“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere safe.” That was exactly what the woman had said. “Not far. Maybe twenty minutes.”
“Wait a minute…”
“No time.” He spoke in fractured English, spitting out the words. “You want to die, you stay here. You ask your questions. You want to live, get in the car. Now! They will be coming very soon.”
“Who will be coming?”
“Shape-changers. Or worse.”
The other man had gone over to the car. But he hadn’t opened the door. He had opened the boot.
“You don’t expect me to get in there!” Scarlett said.
“It must be this way,” the thin-faced man insisted. “You can’t be seen. But you’ll be all right. We make air-holes…”
“No…” It was too much to ask. Scarlett didn’t care how many shape-changers there might be, making their way up The Peak. She wasn’t going to be locked in the boot of a car by two people she had never met before and driven off to God knows where. “You can forget it…” she began.
The man had whipped something out of his pocket and he grabbed her before she knew what he was doing. She felt a handkerchief being pressed against her face. She kicked out, trying to knock him off balance, but he was too strong. The fumes of some sort of chemical, sweet and pungent, crept into her nose and mouth. Almost at once, all the strength drained out of her. She felt her legs fold and the world spun. And then she was falling, being guided into the boot, which had become a huge black hole waiting to swallow her up.
The end came very quickly. Darkness. Terror. And then the welcome emptiness of sleep.
LOHAN
She was in a cage, not lying down but standing. And there was something strange. The wall was moving. It seemed to be scrolling downwards in front of her. Or was it she who was moving up?
As consciousness returned, Scarlett realized what was happening. She was in a lift, one of the old-fashioned sort with a folding iron gate instead of a door. What she was looking at was the brickwork between floors in what must be a very tall building. She was pinned between the Japanese man and the one she had decided to call Paper Face. They were supporting her. She could still taste the drug – chloroform or whatever it was – that had knocked her out.
Scarlett groaned and the two men immediately tightened their grip. There was no chance she was going to start a fight in such a confined space, but she had already struggled at the car and they weren’t taking any chances.
“You are safe now,” Paper Face said.
“Where am I?”
“You will see … very soon.”
The lift slowed down and stopped and the Japanese man jerked the cage door open. They stepped out into a long, dimly lit corridor with walls that were either grimy or had been deliberately painted the colour of grime. There were doors every few metres. The whole place looked like a cheap hotel.
There was a Chinese man guarding the corridor with a machine gun cradled across his chest. The sight of the weapon struck Scarlett as completely bizarre. It was like something out of a gangster film. But the man didn’t look anything like her idea of a gangster. He was dressed in jeans and a loose-hanging shirt. He was skinny, with a wispy beard, a tattoo on his neck and a gold tooth prominent at the front of his mouth. A drug dealer perhaps? Looking at him, it was hard to believe that he was on her side.
The two men took her to the fourth room along the corridor. Paper Face knocked and the door was unlocked from inside. They entered. Machine Gun stayed where he was, opposite the lift.
Scarlett found herself in a large, almost empty flat that looked as if someone had recently moved out … or in. There were a few pieces of furniture, some of them covered in dust sheets, and no decoration: no carpet, no lampshades, no pictures on the walls. The windows had been blanked out with sheets of papers. Scarlett wondered why. They had to be fairly high up so surely there was no chance of anyone looking in. An archway led into a small kitchen and there was a corridor on the other side, presumably with a bedroom and bathroom at the end.
Another man had been waiting for her to arrive. He was Chinese, more smartly dressed than the others – in a grey suit and grey T-shirt – and everything about him radiated confidence and control. Was he the one in charge? He examined Scarlett briefly. His eyes were very dark, almost black, and gave nothing away. There was a thin scar starting high up on his left cheek and then slanting diagonally across his lips so that the two halves of his face didn’t quite meet, like a reflection in a broken mirror. But he was handsome even so. Scarlett guessed that he was barely more than twenty years old.
“How are you?” he said. “You must have been very frightened by your ordeal. I’m sorry that there was no other way.”
“Who are you?” Scarlett demanded. “Where am I and who are these people? What do you want with me? And what was that with Mrs Cheng? They said she was a shape-changer. What does that mean?” Once the questions had started, they wouldn’t stop.
The man held up a hand. He had long, elegant fingers, like a piano player. “We have a great deal to say to each other,” he said. “Would you like a drink?”
“No, thank you.”
“But I would.” He nodded and Paper Face hurried into the kitchen. He was obviously used to being obeyed. He turned back to Scarlett. “Please, come and sit down.”
Scarlett went over to the sofa. She was surprised how quickly the drug had worn off. She sat down. The man followed her and sat opposite. He moved slowly, taking his time. Everything about him was very deliberate.
“My name is Lohan,” he said. “Does that answer your first question? I doubt if my colleagues will have very much to say to you but I will tell you their names too. The man in the kitchen is called Draco. And this here…” he nodded in the direction of the Japanese man, “…is Red. Not their real names, you understand. Just the names they use.
