A Killing Winter (12 page)

‘If
you don’t sort this shit out soon, the last massacre down here is going to look like a cultural visit from the fucking Bolshoi,’ Kursan told me, and looked over at Saltanat for confirmation.

As ever, she looked non-committal and blew smoke into the air. We were sipping tea in our usual
chaikana
tea room. Or rather, Saltanat and I were; Kursan didn’t believe in non-alcoholic refreshment.

Kursan had flown down at my request. No one had his ear closer to the ground for any whisper, or kept better contacts throughout the underworld of the thieves of law. I knew that the usual investigations wouldn’t get me very far, and it was a case of grasping at any thread that might turn into a rope. It might end up hanging me, but I was willing to risk it.

Kursan looked around the
chaikana
and pulled a look of disgust.

‘Osh. I fucking hate it here. Nothing but stupid
myrki
, ugly women and shit food. You owe me for dragging me down here.’

I shrugged; I’d never known Kursan not to complain about anything and everything, and if there was nothing to moan about, he’d complain about its lack.

‘There was a riot in Talas last night,’ he told us, in between gulps of vodka, mouthfuls of
plov
and lungfuls of smoke, ‘with people marching on the police station, demanding that the “baby killers” be brought to justice. No shooting, just
shouting, but it’s only a matter of time. Same thing down here in Naryn. We’re blaming the Uzbeks, and for sure they’ll be blaming us. A couple more killings and the whole country explodes.’

That was worrying. Talas is where the last revolution began, and Naryn’s the far side of the country. If Saltanat was right and this was a coordinated attempt at unrest, whoever was behind it was well funded and well organised. Forget mobiles or the internet; rumours carry between villages here within minutes, and they swell and get more impressive along the way. What’s being gossiped about in Tokmok becomes eyewitness accounts in Tash Rabat the next day.

‘So what are people saying?’ I asked.

‘Nothing in the papers, or on TV, of course. The White House won’t want to start a panic. And those poor fuckers in Tashkent only get to hear about the President’s latest exploits. Nothing as worrying as news for them.’

Saltanat nodded. Throughout Central Asia, you only get told what the bosses want you to hear. Kyrgyzstan’s a little more liberal, but I wasn’t expecting to read a report of foreign baby killers any time soon.

‘You know all this shit about baby pills from China turning up in South Korea?’ Kursan continued.

I nodded. The story going around was that thousands of capsules from China containing powdered baby foetuses were being sold around the Far East as general ‘cure-all’ medicine. The story was given extra credence thanks to China’s strict one-baby policy. Testing of the capsules was supposed to even tell you the gender of the foetus – usually female, since all Chinese families want to have sons rather than daughters. Naturally, we Kyrgyz are willing to believe anything bad about our neighbours. Was it true? Who knew?
What mattered was who believed it, and what they would do about it.

‘Well, they’re saying that Kyrgyz boy babies make the best medicine. I told you that, right?’ Kursan said.

I nodded again. I supposed the Uzbeks were saying the same about their sons.

‘So this is a plot by the Chinese?’ I asked.

Kursan looked at me as if I was half-witted.

‘It’s the Uzbeks doing it, and blaming the Chinese,’ he said, ‘stirring the shit until it’s ripe, like they always do. So the trouble starts, and when the Uzbeks start shooting, it’s all in self-defence.’

‘Or it’s the Kyrgyz doing the killing, and claiming we’re doing it to discredit the Chinese,’ Saltanat said, clearly not happy about Kursan’s conspiracy theory.

‘I’m not saying that your murders are trivial,’ I replied, looking over at Saltanat, ‘or that ours are. But are they really going to stir up a war?’

‘By the time the rumours get around, it’ll be whole orphanages and maternity wards massacred, you know that,’ Saltanat answered, as Kursan pushed his plate away, belched and stood up.

‘What did you do with the other hooker?’ he asked.

‘Gulbara? Saltanat has got her safely stashed away down south.’

‘You don’t think you should take her back to Bishkek? A witness to the last killing? Well, the last one we know about.’

He’d got a point, but I couldn’t help feeling it would prove difficult to convince Gulbara that going back to the scene of Shairkul’s murder was for the public good – or, for that matter, hers. So it made sense to get a more complete statement from Gulbara.

Kursan drained the last of his vodka, ditched his cigarette in the remains of his mutton stew, and we hit the road to Gulcha.

*

It was two hours later when Illya pulled up outside a whitewashed farmhouse on the outskirts of the village. Nondescript, like all the other villages we’d passed through, a huddle of single-storey buildings with pale-blue trim on the doors and window frames, net curtains drawn to keep out inquisitive glances. An occasional shapeless
babushk
a in muddy
valenki
and patterned headscarf dragged a small trolley carrying a milk churn back from the village spring; stray dogs barked and chased the car before they lost interest and skulked back home. Those were the only signs of life we saw.

