The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes & Impossible Mysteries (11 page)

“Is it true that the women had reason to hate Zubov?” he asked, recalling Dima’s comment.

“You mean because he was constantly propositioning them? Actually, the way he was always looking at Ivana, I am surprised poor Cheslav waited until he was dead to kill the old lecher. If I had been her husband, I would have strangled him long ago!”

Dorj immediately recognized the possessive jealousy in Fabayan’s voice. How often had he encountered that fierce tone while investigating a crime? Perhaps that was why he so distrusted his own emotions. So often strong emotions led to disaster.

He might have felt compelled to ask whether the young man had been having an affair with Cheslav’s wife, but the aerialist grabbed one of the hanging ropes and hauled himself up into the shadows. A few seconds later, Dorj heard the creak of the swinging trapeze.

Dorj climbed into Zubov’s caravan. Having spoken to the last two or three members of the small troupe, he had discovered that, predictably, they all claimed that everyone else but themselves had good reason to hate the circus owner.

It was hard to remember he had driven out here hoping that for a few hours the circus’s dazzling lights, nimble performers and sideshows would free him from the dreariness of the vast grey desert and cramped grey offices of his official life. In Ulaanbaatar he had had the consolation of the State Theatre. Out here in Dalandzadgad culture was a traveling circus.

Dorj removed his wire-framed eyeglasses and carefully wiped their round lenses with his handkerchief. But when he put the spectacles back on, the scene remained unchanged and just as murky.

He examined the interior of the caravan. It held no revelations. Its few cupboards contained only household necessaries, and in any event they were too small for purposes of concealment. Nor had anyone been hiding in the lavatory cubicle, waiting to escape in the general excitement. He would surely have been noticed.

The blood smears on the floor and the imprint of a bloody hand on the lavatory door mutely reproached his lack of understanding.

Dorj positioned himself beneath the closed roof vent and reached up to touch it. When he had noticed it earlier, while examining the outside of the caravan, he’d guessed it was too small to serve as an entrance. Now he was certain. His shoulders were much wider than the opening and Dima, although short, was at least as broad. Not a proper midget, as Zubov had said. In addition, the vent gave no evidence of having been opened recently. Indeed, a ropy bit of cobweb hung down from it.

The cobweb made him think about Fabayan’s rigging. Didn’t aerialists fly through the air, in a manner of speaking? He would have had a motive, certainly, unless Dorj were mistaken about the aerialist’s relationship with Ivana. For that matter, Ivana was an acrobat. Dorj tried to imagine some way aerial or acrobatic skills might breach a locked caravan.

After a moment’s thought, Dorj replaced Zubov’s wooden chair to the spot he had seen it while assisting Dima to lay Hercules’ body on the bed. He sat down where Zubov had sat. Why had the circus owner locked the door until the ambulance came? As a precaution, no doubt. People who were hated had reason to lock their doors.

He glanced around again. By the disordered bed an empty vodka bottle had rolled into a corner.

So, he reasoned, perhaps Zubov had felt the need for a drink, sitting in his cold caravan with the corpse of his headline act. It was not surprising. Dorj tried to imagine how it would have been, sitting there with the dead man, drinking, perhaps eventually dozing.

And suddenly the dead man is rising from the bed. Impossible. It must be the vodka, or the tail end of a nightmare. Half awake, he is confused. He jumps to his feet. The chair topples over as the dead man advances. Convulsed with panic, the ringmaster backs away, but there is no escape. The corpse staggers against the lavatory door, steadies itself with a bloody hand. Then those huge hands fasten on Zubov’s throat. Trying to push the nightmare away, the ringmaster finds only a barrel chest gashed by a hideous wound.

Dorj shuddered. Trying to imagine the scene he had felt himself being drawn into it, almost like the shaman he had once seen performing for some tourists. Certainly the masked man, beating a drum and dancing about, had known as well as his spectators that he was not descending into the lower world. But as his gyrations became wilder it seemed to Dorj that the man was convincing himself that he was actually taking the impossible journey and in so doing was also persuading the spectators – most of them, at least – of the fact.

