A Killing Winter (15 page)

The
falling snowflakes, the distant headlights, the wind hustling its way through bare branches had all stopped, frozen into a single moment, slow motion gliding to a complete halt.

Even before the breath of his
pakhan
’s order dissolved into air, I’d swung round to face the muscle, my boot slamming into the side of his knee. His whole leg buckled inward at the joint, bent in a way nature never intended, and I heard the kneecap split, like kindling broken to make a fire. At the same time, the heel of my fist shattered his nose, not so hard as to drive splinters of bone into his brain, but enough to stop him in his tracks. His leg unable to support his weight, he toppled sideways. And as he put his hand out to break his fall, I stamped down on it, bending his fingers back to the wrist.

He gave a surprisingly high-pitched scream, then I was pulling him upright, using him as a shield for whatever might come out of the car, pulling his jaw back to snap his neck if he put up any more fight.

A long gout of blood spasmed out of the remains of his nose, spattering across the snow, and from the smell, he’d pissed himself. With my free hand, I wrestled the gun out of his jacket pocket and pointed it at the open window.

‘Enough, Inspector,’ the voice said, unmoved by the sudden violence. ‘Yuri might be no opposition for you, but you know what I’ll have to do if you kill him.’

‘Out of the car, fucker,’ I said.

I didn’t give a shit how old he was, I wouldn’t have cared if he died shrieking from cancer in front of me. He knew something, and I’d kick it out of him if I had to, until he bled from every hole.

The door locks clicked open, and the boss slowly dismounted.

‘Gun on the floor, now,’ I ordered, taking the gun barrel out of the muscle’s ear and rapping it against his
pakhan
’s jaw. He held his hands up, showing he was unarmed.

‘You think this is a good idea?’ he said. ‘Just as well you have no living relatives.’

‘I’ve fucked around too long on this,’ I said, resisting the urge to hammer his crooked stained teeth out of his face.

The
pakhan
looked around, slightly puzzled, wondering where the rest of his crew were. I let Yuri slump to the floor, and gave him a little steel-toed kiss just to keep him quiet for a while. Then I focused on the
pakhan
.

Maksat Aydaraliev. Seventy years old, deadly as distilled snake venom. He’d ruled the heroin trade through Chui province since before independence. He’d survived the KGB, the State Police, the Anti-Corruption Police, the Drug Squad, two revolutions and anyone in the underworld stupid enough to take him on. His mobile had the private numbers of anyone who was anyone in the White House. He owned sanatoria for Russian oligarchs on the shores of Lake Issyk-Kul, and a dozen restaurants and clubs around Bishkek. He was decisive and pitiless. I knew for a fact that he’d beheaded two undercover law officers and sent his trophies to their wives. He was a man ready to kick over the table any time, and fuck the consequences.

All this in a man who only hit 160cm on tiptoe, who looked as if a strong wind would hurl him as far as the Pamir
Mountains, and who had never been seen in anything other than a hand-tailored suit.

He stared at me, then spat.

‘You underestimated me,
pakhan
.’

I gave Yuri another peck, this time somewhere between his navel and his balls, and a little more piss stained the snow.

‘Is that why you didn’t bring any more brothers along? You thought I’d be easy? Or you know Tynaliev will slice you from arse to armpit if I die before I’ve found his daughter’s killer?’

Aydaraliev reached into his pocket, and I tensed. He brought out his mobile, and offered it to me, raising his eyebrows.

‘Want to call him now and ask?’

It might have been a bluff – anything was possible with Aydaraliev – but right then, I preferred not to tell the Minister that I was no nearer solving his daughter’s murder.

Aydaraliev’s smile was as brutal as one of our mountain wolves as he put away his phone. Then he looked off to his right, gestured for someone unseen to join us. I was pretty sure Aydaraliev wouldn’t shit in his home territory by killing a Murder Squad, but I tensed myself for what looked like an inevitable bruising.

We waited for a moment, and then he beckoned again, impatient this time.

‘Can’t get the staff?’ I asked. If I was in for a beating, I decided to get a few cheap gibes in first.

He looked around, ever so slightly thrown off balance. For the first time in who knows how long, things weren’t going according to his very precise and explicit engineering.

‘Don’t worry, they’re out there,’ he said. ‘And if they’re not, well, heads will roll.’

