A Spring Betrayal

Chapter 11

Even as I let myself into Gurminj’s spartan apartment with the keys I’d found in his desk, I could tell the place had already settled into a sense of loss. I touched the side of the half-empty bowl of chai on the kitchen table. Cold, to be rinsed out and forgotten. Time, for all its uncertainties, doesn’t linger when we die.

It was clear to me that whoever had killed my friend wasn’t too bothered about making it look like a convincing suicide. Probably relying on the stupidity or indifference of the local officers. And that was maybe a clue in itself.

I sat down and looked around the room, open as to what I might find. Clues to a murder are usually all too evident; the bloody knife, broken bottle, bruised throat. But sometimes you have to stare, unthinking, simply letting the scene whisper its secrets. You have to hear the full confession before you can start to separate truth from the lies.

The apartment was almost obsessively tidy, the bed neatly made, plates washed and stacked on the sink. Three chairs stood shoulder to shoulder against the far wall, a table with neatly piled paperwork, a battered coffee can holding pens and pencils.

In the bedroom, the half-empty wardrobe housing a dozen unused clothes hangers was a reminder of Oksana’s absence, of the same emptiness in my own home. A well-thumbed copy of Chyngyz Aitmatov’s The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years lay open on the bedside table. Not when it’s your last day, I thought, and closed the book. A torn sliver of paper, used as a bookmark, fell from between the pages. I recognized Gurminj’s handwriting; a single word: balance.

Between life and death? Good and evil? Sweet and sour? No way of knowing. I remembered our final conversation, and the note Gurminj left behind. But nothing in my life was in balance. Everything was slightly off, a badly hung door that sticks when you try to close it, a window that never quite latches. I checked the jackets in the wardrobe, rummaged through the drawer of the bedside table, lifted the thin mattress. Nothing.

Back in the main room, I leafed through the papers on the table. They were all to do with the running of the orphanage, nothing personal. A small shelf on one wall held a selection of books. Some work books, a couple of popular mysteries, and a thin volume whose spine looked familiar. Selected Poems of Anna Akhmatova. The same edition Chinara had owned, one of her favorites that she read over and over, even when the wolf of cancer began to devour her.

I read a line at random: Here is my gift, not grave-mound roses, not incense-sticks. Who knows what gifts the dead will accept from us, as we hope to do more than appease our guilt at remaining behind? An imam or a priest might be able to tell you, a philosopher could define the problem, but I’m just Murder Squad. There’s only one thing I know how to give the dead. Justice.

I walked back into the kitchen, held the bowl of chai under the tap, watched the dark tea leaves swirl and pattern the sink. Some people think they can foretell the future that way, and they might be right. As long as you believe the future is dark, messy, easy to simply rinse away.

I turned the cup upside down to dry, ran a finger over the counter top. No dust yet, but only a matter of time, like everything else.

An old-fashioned brass weighing scale was virtually the only piece of equipment in the kitchen, apart from a frying pan and a three-layer pelmeni steamer, presumably a souvenir from Oksana’s time. The different-sized weights were cold in my hand as I dropped them into the left-hand pan and watched the right-hand one rise. And then I understood the meaning of Gurminj’s note. Balance is where answers might be found.

I tipped the weights out of the pan and picked up the scale, turned it upside down, found the paper taped to the underside. I peeled away the tape, looked at what was written on the paper. A cell phone number, with an international code. A number I already knew.

I poured a glass of water, sat down, and sipped, wondering why Gurminj would have this number, or use such a roundabout way of letting me know. Whoever murdered my friend would have forced him to write the “suicide” note, but his final sentence was a last act of defiance, knowing I would understand and follow the clue wherever it led.

I splashed cold water on my face, sat back down. Sunlight spilled through the window, bouncing off the brass balance and throwing a small spot of light against the shadow on the wall.

I read the paper again, knowing the number was already stored in my cell phone. My hand trembled slightly as the dialing tone began and was answered.

A voice said, “Inspector.” A woman’s voice, unsurprised, even slightly amused, honey drizzled over ice cream.