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‘I found the girl,’ he said without preamble.

Tu raised his eyebrows. ‘That was fast.’ There was even something like awe in his voice. Then he noticed Jericho’s sour look. ‘And what’s the problem? If there is just one problem.’

‘She slipped through my fingers.’

‘Ah.’ Tu tutted. ‘Well then. You’ll have done your best, little Owen.’

‘I don’t particularly want to talk over the details on the phone. Should we fix up a meeting with Chen Hongbing, or would you like to hear about it first?’

‘She is his daughter,’ Tu said diplomatically.

‘I know. I’ll say it straight. I’d rather speak to you first.’

Tu looked reassured, as though that was what he had been hoping for. ‘I think we’ll do that, though it doesn’t mean we won’t do the other,’ he said magnanimously. ‘But it would certainly be wise to let me know what’s on your mind. When can you be here?’

‘In a quarter of an hour, if the roads aren’t jammed. Something else, Tian. The fellow who fell from your roof this morning—’

‘Yes, a bad business.’

‘What do you know about it?’

‘The circumstances of his death are somewhat curious, to say the least.’ Tu’s eyes gleamed. He seemed less distraught than fascinated. ‘The guy went for a walk along the tracks, five hundred metres up! I ask you, is that normal behaviour for a student who was just looking to earn a few yuan on the side? What was he doing there?’

‘I hear there’s a video.’

‘An eyewitness video, that’s right. It was on the news.’

‘Have they released it?’

‘Yes, but you can’t see very much. Just this what’s-his-name, Grand Chevrolet, climbing about like a monkey up there and then trying to jump over the carriages.’

‘Grand Cherokee. His name’s Grand Cherokee Wang.’ Jericho massaged the bridge of his nose. ‘Tian, I have to ask you for a favour. In the news it said that the surveillance cameras on the top floor of the World Financial Center showed Wang with a man. Obviously they had an argument. I’d like to have a look at the footage, and—’ Jericho hesitated – ‘at Wang as well, if possible.’

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’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.

‘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.’