Free A Killing Winter by Tom Callaghan Page B

where we were; it was hard to make anything out, with the falling snow. I suspected I’d fallen off the edge of the earth. Two men, both Uighurs and clutching Makarov semi-automatic pistols, beckoned me out of the car. They both looked as if you could beat them with a scaffolding pole for a day and still not get anything out of them. I opened the door slowly, making sure my hands were always in view. It was freezing, and I pulled my fur
ushanka
tight over my ears. Right then, a vodka would have been very welcome.
    The thug on the left, whiskery and sullen, reeking of garlic, patted me down, then pointed to the black Mercedes parked nearby. Kursan and I made our way over, the rear window sliding down as we approached.
    ‘Abdurehim Otkur,’ Kursan made the introduction, reaching out to clasp the hand of the man in the back seat. I noticed no one wanted to shake my hand. Abdurehim Otkur was one of the great poets of the Uighur language; clearly I wasn’t supposed to know the real identity of the man in front of me.Reassuring, in a way; if he’d wanted to have me killed, he wouldn’t have bothered with a false name. I watched as he got out of the car, fastening his coat as he did so.
    ‘“We were young when we started our journey”,’ I said, quoting the only line of Otkur I remembered from school.
    ‘“Now our grandchildren can ride horses”,’ he finished the quotation. ‘I’m impressed, Inspector, I wasn’t expecting a man of culture.’
    I did my best to seem modest, while looking Otkur up and down. Burly, above average height for an Uighur, dark, expressionless eyes, with a long face made longer by a knife scar running from his left ear to the corner of his mouth. He noticed my gaze, and drew his index finger down the length of the scar.
    ‘You won’t find my picture in your files, Inspector,’ he said, ‘and you won’t find the son of a whore who gave this to me, either. Not in one piece, anyway.’
    The grin he gave wasn’t reassuring, his scar twisting across his cheek.
    ‘I wasn’t planning on looking for your mugshot, not if you can help me out. Anyway, I assume some obliging squealer back in the Prosecutor’s Office managed to spill coffee on your dossier?’
    ‘Law, always suspicious,’ Otkur said, turning to his thugs, who smiled obligingly. ‘Who can say how these unfortunate accidents occur?’
    ‘The case I’m investigating wasn’t an accident,’ I said, my voice harsh. Back to the business in hand. I was cold, hungry, and my arse felt like I’d been thrashed after eight hours on the road. My gun might have been in the boot of Kursan’s car, but I was still an Inspector, Murder Squad, and people shouldn’t ever forget it.
    Otkur’s face grew serious. He would be a ferocious enemy, cunning, implacable. But then there were plenty in Bishkek Number One who might say the same of me.
    ‘Inspector, Kursan and I do business together now for many years. I don’t like Kyrgyz, he doesn’t like Uighur. But we understand each other. No drugs except for weed, no girls. It’s straightforward, business. But sometimes, shit happens you can’t ignore. That’s when you stand up, be a man. Make sure the scum, the low life know their place, bottom of the shitpile.’
    He paused, and we lit cigarettes. He plumed the smoke out, and I watched the cloud flood through the snowflakes. I guessed we were somewhere the other side of Karakol, up towards the Kazakh border. Before we headed back to Bishkek, perhaps I’d have time to visit Chinara’s grave. Maybe permanently.
    ‘You know Chinese medicine.’
    It was a statement, not a question. I looked over at Kursan, who nodded.
    ‘Only what Kursan tells me.’
    ‘You fuck a Chinese pussy, they go crazy because you’ve got a dick like they’ve never seen before. So, naturally, they complain about their men. So after they’ve given their bitches a touch of muscle to quieten them, the guys start wondering about medicine.’
    ‘Rhino horn, tiger