A Killing Winter

Chapter 8

The State Service for National Security plays by its own rules. Its people are never photographed, quoted in newspapers, hauled before Parliament. Think of them as smoke, or morning mist on the water of Lake Issyk-Kul, drifting, intangible, impossible to pin down. They’re the elite, the Kyrgyz equivalent of the Russian Spetsnaz, hand-picked and trained to eliminate any threat to the welfare and security of the state. The problem is that, all too often, the welfare of the state means the welfare of the top men. So anything that’s bad for them is bad for the country. And Mikhail Tynaliev was the kind of man who refuses to let anything bad happen on his watch. He would take the news I was going to bring him very badly indeed.

As we pulled up outside his town house, motion-controlled lights flashed on while we parked. An armed guard in a secure sentry gatehouse kept a close watch on the street; the blue flickering light across his face told me that the cameras around the grounds weren’t just for show. This was one of Bishkek’s smartest roads, private houses set back, secure, regularly patrolled.

I got out of the car slowly, my hands well away from my body, my ID card already in my hand. This was not the time or place for any sudden moves. From the other side of the glass, the guard beckoned me further forward. I smiled, doing my best to look harmless, my boots skidding on the packed ice.

‘How’s tricks, comrade?’ I said, holding up my card.

The guard didn’t take his eyes off me, but pushed a sliding tray from his side of the glass. I dropped my card in, and waited while the guard scrutinised it. Obviously, I wasn’t his comrade. Eventually, I passed muster.

‘What are you here for?’ he asked, his voice mechanical and hoarse through the loudspeaker set into the window.

‘I’m here to see the Minister. Police business, official.’

‘Does he know you’re coming?’

‘Nyet.’

This was where it could all go to shit. Maybe the guard wouldn’t admit me, in which case Tynaliev wouldn’t find out about his daughter until the morning, which wouldn’t please him. And if I told the guard my reason for coming, it would be all over the city in an hour.

The guard pondered his options, then made a call. A couple of moments of conversation, his face turned away so I couldn’t lip-read, then the decision was made.

‘Someone will be down from the house.’

‘Can you open the gate? We’ll park outside.’

The guard shook his head. No matter that this was a police car, that he’d seen my ID; the risk of a suicide car bomb was too great. I stamped my feet to keep warm, until a side door in the main gate opened. Two more guards waved me forward towards a scanner, but I stopped, held my jacket open to show the Yarygin. No point in giving anyone an excuse to show how fast and decisive he could be when guarding the boss.

They took my gun away, walked me through the scanner a couple of times, and then the senior of the two guards led me towards the house.

‘This had better be important,’ he said. ‘No guarantee he’ll see you.’

‘My Chief sent me personally. It’s to do with a case.’

The guard looked at me, curious, but I wasn’t about to volunteer any more information.

‘You’d better hope he thinks so.’

I trudged down the path, my boots crunching in the newly fallen snow. A wave of tiredness drifted over me at the thought of another death to announce, another person’s grief to observe. The door swung open as I arrived, and I was shepherded into the hall by yet another guard. He patted me down again, clinically and thoroughly, and then took me through into a study to wait for the great man. I could feel sweat starting on my forehead, so I removed my fur hat and stood bareheaded. The room was stiflingly overheated, but that wasn’t the only reason I was sweating. I knew my career could end right there.

‘Inspector.’

I turned round to see Mikhail Tynaliev standing in the doorway. Shorter than I’d imagined from his pictures, but with the typical Kyrgyz build: broad shoulders, a bull neck, powerful hands. Easy to imagine him interrogating a prisoner in the basement of his headquarters, standing too close, the casual punch, the backhanded slap that loosens teeth and lashes blood across the floor.

‘Minister.’

‘It’s very late for an unscheduled visit.’

‘My apologies. I wouldn’t have come at this time of night had it not been a matter of the utmost urgency.’

I stood to attention, spoke formally, tried not to let a tremor enter my voice. Because this man had seen and heard the sounds of fear a thousand times, knew them all.

‘Which is why I’m seeing you now.’

The Minister crossed over to one of the leather sofas that stood against the far wall and sat down. He didn’t invite me to join him.

‘I find it hard to imagine that there’s a threat to the state that the police would know about before my people.’

‘It’s not a political matter, Minister.’

‘No?’

I saw that I’d caught his attention. Not terrorism, not organised crime. Then what? His eyes were on my face now, cold and black as the ice outside.

