A Killing Winter

Chapter 28

I was woken up by a toe digging into my ribs. Somehow I’d managed to sleep through most of the flight and, judging by the look on Kursan’s face, it hadn’t been something I’d regret missing. I grunted and then snarled as another kick jabbed at me. The vividness of dreaming about Chinara was still with me, and I was reluctant to let go of anything that brought her back to me, however temporarily.

‘We’re fifteen minutes from Bishkek. The Russian airbase,’ Saltanat told me.

‘Why are we landing there?’ I said, struggling to sit up.

From the look on her face, it was another stupid question.

‘Who knows what sort of landing committee is waiting at the international airport?’ she said. ‘Who they might want to arrest?’

I nodded, although I still had no idea who had killed Gulbara or, indeed, any of the other women. In fact, my only murder suspect was crouched down facing me, checking her speed loader was prepared.

‘There’s one more reason,’ she added, replacing her gun and buttoning up her coat.

My ears were ready to snap off with the cold, and I reached for my ushanka.

‘There’s been another murder, a bad one, over at Kant. The airbase there is the obvious place to land.’

I considered this for a moment. That explained the earlier call en route to the airport. Saltanat clearly had the sort of connections that reached right to the top. Yet another reason to be wary of her.

‘We’re still in Kyrgyzstan,’ I said. ‘You have no jurisdiction here. Shit, I don’t even know if I have any more. You’ll have to drop me off at the crime scene, and then you and Kursan disappear.’

‘That won’t be necessary. We’re not going to Kyrgyzstan.’

I looked at her, puzzled, then over at Kursan, who simply shrugged his shoulders.

‘The victim is Russian. And she was killed on the base. Russian diplomatic territory. So you’ve got no more right to investigate a murder there than I have.’

The krokodil gave a final lurch and bounced as we touched down. I fastened up my coat, checked the Yarygin was secure on my hip, and wondered – again – in what shit I’d found myself. Then the doors were flung open, and the full blast of a Kyrgyz winter descended upon us.

It wasn’t snowing, but a bone-shattering wind hurtled down off the mountains and along the flat expanse of the runway. An open-topped military jeep was waiting for us, silhouetted against the landing lights. As we stumbled out of the gunship, headlights flared and the jeep raced towards us. A stony-faced driver in military garb sat behind the wheel and, in the front passenger seat, a Spetsnaz Special Forces soldier, dressed in black and with a woollen balaclava concealing his face, cradled a Kalashnikov AK-74 assault rifle lying ready across his lap. Once we were aboard, the jeep zigzagged across the tarmac and screeched to a halt outside a low-slung, drab and windowless building. As we clambered down, we looked like prisoners under guard. And perhaps we were.

The Spetsnaz pointed with his rifle towards a metal entrance door, and the three of us headed towards it to get out of the wind’s howl. Inside, the noise dropped to a slightly more bearable shriek. We were inside a hangar, with half a dozen assault helicopters lined up. There was a stink of aviation fuel and machine oil in the air, a sharp smell that made my eyes water and burnt the back of my throat. But I wasn’t surprised to find that a richer, familiar odour lay like an unsubtle perfume beneath that. My old friends: blood, raw meat and shit.

The woman’s body lay face down in front of the sliding hangar door, as if she’d been trying to burrow underneath it in an attempt to escape. The corpse had been carefully arranged after death; I could tell that much, even as we walked over towards it. Her knees had been tucked under her stomach, pushing her buttocks up into the air. She was naked from the waist down, and I saw that she’d been sliced open from vagina to anus, as if her killer swung an axe with the kind of power that splits wood for a winter fire. One quick blow, blade raised high, from someone who knows what they’re doing. A pool of blood mixed with cement dust from the concrete floor spewed out of her and down past her feet.

I reached for my cigarettes, remembered how much inflammable stuff there was all around me, and put them back in my pocket. The memory of the sheep we had slaughtered at Chinara’s commemoration flashed through my mind.

We stood around the body, like medical students watching a difficult birth, until the door slammed open and a Russian officer marched in. I knew he was a colonel, from the triple stars on each shoulder, and the look on his face told me he was a tough bastard as well. Kyrgyzstan may be a better posting than Chechnya, but the Russians know we have long memories for decades of humiliation, and there are plenty of Kyrgyz who welcome any opportunity for a little retrospective discussion in a dark alleyway.

He walked over to us, his polished shoes echoing off the concrete floor.

‘Barabanov,’ he stated. ‘Which one of you is the Kyrgyz investigator?’

From his accent, he was from the Urals, maybe Ufa, far enough from Moscow to know we did things very differently here. Saltanat jerked her head towards me. Barabanov extended his hand. After a second’s hesitation, I took it.

‘I’m informed that you’re a specialist in this sort of crime?’

‘I wouldn’t say that, Colonel, but I’m Murder Squad, currently investigating a series of murders…’ I paused, before adding, ‘which may or may not be linked to this woman’s death.’

My qualified answer didn’t satisfy Barabanov, and his eyes narrowed as he stared at me. Terrifying if I’d been a nineteen-year-old recruit. But I wasn’t, so I gave the stare right back.

‘And what “may” link them, Inspector?’

‘I really am not at liberty to discuss a matter of Kyrgyz State Security.’

Barabanov said nothing but reached inside his immaculately pressed jacket, covered with a row of service medals, and took out a sheet of paper, handing it to me.

I read the fax to myself:

I decided to return a little friendly fire of my own.

‘Colonel, the quickest way to work out what is and isn’t relevant is for me to find out all the facts first.’

I could see he was reluctant to share information, so I decided to coax the answers out of him.

‘The victim, who was she?’

‘Marina Gurchenko, one of the health personnel on the base. Seconded here a year ago.’

‘A jealous boyfriend? Enemies that you know of?’

‘She was well liked by her colleagues, I know of no reason why anyone would wish to do… this.’

Barabanov looked over at the mound of flesh against the door, but his face showed no emotion. Not a man to face across a chessboard.

‘A question. Was she pregnant?’

For the first time, Barabanov betrayed some emotion. He looked at me warily, as if I’d just produced a switchblade but wasn’t quite sure how to use it. When he answered, I could sense the caution in his voice.

‘Why do you ask? Is that relevant?’

‘It’s a common factor in the murders I’m investigating,’ I stated. ‘And I don’t want to disturb the body before a Crime Scene team arrives.’

‘This is a Russian airbase. Considered Russian territory. We will handle this matter ourselves. Your presence here is only due to the influence of your superiors.’

He tapped the fax to reinforce his point. But I could scent something else besides the bouquet of death.

‘I ask again, was she pregnant?’

Barabanov paused before answering.

‘Yes.’

‘That may well be a motive, Colonel. A married colleague, having a fling? Worried about what his wife and children back home would think, what they might do?’

‘That would hardly justify this ferocity, would it?’

Now we were on my turf, and I sensed his authority diminish.

‘Colonel, I’ve seen people hacked into fragments over a bottle of samogon, cocks and breasts sliced off, brains blown out of both ears over a thousand-som loan. There’s nothing humans won’t do to each other, believe me.’

He nodded. He’d probably been in Chechnya, almost certainly in Afghanistan. He knew what people were capable of.

‘She was pregnant,’ he said, ‘but I’m certain that this wasn’t the act of a married boyfriend afraid of the consequences.’

Saltanat spoke, for the first time, and I suddenly wondered why the Colonel hadn’t asked who she was, or what she was doing there.

‘And what makes you so sure, Colonel?’

‘Because I am… was… the father.’