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The fingers of her right hand moved through the void, etching something into it. A moment later a dark field appeared in the clear air. An old-fashioned dial tone was heard, absurdly mundane and out of place in this strange world.

‘He hasn’t activated picture mode,’ she said, as if apologising for Hongbing’s backwardness.

‘I know, his old phone. You gave it to him.’

‘I’m amazed he’s still using it,’ she snorted. It went on ringing. ‘He should really be at the car dealership. If he doesn’t pick up, I’ll call th—’

The dial tone stopped. There was a quiet rustling sound, along with other background noises. No one spoke.

Yoyo looked uncertainly at Jericho.

‘Father?’ she whispered.

The answer came quietly. It crept up ominously, a fat, weary snake rearing up to take a closer look at its next victim.

‘I’m not your father, Yoyo.’

* * *

Jericho didn’t know what was going to happen. Yoyo was stricken, her friends were dead. She had to deal with the sort of images that are only bearable in nightmares, whose horror subsides in the morning light. But there was no awaking from this nightmare – Kenny’s voice seeped like poison into the island idyll. But when Yoyo spoke, there was nothing but suppressed rage in her words.

‘Where is my father?’

Kenny took his time, a long time, before answering. Yoyo in turn said nothing, waiting frostily, so both of them remained silent, a mute test of strength.

‘I’ve given him the day off,’ he said at last. He crowned the remark with a smug, quiet chuckle.

‘That doesn’t answer my question.’

‘No one told you to ask questions.’

‘Is he well?’

‘Very well. He’s taking a rest.’

The way Kenny said ‘very well’ was designed to suggest the precise opposite. Yoyo clenched her fists.

‘Listen, you sick fuck. I want to talk to my father right away, you hear? After that you can make your demands, but first give me a sign of life, or else you can go on talking to yourself. Did you get any of that?’

Kenny let the rustling noise continue down the line for a while.

‘Yoyo, my jade girl,’ he sighed. ‘Clearly your world-view is based on a series of misunderstandings. In stories like this the roles are assigned in a different way. Every
one of your words that doesn’t meet with my absolute approval will cause pain to Hongbing. I’ll let you off with the “sick fuck”.’ He giggled. ‘You could even be right.’

Vain as a peacock, thought Jericho. Kenny might be a pretty exotic specimen of a contract killer, but he seemed much closer to the profile of a psychopathic serial killer. Narcissistic, in love with his own words, flirting affectionately with his own obnoxiousness.

‘A sign of life,’ Yoyo insisted.

All of a sudden the black rectangle changed. Kenny’s face filled it almost completely. He hovered above the pearly beach like a spirit in a bottle. Then he vanished from the camera’s perspective, and a room became visible, with a wall of windows at the back, bright daylight falling through them. The outlines of some items of furniture could be seen, a chair with someone sitting on it. In front of it, something black, massive and three-legged.

‘Father,’ whispered Yoyo.

‘Please say something, honourable Chen,’ said Kenny’s voice.

Chen Hongbing sat as motionless on his chair as if he had become a part of it. With the light behind him, it was almost impossible to make out his face. When he spoke he sounded as if someone was walking on dry leaves.

‘Yoyo. Are you okay?’

‘Father,’ she cried. ‘It’s all fine, everything’s going to be fine!’

‘It— I’m so sorry.’

‘No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I really am!’ A moment later her eyes filled with tears. With a visible effort of will she forced herself to calm down. Kenny appeared in the picture again.

‘Terrible quality, this phone,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid your father could hardly hear you. Perhaps you could come and see him, what do you think?’

‘If you do anything—’ Yoyo began unsteadily.

‘What I do is entirely up to you,’ Kenny replied coolly. ‘He’s quite comfortable at the moment, except that his mobility is a little restricted. He is sitting in the sights of an automatic rifle. He can speak and blink. If he suddenly feels like jumping in the air or just raising his arm, the gun will go off. Unfortunately it will also do that if he tries to scratch himself. Not quite so cosy, perhaps.’

‘Please don’t hurt him,’ sobbed Yoyo.

‘I’m not interested in hurting anyone, believe it or not. So come here, and come quickly.’ Kenny paused. When he went on talking, the snakelike tone had left his voice. Suddenly he sounded friendly again, almost matey, the way Zhao Bide had spoken. ‘Your father has my word that nothing will happen as long as you cooperate. That involves telling me the names of everyone who knows about the intercepted
message, or even what was in it. And you are to give me every, really
every
drive with a download of the message on it.’

