A Killing Winter

Chapter 44

It was completely dark when we headed out. The pain from my hand throbbed like ice and fire over my wrist, and I knew that if I didn’t get to a hospital soon, infection would race up my arm and finish what Aydaraliev’s men hadn’t. But I was pretty sure the hospitals would be watched, and there’d be no percentage in me saving my arm if the rest of me ended staring sightlessly up on a slab.

There are no street lights outside my building – precious few in Bishkek – so we had the advantage of cover, even if it also shortened the odds of someone creeping up on us without being spotted. But I figured the pakhan’s remaining forces would be in disarray after the call I’d made to the station, saying where to find the bodies and suggesting the three dead gang members were the victims of a takeover bid. An anonymous call: I didn’t know who I could trust, and the last thing I needed was to tell some krisha hoping to earn a few som exactly where we were and what we’d done.

There was enough snow to show us the path but, even so, I was cautious as we walked down towards the street. Then, as we reached the row of bushes beyond the path, twin headlights snapped into action, turning our shadows into elongated stickmen lying in the snow.

Saltanat had her gun up and ready to shoot in a second, but I pushed her arm down. A gang hit, and we’d already have been sprayed with a dozen rounds.

‘Relax, it’s fine,’ I said, but Saltanat kept her finger on the trigger.

We reached the SUV, where Kursan was grinning at us through the windscreen. He beckoned for us to hurry up, then killed the headlights; anyone watching would be momentarily dazzled. We clambered in and set off at speed for Chui Prospekt, Kursan switching the headlights back on only when we reached the first intersection. He hurtled around a matrushka minibus, crashed a red light, left a string of curses in his wake. Saltanat kept watch out of the rear window, until she was reasonably certain we weren’t being followed.

At the Metro Bar, Kursan pulled a hard right, heading down towards Frunze, past the University. He finally parked opposite the Grand Hotel, a new building that already looked as if it had seen better days. Even though we were only a few blocks from the White House, the streets were deserted.

‘I booked a couple of rooms here, fourth floor. As long as no one knows where you are, no one can kill you, right?’

Kursan stood watch while we checked in, strictly cash, adjoining rooms. I was certain Saltanat wouldn’t want to share a bed, or anything else, with a man for a long time.

We inspected each room in turn, and then headed back to the lobby. Kursan had moved the car further down a side street, so that it wasn’t visible from the main road, and he was waiting for us in the Dragon’s Den, the small restaurant and bar on the corner. We joined him and I ordered chai for myself, vodka for Kursan, coffee for Saltanat.

We sat away from the couples at the bar, so I could watch the street. I’d come here with Chinara, during our last summer. The European owner had gone to some trouble to make the place attractive: art photographs of Kyrgyz scenes on the red-painted walls, a long wood-topped bar and a display of bottles on the shelving against one wall. Chinara always claimed that the vegetarian pelmeni soup and manti dumplings were better there than anywhere else in Bishkek. And for all I knew, she might have been right. I could picture her, at the bar, drinking Baltika beer and dipping her portion of manti into chilli sauce with her fingers, flicking her hair back away from her face.

I shivered, not with the cold. Bishkek is a city of ghosts for me.

‘So what’s your plan?’ Kursan asked. ‘You get any further sorting this shit out?’

I told him about the men we’d respectively emasculated, electrocuted, stabbed or executed in the past forty-eight hours. His eyes opened wide when I told him about the death of the pakhan. He’d heard the news but, like everyone else, had assumed it was a gang war or an internal job.

‘You’re a one-man, one-woman death squad,’ he said.

I think he meant it as a compliment.

‘You’ve also solved the murder of the Minister’s daughter, and that poor girl over in Karakol,’ he added, clapping his hands together as if that was the end of the matter.

‘Not in a way that’s going to please Tynaliev,’ I said. ‘He was particularly keen to be the one handing out the summary justice.’

‘You had no option,’ he shrugged. ‘He can always go and piss on their graves.’

‘We might have sorted out some of the who,’ I said, ‘but we haven’t solved the why.’

‘Does why matter, if you’ve planted the bad guys underground?’ Kursan asked.

‘Too many unanswered questions that might come back to bite me,’ I said.

Saltanat stubbed out the cigarette she was holding, only half smoked, and reached for my pack. So far she’d said nothing.

‘What do you think?’ I asked.

‘You’ve dealt with the little guys,’ she replied, her voice as expressionless as her face, ‘and the top guys will be too big to touch. Even if you know who they are.’

‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but if Tyulev and Lubashov weren’t responsible for the murders, why come looking for me? And who killed the Russian? And Shairkul and Gulbara? And the women in Osh, the ones that got you involved in the first place?’

Saltanat said nothing, sipped her coffee, both hands around the cup, as if for comfort.

‘What’s in the bag, brother?’ Kursan asked.

I looked around to make sure we couldn’t be overheard.

‘About a million som worth of krokodil.’

Kursan looked thoughtful.

‘No one’s cooked that up for their own private weekend recreation,’ I added, ‘so it’s got to be about smuggling. Either into the country, or to go abroad.’

‘The connection with the airbase?’

I nodded.

‘Make it cheap here, ship it back to Mother Russia on a military plane, who’s going to stop and search that?’ Saltanat said.

‘You think that Spetsnaz woman, Marina Gurchenko, was involved?’ Kursan asked.

‘One way or another. Maybe she was the mule, most likely she found out about the smuggling route and wanted to stop it. And that’s what got her butchered. She was a medic, after all, the last person you’d expect to supply people with that stuff.’

Kursan said nothing, but rubbed his fingers and thumb together. Money can buy you almost anything.

‘But she was pregnant, like some of the others,’ Saltanat argued.

‘I’m beginning to think all that was a way to get us off the scent, make us think there was some kind of serial-killer gang roaming the country, a cult. The smugglers hear about the killings; a copycat gets rid of their whistle-blower and points the finger away from the truth. The mutilations, the dead children; who’d link all that to a smuggling ring?’

Saltanat looked unconvinced.

‘There are six heroin-smuggling routes out of Osh that we know about,’ she said. ‘Why not just go about business, nice and quiet, keep your head down, clean the profits and live well?’

I took another mouthful of chai, and nodded agreement.

‘You’re right. There’s smuggling involved, but this isn’t just about smuggling. There’s something else behind all this, something bigger. But I don’t know what.’

I drained my glass, set it down, and stared across the empty street. In the last few minutes, it had started to snow, painting the roads a gleaming white, unlike the thoughts in my head.