Michael Walters - The Shadow Walker

This did not sound good, but Nergui was past caring about the Minister’s political positioning, even if this meant that he might end up as the sacrifice on this occasion. He looked at his watch. Three thirty.

“How soon can you get here, Nergui? I’m in my office.”

“I’ll come immediately. The snow’s awful. Maybe ten or fifteen minutes.”

“Make it ten.” As always, the call ended abruptly.

Nergui turned to Doripalam. “I’ve got to see the Minister. I’ll be an hour, no more. I’ve got an idea I want to follow up. I may be wasting everyone’s time but we can’t afford to delay. We should get snow chains put on the truck if we’re going out again.”

Doripalam nodded. “And I take it we are going out again?” There was a note of irritation in his voice.

“Trust me, Doripalam. I’m not keeping any secrets here. I’ve just got a hunch. I’ll explain when I get back, though it’s probably too half-baked to waste anyone else’s time on other than my own. But I would be grateful for your support.”

Doripalam looked at the older man for a second, then nodded. He twisted in his seat and looked at Cholon. “I should organize you some accommodation.”

“What you’re planning,” Cholon said to Nergui. “Is this about my brother?”

“It may be.”

“In that case, can I be part of it?”

Nergui looked at Doripalam, who shrugged. Nergui said: “I don’t know what’s involved and I don’t know what kind of risk we might be talking about. And we can never afford passengers. So we’d be insane to let you come.”

“I understand.”

“But I think we’re past the point of sanity on this. I don’t know what we’re doing anymore. Chasing phantoms. So, yes, if you want to chase some phantoms with us, you can come. But do exactly what I tell you. I may be going mad, but I’m not completely reckless.”

Nergui climbed out of the truck and slammed the door behind him. He watched as Doripalam and Cholon trudged slowly into the building. Then he pulled his coat around him and began to walk through the billowing snow toward the Ministry building.

After the impenetrable darkness, now incessant light.

Slowly, as he lay there, he had begun to regain a sense of his own body, the belief that movement was possible, that he was still alive.

He struggled at first, pulling against the bonds that held his wrists and ankles. But there was no give, no shifting of the cords that held him, only the burning pressure of the ropes against his skin. He was held firmly, tied with professional skill to the wooden bench.

The blind panic that had overwhelmed him in the darkness had passed now, but the terror remained. Somebody had done this to him. Someone was waiting, perhaps somewhere in this very room. Something, eventually, would happen.

There was something surreal about his predicament. Trapped, held by an unseen and unknown assailant, in a brightly lit industrial building. Moments went by when he really didn’t believe it, when he half-expected to wake from a dream or somehow find that it was all an elaborate hoax. Then the reality hit him again, and fear chilled his heart. And at that point the silence would become the biggest threat of all, building around him like a tangible object, taking his breath from him. And he listened, straining his ears, waiting for whatever would happen next.

It was a long walk across Sukh Bataar Square, pushing against the buffeting of the strong winds and the frozen blast of the snow. The Square was silent and snow covered, the statues shapeless under the gathering drifts. The snowstorm had settled in thickly now, and even the snowplows and salt trucks appeared to have given up on their work.

In normal conditions, the Ministry buildings were a five minute walk away, on the far side of the square. Tonight, he had already been walking for ten minutes and still had some way to go. He pulled his shapeless old trilby down over his eyes, and his thick winter coat more tightly around him, and trudged on through the deepening snow.

As he walked, he wrestled with the thought that had begun to form during his interview with Oyon, problems aside at least until he reached the Ministry, trying to work out the next steps in their search for Badzar.

Oyon, for whatever reason, had formed the impression that Badzar’s destination was not far from Oyon’s own apartment. Nergui was inclined to trust that judgment. He had noted that Oyon seemed to be genuinely affronted that Badzar had turned up on his doorstep only because he was already in the neighborhood.

Even it was true, there were still many places where Badzar could be holed up. There were numerous tenements around there, more concrete legacies of the old communist functionalism. Badzar could be staying with another contact, or could have rented an apartment of his own, assuming he had the money to do so. More simply, there were also likely to be a number of unoccupied apartments-those awaiting a change of tenant, even one or two blocks that were due for renovation or demolition under the government’s continuing drive for renewal. Badzar could have broken into one of these.

But there was another possibility. The tenement block they had visited was on the edge of one of the industrial districts, close to where the concrete landscape of the city center gave way to the sprawl of the ger encampments. In that area, there were some thriving businesses, some still state owned, some the first fruits of burgeoning entrepreneurs. But, as throughout the city, there were many disused industrial units, left over from the period of economic madness when the country had adopted all the worst elements of free-market economics to disastrous effect.

And one of those disused units, only a half mile or so from Oyon’s apartment, was the factory where they had found Delgerbayar’s body.

Was it simply a coincidence? After all, there were dozens of disused factories and warehouses across the city. Even if Badzar was holed up in one of them, why should it be that one? Surely he would not risk lingering around an area where the police had been engaged in a large-scale investigation.

Except, of course, that that could be precisely the point. There had been a tendency throughout this case to disregard the obvious because it was seen as irrelevant. They had thought nothing of Delgerbayar’s intended visit to the illegal prospectors because it had appeared to be a red herring, just another part of the routine pattern of his life. So maybe this was similar. They had assumed that the location where Delgerbayar’s body was found was simply a convenient stage set. It was just one of many large empty buildings, isolated from any domestic dwellings, with a suitably intimidating entrance and an appropriate setting for the body to be found. Nergui had had no doubt that the killer had chosen it with some care to maximize the impact of their find. But they had all assumed by the time the police reached the building, the killer would have been long gone.

They had searched the building rigorously, and subjected it to forensic testing where there appeared to be the possibility of finding any material or data potentially linked to the killer, but they had found nothing. There was no sign that the building had been occupied, other than by the spectacularly positioned corpse of Delgerbayar.

But Nergui had been working through the timescales in his mind. The day that they had found Delgerbayar’s body was the same day that Badzar had appeared unexpectedly on Oyon’s doorstep. Was it possible that, having committed the murder, he had set up the body as they had found it, and then moved to lie low with his former acquaintances for a few days?

He shook his head, leaning forward into the wind and snow, treading cautiously to maintain his footing. It was a ridiculous idea. Why would Badzar simply turn up unannounced? Wouldn’t he have made some arrangements beforehand, arranged some safe place to stay? But that might be the reason. If Badzar was involved in this, he was leaving no prearranged trail, no plans, even assuming that his actions were premeditated at all. Oyon and Odyal would recall his turning up with some surprise, perhaps, but they had commented on his unpredictability. Under pressure from the Ministry, the story of Delgerbayar’s murder had been suppressed and had not been reported in the media, as Badzar could have predicted. There was no reason why Oyon and Odyal should have made any connection between Badzar’s appearance and the murder.