The Adversary (25 page)

So who was it?

Nergui jammed his car into reverse and pulled slowly back out of the parking space, and then drove forward out of the hotel parking lot. As he passed the entrance, his eye was caught by two figures, both wearing long rain coats and hats, standing in the shadows outside the lobby of the hotel.

Something about the figures struck him as incongruous, out of place in the scene. They didn't look like hotel staff. He pulled out into the street and up toward the junction with Peace Avenue, hoping that Tunjin had managed to get away safely.

It was already growing light by the time they reached the outskirts of the city. Doripalam was glad to complete the journey, after hours of the beating cold and noise from the open windscreen. Conversation, other than the occasional shouted exchange, had been virtually impossible. In the end, Doripalam had simply closed his eyes, though far from any possibility of sleep, and listened to the endless roar of the engine and the wind.

“Where to?” Luvsan shouted. “Back to HQ?”

“I think we have to,” Doripalam said. “Get this thing in for repair, for one thing.”

They came into town, driving with the river on their right and then, above them, the majestic Chinese-style temple of Gesar Süm, turned left past Liberty Square and the taxi stand, and then right down toward Sukh Bataar Square. The rain had long passed and it looked set to be a fine day, just a few wisps of cloud in the translucent sky.

They parked the truck behind Headquarters and Luvsan went in to organize the repair of the windscreen. Doripalam stood for a moment by the front entrance, looking out across the Square, empty and silent in the early morning sunlight. He felt
momentarily overwhelmed, struggling to come to grips with the responsibilities that were facing him. He understood his job as a police officer, as a detective. He knew what that was all about. Carrying out investigations, trying to get to the truth. That was—not exactly straightforward, but at least comprehensible. But now, in this job, he was never sure of his priorities. It was the political stuff that confused him—the constantly shifting balance of interests and demands. The kind of thing that Nergui had managed with his eyes closed.

And at the moment it was just one problem after another. The whole Muunokhoi debacle. All the publicity around Gavaa's disappearance. The horrific murder of his mother—so far, ironically, accorded less attention than the apparently much more mundane absence of her son. The possibility that she was being threatened—but by whom and why? And now, on top of everything, Tunjin going missing. It was as if a whole year's worth of serious cases had descended on him at once, with no clear rhyme or reason.

And then there was Nergui and his supposed inquiry. What was that all about? An attempt to use the Muunokhoi mess as an opportunity to root out whatever corruption there was in this squad? Doripalam knew that, if he had any dignity, he should have offered his resignation already in the face of Nergui's interference. But he also knew—because he knew Nergui—that there was likely to be more to this than was immediately apparent.

“Where now?”

Luvsan was standing behind him, holding two
plastic cups of steaming coffee. For the first time, it occurred to Doripalam that he'd been up all night. And a pretty stressful night at that. The sense of tiredness swept over him like a wave, and he felt suddenly removed from everything around him.

He took the coffee from Luvsan. “Thanks. You must be exhausted. I know I am, and you did all the driving.”

Luvsan took a sip of his own drink. “Can always manage without much sleep. One of my few talents.”

Doripalam yawned. “Wish it was one I shared,” he said. “I guess we should go and have a look at Tunjin's apartment. I take it there's no more news.”

“Doesn't seem to be. I checked quickly with the duty officer. We've got the apartment all cordoned off. Spoken to the neighbors and to those who witnessed the original disturbance, but it's not much clearer. We can get the full story once we're there, I guess.”

Luvsan had procured them an alternative police vehicle, a marked car. Inevitably, he turned on the siren as they made their way through the center of the city, even though it was still early morning and the streets were largely deserted. Doripalam regarded him with amused disapproval but said nothing.

Tunjin's apartment was only a few minutes away and they were able to park without difficulty outside the apartment block. Even if Doripalam hadn't known the address, it would not have been difficult to identify the building. The glass fronted doors to the lobby had both been shattered, the doors now covered with temporary boarding.

