A Killing Winter Read online

  A Killing Winter

  Tom Callaghan

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  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

  Acknowledgements

  First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Quercus

  This edition first published in 2015 by

  Quercus Editions Ltd

  55 Baker Street

  7th Floor, South Block

  London

  W1U 8EW

  Copyright © 2015 by Tom Callaghan

  The moral right of Tom Callaghan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Ebook ISBN 978 1 78429 018 4

  Print ISBN 978 1 84866 975 8

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, 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.

  You can find this and many other great books at:

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  Born in the North of England, Tom Callaghan was educated at the University of York and Vassar College, New York. An inveterate traveller, he divides his time between London, Prague, Dubai and Bishkek.

  A Killing Winter is the first novel in a series featuring Inspector Akyl Borubaev. It will be followed by A Spring Betrayal.

  To find out more, visit www.tomcallaghanwriter.com or www.quercusbooks.co.uk.

  For Sara

  Dying: nothing new there these days, But living, that’s no newer.

  Sergei Esenin

  Chapter 1

  Fresh blood is especially vivid against snow. Even on a moonless, starless night like tonight, when it spills thick and dark, like oil leaking from the rusting sump of an abandoned Moskvitch. But oil doesn’t steam. Oil doesn’t spatter red against white, until it trails back to a body half hidden under silver birches. And oil doesn’t dribble from the lips of a wound already turning stiff and blue with cold.

  The threat of dawn snow hangs in the sky like ash. A few stray flakes already shroud the woman’s upturned face, a scattering of lace like a bride’s veil across her forehead. Unless a drunk stumbling home from a bar stops for an urgent piss and spots her, a few hours will transform her into yet another snow drift, unnoticed, skirted around, anonymous until the spring thaw. Only when a single boot-clad foot or a mottled hand signposts itself out of grimy snow will people wonder why no one heard anything . . .

  *

  ‘Privyet, Inspector Borubaev, how are you?’

  ‘Cold, what do you think?’

  I waved away the proffered pack, noting the swathe of butts at the uniform’s feet, the stink of cheap tobacco rancid on the raw night air. Typical uniform, high-peaked green cap and no brains inside. I watched as he lit a fresh Classic from the stub of his last one, debated tearing him a new arsehole for contaminating the crime scene. But this is Kyrgyzstan. The forensic lab of the Sverdlovsky District Police is a cupboard with an assortment of cracked test tubes, some pre-independence medical textbooks and a box of out-of-date litmus paper. We’re still waiting for the electron microscope.

  I’d put it off long enough. Time to justify the fistful of som they pay me each month. A battered ambulance would turn up sooner or later, to ferry the body down to the morgue. No hurry; it would be a damn sight warmer there than outside.

  We were up on Ibraimova Street, just down from the Blonder Pub, on the unlit birch-lined path above the carriageway, where the moorzilki, the cheapest railway-station whores, hang out in the summer, by the footbridge. Dumpy, surly women, big-bellied and chain-smoking, swigging cans of Baltika beer, dressed to depress in shapeless T-shirts and tracksuit bottoms, easy down for instant access, easy up for a quick escape. No business ladies here now, though, not at twenty below and more snow coming.

  Not a good place to die, if there is such a thing.

  I told the uniform to keep behind me and followed the droplets and smears of blood towards the body. They reminded me of the black cherry juice you get on ice-cream cones in Panfilov Park, rich and appetising. I turned up my collar against the wind, but nothing keeps a Kyrgyz winter out. My feet felt like they belonged to someone else, but I consoled myself that at least the body wouldn’t stink. Not until Usupov sliced her up on the table. Or rather, sliced her up some more.

  ‘It’s a homicide, Inspector, right? It’s murder?’

  The uniform seemed almost eager; maybe this is what he joined up for, not for pocketing on-the-spot traffic fines to pay for his breakfast. Whether he would want breakfast after this was another matter.

  ‘Could be a nasty shaving cut. Maybe running with scissors.’

  ‘You think?’

  He nodded, impressed at the wisdom of the big-city detective. Typical southern peasant, what we call a myrki, who should never have been let out of his village, a danger to himself.

  A couple of steps further and the cherry juice started to join up into bigger puddles and splashes until it became a frozen river that welled up out of a small white hillock. The body.

  ‘Keep back,’ I said, unnecessarily. He’d already seen the body and, by the smell, left last night’s mutton stew at the scene of the crime.

  ‘This your spew?’

  Better not to assume. Maybe we’ve got a weak-stomached murderer on our hands. Maybe he’d wiped his mouth using a piece of paper with his phone number scribbled on it. Maybe the lab could get a blood group. Maybe.

  ‘Da. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Your first? Don’t worry, we all do, our first time. You’ll get used to it.’

  But you don’t.

