A Spring Betrayal

Chapter 47

I’ve spent a lot of my working life in cellars, one way or another, and the experience has never been a good one. All too often, a cellar has seemed like a prelude to being permanently underground. I’ve been beaten, tortured, threatened with death in cellars. I’ve watched people die, helped them die. I’ve stood by in basement interrogation rooms as a burly ment beats a confession out of a suspect. Cellars are not my favorite places. But as somewhere to die, they’re almost unbeatable.

Nothing looked to have changed in the cellar since Saltanat and I broke into the house what seemed like years ago. No fresh bloodstains on the floor, the hooks and knives still in their racks, ropes and chains coiled on shelves. Not that I could see much, since leather straps held my head, wrists and ankles securely in place against a semi-upright wooden table that stank of dried blood.

I took comfort in the thought that no one else had stared into the unwinking eye of the camera since we’d started our hunt. A small boy kicking his football against a wall with a goalmouth chalked on it, a little girl singing lullabies to her favorite doll; they were safe, if only for the moment. If I was the price to be paid for their safety, that goes with the territory every policeman signs up for, the day they pin on their badge and strap on their gun.

I was under no illusions about my bravery. I’d seen too many people broken in cellars to believe that. The toughest guys loosen their tongues if you push a needle under their fingernails or a lit cigarette against their eyes. The Circle of Brothers might take an oath of silence, but where are your brothers when you watch someone pouring a cup of hot oil into a funnel or whetting the edge of a kitchen knife? It takes so little to make a man talk, sometimes just the thought of the pain to come is enough.

“I apologize, Inspector, for not having anywhere more congenial to chat with you,” Kurmanalieva said, her voice hoarse and menacing. She came into my line of view, her blond hair tied back in a ponytail, her suit immaculate. When you have something very special to sell to collectors, you can afford to buy the very best for yourself.

“I thought this was one of your favorite places, Albina,” I said, using her given name to show my contempt. “The only place in the world where you can reveal your inner nature.”

Kurmanalieva smiled. This close to her, I saw the generous lipstick did little to hide thin, bloodless lips. Her skin looked stretched, waxy. I wondered if it was vanity that had inspired the plastic surgery, the nips and tucks, or simply to avoid being captured in the field. Her face was that of a woman in her early thirties, I guessed, but her hands were old, compact and brutal, veins like blue strings under the skin. Early forties? It didn’t really seem to matter. I didn’t think she would want to fuck me before killing me.

“I want you to know, Inspector, I don’t enjoy the things I’m about to do to you. Not like some of my colleagues. They sometimes get carried away in their enthusiasm, with tragic consequences. Tragic for the individual, of course, but also tragic because one may not get all the information required. Then there’s all the mess and fuss involved in disposal.”

She reached forward and drew a fingernail across my forehead, pausing to hold it against my right eye, its touch as light as a spider’s web.

“Me, I know exactly what I’m doing. When to start. When to stop. When to let someone consider the error of their ways in trying to be brave.”

She pressed her fingernail ever so slightly harder, and I could feel the edge hard against my eyeball. Three millimeters more and she would blind me. Then, almost coquettishly, she pulled her hand back.

“And that, Inspector, is why I am the best. Unfortunately for you.”

She turned and strode out of my sight. I heard the creak of a chair, the rasp of a match, the quick breath in and the satisfied exhale.

“It’s a cliché that people enjoy a cigarette after sex, don’t you think? Personally, I like to smoke before I get down and dirty, before I set to. It’s the ritual, you see. And control. Smoke and fire and death, all in that one little white tube of passion. You’ve heard people say they’d die for a cigarette? Sometimes I make it come true.”

I sighed, as if I’d heard it all before.

“Just what is it you want, Albina?” I asked.

“Well, I’d appreciate knowing where I can put my hands on Ms. Umarova, for a start.”

“I don’t know where she is,” I said, glad Saltanat and I hadn’t arranged to meet at the apartment. “And I don’t see how finding her helps you, to be honest. There’s too much information out there now, about you, about Graves.”

She simply laughed.

“You’d be surprised at how little people hear when you stuff their ears with som, Inspector. Everyone looks the other way for the right price.”

“You’re asking me to betray her?”

“I’m asking you to save yourself a lot of unnecessary anguish. If she were here now, strapped next to you, maybe even holding your hand in some sickly sentimental pact, whose eye would you rather I took out? Hers or yours?”

I was silent. Kurmanalieva stood in front of me, blew a cloud of smoke into my face, and smiled. But it was more like a grimace than a smile, making her look both human and insane.

“I rest my case, Inspector,” she said, inspecting the glowing tip of her cigarette as if solving a puzzle, before stubbing it out on my left hand, the one with the scar tissue I’d acquired during the Tynaliev affair. A lot of the nerves in my hand had been damaged and the scars were thick enough to lessen the pain, but it was still enough to make me cry out.

Kurmanalieva threw the butt onto the floor, grinding it out with her shoe. Elegant scarlet stilettos, I noticed. If I was going to be tortured, it might as well be done with style. She reached up again toward my face, my eye, and smiled as I flinched. She patted my cheek, and her fingernail scratched against the stubble on my jaw. I felt beads of sweat slide down my back.

“Back in the good old days of the USSR,” she said, “I was seconded to the Lubyanka in Moscow for two years. The Kremlin was keen to ensure its distant territories stayed loyal, or at least quiet. So it made sense to have some Central Asians batting for the team.”

As she spoke, she walked toward the shelves with the knives, hooks, and whips, testing the point of a boning knife with her fingertip, running her thumb against the edge of a narrow blade, choosing how to inflict pain. She hesitated, selected a pair of pliers, old and rusted.

