Tom Callaghan - A Summer Revenge

“I haven’t booked you in,” Saltanat said, unlocking the door. “I’m sure you’re perfectly happy where you are. Somewhere cheap and not cheerful, I imagine, knowing your spartan tastes. Or are you staying with Little Miss Bigtits?”

“She’s a suspect in the case I’m working on,” I said, realizing just how pompous and defensive I sounded.

“If you say so.”

I walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows, looked down at the artificial lake below, then at the silver needle of the Burj Khalifa. From this height, the cars resembled children’s toys, and the silence felt alien, imposed. I felt I was looking at an architect’s model of a city, rather than a living, breathing place where people lived, loved, raised their families. Nothing was real; everything was an illusion, a stage set.

I turned to find out why Saltanat had brought me here, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of light, as if the sun’s reflection had been caught in a mirror.

And it was then that the window imploded, hurling razor-edged shards of glass across the suite.

I threw myself to the floor, bracing myself against the impact of the second shot. When you shoot through tempered glass, the impact throws the bullet off target, sending it tumbling rather than spinning. That means you need to fire again through the hole the first shot punches in the window to hit your target. I didn’t look to see if Saltanat had followed my example; she was far better trained in this sort of thing than I was.

After a couple of moments I decided that perhaps the second shot wasn’t on its way, so I began to squirm my way to the door. The shooter wouldn’t want to stay in place for very long; someone might have heard the shot, called the police or wondered why there were noises coming from the empty office next door.

The door to the suite started to open. I held the Makarov out in front of me in case a second shooter was coming in to deliver a death shot to our heads.

“Move!” Saltanat said, and I saw her dive through the open doorway just as a second shot smacked harmlessly into the double bed, fragments of foam rubber dancing up into the air.

Just as well we weren’t lovers anymore, I thought and rolled forward to join her. In the corridor I hauled myself to my feet, pocketed my gun and raced after Saltanat, already halfway to the lifts. I knew that she hadn’t been hit; life isn’t like the movies, where you simply grit your teeth against the pain and swap gun hands. Get shot by a rifle, and the impact rips off an arm or a leg, or simply punches through you, cutting a plate-sized exit wound in your back.

Saltanat hammered at the lift buttons, her face a mask of anger. I saw by the discreet bulge at her waist that she was carrying. She almost certainly also had a knife strapped to her boot. Whoever had fired at us needed to flee the scene right now, before vengeance arrived.

When the lift finally arrived, we scrambled in. I could see Saltanat’s reflection in the mirrored walls. Anger had been replaced by a cold efficiency. Outside the hotel, rather than wait for Saltanat’s car we ran toward the building from where the shots had been fired. I could feel the heat licking at me like some giant feral cat, leaving my skin soaked and sore.

As we neared the building, a black Prado, windows tinted to hide its occupants, roared up from the underground car park and halted at the barrier. Saltanat shot at the windscreen, hit the bonnet, but we could only stand and watch as the barrier rose, the car took a right turn away from us and headed toward the motorway.

“There’s no point trying to follow them,” I said, trying to catch my breath, regretting every cigarette of the last twenty years. “By the time we get your car, they could be anywhere.”

Saltanat nodded. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, watching the car disappear. “I know who they are. It’s just a case of finding them.”

I didn’t know how well Saltanat knew Dubai, but with two and a half million people living in the city, finding them wasn’t going to be easy.

Back in the cool of the hotel lobby, Saltanat told the receptionist that some freak accident had shattered the window of her suite. The manager was promptly summoned, ordered to provide an alternative suite. After accepting his apologies, Saltanat beckoned to me, pointed to the bar.

Once we’d sat down, Saltanat with a glass of red wine, me with a glass of mineral water, I decided it was time I asked some questions, the sort that usually plunge you into trouble when you get the answers you want. The bar was almost completely empty, no one within earshot.

“You say you know who the shooter was? Care to share or is it a state secret?”

Saltanat sipped at her wine, pulled a face. My water tasted flat, warm.

“I take it you’re not here to visit the water parks,” Saltanat said. “And I can’t believe that an inspector—an ex-inspector—earns enough som to take your little friend on an all-expenses-paid holiday. So either you’ve taken a drink from someone or she’s work, right?”

Trying to buy time, I waved the waitress over and asked for ice. She showed the same enthusiasm as if I’d asked her to give me a free lapdance, slouching off to wherever the ice was hidden.

“Sort of work. Not Murder Squad. Private.”

“Irate boyfriend needs mistress tracking down?”

Saltanat had come uncomfortably close to the truth of the matter.

“Irate, very rich and powerful boyfriend?”

I tried to look emotionless, but Saltanat could always read me like a very small book with very large letters.

“So, Tynaliev,” she said with a finality that should have reassured me but didn’t.

“Everyone’s a detective these days,” I said.

“Hardly. Everyone knows that your old boss has a thing for young women, while his wife looks the other way from a conveniently distant dacha .”

I shrugged. No point in trying to bluff it out.

“What’s he promised you? Your old badge back?”

And then I found myself telling her about how I had felt at a loose end after leaving the force, about how my reason for being was to find justice for the dead. I’ve always believed that if murder victims don’t have a dreamless sleep, it all comes back to haunt us. All the bad guys have to do to win is to make the good guys look the other way. Not that I’m claiming to be a good guy, but I try.

I sat back, embarrassed by my little speech, at revealing myself to a woman I’d slept with but hardly knew. I concentrated on crunching ice between my teeth; right then it felt like the only thing I might be any good at.

I had a sudden flashback, of Chinara scolding me for doing exactly that. She said the noise drove her crazy, as well as making her worried about the cost of dental repairs. And as always, whenever I thought about Chinara, an unexpected wave of sorrow knocked me off my feet. I couldn’t ever catch her killer, the cancer, but I knew who had smothered her with a wedding pillow to end her suffering. And even if I could forgive myself, I knew I never would.

Saltanat couldn’t have read my thoughts, but she obviously sensed they were unpleasant. To break my mood, she tapped the side of my glass.

“I wish you’d take a decent drink once in a while. For a hard-bitten Murder Squad cop, you do a very boring holier-than-thou routine.”

I smiled. The idea of getting drunk with Saltanat was a prospect not many would relish and even fewer might survive.

“When I decide I want a pokhmelye , a hangover from a three-day bender, you’ll be the first person I’ll invite.” I sat back, stared at her. “Now, tell me about our little friend with the high-powered rifle.”