An Autumn Hunting

Chapter 9

Derevyashka means ‘wood’, and when you see the place, you understand why. Imagine a mad Siberian’s attempt at building a log cabin, designed under the influence of some particularly potent vodka laced with magic mushrooms. Aliyev had taken one of the tables furthest from the door, facing the room, close enough to the exit into the beer garden to provide an escape route if it all turned tits up. I sat down opposite him, slid my gun onto my lap, gave a barely perceptible nod. Seeing him close up, he seemed fragile, insubstantial. Most of the Circle of Brothers crew I’d encountered over the years had been big guys, fists like boulders, bellies like barrels, hair shaved down to stubble, prison tattoos staining mottled flesh as a testament to their crimes. I’d obviously been dealing with the lower orders.

I ordered coffee, Aliyev asked for green tea. For once, the service was immediate, and I didn’t think it was because of my presence. We sat in silence until the drinks arrived, which gave me the chance to inspect him more closely. Obviously Russian by family, which made his position at the top of the tree even more unusual. Once Kyrgyzstan got its independence, a lot of Russians decided there’d be better pickings back in Moscow or St Petersburg or Novosibirsk. And since crime, just as much as nature, abhors a vacuum, the local element quickly rose to the top, did their best to make sure they stayed there.

Aliyev’s eyes were the washed-out blue you see in the sky above the mountains, on those clear sun-blasted autumn days that feel brittle and fragile, ready to snap at the slightest movement. The lobe of his left ear was missing, possibly a punishment cutting from his youth, but he wore his hair swept back, making no attempt to hide the missing flesh. Strong jaw, clean-shaven, no surplus fat on his face. A mouth as thin and brutal as a carp, elderly and cunning.

His hands were heavily veined, the nails trimmed back, with long thin fingers that looked as if they would be equally at home chalking algebra equations on a blackboard or tightening around a rival’s throat. He could have been any age between forty and sixty, and it was clear he hadn’t stayed alive this long by being stupid. I didn’t know what he could tell about me; not even my mirror tells the whole truth of who I am. But he didn’t blink, look away, or drop his eyes. He had the gaze of a surgeon or a psychopath, impossible to read.

My coffee was watery, bitter, and Aliyev’s tea didn’t look any more appetising. I didn’t add sugar, didn’t want him to think I couldn’t take whatever was served to me.

Finally, he spoke.

‘Maksat Aydaraliev.’

I nodded, showing I knew the name, admitting nothing more. The pakhan, the boss Saltanat and her colleagues had gunned down and dumped in the snowdrifts outside the Kulturny that dark freezing night.

‘I believe it’s you I have to thank for his unfortunate demise, Inspector,’ he said, his voice as free of emotion as if he were reciting the Trans-Siberian Railway timetable. I raised an eyebrow, to suggest I had no idea what he was talking about. He gave a sardonic smile at my reaction, bluff and counter-bluff.

‘No need to be coy, Inspector, we’re all friends here.’

His eyes moved left, and I followed his glance to an SUV parking a little way down Ryskulov. I couldn’t see through the tinted windows, but I was willing to bet it wasn’t some high-society matron taking her poodle for a ride.

‘You’ll notice I’m keeping my hands on the table. All my cards as well,’ he said, ‘but you clearly don’t trust me enough to put your gun away.’ He cocked his head to one side, raised an eyebrow.

I shrugged, nodded, left my gun where it was. Men like Aliyev will apologise for ripping your head off even while they’re pissing down your throat. It comes with the territory.

‘Thank me for what?’ I asked.

‘You took care of Maksat Aydaraliev, didn’t you?’

I shook my head, but I knew he didn’t believe me. Someone had killed the old pakhan, and it made sense to decide I was the one responsible.

‘You know about the alpha male in the pack, Inspector? Lions, wolves, whatever. When the alpha male gets old, starts to weaken, he can’t lead the pack as well as he once did. He stands in the way, so the pack dispose of him, to ensure their survival. He’s removed for the continuance of the pack, the tribe, the gang.’

Aliyev took a sip of his tea, savoured the aroma.

‘With humans, the ways that once served Maksat became old-fashioned, last-century, not fit for today. He was a survivor, tough, until it was time for him to move on, for a new face, new ideas, to take over, lead the way ahead.’

‘Goodbye, Maksat, hello, Kanybek?’ I asked, injecting a little sarcasm into my voice.

‘Maksat believed in the old ways; the fist, the boot, the bullet. Lead or gold, da? Fine for those days, when you could see your enemy face to face. You remember his right hand? Broken in twenty-eight places by your colleagues, he used to say, and his fingernails torn out. Down in that basement no one ever talks about. That was the world then. Do it to me and I do it to you, twice.’

He paused, inspected his own fingers. Nothing broken or mutilated, nothing old-school about him. Yet.

‘But now your enemy might be anywhere in the world,’ Aliyev continued. ‘Nothing but an email address, a Facebook photo, a warning sent as a text message. What good are muscles and Makarovs then?’

