‘It’s not full then?’
‘The restaurant has space for seventy person, thirty-one tables. We have eighteen only at special party tonight. No one is sitting with Mr Wong.’
He opened the doors and led her in.
Inside, the room was almost as dark as the corridor outside, despite the brightness of the doorway and the spotlights trained at unusual angles. The doorman handed her into the care of another staff member, who blandly led her to the table where Wong sat.
The feng shui master looked up and glared when he saw her. His eyes narrowed and the space between his eyebrows tied itself into the sort of knot only a sailor could undo.
‘What? What do you—?’ ‘I got an urgent—’
A gong sounded, cutting off their conversation. It was time for the next course.
Joyce sat next to him and whispered: ‘I’ve come to tell you that you gotta split. You shouldn’t stay here. It’s because—’ Wong sighed and raised one palm to silence her. ‘I know you like animals, but I like animals, too. I like to eat them. Man got to eat. Man got to eat to live.’
‘No, I don’t mean that. I mean you gotta go because something bad is going to happen.’
‘What something bad?’
Joyce’s eyes darted from side to side. There was no sign of Vega, or anything odd going on. She saw nothing but a group of fat rich men and thin rich women finishing tiny portions of something from huge plates. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know exactly. Just something, like, really bad. You see there’s this guy—’
De Labauve stepped out onto the little stage to do his spiel for the next item on the special menu degustation for tonight.
Wong shook his head in a studied display of disbelief. ‘Some guy will do something bad. But you don’t know what.’
‘It’s just that, you see, there’s this guy. His name is—’ Wong interrupted her. ‘You say you don’t know what something bad is going to happen. Well, I know what is going to happen. Something good is going to happen. And I know exactly what it is. Some good food is going to go into my stomach. That is what is going to happen.’
De Labauve spoke in his bad French-Mandarin about the delicate flavours of crustaceans and a pair of chefs appeared carrying the largest lobster Joyce had ever seen. It was a metre in length, and had a bluish, rainbow-tinted shell.
‘I think this guy is going to break in here or something—’
‘Shh,’ Wong said. ‘I want to listen. Afterwards you talk.’
‘And the lobster is the king of seafood,’ De Labauve continued. ‘And this beast is the king of the lobsters. It is one hundred and two centimetres in length and weighs almost eighteen kilos. It was captured three days ago and transported here by aircraft just for you tonight. This dish has been nominated by Osato Miyake in the name of his lovely wife Kami.’ This triggered a round of applause, plus bowing and arm flourishes from Mr Miyake.
Joyce turned to the stage and her face filled with horror. ‘Oh dear God,’ she said. ‘I hope that doesn’t mean they are going to kill the poor thing.’
Wong gave her a look of utter contempt before turning his chair slightly so that he wouldn’t have to look at her. He put his hand against his head so that he wouldn’t even see her out of the corner of his eye.
Chef Tomori raised the lobster high to show everyone. It swayed its long antennae, almost as if it was waving a regal goodbye to the audience. Then he raised it over a large glass dish of boiling water. He tensed his arms, preparing to drop the massive petrol-hued beast into the transparent cauldron.
Joyce gasped: ‘No!’ She clapped her hand over her mouth in horror and stood up.
Wong, embarrassed, spat at her: ‘Sit down. Shut up, crazy gwai mui. You spoil the party.’ He had visions of all the insulted guests pledging never to use his services again.
The lobster was dropped. A shriek of escaping air came from its shell as it plunged into the boiling water. Then there was a deafening crack from the side of the room—so loud it had everyone reaching to cover their ears. The tank of boiling water shattered loudly. Several people screamed. Gouts of boiling liquid splashed on the guests sitting nearest the stage. They leapt from their seats, squealing and brushing the steaming water from their arms.
Joyce and Wong ducked down, both of them knowing the sound of a gun being fired. Water and broken glass cascaded into the fire, extinguishing it with a loud hiss. Clouds of steam filled the stage. Shrieks, noise, chaos, confusion.
