Frank Schätzing - Limit

‘I’ll give Hongbing a toned-down version,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell him that the police aren’t after Yoyo, but that she might believe they are. And that she’s still in Quyu.’

‘ If she’s still in Quyu,’ Jericho threw in.

‘Whatever. What will you do next?’

‘Sift the net, hoping that Yoyo might have left another message. Take a good close look at a fast food chain called Wong’s World.’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘Probably only exists in Quyu. Yoyo’s waste-paper basket was spilling over with Wong’s World wrappers. Thirdly, I need information on the Guardians’ current projects. Meaning the full picture,’ he said with a sideways glance. ‘No cosmetic alterations, no cards up your sleeve.’

Tu looked like a deflated balloon. For the first time since Jericho had known him, he looked helpless. The glasses hung uselessly on his nose.

‘I’ll tell you what I know,’ he said penitently.

‘That’s good.’ Jericho pointed to the bridge of his nose. ‘Tell me, can you actually see anything with those things?’

Without a word, Tu opened a box in the middle of the instrument panel, took out a completely identical pair of glasses, put them on and threw the old ones behind him. Jericho spent a moment wondering whether his eyes had been playing tricks on him. Were there really a dozen more pairs stored there?

‘Why do you repair your glasses with sticky-tape if you’ve got so many you could just throw them away?’ he asked.

‘Why not? That pair was all right.’

‘It was a long way from – oh, never mind. As far as Hongbing is concerned, I think that sooner or later he’ll have to learn the whole truth. What do you say? In the end, he’s Yoyo’s father. He has a right to know.’

‘But not yet.’ Tu flew over the Bund, brought the Silver Surfer lower and turned south. ‘You have to treat Hongbing with kid gloves – be very careful what you say to him. And something else: this business with Grand Rococo’s mortal remains, or whatever the guy was called – well, I reckon there’s no chance of getting at his effects, but I’ll think a little more about it. You’re mostly interested in his phone, is that right?’

‘I want to know who he telephoned ever since Yoyo disappeared.’

‘Good, I’ll do what I can. Where should I drop you?’

‘At home.’

Tu bled off some speed and steered towards Luwan Skyport, only a few minutes from Xintiandi on foot. As far as the eye could see, the traffic was jammed solid in the streets, only the cabin cars on the COD track sped along. His fingers manipulated the holographic field with the navigation instruments, and the jets swung down to the vertical. They sank gently down as though in a lift. Jericho looked through the side window. Two city gyrocopters were parked at the edge of the strip, both painted with the markings that identified them as ambulances. Another was just taking off, lifted terrifyingly close to them and roared off towards Huangpu at full power. Jericho felt something in his hip pocket vibrate, took out his phone and saw that somebody was trying to reach him. He picked up the call.

‘Hey, little Jericho.’

‘Zhao Bide.’ Jericho clicked his tongue. ‘My new friend and confidant. What can I do for you?’

‘Don’t you miss Quyu?’

‘Give me a reason to miss the place.’

‘The crab baozi in Wong’s World is excellent.’

‘You found the shop, then.’

‘I even knew the place. I’d just forgotten what it was called. It’s in what you might call the civilised part of Xaxu. You must have driven this way when you came. It’s a sort of covered street market. Great big place.’

‘Good. I’ll have a look at it.’

‘Not so fast, Mr Detective. There are two markets. The branches are one block apart.’

‘There isn’t a third?’

‘Just these two.’

The Silver Surfer settled to a halt. Tu shut down the engines.

‘I’ll be needed in the Andromeda until seven,’ Zhao said. ‘At least until the Pink Asses have made it onstage, which isn’t always so straightforward. After that I’m free.’

Jericho considered. ‘Good. Let’s take up our posts. One of us watching each branch. Could be that Yoyo and her friends come by.’

‘And what’s that worth to me?’

‘But Zhao, little Zhao!’ Jericho expostulated. ‘Are those the words of a worried lover?’

‘They’re the words of a Quyu lover, you hopeless idealist. What about it? Do you want my help or don’t you?’

‘How much?’

Zhao named a price. Jericho haggled him down to half that, for form’s sake.

‘And where shall we meet?’ he asked.

He gave him directions. ‘Half past seven.’

‘I hope you understand that this is the most boring job in the world,’ Jericho said. ‘Sitting still and keeping your eyes peeled without nodding off to sleep.’

‘Don’t bust my balls about it.’

‘I absolutely shan’t. See you later.’

Tu gave him a sideways look.

‘Are you sure you can trust this guy?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps he’s talking himself up. Perhaps he just wants the money.’

‘Perhaps the Pope’s a pagan.’ Jericho shrugged. ‘I can’t do much wrong with Zhao Bide. All he has to do is keep his eyes open, nothing else.’

‘You know best. Stay available just in case I can find poor Grand Sheraton’s phone. Somewhere between his spleen and his liver.’

When Jericho travelled back to the forgotten world, the traffic was flowing thick as honey. Pretty brisk by Shanghai standards, then. It meant getting home on time, a hot dinner and children sleepy but still awake so that Mum and Dad could put them to bed together.

On the other hand, if you came from Europe, and were used to things moving a bit faster, every minute on the streets of Shanghai was among the more irksome experiences that life had to offer. Statisticians claimed that the average car-driver spent six months of his urban life sitting at red lights, but that was nothing compared with the amount of life wasted in Shanghai traffic jams. Since CODs had ceased to be appropriate for a visit to Quyu, because they would stand out there like frogs with wings and arouse Yoyo’s suspicions, Jericho had no option but to collect his own car from the underground car park. In the afternoon he had sent Diane off in search of Zhao Bide on the net, with no result. There was no one by that name on record. Quyu didn’t exist, and neither did its inhabitants.

However, there were the other five Guardians, right there as expected, in the university lists.

Yoyo herself had left no new traces after her piece on Brilliant Shit. Once again Jericho wondered who would send a professional hitman after a dissident who, while she was plainly troublesome, wasn’t exactly high risk. Leaving aside the police, State elements were certainly involved. The Party was riddled with secret agents like mould in gorgonzola. No one, probably not even the highest officials, knew the full extent of their interpenetration. Against this background there was a covert operation whose goal lay in preventing the distribution of information that Yoyo should never have been able to get hold of.

Which called for more than killing the girl.

Because if her forbidden knowledge came from the net, it was very probably stored on her computer. A circumstance that didn’t do much to improve Yoyo’s chances of survival, but made it harder to kill her. As long as the whereabouts of the device was unclear, she couldn’t simply be gunned down in the street. The killer had to get hold of the computer, and not only that, he would have to find out whom she had passed her knowledge on to. His task was that of an epidemiologist: to curb the virus, bring all the infected parties together, eliminate them and, last of all, eliminate the first carrier.