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‘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?’

‘How much?’

Zhao named a price. Jericho haggled him down to half that, for form’s sake.

‘And where shall we meet?’ he asked.

He gave him directions. ‘Half past seven.’

‘I hope you understand that this is the most boring job in the world,’ Jericho said. ‘Sitting still and keeping your eyes peeled without nodding off to sleep.’

‘Don’t bust my balls about it.’

‘I absolutely shan’t. See you later.’

Tu gave him a sideways look.

‘Are you sure you can trust this guy?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps he’s talking himself up. Perhaps he just wants the money.’

‘Perhaps the Pope’s a pagan.’ Jericho shrugged. ‘I can’t do much wrong with Zhao Bide. All he has to do is keep his eyes open, nothing else.’

‘You know best. Stay available just in case I can find poor Grand Sheraton’s phone. Somewhere between his spleen and his liver.’

When Jericho travelled back to the forgotten world, the traffic was flowing thick as honey. Pretty brisk by Shanghai standards, then. It meant getting home on time, a hot dinner and children sleepy but still awake so that Mum and Dad could put them to bed together.

On the other hand, if you came from Europe, and were used to things moving a bit faster, every minute on the streets of Shanghai was among the more irksome experiences that life had to offer. Statisticians claimed that the average car-driver spent six months of his urban life sitting at red lights, but that was nothing compared with the amount of life wasted in Shanghai traffic jams. Since CODs had ceased to be appropriate for a visit to Quyu, because they would stand out there like frogs with wings and arouse Yoyo’s suspicions, Jericho had no option but to collect his own car from the underground car park. In the afternoon he had sent Diane off in
search of Zhao Bide on the net, with no result. There was no one by that name on record. Quyu didn’t exist, and neither did its inhabitants.

However, there were the other five Guardians, right there as expected, in the university lists.

Yoyo herself had left no new traces after her piece on Brilliant Shit. Once again Jericho wondered who would send a professional hitman after a dissident who, while she was plainly troublesome, wasn’t exactly high risk. Leaving aside the police, State elements were certainly involved. The Party was riddled with secret agents like mould in gorgonzola. No one, probably not even the highest officials, knew the full extent of their interpenetration. Against this background there was a covert operation whose goal lay in preventing the distribution of information that Yoyo should never have been able to get hold of.

Which called for more than killing the girl.

Because if her forbidden knowledge came from the net, it was very probably stored on her computer. A circumstance that didn’t do much to improve Yoyo’s chances of survival, but made it harder to kill her. As long as the whereabouts of the device was unclear, she couldn’t simply be gunned down in the street. The killer had to get hold of the computer, and not only that, he would have to find out whom she had passed her knowledge on to. His task was that of an epidemiologist: to curb the virus, bring all the infected parties together, eliminate them and, last of all, eliminate the first carrier.

The question was where the epidemiologist was at that moment.

Jericho had expected to be pursued. That morning the killer had still been travelling in a COD. He could have swapped vehicles by now, as Jericho had done. Zhao’s description of the man matched the video recordings from the World Financial Center, but Jericho doubted that the stranger would show himself to him. On the other hand, the guy didn’t know that Jericho had seen his face, thought he was undiscovered and was perhaps becoming reckless. Whatever the truth of the matter, he would have to be careful not to be too successful in his search for Yoyo, and deliver her up for the slaughter.

When he was two kilometres from Quyu, Tu sent him the promised photographs. Apart from ‘Daxiong’ Guan Guo, they showed two girls called ‘Maggie’ Xiao Meiqi and Yin Ziyi, and the male Guardians Tony Sung and Jin Jia Wei. Along with the video stills that showed Grand Cherokee’s killer, they formed the basis of his search. The hologoggles and scanners that he brought with him would constantly be able to draw on the data, and immediately demonstrate any agreement. Unfortunately the stills were of poor quality, and left barely any hope that the computer might recognise the killer in the crowd. But Jericho was firmly determined to pull
out all the stops. With the scanners alone, he and Zhao had half a dozen reliable sleuths at their disposal, who would attack as soon as Yoyo or one of her people developed a craving for Wong’s World.

