Also by Tom Callaghan
A Killing Winter
A Spring Betrayal
New York • London
© 2017 by Tom Callaghan
Desert photo © SuperStock
Dubai skyline © Alamy
Jacket design © www.blacksheep-uk.com
First published in the United States by Quercus in 2017
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e-ISBN 978-1-63506-055-3
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
www.quercus.com
For
Tanja Howarth
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
I can’t tell any more
Who’s an animal, who’s a person,
Or when the execution’s due.
Anna Akhmatova
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
I’d smelt violent death before, that sour mix of blood, urine and fear bubbling away like some vile soup. Having been an inspector in the Bishkek Murder Squad, there was no way I could avoid it. Stabbings, shootings, murder by bottle, bullet or boot, I’d smelt them all. The stink settles into your clothes, your skin, your soul; nothing ever fully washes it out. And no matter how many times you smell death, you never become used to it.
I pushed the door open a little further, hoping the only other person in the room was the one no longer breathing. The man’s body was huddled in the far corner, the other side of a double bed, as if he’d tried to take shelter from his death. I turned on the light, wished I hadn’t. The large abstract painting on the wall had been created by long scarlet smears and splashes someone had turned into letters. It looked like a child’s first attempt at writing, as if the finger dipped in blood was unused to the Cyrillic alphabet we Kyrgyz use.
SVINYA. Pig. Short, sweet, and from what I’d learned earlier, accurate.
I walked over toward the body, crouched beside the corpse. It wasn’t hard to tell where the red ink had come from. The man’s eyes, ears and tongue were missing. Well, not missing, just not attached to him anymore, but scattered across the tiled floor like abandoned rubber toys. The wounds gaped like ugly open mouths, the sort that yell and swear and sneer.
A punishment killing? This will teach you not to see, hear or talk about our business? Perhaps, but that didn’t explain why someone had scrawled SVINYA above the body. That seemed personal, an epitaph or a proclamation.
There’s something depressingly familiar about most murders, the unmistakable way the body sprawls as if all its muscles had snapped at once. A lifetime’s energy and ambition, dreams and anger, gone without trace. No wonder it’s hard to believe life is anything more than a series of random collisions, with one final inevitable crash.
I touched the man’s cheek. Cooling, but still warm. Hard to tell how long he’d been dead with the stifling summer heat in the room. Back in Bishkek, I would have waited for the crime scene people, for the ambulance. Not here. I couldn’t tell whether the mutilations were post-mortem; I hoped for his sake they were.
I wondered why none of the man’s neighbors had heard anything; there must have been some sort of scuffle. No one noticed someone arriving at the apartment, no one heard screams?
I gave the room a swift search, hoping to discover what I’d come for. I pulled open drawers, hunted through the wardrobe. Finally I found it, taped to the underside of the bedside table. The bluing looked worn, and the metal had scratches down one side. But it was a Makarov, loaded, just as I’d requested. I didn’t open my wallet to pay. It wasn’t as if he needed the money.
I took a final look at the body, to see if there were any indications of what had killed him. That was when I spotted it, a small puncture mark on his neck, bruised as if someone untrained had jabbed him with a syringe. If he’d been drugged, that would explain why there’d been no noise. I guessed toxicology reports would confirm that, although I wouldn’t be around to read them.
I dropped the gun into my pocket. I wasn’t going to call the police, leave an anonymous tip. The hot weather would make the body’s presence known soon enough.
I took the stairs rather than the lift, a rule I do my best to always keep. Stairs give you a couple of options, lifts give you none. And if there’s somebody with a gun or a knife, they’re ready and waiting for you when the lift doors open. I used my shoulder to push open the bar on the fire escape door, strolled out into the night, hands in my pockets. Another rule: people notice you if you’re furtive, so pretend you haven’t a care in the world.
I walked on for about half an hour, turning left or right at random until I came to the creek, where I sat down and watched the wooden boats moored up four deep. The sluggish black seawater lapped and spat against the stonework. The slight breeze smelled of curry and salt and petrol fumes. In the distance on the other side of the water, the towers of the city sparkled and shone. My shirt was soaked with sweat, my hair plastered to my fo
rehead. Even a Bishkek summer is never this hot, and I felt blistered, worn, as well as jet-lagged after the cramped four-hour flight.
