Read Online The Adversary by Michael Walters - Free Book Online

it wouldn’t look very different. Though maybe the smell would have been sufficient to discourage them. Taking care to avoid the scattered plates and bottles, Tunjin stumbled through into the bedroom. It was in a marginally better state than the larger living room, in that there were no plates of half-eaten food and only a single empty vodka bottle lying by the bed. The bed itself was disturbed, though he had no recollection of using it on the preceding nights. But then he had no clear recollection of sleeping anywhere else either.
    He moved slowly into the bedroom, shaking his head to try to clear his thoughts, swallowing the panic that was once again beginning to well up in his stomach. And then he stopped, and for a moment the fear overwhelmed him.
    There was something lying in the center of the unmade bed. A gray cardboard file, bound with an elastic band. A file he recognized. A file he had last seen sitting, apparently unregarded, on the Chief’s desk.
    The case file relating to Muunokhoi.
    He walked forward slowly and reached out to touch the file, as though suspecting that it was a hallucination. Stranger things had happened, he imagined, after the consumption of this much alcohol. But there was no question that it was real.
    Had he somehow contrived to bring it home with him? Maybe sometime over the last few days, his drunken logic had somehow led him back to police headquarters with the aim of stealing the evidence. Though it was difficult to imagine that anyone would have let him in, and he couldn’t believe that he had been in a state to enter without being spotted.
    Maybe he’d somehow picked it up on the day of the interview with the Chief. Picked it up off the Chief’s desk, without either of them registering the fact. It didn’t seem very likely.
    Or maybe someone else had stolen the file on his behalf and brought it here as—well, as what? As a warning? To incriminate him in some way?
    He leaned over and carefully picked up the file, a wave of nausea sweeping over him as he did so. Hepulled off the elastic band and opened the file, rifling through the stack of papers inside.
    They were exactly as he recalled them. Including those notes and documents that he had either forged himself or had had painstakingly prepared by one of his contacts, a former fraudster, who had worked for nothing other than a few mild blackmail threats. Tunjin wondered, in passing, whether Muunokhoi might have expressed any interest in the person who had actually carried out this skilled work.
    But Tunjin’s more immediate concern was his own well-being. The papers in the file were almost as he had seen them last. But not quite. There was one small, but highly significant, difference. Slipped into the front of the file, on top of the pile of documents, was something new, something which Tunjin was sure had not been there when he had last seen the file.
    It was a photograph. A high quality photograph, apparently taken in a photographer’s studio, with the subject carefully posed. If the subject of the photograph had been, say, an actor or a singer, this might have been the shot selected for sending out, over the artiste’s signature, to fans. There was no need for a signature here, though, since Tunjin recognized the subject only too well. It was Muunokhoi. His eyes were empty, but his mouth, as always, seemed to be smiling.
    â€œI’m here to report a crime. Or a potential crime, I’m not sure. Is this the correct place?”
    Sangajav, sitting uncomfortably at the reception desk, looked up confusedly. He had been working painstakingly through a series of statistics thatDoripalam had requested and now he had lost his place. “I’m sorry?”
    The woman before him presented an impressive figure. Probably around forty, he thought, with a severe haircut and features that were striking rather than conventionally attractive but still with a very decent figure. Very fashionable