Necropolis pof-4

by Anthony Horowitz

  “I’ve enjoyed meeting you,” he said.

  “Goodbye, Father Gregory.”

  The old man walked across the room and stepped out of the window. The chairman waited a moment, then slid it shut behind him. It was good to be back in the warm again. He wiped some raindrops off his jacket.

  The storm was definitely getting worse.

  The Tai Shan Temple was very similar to all the other temples in Hong Kong.

  It was perhaps a little larger, with three separate chambers connected by short corridors, but it had the same curving roof made of dark green tiles and it was set back behind a wall, on the edge of a park, in its own private world. Inside, it was filled with smoke, both from the coils of incense that hung from the ceiling and from the oven, which was constantly burning bundles of paper and clothes as sacrifices to the Mountain of the East. There were several altars dedicated to a variety of gods who were represented by standing, sitting and kneeling statues… a whole crowd of them, brilliantly coloured, staring out with ferocious eyes.

  Despite the bad weather, there were about fifteen people at prayer in the main chamber, bowing with armfuls of incense, muttering quietly to themselves. They were many different ages, men and women, and to all appearances they looked exactly the same as the people who came daily to Man Mo or Tin Hau. And yet there was something about them that suggested that religion was not, in fact, the first thing on their minds. They were too tense, too watchful. Their eyes were fixed on a single entrance at the back of the building – a low, wooden door with a five-pointed star cut into the surface.

  The worshippers – who were, in fact, no such thing – had very simple instructions. Any child who passed through that door was to be seized. If they resisted, they could be hurt badly but preferably not killed. The same applied to any young person coming in from the street. They were to be stopped before they got anywhere near the door. The people in the temple were all armed with guns and knives, hidden beneath their clothes. They were in constant touch with The Nail and could call for backup at any time.

  This was the ambush that Matt had feared. It was the reason he had refused to take the shortcut to Hong Kong. He had been right from the very start.

  The fifteen of them stood there, muttering prayers they didn’t believe and bowing to gods they didn’t respect. And outside, gusts of wind – growing stronger by the minute – hurled themselves at the temple walls, battering at them as if trying to break through, tearing up the surrounding earth and the grass, whistling around the corners. A tile slid off the roof and smashed on the ground. A shutter came loose and was instantly torn away. The rain, travelling horizontally now, cut into the brickwork. The traffic in the street had completely snarled up. The drivers couldn’t see. There was nothing they could do.

  The wind rushed in and the flames inside the temple furnace bent, flickered and were suddenly extinguished. Nobody noticed. All their attention was fixed on the doorway. That was what they were there for. Ignoring the storm, they waited for the first of the Gatekeepers to arrive.

  Scarlett was in a dark place, but someone was nudging her, trying to draw her back into the light. Unwillingly, she opened her eyes to find a boy leaning over her, shaking her awake. She recognized him at once and knew that the fact that he was with her, that he was bruised and dishevelled, could mean only one thing… and it was the worst news of all. He was here because of her. The Old Ones must have tricked him into coming to Hong Kong and now the two of them were prisoners. Scarlett felt a sense of great anger and bitterness. She had been drawn into this against her will. And it was already over. She had never been given a chance.

  “Matt…” she said.

  At last the two of them were together. But this wasn’t how she had hoped they would meet. She drew herself into a sitting position and rubbed her eyes. They had given her back her own clothes but her hair, cut so short, still felt unfamiliar to her. At least she had lost the contact lenses. She had taken them out the moment she had been left to herself.

  “Are you OK?” Matt asked.

  “No.” She sounded miserable. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “I don’t know. They only brought me here an hour ago.”

  “When was that?”

  “About eight o’clock.”

  “Night or day?”

  “Day.”

  Matt examined his surroundings. They were in a bare, windowless room with brick walls and a concrete floor. The only light came from a bulb set in a wire mesh cage. From the moment the door – solid steel – had been closed and locked, he’d had to fight a sense of claustrophobia. They were deep underground. The policemen who had brought him here had forced him down four flights of stairs and then along a corridor that was like a tunnel. Ordinary policemen. The same as the ones who had arrested him. It seemed that the shape-changers, the fly-soldiers and all the other creatures of the Old Ones had decided to leave Hong Kong. He wondered why.

  Despite everything, he had been relieved to find Scarlett. She looked very different from the photograph he had seen of her. He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for her, being stuck here on her own.

  “Why are you here?” Scarlett asked. She still couldn’t keep the disappointment out of her voice.

  “I came for you,” Matt said. He wanted to tell her more but he didn’t dare. There was always a chance that they were being listened to.

  “You shouldn’t have. I’ve mucked everything up. I’d have got away if I hadn’t…” Scarlett stopped herself. She couldn’t bring herself to talk about her last meeting with her father.

  Matt sat next to her so that they were shoulder to shoulder with their legs stretched out on the floor. From the way he moved, she could see that he had been hurt. He looked pale and exhausted. “Why don’t you tell me everything that happened to you?” he suggested. “You could start by telling me where we are. Do you know?”

  She nodded. “The chairman came to see me…”

  “Who is the chairman?”

