A Spring Betrayal (5 page)

Finally I stopped five meters away, and stared at Usupov. His face was expressionless, unreadable.

“Inspector—” he began, but I raised a hand to silence him.

“There must be a very good reason why you’re doing this, and I want to know it. And if I’m not satisfied . . .”

To finish my sentence, I let my fingertips brush the grips of my gun. I tried to keep anger out of my voice. Anger at the men in front of me, at myself for the failures and compromises that had brought me to this point, and shamefully, resentment at Chinara for dying and leaving me adrift, half submerged, like an abandoned rowboat on Lake Issyk-Kul.

“You understand, this is where I laid my wife to rest, on her side, facing Mecca. Where I said my farewells. Kissed her forehead and
looked at her for the last time before I shrouded her face with a white cloth. Then wrapped her body in the frozen earth and snow.”

None of the men spoke. The diggers crouched down in Chinara’s open grave, watching, knowing they were trapped.

I wondered if the simplest solution to everything I carried inside me was to start shooting, and let them extinguish me in a dozen heartbeats, place me next to my life’s love.

I’d done my best to come to terms with the thought of Chinara’s decay. Cheeks collapsing to rest on teeth, eyes sinking back into their sockets, smooth belly distended by the gases of rot. Soft warm skin shrunk into rasping parchment stretched tight over bones before splitting. And slowly, over decades perhaps, turning back into the earth, with only her grave marker to show she’d ever lived and loved and made my heart bright.

I looked at the simple marble plaque in front of the grave. Chinara’s profile, copied from a paper silhouette done by a street artist in Red Square beside the Kremlin walls, during the one visit we’d made there. Followed by her name, her dates, and a line she would often quote by one of her favorite poets:
LOVE
WEATHERS
ALL
STORMS
. When we argued, she could always defuse the occasion, simply by saying it, raising an eyebrow and winning my heart once more with her smile.

But I’ve never been convinced that love can weather a storm as overwhelming as death.

I bent down and brushed the loose soil from one of the blue flowers that had adorned the grave. Sunlight turned the tiny petals turquoise and a gust of wind snatched it from my fingers. It was time.

I like to think I’m not a violent man. I hope the power a police badge, a gun, and a basement interrogation room bestow hasn’t changed my views on right and wrong. But I also know the clarity when the dice have been thrown, and the speed of your reactions and your willingness to pull the trigger are all that stand between you and a hole in the ground.

Don’t think. Act.

It’s a clarity that’s helped me put people in their graves. So perhaps it’s all too easy to deceive ourselves as to who we really are.

The older of the two uniformed officers stepped forward, his hands held palm forward, as if to reassure me that he meant no disrespect.

“Inspector, we received a call from a very senior government official, ordering us to undertake this regrettable action.”

I looked at Usupov. His imperceptible nod confirmed my suspicion: Mikhail Tynaliev, Minister of State Security. I turned my attention back to the officer. He had taken a step forward, so that my view of his colleague was partially obscured. I beckoned him to move back, ready to pull out my gun if I had to.

“Go on.”

“He told us you’re working on a very important case. One with consequences that go to the highest government levels, if you solve it. The very highest. And vital evidence has been concealed in your wife’s grave.”

He paused, shrugged.

“He didn’t tell us where he got the information. And we were ordered to ask you here, to show that nothing disrespectful to your wife’s remains or to your feelings would take place.”

He reached into his pocket, stopped when I shook my head.

“A cigarette, that’s all.”

He looked down at the grave.

“This isn’t what I signed on for.”

I shook my head again and he withdrew his hand, before beckoning to the diggers to climb out of the grave. They did so, standing well away from the other three. Maybe they didn’t know that a Yarygin holds seventeen 9mm Parabellum bullets, more than enough to go around.

I looked down into the dark mouth of the grave. My wife’s shroud was smeared and stained with earth, torn in places, the soil around it raw and freshly turned. The roots of the nearby thorn had coiled themselves around the body, as if defending it against incursions such as this one. The white cloth stirred as if caught by a sudden breeze. But the air was still.