  I pushed back the memory of the old man, his one-room apartment turned into a slaughterhouse, gutted by his nephew in a vodka-fuelled row over God knows what, and focused on the present, on the ice-blue eyes glazed over with snow, s
taring up at the final mystery.

  Ignoring the cold, I peeled off my gloves, and brushed away the snow covering her cheeks and nose. Gently, the way I used to brush Chinara’s hair away from her sleeping face, towards the end, once the morphine took away the worst of the pain. Tenderness is the least we owe the dead; we give them so little beforehand.

  Not a girl, a woman, maybe late twenties, thirty at a pinch. Dyed blonde hair, professional, not a home job, a thin line of black roots showing. Slavic high cheekbones, good teeth, no gold. A long coat, wool, well cut, a cashmere scarf around her shoulders. No handbag, but that didn’t surprise me. Kyrgyzstan’s a poor country; no one’s going to look a gift horse in the mouth. And it wasn’t as if she’d need her mobile where she’d gone, right? So not a moorzilka, then. If she was a business lady, she was a long way from the 191 Bar in the Hyatt Regency when she died.

  There were no marks on her face, no look of terror or surprise, just that frozen stare gazing up at the sky. Snow spilt away to the ground as I pulled back the wings of her coat.

  A white, high-necked blouse, ripped open. A delicate lace bra, sliced apart at the front, revealing small breasts, nipples shrunken and indigo with cold. Still no wound, but that only made it worse. It was like undressing a shop-window dummy, except you can’t mistake the feel of flesh, even when it’s dead.

  Slim waist, leather belt with a metal designer buckle. And the skirt, pulled up to her thighs. Dark-grey material, from what little I could see of the original colour. But otherwise a swamp of crusted crimson turning to black. White pants, shredded and coiled around one leg. And finally, the wound.

  I looked down and wondered what lies and treasons lured her here, before I tugged my gloves back on and stood up. My knees cracked in the cold like ice splintering on a distant lake. My world is a hopeless, brutal place, a land peopled only by regrets and lost love. I fumbled for my cigarettes, waved away the offer of a light, sucked down the cancer.

  ‘Tell the blood waggon I’ll see them down the morgue. Oh, and don’t forget to mention we’re dealing with a double homicide.’

  The uniform looked, if possible, even more puzzled. The fur earflaps on his hat gave him the appearance of a cartoon rabbit. He looked around, even peered behind the slender birches.

  ‘There’s only one body, Inspector.’

  I exhaled, watching the smoke and my breath plume out together into the night, life and death weaving together. The first flakes of the threatened dawn snow kissed my face. I wanted a vodka. Badly.

  ‘You haven’t looked inside her womb.’

  Chapter 2

  It was late afternoon when one of the uniforms at the end of his shift dropped me round the corner from the morgue. It’s always seemed disrespectful to park next to an ambulance unloading the evening’s bag of bones and guts. And it gave me time to collect my thoughts, and get some cold clean air into my lungs before inhaling the sour stink of a newly opened stomach.

  The Sverdlovsky District Morgue is a unprepossessing, shabby building, with the ever popular stained-concrete look; suitable accommodation for the dead in a country where it’s difficult for even the living to find a home. Only a small weather-beaten sign reveals its purpose; it’s not a place many people visit, and those who do usually enter feet first.

  I’ve spent too many evenings there, under the light bulbs that flicker whenever there’s a drop in power, every sound bouncing off the tiled walls, trying not to think of the heavy scents of a butcher’s shop.

  As the ment drove away, the flare of his tail lights spilling over snow reminded me how blood spurted from the throat of the sheep we sacrificed for Chinara’s toi, the commemoration we hold for someone forty days after their death. The imam muttered a few prayers, the sheep shat itself in the yard and, five minutes later, found itself hacked up into chunks.

  I’m a city boy, Bishkek born and bred: I think killing an animal is a hell of a way to commemorate the dead, but that’s the way it’s always been done in the villages.

  I put thoughts of butcher’s knives to one side, and pushed through the swing doors. The business end of the morgue is actually underground, down a flight of broken-tiled steps. There’s a long emerald-green stain against one wall, where last winter’s snows broke in, probably looking for warmth. Every other light fitting lacks a bulb, but there’s still enough light to reflect off the metal doors at the corridor’s end.

  I kicked the worst of the snow off my boots, grateful that there was no babushka to scold me for making a mess on her floor, and took my last deep breath.

  ‘Inspector,’ Kenesh Usupov muttered, not looking up from the shapeless mass on the steel table in front of him, strip lights glinting off his rimless glasses, ‘I suppose you’ve come about the woman? Five minutes, I’m afraid, I’m just finishing off this krokodil.’

