A Killing Winter

Chapter 19

I walked down the broken-tiled steps of the morgue and along the dimly lit corridor towards the racks of the waiting dead. Beyond the metal doors, the stink of chemicals and raw meat lingered in the air. The place was deserted, and the neon strip light above the dissection slab flickered with an intermittent high-pitched buzz, like a dentist’s drill.

At the wall of storage drawers, I looked for Shairkul’s name, but the label holders were all empty. I pulled out the nearest drawer, the runners giving their usual shriek of protest. The corpse inside was the krokodil junkie I’d watched Usupov dissect, what now seemed like months ago. The smell of iodine made my eyes water and I slammed the drawer shut. The next two drawers were empty. But the fourth drawer was occupied.

A woman, by the shape of the sheet covering the body. I pulled back the rough cloth, expecting to find Shairkul staring up at me, her mouth open in protest at the indignity of her penultimate home.

But the body wasn’t Shairkul.

It was Chinara.

I stared, uncomprehending, unable to work out how my dead wife’s body had been exhumed from her grave up in the mountains and brought there. A lock of her hair had fallen over her face, and I lifted it back and tucked it behind her ear. Her skin was smooth, unblemished; I could have almost believed she was asleep, if I hadn’t helped carry her to the waiting hole in the ground. I put my forefinger on her cheek, stroked her face with the lightest of touches.

The final days in the hospital, Chinara was barely conscious for most of it, with ever stronger doses of morphine to dull the pain. I slept on a chair by her bed, in a room on our own because the Chief had pulled some strings. Sometimes working for a powerful man has its advantages. I would doze for an hour or two until her whimpering in pain, from the operation, from the tumours, would wake me. And finally, after eight days, as I sat watching her, she opened her eyes, half smiled, and drifted back into a final sleep. Too many memories, and all the good ones overlaid with the sorrow of what was to follow.

Then, as I looked down at my dead wife, she opened her eyes.

She stared up at me, her gaze unflinching, the way she’d always looked at me. For a moment, I realised with perfect clarity that her illness, her death, all of it was a dream, a hoax. And then with just as much knowledge, I worked out that I was dreaming. Even our loved ones never return from where we bury them. Except in dreams.

But I can’t wake myself, return to the world where I live alone, surrounded by crooks and hookers, the warped, the stunted, the desperate amongst us. With Chinara is where I want to be. Even if that means in the grave.

She gazed at me, and I moved to one side, to face her properly. There was a question in her eyes, it seemed to me, or perhaps a warning. I wondered what she was thinking, even as the absurdity of imagining she could think at all hit me. Dead, decaying, buried under a harsh winter sky; that’s my wife.

She used to interrogate me with each new case, forcing me to use logic, to think through the facts, lies, deceptions. Time after time, she offered directions, insights that helped me solve my cases. Nothing surprised her about human nature, but none of it soiled her.

I looked down at Chinara, her voice clear enough in my head; start finding the missing woman, start turning over rocks. Go back to being a detective again; I’m dead and that’s not going to change. Go back to being the man I loved.

I shut her eyes with my fingertips and slid the drawer back into place, gently, not to wake her. Then I walked out of the room, and into the corridor, towards the morning light and the end of my dream.

I woke up, eyes raw from the light streaming through the window. It must have snowed during the night, because the air had that crystal clarity that presses like thumbs on your eyelids. I couldn’t shake off the idea that Chinara had somehow been resurrected, even though common sense told me it was a case of wishful thinking. During the weeks after she died, I would hear her calling out from the next room, never anything intelligible, just sounds and notes that evoked her voice, summoned it from the dark of her grave. But the advice that she gave me, or rather, the advice my subconscious put into her mouth, held good.

I made coffee, lit and then stubbed out a cigarette, resolved to quit for the hundredth time, stared out of the window, wondered about my next steps.

I could have wandered down to the morgue to see what Usupov had dredged up about Shairkul’s terrible last moments. But a nagging concern about my dream being all too real made the idea unappealing. I decided I could always call him later, no need to face the stink of antiseptic yet again.

First priority had to be finding Gulbara. Either she was dead, on the run as a murderer, or hiding from her flatmate’s killer. She wouldn’t be holed up with a wealthy client somewhere: she was strictly a fuck me and fuck off kind of girl.

It made sense to find Khatchig Gasparian, the Armenian last seen trying to whack Gulbara’s monkey with his stick. Neither of them would be the other’s dream date, but love can be blind, or at least blindfolded with banknotes.

I called Sverdlovsky to have archives pull his file, if there was one; the last revolution saw the Public Prosecutor’s office burnt down, together with most of the files held on our career criminals. If all Gasparian had ever done was give a ment breakfast money to overlook his speeding, then I wouldn’t be interested. But the odds were he was involved in something else. There’s no big Armenian community here, no reason for him to be in Kyrgyzstan. Of course, he could have worked as Gulbara’s minder, pimping her out to pay for his cognac and cigars and mobile, and keeping the punters docile in return with the promise of a slap or two. There was only one way to find out.

I was halfway down the stairs, fresh cigarette in hand, when I remembered that I’d decided to quit. Tomorrow, I promised myself, and pushed open the heavy steel communal door, emerging blinking into pitiless sunlight.