Remembering what he did to the two undercover law
officers, I had no reason to disbelieve him. He laughed, the low rustle on the night air like death creeping up on tiptoe.

‘So what now, Murder Squad? A tango together in the Sverdlovsky basement? Hope I shit myself with fear? Tell me if I sing like a bird, I’ll live in a cage with wider bars.’

Suddenly, he was in my face, flecks of spittle landing on my cheeks.

‘Listen, Comrade Cunt, all-important Comrade Prick Inspector, when I was twenty-three, they came to my village, took me away. I was just a yearling, years away from becoming top guy,
bratski krug
. I didn’t have clout, no one to look out for me, no one asking for a little sweetener in their pocket in exchange for me strolling down Chui watching the pretty girls in their summer dresses.’

He paused and wiped his hand across his mouth.

‘You know what happened, Comrade? When I went waltzing in your basement?’

He waved his hand in my face, and I saw the deformed fingers, missing nails, ancient scars trailing across his palm like albino slugs.

‘I didn’t just dance, I was taught how to play the xylophone. Not with a mallet, with a ball hammer. One knuckle, one bone, one joint at a time. And the next day, the next finger. Never knowing which one it would be. And as soon as they started to heal, all twisted and splintered, curved like an eagle’s claws, well, it happened all over again. Nine months before I danced the polka out of that basement. And you know what? I never sang a single note.’

The same mirthless laugh.

‘Those shit-suckers, they broke my right hand in twenty-eight places. Just as well I write with my left hand, eh, Comrade? And once I got out, that wasn’t all I did with it.’

He shaped his hand in a parody of a gun, jerked the finger, and then blew imaginary smoke from the tip.

‘You won’t find any of the uniforms who waltzed with me then walking around today. All in the line of duty, obviously. At least, that’s what the grieving widows and children were told. A tough career, but at least it’s a short one, right?’

He looked up at me, and grinned, nothing but evil and death in his eyes.

‘What can you do to me, bitch, that the real experts couldn’t manage?’

I heard the crunch of snow behind me, but I never took my eyes off Aydaraliev. My finger tugged back the trigger, up to the pulling point; if I got hit, then he’d be coming with me.

‘The Inspector may not be a real expert, Maksat. But don’t worry; I am.’

A voice I recognised. A voice like honey over ice cream.

Saltanat
walked into the SUV’s twin circles of light, cradling a Kalashnikov.

Aydaraliev looked puzzled for a few seconds, then nodded in recognition.

‘I suppose I’ve got Otkur to thank for you being here?’ I asked. ‘No secrets from you, eh?’

‘Just as well for you, Inspector,’ Saltanat said, her eyes never leaving Aydaraliev. ‘Our friend here always travels with precautions.’

Aydaraliev jerked his head towards the darkness from which she’d just stepped, then raised an eyebrow. Saltanat nodded in return.

‘One of them will wake up tomorrow feeling like Mount Lenina fell on him. The other?’ She shrugged. ‘He won’t be waking up at all.’

‘No loss, if they didn’t have the balls to handle a whore like you.’

Saltanat’s face didn’t register the insult, but she took a quick step forward and rammed the muzzle of the Kalash against his hip. He grunted in pain and put one hand out against the side of the SUV to support himself, staying upright.

‘You’re the Uzbek bitch?’ he said, and contempt dripped from every word. Contempt for her as an enemy, a cop and a woman, all three.

‘Think of it as warming up, Maksat, some light snacks
before we get down to the main course,’ she said, and smiled without warmth.

‘It’s fucking freezing, let’s go and discuss this in the warm, over a bottle, pretend we’re friends.’

‘Sure,’ Saltanat agreed. ‘I want you to be my guest.’

She reached down, never taking her eyes or aim off the
pakhan
, and patted Yuri’s pockets, finding the car keys, tossing them to me.

‘You drive,’ she said, ‘and I’ll snuggle up in the back with my true love.’

And in case I mistook her meaning, she stroked the barrel of her gun.

‘Him?’ I asked, looking down at Yuri.

‘You give a fuck?’ she said, and motioned our captive into the car.

Now that she’d mentioned it, I didn’t, but I didn’t want him to freeze to death either, even if he was gang muscle. I made an anonymous call, and organised a patrol car to pick him up and deposit him in a nice warm cell. Then I slid behind the wheel, fired up the ignition and we lumbered out into the night.