But what Dorj had imagined – a murderous corpse – was simply not possible.

And yet, the lion-tamer had been dead. The wound had been so terrible, he must have gone into shock instantly and died within minutes.

Dorj’s thoughtful gaze was drawn again to the bloody handprint on the door. Nor could he forget the welt around the strangled man’s neck.

Again he tried to picture the performers, and how their skills might have contributed to Zubov’s death. All the exercise did was remind him of a snippet of his limited knowledge of native Mongolian culture. Along with masks, shamans-religious magicians, scoffers called them – wore mirrors on their clothing. Weren’t the sequins sewn into circus performers’ outfits tiny mirrors? Perhaps it was just as Batu said, the soul being called back, simple magic. Was it so dreadful to believe there might be magic in the world?

Dorj finally found Larisa standing outside the cookhouse among the vehicles in the back yard.

“Do you have a few spare moments?” he asked.

The bearded lady shrugged. “We won’t be leaving until tomorrow.”

“You’ll continue to tour?”

“What else can we do? Eventually some legal person will let us know who owns the circus. Meanwhile we have to make a living.”

Dorj paused, gauging the light. It would be more than an hour before it was completely dark. “I need to ask you a few more questions. And there’s something you might like to see. A local landmark.”

“How mysterious. It’s been a long time since I’ve been asked out walking by a gentleman! I’d be pleased to accept.”

“Well, it isn’t exactly, that is to say – there are questions . . .”

“What? You aren’t shy about being seen with a girl who looks like me, are you?”

As they followed faint tyre ruts up a small hill that rose almost imperceptibly several minutes’ walk from the abandoned hangar, Dorj had to admit to himself that although he might indeed be shy about being seen with a bearded woman, it was nevertheless a marked, almost welcome, change from his grey official life.

“Here’s something you might want to know,” Larisa said, when they were well away from the back yard. “Dima is Buturlin’s son. Illegitimate. I understand when Buturlin made Zubov a partner, their agreement required the circus to keep Dima on, even in the event sole ownership passed to Zubov. The agreement apparently didn’t specify that Zubov had to treat him like a human being.”

Dorj nodded, wondering why Larisa was offering the information. Perhaps it was just to be helpful. People did not always need ulterior motives, he reminded himself. “Perhaps Zubov hoped to force him to leave?”

“It would be his way,” agreed Larisa.

“Does Dima have any interest in the circus, now that his father’s partner is gone?”

“I don’t know. You don’t suspect Dima, do you? Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything.”

The wind was still cold, but walking made Dorj feel warmer. Perhaps it was his slight build that made him mind the chill. It was not a good trait for a Mongolian, even a city dweller as he had been, since in Ulaanbaatar in the winter it was not unknown for the temperature to reach 40 below.

He asked his companion about Ivana and Fabayan. Larisa confirmed his suspicion. “She married Cheslav in a fit of pique shortly after Zubov hired him, because she’d just had a big quarrel with Fabayan. Ivana is impetuous and emotional, always has been. She and Fabayan quickly made it up. Poor Cheslav. I often wondered how he could not have known.”

They had reached the windswept brow of the hill. From this vantage point, they could see the black bulk of the hangar. Beyond it lay a litter of abandoned Russian military equipment, left there to rust into oblivion in the Gobi’s vast emptiness.

Here at the top of the hill was the much older landmark Dorj had wanted to show Larisa. It was a pile of rocks standing higher than his head, a sacred
obo
, built stone by stone by passing travellers over the span of hundreds of years. Up here, looking at such a thing, it was easy to believe the impossible.

“So Cheslav avenged himself on the wrong man,” mused Dorj.

“You don’t really believe a dead man got up and strangled someone, do you? You’re thinking like Shakespeare, with all those ghosts stamping about calling for bloody vengeance!”