‘You destroyed my computer,’ said Yoyo.

‘I destroyed something, yes. But did I destroy
everything
?’

‘Don’t contradict him,’ Jericho whispered to Yoyo.

She said nothing.

‘You see.’ Kenny smiled as if his assumption had been confirmed. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll keep my word. And bring that shaven-headed giant with you, you remember the one. You will both come in through the front door, it’s open.’ He paused. Something seemed to go through his head, then he asked, ‘By the way, has this guy Owen Jericho been in touch with you?’

‘Jericho?’ Yoyo echoed.

‘The detective?’

Jericho had been keeping out of view of the phone, so that he saw the scene in Chen’s flat, but couldn’t be seen by Kenny. He gave Yoyo a sign and shook his head violently.

‘I have no idea where that idiot is,’ she said contemptuously.

‘Why so harsh?’ Kenny raised his eyebrows in amazement. ‘He saved you.’

‘He wants to jerk me around the same as you do, doesn’t he? You said he killed Grand Cherokee.’

A flicker of amusement played around Kenny’s lips.

‘Yes. Of course. So, when can you get here?’

‘As quick as I can,’ sniffed Yoyo. ‘Depends on the traffic. Quarter of an hour? Is that okay?’

‘Completely okay. You and Daxiong. Unarmed. I see a gun, Chen dies. Anyone else comes through the door, he dies. Anyone tries to disarm the automatic rifle, off it goes. As soon as everything’s sorted out, we’ll leave the house together. Oh, yes – if reinforcements are waiting outside or anyone tries to play the hero, Chen dies too. He can only leave his chair when I’ve deactivated the mechanism.’

The line went dead.

The weird calls of big animals reached them from the distance. A breeze rustled the bushes that lined the beach to the meadow, and set clusters of blossom bobbing up and down.

‘That bastard,’ groaned Yoyo. ‘That damned—’

‘Whatever he is, he’s not omnipotent.’

‘He isn’t?’ she yelled at him. ‘You saw what’s going on! Do you really think he’ll let him live? Or me?’

‘Yoyo—’

‘So what am I supposed to do?’ She shrank back. Her lower lip was trembling. She shook her head, as tears ran down her cheeks. ‘What on earth am I supposed to do? What should I do?’

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘We’ll get him out of there. I promise you. No one’s going to die, you hear?’

‘And how are you going to achieve that?’

Jericho started walking up and down. He didn’t really know either, yet. Bit by bit, a plan was starting to form in his head. A crazy undertaking that depended on a whole series of very different factors. The glass façade behind Chen Hongbing played a part in it, as did the captured airbike. He needed to talk to Tu Tian as well.

‘Forget it,’ said Yoyo breathlessly. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Wait.’

‘But I can’t wait! I have to get to my father. Let’s get out of here.’ She held her right hand out to him.

‘Hang on, Yoyo—’

‘Now!’

‘Just one minute. I—’ He chewed on his bottom lip. ‘I know how we’re going to do this. I know!’

The house on Siping Lu, number 1276, had retained the monotonous pastel of some of the blocks of flats built in the Shanghai district of Hongkou at the turn of the millennium. When the weather was gloomy it seemed to disappear into the sky. As if to counteract this, emphatically green-tinted panes of glass broke up the façade, another stylistic device of an era that made even skyscrapers look like cheap toys.

Unlike the high-rises a street further on, number 1276 contented itself with six floors, had generously sized balconies and also flaunted what looked a bit like a pagoda roof. On either side of the balconies, the dirty white boxes of the air-conditioning system clung to the plaster. Listlessly flapping in the wind was a tattered banner, on which the inhabitants of the building demanded the immediate suspension of building work on the maglev, another elevated highway that would lead right past their front door, and whose pillars already loomed high above the street. Aside from this pitiful gesture towards revolt, the building was no different from number 1274 or 1278.

The flat, covering an area of thirty-eight square metres, comprised a living room with a wall unit, dining area and sofa-bed, a separate bedroom, a tiny bathroom and a kitchen, only slightly bigger, that opened onto the dining table. There was no hall, and instead a screen at the side masked off the front door, creating a small amount of intimacy.