  “Just some creep in a suit.”

  “I think I may have met him.”

  “He wanted to gloat over me,” Scarlett continued. “He told me that you were on your way but I hoped he was lying. This is an old prison. We’re right in the middle of Hong Kong. It was left over from Victorian times.”

  “So when do they serve breakfast?”

  “They don’t. It’s bread and cold soup and they bring it once a day.”

  Matt lowered his voice. “Hopefully, we won’t be here that long,” he said. It was as much as he dared tell her, but even so Scarlett felt a glimmer of hope. “You know I went to your home in Dulwich,” he said, changing the subject.

  “Was that you in the car? There was an accident…”

  “It was no accident.”

  “I knew it had to be you,” Scarlett said. “They planned it all very carefully, didn’t they? Using me to get you here. Are any of the others with you?”

  Matt nodded briefly and Scarlett understood. They both had to be careful what they said. She gazed at him as if seeing him for the first and the last time. “I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe I’m really talking to you. Do you know, I’ve even dreamed about you.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Matt said. “We all dream about each other. It’s how it works.”

  “There’s so much I don’t understand.”

  “Join the club.”

  “It looks like I already have.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t know where my story even begins, but I suppose I’d better start with St Meredith’s…”

  She told him – briefly and without fuss – and as she spoke, Matt knew that he was going to like her. She had been through so much, and in a way her experiences reminded him of his own at Lesser Malling, the way she had been reeled into something so completely beyond her understanding. And yet she had coped with it. She had been brought here. She had been locked in this room for three days. But she hadn’t cracked. She was ready to fight back.
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br />   She finished talking and it seemed to Matt that just for a moment the building trembled as something, a shockwave, travelled through the walls. Scarlett looked up, alarmed. Part of her knew what was happening and had even been expecting it.

  “What…?” Matt began.

  “It was nothing.” She said it so hastily that he could see she didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t even want to imagine what might be happening outside. “Tell me about yourself,” she went on, quickly. “Tell me how you got here. Did you go to the temple? They’ve got people there waiting for you. They thought you’d come through one of the doors.”

  “I didn’t…”

  He told her his own story, or part of it, starting in Peru. It would have taken too long to tell her the whole thing and he was still afraid of being overheard. From Nazca to London to Macau. It had been a long journey and it was only now that they both saw how closely they had been following each other’s paths.

  Matt finished by explaining how he had found his way to Wisdom Court. This was the difficult part. He had seen Scarlett’s father die and he had been at least in part responsible. How was he going to break the news?

  But she was already ahead of him. “That jersey you’re wearing,” she said. She had suddenly realized. “It’s his.”

  “Yes,” Matt admitted.

  “Where is he now?” Matt didn’t answer and she continued. “They’ve killed him, haven’t they?”

  Matt nodded. He didn’t want to remember what he had seen in the last moments before he had been taken out of Wisdom Court.

  Scarlett’s face didn’t change but suddenly there were tears in her eyes. “It was all his fault,” she said. “He thought he could make a deal with these people – the Old Ones – but they would never have got me if it hadn’t been for him.” She paused. “I don’t know, Matt. I suppose that’s the way they work. They get ordinary people to do evil things for them. They used him. He really thought he was helping me. And now he’s betrayed you too.”

  The building shivered a second time. It wasn’t as strong as it had been before but they both felt it.

  “You know that Hong Kong is dying,” Scarlett said. “The chairman told me. They’re doing it deliberately. They want to turn it into what they call a necropolis. A city of the dead.”

  “I saw some of it last night,” Matt said. “It was horrible.”

  “Don’t tell me. I lived in it. I can’t believe I didn’t see what was going on.” She sighed. “What will happen to us, Matt? Are we going to be killed?”

  “They don’t want to kill us,” Matt said. “It’s complicated. But killing us doesn’t really help.”

  “Then what?”

  “They think they’ve beaten us, but they haven’t. The others are still out there. And you and me…”

  “What about us?”

  “They put us together because they want to crow over us. But that’s their mistake. Because…”

  He didn’t finish the sentence.

  There was an explosion. It was loud and immediate – and it came from somewhere inside the building.

  “What…?” Scarlett began.

  Then the light went out.

  Lohan had used the storm as cover, closing in on the prison through streets that had quickly emptied as the weather had become more intense. He had only been given one night to prepare the attack, but he had still managed to assemble a small army. He had a hundred men with him, all of them well-armed. The Triads had been smuggling weapons across Asia for many years, supplying anyone from terrorists to mercenaries. Lohan had simply taken what he needed. He had plenty of choice.

  Meanwhile, Jet and Sing would be arriving at the Tai Shan Temple. They both had the rank of 426, Red Pole as it was known, making them fighting unit lieutenants. They had another fifty men with them and both operations were to begin at the same moment. There was one door out of Hong Kong. The way there had to be cleared.

  Lohan knew where Matt had been taken because he had followed him. This was what Matt had been unable to tell Scarlett. He had played a trick on the chairman. Just for once, he was the one pulling the strings.

