by Rebecca Lim
But his words didn’t give Harley or Schumacher much comfort. Where was Qing?
Schumacher and the driver of the truck loaded the instruments in silence, no doubt watched by the eagle-eyed customs official who could sense that something was off, but couldn’t prove what it was. As the men loaded the piano holding Harley into the back of the truck, Harley heard Schumacher shout, ‘Right, that’s the last one!’ before the tailgates slammed shut. Not long after the truck set off, Harley slid open the panel protecting his hiding place slightly, just to get some air.
The back of the truck was unbelievably hot because Singapore itself was hot and humid and filled with tropical vegetation smells Harley had never experienced before. He’d never been out of Australia until today. Inside the truck, the atmosphere seemed triply concentrated. He was sweltering inside his flannel shirt, jeans and heavy bomber jacket, but there was no space inside the piano to wiggle his jacket off. If Schumacher didn’t stop the truck soon, he was going to sweat to death.
Harley’s heart almost jumped out of his chest when the panel on the piano suddenly slid open the whole way. In the pitch-black darkness of the truck filled with tinkling, bonging, creaking instruments, he could make out two glowing golden eyes with black irises ringed in blue.
They’re the eyes from the vase, Harley thought, actually cowering. The dragon’s eyes he hadn’t been able to look away from. The whole time he’d fooled himself into thinking she was just a kid in fancy dress, because that’s what she looked like – a kid in fancy dress. But Qing was something else as well. Somehow she was two things at once, although he had no concrete proof of that either.
What had he got himself into?
‘Where did you go?’ Harley whispered, terrified, as the eyes continued to watch him steadily and unblinkingly, although what he really wanted to jabber was, Don’t eat me, don’t eat me, don’t eat me.
Qing’s laughter cut across the steady rumble of the truck’s engine. ‘You’re safe. I just ate,’ she reminded him, making his blood freeze all over again. ‘And I only like to eat fish. The man did not see me – but I was there.’
A hand came forward in the darkness – a small, smooth, entirely human-style hand – and Qing helped Harley out of the piano. His whole lower body had gone to sleep and the blood rushing back into his feet, ankles and legs brought with it a painful cascade of pins and needles. They sat on the floor of the truck together, Harley’s piano like a canopy over their heads, waiting for the hot, stuffy journey to end.
About ten minutes later, it felt like the truck was turning ponderously and heading downwards. If it was possible, the heat inside the truck was building, growing almost unbearable. Qing squeezed Harley’s hand, somehow sensing his physical distress. ‘I am feeling it is not much longer,’ she murmured.
And she was right, because the truck braked to a stop and the doors were quickly thrown open. Harley shielded his eyes as a strong flashlight played across the back of the truck; he sensed that Qing met the light without blinking, even though they’d been sitting in absolute darkness for almost an hour.
‘Qing!’ Harley heard Schumacher exclaim. ‘You are here! Danke Gott. You hid among the tambourines, ja?’
Qing shook her head, pulling Harley to his tingly feet.
‘Somewhere else,’ she replied, grinning. ‘That was fun. I had forgotten how to do that.’
Schumacher – who was now wearing a grey removalist’s jumpsuit – and Harley squinted at each other, unsure what she was talking about, which only made Qing grin more widely.
‘Harls?’ another voice said uncertainly.
Harley stumbled forward. ‘Dad? Dad!’
Still half-blind, he almost fell off the back of the truck into his dad’s waiting bear hug.
As his eyes cleared, Harley could see that the truck was in a dimly lit basement car park that smelled strongly of rotting fruit and diesel. The truck driver cleared his throat discreetly and busied himself engaging the hydraulic tailgate at the back of the truck.
While Qing waited for the tailgate to finish moving into place so that she could step down, Harley and Schumacher and his dad stood watching her. She was framed by cardboard boxes and instruments of all shapes and sizes, but she stood very straight – regal and immaculate, but wary. The heat and humidity weren’t flattening her hair to her head the way they were doing to Harley; sweat wasn’t streaming down her face and neck and armpits and spine like a river. That, even more than the weird golden glow of her eyes in the dim basement, told Harley she was something other than what she seemed.
