The Black Dragon

by Julian Sedgwick

  It bursts open, taking out a gang member lurking on the other side. His face is astonished, then blank, as he keels to the floor.

  “Come on, Major!”

  Zamora parries one more blow, then, with all his strength, hurls the barbell two-handed at his adversaries.

  “Let’s go!”

  They’re through the door and slamming it shut before the gang manages to close. “Need to brace it,” the major shouts, looking around frantically.

  A fire extinguisher—rust-spotted with age—is leaning against the wall. Zamora grabs it and jams it under the door’s external handle, wedging it up and locked.

  “It’ll buy us a few minutes. Now what?”

  “Find a way out.”

  “What about your aunt?”

  “They’ve taken her somewhere else. I’ll explain later.”

  The landing is dark now, choked with cardboard boxes that fill the space and overflow down the stairs. Each one stamped with Chinese characters. Zamora cranks the lighter into flame and peers at them, running his finger along the English underneath. WING LUCK FIREWORK COMPANY. EXPORT. FLAMMABLE.

  Angry voices yell on the other side of the door. Then the first thump as the gangsters make an effort to break it open. The door gives slightly, but the extinguisher holds fast.

  “This way for the exit then,” Zamora says, holding the lighter over his head.

  They hurry down the darkened stairwell, but they haven’t gone more than half a flight when they hear voices echoing below them. A second later comes a deafening gunshot, the bullet ripping out a chunk of wall just above Zamora’s head, showering them both with plaster.

  “Caramba, Mister Danny. These jossers mean business!”

  “We’ll have to climb instead.”

  Going back past the gym door they can hear the effort to break it down: a steady boom, boom as the door is rammed with something heavy. The fire extinguisher shifts again, making an ominous drawn-out hissssss.

  “Keep climbing, Major.”

  But Zamora pauses, looking at the boxes. He bends to one at the bottom of a stack and holds the lighter’s flame steadily against it. It catches, takes hold, sending bigger flames licking up the box’s side—glinting on the major’s face. He smiles.

  “Light at arm’s length. Oh boy. Run, Danny! As fast as you can. Don’t wait for me!”

  Danny climbs swiftly, but pauses at each landing to wait for Zamora. The voices below are climbing faster for sure, closing the gap. There’s not much time.

  “Come on, Major!”

  “It’s all right for you, Mister Danny. This is where my build holds me back, you know.”

  Smoke is curling up the stairwell, stiffening the air. As Danny arrives at each new landing, he tries the door, but every single one of them is locked tight shut.

  “This place is a deathtrap, Mister Danny,” the major says, puffing hard, as yet another refuses to budge. “Somebody ought to close the whole thing down.”

  From below comes another gunshot, then another. They’re deafening in the confined space, and a bullet ricochets off the metal handrail, setting it ringing.

  Then a moment later there’s an eruption of sound below—something like machine gun fire: loud, stuttering. The corridor is lit up by flash after flash as the box of firecrackers ignites and detonates. And that sets off a chain reaction: rockets scream and bang in the gloom, Roman candles pump out their flares, brilliant and extraordinarily loud in the echo chamber of the stairwell. Bursts of blue, green, luminous orange. A rocket comes hurtling up out of the chaos and goes fizzing crazily off the walls and the smoke billows blackly toward them.

  And then, amidst the chaos, a deeper explosion that rocks the stairs.

  “Fire extinguisher, no?” Zamora says, rather proudly.

  “Good job,” Danny says, patting him on the back.

  “Even better than the end of the Wonder Chamber.”

  They come to the top floor. No more steps, and the stairwell below engulfed in smoke as the fireworks display stutters to a close. A number on the wall says 24. No doorway here, just blank wall. Above them a trapdoor is cut into the ceiling with an extendable ladder clamped tight against it. EMERGENCY ROOF ACCESS, a sign says, but the steps are well out of both Danny’s and Zamora’s reach. The smoke is stinging their eyes, making them gag.

  “There ought to be laws,” Zamora says. “What about equal opportunities? I’ll bunk you up.”

  He puts both hands together and Danny places his left foot in them.

  “Ready?” Zamora says. “Just like voltige. On three . . .”

