Tu stared at him. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Well, more specifically—’
‘What are you thinking here, Owen? Have you lost your wits? Should I just call up the morgue and say, hey, how are things, could you just take Mr Wang from the drawer, a friend of mine’s got a thing for splatted corpses?’
‘I want to see his effects, Tian. Whatever he had in his pockets. His phone for instance.’
‘How am I supposed to get hold of his phone?’
‘You know half of Shanghai.’
‘But nobody in the morgue!’ Tu snorted and shoved his shabby glasses back up; they had worked their way down the bridge of his nose as they talked. His jowls quivered. ‘And as for what the surveillance tapes show, don’t get your hopes up.’
‘Why not? The footage must be on the system hard drive.’
‘I’m not authorised to look at it though. I’m just a tenant here, not the owner. Besides, once the police get involved, that footage will be evidence. You’re the one with contacts to the police.’
‘In this case it might not be very wise to bother them.’
‘Why not?’
‘Tell you later.’
‘I don’t know if I can help you.’
‘Yes or no?’
‘Unbelievable!’ Tu snapped. ‘Is that any way to talk to a Chinaman? We don’t do “yes or no”. We Chinese hate to commit ourselves to anything, you must have learned that by now, Longnose.’
‘I know, you chaps prefer an unambiguous “maybe”.’
Tu tried to look outraged. Then he grinned and shook his head. ‘I must be mad. All right though. I’ll do whatever I can. I’m really curious to see what you find so interesting about the jumper.’
In the few minutes that the conversation had lasted, the traffic on the Yan’an Donglu nearby had increased dramatically. The Huaihai Donglu, running parallel, was also suffering from clogged arteries. This heart attack seized hold of the city centre between Huangpu and Luwan twice daily. It was delusional to take your own car, but when Jericho went back to the COD point, he was left standing watching while someone took the last free one. That was the problem with CODs. On the one hand, there were too few of them; on the other hand, every COD that wasn’t up on the high-speed track was one car too many on the Shanghai streets.
Jericho’s mood plummeted. When he had still lived in Pudong, it had been easier to visit Tu. He walked to Huangpi Nanlu metro station and went down into the brightly lit passages, where hundreds of people were being shoved on board the overcrowded Line 1 by stoical crowd-handlers. Hardly had the carriage doors closed than he was bitterly regretting not having walked the mile to the river bank to catch a ferry. Obviously he still had to learn a few tricks about life in his new neighbourhood. He’d never lived so centrally before. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever having taken the metro at this time of day. Even less could he imagine doing it again.
The train picked up speed without any of the passengers even swaying. Almost all the men around were holding their arms up in the air so that their hands were in full view. This habit was based on the fear of being accused of groping. Where twelve people were standing shoulder-to-shoulder on every square metre, it was impossible to say whose hand it was on your crotch. There was sexual molestation every day on the most crowded trains, and often the victims didn’t even have the chance to turn around. Once more and more men were also being attacked, women too had got into the habit of raising their hands. A metro trip was a silent agony, and the children suffered most of all in the fug of clothes smell, sweat and genital odour that swirled round their heads.
Jericho was wedged in place right by the doors. As a result, the pressure of the crowd shoved him out onto the platform first at the next stop. He briefly considered going to Houchezhan, where the maglev ran through, connecting Pudong Airport to the town of Suzhou in the west; it ran right past the World Financial Center and offered an invigoratingly luxurious ride, though the price of a ticket was exorbitant, which was why it mostly ran half empty. He’d be at his destination within a minute, but the problem was that getting to the maglev station would take just as long as going on with the metro to Pudong. Nothing would be gained. At the same moment, the mass of humanity pushed him onto the conveyor for Line 2, and he let them carry him on, comforted by the certain knowledge that the bloke who had snapped up the last COD from under his nose wouldn’t have got a hundred metres by now.
