A Spring Betrayal

Chapter 44

Saltanat went off into the center of Bishkek to send a message to Albina Kurmanalieva, from another Uzbek safe house, I assumed, one I didn’t know about. Trust, or the lack of it, playing its part as usual. Personally, I thought the whole spy tradecraft exercise was nonsense, an overelaborate hangover from the days of the USSR, when everyone was so busy watching each other no one noticed the country collapsing around their ears. Easier just to make a phone call, grab a pocket full of bullets, and take your chances.

When Saltanat returned, I didn’t bother asking her where she’d been, who she’d spoken to, what she’d said. It was as if a sheet of glass had been thrust between us, like visiting a convict in prison. Except I didn’t know which one of us was the prisoner. We sat in silence, and smoked too much, for two days that felt like two months, the minutes slouching along on crutches of fear and boredom.

I was beginning to wonder whether anything was going to happen, and on the morning of the third day, I decided I’d had enough.

Saltanat was asleep when I left the safe house, walking for half a kilometer to where the morning marshrutka minibus was waiting to take people from Tungush into the center of Bishkek. The bus was already crowded, so I stood for most of the journey, hanging onto a seat back as we jolted and bounced over potholed tracks. The early morning sun bathed the Tien Shan mountains with a soft golden light that highlighted the year-round snow-covered peaks and shone through the branches and budding leaves of the trees lining our route. The air was crisp and clean, defying petrol fumes and the smoke coiling out of chimneys. As always, I thought of the beauty of my country, how it deserves better people than the ones who live here. But perhaps that’s true of everywhere.

Finally, we reached the smoother roads of central Bishkek and as people got off the bus, I managed to snag a seat, keeping my hand on my wallet in case of pickpockets. When we reached the public sauna baths on Ibraimova, I squeezed my way to the front, paid my nine som to the driver, and alighted. From there, it was a ten-minute walk south to my apartment block. I wanted to see if the place was still under police observation, and, if not, to collect a couple of items I’d stashed away there. I bought a meat samsi at the stall on the corner of Ibraimova and Moskovskaya, eating it as a cover for staring at the entrance to my Khrushchyovka block. The prefabricated concrete sections at the front were worn and stained from years of scorching summers and brutal winters, and some teenage wit had spray-painted his girlfriend’s name across the metal entrance door. But the apartments inside were solid and warm; better than living in a yurt, that’s for sure.

I checked my watch. Just before seven o’clock. By now, Saltanat would be awake and cursing me. But every day we did nothing, I was in greater risk of being caught by my colleagues—I still thought of them as my colleagues, and knew Tynaliev’s instructions to downgrade the case against me would have set many people wondering if I had been framed. And more importantly, every day’s delay meant some poor soul might be in Graves’s basement, suffering the torments of the damned while a video camera captured every last drop of blood and every plea for mercy.

I couldn’t see any police cars parked nearby, and I was pretty sure no average ment was going to be standing out in the cold. I wiped the last of the grease from the samsi on my sleeve, spat out the inevitable piece of gristle, strode up to the entrance door.

The trick is always to appear confident to anyone watching, show the world you have nothing to fear and even less to hide. Look furtive or worried, and even if the law doesn’t spot you, some sharp-eyed babushka with nothing better to do than spy on her neighbors will call it in.

I keyed in the four-digit number on the electronic lock installed after one of the tenants on the third floor was found stabbed to death, pushed open the door. Security might have been tightened since then, but half the lightbulbs on each landing were still either dead or missing, and the elevator was the same cramped and stinking toilet it had always been.

I took the elevator up to the floor above mine, and walked down the stairs to my front door. A thin ribbon of crime scene tape was still attached to the frame, but there was no sign of anyone guarding the place. I knocked on the door, just in case some ment was hoping to earn promotion, and when no one appeared, let myself in.

Chinara would have been horrified at the mess, but it was nothing more than I’d expected. Chairs overturned, drawers emptied out onto the floor and left open, the bed tipped to one side, with a couple of diagonal knife slashes across the mattress for good measure. Maybe with all the porn they’d found, the crime scene officers had decided to mark the spot with an X.

The poetry books Chinara had loved, had scrimped and saved to buy, littered the floor, spines twisted or broken, pages bent or torn out. I remembered the consolation she had sought and found in these poems, wondered how poetry could save the world when it couldn’t even save itself. I picked up a book at random, looked at one of the final poems.

Written by someone called Esenin, apparently. I wondered if he was still alive, if he’d be interested in meeting up one evening. With that attitude, I thought we’d get on just fine. Then I flipped to the frontispiece, and learned young Sergei had hanged himself at the tender age of thirty, in the Hotel Angleterre, St. Petersburg, back in 1925. So no meeting of minds then.

I picked the books up off the floor, put them back on the shelf where Chinara had always kept them. I wasn’t going to bother tidying the rest of the apartment. As far as I was concerned, the place where she and I had made our home no longer existed.

I looked around for the framed photo I’d kept of her, laughing, her hair caught in the wind as we rode the Ferris wheel in Bosteri, on the shore of Lake Issyk-Kul. It wasn’t in its usual place, but then I spotted it, face down, half-hidden under a pile of clothes.

The frame was intact, but the glass was broken, and someone had ripped Chinara’s photo in two. Checking to see if anything was hidden behind the picture, I guessed. I held a piece in each hand, and brought the ragged edges together, trying to make her whole, hoping to bring her back to life. But some things are impossible; life pins you down, picks your pocket of all the happiness and comfort you’d ever hoped for. Life had made my wife die, and made me her murderer. And knowing I’d simply brought her inevitable end nearer didn’t make me feel any less guilty.

I put the two pieces of the photograph in my jacket pocket, remembering why I’d come back to the apartment, went into the tiny kitchen. As I expected, the cooker and the refrigerator had been searched, and the doors left open, which accounted for the sweet aroma of decaying food. But no one had bothered to search properly under the sink. Years before, I’d constructed a false back with a space of five centimeters between it and the concrete wall. You never know when you might not be able to get to your major arms dump. I’d painted over the cracks on either side, so only the closest inspection would spot it. And nobody had.

I used a screwdriver to pry the false back away, and reached inside. My fingers found the thin plastic-wrapped package inside, surprisingly heavy for its size. My knees creaking to remind me I wasn’t getting any younger, I stood up and slipped the package into my pocket. I checked my watch; half an hour since I’d arrived. It was time to get out of the apartment; I’d been there too long already. I listened at the door before opening, but the landing outside sounded deserted. I pulled the door shut after myself, the click of the lock sounding as final as anything I’d ever heard. An end to my old life, I told myself. The only question was if there would be a new beginning.

I took the stairs two at a time, managing to avoid the piles of litter that had accumulated at each turn. We Kyrgyz are house-proud when it comes to the inside of our apartments, but communal space is a different matter altogether. Maybe that’s why the lightbulbs are always missing.

I was in a hurry, and the stairwell was dark, which was why I didn’t spot the empty Baltika bottle until I stood on it. It rolled away under my feet, taking me with it. I staggered and waved my arms about like one of those Soviet circus clowns that used to make holidays so miserable, then smacked my head against the wall.

I was only unconscious for about three minutes, but apparently that was enough. Because when I came to, and tried to touch my head where I’d attacked the wall, I found I couldn’t move my hands. And I was blind.