  Danny reaches up as the major propels him to the ceiling, making a grab for the release lever—and the ladder comes rattling down, nearly braining them both.

  Danny scrambles up the metal rungs, bangs open the trapdoor, and finds himself in blinding sunlight on the Mansions’ roof, gulping good clean air. Zamora follows him up, coughing furiously.

  All of Kowloon, the harbor, the island, lie spread out before them. Perpendicular lines of the skyscrapers cut the curve of the hills beyond. A dizzying world.

  To the right there’s a smart office block, the same height as the Mansions. It’s tantalizingly close across a narrow—but lethal—twenty-four-floor drop. A gust of wind sweeps the rooftop, stirring the rubbish and weeds, and then dies again.

  “Caracho!” Zamora blinks at the view. He turns quickly back to the trapdoor, but bullets come zipping up the stairwell and he ducks away. “Give me a hand to barricade this or we’re done for.”

  Danny’s eyes scour the rooftop. Maybe there’s something big to heave over the trapdoor, but then what? Any other way off? The asphalt roof is covered in rubbish: old TVs, lamp shades, plastic chairs, a tangle of aerials and wires . . . nothing useful. And no other doorways. But then he spots something else glinting in the sunlight, and runs over to it.

  A tall metal ladder lies amongst the weeds, slowly being throttled. The idea springs to mind in one clear inspiration—and puts him in motion before he has time to think it properly through. Tugging the thing free from the tangled plant growth, he drags it to the narrow chasm at the far side of the roof. Cautiously he edges to the very brink.

  Far below he recognizes the alleyway where he hypnotized Ponytail at the bottom of a gut-wrenching drop. He eyes up the ladder—it should just span the distance from this roof to the next. It looks sound enough. Aluminum or something like that. No rust and definitely in one piece.

  He stands it up vertically, judging the gap, struggling against the wind, which is gusting again—and then lets it fall across the chasm, one foot anchoring the bottom rung.

  Just forget the drop, Mum would say. It’s only as real as you allow it to be. On the wirewalk nothing exists but the wire, and the wire is there to hold you up. It’s your friend, Danny.

  “Major!” he calls, looking back to where—wreathed in smoke—Zamora’s struggling to close the trapdoor. The dwarf looks up questioningly. It’s only as Danny takes in the backdrop behind that he realizes there’s a problem: Zamora’s profound vertigo.

  He’s already waving his hands in front of him as he picks his way across the roof, guessing the worst. “It’s no use saying ‘don’t look down,’ Danny. I can’t do it. No way, nooo way.” For the first time during the last twenty-four hours he looks scared. “No, I’ll take my chances in a straight fight with those boys. You save yourself. And find Miss Laura.”

  There are voices behind him now, and a head pops up through the trapdoor. A long arm extending, aiming a pistol in their direction. Danny calculates the possibilities. Leave Zamora behind? Unthinkable. He needs Zamora’s solidity. Strength. But it’s unlikely he’s going to get across the chasm either. Danny imagines wandering the sprawling metropolis on his own . . .

  “I’ll be just fine,” Zamora is saying, glancing over his shoulder.

  “No time to argue!” The wind’s gusting again, ruffling Danny’s hair. “They’ve got guns. Dad would want you to do it! Just follow me.”
<
br />   He turns back to the drop and eyes the rungs of the ladder. He’s walked slack wire before. And been on the practice rig for tightwire. Barely above the ground. Never had the inclination or courage to go much higher. That was Mum’s domain. You need the height, she would say, encouraging him to give it a go. You need the height to feel things matter.

  He’s never done anything like this.

  Despite himself he glances down and immediately feels the drop pulling, as if it’s hungry for him. He remembers watching the grainy YouTube video of the legendary Karl Wallenda falling to his death from the skyscrapers in Puerto Rico. Over and over again.

  He breathes deeply.

  Nothing but the wire. He takes another breath, lets it out slowly, and then he’s taken that first step, onto the ladder, holding his arms straight, softening his knees, feeling it solid against the soles of his shoes. Must make it look easy for Zamora, he thinks. Place one foot, then the next, then the next.

