Tom Callaghan - A Summer Revenge

The Chechen scrambled into the driver’s seat, fired up the engine and slammed his foot down. The car lurched forward as if drunk, paused for a second, then reversed back toward the road. I watched the headlights dip and bob, receding in the darkness before being swallowed up in the traffic.

I dry-spat into the dirt, my hands shaking, determined to regain control. But my legs wobbled, and I could taste the bile in my throat, smell it, rich and sour. Then my heart almost burst as a figure suddenly appeared out of the darkness.

I only relaxed my finger on the trigger when I realized it was Saltanat.

“I almost blew you away,” I said, then laughed as I remembered my gun was empty. Not a hearty, amused laugh, more a snicker of fear and relief at having Death’s scythe miss me by a hair’s breadth.

“He was making his way toward the entrance,” Saltanat said, pointing at the dead man, “and I didn’t want to shout in case the man upstairs had a gun.”

“Did you have to kill him? He might have been able to give us some answers.”

“You want to rescue your girlfriend. My job is to take these guys out.”

“Different priorities, right?”

Saltanat pulled a face, as if tasting a piece of rotten fruit.

“I didn’t see the backup guy in the back seat,” she admitted, “but they obviously planned to torture you to get the SIM card, then dispose of you. And your cutie, Miss Big Tits, as well.”

“I keep telling you, she’s not my girlfriend,” I said. “And now where do we go from here, and what do we do with him?”

“There’s nothing we can do with the body. If we take it anywhere, we might be spotted, as well as leaving forensic evidence in the car. Easy enough for the authorities to find out who rented it, and then we’re fucked.”

She started to make her way back to our car, and I followed her, looking back for one last time at the body. Something that had once been a man, maybe with a wife, children, now just a piece of meat already starting to rot in the heat. Maybe he deserved it, maybe he’d tortured or raped Natasha, but having your throat sliced open like a watermelon is no way to die.

I used my sleeve to wipe where I’d pried the boards apart, wondered if I’d left fingerprints anywhere else. There would be footprints in the dust, but I calculated that enough people worked on the site to make one more pair of size 44 shoes pretty anonymous. And there was nothing I could do about them anyway.

At the car I found Saltanat cleaning the blood off her knife, wiping it over and over in the sand.

“I’ll sharpen it later. Sometimes the blade gets nicked by the target’s jawbone or collarbone. First lesson—keep your equipment in shape. That way, it doesn’t let you down next time.”

I hoped there wasn’t going to be a next time, but with a killing machine like Saltanat, I wasn’t putting any bets on it.

Saltanat drove back to her hotel as calmly as if she’d been shopping for beachwear. I knew that she prided herself on her sangfroid; I also knew that underneath her composure the demons writhed and twisted and sometimes rose to the surface. I remembered how Saltanat had suffered a terrible rape that only ended when she killed both of the men attacking her, and how her solution then had been to withdraw into herself. And I wondered if she had now become hardened to killing, if the essential light inside her had also died.

Saltanat handed the car keys to the hotel valet, turned to me. “You look like you could use a shower. And some new clothes.”

I stared at my reflection in the mirrors that lined one wall of the lobby. My face was streaked with dirt and dust, and my clothes looked like I’d taken a beating.

“I can do all that where I’m staying,” I said, wondering why I was reluctant to tell her the name of my hotel.

“Get cleaned up here, and then we can decide what to do next,” she said. As always with Saltanat, it came over as an order, not a suggestion. And I obeyed.

The shower was the last word in luxury; scalding hot water jetted out from every angle with a force far greater than the single showerhead in my Bishkek apartment. Steam clouded the bathroom as the water started to ease the tension in my neck and shoulders.

And that’s when Saltanat joined me.

“This didn’t work out too well the last time we tried it,” I said.

“What? If at first you don’t succeed, never try again?” she said, and took hold of me. “What sort of philosophy is that for a Murder Squad inspector?”

“A cautious one,” I replied, and the rest of my answer was lost in her kiss.

Afterward I found a toweling dressing gown in one of the wardrobes, knotted it at the waist and returned to the bed. As always, Saltanat appeared entirely relaxed in her nudity, something I’ve never been able to achieve myself. But then I’m no oil painting, unless it’s by Picasso.

“Either you’re more relaxed these days, or you’ve been practicing. You’ve been horizontal jogging with Miss Natasha?”

I smiled back at Saltanat, who looked down at her breasts, small and perfect.

“I’ve always preferred quality to quantity,” I said, “and reality to fiction.”

“You’re getting better at giving compliments,” Saltanat said and pulled the sheet up to her neck. I opened the minibar, took out another exorbitantly priced bottle of mineral water, mimed drinking.

“Nothing for me,” Saltanat said, and her voice was suddenly all business, as if the last hour had been locked away, and the key hidden somewhere safe.

“Time we worked out our next move,” she said.

“That’s easy. They’ll contact us again. No one’s going to turn down so much money.” I paused, considered another possibility, stared at my reflection in the window. “And presumably they’ll also want revenge.”

“Get dressed.”

I looked over at Saltanat, noticing the way her hair sprawled across the pillow.

“You want me to go?” I asked.

“I want you to return the car.”

“It’s after midnight; the place will be closed.”

She looked at me, raised an eyebrow, said nothing. I nodded; once the dead man was found, the police would examine the CCTV footage on that stretch of road to identify any vehicles traveling along there during the estimated time of death. They would look out for hire cars to begin with. Then they would start looking for people, a man and a woman, Russian most likely.

“Irina Badmaeva,” Saltanat said. “The name on the fake driving license I used. Just park outside, make sure you wipe down the doors and the wheel, then push the keys through the letter box.”

I didn’t need Saltanat to teach me tradecraft, but it made sense. The trail would stop, or at least slow down, at the car-hire firm.

“You want me to come back afterward?” I asked.

“It’s too late; the hotel will notice you coming and going. Best you go back to where you’re staying, and we’ll talk in the morning.”

It all made sense, but it still felt like a dismissal, like I was no longer part of the hour we’d just shared, forgetting about guns and blood and death. Now it was back to the real world. Or at least the world that was real for her and me.

After dumping the car, I walked for several blocks, making sure as best I could that I wasn’t leaving a CCTV trail for the police to follow. Finally, I flagged down a taxi, but I didn’t take it back to my hotel. Instead, I told the driver to drop me at the Vista.

The bar hadn’t become any more stylish and fashionable since I’d last been there, and the stink of sweat, cigarettes and stale beer was as overpowering as ever. An ear-bursting dance track ensured that everybody had to shout and that no one could hear. But most of the conversations were about prices and times, and they were quickly settled. I kept an eye out for Jamila and Lev, just in case they were running the same scam on another hapless guy in search of a night of love, but they weren’t around.