An Autumn Hunting

Chapter 12

The steps went down for three metres, enough to ensure this underground hideout would be soundproof. Fire a gun down there and it wouldn’t be heard outside. It was likely someone had done just that, and not as an experiment.

The basement was huge, stretching far beyond the footprint of the farmhouse above. Recessed lights illuminated a plain wooden floor, with a long table and chairs at one end of the main room. A corridor at the rear led off to three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a small room stacked with guns, a well-stocked kitchen and a storeroom full of tinned food. The air smelt musty, disused, as if it had been a long time since anyone had come down here. The dust in the air tasted metallic, harsh the way silver foil feels on metal fillings. It made me think of the underground bunker in Berlin that the German High Command retreated to as the Red Army approached to end the Great Patriotic War. The place was sterile, impersonal, but like the basement at Sverdlovsky station, I sensed it had seen its share of begging, beatings and blood.

‘Where does the power come from?’

‘We have a concealed generator a little way away, and reserve batteries, of course.’

‘You could withstand a siege here,’ I said.

‘The point of building this was so we wouldn’t have to,’ Aliyev replied. ‘My predecessor, the late unlamented pakhan, believed in showing the world how tough he was, how he would end in a blaze of glory. He’d consider this a cowardly way to live. Well, look how he ended up. Face down in a snowdrift, his jaw shot away. Me? I prefer to stay alive. Once you’re in the grave, you can’t spend money, drink, eat, fuck. From the outside you wouldn’t have seen anything other than a squalid and decrepit ruin. Which makes this safe.’

‘But once you’re down here, you’re trapped. All the police or army have to do is sit up top and starve you out.’

Aliyev simply gave an enigmatic smile, so I guessed there would be a hidden exit, a tunnel with an entrance emerging a few hundred metres away. With the kind of wealth and influence he had at his disposal, digging it would have been no problem, and the workmen would be too afraid to talk. When Genghis Khan was finally buried, all the people who’d built his tomb were put to death, to ensure his body could never be found. I imagined Aliyev would have reminded everyone of that, as a precaution against loose tongues. We Kyrgyz have never been called talkative people; good money together with the threat of a painful death clamps most mouths tight shut.

I headed for the bathroom, used the chemical toilet, checked my mobile: no signal, not that I expected one, which explained why they hadn’t confiscated my phone along with my gun. Back in the main room, my new friends were watching the television news, the sound turned down low.

Aliyev beckoned me over to the table, pointed to a seat. I sat, uncomfortably aware my back was towards the bodyguards. Aliyev sensed my unease and smiled as he poured out two shots of vodka, pushing one towards me.

‘I’d rather have tea, if it’s all the same to you,’ I said. ‘Vodka doesn’t agree with me.’

‘I’d heard you’d stopped drinking after your wife died. Strange, most men would drink more.’

‘I wasn’t celebrating.’

The pakhan thought about my comment, simply shrugged. Perhaps I’d shown him a weakness he could later exploit, or a strength he needed to know.

I wondered how much more information was in the dossier Aliyev had obviously compiled about me, or whether it was just common knowledge among the low lifes I’d dealt with in the past. Either that, or he had filled the beak of someone at Sverdlovsky station. The look on my face must have been enough for Aliyev to seize his advantage.

‘I know a lot about you, Inspector. You don’t hold your palm out for breakfast money, your bank balance wouldn’t keep a sparrow alive, and you occasionally fuck some Uzbek tart. I don’t have positive proof you killed Maksat Aydaraliev, but I know his last meeting was with you. Your old boss, the chief, the one who was “killed in a tragic accident” – I’m sure you know more about that than the newspaper stories revealed.’

Aliyev raised his glass in an ironic salute, drained it, pushed the bottle away. He obviously didn’t subscribe to the traditional belief that once opened, a bottle had to be emptied.

‘You’re an intelligent man, Inspector. Resourceful. A man of principles, but willing to have those principles bent from time to time, if the cause is worth it. Which raises a few questions in my mind.’

He cocked his head to one side and raised an eyebrow, as if debating some unusual problem, or trying to solve a difficult crossword puzzle.

‘Questions I hope you can answer,’ he continued, ‘so I can settle any nagging doubts I might have. I’m sure you’ll agree that’s only reasonable.’

He steepled his hands, then pointed his forefingers at me. I was relieved he wasn’t aiming a gun, but that was short-lived. Because a forearm coiled itself around my throat, forcing me back into my seat, and I felt the cold metal kiss of a gun barrel just behind my right ear.