He took the turning for Quyu and stopped at the edge of the road to change the colour of the car. Within seconds, magnetic fields had altered the nano-structure of the paint particles. He’d shelled out a few yuan for his Toyota to have this chameleonlike ability. As he spoke to a client on the phone, the elegant silvery blue turned into a dingy greyish-brown with matt patches. The front part looked as if it had had a rotten paint job. Dark stains defaced the driver’s door and created the illusion of dents, with the paint flaking off at the edges. A jagged scratch appeared above the rear left mudguard. By the time Jericho crossed the border separating the realm of the spirits from the world of the living, his car was in a lamentable state – just right if he didn’t want to attract attention in the streets of Xaxu.

Zhao had given him a description of the route to the larger of the Wong markets. When he got there, the place was still operating at peak rate. By now he saw this part of Xaxu with different eyes. The largely intact appearance and the busy activity disguised the fact that a fracture in society ran through here, beyond which anyone not in the network lived under the orders of rival triads, whose leaders controlled the turf. In the shadow of the closed-down steelworks to which the district originally owed its existence, the drug trade flourished, money was laundered, prostitution thrived, people dulled their senses in Cyber Planet with virtual wonder-drugs. On the other hand, the triads barely showed the slightest interest in the vast steppes of misery that Jericho had driven through that morning. So Quyu was most honest where it was poorest, and anyone who tried to be honest stayed poor.

Wong’s World covered an area the size of a block, and presented itself as a patchwork of steaming cook-shops, piles of preserves on huge walls of shelves, stacked-up cages of clucking, hissing and whining animals, ramshackle stands and curtained-off booths where you could haggle for acid-trips, gambling debts or STDs. Jericho had no doubt that guns were flogged at Wong’s as well. It was incredibly cramped in there. Scraps of words and laughter flew in raging swarms above the market, along with the hubbub of Chinese pop music from clapped-out speakers. While he was keeping an eye out for Zhao, the man himself broke away from the crowd and came strolling across the street. Jericho lowered the window and beckoned him over. Zhao wore jeans that had seen better days, and a threadbare windcheater, but he still somehow managed to look neat and tidy. His hair fell silkily as he threw his head back and drank beer from a can that pearled with condensation. He had a battered backpack hung over his shoulder. Without any great haste, he approached Jericho’s car and bent down to him.

‘Not really your world, is it?’

‘I’ve been in other hells,’ Jericho said, nodding towards the interior of the car. ‘Come on, get in. There’s something I want to show you.’

Zhao walked around the car, opened the door and slumped onto the passenger seat. For a moment his profile shone in the light of a sunbeam battling its way through the billowing brew of clouds. Jericho looked at him and wondered why someone with his looks hadn’t ended up in fashion or movies long ago. Or
had
he seen Zhao in the fashion world? On television? In a magazine? Suddenly it seemed more than likely. Zhao, an ex-model, washed up and unwanted in Quyu.

The first raindrops exploded on the windscreen.

‘Everything okay?’ Zhao asked.

‘You?’

‘The guys are on-stage. Horrible car you’re driving, by the way. Vario-paint?’

Jericho was surprised. ‘You know your stuff.’

‘A bit. Don’t worry. The illusion is perfect.’ Zhao bent forwards and wiped a fleck from the instrument-panel with the ball of his hand. ‘Anybody would fall for it, as long as they didn’t get in and see the gleaming inner life.’

‘Tell me about the other market.’

‘Just half the size of this one. No chickens, no chicken-heads.’

Jericho reached behind him and handed Zhao a set of hologoggles. ‘Ever worn one of these?’

‘Of course.’ Zhao nodded at the branch of Cyber Planet. ‘Everyone in there wears one of these. You know what they call those shops around here?’

‘The Cyber Planets? No.’