“They told me on the phone that there'd been some
shooting,” Doripalam said. “It looks as if they were shooting their way in.”

There was a uniformed officer stationed at the door, who recognized Doripalam without having to be shown any ID. “There's one of your people upstairs, sir,” he said.

Doripalam gestured to the doors. “This was where the shots were fired?”

“Yes, sir. It looks as if the doors were locked or jammed in some way, and the intruders shot at the glass to make their entry.”

Doripalam glanced at Luvsan. “The doors were locked or jammed? This was in the middle of the day?”

“Yes, sir. Late morning.”

“That wouldn't have been normal, then? The doors being locked, I mean.”

“No, sir. I mean, security here is normally pretty lax, apparently. Nothing to stop anybody entering the building during daylight hours.”

Doripalam nodded. “Thanks. Who are you letting in at the moment?”

“Residents only, that's my orders. Not making ourselves very popular because we're not even allowing in residents' guests for the moment.”

“Keep it that way. I don't want the press in here just yet. And I wouldn't put it past some of them to try to do a deal with some of the residents to talk their way in.”

“That's what I thought, sir. We've been very rigorous.”

“Glad to hear it. Keep it up.” As always, Doripalam was uncomfortably aware that this commanding officer stuff was far from natural to him. The young
officer didn't appear to notice anything, though, even if Luvsan looked mildly amused.

“Come on,” Doripalam said. “Let's go and see the apartment. First floor.”

They made their way up the open, faux marble stairs to the first floor. It was far from a smart address. The lobby area had been full of junk, all of which, other than the scatterings of broken glass, presumably pre-dated the disturbance. The whole place could do with a new coat of paint, he thought, looking around at the scuffed walls, the worn floor tiles, the chipped woodwork.

It was, again, not difficult to spot Tunjin's apartment. A bored looking uniformed officer was sitting on a hard wooden chair outside, a folded newspaper in his hand. He looked up quizzically as the two men approached.

“Doripalam.” He flicked open his ID and waved it in front of the seated officer. “Serious Crimes Team. I understand one of my people's inside.”

It took the uniformed officer a moment to take all this in. Then he jumped to his feet, scattering the newspaper untidily to the floor. “Yes, sir. Please go in.”

Doripalam smiled and pushed open the door. His smile faded almost immediately. Partly it was the smell. Not an overwhelmingly unpleasant smell—Doripalam had had all too frequent cause to enter rooms containing corpses, and this was nothing like that. But it was there, nonetheless. A scent of decay, of organic matter left too long in the spring warm, a smell of sour milk and rotting vegetation, underpinned with a strong smell of alcohol.

The appearance of the apartment matched the
smell. It was clear that, however much the apartment might have been ransacked by the intruders, it had hardly been a model of organized living beforehand. There were plates of half-eaten food scattered on every surface, buzzing with flies. There were several empty or nearly empty vodka bottles. Clothes—presumably dirty—were scattered about the floor.

But, on top of all that, the room had been systematically turned over. Drawers from the cabinets lay emptied across the floor and sofa. Pictures had been pulled from the walls. A cupboard stood with its doors agape and its contents tossed, apparently casually, to the ground.

In the middle of all this, a young officer stood, a clipboard in his hand, apparently making an inventory. He looked up as Doripalam and Luvsan entered. “Good morning,” he said. “Sorry it's not more homely.”

Doripalam carefully made his way through the scattered debris toward the young officer. “Good morning, Batzorig. You pulled this one, then?”

“Looks like it,” Batzorig said. “Not quite sure what I did to deserve it.”

“Something pretty bad, clearly,” Doripalam said. “So this is how Tunjin lived, then?”

“Well, not entirely, to be fair,” Batzorig said. “He can take responsibility for the food and the booze, but probably not for the emptying of the drawers and cupboards.”

“No.” Doripalam looked around carefully. “It's been ransacked pretty thoroughly. So they were after something. Do we have any idea what?”

Batzorig shook his head. “It's difficult to know what
Tunjin might have had that they would have been interested in,” he said.

