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.’
‘A lot of people think that,’ Tu commented. ‘A lot of people think that I’m a fat old coot who doesn’t have an optician and eats canned crap. Do you really think that Yoyo got away from you because the Great Bear was that dumb? He sent you off on your tour of the underworld, and you meekly followed his directions.’
Jericho had to admit that he was right.
‘Anyway, Tian, now you know why I don’t want to trouble my contacts,’ he said. ‘The police might be somewhat surprised. By now they’ll have found out that Wang was Yoyo’s flatmate. They’ll make inquiries and they’ll find out that I’m looking for the girl. Then they’ll start putting two and two together: a dead student, possibly murdered, a dissident with a record, a detective asking questions about one who’s also looking for the other. They shouldn’t be able to draw these conclusions; I want to be able to investigate discreetly. I might end up giving them the idea that they should pay more attention to Yoyo.’
‘I understand.’ Tu’s fingers glided across the tabletop, and the wall across from them became a screen. ‘Have a look at this, then.’
He saw the glass corridor and the door to the roller-coaster boarding platform, from the perspective of two security cameras.
‘How did you get the footage so quickly?’ asked Jericho, surprised.
‘Your wish was my command.’ Tu giggled. ‘The police put an electronic lock on it, but something like that’s not a problem for us. Our own surveillance network is linked in with the in-house cameras, apart from which we also hacked into some totally different systems. There would only have been trouble if they’d put a high-security block in place.’
Jericho considered this. Security blocks were commonplace. The fact that the officers in charge hadn’t bothered to install one told him something about how important they considered the case to be. Another indication that the police didn’t have Yoyo on their radar at all.
Two men appeared in the glass corridor. The shorter man walking in front had long hair and was fashionably dressed, with appliqués on his forehead and cheekbones. It was clearly Grand Cherokee Wang. A tall, slim man in a well-tailored suit walked behind him. There was something dandyish about his combed-back, brilliantined hair, thin moustache and tinted glasses. Jericho watched the way he turned his head about as he walked, scanning the whole corridor and resting his eyes for a fraction of a second on the security camera.
‘Smart operator,’ he muttered.
The two of them went to the middle of the corridor and disappeared from the corner of one camera’s view. The other showed the two of them entering the glass box of the control room with its console.
‘They talk for a while.’ Tu switched to fast-forward. ‘Nothing very much happens here.’
Jericho watched Grand Cherokee gesticulating with jerky speed, obviously showing the other man how the control unit worked. Then the two of them seemed to converse.
‘Now watch this,’ Tu said.
The film slowed down again to real time. The two men still stood next to one another. Grand Cherokee took a step towards the taller man, who stretched out an arm.
The next moment, the student collapsed, crashed his face into the edge of the console and fell to the ground. The other man took hold of him and pulled him back to his feet. Grand Cherokee staggered. The stranger held him tight. On a cursory examination, it must have looked as though he were holding up a friend who had had a sudden dizzy spell. A few seconds went by, then Grand Cherokee fell to his knees again. The tall man squatted down next to him and talked to him. Grand Cherokee doubled over and then lurched to his feet. A little while later the tall man left the control room, but then stopped and turned back. For the first time since he had stepped into the corridor, he turned his face to the camera.
‘Stop,’ said Jericho. ‘Can you blow him up?’
‘No problem.’ Tu zoomed the torso and face until they filled the screen. Jericho squinted. The man looked like Ryuichi Sakamoto playing the Japanese occupier in Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor.
‘Does he remind you of anybody?’ Tu asked.
Jericho hesitated. The resemblance to the Japanese actor–composer was striking. At the same time he had a creeping feeling that he was barking up the wrong tree. The film was ancient, and Sakamoto was well above seventy.
‘Not really. Send the picture over to my computer.’
Tu let the clip play on. Grand Cherokee Wang left the control room and then recoiled from the stranger. The two of them were lost to view for a while, then the tall man came back into sight. He went into the control room and started working at the console.
‘I’m wondering why the security guards didn’t react to that,’ Tu pronounced.
‘To what?’ Jericho asked.
‘What do you mean, to what?’ Tu stared at him. ‘To what you can see here!’
‘What does it look like?’
‘Well, the two of them had a spat, didn’t they?’
‘Did they?’ Jericho leaned back. ‘Aside from the fact that Wang fell to the ground twice, nothing happened at all. Maybe he’s doped up or drunk, or not feeling well. Our oily friend helps him back to his feet, that’s all. Also, the guards have a hundred storeys to watch here, you know how it works. They don’t spend their whole time staring at the screens. Anyway, is there any exterior footage?’
‘Yes, but it’s only put through to the Silver Dragon control room.’
‘Meaning that we can’t—’
‘That they can’t,’ said Tu. ‘We certainly can.’
Just at that moment the tall man left the control room, walked along the corridor and vanished into the next part of the building. Tu started another clip. The screen split up into eight smaller pictures, which taken together showed the whole course of the Silver Dragon’s track. One of the cameras showed Grand Cherokee standing at the end of the last carriage and looking behind himself again and again.
Then he stepped out onto the track.
‘Freeze,’ Jericho called. ‘I want to see his face.’
There was no doubt about it, Grand Cherokee’s face was frozen in a mask of panic. Jericho felt a mixture of fascination and horror.
‘Where does he want to go?’
‘He’s put some thought into it,’ Tu said in a low voice, as though talking out loud would make the terrified man on the tracks fall off. Meanwhile, the Silver Dragon left the platform and passed from one camera view to the next. ‘There are connections between the track and the building on the way round. With a little luck, he’ll reach one.’