We headed east along Chui Prospekt, past the power station with its veil of smoke hanging in the air. I kept one eye on the mirror, but traffic was light, and I was pretty sure we weren’t being followed. Saltanat directed me to the outer edge of Bishkek, towards where a rash of new houses was springing up. The potholed road was replaced by a rutted dirt track, and we bounced and lurched from side to side. Now would have been the time for Aydaraliev to make his move, but Saltanat had her gun pressed firmly into his belly, ready to cut him in half if he tried anything.

We arrived at a large three-storey house, surrounded by a two-metre wall. Someone must have been watching for us, because the blue ornamental gates swung open as we approached, and I steered the car through the gap. The gates immediately closed behind us. I parked beside the front door, and got out of the car.

A guard immediately frisked me, while another pointed his Kalashnikov in my direction. They dragged Aydaraliev out of the car and searched him, much more thoroughly. When they were satisfied, they led the two of us inside. A wooden staircase spiralled up to the first floor and down into the cellar. Other than that, the entrance hall was completely empty. We were pushed forward into one of the rooms at the back, told to sit on the floor. For a safe house, the place seemed pretty basic. There was no heating, and our breath hung in the sour air like steam.

Saltanat walked in and leant against the wall. She’d left her Kalash in the car, but the two guards who flanked her had more than enough firepower. It struck me that the
pakhan
wasn’t their only prisoner, and Saltanat had no more reason to feel friendly towards me than she did towards the old man. I remembered she had been sent to kill me, and my stomach gave a lurch.

‘No point trying to remember your way here again, Inspector.’

Maybe she meant I wouldn’t be leaving here again, or the place was only a temporary bolt-hole. I suspected that the
pakhan
wouldn’t be leaving at all. If so, he was showing no signs of it worrying him. He was a murdering bastard, but I had to admire his balls.

He levered himself up from the floor and walked towards
Saltanat. The guards tensed, and I braced myself for catching a bullet in the crossfire, but Aydaraliev held his hands apart, stood in front of her.

‘I know you’re a
torpedo
, you know I’m top boss, a
vor v zakonye
. Let’s not pretend. I don’t expect you to let me walk out of here with my cock in my hand. It’s not in my nature to give out information. You put a bullet in my head, then you get it quick from my followers. Same shot, behind the ear, guaranteed.’

He paused and looked at Saltanat without blinking. His face could have been chiselled out of granite for all the emotion he showed.

‘Or, you give me shit. The pliers. The hammer. The usual. I know. I’ve used them myself. That happens, they find my body, you get worse. Nipples scissored off. Make a movie of you getting gang-fucked front and back by my boys and your tits hacked off, send it to your family.’

He told her this with as much emotion as if he’d been explaining how to distill extra-strength home brew, then gave a gesture of resignation; all this was out of his hands now.

‘Or one last option. I should be grateful, you showed me that I’ve let things slide, maybe got a bit complacent in my old age. Employing useless pricks like Yuri, and those two clowns who let you stroll up and take them. You let me walk, all is peace.’

He looked around the bare room, weighing up whether the beatings and killings, the drugs and the bribes, the
dacha
and the money, had all come down to this, dying against stained and peeling wallpaper in a bitterly cold house.

‘You drive me back into town, we draw a line under all this nonsense. But I have to have a little taste of something for my trouble, you know that. Otherwise, someone starts whispering,
“Maksat, he’s getting soft, lets some pussy take him for a ride, and in his own fucking car.” And I can’t have that.’

‘So what do you want, top boss?’

The
pakhan
gave another of his mirthless smiles, his eyes considering the odds that he might get out of here alive. He looked over in my direction.

‘His head.’

Saltanat
looked as if she was considering the option. I wondered what my chances were of getting a Kalash off one of the guards, giving the room and everyone in it a severe chastisement, then getting out and through the gates alive. I didn’t rate them. I didn’t like the long silence from Saltanat either. I’m not stupid enough to think that a night passed out drunk next to someone constitutes romance, but she and I were at least supposed to be on the side of the men with the white hats.

