A Killing Winter

Chapter 39

Back at my apartment, there was no sign of Saltanat, no note, nothing to show she’d ever been there, apart from rumpled sheets, a damp towel on the bathroom floor, a scattering of poetry books on the table. As I picked up the towel, I realised I didn’t have her number. I wasn’t sure if I wanted it. I didn’t even know if Saltanat was her real name. I wondered what Chinara would have made of it; the evening before her final trip to the hospital, she’d talked about me finding someone else, but I didn’t imagine she had someone like Saltanat in mind.

I opened one of the poetry books, Collected Poems by Osip Mandelstam, and read the inscription I’d written there what felt like a million years ago.

I flipped through the pages, as if they held the solution to the murders, to my confusion, to my life. But the words blurred before my eyes, refusing to give up their understanding of the world. I gathered the books together and replaced them on the shelf, a kind of order whose secrets I couldn’t unlock.

‘Terror and confusion, terror and confusion.’

The pakhan’s words kept going through my head, like an awkward knot refusing to come untied. The phrase clung inside my mind, a quotation from somewhere in my past, just out of reach. I decided to think about something else, hoping my subconscious would sneak up on the problem and solve the mystery while my back was turned.

My mobile rang, a number I didn’t recognise. Wondering if it might be Saltanat, perhaps even hoping it was, I answered it.

The voice on the other end was male, abrupt, direct. Russian.

‘Barabanov here.’

The Colonel from the airbase. What shit was the Kremlin in its wisdom throwing my way?

‘Colonel? Privyet. What can I do for you?’

‘A matter of protocol, Inspector.’

When I didn’t answer, he continued, clipped, emotionless. As if discussing missing supplies rather than the murder of the mother of his unborn child.

‘The incident involving Nurse Gurchenko has been resolved. The culprit was arrested earlier today, no other further suspects are being sought at this time.’

‘Really, Colonel? I have to congratulate you. When will it be possible for me to interview your suspect?’

The Colonel paused, and I knew he was about to lie to me.

‘I regret to say that will not be possible. En route to further questioning in Moscow, the suspect managed to disarm one of his guards and was shot dead trying to escape.’

I felt the anger rising, but I kept my voice calm.

‘Why was your “suspect” being taken to Moscow? As you know, I am investigating a series of brutal murders across Kyrgyzstan, murders that share several of the same characteristics. It’s very doubtful that the Minister for State Security would grant you permission to extradite a Kyrgyz citizen without my having interviewed him first.’

The Colonel’s tone was back to being flat and unemotional.

‘My apologies, Inspector, I should have made myself clear. The man my military police arrested was a serving Russian officer here on the base. Our zampolit, to be precise.’

If there’s one thing I know about the Russian Armed Forces, it’s that the political commissars they select to spy on their comrades and work up appropriate revolutionary fervour are some of the most unemotional thugs you’d find anywhere. A zampolit is about as likely to commit a sex murder as Lenin is to get up from his glass case and run naked around Red Square.

This time, I didn’t bother to hide the incredulity in my voice.

‘A crime of passion, I suppose, Colonel? A jealous lover driven insane by the thought of his beloved carrying another man’s child? Or perhaps enraged by being rejected in favour of a better catch?’

Barabanov didn’t rise to the bait.

‘I’m sure that with one of those motives you’ve hit the nail upon the head, Inspector. A pity we will never know the exact reason behind this terrible tragedy.’

I wanted to ask more, but the high-pitched tone told me he’d broken the connection.

‘Cheers,’ I muttered, wondering if a single word of what I’d just heard bore any passing resemblance to the truth.

I put the kettle on for chai, and while the water started to boil I debated just what truth was mixed in with Barabanov’s lies. No way of knowing if the ‘suspect’ had butchered Marina Gurchenko, if he was dead. If he ever even existed. I stirred a spoonful of plum jam into my tea, and thought back to the sight of her, splayed out like a deer gutted during hunting season. It would have taken tremendous strength, and time, to complete such butchery, and all the political officers I’d ever encountered had been weasel-faced weaklings, light flashing off rimless glasses to hide the deceit in their eyes.

The tea was hot and sweet, and I was grateful for the kick it gave. I stared at my phone and wondered if Saltanat would call me, but it remained obstinately silent.

I decided to forget about Marina Gurchenko. Had her death been a personal matter, or part of the bigger picture? I knew that was one murder I would never solve. And if I ever tracked down her killer, it would probably be for something else, and I wouldn’t even realise I’d caught him. The Kremlin keeps its secrets locked away in basements that make Sverdlovsky look like a luxury sanatorium on the north shore of Lake Issyk-Kul.

As I sipped my tea, I made connections. Terror and confusion was the instruction given by the Circle of Brothers. But that went against every rule they normally followed.

Vorovskoe blago, the thieves’ code, is all about maximising profits without drawing unnecessary attention to yourself, working in the shadows, preying on the weak and paying off the powerful. If you need to make a statement, you make it with a Makarov; you don’t slaughter and mutilate pregnant women.

So this wasn’t an ordinary criminal enterprise. There had to be big money involved, enough to jeopardise the international heroin trade, the corrupt taxation kickbacks, the bribes, even the regular daily extortion that feeds the Circle.

When one hand is washing the other, it takes an awful lot of cash to make you throw the towel away.

My thoughts were disturbed by a knock on the door.

When I opened it, Saltanat was standing there, frowning, a look on her face I didn’t recognise. I stepped out on to the landing and opened my mouth, but before I could speak, a fist the size of a small horse slammed into the side of my head.

The world stopped and twisted with a dazzling firework display that blinded me to everything, and then I was falling into blackness as deep and dark as Chinara’s grave.