‘This the place?’ I asked.

Illya simply nodded. A man of few words.

We got out of the car and I led us across the road towards the gate. The place was pretty run-down, last painted about the time that Stalin was slicing up the country, with cracks in some of the windowpanes. There was a dog lying by the side of the house, asleep, not the best watchdog in town.

As we got closer, I wondered why the dog didn’t jump up, start barking and snarling at us. And then I saw the red and grey puddle under its muzzle, dark against the mud.

If any birds had been singing, they were silent now.

I put one hand up to halt the others, and with the other hand I drew my gun. I didn’t have to look round to know that Saltanat was doing the same.

The plain wooden door was scarred at the bottom from decades of being kicked open by muddy boots, but that wasn’t the reason why it was hanging off one hinge.

The usual farmyard smells of damp earth, sheep’s wool and animal shit had an odd flavour overlying them, a sour, sickly stink that clawed at my nostrils. I pushed the door further open with my foot and moved slowly inside.

The smell was more powerful now, all too familiar. I thought back to my first killing, the old man butchered by his nephew in the one-room shithole, the walls smeared with blood, the entrails spilt out on to the bare concrete floor.

I could taste the blood in the air.

There’s a game we play in Kyrgyzstan called
kok boru
. It’s a kind of polo, where men on horseback battle to score a goal by hurling the headless corpse of a sheep or goat into a circle made of tyres. After an hour or so of being snatched up, dragged and trampled through the mud, the goat resembles nothing that ever lived, ripped and bloody, hoofmarks stencilled into raw flesh.

Which is what confronted me as I entered the main room.

Gulbara had defied the laws of physics and was in two places at once. Or rather, Gulbara’s lower half lay in the doorway into the bedroom, while her torso and head stared at me from a chair facing the window. The decorative felt
shardyk
hanging on the wall was spattered with pale flecks and grey slivers of torn meat. The wooden floor was a sea of blood, starting to crust and blacken in the cold air. I got closer to the body. Gulbara’s stomach was covered in a criss-cross and welter of razor cuts, none deep, none fatal, but enough to tell her that there was going to be no rescue. I hoped she was dead when her body was hacked in half, that her killer had been professional enough to see this as the next step in escalating the trouble, rather than a murder to be enjoyed and played over and over again in his head.

Gulbara died hard and slow, terrified and alone. And if I had anything to do with it, so would whoever did this.

A shadow fell across the floor, and I turned, raising my gun, ready to shoot. Kursan and Saltanat stood there, their faces numb with the room’s stench and swill and stain. I’ve seen violent death at first hand so many times; I forget how much it shocks normal people. It’s not something I’m proud of.

‘Don’t touch anything,’ I said, reminding myself that I was Murder Squad.

Kursan looked at me as if I was mad, and he was right. If we called the local
menti
, we’d be there for days. And if they discovered we’d got a couple of Uzbek Security people with us, the cell key might just get lost for weeks.

‘We’ll have to leave her,’ Saltanat said.

‘We can call it in from the road,’ I said.

‘What about her family? They could be back at any moment,’ Kursan said, looking over his shoulder at the broken door.

‘How did they find her?’ Saltanat asked, picking her way across the floor, avoiding the worst of the pools of blood. ‘She didn’t have any information worth having. Why take this risk?’

‘Scare a woman and you don’t achieve much,’ I said, ‘but terrify a village and that gets the word out and about. She’s a demonstration, the message that announces that nobody’s safe, so do as you’re told.’

‘That doesn’t answer my question,’ Saltanat said, raising her voice. ‘Illya. In here.’

The driver stomped down the path and into the house, eyes widening at the sight of so much blood.

‘When you brought her here from Osh, were you followed?’

Illya shook his head.

‘There was no one else on the road; I would have noticed.’

‘So who did you tell?’

He paused, for half a second too long.

‘No one.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I swear.’

But I could hear the fear in his voice, sensed the sweat on his palms. Saltanat stared at him, deadpan. She made a terrifying interrogator.

‘Last time of asking, Illya.’

I could see that he was wondering which the least bad option would be, trying to make his mind up. Finally, he looked down at his steel-capped boots and mumbled something.

‘I had a
pivo
or two last night. With my cousin. He was talking about the murders, about the missing kids. Maybe I said something.’

He looked worried. Saltanat took a step closer to him.

‘I never said anything about bringing her here, honestly. I’m not stupid.’

‘You mentioned her name, maybe. Heard about the hooker that shared an apartment with one of the dead girls? Nice tits. Comes from around here? Monkey tattooed on her pussy? Bitch called Gulbara. Is that how it was, Illya?’

‘No, I mean, maybe I said her name.’