‘A personal matter. A family matter.’

His voice, when he spoke, was harsh, flat.

‘Go on.’

‘Early yesterday morning, the body of a young woman was found off Ibraimova Street. We were unable to make a preliminary identification at first; there was no ID on the body. But further information came into our possession within the last couple of hours.’

I paused, but the Minister simply stared at me, his face unreadable.

‘I very much regret to tell you that our inquiries suggest that the young woman may be your daughter, Yekaterina Tynalieva.’

The Minister looked at me.

‘On what basis do you suggest it’s her?’

‘We recovered an ID card in her name, in a handbag taken from the scene of the crime.’

‘So it is a crime, then? Not an accident?’

‘I’m afraid not. We’re treating it as murder.’

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the dead woman’s ID card. He stood up and took it from me. He stared as if unable to make sense of what he saw, and I reminded myself that, right then, he wasn’t one of the most powerful and dangerous men in the country but a man faced with what must be the most terrible news a father can receive.

‘That’s her, that’s my Katia. But there must be some mistake. Her handbag stolen, or…’

His voice trailed away. I said nothing but took out the head shots that Usupov had prepared for me in the morgue a thousand endless hours ago. She looked calm, no expression of surprise or terror, just that indefinable stillness that separates the dead and the living. He took them from my hand, looked at them, nodded.

‘Da.’

One of the photographs fell to the floor, but neither of us moved to pick it up. When he spoke, his voice had aged, suddenly weary, an exhausted man at the end of his tether.

‘Did she…?’

‘As far as we can tell it was very quick.’

I chose my words carefully. The normal phrases of condolence seemed less than adequate, an insult almost.

‘Was she…?’

‘We don’t think so. But the pathologist was unable to tell if she’d been raped. There were… post-mortem wounds.’

Tynaliev pursed his lips, a gesture so slight he might almost have been turned to stone. He reached for a crystal decanter on a nearby table, poured a drink, downed it, poured another, and then, after a moment’s thought, one for me. I nodded my thanks and took the glass.

‘Tell me.’

‘I don’t think that we need to go into details, Minister. I realise this has been a terrible –’

‘Tell me.’

His voice cold, flat. An order.

So I did.

I hid nothing, not the hacking away of his only daughter’s vulva, the gouging out of her belly and womb, the uncoiling and unwinding, the final insult of the foetus dumped inside her like some backstreet abortionist’s garbage can.

The only thing I didn’t tell him was how the snow had settled on her face like the veil of a bride, how quiet the night was beneath the birch trees, how I thought of my own dead wife newly laid in her grave.

Tynaliev gave a long sigh, of resignation almost, at the prospect of a difficult but necessary task about to be undertaken.

‘You’ll bring him to me.’

Not a question, not a request. An order. I put my glass down, untouched.

‘As yet, we don’t have a suspect –’

‘This is not a matter for the security forces, Inspector. But I don’t want every incompetent myrki policeman stumbling his way through this. I want you to handle this case personally, no one else. When you catch him, you bring him to me. Don’t worry, I’ll clear it all with your Chief, and tell him you’re handling the case alone. I’ll see you have your back covered, a roof over your head. And I’ll owe you.’

I understood why the Minister didn’t want the department involved; a hint of weakness and his image as a hard man would be threatened. In Kyrgyzstan, to be seen as weak is to invite your fall, from power, from office, perhaps even from life. And political protection from a man like Tynaliev wasn’t something to be tossed away lightly. But at the same time, I knew that handing a suspect over to him would mean taking part in torture, agony and, only after a long time, death. Then the remnants to deal with: a couple of torn fingernails, splintered teeth, a puddle of blood for the cleaners to mop away. Tynaliev might owe me, but he’d also own me, and I knew enough about how things worked to know it all gets called in, sooner or later.

‘We’ll obviously keep you informed of the progress of the investigation. But right now, I must ask you to come with me. For formal identification, you understand.’

‘Now?’

‘I’ve had the morgue opened for you. At a time like this, the family’s wishes are paramount.’

I didn’t mention his wife, Yekaterina’s mother. It was common knowledge in the department that she lived in the dacha, the country cottage near Talas, while Mikhail Ivanovich occupied himself with an ever-changing line-up of ambitious young women.

‘Very well.’

He paused, placed a hand on my shoulder, gripped it uncomfortably tight.

‘But let me repeat, Inspector, you bring him to me.’

This time, not an order. A threat.