A Spring Betrayal (7 page)

I poured a glass of water, sat down, and sipped, wondering why Gurminj would have this number, or use such a roundabout way of letting me know. Whoever murdered my friend would have forced him to write the “suicide” note, but his final sentence was a last act of defiance, knowing I would understand and follow the clue wherever it led.

I splashed cold water on my face, sat back down. Sunlight spilled through the window, bouncing off the brass balance and throwing a small spot of light against the shadow on the wall.

I read the paper again, knowing the number was already stored in my cell phone. My hand trembled slightly as the dialing tone began and was answered.

A voice said, “Inspector.” A woman’s voice, unsurprised, even slightly amused, honey drizzled over ice cream.

Chapter 12

“Saltanat.
Kak dela?
”

I heard the snap of her lighter, the sharp inhale, the long breath out. I could see the cloud of gray-blue smoke rising in the air.

I remembered unreadable black eyes, a thin white scar running through her left eyebrow.

“You know me, Inspector, I’m a survivor. Like you.”

A pause.

“That’s what we do, Inspector, survive.”

Shoulder-length black hair, high slanted cheekbones, a mouth generous with silence and evasions.

“I’ve been wondering when you’d call me.”

I tried to speak, realized my mouth was dry, took a sip of water.

I hadn’t expected to hear from Saltanat after she crossed the border back into Uzbekistan. We’d been untrusting partners of a sort in the Tynalieva case and, just once, lovers. She’d come to Bishkek to kill me, but decided we were more or less on the same side. While trying to solve the murders of young women across Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, we’d been taken captive by the killers, sent by my boss,
the chief. I’d been tortured, my hand half-cooked on a grill. Saltanat had been raped, before killing two of our captors, while I dealt with the third. While I confronted the chief, she’d escaped from his safe house by killing a corrupt policeman. I hadn’t seen or heard from her since then, but she’d remained a presence as constant and terrifying as a loaded shotgun.

“How’s your hand?”

“Scarred. But working.”

“I take it you’re not calling to ask how I am?”

“You know Gurminj Shokhumorov.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

Her voice was flat, empty, giving nothing away.

“Gurminj is dead. A single gunshot to the head. Suicide, supposedly.”

“But?” I could hear the suspicion in her voice.

“Not many one-armed men shoot themselves on the other side of their head. Single-handed, you might say. Whoever killed him didn’t really care what I thought.”

When Saltanat spoke, the dismissal in her voice was absolute.

“So why did you call me? For the pleasure of breaking the news?”

I paused, marshaling my thoughts, wondering at her hostility.

“I’m working on a murder case. Seven small children, buried together in a field. I don’t know if Gurminj knew something about it, but if he did, he didn’t tell me.”

Saltanat laughed.

“You’re not the easiest man to trust with secrets, Inspector. You have your own agenda, and it doesn’t always tie in with the law. Or the safety of other people.”

“I never knowingly put you in danger.”

She paused, the lighter snapped once more, the inhale and exhale.

“You weren’t the one who was raped, Inspector.”

I thought back to that evening in my apartment, after we’d escaped, after she’d showered for hours until the water ran cold. We’d watched the sky darken and turn all the different shades of blue into night.
Now, as then, I had no words to give her, no comfort. Then, as now, the cruelties people do to each other can’t be washed away or justified in words. All we can do is survive as best we can.

“Gurminj hid your number for me to find. A clue, you might call it. So I know he wanted me to contact you. The only thing I don’t know yet is why.”

When Saltanat spoke, the hostility in her voice was softened by a kind of sorrow.

“I’m sorry about Gurminj. He was a good man. He was helping me with a case.”

“To do with the dead children?” I asked.

“Perhaps. In a way,” Saltanat replied. “We should meet.”

Now it was my turn to be silent. We’d never been able to completely trust each other, except with our lives. And I still carried a smudge of guilt about sleeping with her so soon after Chinara’s death.

“Where? You want to come here?”

“Karakol? No.”

I saw the logic behind her refusal. It’s about as far from Tashkent as you can get in Kyrgyzstan, and there’s only one road in and out. All too easy to get trapped, the mountains on one side and the lake on the other.

“Then where?”