Then a loud, clear voice from the back of the room said: ‘Good evenin’.’
Everyone turned and stared. A young man stood in the corner, near the kitchen door. He was dressed entirely in black and was holding an AK47 in one hand, Rambo-style. He had a mask over the top half of his face, rather like Batman. Curls of long, dark, greasy hair ran down to his shoulderblades. He was flanked on both sides by other individuals similarly attired.
‘Everyone keep absolutely still,’ he said in a London accent, pronouncing still as stiw. ‘And you won’t get ’urt. Yet,’ he added menacingly. ‘Now stand up and put yer ’ands on yer ’eads.’
The intruder’s assistants raced quickly and efficiently to each table. When they got to the table behind which Wong and McQuinnie were crouching, they levelled guns at them, forcing them to stand with their hands in the air along with everyone else. The diners and staff were frisked for weapons. Two of the diners were found to have handguns on them, as did one of the waiters. The pistols were dropped into a tureen of consommé which was simmering quietly in a corner. ‘Where’s my cursed bodyguard?’ Tun Feiyu snapped, but there was no answer to be had.
The giant rainbow lobster lay still on the ground, killed either by the boiling water or the bullet. His saviours had been too late to rescue him and there were only a few things left on the menu: a chicken and egg dish and something called ‘curling oysters’. Vega, well-organised though he seemed, appeared to have some time management issues.
‘This your friend?’ Wong whispered to Joyce. ‘You said there was some guy…?’
‘Yes. No. Yes, this is the guy I meant. But I don’t really know him. He’s not really a friend. I only made his dinner.’
‘What?’
The young man in the mask approached the stage. He slung his gun over his shoulder and faced up to the cowering, terrified De Labauve. ‘Please don’t hurt me,’ the chef begged. ‘You want my pochette?’
‘No fanks.’ Vega, who was as thin and scrawny as a stale green bean, easily picked up the much larger man by his lapels and threw him across the stage where he landed on the griddle with a hiss. As he struggled to get off the burning metal surface, De Labauve’s wig fell off, revealing him to be bald. This elicited a single scream, from the chef ’s girlfriend, who was sitting at a table to the far left—but whether she was upset that her boyfriend was being roughed up or because she had not known that he was hairless could not be ascertained. Scrambling off the griddle, the chef picked himself up and grabbed the nearest drink—Tonyboy Villaneuva’s glass of Chateau Lafite ’82—and poured it onto parts of his body which had been burned: the back of his bald head, and the sides and fingers of his hands.
The sudden violence had silenced everyone.
‘The slaughter of the innocent ’as TO STOP, awright?’ Vega said. He spoke in an odd, slightly slurred way, as if he were drugged. His words varied illogically in terms of pitch and volume, with some words almost screamed.
‘But for now, I ’ave only one word LEFT to say to YOU.’ He made a hand gesture and he and his gang swiftly pulled something out of their shoulderbags: something dark, plasticky and glinting—gas masks.
Wong realised what was about to happen and grabbed a serviette to clamp in front of his face. He turned to look for the exit doors, but they were all guarded.
Joyce put her hand up in junior school fashion and squeaked in Vega’s direction: ‘Excuse me. I’m actually—’ But her words were drowned out by thuds and hisses. A number of gas bombs were set off and the room immediatel
y filled with smoke, darkness and the sound of coughing individuals falling to their knees. The gas had a medicinal smell, rather like cough syrup.
‘One word. And THE WORD is: Goodnight. Awright?’ said Vega, with a laugh.
CF Wong and Joyce McQuinnie fell into a deep sleep.
5
‘Where is my child? Just give me my baby.’
‘Calm down. Jia Lin is fine. We need to do a little deal with you, that’s all.’
‘Just give me my child back. I’ll do anything you say, but just give her back to me.’ Her voice cracked and trembled.
‘You’ll get her back. But you need to give us something.’
