Tom Callaghan - A Summer Revenge

Finally, I gave up, poured a glass of lukewarm water from the tap, sat down to think.

And it was then that I heard a knocking on the hall door.

I drew my weapon, stood to one said, said, “Yes?”

“It’s the caretaker. Someone just left me a parcel. Urgent, they said, please take it upstairs right away.”

“Ms. Sulonbekova isn’t here at the moment,” I explained. “Perhaps you can give the parcel to her when she returns.”

“It’s not for her,” the watchman said, either puzzled or pointing a gun at the door. “It’s for an Inspector Akyl Borubaev.”

I hid my hand with the gun behind the door, turned the handle, looked at the elderly Indian man standing in front of me.

“I’m Borubaev,” I said, holding out my hand for the parcel. The watchman handed it over, after looking over my shoulder to try to see if I’d murdered Natasha. He started to say something incomprehensible, so I smiled politely as I shut the door in his face.

The parcel was small, maybe the size of a bulky fountain pen, and surprisingly light. Probably not a remote-controlled bomb then, and if it was triggered by movement, it obviously didn’t work.

The box was plain white cardboard, of the sort you might use to send someone a small gift or memento. My name had been written using a fountain pen and jet-black ink, rather stylishly.

I opened the box as carefully as if it contained a deadly spider or some spring-loaded poison-delivering device straight out of a James Bond film.

Nothing so high tech or imaginative. On top of a bed of white cotton wool lay the severed right-hand ring finger of a young woman. The nail had been painted with multicolored dots on a clear nail polish, obviously done professionally at an expensive nail salon. The finger was still wearing a diamond ring that sparkled and flashed under the ceiling lights.

A ring that I recognized.

I examined the severed finger, aware that I’d last seen the ring being worn by Natasha Sulonbekova, back at her apartment. There was no way of knowing if the finger was hers or not; I’m no forensic expert. But I was willing to gamble a week’s wages that my old friend Kenesh Usupov, Bishkek’s chief forensic pathologist, would have told me that it had once been attached to a young woman in her early to late twenties, the nail smooth enough to indicate a lifestyle that didn’t involve picking potatoes but went in for elaborate manicures on a regular basis.

The mutilation, or amputation if you wanted to be impersonal about it, suggested a high level of surgical skill, or at least experience. The white nub of the exposed bone was undamaged, and the flesh around it was cut rather than torn. That told me that the job had been done with a single action, without the tentative sawing and hacking of an amateur. Worrying to think that the man with the scalpel had enjoyed a lot of practice.

I held the box up to my nose and sniffed at the finger. The faint scent of blood and raw meat, with no underlying flavor of decay and a degree of rigor mortis told me that the finger had been severed recently, probably within the last twelve hours. The absence of any major bloodstain on the cotton wool suggested that the finger had been left to drain before being carefully packed and delivered.

I looked underneath the cotton-wool bed, but there was no note in copperplate handwriting, no scrawled mobile number. I replaced the lid, wiped it free of my fingerprints using a kitchen towel, looked around and wondered where to put the box. Finally I decided on the fridge. Perhaps not very respectful, but I couldn’t think of a better alternative. It was that or the sink disposal unit. And if she was still alive, Natasha would certainly want to reclaim her ring, maybe even see if her hand and finger could be reunited.

I’d left too many fingerprints all over the apartment to consider trying to remove them all. I could always argue that Natasha was a fellow countrywoman, and that I had met her in my diplomatic capacity. If the police wanted to assume that was just a cover-up for an illicit affair, that was no problem for me. Which reminded me about the photos that Natasha had taken. Presumably they were still on her phone, and the phone was with her. Which meant they could be used as leverage to set Tynaliev against me.

I groaned; the case was growing ever more unlikely to do me any favors.

I pulled the door shut behind me, taking the back stairs so as not to give the watchman another opportunity to identify me in a line-up at some future date. Hopefully, all Kyrgyz people looked the same to him.

The street was empty, as such residential areas usually are late at night. The green illuminated sign of a cruising taxi was the only sign of life. I raised my arm, saw it pick up speed and move toward me. I let my hand drift toward my gun, just in case this was a set-up by the Chechens, but the Pakistani driver wore a taxi uniform and looked genuine enough.

I clambered into the back seat, the ice-cold air conditioning making the sweat on my body raise goose bumps, gave him an address.

The Vista Hotel.

On the way I made a call to make sure the person I wanted to talk to was around.

Lin.

I’d wondered why Lin had been so keen to help me find Natasha. It’s been my experience that honor among whores, like among thieves, is a myth put about to justify what they do. Once you’ve separated two working girls slicing each other’s faces with razors over who gets to fuck the fat sweaty customer, reality kicks in.

So what was the bond between Lin and Natasha? I could understand one Kyrgyz girl maybe helping another out if it didn’t cost anything and didn’t cause her problems. But Lin was Vietnamese, and to us Kyrgyz Ho Chi Min City is the other side of the world. And that’s if we’ve even heard of it.

I didn’t think it would be about sisterhood in the face of the male oppressor either.

Dog eats dog applies to bitches as well. So that left only one motive.

Money.

I’d worked out that Natasha had arrived in Dubai knowing no one, sure that Tynaliev would come after her. Recruiting another Kyrgyz woman to help her, someone to find an apartment in which to lie low, would be to risk betrayal right back to the minister. After all, we’re none of us free from the desire for a few extra slips of paper in our pocket. Any Kyrgyz would know Tynaliev’s reputation for ruthlessness and revenge, and that supplying him with the latter would pay dividends.

So that meant finding someone who wasn’t Kyrgyz. And Natasha had chosen Lin. Or perhaps Lin had spotted Natasha as a potential source of extra income, as a working girl to begin with, before discovering her true financial potential. Whichever way it had begun, I was sure they were now a partnership, and that if I found one she’d lead me to the other.

The bar was as crowded and shitty as I’d remembered it, with Asian women laughing too loudly and too soon at jokes they didn’t understand, and men with untucked shirts that they hoped hid their paunches. A few of the younger men showed off dance moves that they hoped would make them look cool, while the African girls teetered on improbable heels, watching the customers like hawks while trying to look aloof. And above it all, the relentless inhuman beat of dance music amplified beyond pain.

I elbowed my way to the bar, not really giving a fuck whose drink I spilled or what romance I interrupted.

It was several minutes before I spotted Lin, sandwiched between two middle-aged Indians, a position I imagined she would find more lucrative in private. But I wasn’t in the mood to give a damn about her kid sister’s operation or the new engine that her brother’s truck needed. I pushed my way through, took her by the arm. One of the Indian men gave me a hard stare, which disappeared abruptly once he got my service return.