Michael Walters - The Shadow Walker

Finally his concentration was disturbed by a far more welcome sound. It was the noise of a car engine, closely followed by a second. Headlights flashed around the edges of the yard as two marked patrol cars pulled slowly to a halt in front of the factory.

Nergui rose, peering over the cars to see if there was any sign of movement beyond. Three police officers emerged from the front car. The rear car contained the pathologist and a specialist scene of crime officer.

Nergui spoke briefly to the three officers. “Come with me. I think I saw someone over there. It may be our man. But be careful. He’s extremely dangerous.”

He led the way cautiously across the yard to the snow covered wall where he had seen the movements. He flashed the spotlight across it. He had been right. The snow had been disturbed in the center, as if someone had been trying to clamber over the wall. The wall itself was no more than six feet high, not difficult to scale in normal circumstances but made more treacherous by the drifted snow. There was no obvious gate or other entry point.

Nergui handed the spotlight to one of the other officers, and stamped his way through the snow drift to reach the wall. Aware that he might be making himself a sitting target, he reached up and pulled himself up till his head was above the top of the wall, ready to drop back if there was any evidence of a threat from the other side.

There was nothing, just a further area of snow covered concrete, then the ground fell away into some form of wasteland-the ruins of some demolished building, though it was difficult to tell in the snow. On the other side were more factories and industrial buildings, tightly clustered.

Beyond the point where the snow on the wall had been disturbed, there was a line of jumbled footprints, leading down into the wasteland area. It was possible that they might provide some sort of trail, but Nergui suspected that the trail would be lost in the factory buildings opposite, where the narrow alleyways had avoided the worst of the snow.

“Was it him?” one of the officers asked.

Nergui shrugged. “I can’t imagine anyone else being out here on a night like this. Get over the wall and see if you can make anything of the trail of footprints over there-anything at all from the footprints themselves. And then see if you can find where they lead. They probably just disappear on the far side, but it’s worth a look. Take care.”

The officers began to clamber up onto the wall. Nergui watched them a moment, and then began to walk back across the yard to where the pathologist and crime scene officer were waiting. He nodded to them without speaking, and then led the way back into the factory.

Even for Nergui, returning to the scene, the display of body parts was still shocking. He could see the crime scene officer visibly paling at the sight before them, and even the hardened pathologist appeared shaken.

“I’m assuming,” Nergui said slowly, “that these items correspond to the two unidentified corpses already in our possession. That is, I am praying that we are not now faced with two further killings.”

The pathologist nodded. “Let us hope not.”

“And the second thing is to try to get some idea of their identities. If these were removed from the original corpses, then it should be much easier to identify them, I presume?”

The pathologist nodded, staring at the display with a mix of horror and bafflement. “There are no guarantees but at least we will have fingerprints, dental records. It looks as if the killer is trying to assist us.”

“So it would seem,” Nergui said. He turned to the crime scene officer. “I want you to review every square centimeter of this place. Anything you can find- anything -may be critical. We think we know who we’re looking for now, so we’re going to need evidence to prove he was here. I can’t imagine he’s going to have left fingerprints, but there may be other forensic evidence.”

He left the two men working in the room, still lit by the battery-powered spotlight, and made his way back outside. The three officers had climbed back over the wall and were making their way back toward him.

“Nothing,” one said, shaking his head. “The footsteps up at this end are too jumbled to make anything of. And over on the other side there’s a whole network of sheltered alleyways that the snow hasn’t touched. We followed the trail a few yards into the alleys, but then it disappeared.”

“This man knows what he’s doing,” Nergui said. “He’s not going to make it easy for us.” He gestured back to the factory. “Two of you had better stay here, just in case.” He looked around in the darkness. “I cannot imagine he is still in the vicinity. But then I didn’t seriously believe that he was here in the first place.”

He turned to the third officer. “We’ve got a full scale search going on of the area?” he asked.

The officer nodded. “As best we can. We only had the night duty on, but we’re calling in as many officers as we can. The snow’s not helping. They’re gradually getting the streets cleared, but this is the first serious snowfall we’ve had this year so it’s taking time to get it sorted. We’ve got patrol cars all around there now, but it’s taken a while to get them in place.”

“Okay. There’s not much more we can do. If you take me back to HQ, you can get your car out with the rest.”

As they drove back Nergui noted that most of the main roads were now largely clear. Trucks laden with huge cargoes of plowed snow were ferrying along the major routes, trying to open as many as possible before the morning came.

Nergui looked at his watch. Seven twenty. The sky was lightening now in the east, and it would not be long before the sun rose. He would not be sorry to see the back of this particular night, but he was apprehensive about what the coming day might bring. The anonymous caller was due to call back at nine. Was this a hoax or was it really Badzar? And if it was, what might he tell them?

Assuming that the limbs were those belonging to the original bodies, it looked as if Badzar was now trying to communicate something. Was this just coincidence, or did he somehow know that they had stumbled across his identity? If Badzar had been observing him over the previous days-which Nergui, with an inward shudder, increasingly felt to be the case-then it was possible that he had seen Cholon accompanying them. Maybe he had realized that Cholon had betrayed him. If so, they should ensure that Cholon himself was protected. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed HQ, asking for Doripalam. It took Doripalam a few minutes to reach the phone, and when he eventually spoke he sounded breathless.

“I wanted to check that Cholon was okay. What have you done with him?”

“He’s still here. I tried to persuade him to get some sleep, but he was keen to stay here, at least till the next call comes in. And I thought this might be the safest place.”

“We need to keep an eye on him. It’s possible Badzar has seen him with us.”

“You think Badzar’s been watching us?”

“I think he was watching us in the factory tonight. I think he was watching me after you and Cholon left.”

There was an intake of breath at the other end of the line, as Doripalam took in the implications of this. “I’ll take care of him. But I wanted to tell you, I’ve been doing some more digging since I got back here. There are some things I need to update you on.”

Nergui glanced out of the car window. “I’m just a few minutes away. I’ll find you when I get there.”

The center of Sukh Bataar Square was still thickly covered in snow, looking oddly pastoral under the smooth drifts. The roads around the square, though, were now clear. They turned off the square and pulled into the HQ parking lot.