He sat back in his chair, sipped at his green tea.

‘New times, new ways, Inspector. You either move with history or you are history. Which are you, I wonder?’

‘It’s my history I’m planning to change, now I’m no longer Murder Squad, not even a lowly uniformed ment. That’s why I wanted to meet you,’ I said, then fell silent and stared over his shoulder, weighing up the situation. A couple of tables away, four elderly men wearing ill-fitting suit jackets and felt kalpak hats were working their way through a bottle of vodka and a plate of pickled gherkins. Two of the waitresses were texting their friends as if the only way they could ever communicate was via their fingertips. An Asian woman carrying a large shopping bag was making her way to the toilets at the back. No one was paying us any attention, just two more middle-aged men with time on their hands and no particular place to go.

‘A pity. You’d have been useful to me on the inside, pissing out of the yurt, not into it, opening your beak to sing to me, me feeding you scraps in return. But now…’

Aliyev shrugged, held his hands wide in one of those ‘what can I do’ gestures.

‘You’ve terminated your employment in the police force almost as quickly as you terminated the Minister for State Security.’

I did my best to appear surprised he already knew about that afternoon’s events, but he merely smiled.

‘I heard about you shooting Tynaliev before the sound of your shots had stopped echoing from the mountains,’ he said. ‘Did you really think I’d have agreed to meet you otherwise?’

‘So why did you agree?’ I asked, knowing my chance to implement my plan depended on his reply.

Aliyev said nothing for a moment, dropped a couple of sugar cubes into his tea, stirred then sipped. For a couple of seconds he looked oddly melancholy, as if his life was also dissolving into nothingness.

‘Why do people want to join my organisation?’ he asked.

I shrugged, rubbed my thumb against my first two fingers, the universal sign for cash.

‘You’re right, of course,’ he said, ‘although only up to a point. I’ve no use for people only looking to make enough money to get laid or stoned or drunk. Any street robber can do that. I look for certain qualities in a man, to ensure he’ll be a smooth-turning cog, working for the good of the whole machine.’

Qualities wasn’t exactly the word I’d choose for people prepared to rob, rape, murder; men willing to take out an entire three generations of a rival’s family to avenge a perceived slight or a business deal gone sour. It takes a certain determination to walk up to a man you’ve never met and fire two shots into his head. But it’s also barbaric, a sign our species hasn’t progressed much, if at all.

I’ve killed people, usually when they were trying to kill me. Sometimes I see their faces as I turn a corner, or see a reflection in a shop window. They don’t disturb me: I know why they died – them or me – and I believe they deserved no better. It’s at night when victims visit me, their open staring eyes asking why I haven’t solved their murder or brought them justice yet. They are the ones who haunt me, the ones I’ve failed, the ones who remind me I have to do better.

Aliyev tapped on the table. I shook myself out of my reverie and stared back at him.

‘Of course, it’s easy to find people to do the muscle work, the threatening, and, sometimes, the finishing, the wet work,’ Aliyev continued, ‘but they don’t use what little brains they have. They can’t even spell initiative, let alone use it. Then there are the ones who see themselves as criminal masterminds, future pakhans. But they generally have no spine, no balls when it comes to pulling the trigger, putting death through a man’s eyeball or slashing a throat to stain a white shirt red.’

‘Maybe you need a better recruitment agency?’

Aliyev gave a dry smile to show he appreciated the joke.

‘You’re a man of action, but you temper it with thought. You’re honest, but not too honest. And you’re looking for a job, right?’

I nodded. ‘I thought you might help me get out of the country, and fast. After all, you wouldn’t be sitting at the top of the table if Maksat Aydaraliev was still around, pulling out fingernails and counting out banknotes. So you owe me.’

Aliyev nodded, his gaze never leaving mine.

‘You’re right, I owe you. But the thing is,’ and he dropped another sugar lump into his tea, watching the ripple hit the edge of the cup, ‘I also own you.’

He smiled at my puzzled look.

‘Can you imagine how many favours I’ll be able to call on if I hand over the man who gunned down the Minister of State Security? That’s worth twenty million som in the bank. It’s just a question of deciding if you can be more useful to me than all those get-out-of-jail-free cards.’

‘Not much use to you if I shoot your balls off while you’re deciding what to do,’ I said, rapped the underside of the table to prove my point.

‘You could do, but you won’t, because it doesn’t benefit you to do so. Brains trump action.’

‘On this occasion,’ I said, nodding at the strength of his logic. I looked around the bar, wondering how it was my life had become thrown into such disarray. The vodka-drinking men had finished their bottle and were trying to catch the attention of the waitresses, who remained resolutely immersed in the digital world. The Asian woman was making her way towards the door, obviously unwilling to spend any more time in the bar than she had to. In her haste, she’d forgotten her shopping, and I wondered if she’d realise her mistake before walking outside.

‘So?’ he said, leaning forward. ‘What’s your answer? Job or jail?’

I opened my mouth to speak, but he never heard my reply.

Because that was when the bomb went off.