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this way?”
    “We both want to track down who killed Gurminj, don’t we?”
    “So you think he was murdered as well?” I asked.
    “Sure of it. So are you,” she said.
    I nodded, looked at the hotel. All the windows were curtained, and the place had the air of being abandoned. But I knew Saltanat was not the sort to leave anything to chance. I guessed she would have reinforcements only a few seconds away. Or a marksman sighting downa rifle barrel, with me on the receiving end. My forehead itched, as if cross hairs were pressing down on me.
    “There hasn’t been an official report, so I’m wondering how you know.”
    Saltanat simply smiled, enigmatic as ever. I wondered for a moment if she’d been behind Gurminj’s murder, dismissed the idea out of hand. I couldn’t fathom any motive she might have had, and Saltanat has never done anything without a good reason.
    As if reading my mind, she turned the full intensity of her gaze upon me. I felt my breath catch in my chest.
    “When I first met you, Inspector, I wasn’t certain whose side you were on, whether I should kill you or not. I didn’t know whether or not you were wetting your beak with the help of the bad guys.”
    I tried to smile.
    “I hope I convinced you. And call me Akyl, no need for ceremony, surely?”
    Saltanat raised one impeccably plucked eyebrow.
    “Maybe. Later. But first, cards face up?”
    It was my turn to raise an eyebrow. Saltanat has never shown a full hand in her life. But if it gave me a lead to solving the case of the dead children and the murder of my friend, who was I to argue?
    She gave a smile that punched me in the heart. Who can name the exact moment when a woman’s smile reminds you of your dead wife? A woman who made the act of living worthwhile, whose breath you stole away, and buried on a snow-covered hill?
    “You’re the investigating officer, right?”
    “Officially? The dead children. Unofficially? I’m putting Gurminj’s killer on my to-fuck-someone-up-beyond-belief list.”
    I told her about the dead infants, the puzzle of the orphanage identity bands, Usupov’s belief that I’d been exiled to Karakol on the orders of Mikhail Tynaliev, the sham autopsy that Usupov had been forced to sign off. She nodded as I told her about seeing Gurminj sprawled dead at his desk, the apparent suicide note, her mobile number hidden beneath the balance.
    I paused, looked over at Saltanat.
    “Your turn,” I said. Saltanat folded her arms and sat back, her face set in the determined look I remembered from our previous encounters. If anything, she looked even more deadly than when she smiled.
    “I hope you weren’t followed back to Bishkek, Akyl. And that nobody knows you’re here.”
    She paused, lit a cigarette, uncoiled pale gray smoke into the air.
    “We could both be in a world of trouble.”

Chapter 14
    I stared at Saltanat, and she looked back, her gaze unwavering. I don’t know much about women. I’d met Chinara when we were both at school. There hadn’t really been anyone else besides her. She was all I ever wanted. But it was getting hard to remember her, radiant, beautiful, as she had been before the cancer feasted on her. Loss is like that, submerged rocks that from time to time break the surface of the water. It looks safe to dive in, then you break your neck.
    “I don’t see where you fit into all this,” I said. “Or me, for that matter.”
    Saltanat looked down and began to pick at the label on her beer bottle with her fingernails. I’d only ever once seen her looking vulnerable, after the rape. Now she gave off a sense of uncertainty, unwilling perhaps, or unable, to tell me what she knew.
    “I never told my bosses what happened to me,” she said. “They don’t give you medals for failing, for getting into situations you can’t control. The only people who know about what happened are you and me. Best that way.”
    “Didn’t you talk to anyone?”
    She looked up, stared at me. A tear in her