They must have seen me coming. Which was okay, I told myself: letting me get to the car suggested a scam rather than a hit. They’d been loitering where the rich might get caught, expats especially. I didn’t know the alcohol limit here but I’d be well over. If that was the worst of my problems I could handle it. I wound my window down.

‘Is there a problem?’

‘This is your car?’ The officer spoke Russian, voice hoarse, eyes heavy-lidded. A functioning alcoholic, forty-something, tall enough that he had to stoop to the window. There was a faded gravity to his jaundiced eyes. A moustache among the stubble seemed like the remnant of a frayed uniform. I spoke Russian back, badly.

‘Ya ne ponimayu. I don’t understand.’

‘Your car?’ he said in English.

‘Hire car.’

‘You’ve been drinking.’

‘One beer.’

‘You are not in good condition to drive.’ He wasn’t in good condition to police. His breath was flammable. ‘Papers. And keys.’

He took the paperwork and car keys to his vehicle and came back with an old breathalyser, then made a show of tutting when I blew. I went along with this. They hadn’t radioed in to base. Whatever performance going on was restricted, which suited me.

‘Step out of the car. Come with me.’ His English was proficient. The reasonable English spoken by people who needed to fleece English-speakers.

‘We can arrange something,’ I said.

‘Come.’

I followed him to his car, got in the back seat with him. There was a younger officer up front. The car was filled with cigarette smoke.

‘Where are you from?’ the older officer said.

‘The UK.’

‘Here on business.’

‘Yes.’

‘Oil.’ He smiled.

‘Something like that.’

‘You get in trouble here, as a foreigner, it is very bad. Kazakhstan is not England. You would find the prisons very dangerous.’

‘Prison?’ I fumbled with my wallet and made sure he saw money. ‘Tell you what, we can forget this, can’t we? My company would kill me if I got in trouble.’

‘Four hundred thousand tenge. I give you paper, no more problems.’

Four hundred thousand was ridiculous, the better part of a grand, but who could blame him. This conman was growing on me. There was an air of seniority amidst the vice, a conflict that told a story. I imagined a whole portfolio of petty corruption under his control, which opened more doors than those engaged in it usually realised. He’d have connections above and below, colleagues sheltering him, taking their own skim from nicer offices. I had always been drawn to people with ethical voids at their centre: they were more open to suggestion.

I counted out a few hundred pounds’ worth of notes.

‘Officer …?’

‘Shomko.’