  I winced, noticing the smell of iodine in the air, overwhelming the usual odours of blood, raw meat and shit. I’ve seen some horrible things, from babies whose parents broke every bone in their body to grannies raped and kicked to death for their two hundred som pension. But a krokodil is a vision from hell.

  Krokodil is the latest drug craze from Mother Russia, cheaper and much stronger than heroin. You make it yourself at home, using over-the-counter medicines like codeine, mixed and cooked up with iodine, red phosphorus from the striking edge of matchboxes, a dash of gasoline, and whatever else you can lay your hands on. Poison, simple as that.

  Krokodil gets its name from the way your skin turns green and scaly where you inject, as infection and gangrene set in. Your flesh starts to die and rot almost at once, peeling away and leaving deep, unhealing sores that gnaw through tissue and muscle down to the bone.

  I’ve seen addicts with no flesh on their arms, the ulna and radius bones exposed and grey-white, women with holes in their legs you could put your fist in, men whose cheeks have split apart as their gums turn to a bloody mash. The reek of iodine saturates clothes, skin, hair, even the walls of the shitty apartments and shooting galleries where the addicts cook up non-stop for days on end. Swim with the krokodil and you’ve probably got six months to live, if you can call it that.

  With Kyrgyzstan being so close to Afghanistan and a ready supply of cheap heroin, krokodil hasn’t eaten us the way it’s devoured addicts from Moscow to Vladivostok, but it’s only a matter of time.

  ‘A bad one?’ I asked, taking care not to look.

  ‘As opposed to?’

  ‘You know what I mean. Bad.’

  ‘Not really. Heart attack took this one. Hardly any necrosis at all. Except for his fingers. They’re all gone, just raw stumps with the bones jutting out. Oh, and his penis. Couldn’t take a piss, even if he’d had any fingers left to hold his cock. Of course, couldn’t work a syringe either in that state, someone else must have spiked him, got the dose wrong.’

  ‘Or right, maybe. One less vein to feed, all the more for me.’

  ‘It’s possible, Inspector. But impossible to tell.’

  The iodine made me gag, knowing I was sucking rotting tissue into my lungs, but I’d never hear the end of it from my colleagues if I started wearing a mask at autopsies.

  ‘I could come back. When you’re ready. For the woman.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Inspector, this one’s going nowhere, his career’s reached a dead end.’

  That makes two of us, I thought, as Usupov threw a threadbare cotton sheet over the remains in front of him. I tried not to notice how the material immediately started to soak up some horrible fluid, and followed Bishkek’s Chief Forensic Pathologist to the autopsy table at the far end of the room.

  ‘Your girlfriend. Too good-looking for you, way out of your league. Or she was,’ Usupov announced, pulling open one of those oversized filing cabinets where he keeps the new and not so newly dead. The metal runners screeched like a razor scraping rust, and a gust of cold air wafted out. As always, the thought flashed through my head that the corpse wasn’t really dead, and had just breathed out.

  There a
re nights when I can’t sleep, when my eyes feel blistered and cracked from the things I’ve witnessed, when the dead parade past me like fashion models on a macabre catwalk. I pressed my tongue against the roof of my mouth, to counter the worst of any smell, and intruded once more upon the girl’s death.

  One of Usupov’s assistants had stripped her bare, to pass on her clothes to forensics or, more likely, to sell in the bazaar. Since we declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, we’ve endured the corruption and greed of various governments who’ve filled their pockets. Everyone looks out for themselves, making a few som where they can. And if that means selling the clothes of the dead, well, we’re a poor country.

  The girl’s face was uncovered, ice-white, peaceful. The purple bruises of lividity – the smearing under the skin where any blood left in a body slowly settles, dragged down by gravity – were already beginning to show around her hips and back. I could see the wear and tear of daily life on her body; an appendix scar slipping down towards her groin, old nicks and cuts on her hands, a childhood graze stencilling one knee.

  Naked, she looked younger, more vulnerable, one of life’s natural victims, born to end up here, unaware of my gaze or Usupov’s instruments. The sort of woman who continually walks into doors, especially when the doors have been drinking, until one hits her too hard and shuts her out of life.

  But she looked more at rest than Chinara had, when her sisters wrapped her in a burial cloth and placed her on the right side of the yurt, the woman’s side, for her last night on earth before the men carried her down to the graveyard overlooking the valley.

  I could smell her guts, the reek and iron taste of her as if I’d had my head between her legs, lapping at her during her period, and I had to swallow hard. Then, reluctantly, I looked at the wound.

  ‘My God,’ I muttered.

  But if there is a God, I was pretty sure he was off duty when this had been done.

  ‘Interesting, isn’t it?’ Usupov said, as calmly as if he was admiring the bouquet of a fine wine, or appreciating the craftsmanship of a hand-blown glass vase. ‘I honestly can’t say I’ve ever come across anything quite like this before.’