Frank Schätzing - Limit

After that it had gone a little better, or even quite well, and he had his revenge on the pathetic wet blanket who had so stubbornly claimed to be Owen Jericho. With Joanna’s help he had buried that boy, although it had been a stupid idea to bury him alive, not suspecting that it would be Joanna too who would bring him back from the grave. The zombie had come back here in Shanghai, where the world was reinventing itself, and taken revenge in turn. The zombie was the boy in his eyes who frightened off the women. He scared them. He scared himself .

In a foul mood, he steered his car to the nearest COD point and hooked it back up to the grid. The computer calculated what he had to pay and deducted the amount as he held his phone against the interface. Jericho got out. He had to find out why Grand Cherokee had had to die. He stopped in the middle of the street and called Tu Tian. He only spoke a few words to Naomi Liu. She obviously picked up that he was in a bad mood, smiled encouragingly and put him through.

‘I found the girl,’ he said without preamble.

Tu raised his eyebrows. ‘That was fast.’ There was even something like awe in his voice. Then he noticed Jericho’s sour look. ‘And what’s the problem? If there is just one problem.’

‘She slipped through my fingers.’

‘Ah.’ Tu tutted. ‘Well then. You’ll have done your best, little Owen.’

‘I don’t particularly want to talk over the details on the phone. Should we fix up a meeting with Chen Hongbing, or would you like to hear about it first?’

‘She is his daughter,’ Tu said diplomatically.

‘I know. I’ll say it straight. I’d rather speak to you first.’

Tu looked reassured, as though that was what he had been hoping for. ‘I think we’ll do that, though it doesn’t mean we won’t do the other,’ he said magnanimously. ‘But it would certainly be wise to let me know what’s on your mind. When can you be here?’

‘In a quarter of an hour, if the roads aren’t jammed. Something else, Tian. The fellow who fell from your roof this morning—’

‘Yes, a bad business.’

‘What do you know about it?’

‘The circumstances of his death are somewhat curious, to say the least.’ Tu’s eyes gleamed. He seemed less distraught than fascinated. ‘The guy went for a walk along the tracks, five hundred metres up! I ask you, is that normal behaviour for a student who was just looking to earn a few yuan on the side? What was he doing there?’

‘I hear there’s a video.’

‘An eyewitness video, that’s right. It was on the news.’

‘Have they released it?’

‘Yes, but you can’t see very much. Just this what’s-his-name, Grand Chevrolet, climbing about like a monkey up there and then trying to jump over the carriages.’

‘Grand Cherokee. His name’s Grand Cherokee Wang.’ Jericho massaged the bridge of his nose. ‘Tian, I have to ask you for a favour. In the news it said that the surveillance cameras on the top floor of the World Financial Center showed Wang with a man. Obviously they had an argument. I’d like to have a look at the footage, and—’ Jericho hesitated – ‘at Wang as well, if possible.’

Tu stared at him. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Well, more specifically—’

‘What are you thinking here, Owen? Have you lost your wits? Should I just call up the morgue and say, hey, how are things, could you just take Mr Wang from the drawer, a friend of mine’s got a thing for splatted corpses?’

‘I want to see his effects, Tian. Whatever he had in his pockets. His phone for instance.’

‘How am I supposed to get hold of his phone?’

‘You know half of Shanghai.’

‘But nobody in the morgue!’ Tu snorted and shoved his shabby glasses back up; they had worked their way down the bridge of his nose as they talked. His jowls quivered. ‘And as for what the surveillance tapes show, don’t get your hopes up.’

‘Why not? The footage must be on the system hard drive.’

‘I’m not authorised to look at it though. I’m just a tenant here, not the owner. Besides, once the police get involved, that footage will be evidence. You’re the one with contacts to the police.’

‘In this case it might not be very wise to bother them.’

‘Why not?’

‘Tell you later.’

‘I don’t know if I can help you.’

‘Yes or no?’

‘Unbelievable!’ Tu snapped. ‘Is that any way to talk to a Chinaman? We don’t do “yes or no”. We Chinese hate to commit ourselves to anything, you must have learned that by now, Longnose.’

‘I know, you chaps prefer an unambiguous “maybe”.’

Tu tried to look outraged. Then he grinned and shook his head. ‘I must be mad. All right though. I’ll do whatever I can. I’m really curious to see what you find so interesting about the jumper.’

In the few minutes that the conversation had lasted, the traffic on the Yan’an Donglu nearby had increased dramatically. The Huaihai Donglu, running parallel, was also suffering from clogged arteries. This heart attack seized hold of the city centre between Huangpu and Luwan twice daily. It was delusional to take your own car, but when Jericho went back to the COD point, he was left standing watching while someone took the last free one. That was the problem with CODs. On the one hand, there were too few of them; on the other hand, every COD that wasn’t up on the high-speed track was one car too many on the Shanghai streets.

Jericho’s mood plummeted. When he had still lived in Pudong, it had been easier to visit Tu. He walked to Huangpi Nanlu metro station and went down into the brightly lit passages, where hundreds of people were being shoved on board the overcrowded Line 1 by stoical crowd-handlers. Hardly had the carriage doors closed than he was bitterly regretting not having walked the mile to the river bank to catch a ferry. Obviously he still had to learn a few tricks about life in his new neighbourhood. He’d never lived so centrally before. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever having taken the metro at this time of day. Even less could he imagine doing it again.

The train picked up speed without any of the passengers even swaying. Almost all the men around were holding their arms up in the air so that their hands were in full view. This habit was based on the fear of being accused of groping. Where twelve people were standing shoulder-to-shoulder on every square metre, it was impossible to say whose hand it was on your crotch. There was sexual molestation every day on the most crowded trains, and often the victims didn’t even have the chance to turn around. Once more and more men were also being attacked, women too had got into the habit of raising their hands. A metro trip was a silent agony, and the children suffered most of all in the fug of clothes smell, sweat and genital odour that swirled round their heads.

Jericho was wedged in place right by the doors. As a result, the pressure of the crowd shoved him out onto the platform first at the next stop. He briefly considered going to Houchezhan, where the maglev ran through, connecting Pudong Airport to the town of Suzhou in the west; it ran right past the World Financial Center and offered an invigoratingly luxurious ride, though the price of a ticket was exorbitant, which was why it mostly ran half empty. He’d be at his destination within a minute, but the problem was that getting to the maglev station would take just as long as going on with the metro to Pudong. Nothing would be gained. At the same moment, the mass of humanity pushed him onto the conveyor for Line 2, and he let them carry him on, comforted by the certain knowledge that the bloke who had snapped up the last COD from under his nose wouldn’t have got a hundred metres by now.