A Killing Winter

Chapter 31

I’m not a fan of conspiracy theories. I believe the Americans did walk on the moon, there was nobody on the grassy knoll, and the shots fired outside the Kremlin at Brezhnev’s motorcade came from an army deserter, not a deep-cover CIA operative. But this case was a line of distorting mirrors, each reflecting the truth away from me. There was a reason behind the killings; I just had to work out what it was.

I spent the next two days criss-crossing the city, putting the arm on pharmaceutical drug smugglers in Osh bazaar, giving a little muscle to a couple of Uzbek pimps working the parks, treating Alamedin’s biggest heroin dealer to the sight of my Yarygin.

Kursan put me back in touch with Abdurehim Otkur; I told him what I needed and who I wanted to meet. At first he was reluctant to help, but I pointed out the benefits of peace and quiet for everyone on both sides of the border. Then I reminded him that Tynaliev could send a battalion of soldiers to make his life miserable; all it needed was a word from me in the Minister’s ear. Sometimes all it takes is a couple of hints here, a whisper in the right guy’s ear.

Which is how I found myself back at the Kulturny, in the same chair as before, watching the alkashi drink themselves into a stupor not even the moorzilki can stir. I wouldn’t have minded a glass of the good stuff myself, but I needed my wits sharp about me for the meeting I was about to have.

I checked my watch. Eleven. Already ninety minutes behind schedule. Maybe I should have posted some plain-clothes uniforms nearby, but I wasn’t dealing with idiots like the late unlamented Gasparian this time. My Yarygin was safely locked up back home; for a meeting like this, carrying would be a sure sign I wasn’t there just for the conversation.

Contrary to what a lot of people believe about the Circle of Brothers, all most of them want is a quiet life, free to pillage and loot and corrupt and steal. Killing each other might be good for business in the short term, but in the long term it gets in the way of the profit motive, and attracts unwanted attention. And the last thing you want to do is wipe out civilians. After all, they’re your customers. That doesn’t mean that the Brothers are good people to do business with, just that they won’t kill you unless there’s a reason.

The muscle who pushed his way through the door looked like his weapons of choice were his bare hands. Blue prison tattoos danced down his fingers, and his palms looked dipped in ink. A church with three spires was tattooed on the back of his right hand, each spire representing a prison term; just as a church is the House of God, so prison is the home of the thief. From the way his shoulders stretched his leather jacket, when he wasn’t spending his time away getting inked he was lifting home-made weights.

He might have been bulky, but he wasn’t clumsy. He checked out the dazed clientele, spotted me, jerked his thumb towards the door. His boss wasn’t going to walk down into any shithole like the Kulturny with only one exit, so I trailed behind the giant up into the night air.

No fresh snow, for a change, but what had already fallen crunched under my boots as we walked towards the SUV parked across the road, in the darkness under the trees. Street lights are a luxury in Bishkek at the best of times. But no muscle would ever give a rival a clear shot, anyway.

We stopped, he patted me down to ensure I wasn’t carrying a piece or a recorder, and the rear window slid open. The man inside was invisible, but I could picture him from a dozen mugshots over the years. Old, bald, liver spots coating his head and hands like scorch marks. Eyes that gave away only cold calculation. A razor scar down one cheek, furrowing white and jagged into creased skin. And a voice like ice clawing across rock, the result of a bleach gargle administered by a rival now long dead and at the bottom of Lake Issyk-Kul.

The pakhan, the boss.

‘Get in,’ the voice dictated.

I shook my head.

‘I’m Murder Squad, not some fucking baby uniform you own, not some cell bitch on his knees in front of you.’

‘Big talk, Inspector. I’ve been asking around. What they all say about you? Good at putting down useless fuckheads like Tyulev and Lubashov. My mother could have taken those two. Me, I think that’s all there is to you, talk. When you come up against real men? If you’re trouble to me when you’re sniffing around, maybe you should be head to toe beside your wife.’

It was the kind of threat I’d expected, just talk, dancing to show that neither of us was intimidated. Except I was. All I had to do was not show it.

‘You know whose murder I’m investigating? The only daughter of the man who can shit on your head and flush you down the toilet. It’s in your interests to listen, then give your mouth some serious exercise.’

