"That's not legal."
"You did it anyway!"
"Harry, if you'd seen him—"
"I have seen him! I can see him now! He's lying here on the bed like a goddamned squashed cockroach! I'm standing in the middle of his stink!" Feiffer said, "You didn't just ask your pal about him. He worried you. You did a full background on him! Now, who the hell was he?"
"He didn't murder her, she fucking jumped!"
"I know she fucking jumped! She wasn't the only one! You fucking jumped! You took one look at him and your goddamned blood ran cold!" Feiffer said quickly, "I would have done the same! You did a full background check on him and then after you did it, to get flesh on the bones, you rang up everyone you knew who might have run across him!" Feiffer said, shouting, "Charlie, I've got nothing here! I don't even know his first name!"
"Jakob. His first name was Jakob." He didn't have to look it up, he knew. Osgood, speaking formally, reciting it line by line from all the times he had thought about it, said, "Jakob Idris, age sixty-eight, Malay origin, resident in Hong Kong thirty-three years, employed as part-time contract specialist labor at Quarantine Station, Hong Bay, original occupation company director, wife Mata, currently deceased, no suspicious circumstances." Osgood said softly, abruptly, "He didn't make my blood run cold, Harry, he frightened me. I don't know why. I don't know how he did it, but he frightened me. I looked at him and I knew that he was something that should have frightened me." Osgood said tightly, "I thought he might have been someone who— I thought—" Osgood said, "But he was as clean as a whistle. All he was, all he was before he was what he was when I met him was a company director of a light engineering works here in North Point. I thought—" Osgood said, "The Idris Garden Implement and Engineering Works—ridiculous. He'd owned the place about twenty-five years and evidently done a fair trade—it wasn't a public company, it wasn't listed on the exchange, but my pal checked with the export section of Customs and it was doing all right until the Americans started doing more and more legal business with China and the Chinese started making the sort of things he made at about one-fifth of the cost." Osgood said simply, "He went broke. One of the guys in the companies squad said that there had been a suggestion that his partner had absconded with the company's funds, but if it was true Idris didn't lay a charge." Osgood said, "He did say something else when I spoke to him. I said something about death—I don't even remember what it was, something bloody saccharine and according to the manual of what to say to distressed relatives—and he said in a whisper, 'like wind, like wings.'" Osgood said, "I was bending down to talk to him. He took a single step back when he said it and smiled at me." Osgood said, "That was when my blood ran cold, that was when—" He said with irritation, embarrassment, "Why the hell am I telling you this? What the hell have I got to do with anything? I'm a cop! I'm supposed to be the opaque bloody repository for bloody bald statements by people I interview. I'm not a participant, I'm a goddamned neutral, unemotional, untouchable observer!"
"What sort of factory was it? Was it big?"
"He made goddamned shovels! It was somewhere up in the redevelopment area. He didn't even have a long lease on it. When the business went bust the lease had about eighteen months to run. Eighteen months ago when the development was in the planning stage the developers were paying millions to buy leases. They didn't have to buy his: they just had to wait and let it run out. It's due to run out in about three weeks." Osgood said, "I don't know—should I feel sorry for him? Maybe he was a man who, all down the line, had had life kick him in the teeth." Osgood, losing control, going too far into it, said, "I don't know! I'm not going to tell you anything else because anything else is just speculation!" Osgood said, "You've got it! You want it! You fucking do it!"
"How big was the factory?"
"It was the old gasworks at the corner of Godown Street and Tung Kun Street! I didn't go there! It was all closed up! He had the whole place for the business! The business failed! He was going to expand into the lawn mower business or the bloody bulldozer business or something so he leased the entire building, but the tide of bloody world politics overtook him and what he had was just a bloody great empty—"
Feiffer said tightly, "Aviary."
Osgood said, "What?"
Feiffer asked almost casually, "Did he make machetes along with his rakes and his shovels, Charlie?"
"I suppose so." Osgood said, "What are you talking about? Has this got something to do with Yat's? You're not saying he did that?" Somehow, it would have made everything clear. Somehow, it would almost have been a relief. Osgood, sounding anxious, said with hope, "Are you saying he did all that at Yat's?"