“I imagine you’re thinking ‘Traitor,’ or some such nonsense,” she said, her back toward me, so I was unable to read her expression. “But times were different. The Russians offered stability, peace. Casualties? There always are. But the people who bleat about democracy are always the ones with a passport and money for a ticket out.”

She turned back toward me, stood in front of me, her eyes drilling into mine.

“No comment, Inspector?” she asked. “You spent a few years in an orphanage, you know how turbulent things were then.”

I said nothing, unwilling to provoke her, to risk further pain.

“Did you know the Lubyanka was originally the headquarters of an insurance company?”

She laughed, that horrible false laugh again, charming as a scar.

“If you think about it, in one way, that’s what it stayed as. Insurance for the elite, for the country.”

She shrugged, resumed pacing around the room.

“I learned the virtues of patience. Rush in too quickly with the pliers or the electricity and you either kill your subject or they defy you, tell you nothing. The way I work, you’ll tell me everything, I’ll be a mother confessor to you. Your words spilling out, tripping over your tongue, unstoppable.”

I remained silent, shut my eyes, wished I could do the same for my ears. The awful thing was I knew she was right. I’d talk, sooner or later. Her voice continued, cajoling, wanting me to see her point of view.

“Normally, I’d take my time. Mix a little pain with a lot of sympathy and understanding. I don’t want to do this, any more than you want me to. But what choice do you give me?”

I bit the inside of my cheek, focusing on the pain rather than her hypnotic voice. A standard anti-interrogation technique, only a matter of time before I broke. Hours, days, weeks; none of it matters if you’re dreading the next few minutes.

“As I recall, you didn’t say anything the last time we met. Or don’t you remember?”

I remembered her perfume, the scent of dying lilies, the curve of her breasts, the cruelty in her eyes. The woman in the orphanage. I’d sensed her malevolence even then.

Without warning, Kurmanalieva knelt down and took hold of my foot. I tried to pull away, but the leather straps held me firmly in place.

“Ticklish?” she asked, drawing her fingernail lightly across the sole of my foot. She looked up at me, winked, as if we were in some conspiracy together.

I watched as she held up the pliers.

“Haven’t used these for a while,” she said brightly, snapping the jaws open and closed, open and closed. “I do hope I haven’t lost the knack.”

She placed the pliers against my little toe, and squeezed, just hard enough for me to feel the cold steel.

“Start off small, that’s always been my motto,” she said, cheerful, as if giving a toast at a birthday celebration. “The trick is not to damage the root bed; that way, your toenail grows back. Eventually. Of course, there’s a certain amount of initial discomfort, live and learn, eh?”

The last thing I wanted was a lesson in anatomy, but I could only listen.

“The nail plate, the bit you trim, that’s just dead, compacted cells, the stuff that rhino horns are made of. But underneath, at the back, that’s the matrix, the living tissue that grows the nail. Very sensitive.”

And with that, she jerked her arm back.

A bolt of white fire screamed up my left leg, turning me sightless for a few seconds.

I opened my eyes, wondering if I’d pissed myself, looked at my torturer. Kurmanalieva held up the pliers, my bloodstained toenail trapped in their jaws.

“There, all done, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” she asked, in a terrible parody of maternal feeling, as if taking a splinter out of my finger or cleaning a cut on my knee.

“Just be glad it wasn’t your big toe, that really does hurt. Or so I’ve seen.”

She held the pliers close to my face. I could smell the blood, see the gleam in her eyes. I managed not to vomit, although messing up her designer suit was a temptation.

“It’s not the sort of wound you can put a bandage on, but as long as you keep it clean and dry, the nail will grow back, and you’ll be fine in eighteen months.”

Kurmanalieva reached into her bag, took out her cigarettes, lit one, placed it between my lips. I inhaled, dizzy as the smoke filled my lungs. She looked down at my foot, a worried expression carving lines in her forehead. She looked at the lit tip of her cigarette, and softly blew on it, until it flamed a rich orange.

“I don’t think you can keep your toe clean and dry, Akyl, not being tied up and in this damp cellar. So it’s probably best if I cauterize the wound.”

She knelt down again, and with a single stabbing movement, stubbed her cigarette out on the bare raw flesh where my nail had been.

This time, I fainted.

When I came round, Kurmanalieva was scrubbing the pliers clean with a cloth she soaked from an unlabeled bottle.

“Vodka,” she explained. “I keep things hygienic. No point in questioning people if they’re going to die from blood poisoning first.”

She held the bottle up in front of me, raised one eyebrow, held the thumb and forefinger of her other hand a couple of centimeters apart.

“Just a small one, raise the spirits, loosen the tongue? Oh, of course, you don’t drink, do you?”

She turned away, then splashed some of the clear liquid over my bare foot. I didn’t pass out, but I did vomit. Unfortunately, only on myself. Music suddenly filled the cellar. “Dies Irae,” the “Day of Wrath,” played in the cheap tinny tones of a mobile phone. Kurmanalieva rummaged in her bag, produced a smartphone, turned away to take the call. She listened without speaking for a moment, then spoke.

“Thirty minutes. Don’t be late.”

She ended the call, placed her phone back in her bag, turned to me.

“I know it’s very rude of me to leave you, the sign of a poor hostess. But that was your delightful friend, Ms. Umarova. She wants to meet with me, maybe reminisce about when we worked together. And wants to make a trade for you. True love, Inspector?”

She stared at me, at her handiwork. I stared back.

Kurmanalieva shook her head at Saltanat’s taste in men, smiled, waggled her fingers in farewell. There was something I had to know before she left the room.

“Why haven’t you killed me?”

She stared at me, one foot on the stairs, before giving a slow smile that highlighted the crow’s feet around her eyes.

“Because you’re not top of my list. Yet.”

Then she switched off the light.