Ray – also wearing a grey jumpsuit – raised his hand to help the girl step down the ramp, yelping as a strong blue spark of static electricity leapt between their clasped fingers. But Ray didn’t let the girl’s hand go until she had both feet on the floor.
‘It means she likes you, Dad.’ Harley smiled. ‘This is Qing.’
Ray bowed his head as if he were meeting the Queen. ‘I’m Harley’s dad, Ray,’ he said gently.
‘Bāba Ray,’ Qing replied, urgency in her low tone. ‘I need you to help me get the Quek vase because – it is no vase.’
‘It’s a person,’ Harley interjected, ‘just like her.’
Ray shook his head, half in amusement, half in disbelief. He looked into Qing’s small, angular face. ‘A lot of people are after that vase at this point in time, young lady. I can’t make any promises – there are things that need to be made right – but I do have a little plan I need to run past you two.’
He placed his hands carefully on the children’s shoulders, half-bracing for an electrical charge to leap between the three of them.
‘Schumacher,’ Ray ordered, beckoning to his old friend and partner-in-crime, ‘get in close, and listen up.’
Ray explained that night had fallen and that they were all standing in a car park under a multilevel shopping centre an hour’s drive from Balestier Road. The Quek mansion, Ray added, was the only colonial-era mansion left along the busy six-lane thoroughfare amid office buildings, shopping malls and hotels. It was a measure of the family’s enormous wealth and influence that they still held a two-acre compound right in the heart of crowded Singapore. The Queks had been living there for almost a hundred and fifty years.
‘So the mansion,’ Ray continued hurriedly, ‘is protected by a twenty-foot concrete and reinforced steel perimeter wall, a physical security team of two dozen men who rotate through each twelve-hour shift a dozen at a time and twenty-four-seven CCTV with multiple internal and exterior cams. From schematics of the house I managed to obtain once – dated from just before the significant renovation undertaken in nineteen ninety-four,’ Harley wrinkled his nose; that was so far back it was just about the olden days, ‘the entire east wing is likely to function as the Quek family’s personal museum of rare Chinese artwork and artefacts, based on the building works that were intended for that area. The vase is likely to be in some kind of secure location in that part of the mansion.’
‘It sounds impossible, boss,’ Schumacher said glumly from over Ray’s shoulder. ‘We will never get inside without being seen, the four of us.’
‘We’re in luck today.’ Ray smiled as another truck rumbled down the ramp towards them and parked nearby. The two truck drivers started to shift musical instruments from one truck to the other as the children and Schumacher continued to huddle around Ray. ‘The entire Quek family flew to Hong Kong last week to watch a rugby match en masse with most of their security team. The mansion is empty of occupants. Even the two housekeepers and the gardener who live in outbuildings away from the main house aren’t home – they’ve been given a few days off.’
Ray looked uncomfortable for a moment, then continued. ‘Because only people in my, uh, specific line of work know about the bounty on the dragon vase, there are only six security guards on duty at the mansion at present; the rest are trailing the family around Hong Kong. ‘Plus –’ Ray tapped his nose in way that made Schumacher grin, ‘security is going to find an orde
r for a nice new Källtewelle in the housekeeping database. It won’t really matter if we’re seen – we’re going to deliver a piano today, and a little bit more besides.’
They napped until just after sunrise, then Schumacher himself drove the delivery truck up out of the basement car park while Ray, Qing and Harley huddled in the back, now almost empty because most of the musical instruments had been removed.
‘How did you get hold of the renovation plans for that house, Dad?’ Harley asked as the three of them sat cross-legged in a circle on the steel floor of the truck beside the remaining Källtewelle piano (the one that played actual notes, not the special one with the hidey-hole), which had a hand cart with wheels wedged in below it now.
Ray’s voice went a bit vague. ‘I might have been researching a potential, ah, job at the Quek mansion just over twenty years ago. Around the time the family acquired the vase in the first place, actually. The job got called off.’
‘What kind of job?’ Harley said suspiciously.
