Necropolis

by Anthony Horowitz

  Scarlett was beginning to feel embarrassed with two adults quarrelling over her, especially in the middle of such a public place. But Justin and Mrs Cheng had reached an impasse. The Chinese woman was breathing heavily and two dark spots had appeared in her cheeks. She was struggling to keep her temper. Suddenly she snapped out a command, her voice so low that it could barely be heard. The chauffeur, Karl, lumbered forward.

  “Now hold on a minute…” Justin began.

  It looked as if Karl was going to punch him. But instead he simply reached out and laid a hand on Justin’s shoulder, his long, black fingers curving around the escort’s neck. There was no violence at all. Then he leant down so that his eyes were level with the other man.

  And Justin caved in.

  “You’re making a fuss about nothing,” Mrs Cheng said.

  “Yes…” He could barely get the word out.

  “Why don’t you phone the Nightrise offices when they open? They’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

  “There’s no need. Of course the girl can go with you.”

  “Let him go, Karl.”

  Karl released him. Justin swayed on his feet, then abruptly walked away. It was as if he had forgotten about Scarlett. He wanted nothing more to do with her.

  “Let’s be on our way, Scarlett. We’ve wasted enough time here.”

  Scarlett picked up her case and followed Karl and Mrs Cheng down an escalator. A sliding door led to a private road with a number of smart executive saloons and limousines waiting for their pick-ups. Karl took the case and hoisted it into the boot. Meanwhile, Mrs Cheng had opened the door, ushering Scarlett into the back.

  “Where are we going?” Scarlett asked.

  “We will take you to your father’s apartment.”

  “Is he there?”

  “No.” Audrey Cheng spoke English like many Chinese people, cutting the words short as if she were attacking them with a pair of scissors. “Your father had to go away on business.”

  “But that’s not possible. He just got me out of school. He made me come all this way.”

  “He has written a note for you. It will explain.”

  They had left the airport. Karl drove them across a bridge that looked brand new with steel cables sweeping down like tendrils in a web. The airport had been built on an island, one of several that surrounded Hong Kong. Everything here was cut into by the sea.

  They reached the outskirts of the city and Scarlett saw the first tower blocks, five of them in a row. They warned her just how different this world was going to be, how alien to everything she knew. All five tower blocks were exactly the same. They had almost no character. And they were huge. Each one of them must have had a thousand windows, stacked up forty or fifty floors in straight lines, one on top of another. From the road, the windows looked the size of postage stamps and anyone looking out of them would have been no bigger than the Queen’s head in the corner. It was impossible to say how many people lived there or what it would be like, coming home at night to your identical flat in your identical tower, identified only by a number on the door. This was a city that was far bigger than the people who lived in it. Hong Kong would treat its inhabitants in the same way that an ant hill looks after its ants.

  The motorway had turned into an ugly, concrete flyover that twisted through more office and apartment blocks. It was only seven o’clock in the morning but already the traffic was building up. Soon it would start to jam. Looking down, Scarlett saw what looked suspiciously like a London bus, trundling along with far too many passengers crammed on board. But it was painted the wrong colours, with Chinese symbols covering one side. Hong Kong had once belonged to the British, of course. It had been handed back at the end of the Nineties and although it was now owned by China, it more or less looked after itself.

  They passed a market where the stalls were still being set up and made their way down a narrow street with dozens of advertisements, all in Chinese, hanging overhead. Finally, they turned into a driveway that curved up to a set of glass doors in a smaller tower block. Scarlett saw a sign: WISDOM COURT. The car stopped. They had arrived.

  Wisdom Court stood to the east of the city in what had to be an expensive area, as it had the one thing that mattered in a place like this: open space. The building was old-fashioned – with brickwork rather than steel or glass. It was only fifteen storeys high and stood in its own grounds. There was a forecourt with half a dozen neat flower-beds and a white, marble fountain, water trickling out of a lion’s head. There were two more lions with gaping mouths, one on each side of the door. Inside, the reception area could have belonged to a smart hotel. There were palm trees in pots and a man in a uniform sitting behind a marble counter. Two lifts stood side by side at the end of the corridor.

  They went up to the twelfth floor, Karl carrying the luggage. Audrey Cheng had barely looked at Scarlett since they had left the airport, but now she fished in her handbag and took out a key which she dangled in front of her as if to demonstrate that she really did have a right to be here. They reached a door marked 1213. Mrs Cheng turned the key in the lock and they went in.

  Was this really where her father lived? The flat was clean and modern, with a long living room, floor-to-ceiling windows and three steps down to a sunken kitchen and dining room. There were two bedrooms, each with their own bathroom. But at first sight there was nothing that connected it with him. The paintings on the wall were abstract blobs of colour that could have hung in any hotel. The furniture looked new … a glass table, leather chairs, pale wooden cupboards. Had Paul Adams really gone out and chosen it or had it been there when he arrived? Everything was very tidy, not a bit like the warm and cosy clutter of their home in Dulwich.

