A Spring Betrayal (20 page)

We spent the next day discussing what to do. I voted for a quick headshot and a high-speed exit over the border into Kazakhstan. Once there, we could work out what to do next. My desire for revenge was fierce, on behalf of Gurminj, Rustam, the dead children. At night, I dreamed of seeing the sudden terror in Graves’s eyes, heard the half-uttered scream and watched his brains spatter gray and viscous against a bloodstained wall. I could almost taste his fear. And if a bullet came my way, perhaps that made a suitable end for an endless struggle.

Saltanat was calmer, more rational. She wanted to see Graves punished, but, smarter than me, she thought ahead, wanted to prove me innocent of the child pornography charges. Hour after hour, we debated strategy, tactics, but all the time I could feel the tension on a trigger, imagined my finger tightening and then the recoil. The muscles in my jaw pulsed with the need for sudden blood.

“Listen to me, Akyl, killing Graves isn’t the answer. We haven’t even proved it’s him,” Saltanat argued, pounding one fist into another for emphasis.

“He’s dirty, and you know it. You saw the films.” My voice flat.

“Yes, but I didn’t see him. Maybe he wholesales the porn, buys it in, that makes him guilty of a lot of things. But maybe not murder.”

“I don’t give a fuck about proving it. He doesn’t know what goes on in the cellar of his own house?”

I heard my voice getting angrier, didn’t bother to rein it in.

“When you scoop shit off the street, do you care whether it’s from the ass of a dog, a cow, or a horse? It’s still shit, and needs to be cleaned up.”

Saltanat sighed in frustration, sat back on her heels.

“If you’re looking for a gunfight, one in which you die heroically, gun blazing, the bad guys falling dead, that’s up to you. I can’t stop you. If you don’t mind everyone remembering you as a man who peddled the worst kind of filth for money, again, your call.”

I shrugged, as if I didn’t care one way or the other.

“First of all, we have to appear to back away. To convince Graves the slaughter at the hotel made us realize we were in too deep. Amateurs. And with him having the iPhone evidence of his involvement, we’re just going to disappear.”

I had to admit it made a lot of sense, even if my anger and pride made it hard to swallow the truth.

“So what do you want us to do?”

“We call him,” Saltanat said. “We tell him we got the message, we’re crossing the border, he has nothing to be concerned about.”

“He won’t believe that,” I said. “He’s made a lot of dirty money, dirty friends, dirty enemies. He won’t be happy until we’re in the cellar starring in his next home movie.”

“That’s why I’m going to make the call,” Saltanat said. “He hears an Uzbek accent, we’re a gang from over the border. Especially when I tell him you’re dead. And send him the photos to prove it.”

“I take it I’m not actually dead,” I said.

“You’re face down, shot in the back, somewhere up in the mountains where it’s still snowy,” she said.

“I hope it was quick,” I said.

“You never knew what hit you,” Saltanat said.

It’s as good a description of love as any I’ve ever heard.

Chapter 40

The following morning, we drove out of the city, up to Ala Archa, the national park that climbs up into the mountains. It’s a serene, beautiful place, with rowan and birch trees sheltering under the steep slopes of the valley. At weekends in the summer, it’s always busy with walkers, tourists, and people who just want to get out of the heat and dust of the city. Hike to the far end of the park and you might spot wolves, bears, perhaps even a snow leopard, while eagles and hawks patrol the sky. Saltanat parked in front of the small hotel marking the end of the road, and we started to walk.

The air was crisp, the remnants of the winter still white underfoot, and the music of the river created a swirling soundtrack as we climbed up into the tree line. The snow got deeper, its chill creeping through the soles of my boots. I was out of breath, out of condition, but Saltanat strode ahead, making no concessions to my lack of speed or the leather case she was carrying.

Finally, we stopped, in a natural clearing where birch trees clustered around us like onlookers at a road accident. Or perhaps witnesses at an execution. Saltanat put down the bag, looked around.

“This is as good as anywhere,” she said. “Take off your jacket.”

I felt a cold breeze brush across my chest. The upper branches of the trees quivered, and I felt a faint drift of snowflakes on my face.