Ray didn’t answer Harley’s question but said instead, ‘The truck will be stopping shortly and I’m going to get out and sit beside Schumacher. When we reach the front of the mansion we’ll make enough fuss to ensure you can get inside. Don’t think about the cameras or it will slow you down – we’ll draw the men away from the CCTV feeds and control room as much as we can. Just try your hardest to make sure you’re not seen, and head straight for the ground floor of the east wing. You’ll see a giant stone statue of a god standing guard at the door to the collection: flowing beard, frightening expression. On the plan we’re talking floor-to-ceiling big – he’s unmissable. The statue will provide a good hiding place for kids as skinny as you two. Just keep your heads down and I’ll join you as soon as I can.’
‘What about Schumacher?’ Harley asked as Qing listened intently, a small frown pleating her brows.
‘Schumacher’s our way out,’ Ray said shortly as their truck rumbled to a stop. ‘You always have to have someone on the outside. It’s one of my ground rules. No exceptions. Inside the mansion, it will be just the three of us.’
‘No,’ Qing insisted, shaking her head so fiercely her hair fell about her face, ‘just me.’
‘The Sparks have got your back,’ Ray said firmly. ‘We’ve come this far. And the Quek collection is legendary and a closely guarded secret. I want to see it. I want to see that vase. This may be my only chance, ever. I never thought it would come.’
‘Dad, that vase is a person,’ Harley reminded him, frowning.
‘That vase,’ Ray reminded him sternly, ‘is our ticket out of this mess, Harls. Remember that.’
Qing and Harley exchanged troubled glances as Schumacher swung one of the back doors of the truck open.
Ray shielded his eyes from the hot, golden, early morning sunshine as Schumacher handed Harley a small plastic bag with handles, containing some kind of pale green juice with a straw in it, a banana leaf full of heavenly smelling food, and a plastic fork. Qing shook her head when Schumacher offered her the same thing, so Ray, Schumacher and Harley wolfed their hot breakfasts down while Ray continued speaking.
‘It’s not far now,’ he said, indicating a pile of felt blankets heaped up in the corner of the truck with his plastic fork. ‘When the truck gets going again, I need you to get under the blankets, kids, and keep very still and quiet when the truck stops at the gate to the mansion.’
As Ray got to his feet, taking Harley’s rubbish with him, he said to Qing, ‘Will you recognise what you’re looking for? There’ll be no time to hesitate. We’ll need to grab and go.’
She nodded. ‘If the vase is there, I will find it,’ she answered fiercely.
Ray nodded as he jumped out of the back of the truck. ‘Blankets,’ he reminded them as Schumacher handed Ray a grey cap that said Courier across the front. Schumacher slipped his own cap on his head before giving Qing and Harley a broad wink and slamming the door shut.
The truck only seemed to travel another few kilometres before it slowed to a stop again at the guardhouse outside the Quek mansion. Harley and Qing scrambled under the blankets, which felt unbearably heavy, hot and scratchy.
There were a couple of raised, enquiring voices from outside the vehicle and Harley heard Schumacher reply loudly in his bluff Bavarian accent, ‘My friend, see for yourself!’
The back doors to the truck swung open and, beneath his heavy blanket, Harley froze as Schumacher knocked on the side of the piano. ‘One fine German piano! As ordered.’ He lifted the lid and bashed on the keys before placing it down again. ‘See! Here are the papers!’
Harley almost fell asleep again in his blanket nest as the security guards argued with someone inside the compound on their walkie-talkies. The truck doors finally clanged shut and the truck started up, travelling very slowly up a raked gravel drive before it pulled to another stop and the engine cut out.
The back doors to the truck opened again and Harley heard his dad say, ‘Where do you want it, sport? Don’t have all day.’
Schumacher engaged the automated ramp at the back of the truck while two new voices argued about the origin of the order.
Four guards, Harley ticked off in his head. That left only two, elsewhere in the grounds.
The big German started to whistle as he cheerfully began unloading the upright piano from the truck.
‘Stop right there!’ the third man shouted in frustration. ‘No one authorised this!’
‘I have the deadlines,’ Schumacher said calmly, as he kept lowering the glossy black piano to the ground with the help of the handcart. ‘You cannot be getting in the way of my deadlines.’
