‘He won’t though,’ said Jericho.
Tu shook his head silently. Horrified, they watched Grand Cherokee die. For a while neither said a word, until Jericho cleared his throat.
‘The time stamps,’ he said. ‘Once you compare them there’s no doubt that it was our friend who started the Silver Dragon. And something else strikes me. We only saw his face twice, and it wasn’t clear either time. He knew how to keep his back to the camera as well.’
‘And what conclusions do you draw from that?’ Tu asked hoarsely.
Jericho looked at him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But you and Chen – you’ll have to get used to the idea that Yoyo has a professional killer after her.’
No, he thought, wrong. Not just Yoyo.
Me too.
Tu Technologies was one of the few companies in Shanghai with its own private fleet of skymobiles. In 2016 the World Financial Center had been retro-fitted with a hangar for skycars above the offices on the seventy-eighth floor. It had room for two dozen vehicles, half belonging to the company that owned the building, most of these being huge VTOL craft for evacuation. Since Islamist terrorists had steered two passenger jets into the twin towers of the New York World Trade Center not even a quarter-century ago, there had been growing interest in skymobiles with every passing year, leading to the development of various models. By now nearly every newly built super-high-rise in China had flight decks. Seven of the vehicles belonged to the Hyatt: four elegant shuttles with steerable jets, two skybikes and a gyrocopter. Tu’s fleet consisted of two of the helicopter-like gyros and the Silver Surfer, a gleaming ultra-slim VTOL. Last year Jericho had had the treat of piloting it for a few hours: a reward for a job instead of him billing them. It was a wickedly expensive piece of technology. Now Tu was sitting in the pilot seat. He wanted to visit Chen Hongbing, and then had to meet some people for business in Dongtan City, a satellite city of Shanghai on Chongming Island in the Yangtze, which held the record as the world’s most environmentally friendly city. Tu Technologies had developed a virtual canal for the city, which was already threaded with dozens of real canals; their glass tunnel would create the illusion of gliding along through a town in the age of the Three Kingdoms, that beloved cradle of so many stories between the Han and the Jin dynasties.
‘We’ve become the world number-one polluters,’ Tu explained apropos of Dongtan. ‘Nobody poisons the planet as chronically as China does, not even the United States of America. On the other hand, you won’t find anyone else as thorough in applying alternative sustainable designs. Whatever we do, we seem to do it to the limit. That’s what we understand by yin and yang these days: pushing the very boundaries.’
The huge hangar was brightly lit. The in-house VTOLs rested one next to the other like stranded whales. As Tu steered his manta-flat vehicle over to the starting strip, the glass doors at the front of the hangar slid aside. He swung the machine’s four jets to horizontal and accelerated. A howling roar filled the hall, then the Silver Surfer shot out over the edge of the building and fell down towards the Huangpu. Two hundred metres above ground, Hu lifted the machine’s nose and steered it over the river in a wide curve.
‘I’ll give Hongbing a toned-down version,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell him that the police aren’t after Yoyo, but that she might believe they are. And that she’s still in Quyu.’
‘If she’s still in Quyu,’ Jericho threw in.
‘Whatever. What will you do next?’
‘Sift the net, hoping that Yoyo might have left another message. Take a good close look at a fast food chain called Wong’s World.’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘Probably only exists in Quyu. Yoyo’s waste-paper basket was spilling over with Wong’s World wrappers. Thirdly, I need information on the Guardians’ current projects. Meaning the full picture,’ he said with a sideways glance. ‘No cosmetic alterations, no cards up your sleeve.’
Tu looked like a deflated balloon. For the first time since Jericho had known him, he looked helpless. The glasses hung uselessly on his nose.
‘I’ll tell you what I know,’ he said penitently.
‘That’s good.’ Jericho pointed to the bridge of his nose. ‘Tell me, can you actually see anything with those things?’
Without a word, Tu opened a box in the middle of the instrument panel, took out a completely identical pair of glasses, put them on and threw the old ones behind him. Jericho spent a moment wondering whether his eyes had been playing tricks on him. Were there really a dozen more pairs stored there?
‘Why do you repair your glasses with sticky-tape if you’ve got so many you could just throw them away?’ he asked.
‘Why not? That pair was all right.’
‘It was a long way from – oh, never mind. As far as Hongbing is concerned, I think that sooner or later he’ll have to learn the whole truth. What do you say? In the end, he’s Yoyo’s father. He has a right to know.’
‘But not yet.’ Tu flew over the Bund, brought the Silver Surfer lower and turned south. ‘You have to treat Hongbing with kid gloves – be very careful what you say to him. And something else: this business with Grand Rococo’s mortal remains, or whatever the guy was called – well, I reckon there’s no chance of getting at his effects, but I’ll think a little more about it. You’re mostly interested in his phone, is that right?’
‘I want to know who he telephoned ever since Yoyo disappeared.’
‘Good, I’ll do what I can. Where should I drop you?’
‘At home.’
Tu bled off some speed and steered towards Luwan Skyport, only a few minutes from Xintiandi on foot. As far as the eye could see, the traffic was jammed solid in the streets, only the cabin cars on the COD track sped along. His fingers manipulated the holographic field with the navigation instruments, and the jets swung down to the vertical. They sank gently down as though in a lift. Jericho looked through the side window. Two city gyrocopters were parked at the edge of the strip, both painted with the markings that identified them as ambulances. Another was just taking off, lifted terrifyingly close to them and roared off towards Huangpu at full power. Jericho felt something in his hip pocket vibrate, took out his phone and saw that somebody was trying to reach him. He picked up the call.
‘Hey, little Jericho.’
‘Zhao Bide.’ Jericho clicked his tongue. ‘My new friend and confidant. What can I do for you?’
‘Don’t you miss Quyu?’
‘Give me a reason to miss the place.’
‘The crab baozi in Wong’s World is excellent.’
‘You found the shop, then.’
‘I even knew the place. I’d just forgotten what it was called. It’s in what you might call the civilised part of Xaxu. You must have driven this way when you came. It’s a sort of covered street market. Great big place.’
‘Good. I’ll have a look at it.’
‘Not so fast, Mr Detective. There are two markets. The branches are one block apart.’
‘There isn’t a third?’
‘Just these two.’
The Silver Surfer settled to a halt. Tu shut down the engines.
‘I’ll be needed in the Andromeda until seven,’ Zhao said. ‘At least until the Pink Asses have made it onstage, which isn’t always so straightforward. After that I’m free.’
Jericho considered. ‘Good. Let’s take up our posts. One of us watching each branch. Could be that Yoyo and her friends come by.’
‘And what’s that worth to me?’
‘But Zhao, little Zhao!’ Jericho expostulated. ‘Are those the words of a worried lover?’
‘They’re the words of a Quyu lover, you hopeless idealist. What about it? Do you want my help or don’t you?’