“You know Shakespeare?”

“Circus people know everything.”

“I really can’t make anything of it,” Dorj admitted. He related his conversation with the dead man’s wife.

Larisa pondered for a few moments. “What if she somehow gave the tranquilizer to Cheslav?” she finally suggested. “Not to kill him outright. Just to make him slow, perhaps affect his reactions. Give the lion its chance, you know? He was frightened of the lion, and I think they can sense it. Well, she was too, especially having to feed it. Though she disliked the reptiles even more.”

Dorj nodded. It almost seemed a reasonable theory, given the character of the widow. A tawdry triangle and a more than melodramatic way to get rid of an unwanted husband.

Larisa continued. “But here is another idea. About that terrible wound Cheslav had – perhaps it didn’t kill him immediately because of the tranquilizer in him? And he came to in the caravan? He probably thought that Zubov had plotted with Ivana, and that would be enough. He would want revenge before he died.” She sighed and continued, “But it is all too fantastic, even for a circus, don’t you think?”

Dorj shrugged without comment. Her theories made as much, or as little, sense as anything he had been able to think of up to that point.

Sunset was a purpling bruise on the horizon. In its soft light, they stood looking at the pile of stones that formed the obo. It was not the sort of thing to which Dorj was usually drawn. But it was the only magic he could think to offer this strange woman.

“This is an ancient place of power,” he explained.

“A good spot to solve your mystery, then.”

Dorj listened to the wind sighing around the
obo.
He thought of the unknown number of ancient hands, belonging to forgotten people all now turned to dust, this single action of their lost lives, the placing of a stone, now all that was left of them.

“It is a good place to make one believe the dead might return,” he said, quietly. “We should go back before it gets dark.”

He picked up a pebble and added it to the
obo.
As Larisa bent to do the same, she stumbled and, as he had earlier, Dorj caught her arm. This time he was not so quick to let go.

“You would never guess I was an acrobat once,” she said.

“And, so I am told, a contortionist. You didn’t mention that.”

Larisa’s blue eyes widened slightly. “You don’t suspect me, do you? Do you suppose I managed to wriggle into the caravan somehow?” She looked away from him. “I’m sorry, Inspector. But in fact, I have indeed misled you about something else. You didn’t think this was real?”

She grabbed the edge of her beard and pulled. Dorj stared for a second at the suddenly smooth face. “Now there is a magical transformation which the Bard himself would have been proud to preserve in his work,” he finally said.

To his distress he saw that the unveiled face was set in a frown.

“I have never suspected you, Larisa,” he quickly assured her. “In fact, right now I need your assistance.” He grabbed her hand – he could hardly believe he had done so – and hurried her back down the hill.

“There may be another trap around here,” Larisa worried. “Be careful. Dima might have put some more out. I wish you’d tell me what you’re looking for.”

So far she and the inspector, searching around the back of the hangar with the aid of a fading torch, had located perhaps a dozen traps, finding only one sprung, and that holding an unfortunate rat. Dorj merely insisted they continue looking. She swung the feeble yellow light across the ground until it lit upon a metal stake. The flickering beam slid down the stake’s attached chain to reveal another trap, and beside it a semi-comatose snake.

“It belongs to the circus, doesn’t it?” said Dorj.

“Yes. It’s Nikita. How do you know?”

“I grew up in the city, but I don’t think boa constrictors are native to the Gobi. Not even ones as small as this.”

“He’s just a baby,” Larisa pointed out. “Zubov traded our big python for it. He eats less. Ivana didn’t say anything about him being missing.”

“There were pictures of snakes on the animal trailer, but I didn’t notice any inside. At least one aquarium was empty, though. When you wondered whether I suspected you’d managed to wriggle into the trailer caravan, it reminded me.”

Sluggish from ingesting whatever it had found in the trap, the snake was quickly popped into the empty feed sack Dorj had brought with him. “We’ll need this for evidence,” he commented.