A Spring Betrayal

Chapter 12

“Saltanat. Kak dela?”

I heard the snap of her lighter, the sharp inhale, the long breath out. I could see the cloud of gray-blue smoke rising in the air.

I remembered unreadable black eyes, a thin white scar running through her left eyebrow.

“You know me, Inspector, I’m a survivor. Like you.”

A pause.

“That’s what we do, Inspector, survive.”

Shoulder-length black hair, high slanted cheekbones, a mouth generous with silence and evasions.

“I’ve been wondering when you’d call me.”

I tried to speak, realized my mouth was dry, took a sip of water.

I hadn’t expected to hear from Saltanat after she crossed the border back into Uzbekistan. We’d been untrusting partners of a sort in the Tynalieva case and, just once, lovers. She’d come to Bishkek to kill me, but decided we were more or less on the same side. While trying to solve the murders of young women across Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, we’d been taken captive by the killers, sent by my boss, the chief. I’d been tortured, my hand half-cooked on a grill. Saltanat had been raped, before killing two of our captors, while I dealt with the third. While I confronted the chief, she’d escaped from his safe house by killing a corrupt policeman. I hadn’t seen or heard from her since then, but she’d remained a presence as constant and terrifying as a loaded shotgun.

“How’s your hand?”

“Scarred. But working.”

“I take it you’re not calling to ask how I am?”

“You know Gurminj Shokhumorov.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

Her voice was flat, empty, giving nothing away.

“Gurminj is dead. A single gunshot to the head. Suicide, supposedly.”

“But?” I could hear the suspicion in her voice.

“Not many one-armed men shoot themselves on the other side of their head. Single-handed, you might say. Whoever killed him didn’t really care what I thought.”

When Saltanat spoke, the dismissal in her voice was absolute.

“So why did you call me? For the pleasure of breaking the news?”

I paused, marshaling my thoughts, wondering at her hostility.

“I’m working on a murder case. Seven small children, buried together in a field. I don’t know if Gurminj knew something about it, but if he did, he didn’t tell me.”

Saltanat laughed.

“You’re not the easiest man to trust with secrets, Inspector. You have your own agenda, and it doesn’t always tie in with the law. Or the safety of other people.”

“I never knowingly put you in danger.”

She paused, the lighter snapped once more, the inhale and exhale.

“You weren’t the one who was raped, Inspector.”

I thought back to that evening in my apartment, after we’d escaped, after she’d showered for hours until the water ran cold. We’d watched the sky darken and turn all the different shades of blue into night. Now, as then, I had no words to give her, no comfort. Then, as now, the cruelties people do to each other can’t be washed away or justified in words. All we can do is survive as best we can.

“Gurminj hid your number for me to find. A clue, you might call it. So I know he wanted me to contact you. The only thing I don’t know yet is why.”

When Saltanat spoke, the hostility in her voice was softened by a kind of sorrow.

“I’m sorry about Gurminj. He was a good man. He was helping me with a case.”

“To do with the dead children?” I asked.

“Perhaps. In a way,” Saltanat replied. “We should meet.”

Now it was my turn to be silent. We’d never been able to completely trust each other, except with our lives. And I still carried a smudge of guilt about sleeping with her so soon after Chinara’s death.

“Where? You want to come here?”

“Karakol? No.”

I saw the logic behind her refusal. It’s about as far from Tashkent as you can get in Kyrgyzstan, and there’s only one road in and out. All too easy to get trapped, the mountains on one side and the lake on the other.

“Then where?”

“Remember where you last saw me? No, don’t say it, but there. Tomorrow. Noon.”

“I remember,” I said, suddenly wondering if my phone was being tapped.

“Be careful, Inspector. And silent.”

Then she hung up, leaving me to wonder just what the hell was going on.