Saltanat opened the case, took out a glass jar and a plastic bag. A medium-sized raw steak glistened inside the bag, streaked with blood, marbled with fat. The jar was half full of a thick red fluid that was all too familiar. I decided not to ask where she’d acquired the blood.

Saltanat unwrapped the steak, laid it on the snow, poured a little of the blood on and around the meat, then covered it with my jacket. I shivered and realized I should have brought a sweater. At least, that’s why I thought I was shivering.

Saltanat pressed her Makarov against the bulge caused by the meat, and fired a shot. My jacket jerked as if I’d still been inside it, and some blood oozed out of the bullet hole, its edges blackened by powder burn. I could see charred flesh, smelled burned meat. I felt slightly sick.

“Now the fun part,” Saltanat said. “Put your jacket back on.”

I did as I was told, and waited for instructions.

“Fall forward, and don’t use your hands to break your fall,” Saltanat said. “We need this to look convincing.”

I was convinced she was enjoying this rather too much, but I fell forward, my face buried in the snow, arms flung out. Saltanat placed the steak under the bullet hole, and I could feel a clammy sweat on the back of my neck. Saltanat spattered some of the blood by my side, and I could taste its rich scent in the back of my throat.

“Stay still,” she commanded. I didn’t move for four or five minutes, until she told me to get up.

I lumbered to my feet, brushing snow and dirt off my face, out of my hair.

“My jacket’s fucked, I suppose,” I grumbled, wiping the worst of the blood against a clean patch of snow.

“Not at all,” Saltanat said, scrolling through the photos she’d taken. “A bullet hole, what could give you more street cred than that, a Murder Squad inspector who survived an assassination attempt?”

It would be all too easy for someone to repeat the exercise, next time for real. I’d seen too many bodies sprawled out on pavements, in fields, under birch trees, to think the same fate could never await me.

“Won’t they want to see my face?” I asked. “Find out who I am, I mean, was?”

“The last thing we want is for someone to recognize you,” Saltanat said. “Better to say we decided to turn you into food for the crows. By the way, you make a lovely corpse.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I said, started back down the hillside toward the car, until I slipped and landed on my ass, felt the snow seeping wet into my trousers. Saltanat’s laughter followed me all the way down.

Chapter 41

The Voice at the other end of the phone was guarded.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Graves?” Saltanat said.

Silence.

“You spoke to a former colleague of mine the other day.”

“Did I?”

“Regarding a series of financial transactions that, in the event, never happened,” she said. Her tone was officious, impersonal. Saltanat could play the ice queen to perfection.

“And?”

“There was a series of cancelations at a local hotel. Perhaps you read about them?”

“Perhaps.”

The voice was noncommittal, giving nothing away, not even confusion or misunderstanding.

“The colleague who spoke to you is no longer with our organization, ever since we discovered he was acting on his own, without our authority. His employment was terminated. And so was he.”

More silence.

Saltanat continued, the frost in her voice amplified by the formality of her language.

“As a gesture of our commitment to an amicable solution, we’re sending you photographs of his resignation. We hope this ends any unpleasantness between our two organizations. Please accept our apologies.”

After a moment, the Voice spoke.

“Damage was done, costs incurred. I would expect some form of compensation.”

Discussing death, violence, crime, in the language of the boardroom. Not for the first time, I wondered if the entire world was greedy and corrupt. The biggest thieves sit at boardroom tables discussing takeovers and share options. And the only handcuffs they ever get to put on are golden.

“I quite agree, Mr. Graves,” Saltanat continued, “but my superiors feel the quickest way to deal with this problem is to simply let the matter drop, and we both continue to go about our respective businesses as before.”

The Voice started to speak, but Saltanat abruptly broke the connection. She handed the cell phone to me.

“You might want to have a look at your corpse,” she said. “That’s not something you get to do every day. And then take a hammer to the phone.”

I thumbed through the images of my dead body in the snow. They looked pretty convincing, and it wasn’t as if I’d never seen such things before. The close-up of the bullet hole with the charred meat and powder burn was particularly effective.

“So Graves gets these, and decides the problem’s over. Then what?”