When he crept out of the air-conditioned passages at Pudong, it felt as though he’d been slapped in the face with a hot towel. The sun hung amidst streaks of high cloud, an unfriendly, glaring dot. Slowly it clouded over. He looked over to the World Financial Center, standing off to one side behind the Jin Mao Tower. Grand Cherokee had been walking along those tracks, as though on a tightrope? Incredible! Either he’d gone mad, or circumstances had left him no choice. He logged on to the internet and loaded up the eyewitness footage on his phone. The shot was very shaky, but zoomed in crisp and clear. It showed a tiny figure up on the tracks.
‘Diane,’ he said.
‘Hello, Owen. What can I do for you?’
‘Enhance the video I have open. Get me everything you can with contrast and depth of field. Freeze every three seconds.’
‘As you say, Owen.’
He walked over to the bottle-opener, crossed the shopping mall and went up to the Sky Lobby.
Tu Technologies
Tu’s company took up floors 74 through 77, with the hotel above and the viewing platform and roller-coaster crowning the lot. A woman smiled warmly at Jericho and wished him good morning. Everyone knew her. Her name was Gong Qing, China’s newest female superstar, who had won an Oscar last year and had other things to do with her time than checking who came and went at Tu Technologies. Tu’s staff were used to it, they simply returned her greeting and went right on past, while visitors were asked their name and invited to place their palm on the actress’s outstretched right hand. Jericho did this too. Briefly he felt the cool surface of Gong Qing’s transparent 3D projection box. The system read his fingerprints and the lines on his hand, scanned his iris and stored his voiceprint. Gong Qing confirmed that he was already stored in the system and didn’t trouble to ask his name. Instead, a friendly look of recognition flitted across her features.
‘Thank you, Mr Jericho. It’s a pleasure to see you again. Who would you like to see, please?’
‘I have an appointment with Tu Tian,’ Jericho said.
‘Go up to the seventy-seventh floor. Naomi Liu is waiting for you.’
In the lift, Jericho silently paid tribute to Tu’s trick of managing to get a different well-known face for the reception routine every three months. He wondered how much Tu had paid the actress, left the lift and stepped into a vast room that took up the whole floor. All four floors of Tu Technologies were modelled this way. There were no little territories of desks and offices, no empty lifeless corridors. The staff roved around a manifold workscape assisted by their luggage-like lavobots, which carried an interfaced computer in their innards along with storage space for whatever material a staffer might need for that day’s work. All the staffers had their own personal lavobot, which they would pick up at reception in the morning and which followed them around from desk to workplace and docked there. There were open workspaces, closed cubicles, team spaces for brainstorming, and glassed-in soundproofed offices fitted with adjustably tinted glass. In the middle of every floor was a lounge oasis with sofas, a bar and a kitchen, harking back to the fireplaces which early man had gathered around two millennia ago.
We don’t just give our staff work to do, Tu used to say. We give them a home to come to.
Naomi Liu sat at her desk flanked by a curved conical screen two metres high. The screen, like the surface of her desk, was transparent. Documents, diagrams and film clips ghosted across the surfaces, as Naomi opened or shut them with her fingertips or gave voice commands. When she spotted Jericho, she bared her pearl-white teeth in a smile.
<
br /> ‘And? Happy with your new holowall?’
‘I’m afraid not, Naomi. The holograms don’t carry your scent to me.’
‘You exaggerate so elegantly.’
‘Not at all. My senses are rather sharper than other people’s. Don’t forget, I’m a detective.’
‘Then of course you’ll be able to tell me what perfume I’m wearing today.’
She looked at him half expectantly, half mocking. Jericho didn’t even try to guess a brand name. All perfumes smelled the same to him, flowers ground to powder and dissolved in alcohol.
‘The best,’ he said.
‘That answer gets you through to see the boss. He’s in the mountains.’