Harley heard the crunch of gravel as Schumacher wheeled the piano off the ramp and onto the gravel-covered drive.
‘We have no record of an order for a piano,’ the fourth guard insisted angrily. ‘There is already a concert grand inside the house.’
‘I think you will see that you do,’ Schumacher said patiently, still whistling as he pulled the piano away from the truck. ‘I shall take it around the side, seeing as how pianos cannot be travelling up front stairs.’
‘Stop! Where are you going?’ someone new shouted, running closer.
Five security guards, Harley said to himself. Man number six was probably watching all the action on a closed circuit TV somewhere inside.
‘I cannot be taking this up the front stairs,’ Schumacher repeated, as he kept dragging the piano away from the truck, drawing two of the security guards with him from the sound of their crunching footfalls. ‘Call your supervisor,’ Harley heard Schumacher yell cheerfully, his voice growing fainter and fainter.
‘I will!’ a man retorted fiercely.
The security man who remained demanded to see Ray’s paperwork. ‘It’s at the front of the truck,’ Ray shouted as their voices moved away from the lowered tailgate.
Harley was sweating – but not just from the heat. ‘Qing!’ he hissed. ‘We gotta go now.’
There was no reply as Harley shoved the heavy blankets off his body, poking and prodding at them to see where the girl had got to. But, of course, she’d already gone and he’d never even heard her leave.
Muttering under his breath, Harley walked as quietly as he could in his sneakered feet down the interior of the truck. He let himself lightly onto the ground, the faint crunch of his soles on the gravel making him flush even hotter with fear. There was no one around the back of the truck. From the tracks in the gravel he could make out that Schumacher had dragged the piano away to the left. From the front of the truck, he could hear his dad insisting, ‘Check your computer system – I’m sure the order is in there,’ before turning up the truck’s radio. The sound of sixties music covered the noises Harley was making as he sneaked away towards the eastern side of the house.
As he crept, Harley studied the face of the grand two-storey, Chinese-style mansion the truck was parked below. There was a set of three wide stone stairs leading up to the recessed front porch of the house which was cover
ed in square, decorative iron panels – nine on each side of the tall, red-painted, double front doors – depicting writhing dragons and phoenixes, horses, tigers and bats, and frightening gods. A stone column carved with dragons and pearls and fruit stood on each side of the giant doors. The walls of the mansion were painted a brilliant white and each of the windows, upstairs and downstairs, was covered in a carved dark wooden window frame in a symmetrical pattern that looked almost like a Chinese character, the carving was so intricate. The roof was covered in shining, narrow, dark green tiles that looked a little bit like pieces of bamboo made out of glazed ceramic. Each corner of the roof curved upwards at the corners, the ridges and roof beams decorated with the sinuous, threatening bodies of ceramic dragons. The uppermost ridge of the roof was also topped with the sinuous, threatening shapes of more dragons.
As the sun beat down on Harley creeping across the grounds below, his eyes darting about for security cameras but not finding any, bright sunlight flared off the eyes of all the watching dragons as if they were made of diamonds.
‘They are made of diamonds,’ Qing hissed as Harley backed into her suddenly.
He almost fell over in fright. It was like she’d literally appeared out of thin air.
‘This is the Lair of the Diamond King,’ Qing murmured, as she and Harley moved swiftly together around the right side of the mansion into the deep green of the manicured Chinese garden. ‘Mo Li Qing’s likeness is everywhere.’
Harley barely heard what she was saying as he surveyed the glorious gardens surrounding the mansion. From where they were standing, the east wing of the house was clearly visible, as was another section of the mansion to the back. The entire building was shaped like a symmetrical cross – if you cut it down the horizontal or the vertical, the two halves of the building would look exactly the same. The landscaped gardens were filled with sweeping lawns and tiled pavilions with the same curving-up roof lines, and there were beautiful bodies of water everywhere, spanned by graceful ornamental bridges. As they crouched down low and ran across the gardens, Harley and Qing passed groves of ancient trees heavy with fruit, and sculpted walks of bamboo and willow. It was the most strange and beautiful garden Harley had ever seen. And it was absolutely deserted.