  But looking around, Scarlett did find a few clues that told her he had been there. There were some books about the Second World War on the shelves. He always had been interested in history. The fridge had some of his favourite food – a packet of smoked salmon, Greek yoghurt, his usual brand of butter – and there was a bottle of malt whisky, the one he always drank, on the counter. Some of his clothes were hanging in the wardrobe in the main bedroom and there was a bottle of his aftershave beside the bath.

  And there was the note.

  It was printed, not written, in an envelope addressed to Scarlett and it wasn’t signed. Scarlett wondered if he had asked his secretary to type it. He only used two fingers and usually made lots of mistakes. The note was very short.

  Dear Scarly,

  Really sorry to do this to you but something came up and I’ve got to be out of Hong Kong for a few days. I’ll try to call but if not, enjoy yourself and I’ll see you soon. No need to worry about anything. I’ll explain all when we meet.

  Dad

  Scarlett lowered the note. “It doesn’t say when he’ll be back,” she said.

  “Maybe your father doesn’t know.”

  “But he’s the only reason I’m here!”

  Mrs Cheng spread her hands as if to apologize but there was no sign of any regret in her face. “This afternoon I will take you into the place where your father works,” she promised. “We will go to Nightrise and you will see the chairman. He will tell you more.”

  Karl had carried Scarlett’s suitcase into the spare bedroom. So far he hadn’t said a word. He was waiting at the front door.

  “I’m sure you’re tired,” Mrs Cheng said. “Why don’t you have a rest and we can explore the city later. Maybe you would like to do some shopping? We have many shops.”

  Scarlett didn’t want to go shopping with Audrey Cheng. It seemed that the two of them were going to be together until Paul Adams returned. It wasn’t fair. Had she really swapped Mrs Murdoch for her? But she was certainly tired. She had barely slept on the plane. Right now, in London, it would be about midnight.

  “I would like a rest,” she said.

  “That’s a good idea. I will be here. Call if there is anything you need.”

  Scarlett went into her room. She undressed and ha
d a shower, then lay on the bed. She fell asleep instantly, darkness coming down like a falling shutter.

  And once again she returned to the dreamworld, to the desert and the sea. She could sense the water behind her but she was careful not to turn round. She remembered the creature that had begun to emerge – the dragon or whatever it was – and didn’t want to see it again.

  Everything was very still. Her head was throbbing. There was something strange in the air. She looked for the four boys that she had once known so well and was disappointed to find that they were nowhere near.

  Something glowed red.

  She looked up and saw the sign, the neon letters hanging in their steel frame. They were flashing on and off, casting a glow across the sand around them. But the words were different. The last time she had seen them, they had read: SIGNAL ONE. She was sure of it.

  Now they had changed. SIGNAL THREE. That was what they read. And the symbol beside them, the letter T, had swung upside-down.

  SIGNAL THREE

  SIGNAL THREE

  What did it mean? Scarlett didn’t know. But behind her, far away in the sea, the dragon saw it and understood. She heard it howling and knew that once again it was rushing towards her, getting closer and closer, but still she refused to turn round.

  And then it fell on her. It was huge, as big as the entire world. Scarlett screamed and after that she remembered nothing more.

  THE CHAIRMAN

  The view was amazing. Scarlett had to admit it despite herself. She had never seen anything quite like it.

  It was the middle of the afternoon, her first day in Hong Kong, and she was standing in front of a huge, plate glass window, sixty-six floors up in the headquarters of the Nightrise Corporation. The building was called The Nail and looked like one too, a silver shaft that could have been hammered into its position on Queen Street. She was in the chairman’s office, a room so big that she could have played hockey in it, although the ball would probably have got lost in the thick-pile carpet. Paintings by Picasso and Van Gogh hung on the wall. They were almost certainly original.

  From her vantage point, Scarlett could see that the city was divided in two. She was staying on Hong Kong Island, surrounded by the most expensive shops and hotels. But she was looking across the harbour to Kowloon, the grubbier, more down-at-heels neighbour. The two parts were separated by what had to be one of the busiest stretches of water in the world, with ships of every shape and size somehow criss-crossing around each other without colliding. There were cruise ships, big enough to hold a small army, tied up at the jetty with little sampans, Chinese rowing boats, darting around them. Tugs, cargo boats and container ships moved slowly left and right while nimbler passenger ferries cut in front of them, carrying passengers over to the other side and back. There were even a couple of junks, old Chinese sailing ships that seemed to have floated in from another age.

  The Hong Kong skyscrapers were in a world of their own, each one competing to be the tallest, the sleekest, the most spectacular, the most bizarre. And there was something extraordinary about the way they were packed together, so many billions of tons of steel and glass, so many people living and working on top of one another… It had already reminded Scarlett of an ant nest but now she saw it was for the richest ants in the world. There weren’t many pavements in Hong Kong. An intricate maze of covered walkways connected the different buildings, going from shopping centre to shopping centre, through whole cities of Armani and Gucci and Prada and Cartier and every other million-dollar designer name.

  There was very little colour anywhere. If there were any trees or parks, they had been swallowed up in the spread of the city and even the water was like slate. Although it was late in the day, the light hadn’t changed much since the morning. Everything was wrapped in a strange, silver mist that made the offices in Kowloon look distant and out of focus.