The ‘mountains’ were a shapeless seating range in the back of the room, its elements ceaselessly adjusting with a life of their own to the bodies which climbed or sprawled over it. You could flop down, climb up or lounge about. The range was stuffed with nanobots which made sure that the range itself constantly shifted position, as did the bodies that had plumped down into it. Experts held that thought came more easily when the body changed posture more often. Practical results bore them out. Most of Tu Technologies’ trailblazing ideas had been hatched in the cradling dynamic of the mountains.
Tu was enthroned right at the top, with two project managers, looking like a proud, fat kid up there. When he spotted Jericho, he broke off the conversation, slid down and got to his feet puffing and grunting, making futile attempts to smooth his rumpled trousers. Jericho watched patiently. He was sure that the trousers had already looked like that first thing in the morning.
‘An iron would work wonders there,’ he said.
‘Why?’ Tu shrugged. ‘These are all right.’
‘Aren’t you a bit old to go climbing about like that?’
‘Really?’
‘You came down that slope about as elegantly as an avalanche, if you’ll pardon my saying so. You might slip a disc.’
‘My discs are not up for discussion. Come along.’
Tu led Jericho to one of the glassed-in offices and shut the door behind them. Then he turned a switch so that the glass tinted itself dark and the ceiling began to glow. In a few seconds, the walls were completely opaque. They took seats at the oval conference table, and Tu settled, an expectant look on his face.
‘So, what have you got?’
‘I don’t believe that the authorities are looking for Yoyo,’ Jericho said. ‘At least, not the usual security organs.’
‘Is she still at large?’
‘I imagine so, She’s gone to ground in Quyu.’
To his surprise, Tu nodded, as though he had expected nothing less. Jericho told him everything that had happened since last time they spoke. Afterwards, Tu sat there in silence for a while.
‘And what are your suspicions regarding this student who died?’
‘My guts tell me he was murdered.’
‘Well, hooray for your guts.’
‘He lived in Yoyo’s flatshare, Tian. He wanted to drum some money out of me for information which he probably didn’t even have. Maybe he was playing the same game with somebody else, who was less patient with that sort of thing. Or maybe he really did know something, and was got out of the way before he could tell anybody.’
‘You, for instance.’
‘Me, for instance.’ Jericho gnawed at his lip. ‘Well, it’s a theory. But it sounds plausible to me. Yoyo clears off, her flatmate makes gnomic remarks about knowing where she is, he wants money and then he falls off the roof. It rather raises the question of who helped him do that. The police? Not on your life! They would have put the kid through the wringer, not tossed him overboard. Apart from which, they would only have one reason to go after Yoyo, and that would be if they had exposed her. Has there been even a single policeman up here to see you?’
Tu shook his head.
‘They’d have come here, you can bet your life on that,’ Jericho said. ‘Yoyo works for you. They’d have been knocking at Chen’s door, and squeezing Yoyo’s flatmates for information. None of that happened. She must have been stepping on somebody else’s toes. Somebody less squeamish.’
Tu pursed his lips. ‘Hongbing and I could put a blog entry up on this forum she posted to. We could tell her—’
‘Forget it. Yoyo can do without you trying to make contact.’
‘I don’t understand. Why didn’t she at least send Hongbing some message?’
‘Because she’s frightened of dragging him into it. Right at the moment, she’s completely concentrated on just how much she can risk without bringing danger down upon herself and other people. How is she to know whether or not Chen’s under surveillance, or you? So she’s playing dead, and trying to get some information. She was safe in Quyu, for a while, but then she got word that I was on my way. Since then she knows that I’ve been there. And that someone was following me. With that, the Andromeda was done with as a hiding-place. She had to leave there as well, leaving no more sign than when she left her flat.’
‘This Zhao Bide,’ Tu said thoughtfully. ‘What part do you think he plays in all this?’
‘No idea. He was helping to set up the concert, so presumably he’s something to do with the Andromeda.’
‘A City Demon?’
‘He says no.’
‘On the other hand, he knows that Yoyo is a Guardian.’