  Matt had contacted Lohan the night before, the call forwarded through the Kung Hing Tao firework company. The Triad leader already knew what had happened. Richard and Jamie were with him. The two of them had made it out of the water and over to Kowloon. They were standing next to him, worrying desperately about Matt, when the phone rang.

  “We have to find Scarlett,” Matt had said. “And there’s only one way to do it. We have to let the Old Ones capture me.”

  “How will you do that?”

  “Paul Adams – Scarlett’s father – will call them and tell them I’m at Wisdom Court. They won’t suspect anything. They know that he wants Scarlett back and they’ll think he’s still trying to help them.”

  “And then?”

  “You have your men outside. You follow me wherever they take me.”

  “How do you know they’ll take you to Scarlett?”

  “I don’t… not for sure. But my guess is they’ll probably hold us together. I know the way these people think. They’ll want to parade us, to boast about how they’ve beaten us. Having the two of us together will make it more fun for them. Anyway, I haven’t got any other ideas so we’ll just have to risk it.”

  Richard had come onto the phone. He had heard what Matt was suggesting. “You can’t do this,” he pleaded. “It’s too dangerous. Please, Matt, think what could go wrong.”

  “We don’t know where she is, Richard. There’s no other way we’ll find her.”

  “What about Paul Adams? Once they have no further use for him, you know they’ll kill him.”

  “He’s prepared to risk it. He knows what he’s done. And he’ll do anything to get Scarlett freed.”

  It had worked out just as Matt had hoped. Six police cars had arrived at Wisdom Court just after seven o’clock. Lohan – with Richard and Jamie crouching next to him – had watched the police go in. They had seen the chairman arrive and leave and they were still there when Matt, semi-conscious and in pain, had been dragged out. Jamie had started forward at that moment, wanting to go to him. But Richard had grabbed hold of him, forcing him to remain still. This was Matt’s plan. It was all or nothing.

  Matt had been driven across the city, never out of sight of Lohan’s men. They had seen him disappear into the prison close to Hollywood Road. So now they knew where he was being held. Hopefully, Scarlett would be there too. As the storm had worsened, Lohan had surrounded the prison, his men closing in from all sides.

  The storm.

  Lohan was beginning to think that it was getting out of control. In all the years that he had been in Hong Kong, he had never experienced anything like it. When he stood up, he could feel the wind trying to batter him down again. Dust and dead leaves whipped into his face. He could hear the air currents howling as they rushed through the streets. If it got any worse, it would be dangerous out here. But then, of course, it was dangerous anyway. If the storm destroyed the city, it would only be finishing what the Old Ones had already begun.

  A crash of thunder. Rain lashing down so hard that he could see it bouncing off the parked cars, turning into miniature rivers that coursed along the side of the road. In seconds, he was soaked. Richard was next to him. “What’s going on?” he muttered.

  “We must move now,” Lohan said.

  Victoria Prison was a huge, solid building with barred windows and a single, massive door – the only way in. Six armed guards stood outside it in the rain, dressed in uniforms, with their faces partly obscured by their caps. Lohan, Richard and Jamie were watching from the doorway of an antique shop across the road. Lohan’s strategy was simple. There was no time to be clever. He knew he had to break in as quickly, as decisively as possible. Once the enemy knew he was there, they would fight back.

  He gave the signal.

  There was an explosion – the same explosion that Matt had heard – as a rocket launcher, conceal
ed in a parked van, fired a 40mm shell at the main door. The prison hadn’t been built to withstand such an attack. The doors were blown apart in a ball of flame. Half the guards were killed instantly. The rest were cut down by a burst of machine-gun fire as the Triad fighters surged forward, pouring out of alleyways and rising up from behind parked cars. Further down the road, two of Lohan’s men, disguised as construction workers, cut off the main power supply, isolating the prison and short circuiting the alarms.

  “Move!” Richard and Jamie were unarmed but they ran forward with Lohan and in through the shattered doors.

  And then they were inside the prison. Lohan’s people were spreading in every direction, through the upper floors, smashing open the doors to reveal the empty cells behind them. Some of them were armed with guns and grenades. Others carried swords and chain-sticks. It was pitch black inside the building now that the electricity had been cut, but they had brought electric torches with them, strapped to their shoulders, the beams slicing through the dark and showing the way ahead. Lohan’s orders were clear. Kill anyone who gets in your way. Find Matt and Scarlett. We have only minutes to get them out.

  There were more guards on the upper levels. Although the building held only two prisoners, the chairman had taken no chances. Now they opened fire on the invaders. Lohan saw the flash of bullets, heard some of the Triad men cry out. A few bodies fell. Then someone threw a grenade. Another fireball, and one of the guards pitched forward as if diving into a swimming pool, disappearing into the darkness below.

  Lohan himself led a group of fighters four floors down into the basement, Richard and Jamie close behind him. Only now was Richard beginning to see the hopelessness of the task. There had to be at least two hundred cells in the prison. Were they really going to blow every one of them open? They came to a corridor with more steel doors set at intervals. A guard ran towards them, bringing his machine gun round to aim.

  “Drop the gun!” Jamie said. “Lie on the floor.”