I wondered whether I should simply return home, knew it wasn’t an option. If I failed, the man who’d sent me here would pour never-ending shit on my head. Since I’d left the police force, I was now officially “little people,” which meant I was powerless against state bureaucracy, let alone a vendetta from a government minister. For only the four-hundredth time I debated whether resigning had been the right move, whether I should have stayed where I was, doing what I did best. Solving murders, catching killers.
I lit a cigarette, stubbed it out; adding to the hot air already filling my lungs wasn’t a great idea. The thought of a cold beer was appealing, but I’d given up alcohol completely after my wife Chinara’s death the previous year.
From somewhere behind me, the midnight call to prayer sang out from the minaret of a nearby mosque. All my life I’ve heard the adhan; though I’m not a Muslim, I’ve always found it a haunting sound, especially at night. So I listened as the muezzin’s voice spilled like honey out over the water and merged with the whisper of tides, the creak of wooden boats. I waited until the final notes faded away, turned to walk back to my hotel.
I needed to think about the mess I was in up to my neck. And what I was going to do about it, alone, uncertain, in a city so alien I might as well have been on another planet. I was in Dubai.
Chapter 2
A week earlier, late one evening, I’d been summoned to meet my old nemesis, the Kyrgyz Minister for State Security, Mikhail Tynaliev. We had a curious relationship, considering most people who challenge Tynaliev end up regretting it, often from inside a shroud.
Initially, I’d done him a service, finding the man who’d organized the butchering of Tynaliev’s daughter, Yekaterina. The minister had taken on the role of judge and jury, and no one ever uncovered the body. Then I did him a disservice by ignoring his orders and killing Morton Graves, a connected foreign businessman, pedophile and murderer. So I wasn’t at all certain I wasn’t going to end up in Bishkek Penitentiary One, sharing an overcrowded cell full of people I’d helped put there.
There’s a story Stalin would summon his ministers and generals in the middle of the night, sending a car to fetch them. Turn left and into the Kremlin, and you were escorted into Uncle Joe’s presence. Turn right, and an execution basement in the Lubyanka was your final destination, your trousers stinking with your fear. I knew the feeling.
The driver of the car sent to pick me up had told me to bring my passport, refused to say another word on the drive to Tynaliev’s town house. Motion-controlled lights turned the air blue-white, and the armed guard at the sentry gatehouse kept a keen eye on us as we parked.
I held my passport up to the glass, said I was expected. Perhaps I should have said summoned.
“Armed?”
I shook my head. The guard beckoned me through the security scanners, jerked a thumb toward the house. I nodded thanks, began the trudge down the path. Just as I reached the door, it opened, and Mikhail Tynaliev stood outlined against the light.
“Thank you for coming, Mr. Borubaev,” he said, the emphasis on Mr., but there was no welcome in his voice. “Please come in.”
I entered the hall the way an apprentice lion-tamer might enter the cage. I had no idea why Tynaliev wanted to see me or why I’d had to bring my passport, but I didn’t imagine it would be anything I’d enjoy. He led me through into his study, sat down on one of the leather sofas. I’d been in the over-decorated room before and I hadn’t enjoyed the experience then.
“Drink?”
“Chai?”
Tynaliev shrugged, reached for the decanter by his elbow.
“Still not drinking? Probably a good idea, where you’re going.”
He poured himself an industrial-sized vodka, took a sip, nodded appreciation. He gestured toward a chair beside his desk, one of those fussy faux-antiques with spindly gold-painted legs.
“Missing your old job?”
It was my turn to shrug. Tynaliev looked as formidable as ever, broad shoulders, a head slotted between them with no sign of a neck, hands that could stun a suspect with a single punch. People said he was more than willing to take over an interrogation if answers and teeth weren’t being spat out fast enough.
“I’m able to get you your old job back. If you want it. Unless the bits and pieces of private investigation you’ve picked up are making you rich?”
Tynaliev obviously knew I had enough som in my bank account to buy a couple of cheese samsi for breakfast. What he didn’t know was I missed the chase, the challenge. Being Murder Squad is as addictive as being hooked on krokodil, Russia’s new homemade wonder drug, and probably just as life-threatening. But it goes deeper for me. Someone has to speak for the dead, for the old man killed for his pension, the schoolgirl raped and strangled, the wife who refused sex when her husband came home drunk. Solving a case is like closing the victim’s eyes, so they can finally sleep.