“Remember where you last saw me? No, don’t say it, but there. Tomorrow. Noon.”

“I remember,” I said, suddenly wondering if my phone was being tapped.

“Be careful, Inspector. And silent.”

Then she hung up, leaving me to wonder just what the hell was going on.

Chapter 13

On the long journey back to Bishkek, I reviewed Gurminj’s death. Or rather, his murder; I knew Gurminj wouldn’t kill himself, after all he’d survived. The note was in his handwriting, but there was something off about the tone. A gun to his head as he wrote? I remembered our evenings spent demolishing a bottle of vodka, his outrageous snores as he’d slept on the sofa in our little apartment. Chinara had never complained; she adored him, and constantly tried to match-make him with any of her friends who were currently unattached. Pointless really, since Gurminj was as devoted to the memory of his Oksana as I was to become to my Chinara. He and I had both discovered that the death of the one you love is the final snapping of the chain that binds you to the rest of the world.

Before I left, I’d interviewed the orphanage staff and older children; no one seemed to have heard anything. I asked about the silent boy, Otabek; was told that he hadn’t been seen all afternoon, no one knew where he was. Maybe a runaway, I thought; after all, I’d been one myself. Or maybe he was something else, a witness perhaps. Or a murderer.

For the first few kilometers, I half-expected to see him trudging along the side of the road, but there was no sign of him. I didn’t think he’d shot Gurminj, but I’ve learned never to rule out any possibilities when it comes to murder.

One of the delights of spring in Kyrgyzstan is the way our rivers come to life, having been silenced throughout our long winters. Snowmelt dances and splashes, refreshing the fields, and the first hint of leaves and new grass begin to appear. What we lack in wealth, we make up for in beauty, with the Tien Shan mountains reflected in the mirror of Lake Issyk-Kul. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a good trade-off.

I reached the center of Bishkek, parked next to the Metro Bar, crossed Chui Prospekt and began to walk down Tureshbekov toward Frunze. The air was still cold, with a sour hint of coal smoke, but the trees lining the street were starting to bud, the promise of winter’s end and the start of spring. I didn’t look behind me to see if I was being followed; that’s a certain way to tip off your pursuers you know they’re there.

I turned off toward the Dragon’s Den restaurant where I’d last seen Saltanat, but stopped when I saw the
SOLD
sign outside. A sense of regret swept over me, for times past, opportunities lost, melting snow suddenly cascading from a roof. From the look of the restaurant sign, faded and rusting slightly at the edges, the place had been closed for a while. I wondered what had happened to the long wooden bar, the elegant photos of traditional Kyrgyz nomadic life. I hoped they’d found a good home, that people were still sitting at the bar sipping Baltika
pivo
or vodka, admiring the ornate dresses of the pretty girls in the photos. I like to think some things don’t fall apart with the passage of time, that what we make can sometimes survive us.

I was shaken from my reverie by the blare of a horn. A black Lexus with tinted windows was parked across the street, outside the inaccurately named Grand Hotel. The driver’s window was open, Saltanat Umarova waving to me to hurry up.

I clambered into the passenger seat, making sure the back seat was empty. I might have been in partnership with Saltanat once, but that
didn’t mean I trusted her. I hadn’t closed the door when we took off with a screech of tires that could have been heard in Talas.

As always, Saltanat wore black, a long leather coat, jeans tucked into shin-high lace-up combat boots. As she changed gear, I noticed that her crimson fingernails matched her lipstick. Her eyes were hidden behind wrap-around mirror sunglasses, the sort that conceal your thoughts, balanced on cheekbones that could etch glass. She’d cut her long black hair since I’d last seen her, cropped back to almost boyish length, emphasizing her elegant neck and jawline.

“You couldn’t live without me?” I said.

“Fuck off,” she explained, and pressed down on the accelerator.

“I’d love to, but first, where are we going?”

Not bothering to reply, Saltanat threw the Lexus down a series of narrow alleyways, left, right, straight ahead, until I was completely lost.

“I think you’ve shaken them off,” I said. “If they were ever there.”

“They were. Count on it.”

I hadn’t seen anybody; if we were being watched, it was by professionals.

“You’re going to tell me what this is all about.”