Until recently at any rate.

Now it leaned folded against the wall, so that the whole of the area around the front door was visible. Xin had made himself comfortable on the sofa-bed, a little way away from the chair on whose edge Chen Hongbing sat as if lost in contemplation, tall, angular, bolt upright. His temples glistened in the light that fell through the glass façade to the rear and dissolved into tiny droplets of sweat that covered his taut skin. Xin weighed the remote control for the automatic rifle in his hand, a flat, feather-light screen. He had told the old man that any sudden movement would lead to his death. But the mechanism had not been activated. Xin didn’t want to risk the old man bringing about his own demise through sheer nervousness.

‘Maybe you should take me hostage,’ Chen said into the silence.

Xin yawned. ‘Haven’t I done that already?’

‘I mean, I – I could put myself at your mercy for longer, until you no longer saw Yoyo as a threat.’

‘And where would that get you?’

‘My daughter would live,’ Chen replied hoarsely. It looked odd, the way he uttered words without any gestures, struggling to keep even the movements of his lips to the barest minimum.

Xin pretended to think for a moment.

‘No, she will survive as long as she convinces me.’

‘I’m asking you only for my daughter’s life.’ Chen’s breathing was shallow. ‘I don’t care about anything else.’

‘That honours you,’ said Xin. ‘It brings you close to the martyrs.’

Suddenly he thought he saw the old man smiling. It was barely noticeable, but Xin had an eye for such small things.

‘What’s cheered you up?’

‘The fact that you’ve misunderstood the situation. You think you can kill me, but there isn’t much left to kill. You’re too late. I’ve died already.’

Xin began to answer, then looked at the man with fresh interest. As a rule he didn’t set much store by other people’s private affairs, particularly when they were eking out their final minutes. But suddenly he craved to know what Chen had meant. He got up and stood behind the tripod on which the rifle stood, so that it looked as if it were actually growing from his belly. ‘You’ll have to explain that to me.’

‘I don’t think it will interest you,’ said Chen. He looked up and his eyes were like two wounds. All of a sudden Xin had the feeling of being able to see inside that thin body, and glimpse the black mirror of a sea below a moonless sky. In its depths he sensed old suffering, self-hatred and repulsion, he heard screams and pleas, doors rattling and slamming shut. Groans of resignation, echoing faintly down endless, windowless corridors. They had tried to break Chen, for four whole years. Xin knew that, without knowing it. He effortlessly identified the focus point, he could touch the spots where people were most vulnerable, just as a single glance into the detective’s eyes had been enough to spot his loneliness.

‘You were in jail,’ he said.

‘Not directly.’

Xin hesitated. Might he have been mistaken?

‘At any rate you were robbed of your freedom.’

‘Freedom?’ Chen made a noise between a croak and a sigh. ‘What’s that? Are you freer than me right now, when I’m sitting on this chair and you’re standing in front of me? Does that thing you’re pointing at me give you freedom? Do you lose your freedom if you’re locked up?’

Xin pursed his lips. ‘You explain it to me.’

‘No one needs to explain it to you,’ Chen croaked. ‘You know better than anyone.’

‘What?’

‘That anyone who threatens anyone else is frightened. Anyone who points a gun at anyone is frightened.’

‘So
I’m
frightened?’ Xin laughed.

‘Yes,’ Chen replied succinctly. ‘Repression is always based on fear. Fear of dissident opinions. Fear of being unmasked. Fear of losing power, of rejection, of insignificance. The more weapons you deploy, the higher the walls you build, the more ingenious your forms of torture, the more you are only demonstrating your own impotence. You remember Tiananmen? What happened in the Square of Heavenly Peace?’

‘The student unrest?’

‘I don’t know how old you are. You were probably still a child when that happened. Young people demonstrating for something that had already been fought for by many others: freedom. And lined up against them a State almost paralysed, shaken to its foundations, so much so that it finally sent in the tanks and everything sank into chaos. Who do you think was more frightened then? The students? Or the Party?’

‘I was five years old,’ said Xin, amazed to find himself talking to a hostage as though they were sitting together in a tea house. ‘How the hell should I know?’

‘You know. You’re pointing a gun at me right now.’

‘True. So I would guess that you’re the one who should be shit scared right now, old man!’