Then, a sudden movement, quick, intense. The gray muzzle and black snout of a rat, alert at our intrusion. A rat that had made a home
in my wife’s body, her ribcage its roof rafters, her belly its nest. The rat stared back at me, unafraid, baring long yellow teeth in a snarl of defiance. Then I was pumping bullet after bullet into the grave, and as the earth gave way under my feet, I fell, to embrace Chinara for a final time.

Chapter 8

I’d had the nightmare before, but its familiarity did nothing to stop me waking, bathed in sweat, heart pounding and my mouth filled with the taste of bile. I switched on the bedside lamp and drank from a bottle of water. Its chill punched my stomach, and I thought I was going to vomit.

I looked around the room, bland, unremarkable, but couldn’t shake off the impression that something vile had retreated into the shadows, awaiting its moment. I sat there, hands shaking, until my heart slowed and the terror in my mind subsided.

I knew the dream was offering me some sort of clue, dredged out from the day’s events by my subconscious. When you live in a country governed by the seasons and the power of nature, there’s a deep-seated belief in the sacredness of the world around you. To survive in a land this harsh, you need respect. There’s an element of shamanism buried deep in Kyrgyz culture, a knowledge that recognizes mystic places, sacred mountains, the superstitions and beliefs that underscore the way we live. We never place the round flatbread
lepeshka
upside down on a plate or fill a cup to the brim with chai, we don’t disturb brightly colored cloths tied to a branch or a rock. To do
so is to insult the gifts of nature, or to issue a challenge to forces we don’t even comprehend.

Sometimes the job’s simply about keeping an open mind, rearranging facts until you start to see patterns. But over the years, I’ve learned dreams can hint at something, even if I can’t always work out what it is. It’s more than simply sifting clues or watching how seemingly random patterns form a new way of seeing things.

Dreams let me step away from myself, allow me to reach an understanding with my surroundings, the smells, the sounds, the mutter of wind stirring the grass on the high
jailoo
. The cynical might call it grasping at straws, or following a hunch, or desperation. I call it listening to the songs of the dead, telling me how they died, why, and who stole their breath.

And sometimes it’s about seeing the world through the eyes of the thief.

I spent the next two days making phone calls, using the list that Gurminj had given me of all the orphans whose identity bands were in front of me as I spoke. None of them seemed connected to each other, and a couple hung up on me once I started to explain the reason for my call. None of them had been in the same orphanage at the same time as anyone else on the list. Four men, three women, living in different parts of the country, with nothing in common apart from their time in the care of the state. A time that didn’t seem to have many happy memories for them.

I also contacted their local police stations, to see if there was anything against them. One man accused of selling weed, a couple of car crashes, nothing that tied them to seven small bodies.

Usupov was due to go back to Bishkek the following day, taking the bodies with him, to store in the morgue in the hope that we might find out their identities. My new boss in Bishkek, the replacement for the chief, a paper-pusher and political appointment called Lavrov, had already called me twice, stressing the need for a quick solution to the crime. I did think about asking him if he had any ideas, but the only investigating he’d ever done was looking for his car keys.

Which meant it was time to find out exactly what Usupov wasn’t telling me.

“Kenesh, I need to know what’s going on.”

We were in the hotel lobby, empty apart from the two of us and a receptionist engrossed in texting her friends. It made sense to talk here; I know enough about wired interrogation rooms to avoid having a conversation in any police station. I sat back on the lumpy hotel sofa and stared at Usupov, saying nothing. All too often, it’s what you don’t say that gives you the edge.

Usupov looked around, his usual calm gone, avoiding my eyes, his glasses catching the harsh mid-morning light from the window. His unease infected me, and my fingers touched the cold metal of my Yarygin.

“Akyl, the best thing you can do is tiptoe away, and make sure the door doesn’t slam behind you. This is a crime you don’t want to solve.”

His unusual use of my name was even more disconcerting than the warning he gave. In all the years I’d known him, the formality with which he’d called me “Inspector” had defined our relationship. Now, I didn’t know where I stood with him. I lit a cigarette to buy myself some time to think, and watched the blue-gray smoke as it hung in the air.