Saltanat took the phone back from me, and started to dial a number.

“His problem is just starting, whether or not he believes it’s been sorted out. Once I send a photo of the hotel, together with your holiday snaps.”

“Sending them where?”

“To your old colleagues at Sverdlovsky station. Together with a text that the very dead body in the photo is yours, that the hotel massacre
is involved, and that our friend Mr. Graves knows something about both. Let’s see what they do then.”

You can only admire such deviousness.

An hour later, we were parked a couple of hundred yards away from Graves’s mansion when the first squad car arrived. An officer got out of the passenger seat, adjusted his uniform, squared his peaked cap, said something into the gate intercom.

After a couple of moments, the side gate swung open and the
ment
went inside.

“This is your version of stirring the sewage and seeing what floats to the top?” I asked. Saltanat shook her head.

“Nothing so direct,” she answered. “We watch what happens, and that tells us just how well protected Graves is. He’s got to be giving a lot of beaks something to drink; maybe this will tell us whose.”

“Sverdlovsky’s going to be very happy the missing inspector is going to stay missing,” I said, “but I hope that’s only going to be temporary.”

I tried a light-hearted voice, but Saltanat looked at me, concerned perhaps I was losing my edge, my fire.

“You know, Akyl, if you wanted to get out of Kyrgyzstan, we could go to Tashkent. New papers, a new identity, you could start over again.”

I took her hand, squeezed it.

“I’m touched you’d do that for me,” I said. “Honestly.”

I looked around and waved a hand in the general direction of the mountains.

“But this is home. Not much, I know, but . . .”

I shrugged, then leaned forward and kissed her cheek.

“This is where I am, this is what I do. Without it, I’d be nothing.”

Saltanat raised an eyebrow.

I smiled, then stiffened as a black limousine turned the corner, parked behind the squad car. Tinted glass prevented us from seeing who was inside. The uniformed driver opened the rear door and an elegant middle-aged blond woman emerged. Dark glasses covered her
eyes, but even at a distance, I saw she was attractive, slim, head held high, full of confidence. Her hair was piled up in a French braid, and her clothes were expensive. From GUM in Moscow, or Bond Street in London. A lot of Russian oligarchs live there now, and they like their mansions expensive, their cars high-end, and their women stylish. Why steal billions of rubles from the Russian people if not to enjoy the fruits of your labors?

“You know who she is?” I asked, flicking through the filing cabinet in my mind, not coming up with any immediate answers, although there was something familiar about her. Saltanat frowned, said nothing.

I did recognize the man who got out of the car and walked with the woman toward the gate. I’d last seen him just a few days before, drinking
pivo
at a market stall in Jalalabad.

Mikhail Ivanovich Tynaliev, minister for state security.

Chapter 42

“So now we know,” I said, lit a cigarette, my hand trembling. I’d expected Graves to be connected, but hadn’t imagined it would be so high up.

“We could have guessed Graves and Tynaliev would know each other,” Saltanat said, “but we don’t know how close the connection is. Graves has legitimate businesses. It could be Tynaliev is involved in those, but not in the porn.”

I understood Saltanat’s logic, even agreed with it. But doubts nagged in the back of my head, like blisters from a pair of new shoes.

“I can’t imagine Tynaliev would approve of Graves’s cellar activities, not after the murder of his only daughter,” I said, “but as minister for state security, a dog can’t bark in Panfilov Park without it being reported to him.”

“Then why would he fly down to Jalalabad to see you, tell you to solve the case, tone down the police hunt for you?” Saltanat asked. “Surely if he was involved, he’d be more interested in you taking the fall for everything?”

I shrugged.

“Maybe he fancies a press conference where he can announce ‘Rogue Inspector Shot Dead Resisting Arrest.’ And then everybody can get back to the cellar work, cutting and raping and killing and piling up the money just like before.”

Saltanat didn’t look convinced, although the logic seemed pretty plain to me.

“So who killed Gurminj? And the buried children? And why the false identity bands?”

I didn’t have a reply. I wasn’t even sure I wanted one. All I knew was my gun had the solution. Or rather, seventeen of them. Sixteen for the bad guys and one for myself.