A Spring Betrayal

Chapter 50

“I was really pissed off with you when I found out you’d gone,” Saltanat said, sipping at a cup of hot chai. We were sitting in a small coffee shop in Tungush, on our way back into Bishkek.

“I was pretty sure you would have gone either to the Ibraimova apartment or to keep watch outside Graves’s house. So I borrowed a motorbike, well, stole it, arrived at your apartment just in time to see Kurmanalieva supervising two of her thugs dumping you in the trunk of her car. I couldn’t tell whether you were dead or unconscious, so I followed them back to Graves’s house, waited outside.”

Saltanat took another sip, then lit a cigarette, watching the smoke rise upward.

“I wasn’t going to storm the house. I had no idea where you were, how many people were there. So I waited, put in the call to Kurmanalieva. I saw her drive away, waited some more. Then Graves drove out, so I followed you. You know the rest.”

Saltanat had snapped the linking chain of the handcuffs, but I was still wearing fancy bracelets. The waitress had noticed them as she brought us our tea, and I’d made some joke about a bet gone wrong. She didn’t laugh, simply looked at me as if I was crazy, slapped down the chyoht and walked away. Saltanat didn’t laugh either.

“I’m beginning to think you’re a liability, Akyl,” she said, staring at the tip of her cigarette, her eyes refusing to meet mine. I felt my heart stop, kick-start, and turn over, my throat suddenly parched and sore.

“That sounds like the start of a familiar song,” I said. “One of those traditional songs about parting lovers, and eternal tears and all that stuff.”

“No,” Saltanat said, and I could see she was choosing her words with great care, “I’m not saying that. But we have to end this, Akyl. I don’t just mean nailing Graves for the murders, avenging Gurminj. But we go two steps forward, one step back, one step forward, three steps back.”

It was as close to a declaration of sorts that I’d ever heard her make.

She paused, stubbed out her cigarette, started to reach for another, then put down the pack.

“Give me your wallet,” she said. I picked up the chyoht and looked at the total.

“I was going to pay,” I said, starting to count out a handful of som notes.

“No, give me your wallet,” she repeated, and then plucked it out of my fingers.

“This is what I’m talking about, Akyl,” she said, flipping past the slots for my non-existent credit cards. She pulled out a passport-sized photograph, and held it up for me to see. Chinara, on the Ferris wheel.

“I won’t compete with a dead woman,” Saltanat said, and I could hear the determination in her voice.

I took the photo from her and started to tear it up, but Saltanat reached over the table to stop me.

“Nice gesture, I appreciate you making it,” she said, “but you need to decide what is important to you.”

“What do you want me to do?” I said.

“You’re the detective, solve the mystery,” she said. “And anyway, it’s not about what I want you to do, it’s what you want to do. I’m not looking for a lapdog.”

I nodded, afraid words would fail me if I tried to talk about her, about Chinara, what they both meant to me. Can you love two people without betraying each of them with the other, even after death? I didn’t have an answer. I wasn’t even sure there was one.

We stood up, and I put the money for the bill on the table.

“Just a couple of things; where are we going to stay tonight? The safe house is out, my apartment’s out, the hotel’s out. And more important,” and I held up my wrists, clanking the handcuffs together, “when can I get rid of the jewelry?”