A Killing Winter

Chapter 21

The winding mountain road to Osh climbs to almost 4,000 metres between Bishkek and Jalalabad. I’ve done the journey countless times; I don’t trust the flights between the two cities, and the driving relaxes me, lets my mind dig around for answers while being half distracted. The uncoiling road is a kind of hypnosis, using all my concentration while the pieces in my head form patterns of their own accord. But doing that journey in the heart of winter would be suicide, quick or slow, depending on whether you skid over the first bend or spend the next three months snug and immovable in a snowdrift, getting further buried with each snowfall.

So I flew, using all my energy to concentrate on keeping the plane aloft, which was more than I suspected the flight engineers had done.

Finally, I thought I might be getting somewhere on the case, thanks to Urmat Sariev and his fruit persuaders. I hadn’t even stubbed out my first cigarette before they called me down to the basement. Gasparian was sitting on the floor, manacled hands shielding his head, back to the wall to protect his kidneys. He’d been crying, and there was a thin river of blood dribbling from one nostril. Sariev wasn’t even breathing heavily.

‘This bitch won’t last five minutes in Number One before some cell boss splits his arse with a big yelda,’ Sariev said, and gave Gasparian shoe leather to reinforce the insult.

Gasparian started to mutter something, but Sariev has only ever been interested in coaxing a confession, not in actually listening to it.

‘Zakroy svoy peesavati rot, sooka!’ he screamed, spit landing on Gasparian’s head.

‘No, let the bitch keep his fucking mouth open,’ I said. ‘He knows what I want from him. Don’t you?’ And I gave a gentle toe-prod to Gasparian’s ribs. It’s a bad cop, worse cop thing.

Sariev shrugged, reached into the bag, selected an apple and took a massive bite. As an afterthought, or maybe as thanks for giving him the opportunity to dance in the basement, he offered one to me. I shook my head, and squatted down next to the prisoner.

‘Khatchig,’ I said, in my mildest tone, ‘this could all have been avoided. We can stop it right now, or the sergeant can treat you to some more fruit. All I need is where you’ve stashed Gulbara. Just an address, that’s all. For her own good, you know. We can protect her.’

Gasparian muttered something indistinct about us not having helped Shairkul, and Sariev gave him another piece of fruit. Still in the bag.

Gasparian spat out a tooth, and looked up at me.

‘You know you’ve got a squealer here in the station, don’t you? Shit, you’ve probably got a dozen little birds all singing sweetly, the pay you get.’

‘So?’

‘Well, I’m not saying anything with anyone else in the room but you. Word gets round that I sing and I’ll end up in the drawer next to Shairkul.’

I thought it over, and gave Sariev the nod to leave. He wasn’t too happy about the idea, but headed for the door. He swung the bag at Gasparian’s head one last time, pulling back at the last minute, so that the apples whistled harmlessly an inch from Gasparian’s face, and grinned as Gasparian flinched.

‘Just off down the bazaar, Inspector, pick up some apples. Nothing like a healthy diet, eh?’ and he was gone.

I helped Gasparian to his feet and steered him towards the chair. He sat down, and blew a long string of bloody snot on to the floor. His wrists were raw and bleeding from where the chain had cut into him. I didn’t feel proud of what I’d done, but there were three dead women who deserved answers, even if they weren’t around to hear them.

‘You know this is nothing, don’t you, Khatchig?’ I said, in my most soothing voice. ‘If I let him loose, there’s no way he won’t put you in intensive care, ruptured spleen, crushed testicles, burst eardrums, just for starters. Or he’ll just dump you in the morgue, next to your two-legged bank account. You’ve hurt one of ours; you think anyone gives a shit what happens to you?’

He nodded, facing up to reality. Down in the basement, with flecks of dried blood sprinkled on the tiled walls, you have to be a bigger man than Khatchig to hold out. I offered him a wad of tissues, to wipe his face.

‘So if I tell you where Gulbara is, I walk out of here?’

I shook my head.

‘We’ve upped the stakes since then, my friend. If you’d sung before we came down here, you’d be back home having a little taste and wondering which one of your stable to fuck. Now, well, I’ve got other questions, and I want answers. And in case you’re wondering, I’m not an animal like my sergeant. I don’t like to just kick and smash and break.’

I took hold of Gasparian’s jaw and wrenched his face round towards mine. His eyes dropped, avoiding contact.

‘Look at me, Khatchig. No, look at me.’

He stared up at me, panic deep in his eyes. I narrowed mine, my face impassive, brutal.

‘I don’t like unnecessary pain. Make a note of that word “unnecessary”. But I promise you, any pain I think necessary will really hurt you.’

I pushed him back on to his heels, sat down in the chair. I lit a cigarette, held the burning end up, as if examining some kind of instrument. Which, in a way, I was. I blew on the tip, watched the glow burn brighter. I could smell the sweat on him, the fear.

‘You’ve probably burnt yourself with a cigarette, by accident. Painful, but it heals. But not where I put it.’

I blew on the cigarette again, gave him my best mirthless smile.

‘Left or right, Khatchig?’

He shook his head, puzzled, uncertain.

I explained.

‘Left or right? Which eye do you want to lose?’

As the plane made its descent into Osh airport, I wondered if I would have actually blinded Gasparian in one eye, felt the burning tip of the cigarette push past the resistance of the eyelid, heard the sizzle of the eyeball’s jelly, shut my ears against the screams. Of course, it didn’t come to that. I learnt a long time ago that it isn’t what you do, it’s what people think you are capable of. Sariev just knows brutality; God help me, I know psychology.

