A Spring Betrayal (10 page)

Like a man doing a mime act in extreme slow motion, wading through particularly sticky glue, Lubashov lowered the gun down on the floor. It looked as if Mother Lubashova wouldn’t need to buy a second tombstone. But Saltanat didn’t take her eyes off his hands, her gun off his face.

“You’ve got a good explanation for trying to kill a police officer?” she said.

Lubashov looked about to burst into tears.

“My brother,” he mumbled, said something nonsensical about revenge. Over the years of what I laughingly call my career, I’ve learned that the weakness of all these wannabe gangsters is that they mistake violence for an instant solution instead of a last resort. But shooting a Murder Squad detective will bring a wealth of shit down on everyone, even if he’s wanted for questioning.

Saltanat moved forward, beckoning Lubashov back with her gun, until she could pass his gun back to me.

“How badly are you hurt?”

I shrugged, nonchalant, immediately wished I hadn’t.

“We can pick up some bandages once we leave. It’s just a graze; I’ve had worse shaving cuts.”

More bravado on my part that Saltanat chose to disregard.

“What do you want to do with this one?” she asked, nodding at Lubashov, who now knelt down and laced his fingers behind his neck.

“Not much I can do, is there? Can hardly ask for him to be taken down to the station, unless I want to share his cell.”

I looked at him, the usual cheap mix of arrogance and uncertainty clear in his face. Bullet fodder, if not now, in the future. I pondered for a moment, then drew my Yarygin, awkwardly, with my right hand.

“I could save us some trouble and kill him,” I suggested, sighting down the barrel in the general direction of Lubashov’s balls. Or where they would have been if Saltanat hadn’t drop-kicked them into his pelvis.

Lubashov’s face grew smudged with gray.

“Plenty of room for you next to your brother,” I added, “and then your dear old
mama
only needs one
marshrutka
bus ticket to visit the pair of you. Convenient, eh?”

I moved closer to Lubashov, never letting my eyes drop until my gun loomed large in his life. Despite what he might have thought, I wasn’t going to shoot him. In fact, I’ve never killed or wounded anyone except in self-defense. Maybe that makes me less of a detective. And it certainly doesn’t mean that the innocent dead don’t rise up before me at night. They all stare with accusing eyes, wondering why I hadn’t protected them from the monsters outside, why they’d had to pay such a price in order for me to catch the bad guys. And if they could talk, they’d all ask me the same question: “Why me?”

“If you’re going to do it, then just fucking do it,” Lubashov said, with an unexpected and rather admirable flash of spirit.

“Not my style,” I said, stroking his cheek with the gun barrel while Saltanat kept him covered with her Makarov. “I only shoot villains, not half-assed hopefuls who don’t even know how to put a clip in a gun.”

I gave him one of my special smiles, the one that never reaches my eyes.

“I’m a pretty forgiving kind of guy, but, my job being what it is, I can’t help wondering if there’s another reason you want me dead, other than your brother snoozing in the cemetery. So tell, who put you up to ruining my second-best jacket?”

“Inspector, we really don’t have time for this,” Saltanat said, impatience clear in her voice.

I sighed, knowing she was right. I holstered my piece and unloaded the clip from Lubashov’s gun. The metal felt cold, oily, like the name plaque on a tombstone, like death itself.

“You need to check the tension on the spring, rotate your bullets, keep everything clean, oiled and wiped. Or one day you’ll come up against someone who isn’t as considerate as me, and while you’re wrestling with a misfire, they won’t miss firing at you.”

I looked around at the rest of the bar, at the people frozen in front of me.

“Everyone keep their sticky little hands where I can see they’re not going to give me any trouble. Nice and calm, like taking a walk in Panfilov Park.”

I nodded toward Saltanat, gestured toward the stairs.

“Don’t forget our parrot; I don’t think we’ve heard all his amusing repertoire yet.”

Saltanat took hold of Kamchybek’s arm, and we started off back to the daylight and fresh air.

And that’s when the shooting started.

Chapter 19

One of the first rules of policing is to make sure you’ve cleared every room, not just the one you’re in. But I must have been feeling less than first-rate because I didn’t check out what laughingly passes as the Kulturny bathroom, a piece of guttering fixed to the wall on a slant, so that urine dribbles down into a pipe leading to the sewers.