“Kenesh, I’m not a virgin. Tell me.”

Usupov shrugged. I picked a fleck of tobacco off the tip of my tongue and stubbed out my cigarette.

“You know I can’t just walk away from this. I do and I’m fucked. Lavrov will have me up on the Torugart Pass, inspecting license plates on the trucks that cross over from China.”

Usupov said nothing, and I felt anger starting to rise.

“If you know something, and I don’t, you’re a witness, maybe even a suspect,” I said, “and no one’s going to question me if I put you up in a cell for a few days. Maybe with someone you’ve testified against.”

It was an empty threat, and we both knew it, but I needed to remind Usupov that this was a murder case, and there weren’t going to be any get-out-of-jail cards.

“I don’t know much,” Usupov said, staring down at his hands. I noticed that they shook slightly.

“So you do know something,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

“Not know, more something I suspect.”

“You tell me what you suspect, I’ll find the evidence to back it up,” I said.

“You’re coming up against some very powerful men, Akyl.”

I shrugged; I’d expected nothing less. And putting a stone in the shoes of the rich and powerful is more satisfying than confiscating some
alkash
’s bottle, or collecting breakfast money fines for speeding.

“It wouldn’t be the first time, Kenesh, you know that. It’s my career specialty.”

He shook his head, sucking his teeth at my criminal stupidity.

“They’ll brush you aside and forget about you the next minute. Traffic duty in Torugart Pass? You’ll be lucky not to be in a shroud lying next to your wife.”

Perhaps that was the meaning of my dream, a warning or a prophecy. The ticking of the clock behind the reception desk was very loud. Silence hung between us like a spider’s web, ready to snare the unwary.

“These powerful fuckers, what is it they want, Kenesh?”

Usupov stared past me, and I could have sworn there were tears in his eyes.

“You can’t fight them, Akyl.”

“Let me ask you again, and this time with my Murder Squad cap on. Chief Forensic Pathologist Usupov, what is it they want?”

Usupov paused, sighed, world-weary, sickened.

“Fresh meat, Inspector. Young meat.”

He stirred his lukewarm tea, raised the cup to his mouth, put it down again untasted. His eyes were bleak behind his glasses.

“They want children.”

Chapter 9

“It was around this time, about a year ago,” Kenesh began, his eyes avoiding mine. “I’d been called out in the middle of the night by the duty officer at Sverdlovsky station. They’d found a body just off Chui Prospekt, it was being shipped to the morgue for me to examine. He wouldn’t give me any details, except to say it was important the autopsy be done right away.

“I wasn’t too pleased; we’d been celebrating the spring festival, Nowruz, and I knew I had a busy day ahead. But he told me orders from the top, with a police car outside my front door within ten minutes. So I got dressed, a
ment
drove me across town to the morgue.

“The body had already arrived, laid out on the table, covered, just as usual. But what was different was the man sitting on the next table. He was wearing a suit, smart, expensive, so I didn’t think he was a policeman; a lawyer maybe, a government official, whatever. But he didn’t have that
nomenklatura
look. He was thickset, maybe forty, with the face of a former boxer, all shadows and scars. He sat there on one of the tables, legs swinging, smoking as if he didn’t have a care in the world, in his favorite bar with a cold beer in front of him.

“I told him that I didn’t allow smoking in the operating room. He looked at me, then at the end of his cigarette, raised an eyebrow.

“‘You’re worried about his health?’ he said, waving the cigarette in the direction of the body.

“‘No, but I’m worried about mine,’ I said. He just smiled, looked at his cigarette again, and gusted a blue cloud in my direction. His smile never managed to climb as far as his eyes.

“‘I think you’ll find the cause of death was a heart attack,’ he said. ‘Tragic in such a young man.’

“I pulled back the sheets, and looked down at the body.”

Usupov paused, then reached over and took a cigarette from my pack that lay on the table. He lit it with the uncertain gesture of a nonsmoker, coughed as he swallowed the smoke.

“Bad?” I said.

Usupov nodded, swallowed, trying to recapture his normal air of detachment.