The kidnapper spoke in English, but it was with neither of the accents Linyao knew best: Chinese or north American. Was it some variety of British English? ‘Anything. You can have everything I’ve got. I don’t have much money but you can have all of it. Please!’ She burst into tears again.
‘Calm down, Ms Lu. We want one thing only. We want your security pass for the Shanghai Municipal Stables. We just need to borrow it for a while.’
‘My stable pass?’
‘Yes. That’s all. Just give us your—just lend us your stable pass, and you’ll get your daughter back.’
‘When do I get her back?’
‘Bring the pass to the park south of Yan’an Dong Lu, opposite the Main Telecommunications Building, and sit on one of the benches near the centre. Take your mobile phone with you. We’ll call you at seven o’clock exactly.’ Then the soft voice hardened: ‘You call the police, or anyone in the authorities, and the deal is off—you’ll never see your daughter alive again, do you understand?’
Linyao’s reply was just a sob.
‘Do you understand?’
‘Yes, yes, I won’t tell anyone.’
The phone went dead.
She turned a bleary, red-eyed face to Dilip Sinha, and wept as she spoke. ‘They want my stable pass card. I have to deliver it to the park. At seven.’
Sinha’s face betrayed no emotion, remaining calm and reassuring, although his right eyebrow lifted itself two millimetres.
She rose to her feet.
‘Sit down,’ Sinha said. ‘Getting there too early will do us no good. It’s better that you keep as calm as possible. We need your brain working at full capacity. It will work better if it is calm. We can take comfort from the fact that the child is alive and well, and the persons with whom we are dealing have a plan to get her back into your arms. Also, we can take comfort from the fact that they want to swap her for something that you have, rather than something you don’t have, such as a million dollars. Now tell me. Your stable pass—what does that do?’
She lowered herself back to the stool. The light was disappearing. A truck roared by. The evening was getting colder. She shivered, but would have done so had she been in a sauna. Linyao buried her face in her hands for a minute. She took deep, slow breaths. Then she looked up, sniffed once and spoke calmly: ‘It gets me into the place where they keep the animals for government use—the horses for parades, the performing animals for shows, and so on. I’m a veterinarian. My job is to look after these animals if they get sick.’
‘I see. Is there any money associated with the place?’
‘No, nothing. There’s the animal block, and there’s the offices, and there’s the storerooms where we keep the fodder, medicines, bales of hay, that sort of thing. There’s no money there.’
‘If it’s not cash they are after, it’s something else—are any of the animals valuable in any way?’
‘Not really. Horses, birds, the occasional performing elephant or tiger. They all have some monetary value, but not a lot. Elephants are expensive, but they are not easy to sell on the street corner.’
‘Could they use your card as a front to get in somewhere? For example, to escort a performing horse to a parade to entertain the Politburo members, or the visiting dignitaries from the United States or something?’
‘No. My card only gets me into the stable block. It doesn’t get me into any other building. Even if the horses were entertaining someone important, I wouldn’t—or someone with my card wouldn’t—be able to go with them.’
‘But the horses, et cetera, can go to buildings where top dignitaries are waiting to be entertained? At the presidential summit which starts this week, for example?’
Linyao thought about this. ‘Yes. There will be a few animals at the summit’s first night cultural show at the Grand Theatre tomorrow. But I don’t see how my pass could help anyone infiltrate those events. No—they can’t be planning to sneak into the parades with the horses or anything. There are separate passes for the animal handlers. Even the animals themselves have passes—photopasses with their pictures on them.’
Sinha sighed. ‘Perhaps they don’t understand that your stable pass only lets them have limited access. Perhaps this is all misconceived.’
‘I’ll tell them when I speak to them—when they give my baby back.’ She looked down at the phone she was clutching tightly: now this tiny device was her precious lifeline to her child.
The vaastu master looked away, his eyes appearing to sweep the dingy street as he searched for answers somewhere in the middle distance. ‘No—there’s something wrong here. Their planning is too good. They wouldn’t make a mistake like that. Our train of thinking must be wrong. I think we should assume that they know your pass will only get them into the stable block. Is there access to any important government building from the stables? Is it adjacent to anyone’s office?’
