Michael Walters - The Shadow Walker

The wooden building was warm and dark inside. It was sparsely furnished, just a reception desk and a couple of low chairs. The man behind the desk looked up as they entered and smiled at Nergui, uttering some words of welcome. Nergui nodded back, and gestured behind him, introducing Drew.

“Mr. McLeish,” the man said, smiling enthusiastically at Drew, “it is good to welcome you here.”

“You speak English?” Drew said.

The man nodded, modestly. “A little,” he said. “We have been receiving tourists from the United Kingdom and from the USA for a long time now-more than ten years. I have been trying to learn some of their-your-language.”

“You speak it well, Mr.-?”

“Batkhuyag. I ask our visitors to correct me when I get it wrong.” He laughed. “They are very happy to do so.”

Nergui said a few more words to him in Mongolian. Batkhuyag nodded, and pointed behind him. “I have arranged a ger for you to use as a base,” he said, speaking English, clearly for Drew’s benefit. “I try to find the most-what do you say? — private one for you to use so that you can speak to anyone you wish to without being disturbed.” He shrugged. “I really do not know if we can help you. The police down here came to ask some questions, but as far I am aware no one here was able to provide any real information. But we will help as much as we can. Please feel free to speak to anyone, to go where you wish.” He paused, as if unsure how to formulate his next sentence. “I would of course ask that you try to disturb our guests as little as possible. I know you may wish to speak to them, but please come to me first so that I can prepare them.”

Nergui nodded. “I do not know that we will need to speak to your guests. Would any of them have been here at the time that Delgerbayar-the officer we are investigating-was supposed to have visited?”

Batkhuyag nodded. “That was a week ago, yes? In that case, some of them would have been, although most are here only this week.”

“Well, we will see how things go. We may wish to speak to some of those who were here last week, but I promise you we will be discreet.”

“Of course,” Batkhuyag said. “I should not have raised the issue. You know your jobs, I’m sure.”

Nergui smiled. “If you’ve had the local police around here asking questions, I can imagine that discretion was not always evident?”

“Well, they are local men. They are doing their best, I’m sure. But I need to do mine, and the tourists are important to us.”

“We want them to see our country at its best,” Nergui agreed.

“I will ensure that they do.”

Batkhuyag led them back out into the open air, then through the cluster of gers toward the back of the camp. He gestured to a tent which lay separated from the others, close to the wooden building which served as a restaurant and meeting place for the camp. “I thought this would be best,” he said. “We use it for staff during the busy part of the season, but it’s empty now. You can use this to interview people and as your accommodation for this evening, if that’s okay.”

It was clear to Drew that Batkhuyag was doing his best to ensure that the hospitality of the camp was not unduly contaminated by the presence of the policemen. The ger was as far as it could be from the remaining tents, and was clearly not of the same standard as the tourist gers. But Drew didn’t blame the man for seeking discretion. Subtlety wasn’t a quality generally found amongst policeman, and he didn’t imagine that the police here were any different.

Batkhuyag opened the door of the ger and showed them inside. The interior was dark but, to Drew’s surprise, there was electric light. The place looked surprisingly comfortable. There was an ornately decorated table in the center surrounded by rugs. Some hard wooden chairs had been placed, slightly incongruously, around it, but Drew imagined that those had been provided specifically for Nergui and himself. Around the far walls, there were two beds, again ornately painted. Sleeping here would certainly be an experience, but not necessarily an unpleasant one, he thought.

Nergui looked around and nodded, smiling faintly. “It looks fine,” he said. “Most comfortable.” It was difficult to be sure if there was a trace of irony in his tone. He gestured toward one of the seats. “You will join us, Mr. Batkhuyag?”

Batkhuyag looked surprised. “Me? I didn’t really envisage-”

Nergui made a slight bow. “But, of course, Mr. Batkhuyag, you are the first person we wish to see here. I do not believe that anything happens in this camp of which you are unaware, no?”

Batkhuyag looked confused. It was, Drew had to admit, a neat question, a cunning balance of flattery and threat. “Well,” Batkhuyag said, “I’m not sure I would say that-”

“Come now, Mr. Batkhuyag, there is no need for false modesty.

I can see how well run this place is.” Nergui casually lowered himself on to one of the wooden chairs. Batkhuyag had no choice but to follow. Drew pulled back the remaining chair and turned it around so that he could sit leaning on the chair back. He carefully positioned himself slightly away from Nergui and Batkhuyag. As far as he was concerned, this had to be Nergui’s interview. He would intervene only if he thought there was something he could add.

Nergui leaned forward in his chair, his hands together. “Now, Mr. Batkhuyag, how much do you know about why we’re here?”

Batkhuyag shrugged. “Not a great deal. Just what the local police chief told me when they visited.”

“Which was?”

“That you were investigating some internal case involving one of your officers, who you believed had visited the camp a week or so back. They really just wanted to know if he had been here. They showed me his photograph.”

“And had he been here?” Nergui said.

Batkhuyag shook his head. “Not as far as I’m aware. I didn’t recognize the photograph.”

“Is it possible he came without your knowing?”

Batkhuyag shrugged. “Of course it’s possible. The day in question was one of our turnover days-one group of tourists coming, another leaving, some staying put. Things get very busy. We tend to get deliveries on those days, too. There’s laundry being picked up for cleaning, new laundry being dropped off. Food deliveries. All of that. I couldn’t swear that your-”

“Delgerbayar,” Nergui said.

“I couldn’t swear that he wasn’t here for a while in the middle of all that. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t staying here as a guest. Obviously, we had no one of that name, and that photograph didn’t look familiar. Also our guests tend to stay for several days at least-as I understand it, your Mr… Delgerbayar would have come down only the previous day. That would have been unusual, so we would have remembered.”

“Did you ask any of the other staff if they recognized him?”

“A few,” Batkhuyag said. “I mean, we didn’t do it systematically or anything. The police weren’t here long enough for that-I got the impression they were just going through the motions. Routine questions.”

“That would be pretty much it,” Nergui said. Watching the two men, Drew wondered about this. He didn’t know how much the local police had been told. It was difficult to believe that they would be unaware of the brutal murder of a fellow officer. And why would they not have been told officially? Drew still had the sense of operating in an alien environment-superficially it resembled the world he was used to but it left him constantly wrong footed. For Drew the murder of a fellow officer was still one of the most serious and dreadful of crimes. Partly this was because of the inevitable fear that it might be your own life on the line next time. But partly it was the recognition that if you tolerated that kind of assault on the forces of law and order, there was no possibility of holding any other line. It was difficult to believe that, if the police down here were aware of Delgerbayar’s murder, they would have treated it casually.