A Spring Betrayal

Chapter 16

I’d used up the day’s ration of self-pity, turned to face Saltanat.

“We both want to find who killed Gurminj,” I said.

“And the babies you uncovered. And the children butchered in those films,” she added. I nodded agreement.

“We put the past behind us?” she asked.

“All of it?” I replied, remembering the warmth of her body next to mine on the one occasion that we’d slept together. She didn’t blush, or smile at the memory. Tough to the core.

“Let’s clean this mess up first, see where we stand after that. Right now, I want Gurminj’s killers far more than I want you.”

But she spoke with a half-smile that said she knew she could control me, as long as we avoided getting killed first.

“There’s a squealer I want to talk to,” she went on. “Hangs out at one of your favorite bars.”

I winced. I don’t have fond memories of the Kulturny, Bishkek’s seediest, dirtiest bar. Lubashov, a thug I’d put in the ground, had been the bouncer at the Kulturny, and most of the current inmates at Penitentiary One had enjoyed a few shots of the good stuff there in their day. If I had my way, I’d weld the steel door shut, with all the regulars locked inside, and push a bowl of plov inside twice a day. To call it a shithole full of shits was to insult shits and shitholes everywhere. But it was the best place to push and shove, rattle some cages, see what shakes loose.

The sky had grown steadily darker while we’d been talking, storm clouds tumbling and spilling down from the mountains. The first drops of rain began to fall, cautiously at first, then with increasing violence. We ran back to the car, and I felt a curious exhilaration. The sense of helplessness I’d had ever since we unearthed the dead babies was melting away. I didn’t know if we’d solve anything, avenge anyone, but we were at the beginning of something fresh.

Saltanat was with me, as a comrade, if nothing more; the rain fell more heavily, and the windshield wipers could not sweep clear the blurred future that lay ahead of us.

After repeating the same series of alleyways and passages in reverse, we emerged onto Chui Prospekt, heading east. Pools of water that had already formed on the road reflected traffic lights, reds, yellows, and greens vivid against gunmetal gray. The giant red and yellow flag by Ala-Too Square flapped in desperation, threatening to rip apart and fly away. The air crackled with electricity, tense, dangerous. My Yarygin sat cold and heavy against my hip.

“I should check on my apartment, get some clothes,” I said. “What time are you meeting your squealer?”

“Not for a couple of hours. We’ve got time.”

The tires of the Lexus threw up sprays of water that sparkled in the air. We turned right, onto Ibraimova, toward my apartment block, a khrushchyovka pre-cast concrete relic from the country’s days as a far-distant outpost of the Soviet Empire, named after the Soviet premier who’d ordered their building throughout the USSR. As we drove up toward the top end of Ibraimova, to make a U-turn, I looked over toward my building.

“Don’t turn,” I said. “Keep going straight and go right at the top.”

Saltanat nodded, kept the Lexus over to the right, pulling into the filling station just beyond the Blonder pub, then down a narrow road lined with birch trees.

“Stop, but keep the engine running,” I instructed, looking out of the window back toward my building. We were parked very near where I’d found Yekaterina Tynalieva’s body a few months ago, and the coincidence didn’t escape either of us. Nothing left there now to show anything had ever happened. How quickly we die and are forgotten.

“Problem?” Saltanat asked. She opened the glove compartment, and I saw the dull metal sheen of a Makarov.

“Two police cars, tucked away by the trees next to my place.”

“Why would they be waiting for you?”

“A question I’d like answered,” I said, and reached in my pocket for my cell phone. I called up the contact list, memorized a number, removed the battery.

“Give me your phone,” I said. Saltanat reached into her jacket, pulled out an elegant smartphone, and handed it to me.

“Apple? Uzbek security must be raking it in. All those children forced to pick cotton instead of going to school,” I said.

Saltanat glared at me.

“Bought and paid for. By me. Okay?”

I raised a hand to appease her, dialed the number, heard the ringing tone, waited until a familiar voice answered.

“Usupov. You know who this is. No need to say my name. Can you talk?”

“Yes. Where are you? You’re in Bishkek?”

“No need to know exactly where right now. I just want answers to a couple of questions.”

“If I can.”

Usupov’s voice was strained, cautious. I’d always seen him, if not as a friend, then at least as an ally in the cause of doing the right thing. After our last conversation in Karakol, I wasn’t so sure where his loyalties lay anymore, but there was no one else I could ask.

“Whose cell phone are you using? This isn’t your regular number. It’s a foreign number.”

I laughed. Even in Kyrgyzstan, we know how to track a mobile’s location, and any of the service providers would be happy to earn points by helping the police. Or anyone else with enough clout.

“There are two police cars packed with menti outside my apartment block. Any idea why?”

There was a long silence before Usupov spoke, in little more than a whisper.

“There was a call last night. Anonymous. A tip-off. Saying you were involved in something pretty bad, that there was some illegal material stashed in your apartment. So Sverdlovsky sent a couple of men around. You weren’t there, otherwise they’d have arrested you. And given you a good kicking down every flight of stairs.”

There wasn’t anything in my apartment that could have been a problem. But anyone who knows how to pick a couple of locks can leave something incriminating and then call it in.

“What was it they found? Drugs? You know that’s not my thing.”

Usupov paused for even longer. When he spoke, there was a note of disgust in his voice.

“We go back a long way, Inspector. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. For the moment.”

My stomach tensed, and when I spoke, my voice was hoarse.

“Go on.”

“DVDs. Child porn, I heard on the grapevine. Stuff you couldn’t imagine, the sort that visits you in nightmares. Torture, rape. And murder.”

Saltanat watched as I failed to hide the disgust on my face.

“Kenesh, this is a setup, believe me, I know nothing about this. Maybe it’s because I’m investigating all the deaths in Karakol? Maybe linked to the fake death certificate you had to sign?”

There was a long pause before Usupov spoke.

“They know you’re not in Karakol. Orders are to stop and arrest you. Maximum force permitted, if necessary.”

I knew what that meant. Maximum force obligatory. Whatever it was someone high up thought I knew, they’d make sure I couldn’t spread the word. Relentless rain hammered against the car roof.

“Akyl, if I were you, I’d head for the border. Any border.”