“That’s very generous of you, Minister,” I said. “Spasibo. If there’s ever anything I can do for you . . .”
Tynaliev almost smiled. It wasn’t pleasant. “Before you start work again, perhaps you’d like to take a little holiday? Somewhere warm, with beaches? Just for a week or so.”
Tynaliev poured himself another equally large vodka. If he’d had a smile on his face, it had melted like ice under a sunlamp.
“Don’t fuck around with me, Mr. Not-Yet-Inspector. Just sit there and listen to what I want you to do.”
I did as I was told. It looked like I wasn’t going to get my cup of tea after all.
Chapter 3
“I’m going to tell you a story, Borubaev. A hypothetical story, you understand?”
I nodded. Tynaliev could recite the entire Manas epic—all half a million lines of the long Kyrgyz poem—if it meant I got my job back.
“A senior colleague of mine—no need for names—has fallen in love with a woman much younger than him.”
I nodded, making sure I kept a straight face. I had a pretty good idea of the colleague’s name. Every doctor in the world has heard the “It’s not me, it’s about a friend with a problem” story. And everyone knew Tynaliev’s wife spent most of her time at their dacha, a luxurious country cottage on the outskirts of Talas, while Tynaliev spent most of his spare time working his way through a long line of ambitious and attractive young women.
“This young woman,” I asked, deliberately keeping my voice neutral and professional, “does she reciprocate his feelings?”
“She said so,” Tynaliev shrugged, “and there were the usual presents, trips, restaurants. The problem was, my colleague was—is—married.”
“Always difficult, Minister, even if the wife is understanding.”
Our hypocrisy hung in the air like cigar smoke. Tynaliev took a sip of vodka, looked away, unwilling to catch my eye.
“That’s not the problem, Inspector.”
I was pleased to see I’d regained my rank, wondered if my salary would be backdated. You get tired of samsi for breakfast.
“The young lady in question announced she wanted to go on holiday. Naturally, my colleague was more than happy to help with the expenses, flight, visa.”
“Naturally,” I agreed. “Where was she planning to go?”
“Dubai. For the shopping.”
“And she went?”
Tynaliev nodded.
“And didn’t come back?”
He nodded again, sipped his vodka. He suddenly looked older, less certain of himself. Discovering you’ve grown old will do that to you. Or learning it’s your money and power that lures the girls to your bed, not your looks or charm or the size of your yelda.
“And you want me to go to Dubai to find her? What did she take that’s so important, Minister? Money? You’ve got more than you know how to spend. Documen
ts? Secrets? Something that could harm you politically?”
I watched as anger and pride flickered across his face like summer lightning.
“Inspector, as I said, my colleague . . .”
“Minister, I can’t help if I don’t know the facts,” I said, one reasonable man talking to another. “If she was your lover, then tell me; I’m not a judgmental man.” I paused, folded my arms. “And if you won’t tell me, then I don’t stand much chance of finding her or doing the right thing when I do.”
“I rely on your complete discretion, Inspector,” Tynaliev said, looking at me as if he’d prefer to rip my throat out.
I decided to alter my approach, so as not to change my status from living to dead.
“What’s the girl’s name, Minister?” I asked.
“Natasha Sulonbekova.”
“Age?”
“Twenty-four.”
Tynaliev opened a drawer in his desk and produced a photograph. A slim young woman in a white bikini stood by the edge of a swimming pool, hands on hips, turning slightly away in best approved model fashion. Her long straight black hair was tied back. She was pouting toward the camera, either for real or in a parody of such poses. I couldn’t help noticing her breasts were larger and higher than a stingy Mother Nature normally provides for Central Asian women.
“Large breasts, Minister. Yours?”
Tynaliev nodded with a slight smile, proud of his conquest despite himself, despite her running out on him.
“Bought and paid for, Inspector.”
I thought about the stupidity of older men when it comes to attractive younger women, then I thought about Saltanat. I hadn’t heard from her since she’d gone back to Tashkent with Otabek, the boy we’d rescued from Morton Graves’s pedophile ring. Were we a couple? I was never sure, and an Uzbek security service officer and a Kyrgyz Murder Squad inspector isn’t an ideal match. But with Tynaliev staring at me from across the room, this wasn’t the time to work out my relationship woes. Time to focus.
“What exactly did Ms. Sulonbekova take from you, Minister?”
“Is that important?”