‘Not good enough, Maksat,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t help me get what I want to know. Who’s killing these people, and why? You walking out of here with your mouth shut isn’t going to happen. You think your shitty little gang can get to me? I had no trouble getting to you, did I?’

She cracked her knuckles and I realised I was involved with a truly dangerous woman.

‘Give me your hand.’

He stretched out his right arm, and she took his hand in hers, almost tenderly.

‘You know, us Uzbeks, we’re pretty straightforward people, not like you shaman-following Kyrgyz. To us, a storm is just a storm, a mountain just a hill grown too big for its own good. But that doesn’t mean we can’t look into the future.’

She turned his hand over and ran her forefinger over the scars on his palm, inspecting the twisted and ripped flesh where his fingernails had once been. When she spoke, it was with sadness.

‘You suffered a great deal at the hands of the Inspector’s predecessors. Your hands are testament to that. But I can read more than your past here, Maksat. I can see your future, see you opening your heart to me. Because you’ve finally arrived at the place where we bury strangers. You’ve been brought here by the voices of the dead.’

She nodded at the two guards, who took the
pakhan
by his arms. His face was a mask of resigned defiance, as if he’d always known that this is how it would end. For a moment I was reminded of my mother, the same absolute refusal to submit, the identical unwillingness to accept that anything can exist greater than your own strength of will.

‘I had seventy years. A lot more than you will have.’

Saltanat remained unmoved, then one corner of her mouth twitched upwards, and I realised that I’d never seen her smile.

‘Perhaps you’d like to look around the house. Not very interesting architecturally, and the decor leaves a little to be desired.’

She reached for a corner of the paper peeling away from the wall and tugged at it. The paper was damp and ripped with no resistance, revealing spots and blisters of mould and damp seeping through the plaster. I thought of the nails torn out of the
pakhan
’s fingers, and felt sick.

‘I thought we might start with the cellar.’

*

We were at the top of the stairs when Aydaraliev made his move. The stairs wound down around a central post, and there was no handrail on the inner edge. So it wasn’t difficult for the old man to elbow one guard off-balance, then smash his fist into the guard’s shocked and open mouth. The Kalash skittered and tumbled down the stairs, and came to rest on
the half-landing. The
pakhan
moved fast, hands reaching out for the barrel.

But the other guard was just as fast, and launched a savage kick at Aydaraliev’s ankle. The old man grunted in pain, and lurched back towards the wall. And by then the first guard had recovered, jumping down on to the landing and sweeping his gun back into his arms.

‘Surely you don’t want to leave already, Maksat? The tour’s only just begun.’

And then we were at the bottom of the stairs, pushing through a doorway, along a narrow unpainted hallway, and towards the furnace room at the back. Smudges and smears of coal streaked the floor, while the walls were black with coal dust. The furnace was made from rough cast iron, with a small glass window where coals would normally glow and burn. But that night, the furnace, like the house, was cold and empty.

A coal hammer, a pair of pincers with which to feed the furnace, and a heavy spade leant against one wall. Aydaraliev’s eyes widened as he spotted them. He’d been in cellars like this before, used tools in ways for which they were never meant.

It takes very little to hurt a man to the point where he talks, wants nothing more in the world than to say the words that make the agony go away. Small, innocent things: a sliver of wood, a pair of nail scissors, a needle. That’s all you need to make a man weep and scream and piss himself.

Small things, like the rogue cells that feasted on Chinara’s breast, devouring it like a child turned cannibal, dragging her down into the earth.

I could taste raw meat in my mouth at the thought of what was to come.

‘If I’d
known we were having guests, I’d have had the furnace lit, Maksat. Keep you warm; at your age you don’t want a chill.’

Her use of his first name belittled him, stripped him of the prestige and dignity he’d taken as his due for so long. She spoke patiently, as if talking to a retarded child, someone who needs everything explained from start to finish using single-syllable words.

‘Saltanat, this isn’t going to help.’

She turned to look at me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Aydaraliev set his jaw.

‘No?’ she said.

‘Look at him. He’s tough, he won’t talk easily. But he’s old. Probably a bad heart, vodka, a
papirosh
in his mouth for the last sixty years.’

Now there was an amused look on her face.

‘Don’t tell me Murder Squad’s finest is worried about his civil liberties. I’m surprised you’re not insisting on the first punch. Or maybe you’ve forgotten about the headless cops?’