"I'm saying—"
It made sense of it. It made sense of it all. It made sense of the way a six-foot-two man had felt when a tiny, pale-eyed old man had said something to him in a whisper. Osgood, seizing it, said quickly, "He wasn't some poor bloody victim of life! He was the one who did the victimizing!" Osgood said, "Even his poor bloody daughter—even her— He put her in the bloody loony bin with the way he was!"
"What daughter?"
Spencer, at the door to the bedroom, holding up the photograph, said urgently, "Harry—"
"What fucking daughter?"
"The one in the loony bin in St. Paul de Chartres hospital! I couldn't get to talk to her! I only found out she even bloody existed when I saw the funeral notice in the paper!" Osgood, reaching hard for something to hang on to, looking for a way out, said as a command, "Look around! There isn't even a bed in the bloody apartment for her! He must have put her in, thrown away everything that even reminded him or his wife of her and then, as if she had ceased to exist—"
"Why is she in St. Paul's?"
"Depression. She's not a fucking loony. She's a sort of come-and-go patient who never goes. She—" Osgood said, realizing where it was leading, "No, it wasn't her, no."
He had the photo. Spencer, putting it into Feiffer's hand, said again, "Harry—"
"Harry, she—" Osgood, at the other end of the line, said, "No. No. No!" There was a limit. He had come to it. It wasn't possible. Osgood said over and over, "No! No! No!"
He looked down at the photo. It was of Yat's. It was of the Wishing Chair at Yat's. He saw the dog sleeping by the chair with a blur where, even it its sleep, before it had been gutted in the rain, its tail wagged for anyone who came to it. It was her. Sitting in the chair, half smiling on a day a long, long time ago, it was her.
Osgood said in desperation, too much threatened, too much unsure, unknowing, incapable of dealing with it, with what it all meant if it was true, "Harry, for Christ's sake, she's only fourteen years old!"
It was her. She was the one. In the photo, taken years ago, taken when she was about eleven or twelve, sitting on the Wishing Chair, she was smiling. It was her. On the bed, Idris's hand had almost been severed from the wrist. It hung down covered in flies, by a single ribbon of sinew.
On the other end of the line, Osgood, in the terrible hush, said desperately, "Harry! Harry, are you still there?"
He found it. There, at the corner of Godown and Tung Kun streets, in the deserted rubbish-blowing, closed-off roads and lanes of the development area, he found it. Now, on a peeling derelict wooden sign above the boarded-up windows and doors, the brick, warehouselike building read IDRIS GARDEN IMPLEMENT AND ENGINEERING WORKS.
In his ears, the pinging reached a crescendo and then stopped.
O'Yee, taking the headphones from his ears, in the faint wind through the deserted, silent street, listened.
He saw Lim's face.
He listened.
He heard no sound at all.
He listened.
She had killed them. All of them. In the cocoon, with her hand and wrist moving and tensing as she held the machete, she heard her mother call. "Jakob!"
She heard her call.
"Jakob—!"
She heard her call.
"JAK-OB!"
She heard her.
She saw her.
She heard her go in silence as she fell: she saw it in her mind.
"JAKOB—!"
He lay on the bed writing something.
He wrote a note.
She wrote a note.
What he was writing was what she had written.
"He thought he saw an Elephant—"
She wrote it. She stood beside her mother as the pencil she used wrote it on the back of the photograph. She saw her mother look up at her. She was not crying. She was writing all the lines of the poem and she was weeping.
"JAKOB!" She heard her call.
"JAKOB! JAKOB!"
She had killed everything. There was more. She had killed everything and still there was more and more and more—
"JAKOB!" She was weeping. Her mother was weeping with tears rolling down her face and in the kitchen where she wrote, she was shaking her head writing the words and weeping.
The machete, in the cocoon—in the room where the machine, over and over printed the single square of paper she had cut out from the newspaper over and over—the machete gleamed like an icicle.