A classic mistake. And a deadly one.

The man who burst through the door could barely squeeze through the frame. Two meters, easily, and almost as many wide. Hair down to his shoulders, dark glasses hiding his eyes, mouth stretched wide in a scream that echoed around the room. Almost as large, and just as frightening was the Glock 17 semiautomatic pistol he gripped in one meaty paw. He collided with the wall as he raised the gun, fired off two shots. In that confined space, the noise was deafening, an express train roaring through a tunnel.

I was off balance, unsighted, and that gave Lubashov the opportunity to pull at my leg and bring me down. I managed to keep hold of my Yarygin, slammed the butt against Lubashov’s nose. The bone shattered and I was drenched as his blood spurted across my face.

“Maxim!” Lubashov yelled. “Kill them!”

Maxim fired off another shot which shattered the mirror behind the bar and sent bottles cascading and splintering. That was all the time Saltanat needed to fire her own weapon twice, hitting Maxim in the shoulder and stomach, the shots knocking him back on his feet. Surprise turned to an expression of pain as he watched blood leaking out of his shirt. He looked puzzled, the way people do when they suddenly realize they’ve lost a filling, or their apartment keys are missing. He put out an arm to steady himself, gain time, decide on his next target. I watched as his life struggled to hang on, a man dangling by his fingertips over a spring-swollen river. And then he staggered backward, dropping the gun as he fell.

Gunsmoke rose in a lazy spiral toward the ceiling. The room held its breath in shocked silence. Lubashov clutched the ruins of his face, whimpering to himself. I hauled myself up, holstered my gun.

“Akyl, we have to get out of here,” Saltanat murmured. “Before the law arrives.”

I nodded, looked round to see what Kamchybek was doing.

“We have a problem,” I said, pointing at our not-so-little songbird.

“Fuck,” Saltanat said, looking at the hole in Kamchybek’s face. His left cheek, torn away by one of the Glock’s bullets, revealed an uneven row of yellowing teeth. His face had the sullen cast of a particularly bitter sneer. One eyelid drooped lower than the other, giving him the look of a lecherous pimp who has just reeled in a live one.

I reached forward, picked up the iPhone, slid it into my pocket.

“Come on,” I said, stepping over Lubashov, pausing only to bring my boot heel down hard on his gun hand, before heading for the stairs. “Let’s hope it’s stopped raining.”

We pulled up once more outside Saltanat’s hotel. I saw the hotel’s name embossed on the high metal gates. Umai, after the Kyrgyz goddess of fertility and virginity. Umai is supposed to be the special protector of women and children, so I suppose she’s my boss in the long run. I didn’t think I could rely on any special favors from her. But I’m always willing to hope.

Saltanat tried the remote, but the gates remained shut. She hit the horn, and the gates finally swung open to let us enter. A burly, shaven-headed man in his fifties stood behind the wooden bar under the canopy, sheltering from the rain. Saltanat climbed out of the car, ran over and kissed him on the cheek. He greeted her warmly, looked at me as I joined them. While not openly hostile, he looked at me as if I’d be the cause of trouble for him, his hotel, and his friend.

“Inspector Akyl Borubaev, Bishkek Murder Squad.” Saltanat made the introductions.

“
Privyat
,” I said, held out my hand. He took it, nodded, his face thawing slightly.

“And you are?” I asked.

“Rustam,” he answered, his accent Uzbek. He gestured at the fridges behind the bar, stocked with bottles of
pivo
and vodka. “Help yourself. I’ll organize food,” and with that, he walked toward the hotel’s side entrance.

I turned away from Saltanat, looked down at my hands. They didn’t shake or tremble; a bit late in the game, perhaps I was getting used to killing.

“Who do you think that guy was?” Saltanat asked. Her hands were as rock-steady as mine.

“Two thoughts,” I said. “Either just some
gopnik
layabout in a tracksuit getting rid of the day’s
pivo
when we walked in. Or . . .”

“Or?” she prompted.

“You were set up by Kamchybek’s call. You were meant to go there, and get hit. But they didn’t expect I’d be with you. Or that Lubashov would try to avenge his brother. That made it all turn to shit.”

“Which do you think it was?”

