A Killing Winter by Tom Callaghan Read Free Book Online

cloth near to hand seemed to be Gulbara’s panties. I’m not a fastidious man, but sometimes this job makes impossible demands. I dropped the panty-wrapped knife into my pocket, smiled, and then tapped Gasparian on the knee again. This time, not gently.
    He roared, the bellow I’d come to associate with his sex life, and clutched at his knee. He tried to stand, but had to grab at the wall for support. Gulbara sniggered, the sort of laugh you’d expect from a naked woman with a tattoo of a monkey climbing into her pubic hair.
    ‘You’ll need to go to a hospital with that knee,’ I told him. ‘Should keep you out of trouble for a few hours.’
    ‘Cunt,’ he muttered, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it.
    I picked up his clothes, walked out into the hallway, and flung them through the open door. He took the hint and limped past me, his knee already starting to swell. He tried the dead-eye stare, which impressed me about as much as his dick did, and waited until he was in the safety of the hallway before he snarled, ‘This isn’t over.’
    I smiled politely, shut the doors and bolted the inner one. Someone back in Sverdlovsky would have his record; it wouldn’t be hard to find him if I needed to.
    I turned back to Gulbara, who still lay sprawled in the wreckage of the bed.
    ‘Get dressed.’
    ‘You’ve got my panties. Going to sniff them when you get home?’ She spoke with a thick country accent; Osh, or maybe Naryn. Come to the big city to make her fortune.
    ‘I’m sure you’ve got another pair for best. Get dressed sowe can talk, or you can come down to the station as you are. It’s cold enough out there to freeze the nipples off a whore. Given your job, I wouldn’t run the risk.’
    Once Gulbara had slithered into a red dress short enough to delight a gynaecologist, we went into the sitting room. Shairkul reached into a wall cupboard and brought out a bottle of Kyrgyz brandy and three small mismatched glasses. I nodded and watched her pour three shots. I waited until the two women had downed theirs before I sniffed at mine. Rough, raw, perfect for weather like this, for a case like this. I raised the glass to my lips, pretended to join them, then put it down, untasted.
    ‘I won’t beat about the bush,’ I began, ‘especially not with the monkey that lives there. Its bite might be poisonous.’
    Neither woman smiled. Judging by a couple of track marks in the crook of Gulbara’s left arm, that wasn’t the only monkey she was carrying around with her.
    ‘You found a dead woman last night. Found her handbag as well. And that’s what I’m here for. Anything else you do outside of that, I’m not interested. Understand?’
    Gulbara nodded, and Shairkul refilled the glasses. They drank again. Companionable silence.
    ‘I had nothing to do with her dying, you understand?’
    I waited for her to continue, my eyes never leaving her face.
    ‘She was dead when I came past. I was heading for the bridge over Ibraimova, looking for a taxi. No business, too cold. And then I saw her.’
    Gulbara gave a theatrical shudder at the memory, and held out her glass for another drink. I shook my head at Shairkul; I didn’t want Gulbara pissed before I’d had a chance to hear her story.
    ‘You saw her.’
    Not a question. I nodded my head.
    ‘I thought at first it might be one of the regular girls. An occupational hazard. But not the way she was dressed. Too smart for a tart. And too pretty.’
    Suddenly Gulbara looked like the frightened, vulnerable woman just out of her teens that she was behind the harsh make-up and the cheap nylon dress. She knew there was a killer out there in the dark, maybe waiting for another woman, maybe looking for a prostitute to slice and hurt and scar and maim, looking to turn her into so much cooling meat. Death comes to all of us, and the best we can hope for is that it’s painless and quick. All too often, it’s neither.
    ‘I could see there was nothing I could do. And too