He had looked at her once as he lay on the bed writing down what her mother had written, he had looked with his blind, unseeing eyes at the keys she had gotten from somewhere, and then—
Then she had killed him.
"Daisy . . ."
In the rain, holding the umbrella in the darkness, she had called softly. The iron bar and the machete were on the ground beside her.
"Daisy . . ."
In the cocoon, his rasping soft whisper called, "Daisy . . . " He knew all their names.
"Daisy . . ."
"Daisy . . ."
"JAKOB!"
In the cocoon, in the redness, in the factory, she waited.
"JAKOB—!"
There was no sound and no one knew she was there.
"Godown Street and Tung Kun Street?"
On the phone, Osgood, knowing now he would have to take what it was that had been left there in that awful apartment, said quickly, "Yes."
"What the hell's her bloody name?"
"She's fourteen years old!" Osgood said, "Mata! Her name is Mata—Mata Idris—the same as her poor bloody mother!" Osgood, shrieking, everything he had ever believed in—himself— gone, gone forever, yelled, "What else? What the fucking bloody goddamned hell else?"
She touched at the blade and felt its edge. In the redness, in the darkness, it glittered like ice. She touched at the gun and felt its weight.
In a photograph once, in it now, she smiled. The dog beside her by the chair, even though it was asleep, was wagging its tail.
It dreamed its dreams.
In the blackness of the unlit, boarded building, she dreamed hers.
"Twenty-eight!"
He heard it.
O'Yee, touching at his gun, put his shoulder a little to the closed corrugated iron door at the main entrance to the place.
The door gave. It was open.
O'Yee said to Lim with his hand wet with perspiration around the butt of his gun in its holster, "Wait here. You wait here."
He listened.
He heard it.
O'Yee, steeling himself, giving an order, said a moment before he pushed in the door and went in, "Wait here. Whatever happens, you—" He saw Lim's face.
O'Yee said with a sudden, inexplicable, urgent anger, "You! You just wait here!"
16
"Get the shotgun out of your car and ride with me!" Outside the New China Apartments as Auden ran to his car, Feiffer ordered Spencer, "You two ride with me! You drive, Bill!" He saw Auden working the lock on the boot of his car. He saw him limping. Feiffer yelled, "Are you all right?" He saw Auden nod hard. Feiffer ordered him, "Move! Move!"
Spencer still had the photograph in his hand. He looked down at it. At the other car the shortened pump action 12 gauge was coming out. He saw Auden pull it free and cock it in a single motion. Spencer said urgently, "Harry—she's only fourteen years old!"
Feiffer ordered him, "Drive!" He saw Spencer's face. "It's not for her!" He ordered Auden, closing the boot, "Run! Run!"
All the windows and doors were boarded up. Only the main entrance seemed opened and it had two sheets of corrugated iron nailed onto it. At the old gasworks, O'Yee, putting his arm against it and pushing, felt it give. He listened. There was nothing, no sound. Through the inch he got the door open he could see only darkness. He had been shouting orders at Lim. He felt his mouth go dry. In the darkness there was nothing. O'Yee said quietly to Lim two feet behind him, "Wait here." There was nothing, no one around but them. He looked back up and down the street and saw only empty canyons and papers and rubbish blowing in eddies in the ground currents. It was not a two-story building, it was a building two stories high without a second-floor level. Inside it was a giant hangar. O'Yee, his arm still on the corrugated iron, kneading his fist, said again, "You wait here."
"Yes, sir."
O'Yee said again, "Wait here."
He heard Lim take a step backward.
O'Yee said—
There was nothing to say.
The door opened another inch as he pushed on it and he moved his fingers along the corrugated iron and got them around the edge of the door. It had resistance. Ten feet high, it balanced on two rusty hinges that made a grinding noise as they moved. He felt resistance. It was spring-loaded. There were two holes in the corrugated iron where there had been a padlock and chain.
The padlock and chain were no longer there.
O'Yee, swallowing, said—
Lim said quietly, "You can rely on me."
He pushed. The door gave a little more, grinding on its hinges.