  Just a short walk, as if the ladder’s on the ground. He frees his right foot from the safety of the roof. The first step establishes the rest—it’s the one you need to get right. In his peripheral vision the void gapes below, and then he realizes something. Even if they weren’t running for their lives, there’s something irresistible about taking that step. It can’t be denied.

  Here we go. Left, right, left. Steady. He uses his arms to balance a wobble and waits for a second as the wind twists around him, poised midway across the chasm.

  Need to trust my center of gravity. Take time to balance. The wind drops again. For a fleeting moment, he feels a kind of bounding elation, feels vital, alive—fully alive! He looks around at the vastness of the city, eyes wide open.

  And then he’s away again.

  It takes five more quick steps, treading with purpose on each rung. There’s just his feet and the ladder and nothing else, not a single stray thought, and then he feels the gritty surface of the next rooftop and his knees suddenly threaten to buckle. Another deep breath steadies him and he turns to look back, the blood singing in his veins, tingling all over.

  A gunshot shatters the glory of the moment.

  “Come on, Major!” Danny shouts, putting strength into each syllable. “You can do it. Head high.”

  Zamora hesitates, puffs out his cheeks. Takes a breath, and then half a hesitant step toward the edge. He stops. He’s not going to be able to do it!

  Another gunshot. Figures on the roof running toward the major.

  “For goodness’ sake, Major. Call yourself a showman! I’ve seen braver jossers!”

  That does it. Zamora crosses himself three times, taps the bowler hat firmly onto his head—and takes a shaky step onto the ladder, then another. He puts out his arms resolutely to either side, fingers splayed.

  The gang members are scrambling across the roof, angry shadows in the billowing smoke.

  “Keep looking at me,” Danny calls. “Trust your feet.” The wind gusts again, and Zamora reaches up to hold his bowler. He wobbles.

  “Forget your stupid hat. Keep your arms working!”

  Danny ducks as another gunshot zips over their heads. And then Zamora virtually breaks into a run, the ladder chattering under his heavy tread, bouncing dangerously—and he’s standing with Danny, astonished. He opens his mouth but nothing comes out, and instead he turns and gives the ladder an angry kick, sending it tumbling, clanging off the air conditioning units and fire escapes, down into the alleyway below. It’s a hellish fall, and Zamora regrets the seconds he spends watching it go, his stomach knotting.

  “Let’s go, Major!”

  They’re on a roof garden among pot plants, benches, sun loungers. A woman in a business suit sits up on one of the reclining chairs, staring at Zamora and Danny as they hurdle a low barrier and charge toward an access door.

  “Hope you enjoyed the show,” Zamora says, tipping his bowler.

  Danny glances back to see triad members running toward the chasm, and then he and Zamora are in the stairwell, down a flight of steps, through a deserted boardroom, the bright hum of an open-plan office—and straight into a waiting elevator.

  Zamora thumps the ground-floor button so hard it nearly implodes. “I think I’m going to be sick,” he says, steadying himself against the lift wall.

  Unlike the elevator in the Mansions, this one’s smooth and fast, and they plummet the twenty-four floors almost as fast as the ladder.

  Out on the pavement Danny squints back up at the roof of the Mansions. Black smoke is smudging the air, and a tiny figure peers down at them, pointing. Faintly you can hear him shouting, but the words are lost.

  There’s a siren approaching.

  “Taxi!” Zamora calls. Pushing past a confused backpacker, he propels himself and Danny onto its waiting seat.

  16

  HOW TO FEEL ANGRY

  The metropolis glides by drenched in sunshine.

  Danny sits back and realizes his legs are shaking as the adrenalin goes thumping through his system, excitement muddling itself with disappointment, fear, the elation of being poised high over the drop.

  Something else is there too.

  If only Dad could have seen the muscle reading. If only Mum could have seen me on the ladder . . . If only. It’s a voice he can’t usually hear—and when he has heard it whispering he has suppressed it.

  Yes, he has felt the shock, the grief. And, yes, he has felt the crushing guilt at surviving the fire, that he selfishly ran away that evening, driven by some childish tantrum, some need for attention. But now he feels anger—the anger that has been lurking there, ever since the tragedy.

