The Shadow Walker (33 page)

Cholon began to walk, dead-eyed, back to the truck. Doripalam turned to Nergui. “You'll be all right here on your own? Do you think it's safe?”

Nergui shrugged. “I imagine so. I can't believe that Badzar would have hung around after setting up that little show for us.”

“He's smart, though,” Doripalam said. “How did he know we
would come here? I mean—” He looked slightly embarrassed. “I mean, it was only a hunch on your part. I—well, I wasn't sure anything would come of it.”

Nergui smiled grimly. “Neither was I, if I'm honest. But once the thought had occurred, I couldn't ignore it. But the truth is that that display could have sat there for a long time. The light was on a timer, and I suppose Badzar could always come replace the battery at intervals if necessary. At this time of the year, the flesh wouldn't decay quickly. He could just wait until we—or someone—happened to stumble upon it.” He paused. “And of course, if our phantom caller really is Badzar, then he might have used his next call to lead us here.”

“But what's he up to? Why go to all that trouble to dismember the bodies, apparently to hide their identities, and then give us the missing body parts anyway?”

“I don't know, but I have a sense that this is moving toward some endgame.” It was what he had felt all along, the sense of something moving slowly but ever more certainly toward a purpose, toward some sense of resolution. He couldn't square this feeling with the brutal and apparently random nature of these killings, but he now felt this sense of purpose more than ever. He shook his head. “There's something about this,” he said. “I think endgame is the right word. There is some game being played here, and I have an awful feeling we're being treated as the pawns.”

Doripalam nodded, clearly baffled by Nergui's speculations. “You don't want us to wait till backup arrives?”

Nergui glanced across at Cholon, who was leaning over the hood of the truck, looking like a man who had had all the life beaten out of him. “No, you need to look after Cholon. I can't begin to imagine what he's going through. Get him a hotel room, see if he can get some sleep, but keep an eye on him.”

As soon as the truck had driven away, Nergui wondered if this had been a wise decision. There was no telling what Badzar might be planning. Perhaps he was observing him at this very moment,
waiting until Doripalam and Cholon had driven away before moving against Nergui. Just as, Nergui thought, he might have been waiting for Drew on the night they left the embassy.

He looked uneasily around him. The yard beside the factory was silent and deserted. It was still dark, though the glow in the eastern sky heralded the approach of sunrise. In the distance, the city would be starting to come to life, the snowplows out clearing the streets. But there was no sign of that here. Nergui flashed the spotlight around the yard, catching unnerving shapes and shadows as the beam circled. He moved himself slowly back against the wall of the factory, trying to ensure that there was at least no risk of his being caught from behind.

Nergui was far from being a nervous individual, but the next twenty minutes, until the backup team arrived, were among the most uncomfortable he had ever endured. He stood, with his back to the factory wall, regularly arcing the spotlight beam around him, trying to minimize the risk that anyone might take him by surprise. He kept his hand in his pocket, resting on the cold handle of his pistol, ready to draw it at any sign of movement.

The snow was helpful to him because any figures crossing the open area of the yard would be thrown into relief by the stark whiteness, and it was virtually impossible to walk silently across the crisp drifts. The moon had risen too, and the yard was bathed in its pale light, although there were still too many shadows and dark corners where an assailant could hide.

Nergui told himself he was being ridiculous. There was no possibility that Badzar would have hung around here, no chance that he had witnessed their arrival. The risks would surely have been too great. But, clearly, they were not dealing with a rational man. It seemed there was no limit to what he might do, no way of predicting his actions.

However much he tried to rationalize his position, Nergui could not shake the uneasy feeling that he was being watched, and his mind went back to the arrow that had been fired at himself and Drew, and he realized how vulnerable his position might be.

He remained as still as possible, listening for any movement, any sound that might reveal the presence of another person. Now that the snow had stopped falling and the sky had cleared, there was a faint chill breeze blowing through the yards and alleyways between the factory buildings. He heard, once, the sound of something scattering, perhaps a paper blown in the wind, or maybe the echo of footsteps in the snow. He turned in what he judged to be the right direction, straining his ears, but could hear nothing more.

And then he heard another sound, off to his left. Unmistakable this time, the sound of scraping, snow being dislodged, someone moving. He directed the spotlight toward the sound, able to see nothing. The white sweep of banked snow rose toward a concrete wall at the far end of the factory yard. And then his spotlight caught something, raised upon the top of the wall—a shape, a shadow, moving swiftly, dropping behind the concrete. He tensed, shining the light backward and forward at the spot, but could see nothing more. Just the snow-covered top of the wall, perhaps a smudge or two where the snow had been disturbed.

He peered into the light, trying to see more. Perhaps it had been an animal of some kind, though that seemed unlikely on such a cold night. And in his heart he knew that someone had been watching him. Perhaps was still watching him

Nergui shivered. The prospect that he was being observed by the person who had been capable of such unspeakable acts of murder and mutilation, who had perhaps been responsible for Drew's disappearance, sent a chill through his body. He crouched down, trying to present as small a target as possible, his eyes concentrating on the area where he had seen movement, but also constantly darting around the yard in case assault should come from another direction.

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.

It was only when he finally entered the HQ building that Nergui realized how cold he was. Through the glass he could see Doripalam sitting in the rest room with Cholon, a large pile of official files behind them. Cholon had finally fallen asleep, curled awkwardly in one of the large armchairs.