A Killing Winter (10 page)

I
raised my hands, shoulder height, turned round slowly, no hasty movement that could be misinterpreted. Alisher was already out of the car, his hands palm down on the hood, face turned away so as not to be able to identify anyone. The black eye of the Makarov pointing in my direction held my complete attention. Suddenly the air tasted extra clear and crisp, the sounds of traffic ringing in my head. I was about to die, and I couldn’t even find it in myself to picture an alternative. A thought: would they bury me beside Chinara? Followed by: would there even be a body to bury, or would I end up in a ditch, a stream, a wood, unnamed, unmourned, a skeleton gnawed clean?

The black eye didn’t blink. Whoever was holding it knew what they were doing. The hand didn’t shake, its wrist supported by the other hand, classic military training. Or maybe police. A small hand, slim fingers, the nails a vivid red, the same red that would spurt from my chest if the Makarov’s bullets tore into me. A woman’s hand.

‘Clasp your hands together behind your head, Inspector.’

The same honey-over-ice-cream voice. The same impersonal tone, cold, calculated, as warm as the dirty snow piled against the roadside. One consolation: I’d lived too long to die too young.

I tried to keep the tremor out of my own voice.

‘It’s my aftershave, right? So irresistible you decided to follow me all the way here?’

‘Always the joker.’ Her voice took on a faintly amused air.

But I still kept my hands tightly gripping the back of my neck.

‘Not always,’ I admitted, ‘only when someone’s planning on using my chest for target practice.’

‘Use the thumb and forefinger of your left hand to take out your gun and – slowly – place it on the ground in front of you.’

I obeyed, the metal cold against my fingers.

‘Now take three steps to the right.’

Smart thinking. Even if I’d been foolish enough to attempt one of those somersault rolls that you see in the movies, the gun was on my wrong side, giving her a lifetime to pull the trigger.

In one of the nearby houses, someone was cooking
pelmeni
dumplings, and the sweet scent filled my mouth with saliva. For the first time since I helped spade the earth over Chinara, I realised that life is sweet, that I didn’t want to die.

The single eye of the Makarov blinked, turning its unrelenting gaze away from me.

‘Just a precaution, Inspector, my apologies. You’ve got fast reactions and a careful aim. I saw what happened to Lubashov. You can’t unpull a trigger, and I’d rather be safe than sorry. Or dead.’

I inspected the woman behind the gun. Slim, tall, long straight black hair falling to her shoulders. Eyes hidden behind wraparound sunglasses, crimson lipstick matching her fingernails. High, slanted cheekbones, and the kind of mouth the papers always describe as ‘generous’ – though, in my experience, lips like that are only giving when they want something in return. Long black leather coat, jeans tucked into shin-high lace-up combat boots. In a different place, at a
different time, the type of woman it would be very easy to desire.

‘Now we’ve established we’re not going to shoot each other, I can put my hands down?’

I tried to give my voice a suitable air of amused nonchalance, but I wasn’t surprised by the tremor in my voice. She nodded, and I put my arms down by my side. I looked down at my gun, and raised an eyebrow.

‘I think we’ll leave it there for the moment. Call it a first-date precaution.’

I shrugged, and looked past her to the black BMW with the Uzbek diplomatic plates, Army Camouflage standing there, arms folded, in his signature camo pants and steel-capped boots.

‘You told me I was a shitty little uniform the last time we met. Doesn’t sound good for a first date, does it?’

She stared at me, then pushed her sunglasses up on to her forehead. Her eyes were as black as her clothes, and just as unrevealing. A thin white scar cut through her left eyebrow, easy enough to conceal with make-up. The fact that she hadn’t bothered made her more intimidating.

‘I underestimated you, Inspector. But I can assure you, we’re on the same side. Fundamentally.’

I puzzled over that for a minute, then shook my head.

‘You tried to warn me off. All that crap about foreign holidays. Which wouldn’t help me solve my case.’

‘I didn’t want you fucking up my case, getting in the way,’ she said, holding her hand out in a vague apology, and taking a couple of steps towards me. ‘I’ve put a lot of time and effort into this.’

There was a new scent in the air.

Perfume. Heady. Erotic. Maybe Kursan was right and
it had been too long since I’d been anywhere near a woman.

‘If you’re Uzbek law, and I’m not sure about that, you’ve got no jurisdiction here in Kyrgyzstan. Not even here in Osh. And why would you be interested in these murders, anyway? The victims aren’t Uzbek.’