“Eventually,” she answered, steering the Lexus at high speed toward a metal garage door, opening the door with a remote control. I winced as we scraped through the gap, braced myself against the dashboard for the inevitable crash. The abrupt halt threw me forward and then back, as Saltanat drove in and slammed on the brakes.

“Out,” she commanded, impatient as I fumbled with the seat belt and then the door. She didn’t look to see if I was following when she strode through the side door of the garage. We were in the side garden of a small hotel, surrounded by high walls and with an impressive double-wide steel gate. A traditional felt yurt stood in one corner of the garden. Across from the yurt, a sloping roof sheltered an open-air wooden bar from rain and snow. Something about it looked familiar, and I realized it was the bar that had graced the Dragon’s Den.

Saltanat took a bottle of Baltika out of the fridge, uncapping it and taking a good swallow. She pointed at her beer and raised an eyebrow.
I shook my head, aimed a finger at a bottle of water. She shrugged, passed it over, no glass.

“Still staying away from the vodka? Not even an occasional
pivo
?”

I shook my head. I’d never told her, or anyone, but I knew that a single
pivo
, or a hundred grams of vodka, would send me hurtling down a slope of guilt that could only end in eating my Yarygin.

Saltanat took another swallow, set the bottle down on the bar. The rings it made on the wooden surface reminded me of handcuffs. She looked over at me, as if assessing what she saw, not much caring for it. I do the same in the mirror every morning. A creased, worn face, cropped black hair silvered with the first hints of gray, black eyes under thick eyebrows. Tatar cheekbones, higher than the average moon-faced Kyrgyz. A flat, impassive stare, slowly changing from wary to merely weary. I’d always believed in keeping on keeping on, but increasingly I wonder why.

“You didn’t have a problem getting here?”

I shrugged.

“You mean driving here, or leaving the case I’m on? I’m not flavor of the month in Bishkek, as I’m sure you know.”

“I’d heard,” she said. “And about the infant murders, and what happened to your old boss. I guess a couple of years’ exile in Karakol is the price you pay for being a semi-honest cop.”

I didn’t ask how she knew about the murders; as a member of the Uzbek security service she probably knew as much about what was happening in Kyrgyzstan as Mikhail Tynaliev. In my country, you can always find a little bird who’ll sweetly sing if you put enough
som
in his bowl.

“You’re going to tell me why you wanted me to come all this way?”

“We both want to track down who killed Gurminj, don’t we?”

“So you think he was murdered as well?” I asked.

“Sure of it. So are you,” she said.

I nodded, looked at the hotel. All the windows were curtained, and the place had the air of being abandoned. But I knew Saltanat was not the sort to leave anything to chance. I guessed she would have reinforcements only a few seconds away. Or a marksman sighting down
a rifle barrel, with me on the receiving end. My forehead itched, as if cross hairs were pressing down on me.

“There hasn’t been an official report, so I’m wondering how you know.”

Saltanat simply smiled, enigmatic as ever. I wondered for a moment if she’d been behind Gurminj’s murder, dismissed the idea out of hand. I couldn’t fathom any motive she might have had, and Saltanat has never done anything without a good reason.

As if reading my mind, she turned the full intensity of her gaze upon me. I felt my breath catch in my chest.

“When I first met you, Inspector, I wasn’t certain whose side you were on, whether I should kill you or not. I didn’t know whether or not you were wetting your beak with the help of the bad guys.”

I tried to smile.

“I hope I convinced you. And call me Akyl, no need for ceremony, surely?”

Saltanat raised one impeccably plucked eyebrow.

“Maybe. Later. But first, cards face up?”

It was my turn to raise an eyebrow. Saltanat has never shown a full hand in her life. But if it gave me a lead to solving the case of the dead children and the murder of my friend, who was I to argue?

She gave a smile that punched me in the heart. Who can name the exact moment when a woman’s smile reminds you of your dead wife? A woman who made the act of living worthwhile, whose breath you stole away, and buried on a snow-covered hill?

“You’re the investigating officer, right?”

“Officially? The dead children. Unofficially? I’m putting Gurminj’s killer on my to-fuck-someone-up-beyond-belief list.”