A Killing Winter

Chapter 53

‘It’s amazing what you can hear when one of these is left on,’ I said, tapping my mobile, ‘and you never know who might be listening.’

The Chief’s face was as grey as the start of the dawn outside.

‘Minister, this is obviously some kind of misunderstanding, a plot, a conspiracy. If you’ll allow me to explain?’

Tynaliev said nothing, but watched, impassive, as the three bodyguards hauled the Chief up by his arms.

‘Everything you heard, it was just speculation. The Inspector, he lost his wife just a few weeks ago, he isn’t well. I told him to take some leave, sort himself out, clear his head of all these delusions, just ask him yourself.’

His voice rose in pitch as he was bustled round towards the door. Saliva dribbled from the corner of his mouth.

‘There’s no evidence to back up these claims, Minister, maybe I’ve been foolish in giving the Inspector his head, nothing more than that, nothing any court would convict me for in a trial.’

We all looked down at the tape still smouldering in the ashtray.

‘You’d have enjoyed hearing that,’ I said, ‘if you like traditional Kyrgyz folk music, that is. By the Bishkek Manas Ensemble. Very good, I’m told, by those who know.’

The Chief’s eyes closed for a moment. He struggled to break free, but only half-heartedly, as if resigning himself to what was to come.

‘This is all circumstantial. No court’s going to convict me,’ he said.

When Tynaliev spoke, his voice was calm, measured, final.

‘You really think there’s going to be a trial?’

He reached into his jacket and took out a photograph. A girl in her late teens, taken in summer, sprawled out on the grass outside a dacha, her face turned up to revel in sunshine and the joy of being young and alive.

Yekaterina.

Tynaliev nodded at the bodyguards, and they dragged the Chief out of his office. His shoes trailed toes down, leaving faint scuff marks on the wooden floor. I listened to them go along the corridor, and down to a painful, lingering and solitary death, in a snow-white field or some soundproofed basement.

The Minister began to follow them, turned and, after a second, held out his hand.

I stood there, looking into his eyes, my arms by my side.

He frowned, before a kind of understanding crossed his face. Even if this was the only justice the men behind his daughter’s murder would ever face, I was still Murder Squad.

Finally, he nodded, left the room, never looking back.

I was in the passenger seat of one of the station’s few decent cars, an enthusiastic ment at the wheel, ignoring red lights, pedestrians and anyone else foolish enough to be out of bed at this hour.

Tynaliev’s team had tracked the Chief’s call, and we were heading out past the giant water purifiers to the east of the city. I’d no reason to think that Sariev would disobey his orders, but I still kept my foot pressed hard against the floor of the car, as if I was doing the driving myself.

We pulled up outside a villa on the outskirts, a high wall guarding its privacy, a good place where neighbours wouldn’t be disturbed by the occasional scream of agony or a single shot. My burnt hand gnawed at me under makeshift bandages. I checked the load in the Yarygin, and opened the car door. I’d already unscrewed the overhead light. Sariev was expecting the Chief and a big bonus, but I’d seen enough consequences of over-confidence not to put money on his compliance.

The uniform started to speak, but I put my fingers to my lips, walked towards the gates. They were the usual cheap metal affair, spray-painted green with gold detailing, already starting to streak with rust after all the Kyrgyz winter had thrown at them.

I tugged at the left-hand side and, to my surprise, the gate swung open for a couple of feet, before being stopped by a drift of snow. I don’t like surprises at any time, particularly when someone might be holding a gun. So I kept still and listened for a couple of moments, hoping anyone inside would think that the wind had blown the gate open.

The yard appeared empty, so I squeezed through the gap, and inched up the steps. Another surprise; the door was ajar. I stepped into the hallway and took stock.

Someone had commissioned an avant-garde mural on one wall, a seemingly random outburst of paint. Except this wasn’t paint. And the body that lay at the foot of the stairs wasn’t a statue either.

I could only tell it was Sariev by the uniform. His head was a watermelon that had been thrown down several flights of stairs. There was only one eye left that I could see, lolling on his cheek like a drunken afterthought. The other must have been under the mass of bone splinters and split flesh on the other side of his head.

His jaw rested almost under one ear, dislocated and then shattered. Fragments of teeth gleamed upwards, like yellow sweetcorn tipped out from a jar. Both hands had suffered multiple fractures, and his left leg lay at an angle that would defeat geometry. I didn’t need a doctor to confirm that Sariev wouldn’t be brutalising any more prisoners.

Searching the house confirmed what I already knew; Saltanat wasn’t there. Maybe her backup team followed her and waited for the right moment. Or perhaps she killed Sariev all by herself. Impossible to say and, right now, the effort of knowing hardly seemed worth it.

I sensed movement behind me, swung round and came within a tenth of a second of adding to the Department’s death toll for the evening. My young driver looked white, whether at the spatter of blood and brains everywhere, or at the realisation that his own might have added a fresh impasto to the scene.

I put the Yarygin away, told him to call it in. Outside, away from the body, I lit a cigarette, watched the smoke trail out of my mouth. I wished I could think of a reason to quit, but none came to mind. What’s one more death, after all?

I told the uniform I was taking the car back to the station, and eased myself into the driver’s seat. After a couple of complaints and grumbles, the engine turned over and I headed back towards Chui, taking it slowly, breathing deeply, wondering if this was finally the end.

I thought of the Chief, probably naked by now, cut, burnt, gouged, as Tynaliev watched, the expression on his face one of polite interest. No one would find him face down in a snowdrift, or floating down the Naryn in the spring. There wouldn’t be any forty-day toi, no gathering of friends and relatives to weep and reminisce.

Just a sheep dragged towards the waiting knife, the last sound it heard its own helpless bleat.