“Unless it was something he'd taken from HQ,” Luvsan said, from behind.

Doripalam turned. “Like what?”

Luvsan shrugged. “No idea. Files, paperwork? Who knows?”

“The last time I saw Tunjin,” Doripalam said, “he didn't give me the impression he was intending to follow up assiduously on his paperwork.” He turned back to Batzorig. “And we've no idea what might have happened to Tunjin?”

“None at all,” Batzorig said. “He's just vanished.”

“With the intruders?”

“We don't think so.”

“So what's the story?” Doripalam said. “Walk me through it.”

“It's an odd one,” Batzorig said. “From what we've been able to piece together from talking to neighbors and passers-by, there was some sort of disturbance yesterday. One of the residents of this block—coming back from the market, I think—discovered she couldn't get in the front entrance. It's normally left unlocked during the day. She tried to unlock it with her own key, but the door was jammed. She asked a passer-by for some assistance, but he couldn't do anything. It looked as if, as well as locking the doors, someone had jammed a broomstick into the handles.”

“To stop it being opened from outside?”

“Exactly. Anyway, a bit of a crowd started to gather. The general consensus was that it was kids—you know, youth of today, all that stuff. Then, in the
middle of all that, with this small group milling about outside the doorway, two men came up, dressed in dark glasses, baseball caps, leather jackets, you know the kind of uniform—?”

Doripalam looked up at him. He knew the uniform. The hard men, the hired help, all over the seamier side of the city.

“These two guys came up, gestured for the crowd to move aside, and then pulled out a handgun each and shot out the glass in the doors. I think the crowd dispersed pretty quickly.”

“And no one thought to call us?” Luvsan said from behind.

“Well, yes, they did eventually. But I think they were all a bit shocked. Anyway, from what we can tell, the two men cleared and opened the doors, made their way up here, kicked down Tunjin's door and got in here. We don't know quite what happened after that because no one was getting too close to find out. But we assumed they didn't find Tunjin and they went through the apartment pretty quickly—probably only a few minutes. We've got some witnesses who then saw the two men exit the front of the block, probably five minutes or so later. There was no one with them so we presume they didn't find Tunjin. The two men then ran down to the far end of the block. There was the sound of more gunfire, and somebody reported the sound of a motorbike speeding away. Nothing more after that. It looks as if the two men had a car parked somewhere, but nobody seems to have seen them leave. We've got one witness down in the end block who thinks he may have seen something.”

“So we think Tunjin might have made an escape on a motorbike?” Luvsan said, incredulously. He was clearly struggling to picture the image.

“Who knows? The motorbike might have just been a coincidence. But it certainly looks as if—well, either he escaped or he wasn't here in the first place.”

“The gunshots at the far end of the blocks suggest that they were trying to stop someone,” Doripalam pointed out. “Has anyone had a look down there yet?”

Batzorig nodded. “Yes. There's a patch of waste ground out there. And an encampment—one of the permanent ones. We found an old man—” He stopped to glance at his notebook. “Agypar, apparently. Lives in the end block and happened to be down in the utility room in the basement at the time. Said he heard some gunshots and peered out. Saw two men, one of them apparently injured. Looked as if he'd been shot in the knee.”

“Tunjin?”

Batzorig shook his head. “Definitely not. I think Tunjin's build would have been unmistakable. This man was nothing like that. More likely to have been one of our two intruders. The old man thought he was wearing a leather jacket, but he was too far away to see anything for sure. When the old man realized it really was gunfire, he made himself scarce.”

“What about the motorbike?”

“Knew nothing about it,” he said. “Said he didn't see or hear anything of that kind. There were a few bikes chained up there, but most of them looked as if they'd been standing there a long time. There were some tire tracks, but it was difficult to be sure how recent they were.”

“Any sign of blood?” Doripalam said.

“We found a few traces on the ground. We've sent a sample to be analyzed, see if it matches Tunjin's records.”