“Your next question – what do we want with you? Very simply, we want to get you out of Hong Kong as quickly as possible. Quite frankly, it would have been better for everyone if you had never arrived, but never mind. We couldn’t stop you coming, although we tried. It’s remarkable how many people you’ve already managed to get killed.”
He certainly wasn’t sparing her feelings. But Scarlett wasn’t going to let him intimidate her. “I want to see my father,” she said. “Do you know where he is?”
“I’m afraid not,” Lohan replied. “I have never even met him. For what it’s worth, I would imagine that he is dead. A very great many people have died in Hong Kong in the last weeks. He was probably one of them.”
“You’re telling me my father’s dead! Don’t you care?”
Lohan shrugged. “I’ve told you. I’ve never met him. Why should it matter to me whether he is alive or dead?”
Draco came back in from the kitchen, carrying a tray with a small porcelain bowl and a jar of some sort of spirit – vodka or sake. He set the whole thing down in front of Lohan, bowed and then took his place on a seat beside the front door. Lohan poured himself a drink. He held it briefly between his index finger and his thumb, then threw it back and swallowed. He set the bowl back down.
“You want to know where you are,” he continued. “This apartment is in Mong Kok, a couple of blocks north of the Tin Hau Temple, where you had your fortune told. The entire building belongs to us and with a bit of luck, nobody will come up here. While you remain in this room, you are safe. Every minute you spend outside it, you are in more danger than you can possibly imagine.”
“You mean shape-changers.”
Lohan ignored her. For a moment he gazed past her, as if focusing on something outside the room. Then he began.
“You have to understand the nature of a city,” he said. “You live in London and so maybe what I’m about to say will be obvious to you. All cities are the same. They have an atmosphere. More than that. You might call it a flow. The traffic moves in a certain way. The trains pull in and out of the stations. People go to work, they have
their lunch, they go shopping, they go home again. Postmen deliver the post. Policemen patrol the streets. Sweepers and refuse collectors come out in the evening. The night bus arrives at the right time and picks up the people who are waiting at the stop and takes them where they expect to go. Everyone is obeying the flow, even if they don’t realize it, because if they didn’t life would descend into chaos.
“Now … consider Hong Kong. It is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. There are more than seven million people living here. That works out at around 6,500 people per square kilometre. A few of them are rich. Most of them are very poor. And then there are the millions in between – the doctors and dentists, the shopkeepers, builders, plumbers, teachers…”
“I think I get the point,” Scarlett interrupted.
“No, Scarlett. I don’t think you do.” Lohan hadn’t raised his voice. His face was as impassive as ever. But Scarlett realized that she shouldn’t have spoken. He wasn’t used to being interrupted. “This is the point,” he went on. “How many of those people could die, do you think, before you noticed? How many of them could be shot or knifed while they lay in bed before the city seemed any different? Fifty of them? Or five hundred? Or how about five hundred thousand? Can you describe to me, accurately, the man who sold you the ticket when you boarded the tram this morning? Or the driver who took you to The Peak? Or the man who was sweeping the leaves away when you began your walk? Suppose they had all been taken away and replaced with people who looked a little like them but who were not the same? Would you notice? If they and their entire families had been murdered, would you care? We see only what we want to see because that is the way of the city. In a village, in the country, people notice things. But on the streets, we are wilfully blind.”
“Are you saying that’s what’s happened?” Scarlett asked. “Ever since I’ve been here, I’ve been seeing weird things. And there’s nobody living at Wisdom Court. The whole place is empty. Are you saying they were all killed?”
“In the last three months, Hong Kong has been taken over,” Lohan replied. “It happened very quickly, like a virus. It is impossible to know how many people have been killed. Anyone who has noticed what has been going on or who has tried to fight it has been removed. What has happened has been so huge, so terrible that it is almost impossible to understand.
“Of course, some people have guessed, or half-guessed, and they have managed to get out, taking their money and their families with them. Ask them why they have gone and they will lie to you. They will say they wanted a change or they had new business opportunities. But in truth they have gone because they were afraid. Other people are aware that Hong Kong has changed. They have stayed here because they have no choice, because they have nowhere else to go. They are frightened too. But they keep their heads down and they go about their daily business in the hope that, if they ask no questions, they will be left alone. If you are poor, Scarlett, if you run a tiny stall in the street, what does it matter who controls the city? All you care about is your next meal. The city can take care of itself.”
“Who has taken over Hong Kong?” Scarlett asked, although she already knew the answer.
“They are called the Old Ones,” Lohan said. “At least, that is what you call them. In the East, we talk of gwei, evil spirits. We have many names for them.”
“I know about all this,” Scarlett said. “It’s what Father Gregory told me.”
“Who is Father Gregory?”
“He’s a monk. I went through a door in a wall and I met him…”
“This was at the Church of St Meredith’s.” Lohan knew the name. Perhaps he had read about it in the newspapers when Scarlett disappeared, but she doubted it. He seemed to know a lot about a lot of things. She wondered how. She still wasn’t sure how he fitted in. “You have to understand that we have been interested in you for a long time, Scarlett,” Lohan said. It was as if he had been reading her thoughts.
“We?”
