In the bedroom, the half-empty wardrobe housing a dozen unused clothes hangers was a reminder of Oksana’s absence, of the same emptiness in my own home. A well-thumbed copy of Chyngyz Aitmatov’s The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years lay open on the bedside table. Not when it’s your last day, I thought, and closed the book. A torn sliver of paper, used as a bookmark, fell from between the pages. I recognized Gurminj’s handwriting; a single word: balance.
Between life and death? Good and evil? Sweet and sour? No way of knowing. I remembered our final conversation, and the note Gurminj left behind. But nothing in my life was in balance. Everything was slightly off, a badly hung door that sticks when you try to close it, a window that never quite latches. I checked the jackets in the wardrobe, rummaged through the drawer of the bedside table, lifted the thin mattress. Nothing.
Back in the main room, I leafed through the papers on the table. They were all to do with the running of the orphanage, nothing personal. A small shelf on one wall held a selection of books. Some work books, a couple of popular mysteries, and a thin volume whose spine looked familiar. Selected Poems of Anna Akhmatova. The same edition Chinara had owned, one of her favorites that she read over and over, even when the wolf of cancer began to devour her.
I read a line at random: Here is my gift, not grave-mound roses, not incense-sticks. Who knows what gifts the dead will accept from us, as we hope to do more than appease our guilt at remaining behind? An imam or a priest might be able to tell you, a philosopher could define the problem, but I’m just Murder Squad. There’s only one thing I know how to give the dead. Justice.
I walked back into the kitchen, held the bowl of chai under the tap, watched the dark tea leaves swirl and pattern the sink. Some people think they can foretell the future that way, and they might be right. As long as you believe the future is dark, messy, easy to simply rinse away.
I turned the cup upside down to dry, ran a finger over the counter top. No dust yet, but only a matter of time, like everything else.
An old-fashioned brass weighing scale was virtually the only piece of equipment in the kitchen, apart from a frying pan and a three-layer pelmeni steamer, presumably a souvenir from Oksana’s time. The different-sized weights were cold in my hand as I dropped them into the left-hand pan and watched the right-hand one rise. And then I understood the meaning of Gurminj’s note. Balance is where answers might be found.
I tipped the weights out of the pan and picked up the scale, turned it upside down, found the paper taped to the underside. I peeled away the tape, looked at what was written on the paper. A cell phone number, with an international code. A number I already knew.
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.