A Spring Betrayal

Chapter 19

One of the first rules of policing is to make sure you’ve cleared every room, not just the one you’re in. But I must have been feeling less than first-rate because I didn’t check out what laughingly passes as the Kulturny bathroom, a piece of guttering fixed to the wall on a slant, so that urine dribbles down into a pipe leading to the sewers.

A classic mistake. And a deadly one.

The man who burst through the door could barely squeeze through the frame. Two meters, easily, and almost as many wide. Hair down to his shoulders, dark glasses hiding his eyes, mouth stretched wide in a scream that echoed around the room. Almost as large, and just as frightening was the Glock 17 semiautomatic pistol he gripped in one meaty paw. He collided with the wall as he raised the gun, fired off two shots. In that confined space, the noise was deafening, an express train roaring through a tunnel.

I was off balance, unsighted, and that gave Lubashov the opportunity to pull at my leg and bring me down. I managed to keep hold of my Yarygin, slammed the butt against Lubashov’s nose. The bone shattered and I was drenched as his blood spurted across my face.

“Maxim!” Lubashov yelled. “Kill them!”

Maxim fired off another shot which shattered the mirror behind the bar and sent bottles cascading and splintering. That was all the time Saltanat needed to fire her own weapon twice, hitting Maxim in the shoulder and stomach, the shots knocking him back on his feet. Surprise turned to an expression of pain as he watched blood leaking out of his shirt. He looked puzzled, the way people do when they suddenly realize they’ve lost a filling, or their apartment keys are missing. He put out an arm to steady himself, gain time, decide on his next target. I watched as his life struggled to hang on, a man dangling by his fingertips over a spring-swollen river. And then he staggered backward, dropping the gun as he fell.

Gunsmoke rose in a lazy spiral toward the ceiling. The room held its breath in shocked silence. Lubashov clutched the ruins of his face, whimpering to himself. I hauled myself up, holstered my gun.

“Akyl, we have to get out of here,” Saltanat murmured. “Before the law arrives.”

I nodded, looked round to see what Kamchybek was doing.

“We have a problem,” I said, pointing at our not-so-little songbird.

“Fuck,” Saltanat said, looking at the hole in Kamchybek’s face. His left cheek, torn away by one of the Glock’s bullets, revealed an uneven row of yellowing teeth. His face had the sullen cast of a particularly bitter sneer. One eyelid drooped lower than the other, giving him the look of a lecherous pimp who has just reeled in a live one.

I reached forward, picked up the iPhone, slid it into my pocket.

“Come on,” I said, stepping over Lubashov, pausing only to bring my boot heel down hard on his gun hand, before heading for the stairs. “Let’s hope it’s stopped raining.”

We pulled up once more outside Saltanat’s hotel. I saw the hotel’s name embossed on the high metal gates. Umai, after the Kyrgyz goddess of fertility and virginity. Umai is supposed to be the special protector of women and children, so I suppose she’s my boss in the long run. I didn’t think I could rely on any special favors from her. But I’m always willing to hope.

Saltanat tried the remote, but the gates remained shut. She hit the horn, and the gates finally swung open to let us enter. A burly, shaven-headed man in his fifties stood behind the wooden bar under the canopy, sheltering from the rain. Saltanat climbed out of the car, ran over and kissed him on the cheek. He greeted her warmly, looked at me as I joined them. While not openly hostile, he looked at me as if I’d be the cause of trouble for him, his hotel, and his friend.

“Inspector Akyl Borubaev, Bishkek Murder Squad.” Saltanat made the introductions.

“Privyat,” I said, held out my hand. He took it, nodded, his face thawing slightly.

“And you are?” I asked.

“Rustam,” he answered, his accent Uzbek. He gestured at the fridges behind the bar, stocked with bottles of pivo and vodka. “Help yourself. I’ll organize food,” and with that, he walked toward the hotel’s side entrance.

I turned away from Saltanat, looked down at my hands. They didn’t shake or tremble; a bit late in the game, perhaps I was getting used to killing.

“Who do you think that guy was?” Saltanat asked. Her hands were as rock-steady as mine.

“Two thoughts,” I said. “Either just some gopnik layabout in a tracksuit getting rid of the day’s pivo when we walked in. Or…”

“Or?” she prompted.

“You were set up by Kamchybek’s call. You were meant to go there, and get hit. But they didn’t expect I’d be with you. Or that Lubashov would try to avenge his brother. That made it all turn to shit.”

“Which do you think it was?”

“I look like I believe in coincidence?”

“Who would set it up?” she asked.

I shook my head; better to assume everyone was against us.

“And the iPhone? Why bother if they were going to put me down?”

“A good way to find out just how much you knew, how much you might have reported back, before putting one in your ear.”

I didn’t want to tell her I thought she wouldn’t have been killed, not just then. She would have been dragged somewhere quiet, where the occasional scream goes unnoticed and people pretend a gunshot is a car backfire. The same sort of place where Saltanat had been raped, probably the same kind of people.

I put my hand on hers, just for a moment, then uncapped a bottle of Sibirskaya Korona, pushed it toward her. She hesitated, then drank.

“It helps me relax,” she said. “You should try it.”

“You think I can’t relax unless I’m halfway down the hundred grams?”

“You used to drink.”

“And now I don’t.”

“Forever?”

I shrugged, pretended nonchalance I didn’t feel.

“For today will do, for now.”

Saltanat considered this for a moment, smiled, nodded. Once upon a time, in my drinking days, before Chinara, this would have been when I kissed the evening’s girl, smelled lemon shampoo in her hair, felt the heat of her skin, the softness of her lips.

But those days are dead and buried deep. And I don’t think they’ll be coming back, at least, not for Mrs. Borubaeva’s boy. It’s the death all around that’s corroded me, not the drink.

Saltanat leaned back, finished her beer, said, “Time to eat.”

I thought, Time to kill.