‘I’m just saying killing him throws more shit at the fan. How many more enemies do we need while we try to solve this?’

She raised her eyebrow, and the scar that furrowed it gleamed bone-white.

‘We, Inspector? I don’t recall us partnering up.’

She looked over at Aydaraliev, then back at me.

‘What makes you think you’re not in for more of the same? Remember, I told you I was sent to deal with you,
da
?’

I hadn’t forgotten, but I had hoped she might have.

She took down the pincers from the wall, tested them by snapping the jaws together. The snick of the blades meeting was thin, unremarkable. You wouldn’t hear it above a scream or a curse.

She ran her thumb along one edge.

‘The trouble with these is they get blunt so easily. So it’s much harder to cut through something, takes longer too.’

‘Just get on with it,’ Aydaraliev snarled. ‘If this is meant to terrify me, try harder.’

Saltanat flashed a brilliant smile, and I could have sworn that her eyes sparkled.

‘I wouldn’t waste my energies,
pakhan
. Everyone in the stans knows how tough you are. So I thought we’d just chat, and I could persuade you to do the right thing.’

Aydaraliev gave a sharp bark of a laugh and spat on the floor, his phlegm quickly absorbed by coal dust.

Saltanat’s smile never faltered as she reached into her pocket and took out her phone.

‘I’m a long way from home,
pakhan
, you know how it is, you miss your family and friends. But these new phones, you can even get real-time video on them now.’

She held the phone in front of Aydaraliev, angling it so that we could both see the screen.

‘Of course, I’m not old enough to have a grandchild. But you are.’

It was hard to see from where I stood, but I could see that an image of a young girl filled the screen. Aydaraliev said nothing, but his lips narrowed.

‘Ayana, isn’t it? Such a pretty name. A real charmer. Nearly twelve, she’ll be a woman soon.’

The girl on the screen waved and was suddenly pulled away off-screen. Her image was replaced by that of a burly man, who grinned, revealing a row of gold teeth. He was unshaven and thuggish, and neither I nor her grandfather were in any doubt about the implied threat, or what would happen if he didn’t talk.

Saltanat switched off the phone, and stood in front of the
pakhan
. He stared back at her, his eyes black with hate, but there was a tremor in one corner of his mouth. She pulled the hammer off the wall; one face was flat and blunt, the other tapered to a point.

‘It’s your own fault really, Maksat. I know that we could give your spine the xylophone treatment, play dentist’s visit, even smash your balls into pancakes with this hammer, and you wouldn’t sing to us. You’d bite your own tongue out and spit it at me first, right?’

Aydaraliev said nothing, but from the slump in his shoulders I could see Saltanat had won.

‘So here’s the deal. You tell us what you know – everything you know – and she’ll go home tonight. And still be a virgin, to be bride-stolen by some idiot with more balls than sense. Otherwise,’ and she pounded one fist on another, the Russian gesture for fucking, ‘well, my guys have cameras, and all the other equipment to make a very special film, the sort that’s very popular on the internet. Nipples scissored off, tits hacked off, I believe you said. They’re small of course, her still being just a girl, but they’ll be sensitive enough. What would your gang say about that? Must be hard to owe allegiance to a
pakhan
who can’t protect his own family.’

Aydaraliev nodded.

I felt vomit rise in my gut and burn my throat, imagining a
devochka
screaming, begging, her parents being held down and forced to watch as their world was stripped bare of everything decent and innocent. I wondered if Saltanat was human, or merely a psychopath. If she was a
torpedo
who kills to order, you’d have to be on her hit list, money in the bank. If she was a psycho, then no one would be safe until she’d been put down without mercy.

Aydaraliev looked round at us, stopping at me.

‘What do you think of this, Inspector? This is how you do your business? This makes you better than me? Maybe even worse?’

‘I don’t have any more to say than you do,’ I answered, knowing that it was a cheap answer; weak, the way that I seemed to be around Saltanat. I stumbled over my words, shut my mouth. I could have made an argument for this being the quickest way to solve the case. But silence is one, or both, of two things: consent and the desire to survive.

‘Let’s go back upstairs,’ Aydaraliev said, holding his hands wide. ‘If I’m going to talk, let’s not do it in a fucking coal cellar. If you’re going to plant lead in my skull, treat me like a man.’