‘And maybe your cousin told his pal, who told their best friend, don’t tell anyone, keep it to yourself? And this is where we end up, Illya. Staring at something off a butcher’s slab.’

Illya said nothing. The scorn in Saltanat’s voice hung in the air. She looked at him, and sighed. When she spoke, there was resignation in her voice.

‘OK, Illya, question time over. We’re through here. Time to go.’

As Illya nodded, Saltanat took another step closer to him, produced a gun from nowhere, and calmly pumped two bullets into the side of his head, just behind his ear.

There
was surprisingly little blood, though it wasn’t as if the room needed any more. Saltanat had used a 9mm, so the two bullets rushed around inside Illya’s head like hyperactive puppies, failed to find an exit, then rolled over and went to sleep. There were a few flecks and smears on Illya’s boots and camo pants, but I couldn’t tell whether it was his blood or Gulbara’s.

I was too surprised to react, but Kursan reached over and forced Saltanat’s hand backwards, twisting the gun out of her fingers with a single swift motion.

‘What the fuck was that about?’ he asked, slipping the gun into his pocket. Saltanat looked as unruffled as ever. Crazy bitch she might have been, but I couldn’t help wondering if she ever felt anything, or whether she was ice queen all through.

‘You believed that stuff about a family chat over a few beers? He’ll have spilt everything he knew for a backhander,’ she said. ‘Illya told someone where Gulbara was, and this is the result. And if we don’t leave now, we’re in the frame for her murder, and now his. You think her butchers aren’t coming back?’

I listened, suddenly attentive, for a car engine approaching, the stamp of feet outside. Nothing but a silence made ominous by the stink of fresh blood.

‘We have a joke in Uzbekistan,’ Saltanat said. ‘We send Security forces out in threes: one who can read, one who can write, and one to watch the dangerous intellectuals. We don’t
even trust ourselves, let alone each other. I knew Illya would be reporting back on me; I just don’t know who else he was whispering to.’

Even as she spoke, she stepped over Illya’s corpse and headed for the door. Kursan and I looked at each other. He shrugged, and I followed her. Kursan gestured for me to carry on, before heading back into the kitchen. Saltanat got behind the wheel, and I slid into the back of the car, just as Kursan emerged and clambered into the passenger seat. We moved off back down the rutted track, the village as deserted as when we arrived.

‘Nobody heard the shots?’ I asked.

‘No one who’ll do anything about it,’ Saltanat said, and the look on her face discouraged me from asking any more stupid questions.

‘Where now?’

‘Back to Osh, to the airport,’ she replied. ‘Better we get out of here before they find the bodies.’

‘I took care of that,’ Kursan announced, and didn’t even flinch as the dull crump of an exploding gas cylinder boomed behind us. ‘Hard to tell what’s what when everything’s been cooked to a crisp.’

Behind us, a watery spiral of smoke twisted upwards. I told myself it was my imagination, but I wondered if the roast meat I could smell on the air came from the bodies we’d left back there. I felt like an amateur in the company of two hardened criminals, but I told myself to focus on what really mattered. The dead women, the dead children, snowflakes settling on cold faces, bellies ripped into a confusion. Saltanat could take care of the politics, the intrigue, the corruption; I simply wanted to stop seeing Yekaterina Tynalieva’s eyes staring into the dark.

Just for a fucking change, it was starting to snow; light at first, but I’d been caught in too many blizzards to expect it to stay that way. Sure enough, the weather got worse until, by the time we reached the outskirts of Osh, it was hard to see more than the length of the car bonnet ahead. There weren’t going to be any flights out that day.

Saltanat’s mobile rang, and she pulled over to the nearest snowdrift. I watched as she nodded, her face grim, listening, not answering. She rang off, and put the car into gear.

‘Problems?’ I asked, expecting and getting no reply, watching her profile as she stared ahead into the falling snow.

I consoled myself with the thought that anyone following us had to put up with the same whiteout, and the traffic boys were all safely tucked up in the station house counting their breakfast money. I figured we’d head back to the guesthouse off Ak-Burinskya Street, so I was surprised when Saltanat took the road that leads out to the airport. The car skittered and slid across the ice, but that didn’t stop her putting the metal to the floor.

‘There won’t be any flights out, not in this,’ I said, but she ignored me, and took a slip road away from the main terminal.

‘You’ve missed the turn-off. The terminal’s back there,’ I added, not sure whether I wanted to be helpful or irritating. From the look on her face, I had a pretty good idea which one she’d settled for.

She sighed, as if dealing with a slightly dim child.

‘We’re not taking a commercial flight,’ she said, spinning the wheel hard right and into the lee of a low building with a corrugated roof.

My heart sank; if there is one thing worse than trusting body and soul to an airline pilot, it is being flown in some
rusting heap by an exile from the Kazakh air force over some of the highest mountains in Central Asia during the winter’s most ferocious blizzard.