She nodded towards the limousine.

‘Let’s get out of the cold. We can talk there.’

I hesitated; there’s nothing easier than to shoot someone in the back of the head as they get into the back seat of a car. The Makarov’s 9mm bullet bounces around inside the skull, mashing up everything in its path and leaving only puree. If you’re very unlucky, you get to spend a couple of decades having an impatient nurse spoon just the same sort of puree into your drooling mouth.

She spotted my reluctance, and gestured towards my gun.

‘Pick it up, put it away, and I’ll do the same. Illya, go and sit with the Inspector’s driver, calm him down, keep him quiet.’

I took my time, using thumb and forefinger as before, but I felt a lot happier once I’d got the pistol snug against my body. And knowing that Army Camouflage called himself Illya didn’t make him any less threatening.

‘If it makes you feel any happier, Inspector, I’ll get in the car first. No surprises.’

Once we were both comfortable in the back seat, she offered me her hand. The same hand with which she could have killed me. I noticed the square-cut nails, slim fingers, no rings, her strong grasp at odds with the scarlet polish. Her perfume was stronger now, sweet but with an undertone of something astringent, lemon perhaps. Maybe that was a hint, or a warning.

‘You’re wondering whose side I’m on, Inspector,’ she said, never taking those eyes off me.

‘Point a gun at me, and I’m pretty certain you’re not on mine.’

She raised an eyebrow, and I watched the scar curve back on itself.

‘The facts: you’re Bishkek’s top murder specialist, investigating the deaths of three women, and two unborn males. Nothing to connect the three women; they didn’t know each other, they didn’t share the same social circles, even come from the same city. A politico’s daughter, a peasant girl, a prostitute. And you want to know what links them.’

Everything she said was accurate, but that didn’t mean I had to share what I knew; we’d left the playground a long time ago.

‘What I want to know is why you’re interested. You’re Uzbek, why should you give a shit about dead Kyrgyz? It’s not as if there’s much love lost between our two countries.’

While she decided what to confide in me, I pressed home my advantage.

‘The two dead wannabes, the ones shot outside Fatboys. What’s your connection to those two?’

She reached in the pocket of her jacket, smiled as I tensed, pulled out a packet of cigarettes, the cheapest, nastiest brand in all Central Asia, short of rolling your own
papirosh
from roadside tobacco.

‘Cards on table?’

‘Sure,’ I said, ‘let’s see your hand.’

‘You came down here looking for that prostitute? Gulbara?’

‘She’s a witness in my case.’

‘Well, there’s a problem.’

She lit up, opened her window, plumed smoke through the gap. Considerate. She gave me a hard, appraising stare.

‘Do you want to fuck her?’

The question took me by surprise, and so did hearing her swear.

‘Why would I want to do that?’

She shrugged, and took another hit of nicotine.

‘Lots of men do.’

‘Lots of men will fuck anything with a pulse, but I’m not one of them.’

‘How long since your wife died?’

I didn’t know how she’d heard about Chinara, but a slow anger started up, at her death being thrown so casually into the conversation.

‘Being a widower doesn’t mean I want to fuck a
krokodil
-shooting hooker.’

I didn’t make an effort to disguise my rage, and she nodded slowly.

‘She’s worried that if you don’t want to fuck her, there’s only one thing you do want.’

‘Which is?’

She stared at me, unblinking, those black impenetrable eyes never leaving my face.

‘To kill her.’

‘See
it from my point of view, Inspector.’

Gulbara was sitting across from me, clutching a cup of tea as if it was the only thing stopping her freezing to death. But the café was warm, and her shivering was due to coming down off the drugs. Her hair was scraped back and tied in a loose ponytail; she looked much younger, but maybe that was because she wasn’t naked, and the track marks on her arms and thighs weren’t on display. I imagined the monkey was still clambering into her
pizda
, though.

‘I come back to the apartment, and I find . . . well, you saw what happened to Shairkul. The handbag led some very bad people to us. And you were the one who took the bag from me, who passed it on to someone. Who else knew about us, we were just working girls? The bag belonged to somebody rich, important. Someone who’d want their thousand dollars back.’

‘How does that make me the one who killed Shairkul?’

Gulbara looked uneasy and sipped her tea.

‘Maybe not you, but someone who could make the police look the other way. A politico, maybe, one of the high-ups. What’s a dead hooker to one of them?’

