‘We won’t get any further like this. Where are you anyway?’
Kenny paused for a moment.
‘Nice flat. Looks like you’ve done some house-clearing.’
Jericho gave a sour smile. He felt a kind of satisfaction in being proved right and having got out in good time.
‘You’ll find a cold beer in the fridge,’ he said. ‘Take it and go.’
‘I can’t do that, Owen.’
‘Why not?’
‘Haven’t you had jobs to do, like I do? Aren’t you used to taking things to their conclusion?’
‘I’ll tell you once more—’
‘Imagine the inferno if the flames should take hold of other parts of the building.’
Jericho’s mouth dried up all of a sudden.
‘What flames?’
‘The ones from your flat.’ Kenny’s voice had dropped to a whisper and he suddenly reminded Jericho of a snake: a huge talking snake stuffed into the body of a human being. ‘I’m thinking of the people, and also of you. I mean, everything here looks new and expensive. You’ve probably put all your savings into it. Wouldn’t it be terrible to lose all that at one go, just for a matter of principle, out of solidarity with some pig-headed girl?’
Jericho said nothing.
‘Can you imagine my situation any better now?’
A host of insults collected on the tip of Jericho’s tongue. Instead he said as quietly as possible, ‘Yes, I think so.’
‘That’s a weight off my mind. Really! I mean, we weren’t a bad team, Owen. Our interests are marginally different, but basically we want the same thing in the end.’
‘And now?’
‘Just tell me where Yoyo is.’
‘I don’t know.’
Kenny seemed to think about it.
‘Good. I believe you. So you’ll have to track her down for me.’
Track her down—
Good God! What sort of bloody idiot was he? He didn’t know what tricks the hitman had up his sleeve, but doubtless everything he said was designed to drag the conversation out. Kenny was trying to track him down. To locate him.
Without hesitation, Jericho hung up.
Less than a minute later his phone lit up again.
‘I give you two hours,’ hissed Kenny. ‘Not a minute longer. Then I want to hear something that will put my mind at rest, otherwise I’ll consider myself forced to undertake a radical restructuring of the building.’
Two hours.
What was Jericho supposed to do in two hours?
He hastily bundled the display and the keyboard back into his backpack, put a banknote on the table and left the bistro without a backwards glance. He strode towards the lift, took it down to the underground garage, climbed onto his bike and brought it out onto Liuhekou Lu, where he started the engine and flew towards the river. During the short flight a bulky ambulance hovered below him, big enough for him to land on. In the distance he saw an armada of unmanned fire-engines making for the hinterland of Pudong. Private skymobiles crossed his path, pleasure-blimps bobbed above the Huangpu. For a moment he considered flying to the WFC and looking up Tu, but it was too early for that. He would need peace to carry out his plan, and he had to have somewhere to stay, for as long as Kenny robbed him of the warmth and security of Xintiadi.
And he knew where.
Looming over the grand buildings of the Bund was one of the most peculiar hotels in Shanghai. Like a huge lotus blossom, China’s symbol of growth and affluence, the roof of the Westin Shanghai Bund Center opened itself up to the sky. It made some people think of an agave, others of an outsize octopus extending its tentacles to filter birds and skymobiles out of the air. Jericho saw it only as a refuge whose manager played in the same golf club as himself and Tu Tian. A casual acquaintance without the bonus of familiarity, but Tu liked the man, and tended to use the hotel as accommodation for business partners too lowly for the WFC and the Jin Mao Tower. Jericho was also granted the indulgence of special conditions, a favour that he had so far never called on. Now, since he felt little desire to wander nomadically from bistro to bistro, he decided to make use of it. After he had landed his bike by the front entrance, he stepped into the lobby and asked for a single room. The cameras set into the wall scanned him and passed the relevant information on to the receptionist. She smilingly greeted him by name, a sign that he was already on their files, and asked him to set his phone down on the touchscreen. The hotel computer compared Jericho’s ID with the database, authorised the reservation and uploaded the access code to Jericho’s hard drive.
‘Would you like us to take your car to the underground car park?’ the woman asked, and performed the trick of speaking with a smile even though her lips never met.
‘I’ve come on an airbike,’ said Jericho.
‘We’ve got a landing bay, as I’m sure you know,’ said the smile fixed to the corners of the receptionist’s mouth. ‘Do you want us to park your bike there for you?’
‘No, I’ll do that myself.’ He grinned. ‘Quite honestly, I need every hour of flying time I can get.’
‘Oh, I understand.’ The smile switched from routine politeness to routine cordiality. ‘Safe journey up there. Don’t forget, the hotel façade can take more knocks than you can.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
He left the lobby and flew his bike up along the glazed outside wall, constantly accompanied by his reflection. For the first time he became aware that he wasn’t wearing a helmet, as the regulations for airbikes demanded. Another reason to keep away from the police. If they found out that the bike wasn’t registered to him, it was going to be a tough thing to explain.
The landing pad was open and almost empty, aside from the hotel’s own shuttles. Nearly all twentieth-century visions of the future had assumed some form of private urban air traffic powered by lightbeams, taking it for granted that aerial traffic would shape the face of cities. In fact, the number of such skymobiles was tiny, and they were restricted to State and city institutions, a few exclusive taxi companies and millionaires like Tu Tian. In purely infrastructural terms, of course, there were good reasons for lightening ground traffic by exploiting the airborne variety, except that all these considerations faced a great Godzilla of a counter-argument: fuel consumption. To counteract the force of gravity you needed powerful turbines and a whole load of energy. The economical alternative, the gyrocopter, spiralled its way into the air by rotor power like a helicopter, but had the disadvantage of excessively massive rotor blades. Financially, the expense of making cars fly was entirely disproportionate to the effect, and airbikes, even though they were more economical and affordable, weren’t really an exception to that. They were still expensive enough to make Jericho wonder who could afford to supply a hitman with three – especially customised models. The police, chronically underfunded? Hardly. Secret services? More likely. The army?
Was Kenny a soldier? Was the army behind all this?
With his backpack over his shoulder, Jericho took the lift to his floor and held his phone up to the infrared port beside the door to his room. It swung open, revealing a view of the room behind it. Fussy and staid, was his first impression. All in great condition, but stylistically nowhere. Jericho didn’t care. Within a few minutes he had freed Diane from her backpack and connected her up. That made this room his new investigation agency.
Would Kenny set the loft on fire?
Jericho rubbed his temples. He wouldn’t be surprised, but on the other hand he doubted that the hitman would wait in Xintiandi until he called. Kenny would try to arrest Yoyo on his own initiative, probably aware that Jericho wasn’t automatically prepared for collaboration just because he was waving a box of matches around.