‘The plan is that we commit to sharing information. As soon as one of us sees or hears something, we let the other guy know.’
Jericho hesitated. ‘Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?’
‘Just as long as you don’t expect me to answer.’
‘What’s your relationship with Yoyo?’
‘She’s got friends here. I’m one of them.’
‘I know that she has friends. What I want to know is what your relationship with Yoyo is. You’re not a City Demon. You know that she’s one of the Guardians, but that doesn’t mean that you’re one yourself.’
Zhao emptied his bottle and belched again.
‘In Quyu, we’re all in it together,’ he said equably.
‘Come on now, Zhao.’ Jericho shook his head. ‘Give me an answer or just drop the thing, but don’t try this romance-of-the-slums business on me.’
Zhao looked at him.
‘Do you know Yoyo in person?’
‘No, just from recordings.’
‘Anybody who’s met her in person has two choices. He falls in love, or puts his feelings on ice. Since she doesn’t want to fall in love with me, I’m working on the second option, but whatever happens, I’ll never leave her in the lurch.’
Jericho nodded and asked no more questions. He glanced across to the second car again.
‘I’m going to have another look round in the Andromeda,’ he said.
‘What for?’
‘Perhaps I’ll find something that might help us.’
‘If you like. If you get into trouble, it wasn’t me who said you could.’ He clapped Jericho on the shoulder and went across the yard to the rusty delivery van. Jericho saw him speaking to one of the roadies, gesticulating. It looked as though they were talking about where the stage lighting should go. Then the two of them heaved another wheeled trunk from the van. Jericho waited a minute and followed them inside. As he entered the main hall, the sound engineer’s desk was just being set up. There was nobody on the balcony. He went up the steel steps, slipped through the grey door, pulled on a pair of disposable surgical gloves and went into Yoyo’s shabby den once more. The first thing he did was put a bug under one of the floorboards. Then he quickly scanned the piles of printouts, magazines and books. Nothing there gave him any clues as to where Yoyo might be. Most of it was about music, fashion, design, hip Shanghai, politics, virtual environments and robotics. Specialist literature that Yoyo probably read to keep up with work at Tu Technologies. He went to the table and sorted through the waste-paper basket underneath: torn packaging, scrunched up and smeared with leftovers. Jericho smoothed them out. Several were from a place called Wong’s World, and bore its rather inept logo, a globe on a dish, covered with sauce and served with what was probably supposed to be vegetables. The globe even had a face, and looked visibly depressed.
Jericho took some photos and left the room.
As he went down the steel steps, Zhao looked up at him briefly and then turned back to the mixing desk. Jericho walked past him without a word and went outside. In the foyer, he spotted a poster for the Pink Asses. Unbelievable. They really did use the tagline Ass Metal, promising that their music went ‘right up your arse’.
He was fairly sure that he didn’t want to hear that.
As he unlocked the COD, he scanned his surroundings. The second car was still parked a little way away. Somebody had been on his tail, it would be naïve to imagine otherwise. He was probably being watched right at this moment.
A student who had promised to get some information about Yoyo, and fell to his death when his own roller-coaster ran him over. A COD that turned up right after he had arrived at the Andromeda. Yoyo’s renewed disappearance. How many coincidences did you have to shrug off before dry fear began to fur your tongue? Yoyo hadn’t been starting at shadows. She had every reason to hide, and there was still no knowing who was after her. The government, or its representatives the police and the Secret Services, would not shrink from murder if circumstances demanded. But what circumstances could force the Party to go this far? Yoyo might have earned the distinction of being an enemy of the State, but killing her for that wouldn’t have been the style of a regime that locked dissidents up these days, rather than killing them as in Mao’s times.
Or had Yoyo awoken a quite different sort of monster, one that didn’t play by the rules?
It was clear that whoever was hunting her also had Jericho in their sights. Too late to drop the case. He started the COD and dialled a number. It rang three times, and then Zhao’s voice spoke.
‘I’m getting out of here,’ Jericho said. ‘In the meantime, you can make yourself useful in this new partnership of ours.’
‘What should I do?’ asked Zhao.
‘Keep an eye on the second COD.’
‘Right you are. I’ll be in touch.’
Kenny Xin watched him drive away.
Fate was a fickle mistress. It had led him here, from the lofty eyrie atop the World Financial Center to the black crud that accumulated under the fingernails of the world’s economic superpower. This was always happening to him. No sooner did he think he had escaped the clutches of that syphilitic whore called humankind, thought that he no longer owed her a glance, would never have to endure her stinking breath again, than she dragged him back to her filthy lair. He’d had to endure the revolting sight of her back in Africa, let her touch him until he feared he was infected all over his body, that he would dissolve into a pool of ichorous pus. Now he had ended up in Quyu, and again the hideous mask of her visage was grinning at him and he couldn’t turn away. He felt dizzy, as always when overcome by this disgust. The world seemed to hang skew-whiff, so that he was amazed not to see the houses tumbling down and the people lose their footing.
He pressed finger and thumb against the bridge of his nose until he could think clearly again.
The detective had disappeared. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to bug his COD, but Xin had no doubt that Jericho had left Quyu for the time being and would return the car to the grid soon. He didn’t need to follow it. Jericho couldn’t get away from him. His gaze wandered over the yard, and he got rid of the disgust he felt by shedding waves of it to every side. How he hated the people in Quyu! How he had hated the underfed, chronically ill, dispirited creatures in Africa! Not that he had anything against them personally. They were anonymous, mere demographic statistics. He hated them because they were poor. Xin hated their poverty so much that it hurt him to see them alive.
High time to get out of here.
Jericho
He was just steering up the slipway onto the high-speed track when he got a call. The display stayed dark.
‘The guy who’s following you has left the complex,’ Zhao told him.
Automatically, Jericho glanced into the mirror. Silly idea. There were only CODs up here on the tracks, all the same shape and the same colour.
‘I haven’t seen anyone so far,’ he said. ‘At least he can’t have followed me directly.’
‘No, he waited a while.’
‘Can you describe him?’
‘Chinese.’
‘I see.’
‘About my height. Well dressed, elegant. Somebody who pretty clearly didn’t belong in Xuyu.’ Zhao paused. ‘Even you were less out of place.’
Jericho thought that he heard a grin in his voice. The COD accelerated.
‘I went through Yoyo’s waste-paper basket,’ he said, without responding to Zhao’s jab. ‘She seems to pick up her food in a place called Wong’s World. Heard of it?’
‘Maybe. Fast food joint?’
‘Could be. Might be a supermarket as well.’