  While she was being driven there, Scarlett had noticed quite a few people in the street had covered their mouths and noses with a square of white material, like surgeons, so that only their eyes showed. Was the air really that bad? She sniffed a couple of times but could detect nothing wrong. On the other hand, the air in the car was almost certainly being filtered. The same was true of the office. The windows here were several centimetres thick, cutting out all the noise and the smells of outside.

  “It’s quite a sight, isn’t it?”

  Scarlett turned round. A man had crept up on her without making any sound. He was a European, about sixty, with white hair and thin, silver glasses and although he was smiling, trying to be friendly, she found herself recoiling from him … as if he were a spider or a poisonous snake. There was something very unnatural about the man. He had clearly had a lot of work done to his face – Botox or plastic surgery – but there was a dead quality to his flesh. His eyes were a very pale blue, so pale that they had almost no colour at all.

  This was the chairman of the Nightrise Corporation. It had to be. He was wearing an expensive suit, white shirt and red tie. Very successful people have a way of walking, pushing forward as if they expect the world to get out of the way, and that was how he was walking now. He had a deep, throaty voice – he could have been a heavy smoker – and spoke with a faint American accent. There was a silver band on the middle finger of his left hand. Not the wedding finger. Scarlett somehow doubted that he would be married. Who in their right mind would choose to live with such a man?

  “It’s all right,” Scarlett said.

  The chairman seemed disappointed by her reaction. “There is no greater city on the planet,” he muttered. He pointed out of the window. “That’s Kowloon. Some people say that the best reason to go there is to admire the views back again but there are many museums and temples to enjoy too. You can take the Star Ferry over the water. The crossing is quite an experience, although it is one I have never enjoyed.”

  “Do you get seasick?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “When I was twelve years old, a fortune-teller predicted that I would be killed in an incident involving a boat. I’m sure you will think me foolish, but I am very superstitious. It is something I have in common with the Chinese. They believe in luck as a force, almost like a spirit. This building, for example, had to be built in a certain way, with the main door slanting at an angle and mirrors placed at crucial points, according to the principals of feng shui. Otherwise, it would be considered unlucky. And you see over there?” He pointed to a factory complex on the other side of the water, in Kowloon. “How many chimneys does it have?” he asked.

  Scarlett counted. “Five.”

  “It has four real chimneys. The extra one is fake. It is there because “four” is the Chinese word for death but on the other hand they believe that five brings good luck. Do you see? They take these things very seriously and so do I. As a result I have never been close to the water and I have certainly never stepped on a boat.”

  He gestured at a low, leather sofa opposite his desk. “Please. Come and sit down.”

  Scarlett did as she was told. He came over and joined her.

  “It’s a great pleasure to meet you, Scarlett,” he said. “Your father told me a lot about you.”

  “Where is my father?”

  “I’m afraid I owe you an apology. I’m sure you were disappointed that he wasn’t here to meet you. The fact is that we had a sudden crisis in Nanjing.”

  “Is that in China?”

  “Yes. There was a legal problem that needed our immediate attention. Obviously, we didn’t want to send him. But your father is very good at his job and there was no one else.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “It shouldn’t be more than a week.”

  “A week?” Scarlett was shocked. “Can I talk to him?” she asked.

  The chairman sighed. “That may not be very easy. There are some parts of China that have very bad communications. The landlines are down because of recent flooding and there are whole areas where there’s no reception for mobile phones. I’m sur
e he will try to call you. But it may take some time.”

  “So what am I meant to do?” Scarlett asked. She didn’t even try to keep the annoyance out of her voice.

  “I want you to enjoy yourself,” the chairman said. “Mrs Cheng will be staying with you until your father returns and Karl will drive you wherever you want to go. There are plenty of things to do in Hong Kong. Shopping, of course. Mrs Cheng has the necessary funds. There’s a Disneyland out on Lantau. We have all sorts of fascinating markets for you to explore. And you must go up to The Peak. Also, I have something for you.”

  He went over to the desk and opened a drawer. When he came back, he was holding a white cardboard box. “It’s a small gift for you,” he explained. “By way of an apology.”

  He handed the box over and she opened it. Inside, on a bed of cotton wool, lay a pendant made out of some green stone, shaped like a disc and threaded with a leather cord. Looking more closely, Scarlett saw that there was a small animal carved into the centre; a locust or a lizard or a cross between the two, lying on its side with its legs drawn up, as if in the womb. It was very intricate. If the work hadn’t been so finely done, it might have been ugly.

  “It’s jade,” he explained. “And it’s quite old. Yuan Dynasty. That’s thirteenth century. Can I put it on you?”

  He reached forward and lifted it out of the box. Compared to the delicacy of the piece, his fingers looked thick and clumsy. Scarlett allowed him to lower it over her head although she didn’t like having his hands so close to her throat.

  “It looks beautiful on you, Scarlett,” he said. “I hope you’ll look after it. It’s very valuable, so you don’t want to leave it lying around.” He got to his feet. “But now I’m afraid I will have to abandon you. I have a board meeting. I’d much rather not go. But even though I’m the chairman, they still won’t accept my cry for mercy. So I’ll have to say goodbye, Scarlett. It was a pleasure meeting you.”