As I’d expected, Gasparian gave up Gulbara’s address straight away. Nothing in it for him but pain if he kept his mouth shut. So he talked. And kept on talking.

To my not very great surprise, it turned out he was a lightweight, at the very bottom of the Circle of Brothers, a foot soldier, expendable. He was terrified of the Circle. But the Circle weren’t there in the basement, and I was, with Sariev lurking outside with a fresh bag of fruit.

I knew that before I left for Osh, I should have given Tynaliev the malenkoe slovo about the Circle of Brothers, the little word about their possible involvement in his daughter’s death. For those who don’t know, they’re our very own home-grown Eurasian organised-crime group. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a lot of the criminal gangs in the former ‘stans’ grouped together in a loose collective called the Circle of Brothers. Each of the countries has their own crime boss sitting at the table with their foreign counterparts, doling out territories, alliances, joint operations in information, not just in Central Asia but in Europe, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, the UAE in particular.

Drugs are their big thing, as you’d expect, but they don’t say no to robbery, prostitution, counterfeiting, smuggling, or anything else that can make money and isn’t legal. And when it comes to ruthlessness, even the Russian gangs admit to being lightweight in comparison. Devotion is absolute, unquestioning, irrevocable; break any of the rules and there’s no question about what will happen to you, just how long it will take you to die, and how painfully. With the kind of power they wield, the resources they can call on, and the effect they have on the entire region’s stability and economy, the Circle of Brothers are a serious problem, and one that Tynaliev would certainly be watching.

Which made my keeping quiet about Gasparian less than smart.

But I wanted this case for myself. If it went over to the security forces, particularly with Yekaterina as one of the victims, that’s what the investigation would focus on. Nobody would give a fuck about a dead peasant girl or a butchered prostitute.

Nobody except me.

Not that I’m a holy guy. I’ve had my share of breakfasts bought by speeding motorists, known a bottle or two of good stuff come my way for a favour. But I owed it to the dead women, to Chinara. And of course, if I wanted to be sentimental, I owed it to myself.

I hadn’t bothered to let anyone in Osh know that I was coming. If all this had a connection to the Circle of Brothers, then letting the cops know I was on my way was just setting myself up, either for a beating or a series of blank stares and shrugged shoulders. I clambered down the aircraft steps, setting my ushanka firmly on my head, turning up the collar of my coat. The Yarygin was cold and heavy on my hip; no need to check it into the hold if you’ve got police ID. Sometimes, amazingly, the system works for you. It was only a couple of hundred metres to the airport terminal, but still cold enough for me to catch my breath, and shuffle a little faster across the hard-packed snow.

There’s no such thing as car hire in Kyrgyzstan, so Kursan had sorted out transport for me. I wandered out into the forecourt of the terminal and looked for the oldest, most dilapidated car I could find. A burly Uzbek man stood by a Moskvitch whose multicoloured bodywork told me it was, in fact, several cars cannibalised and held together by string and bad temper.

After a series of grunts, we established that his name was Alisher, that Kursan had told him to take me wherever I wanted to go in Osh, and to find me somewhere to stay. I got in the front seat and strapped on the seat belt, which promptly collapsed around me. Not a promising start.

I gave Alisher the address for Gulbara that I’d coaxed out of Gasparian; somewhere off Lenin Avenue, not far from the Sulayman Mountain. The Moskvitch sneezed its way forward, the engine picked up, and we made our way towards the centre of the city.

It was the first time I’d been in Osh since the riots; the streets with their burnt-out buildings, only smoke-blackened walls still standing, did nothing to improve my temper. People hurried along what pavements there were, wrapped up against the cold, avoiding eye contact. With everyone wearing thick winter coats and scarves, I couldn’t tell who was armed and who wasn’t. Best to assume everyone.

It was getting dark as Alisher steered us around the base of the sacred mountain. Everyone in Osh will tell you that Sulayman is buried there, near the mosque at the summit; good for tourism, I suppose. I climbed the mountain long ago, on a visit with Chinara. For a moment, memories came back: her long hair swept into turmoil by the wind, the same wind that snatched the words ‘I love you’ from her mouth and sent them scattering across the valley.

Alisher turned off Lenin Avenue and down a quiet, tree-lined street of one-storey Russian-style houses, all whitewashed walls and window frames painted a pale sky-blue. Very few of the houses had numbers, but we found the address that Gasparian had given me. Or rather, we managed to find where it had once been. Now, it was nothing more than a heap of torched rubble, crowned by remnants of the roof, which had collapsed in on itself. A chimney stack still stood in the far corner, a solitary finger insulting the sky.

I swore under my breath, and looked over at Alisher, who simply shrugged, opened his door and hawked phlegm on to the snow. A gust of cold air blew in through the open door, bringing an acrid stink with it of charred wood and gasoline. I got out of the car, picked my way through the fallen timbers and corrugated iron towards the chimney stack. I placed my hand against the brickwork; it was still warm. When I picked up a blackened remnant of window frame, the soot and charcoal crumbled under my fingers. Whenever this house burnt down, it wasn’t during the riots. Recently, not more than a day or so before my arrival.

So the new question: where was Gulbara? On the run, in hospital, or reduced to bones and melted fat beneath my feet?

I was wondering what my next move should be, when an unmistakable sound interrupted my thoughts.

The tap of a gun barrel against the car behind me.