I sighed, and drank my own tea. Without asking, Gulbara added more to my cup, filling it halfway, the perfect hostess.

‘You found a body, hacked and mutilated, with a dead foetus in her belly. Then you find your flatmate and work colleague in the same condition. You think I keep a store of
dead baby boys just in case I want to make a murder more interesting?’

I reached across and pulled up her sleeve, the rotting
krokodil
greenish-brown against the pallor of her skin.

‘How much of that shit are you shooting up?’

My voice had risen and I was getting curious stares from the people at the next table. Gulbara looked down at her cup, and I noticed that her fingernails were chewed down to the quick.

‘Saltanat told me you were OK.’

I looked across at the other woman at the table. At least now I knew her name.

She nodded.

‘You’re one of the good guys, Inspector. Or . . .’ Saltanat paused to consider, ‘at least you don’t mind killing the bad guys.’

‘I don’t want to kill anyone,’ I said, and drank more tea.

‘Doesn’t stop you being pretty good at it, though.’

Her tone was mocking, as if I was a joke to which only she had the punchline.

I looked over at Gulbara. The cop banter wasn’t helping her calm down. And then it struck me that I didn’t know if Saltanat was law; I didn’t know anything about her, except that she scared the shit out of me.

‘Are you taking me back to Bishkek?’

I looked at Gulbara, tried to reassure her with a calm voice and an understanding gaze.

‘You’re not suspected of anything, there isn’t a warrant out for your arrest. I just need your deposition. Give me some answers, and I’ll see that there won’t be any paper out on you, not even for fleeing the scene of a crime.’

Saltanat surprised me by nodding in agreement. I gave Gulbara my most winning smile.

‘Tell me what you know, it ends here. No having to go back to Bishkek.’

‘I don’t have a minder any more, anyway, do I?’ Gulbara asked, guessing that I’d given Gasparian the hard word.

Once back in the Kulturny, she’d be fixed up with a new protector in seconds, whether she wanted one or not, but I decided not to share that cheerful thought.

‘Stay in Osh, maybe,’ I suggested. ‘Get off the
krokodil
?’

She looked defensive, and tugged the sleeves of her coat further down over her wrists.

‘It’s only every once in a while, to relax, for my nerves.’

We both knew she was lying; if the
krokodil
kept biting her, she’d got a year left, maybe two if she was really unlucky. But it was her call, and I was a murder cop, not a drugs counsellor, a father figure or a knight in tarnished armour come to the rescue. Gulbara knew that too, knew what lay ahead as surely as if I’d shown her a photo of a pile of freshly dug earth, with her name and face engraved on the headstone.

I gave up on the cheap advice, and got down to her statement. Saltanat listened intently, saying nothing, her eyes narrowed from the smoke of her cigarette. What Gulbara had to tell me was pretty much as I expected: no, she didn’t know who Shairkul was meeting, didn’t know anything about Vasily, or what he might have done to get Lubashov so pissed off with him. One thing she did tell me was that Shairkul was also working off the books, servicing clients she’d found on her own account. Which meant she got to keep the money, but risked a beating from Gasparian if he found out. But I already knew Shairkul’s pimp wouldn’t also be her killer.

‘The dead woman, she was somebody important?’ she asked, wondering if she should continue to be scared.

I thought about saying every murder victim is important, if only to their family and friends, but I knew both women would see that as the worst sort of lie. Yekaterina’s father could turn Bishkek upside down to find his daughter’s butcher, but I’d be lucky if I could get Shairkul anything more memorable than a cheap cotton shroud and a state-dug pit.

‘Her father’s a big guy,’ I said, and left the rest unspoken. ‘You know anything about Shairkul’s family?’

I thought I could trace her easily enough, but it never hurts to save time when you’re hunting a murderer.

‘She’s . . . was . . . from Tokmok,’ Gulbara said, her face screwed up as if to help her concentration, ‘but I don’t know anything about her family. She said they didn’t get on.’

I couldn’t say I was surprised; not many parents are delighted when their darling daughter decides to start selling herself under the trees in Panfilov Park. It was time to push Gulbara a little harder.

‘How did your house burn down?’ I asked, throwing out the question as if the answer didn’t really matter.

Gulbara fiddled with her tea, and I sensed a new tension.