‘I don’t know. It’s just north of the creek in a building off Zhejiang Bei Lu. There are lots of nondescript buildings around there—I have no idea what’s inside them.’
‘Let’s look at a map.’ Sinha had purchased a street map of Shanghai at the airport bookshop to help him find Wong’s office—now, his ex-office. They pored over the map and noticed that next to the stables were dozens of blocks, including some government offices. ‘It will take forever to try to work out who is in them, and who they’re after—but I think we’re going to have to try.’
‘You are going to have to try. I am going to the park.’
Sinha shook his head. ‘I don’t think you should, madam. They said seven o’clock. It will do you no good to go ridiculously early. Indeed, it may make them feel uncomfortable. I suggest we follow their instructions closely. Let’s spend some time looking at the map and working out what they want your pass for. And then, in good time, we’ll head to the park.’
After some thought Linyao decided that he was right— engaging in some activity would help her pass the time without going mad with worry. ‘I’ll take you there,’ she said. ‘To the stable block. Come on.’
Before Sinha could react, she had raced off down some gritty streets. Walking at a brisk pace, she led him over a small hump-backed bridge across an ugly brown river to the stable block in Zhejiang Bei Lu. It took less than twenty minutes to get there. Then they carefully walked the streets surrounding it. Sinha took notes in a small notebook as Linyao told him what each building contained. She knew some of them, but there were several she couldn’t identify. In those instances, they simply strolled up to the main entrances and examined the nameplates. There was one large office building, to the east of the stable block, which had no nameplate at all— something that piqued Sinha’s interest. The guards standing outside looked particularly hostile. All the windows were covered with reflective panels so passers-by could not see inside. Stone barriers prevented cars pulling up outside the main door, and a guard checked every approaching vehicle before allowing it to proceed into a tunnel to a basement car park to the right of the entrance. This black hole swallowed up a succession of cars, most of which were black and had tinted windows.
‘Very suspicious,’ said Sinha. ‘No identifying marks whatsoever. It strikes me that this building is significant, given the vehicular activity and the fact that it gives no clues as to what it is.’
Linyao shook her head. ‘Tha
t’s where the spies hang out. It’s one of those secrets that nobody tells anyone else because everyone already knows it.’
Seven o’clock—or actually, six forty-nine—arrived with glacial slowness. Linyao waited at the Yan’an Road park. She sat on a bench, but she was shaking so much that she looked as if she had delirium tremens. She had the stable pass—a piece of laminated plastic bearing her photograph—in her sweaty right hand, which was in her pocket, and her mobile phone was on her lap.
The little digital clock on the screen of the phone moved slowly. It said 6:49. She waited for what seemed like hours before looking at it again. It still said 6:49. Had the damn thing stopped? What a time for the clock to give up! Did this not prove that she was cursed? Her life had become a waking nightmare. If she and Jia Lin came out of this alive, she would burn incense at the temple every day—twice a day, if that’s what the gods wanted.
Then the time on the tiny Motorola screen switched to 6:50 and she realised that the phone was still working, but the rawness of her nerves was slowing time down for her. There were ten minutes to go. She closed her eyes and replayed, in her head, the conversations with the kidnapper. Did she recognise the voice? Were there any clues in what was said, or in the background noises? Were there any background noises?
She couldn’t bear to replay Jia Lin’s little cry—it broke her heart even to think of it. What must the poor girl have been suffering. When she got her back, she would never let her out of her sight again. She would pull her out of school. She could come to work at the stables, in her office. She would learn more from her mother than from that useless school that allowed kidnappers to snatch children and their minders from its doorstep.
Her mind played on these things for a while, and when she next looked at her watch it said 6:54. The phone was due to ring in six minutes. Again and again, her eyes swept the thinning crowds of people ambling through the park, looking for a small girl with pigtails. Where could she be? When would she appear?
The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics Page 9