“I am referring to the organization to which I have the great honour to belong. In fact, we have been watching you since the day that you were born.” He allowed this to sink in, then went on. “Have you ever wondered how you came to find yourself in the Pancoran Kasih Orphanage in Jakarta? Well, I can tell you. We arranged it. Why were you taken to live in Great Britain, thousands of miles away from your true home? We wanted it.”
“Why?”
“To keep you safe. To hide you from the enemies that we knew would one day search for you.”
“There was an accident in Dulwich. A white van…” Scarlett didn’t know why it had come into her mind right then, but she was suddenly sure that it was connected. She had a sense of everything coming together.
Lohan nodded. “It happened when you were thirteen years old,” he said. “It was not enough simply to send you far away. My organization had a sacred pledge to protect you, even from your own carelessness. When you stepped in front of the van which was speeding towards you, one of our people was there to push you out of the way. He was able to save you once. Unfortunately, he was less successful a second time.”
“He tried to contact me. In London…”
“His task was to give you a message. Under no circumstances were you to come here to Hong Kong. We had hoped to intercept you before you even left for the airport. But by then it was too late. The Old Ones had discovered who you were. They killed him.”
“He was waiting for me at the restaurant – the Happy Garden.”
Lohan nodded and there was a tiny spark of anger in his eyes. Perhaps part of him blamed her for the death. “Three people died in the explosion,” he said. “And the British authorities didn’t even bother to investigate. They just blamed it on us … Chinese gangs fighting each other. What did it matter to them? A few dead fei jais.” He used the Cantonese slang for petty criminals. “To the police, it just meant more paperwork.”
“This all happened because of the church, didn’t it.”
It was all making sense. Father Gregory had told her he was going to hand her over to the Old Ones. Scarlett had managed to escape – but not before she had given him her name and address. That had been all he needed. From that moment on she had been in a trap from which there was no escape.
“As soon as you returned, the Old Ones closed in on you,” Lohan said. “They knew that they had found one of the Gatekeepers and they weren’t going to let you go. From that moment on, they never let you out of their sight.”
Scarlett thought back. She had felt all along that she had been under surveillance but it was only now that she realized how true that had been. Every movement she had made had been watched. She had been pushed around like a piece on a board game and the last roll of the dice had brought her here.
“They used my dad to bring me to Hong Kong,” she said, and felt a sudden ache of sadness. Lohan had said Paul Adams might be dead. He could well be right.
“We never wanted you to come to this city,” Lohan said. “Once you were here, you would be utterly in their power, and you have no idea to what extent that has been true. All day, every day, you have been surrounded by them. Nobody has been allowed to come anywhere near you. Haven’t you noticed? Since you have been here, nobody has approached you. Nobody has come near.”
“There was a man with a letter…” Scarlett began. “In Queen Street.”
Lohan shook his head. “We didn’t send him. We knew that it would never have worked.” He paused. “The Old Ones control the police, the government and the civil service. They have made deals with the Chinese authorities and anyone who has stood in their way, they have killed. The hospitals, the fire service, the newspapers, the television and radio stations all serve them now. They keep constant watch on us through the surveillance cameras in the streets and know what we buy every time we use a credit card. They have taken over the mobile phone network and the Internet and every call is monitored, every one of the millions of e-mails that are sent every day is read by them. Criticize the governmen
t … you die. Even try to tell people what you know … you die. We’re back where we started, Scarlett. How many thousands of people can you kill in a city like this without anyone noticing? Only the Old Ones know the answer.
“And they are everywhere. The woman and the driver who pretended to work for your father were both shape-changers. We don’t know where they came from or what exactly they are. Many of the crowds that surrounded you were the same. Why do you think Wisdom Court is empty? They wanted to keep you in isolation and every man, woman or child who might come into contact with you was either taken away, killed or replaced.”
“Replaced with what?” Scarlett asked.
“With creatures that belong to the Old Ones.” Lohan filled the bowl a second time and drank it. The alcohol had no effect on him at all. “The whole city is against you, Scarlett. If you stepped outside now, you would be seen and identified in seconds. That was why you couldn’t travel here, sitting in a car. It was also why we had to be so careful reaching you. One of my people added the guidebook to your luggage at the airport. Then we bribed the supervisor of an office building and transmitted a message on the screen. The fortune-teller is part of our organization and she sent you to The Peak. Four different approaches and each time we had to be certain that you alone knew our intentions.”
“So what am I going to do?” Scarlett couldn’t keep the helplessness out of her voice. This is what it came down to. She was stuck in a room in a dirty block of flats. And outside a whole city was searching for her. She remembered how the day had begun when she had woken up. Even the flies were on their side.
“You must not be weak!” For a moment, Lohan didn’t even try to hide his contempt. He spat out the words and his mouth, cut in half by the scar, was twisted into a sneer. “It will not be easy,” he said. “The Old Ones chose this city very carefully. You are on an island with only four possible ways out. First, of course, there is the airport, where you arrived. But that is out of the question. Every flight will be watched and even if we disguise you and give you a false passport, the danger is too great.
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