‘It’s my mother’s house, not mine. When the recent troubles came, well, we’re Uzbek, and this is a Kyrgyz district. Mama lived through the killings twenty years ago; when it all started up again, she just grabbed what she could and headed for Doslik.’

We Kyrgyz call the Uzbekistan border Doslik, while the Uzbeks insist it’s called Dostuk. Neighbours, and yet we can’t even agree on a common name. It turned out that Mama had crossed into Uzbekistan and headed for relatives in Tashkent, fleeing the authorities on both sides. A lifetime’s home
suddenly in hostile territory, what else was she to do? Yet again, I felt weary despair at my country’s endless acts of hate, stupidity, violence.

‘But that was a while ago, and the ruins of your house are still warm. So, again, what happened?’

Gulbara looked over at Saltanat, but there was no help coming from that quarter.

‘I’ve been staying there since I left Bishkek. A couple of nights ago, I’d gone out. Working.’ She looked at me, defying me to criticise. ‘I have to eat, don’t I?’

I nodded. Whores get hungry too.

‘I got back about midnight, and the place was alight. Nobody round here is going to do anything to help. I’m just an Uzbek slut, as far as they’re concerned. Probably my fucking next-door neighbours. Some dickhead who thinks Osh belongs to the Kyrgyz.’

I didn’t ask about insurance; it’s as rare here as diamonds in the street.

‘You don’t think it had anything to do with what happened to Shairkul?’ I asked, as gently as I knew how.

Saltanat flashed me a warning look, but Gulbara was too busy thinking about the misery of her future to notice. I could see that she could use a
kosiak
right now, home-grown and hand-rolled, just to take the edge off things, but I didn’t come all this way to listen to stoned ramblings. The thought that the fire might be a hit rather than some racist act wasn’t the best thing to put in her mind, but better that than her stumbling into the sights of a Makarov.

‘But I don’t know anything,’ she wailed, tears starting, face twisted, ‘I swear I don’t.’

‘You’ve got somewhere to stay?’

‘With my uncle and his family, near Gulcha.’

I nodded. Down south towards the Tajik border, far enough away from Osh to give her relative safety, I hoped.

‘I’ll see she gets down there without any trouble,’ Saltanat said.

One last question.

‘Your friend Gasparian? The fat hairy guy I caught teasing the monkey?’

‘Him? Pays the rent on the apartment, keeps the local uniforms in breakfast money, we give him a slice of what we make. He visits me every couple of weeks. Can’t get it in without swearing and yelling and calling me names. Not that there’s a lot to put in.’

‘Did you say anything about the first murder to him?’

She scrounged another cigarette off Saltanat. The air above the table was thick and blue, and I wondered if the café owners had ever considered turning it into a cancer ward. She sparked up, and blew smoke in the general direction of the kitchen.

‘He mentioned it. Had I heard about it, was she a working girl, did I know her? That sort of thing. And then he got hard and climbed on. I didn’t pay too much attention, too busy trying not to get crushed. And then you spoilt his party.’

I excused myself, and headed out into the relatively clean air outside. I called Sverdlovsky to tell them to hold Gasparian for further questioning, but he’d already been released. They asked if I want him picked up, but he’d either be laughing from the other side of a border, going about his daily routine, or dead. It could wait until I flew back.

Saltanat was making arrangements for Illya to drive Gulbara down to her uncle’s farm. It was quite a drive, over two mountain passes that were going to be dense with snow, but the BMW should make it, if he took it slowly.

I scribbled my mobile number on the back of my card and gave it to Gulbara.

‘If you think of anything more, call.’

But she probably wouldn’t. And I was pretty sure I wouldn’t see her again, unless it was round by the dark side of Panfilov Park, near the Lenin statue, or on Kenesh’s morgue table.

Saltanat surprised me by kissing Gulbara on both cheeks, then hugging her; I had her down as an ice maiden. We watched as Gulbara walked down the street, Illya two paces behind. Alone, I turned to Saltanat. The sunglasses were back in place, even though it was now night outside. I reached over and removed them. She stared back at me, expressionless. It was clear that I wasn’t going to get any information that she didn’t want to give.

‘I’ve got a few more questions,’ I said.

‘I rather thought you might.’

‘Questions like: what’s your involvement in all this? Who are you working for?’

I poured out the last of the tea into our two cups, added sugar, took a mouthful, savoured the flavour and the warmth.

‘I’ll answer your questions. Maybe. But first of all, I want a proper drink.’