‘Yes, but I get the impression that he knew nothing about the message she posted up on Brilliant Shit. It’s hard to place him. Definitely some of the Guardians are also City Demons. But not all the Demons are Guardians. Then there are people who help Yoyo without belonging to either group. Such as Zhao.’
‘And you think she trusts him?’
‘It looks as though he’d very much like her to. Mind you, she hasn’t told him where she ran off this time.’
‘She didn’t tell me or Chen either.’
‘Also true. That doesn’t get us any further though.’ Jericho looked at Tu reproachfully. ‘As you well know.’
Tu returned his gaze equably.
‘What are you getting at?’
‘Every time Yoyo has to run, the number of people she can trust with her whereabouts becomes smaller. But there have to be some who know quite well.’
‘And?’
‘And with all due respect, I’m wondering whether there’s anything you’ve been keeping from me.’
Tu steepled his fingers.
‘You think I know the rest of the Guardians?’
‘I think that you’re trying to protect Yoyo, and yourself as well. Let’s assume that strictly speaking you didn’t need my help at all. Nevertheless, you gave me this investigation to carry out so that you didn’t have to take action yourself. Nobody’s supposed to know that Tu Tian is unduly interested in a dissident’s whereabouts. Chen Hongbing on the other hand is Yoyo’s father, there’s no problem if he hires a detective.’
Jericho waited to see whether Tu would say anything about that, but all he did was take his crooked glasses off his nose and start polishing them on a corner of his shirt.
‘Let’s also assume,’ Jericho went on, ‘that you know where Yoyo skedaddles to when there’s trouble. And now Chen Hongbing comes along, knowing nothing whatsoever of all this, and asks you for help. Should you tell him what his daughter gets up to online, and that you know all about it? More than that, that you approve of what she does and you know where she’s hiding? He would go crazy, so you point him towards me and you also slip me the vital clue: the City Demons. By the way, Grand Cherokee Wang told me about them as well. That was how you told me where I should look. Your plan was simple enough: I find the girl, you keep a low profile, you don’t need to bare all to Chen, the father is reassured as to where his daughter is, and his friend can sleep soundly.’
Tu looked up briefly and kept on polishing his glasses, not saying a word.
‘For all that, what you didn’t know and still don’t, is who Yoyo’s enemies are, and what this whole thing’s about. Th
at has unsettled you. Now that Yoyo has left the Andromeda, you’re groping around in the dark just like I am. Things have got complicated. You’re just as clueless and worried as Chen, and on top of that, someone’s dead.’
Breathe on glasses, polish with shirt.
‘Meaning that from now on, you really need me.’ Jericho leaned forward. ‘And this time it’s for a real investigation.’
Breathe, polish.
‘But to do that, I have to be able to investigate!’
With a dry snap, the arm of the glasses, patched already with sticky-tape, broke. Tu cursed under his breath, cleared his throat noisily and tried to put them back on the bridge of his nose, where they balanced like a car about to slip off the edge of a cliff.
‘I could recommend you an optician, by the way,’ Jericho added drily. ‘But first of all you have to tell me what you’ve been keeping quiet so far. Otherwise I can’t help you.’
Otherwise, he found himself thinking, I could fall off a roof myself soon enough.
Tu drummed on the table with the arm of his glasses.
‘I knew what I was doing when I hired you. It’s just that it wouldn’t do you any good if I give you the names of the other five Guardians. They’ll have gone to ground as well.’
‘For one thing, I have a trail to follow. For another, I have an ally.’
‘Zhao Bide?’
‘Even if he’s not a City Demon, he’ll know their faces. I need names and photos.’
‘Photos, that will take some time.’ Tu dug around in his ear. ‘You’ll get the names. Anyway, you know one of them already.’
‘Really?’ Jericho raised his eyebrows. ‘Who?’
‘His nickname’s Daxiong – Great Bear.’
‘The man-mountain with the cannonball head?’ He tried to imagine Daxiong being politically aware, armed with an intellect that could put the Party in uproar. ‘I can hardly believe that. I was convinced that his bike had a higher IQ than him.’
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