The muscle beside me didn’t like the way I was talking. He took a step towards me, and I could see I was in for a three-spired church smashing my jaw. I gave him the cold stare and beckoned him forward.

‘Arsehole! You think you can take me? Fuck your mother!’

He didn’t like that, but he had just enough discipline not to do anything without an order.

‘Let me tell you something. You think I’d come looking for you with just my dick in my hand? Check out the roof; maybe you’ll see the night sight of my sniper.’

The muscle’s eyes darted upwards, in the direction I’d indicated. Biceps are one thing, but you can’t outpunch a bullet. He didn’t spot my sniper, which was hardly surprising, since there wasn’t one.

The voice from the back of the car was surprisingly patient, but then, this was a guy who’d been smart and ruthless enough to have outlived all his enemies and most of his friends.

‘Enough of this shit. I’m not going to put you back in your marriage bed, Inspector. Not yet, anyway. You want to stay out there in the cold, fine. We can talk like this. So tell me.’

I told him about the murders in both countries, about the mutilations.

‘We had nothing to do with any of this,’ he said. ‘We’re businessmen. Nobody needs this on our doorstep.’

‘There’s one more killing you maybe don’t know about, and it’s going to fall on us all like a mountain.’

I described the murder of the female Spetsnaz. I didn’t need to labour the point. Moscow could come back in and smash us into pieces, if doing so would give them an advantage. Don’t believe me? Talk to the Chechens, the Georgians, and see what they have to say. The Kremlin was pissed off enough already about the American airbase; if we had anything worth stealing, they’d descend on us like winter wolves hitting the flocks outside Naryn.

Silence hung inside the car like the scent of rotting meat. When he finally spoke, it was with an air of resignation.

‘Apart from a bit of piss, the world is full of shit.’

Secretly, I agreed with him, but I also knew who helped make it that way.

‘Thanks to your life’s work,’ I replied, tensing in case the three-spired church decided to show me what disrespect can get you.

‘I do what I do, you do what you do. We carry the stink of the grave, both of us.’

I heard him cough, a brutal, rasping hack dragged out of his lungs with meathooks. Maybe cold air didn’t agree with him. Maybe a cancer even more malignant than he was had chosen to lodge inside him, on a strictly short-term basis.

‘I’ll tell you what I think, shall I?’

No answer from the SUV, so I carried on.

‘Tynaliev’s daughter? Maybe a sex crime, but it didn’t have that smell of testosterone and lust. No frenzy, the way the womb was sliced open. So I figure one of Daddy’s political opponents, or a revenge killing. God knows enough people who would like to piss on his grave. You included.’

‘Da, me included,’ and I could hear the scars from the bleach in his words. The voy said nothing, but cracked his knuckles with the same glee he’d use on my skull.

‘The girl in Karakol, Umida Boronova. We found her body, not her child. The obvious assumption was that she’d been killed for her baby. I got the whisper that there might be Chinese medicine involved, people paying big money for bigger dicks.

‘Then the prostitute, Shairkul, the one sliced and diced. Again, not her baby, so maybe the Chinese medicine theory is right. But why kill women who aren’t pregnant when you can just harvest the babies of those who are? A warning?’

I shrugged, to hint that I was genuinely puzzled.

‘Then an Uzbek Security officer warns me off. That’s before someone sets me up, and Tyulev and Lubashov end up on a metal bed. Joy all round; the killer of Yekaterina taken out by brave police officer, end of story. Everyone happy. Except the killings don’t stop. Different places, no connection between the victims. It’s not sex, it’s not revenge, it’s not a solo crazy guy, and it’s not hawking traditional medicines.’

Silence.

And then, ‘Go on.’

‘The Uzbek woman tells me her government thinks we’re stirring up trouble down in Osh, and my boss thinks it’s the other way round. More dead women, including the one who went south to keep safe. And now the Russian military are involved.

‘So I ask myself: the Circle of Brothers don’t want the Kremlin coming down all mob-handed, looking for revenge and calling it restoring public order. No reason to shit all over what’s kept everybody sweet and plump all these years, is there?’

A few flakes were starting to fall, tentative, unwilling to settle on the car and provoke the boss’s anger. It would be a long time until dawn, and I wondered if I was going to see it.

Then the voice scrawled some instructions into the air, breath pluming out of the open window into the dark.

‘Hurt him.’