Frank Schätzing - Limit

Tu pursed his lips. ‘Hongbing and I could put a blog entry up on this forum she posted to. We could tell her—’

‘Forget it. Yoyo can do without you trying to make contact.’

‘I don’t understand. Why didn’t she at least send Hongbing some message?’

‘Because she’s frightened of dragging him into it. Right at the moment, she’s completely concentrated on just how much she can risk without bringing danger down upon herself and other people . How is she to know whether or not Chen’s under surveillance, or you? So she’s playing dead, and trying to get some information. She was safe in Quyu, for a while, but then she got word that I was on my way. Since then she knows that I’ve been there. And that someone was following me. With that, the Andromeda was done with as a hiding-place. She had to leave there as well, leaving no more sign than when she left her flat.’

‘This Zhao Bide,’ Tu said thoughtfully. ‘What part do you think he plays in all this?’

‘No idea. He was helping to set up the concert, so presumably he’s something to do with the Andromeda.’

‘A City Demon?’

‘He says no.’

‘On the other hand, he knows that Yoyo is a Guardian.’

‘Yes, but I get the impression that he knew nothing about the message she posted up on Brilliant Shit. It’s hard to place him. Definitely some of the Guardians are also City Demons. But not all the Demons are Guardians. Then there are people who help Yoyo without belonging to either group. Such as Zhao.’

‘And you think she trusts him?’

‘It looks as though he’d very much like her to. Mind you, she hasn’t told him where she ran off this time.’

‘She didn’t tell me or Chen either.’

‘Also true. That doesn’t get us any further though.’ Jericho looked at Tu reproachfully. ‘As you well know.’

Tu returned his gaze equably.

‘What are you getting at?’

‘Every time Yoyo has to run, the number of people she can trust with her whereabouts becomes smaller. But there have to be some who know quite well.’

‘And?’

‘And with all due respect, I’m wondering whether there’s anything you’ve been keeping from me.’

Tu steepled his fingers.

‘You think I know the rest of the Guardians?’

‘I think that you’re trying to protect Yoyo, and yourself as well. Let’s assume that strictly speaking you didn’t need my help at all. Nevertheless, you gave me this investigation to carry out so that you didn’t have to take action yourself. Nobody’s supposed to know that Tu Tian is unduly interested in a dissident’s whereabouts. Chen Hongbing on the other hand is Yoyo’s father, there’s no problem if he hires a detective.’

Jericho waited to see whether Tu would say anything about that, but all he did was take his crooked glasses off his nose and start polishing them on a corner of his shirt.

‘Let’s also assume,’ Jericho went on, ‘that you know where Yoyo skedaddles to when there’s trouble. And now Chen Hongbing comes along, knowing nothing whatsoever of all this, and asks you for help. Should you tell him what his daughter gets up to online, and that you know all about it? More than that, that you approve of what she does and you know where she’s hiding? He would go crazy, so you point him towards me and you also slip me the vital clue: the City Demons. By the way, Grand Cherokee Wang told me about them as well. That was how you told me where I should look. Your plan was simple enough: I find the girl, you keep a low profile, you don’t need to bare all to Chen, the father is reassured as to where his daughter is, and his friend can sleep soundly.’

Tu looked up briefly and kept on polishing his glasses, not saying a word.

‘For all that, what you didn’t know and still don’t, is who Yoyo’s enemies are, and what this whole thing’s about. That has unsettled you. Now that Yoyo has left the Andromeda, you’re groping around in the dark just like I am. Things have got complicated. You’re just as clueless and worried as Chen, and on top of that, someone’s dead.’

Breathe on glasses, polish with shirt.

‘Meaning that from now on, you really need me.’ Jericho leaned forward. ‘And this time it’s for a real investigation.’

Breathe, polish.

‘But to do that, I have to be able to investigate!’

With a dry snap, the arm of the glasses, patched already with sticky-tape, broke. Tu cursed under his breath, cleared his throat noisily and tried to put them back on the bridge of his nose, where they balanced like a car about to slip off the edge of a cliff.

‘I could recommend you an optician, by the way,’ Jericho added drily. ‘But first of all you have to tell me what you’ve been keeping quiet so far. Otherwise I can’t help you.’

Otherwise, he found himself thinking, I could fall off a roof myself soon enough.

Tu drummed on the table with the arm of his glasses.

‘I knew what I was doing when I hired you. It’s just that it wouldn’t do you any good if I give you the names of the other five Guardians. They’ll have gone to ground as well.’

‘For one thing, I have a trail to follow. For another, I have an ally.’

‘Zhao Bide?’

‘Even if he’s not a City Demon, he’ll know their faces. I need names and photos.’

‘Photos, that will take some time.’ Tu dug around in his ear. ‘You’ll get the names. Anyway, you know one of them already.’

‘Really?’ Jericho raised his eyebrows. ‘Who?’

‘His nickname’s Daxiong – Great Bear.’

‘The man-mountain with the cannonball head?’ He tried to imagine Daxiong being politically aware, armed with an intellect that could put the Party in uproar. ‘I can hardly believe that. I was convinced that his bike had a higher IQ than him.’

‘A lot of people think that,’ Tu commented. ‘A lot of people think that I’m a fat old coot who doesn’t have an optician and eats canned crap. Do you really think that Yoyo got away from you because the Great Bear was that dumb? He sent you off on your tour of the underworld, and you meekly followed his directions.’

Jericho had to admit that he was right.

‘Anyway, Tian, now you know why I don’t want to trouble my contacts,’ he said. ‘The police might be somewhat surprised. By now they’ll have found out that Wang was Yoyo’s flatmate. They’ll make inquiries and they’ll find out that I’m looking for the girl. Then they’ll start putting two and two together: a dead student, possibly murdered, a dissident with a record, a detective asking questions about one who’s also looking for the other. They shouldn’t be able to draw these conclusions; I want to be able to investigate discreetly. I might end up giving them the idea that they should pay more attention to Yoyo.’

‘I understand.’ Tu’s fingers glided across the tabletop, and the wall across from them became a screen. ‘Have a look at this, then.’

He saw the glass corridor and the door to the roller-coaster boarding platform, from the perspective of two security cameras.

‘How did you get the footage so quickly?’ asked Jericho, surprised.

‘Your wish was my command.’ Tu giggled. ‘The police put an electronic lock on it, but something like that’s not a problem for us. Our own surveillance network is linked in with the in-house cameras, apart from which we also hacked into some totally different systems. There would only have been trouble if they’d put a high-security block in place.’

Jericho considered this. Security blocks were commonplace. The fact that the officers in charge hadn’t bothered to install one told him something about how important they considered the case to be. Another indication that the police didn’t have Yoyo on their radar at all.