He touched his free hand, he thought, to his gun in its shoulder holster. His hand only got as far as his shirt and flattened against his chest, rubbing it. His hand was wet. O'Yee said in a whisper, "Can you hear anything?" He could see, as the door opened, only darkness. There was the faint musty smell of ammonia and oil and disuse. O'Yee, feeling for the corner of the door, pushing, hearing the sound as the hinges moved, said so softly Lim had to strain to hear him, "Wait . . . wait here."
"Maybe there's nothing there."
"Yeah." He listened. In the hangar he could see only darkness. As the door opened it let in only a little more light. He saw shapes, shadows, machines. He smelled the smell of oil and ammonia and disuse. He wished he had a cigarette. O'Yee said to a question he thought Lim had asked, "Yes, yes, that'll be all right."
He listened.
He listened for twenty-eight.
He listened for anything.
There was nothing. There was only the darkness. O'Yee, pushing the door, nodding, said in a voice he could get no volume to, "Yes." He heard Lim come closer.
O'Yee, pushing hard on the door and feeling the pressure of it against his hand, getting it open a foot and sliding around it into the warehouse, said for the last time, holding Lim's eyes before he went in, "Yes. Yes, that'll be all right."
He went in. He seemed, instantly, to disappear.
The door, let free on its spring-loaded hinges a foot from where Lim stood with the metal detector on the ground beside him, closed with terrible finality, suddenly, without warning, with a bang.
On the car radio, Hurley said urgently, "He's there! He must be there! He hasn't rung back and I can't get in touch with him!" Hurley said, "It's the old gasworks on Godown Street and Tung Kun Street in North Point—"
"What the hell's he doing there?" In the back, reading the street map, Auden ordered Spencer, "Left! Turn left into Singapore Road, down Singapore Lane, then right into Temple Street and then—" Feiffer, grabbing hard on to the microphone as Spencer swung the car through the cross junction from Shanghai Street and accelerated down Singapore Road, demanded, "Who the hell are you?"
"I'm with the archives and history section!"
"The end of the street—the end of Temple's blocked off—" Spencer, changing down and making the engine roar, turning right back down to run parallel wit
h Shanghai Street, shouted back to Auden behind him, "It's all blocked off! There are pylons in the middle of the road!"
He saw Feiffer turn to look at him or back out through the rear window. He tried not to look as if his legs still hurt. Auden, looking stoic, shouted, "He knocked down a wall at the station, boss!" He looked away down to his map. There were the marks of pylons everywhere. Auden, finding a clear street, shouted above the engine, "When you get to Shanghai, try to bear right and then come up again into Godown Street!"
"What the hell do you mean he knocked down a wall?"
The radio was breaking up into static. Feiffer, pressing hard on the "Send" button to try to clear the fast-breaking transmission, shouted to Hurley, "Who the hell are you? Why the hell is O'Yee there?"
"I can't get into Godown Street from there!" Ahead of him, Spencer could see only more pylons blocking the road. They were everywhere. The whole area was closed off. It was some sort of new development. Spencer, trying to be helpful, trying to catch Feiffer's eye as he turned again into a nameless side street and found himself back where he started, going again for Singapore Road, said to be part of the conversation, "Someone knocked down a wall in the basement too!" He could get nowhere. He was going in circles. Spencer, a moment before the transmission broke up into static and then cleared again, said in protest, "Phil, for God's sake, read the map!"
She became stone.
In the factory, in the darkness, in the silence and the faint smell of ammonia and oil and decay, she heard a sound and became stone.
She ceased to breathe or make any sound at all.
She listened. In the cocoon, unmoving, stone, she listened for a whisper, a rasp, a motion.
". . . Jakob . . ." Outside the cocoon there was no sound. She listened for a sound.
In her hand the machete was glittering against the redness, beginning to come alive. She was stone. There was no perspiration. Her hand, feeling the life surging through the wooden handle of the weapon like a tide, a current, was stone and did not move.
". . . Jakob . . ." He had looked up from the words he was writing and seen that it was her. For an instant the pale eyes had looked up at her and an expression had begun on his face. For an instant . . .
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