  How could they have left him alone? How on earth could they have allowed themselves to be burned up by the fire? How could they have been so careless? And left him without the Mysterium, locked up half-comatose in Ballstone, or fighting for his life on a rubbish-strewn roof halfway across the world?

  What were they thinking?

  He leans back on the seat, eyes closed. No point being overwhelmed by that now. He remembers the rain hammering on his face outside the Bat—stimulating, tingling—how it cleared his head. I am waking up, he thinks. And when I ran out across that ladder I felt like I used to in the Mysterium. Fully awake and not just waiting for life to start happening again.

  He opens his eyes, the colors there glowing intently as his thoughts race on. Now that he’s awake, he knows what he needs to do. Find Laura, of course. But more than that: he needs to go back and do what he should have done that long year and a half ago. I need to find out what really happened to Mum and Dad. Find out why and how they were taken away. Find out what they both kept tight to themselves. Open up the past and peer inside at all of the stuff lurking there—good and bad. Reveal it. Face it.

  Zamora has been watching him closely. “OK, lad?”

  “Yes. I’m fine.” His voice is calm, focused.

  “Perhaps we should go back to the police?” Zamora says.

  “No. Think about Lo typing the wrong thing. We can’t trust him.”

  “And you said he got those Chinese characters wrong. We could try to find this other detective. Tan.”

  “If Laura can’t find him, I doubt we can.” Danny looks the major full in the face. “You never said you’d pocketed that gun.”

  “Thought it might come in handy. But I’d never shoot. Not my style.”

  “You were expecting trouble, weren’t you? From the start?”

  “There’s always trouble,” Zamora says heavily. “Besides, I wasn’t the only one to pocket something at the crime scene, was I?”

  Danny slumps back on the seat, considering. His heartbeat’s coming back down, the fears and the nausea subsiding.

  “What’s done is done,” Zamora says. “Right now we’ve got work to do.”

  “You’re right,” Danny says. “And we’ve got more to go on now. I found a note from Aunt Laura on the wall at the gym. It said CHEUNG CHAU. That’s two references we’ve got to it. And then it said LOOK FOR WHITE SUIT BE CARE
FUL. So she does know about him—or saw him after she was kidnapped.”

  Zamora rubs his bald head thoughtfully. “It could mean ‘Be careful of White Suit.’ Or ‘Find White Suit, and be careful.’ Let’s go back to the hotel and see if there’re any messages. Then we could ask Kwan about getting to this blasted island.”

  Once again Danny does his best to force the image of bolt cutters and severed fingers from his mind. He leans forward to the driver. “Pearl Hotel, please. And a bit faster?”

  The neon signs are pale in the daylight. One of them says: HONG KONG: IT’S AN AMAZING ADVENTURE!

  “Too blooming right,” Zamora says. “And I’m a middle-aged fellow now. Should be putting my feet up, no?”

  Danny’s attention is drifting. He’s thinking again about the lipstick gash, the dead fish, the red-painted water tank. There is some kind of a link, he thinks. It’ll come if I relax. But that’s easier said than done with the adrenal system still pumped by the ladder walk.

  Finding Laura is the pressing problem, but for some reason his mind won’t stop working back to the failed Water Torture Escape.

  “Major? Dad was good at what he did, wasn’t he?” he says suddenly.

  Zamora looks taken aback. “Good?! One of the best, Danny. As good as I’ve seen. The burning rope. Hypnosis. The escape stunts. All worked to look new and modern and cool . . . not a workaday grifter like Jimmy Torrini. No, your mum and dad were the real deal, Danny.”

  “So why did the water torture go wrong?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” Zamora rasps the stubble on his head. “We had it smooth as silk every day in rehearsal. Not much that could go wrong, really. I checked the equipment over the next morning. All fine.”

  “But Dad didn’t make mistakes—”

  “Hardly ever. He said he learned from when Houdini got it wrong—when he was impetuous and didn’t plan things properly. Heart ruling head.”

  “And don’t you think it’s odd that the fire happened so quickly afterward?”

  “It certainly felt weird at the time. Didn’t feel right in my bones . . .”