“I look like I believe in coincidence?”

“Who would set it up?” she asked.

I shook my head; better to assume everyone was against us.

“And the iPhone? Why bother if they were going to put me down?”

“A good way to find out just how much you knew, how much you might have reported back, before putting one in your ear.”

I didn’t want to tell her I thought she wouldn’t have been killed, not just then. She would have been dragged somewhere quiet, where the occasional scream goes unnoticed and people pretend a gunshot is a car backfire. The same sort of place where Saltanat had been raped, probably the same kind of people.

I put my hand on hers, just for a moment, then uncapped a bottle of Sibirskaya Korona, pushed it toward her. She hesitated, then drank.

“It helps me relax,” she said. “You should try it.”

“You think I can’t relax unless I’m halfway down the hundred grams?”

“You used to drink.”

“And now I don’t.”

“Forever?”

I shrugged, pretended nonchalance I didn’t feel.

“For today will do, for now.”

Saltanat considered this for a moment, smiled, nodded. Once upon a time, in my drinking days, before Chinara, this would have been when I kissed the evening’s girl, smelled lemon shampoo in her hair, felt the heat of her skin, the softness of her lips.

But those days are dead and buried deep. And I don’t think they’ll be coming back, at least, not for Mrs. Borubaeva’s boy. It’s the death all around that’s corroded me, not the drink.

Saltanat leaned back, finished her beer, said, “Time to eat.”

I thought, Time to kill.

Chapter 20

Saltanat and I sat under the shelter of the sloping bar roof, the rain cascading down around us. We’d eaten the vegetable
pelmeni
and bowls of
lagman
Rustam had brought out to us, wondered if the storm would ever end. Up in the mountains behind us, occasional rolling peals of distant thunder punctuated our conversation as we planned what to do next.

I thought I knew the streets and alleys of Bishkek better than most
tacsi
drivers, but I’d never heard of the Umai Hotel. And judging by the apparent absence of any guests, neither had anyone else.

“How do you know about this place?”

Saltanat lit a cigarette and sucked down the first smoke, then let it merge with the fine gray mist of the rain.

“I was at school with Rustam’s daughter. Anastasia. We knew each other, not well, enough to say hello. When she was at college in Tashkent, she was attacked by three men.”

She paused, stared at me.

“I helped catch the men who did it. One of them was killed trying to escape. By me.”

Her look challenged me to disagree with her. I simply raised an eyebrow.

“I’d do it again. Rustam knows that too. So I stay here at his insistence, every time I’m in Bishkek. I can’t pay for anything. Embarrassing, really.”

After a final draw on her cigarette, she threw the still-lit stub out onto the grass, listened to its half-hearted hiss before dying.

“I don’t think your people—your ex-people—know I use this place, but we’d better keep on the move, just in case.”

I followed her to the car. From the hotel porch, Rustam raised his arm in farewell, jacket collar turned up against the rain. As the Lexus started to move toward the gates, Saltanat turned to me, her face impassive, betraying nothing. Her voice was calm.

“Eighteen months later, Anastasia killed herself.”

And then we were through the gates, tires sending up a black spray against walls on both sides.

Chinara always said I felt too deeply for the victims in the cases I handled, that my emotional involvement would lead me to make mistakes, to follow one line of investigation excluding all others. At the same time, she knew it was the only way I could operate. My unconditional need for her and my need for justice for the dead were what made me the man I was. But things change, and so did I.

“Love weathers all storms”? Perhaps. But I’ve learned that without love, nothing shores our lives up except rage, darkness, death. The story Saltanat had shared gave me one insight; we both endured the same sense of loss on behalf of the dead. Chinara had been my soul mate; Saltanat was my mirror image.

“Our plan?” I asked.

“We go somewhere no one will look for you. You can’t hide in Bishkek; too many people know you. And my contact down in Jalalabad can deprogram that phone’s security features.”

“It’s the only lead we’ve got,” I agreed. “But wouldn’t it be better if we split up? Why should you get involved with this?”

“Because I want whoever killed Gurminj,” she said.

“And those children.”

“Yes. And those children.”

Which meant heading southwest toward Jalalabad, snowcapped mountains rising up on either side of us, soon to be stained with the setting sun’s blood.