I looked over at Kursan for moral support, but he was slumped in his seat, eyes closed.

The snow battered against me as I got out of the car, and followed the others towards the hangar. I wasn’t happy with what I found inside.

‘We’re going up in that?’ I asked, shouting above the noise of the wind.

In front of me, pilot already in place, was a
krokodil
. Not a dead junkie, but a Mil Mi-24, an old Russian helicopter gunship, known as a
krokodil
because of its camouflage patterning. The Soviets used to call the gunship ‘the flying tank’, not because of its protection but because of its wallowing lack of manoeuvrability. As we clambered aboard, I couldn’t help noticing that the metal of the door was scarred and torn, pocked and pitted with what looked like small-arms fire. Maybe the beast was a veteran of Afghanistan, one that had ended up being pensioned off cheaply to us. Or, more likely, at considerable expense, once the necessary
viziatka
had been slipped into the appropriate hands.

We sat down against the bare metal sides of the gunship, clutching at webbing straps as the pilot edged us forward out of the hangar and into the storm. The helicopter rocked from side to side as the winds started to buffet it, almost managing to drown out the belch and snarl of the engine. In weather like this, it was going to be a good four hours before we got back to Bishkek, and I needed a believable story to tell the Chief. Unapproved leave of absence was probably the least of my crimes, and the Torugart Pass looked ever more likely as my final posting.

The weather and the screams of the engine made it impossible to talk, even at the volume Kursan operated at, so we concentrated on getting as warm and comfortable as we could in a flying fridge. Kursan staggered to his feet and rummaged at the back, dragging out some canvas sheets and throwing one to each of us. I wrapped myself up, ignoring the smell of sweat and oil, and shut my eyes. And despite the noise and the endless shaking, I managed to doze off.

And dream.

*

Chinara’s last few days were a flood of despair on my part and pain on hers. Morphine kept her asleep for most of the time, and when she was awake she often didn’t recognise me. All her energies were concentrated on breathing, on hauling in the last few cubic centimetres of air, that final flailing to keep the flame alight. At times, her struggles would knock her embroidered cushion to the floor, and her hand would scrabble for it, her eyes frantic until she felt the familiar material under her fingertips.

Our hospitals aren’t the best equipped, to say the least. Unwashed floors, broken windows, filthy bathrooms, even dirty operating theatres. Most families bring in a more comfortable mattress, favourite meals, home remedies to supplement the out-of-date fake medicines that the administrators buy from China. It’s not always negligence or corruption; more often than not, it’s just lack of money.

I took a month’s unpaid leave of absence, although I knew I wouldn’t need that long. Or rather, Chinara wouldn’t. I spent all my time by her bedside, catnapping in the chair I’d bullied out of a ward attendant by flashing my police card, going home only to shower, shave and change when the stink of me got too much.

The days seemed to hurtle by; no sooner was it light outside than the sun was falling out of the sky. But the nights, they seemed endless, as if the same implacable force that had sown the tumours deep in her breast was determined to drag out the agony for as long as she could still gasp and scream when the morphine wore off.

Her hair had started to grow back, in some sick fucking parody of recovery, but the flesh was drawing back from the bones of her face, morphing into a shrunken head wearing a wig, eyes still glittering against skin worn sallow and smooth with exhaustion.

All I could do was hold her hand, smile when she surfaced from wherever the drugs had taken her, whisper to her over and over again that I loved her, that I’d never forget her, that I wished that it was me instead of her sliding towards the dark. The words became a tattoo on my tongue and I knew that, once she was gone, ‘love’ was a word I would never use again.

I would think of her on the shore of Lake Issyk-Kul, beyond the holiday towns like Bosteri, where we’d find some rocky spot, and clamber down to the shore to swim in its glass-clear water. In the darkest parts of the night, I would picture her, slipping away from my embrace, down deep under the surface, hair spread out around her, astonished eyes fixed on mine as she sank out of sight.

In one of her rare moments of lucidity, just a couple of days before she died, she repeated something she’d said to me over and over as we got past the initial diagnosis, the operations, the drugs, always hopeful of success.

‘Only two things matter; the way you live your life, and the manner in which you leave it.’

I kept telling myself about her bravery, her stoicism, the
way she never complained, even when the pain bit deep or when she saw the scar where her breast had been. And that just reminded me of my own self-pity, my own concerns about my future. She lived her life well, if for too short a time. And death stood in the corner of the room, ready to devour her.

She died just after sunrise, ten days after going into hospital for the last time. There were no final words, no parting glance, just the winding down of a machine worn beyond repair. I don’t believe she knew I was there.

I drew the sheet over her face, found the duty nurse to tell her that it was finished, then walked home through the bright sunlight that burnt off the snow, finally facing the terror of being alone.