Gurminj stopped by the main door, put his hand on the shoulder of a young boy, maybe eight years old, with a strange, lopsided hairstyle as if he’d cut it himself, using blunt scissors and without the aid of a mirror.
“Inspector, meet Master Otabek, our newest resident,” Gurminj said. “He joined our happy little gang just a couple of weeks ago.”
I crouched down to look into the boy’s face and smiled.
“I used to live here myself, Otabek,” I said, “and I made lots of friends. I’m sure you’ll like it here, and Director Shokhumorov will take very good care of you.”
The boy said nothing, but simply stared back at me, the way I’d stared when I was told I wasn’t visiting, but staying. I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t seem totally false, so I smiled again and stood up.
At the gate, Gurminj shook hands again, then embraced me.
“Quiet boy, that Otabek,” I said. “Reminded me of myself when I was here.”
“He doesn’t say much,” Gurminj said. “In fact, he doesn’t say anything. I think whenever he tried to talk in the past, it was beaten out of him. Belts, fists, the usual loving parents. But we’ll help him find his voice, his way back.”
I nodded. Gurminj always did his best, and the effort it took was stenciled in the lines on his face. If only everyone tried as hard to live a decent life, maybe I’d be out of a job.
It took me twenty minutes to walk back to the hotel, past run-down shops and patches of muddy wasteland, stray mongrel dogs barking from a safe distance. Karakol feels like it crouches at the edge of the world, with mountains on three sides holding everywhere else at bay. Winter storms can cut the main road back to Issyk-Kul and Bishkek, but the isolation of the place lasts all year round. The people here are suspicious of strangers, and I got several hard stares from the people I passed. No one likes cops, but in Karakol it’s become an art form.
As I walked, I tried to find a possible motive behind the deaths. I was pretty sure Usupov would find a cause of death, at least for the less decomposed bodies. I was also pretty certain it wouldn’t be from natural causes. But why kill the children in the first place, then bury their bodies together, where the likelihood of them being uncovered was so much greater?
Usupov was waiting for me in the reception area of the Amir. For once, his usual composure seemed to have slipped. I wondered if seeing so many dead children had slipped a scalpel under his skin, then remembered how he’d autopsied all the protesters shot dead by the government at the start of the last revolution. If there was one thing Usupov was hardened to, it was death.
“Inspector,” he began, stopped to polish his glasses. His hands shook slightly; we might have worked together before, cut a few corners, done each other favors, but I was still Murder Squad. Which means I don’t have friends, only suspects.
I jerked a thumb at the chairs furthest from the reception desk, and we sat down. The clock on the wall behind the desk stuttered away the minutes, but otherwise the room was quiet. I stared at him, not saying a word.
Few things intimidate people more than silence. Their guilt hangs in the dead air, or they get a taste of what solitary confinement in a basement cell must be like.
“Gurminj told you about the identity bands?”
I showed him the face with the unreadable Uighur mask I’d inherited from my grandfather. A face sharpened by a thousand basement interrogations.
“I’ll be looking into that,” I said. “Not easy, getting hold of those, from all over the country.”
Usupov nodded. Tracking the original owners was going to be time-consuming, but it had to be done. Gurminj had given me the names, but interrogating them was strictly down to me.
“Any thoughts on why the bodies were buried together?” Usupov asked.
I shrugged.
“Seven different dumping sites would mean seven different holes, seven times the risk of being seen, of someone plowing a potato field and unearthing a dead child,” I said. “So one burial place makes sense.”
“You think?”
“It’s what I would do. Maybe he was in a hurry, or there’s some kind of ritual involved, a psycho thing,” I said, wondered why the corner of Usupov’s mouth twitched, as if hooked. Fear. It was time to press home.
“So what have you got to tell me, Kenesh?”
He looked away. We’d known each other a long time, and I’ve learned from long experience how to tell when people lie. And he knew it.
“I was under orders from the moment you called me. To tell you nothing right away, to report back direct first with whatever I found out.”
I raised an eyebrow, looked disbelieving. I didn’t have many friends back at the station, but this seemed a complicated way of screwing up my career even more than it already was.
“Sverdlovsky station.”
It wasn’t a question, but Usupov shook his head.
“Worse.”
I waited. Until he said the name I really didn’t want to hear.
“Tynaliev.”
Mikhail Tynaliev. The minister of state security, probably the most dangerous man in Kyrgyzstan. The father of the dead and mutilated girl I’d knelt beside on a winter night, a brutal wind coming down off the mountains.
I didn’t think anyone knew how I’d set up my old boss to admit to having Yekaterina Tynalieva killed. But in the dismal hours before dawn, I’d sometimes lie awake, wondering just how much he’d been hurt before Tynaliev had him put down. Imagining his fingernails being ripped out, his testicles crushed. Having seen Yekaterina Tynalieva’s body, and knowing her father’s reputation, I would hazard a bet that death was an escape, but not a quick one.
Usupov wasn’t stupid; he would have linked Tynaliev with the disappearance of the chief. But he knew better than to inquire into matters that would bring him nothing but problems. I was Murder Squad; it was my job to get myself into trouble by asking the right questions.
“It was the minister who organized the helicopter up here,” Usupov said. “He told me he wanted a full report, the matter dealt with quickly.”
“Why would Tynaliev show an interest in a case like this?” I asked. “It’s going to reach the papers, but it’s not as if it threatens state security. A psycho, maybe a cult, but that’s all. So why?”
Usupov finished polishing his glasses and put them back on, clearly more comfortable behind their shield.
“Why is it so important to him?” I repeated.
Usupov smiled, but it never climbed as high as his eyes.
“That’s not the sort of question you ask a man like the minister,” he said. “But maybe it’s not about state security.”
I waited for him to add to that. He shook his head, stood up, began to walk toward the elevator doors, turned and looked back at me.
“Maybe you should ask if it’s about you.”
Chapter 6
I’d last seen Mikhail Tynaliev when his bodyguards had dragged my old boss out of his office to a painful, solitary death. I didn’t expect thanks—he wasn’t that sort of man—but I had hoped he would leave me alone. As I watched Usupov disappear into the elevator, I guessed it was the minister who had ordered me into this internal exile.
I wasn’t going to tell the world about the chief’s death, but keeping hold of power means making sure the bag is securely tied when you drown those kittens you don’t want. If Tynaliev wanted to make sure my tongue stayed behind my teeth, he could have arranged it. A car accident, a shooting in the line of duty. But that wasn’t the minister’s style. Better to keep me alive but off balance, in case I came in useful later. Everyone said he was devious. No one ever said he wasn’t smart.
I knew that since Tynaliev was involved, there was something political floating in the wind. Maybe a power struggle at the White House; I’d heard rumors of a potential palace coup. That was something Kyrgyzstan didn’t need; yet another president in less than twenty-five years, the country weakened and looking to Russia for help. But I couldn’t see any connection between dead children and whoever was going to be next in line to siphon off our taxes.