The chanting seemed to have been going on for years. Chen could not remember a time when it had not been ringing in his ears: a surging, insistent note, threaded through with discord. He blinked, trying to clear his head. A red and gold ceiling swam above him; lights sparkled by. By degrees, he realized that he was still lying flat on his back on H'suen Tang's carpet. The chandelier that hung at the far end of the room was spinning like some gigantic crystalline top. The harsh voice chanted on, and there was now something distinctly familiar about it. Chen raised his head. Lao Li, the police exorcist, was standing in the centre of the room, his feet braced apart beneath his robes. The long, scarlet tail of a charm fluttered behind him as he recited, vanishing into sparks as he called forth the words. Under the chandelier, Mrs Tang was spinning, too. She whirled too fast for Chen to see her properly, and she was emitting a wail like a steam kettle. A painful heat pricked across Chen's chest and for a dazed moment he wondered whether he was having a heart attack. Then he realized that the stinging sensation was coming from his own rosary, tucked into the inner pocket of his jacket. Chen seized the rosary and struggled to his feet to assist the exorcist. Whatever had possessed Mrs Tang was close to emerging. Chen could smell the betraying reek of Hell: spice and metal and blood. Mrs Tang's revolving form began to slow, and her head snapped from side to side. Something long and thin crept from her gaping mouth, congealing into a greasy stain upon the air. Teeth snapped from a blind, narrow head; it reminded Chen of one of the phallic clams that occasionally crept from buckets along the harbor wall. The thing bunched itself into a mass of wrinkles, aiming at the chandelier, but at that point Chen threw the rosary. The string of beads, each one a hot, glowing coal, snaked through the air and wrapped around the creature's bunched body. There was the sudden pungent smell of seared flesh and the two halves of the entity fell writhing onto the floor. Chen glimpsed a thick honeycomb of cells within, and then the demon was nothing more than a little heap of ash. Mrs Tang lay quite still, her head twisted at a distressingly unnatural angle. Chen crouched by her side and checked her pulse, though he knew it was useless. He raised his head to meet the angry eyes of the police exorcist.
"Shit," Lao said, brushing ash from his hands. "Couldn't hold it. I fucking hate losing them."
"You did what you could," Chen said in resignation. "You probably saved my life, anyway." From the look on Lao's face, this accounted for remarkably little.
"But not Mrs Tang's," the exorcist added bitterly. Chen straightened up.
"Where's her husband gone?"
"What husband? Was Tang here?"
"She jumped me when I came through the door. I saw him lying on the rug."
Lao passed a distracted hand through what remained of his hair. "When I came in—the front door was wide open, by the way—there was just you and the woman. She was on the point of finishing you off, so I skipped the formal introductions."
They stared at one another for a moment, and then Chen said with quiet anger, "Then where the hell's Tang?"
Together, Chen and Lao conducted a hasty search of the mansion, but there was no one to be seen. Tang had mentioned the presence of his personal physician, but Chen could find no trace of anyone. The servants' quarters were tidy and empty and quiet.
"All right," Chen said wearily, as they came back down the stairs. "One corpse, and one missing person. At least. I'd better call the specialists."
It was some time before the forensic unit arrived. Chen and Lao spent the time cautiously searching garden and house. Chen lingered in the bedroom that had evidently belonged to Pearl: a sad shrine, with cosmetics and stuffed toys lining the large, white dressing table like objects upon an altar. Methodically, Chen searched all the obvious secret places, found nothing except a box of novelty condoms, and turned his attention to the undersides of drawers and the backs of photographs. This yielded a single item of interest: a snapshot of an ornamental facade, a dragon lantern washed by rain and a girl's face staring from a window. The face was not that of Pearl Tang. This girl was equally as young, and in the sharp, digitized image of the photograph her face seemed filled with a kind of repressed excitement, the mouth pursed as though she was trying not to laugh. Her hair was arranged into an over-elaborate style that looked curiously antiquated. Chen tucked the photo carefully into his wallet and resumed his search. He found nothing more.
Downstairs, the forensic unit was arriving. They were not, as Chen had specifically requested, the special team that dealt principally with supernatural cases. Chen sighed. Yet more evidence of prejudice on the part of the department, or, more likely, sheer penny-pinching. Beside him, Lao echoed the sigh.
"Just what we need. A bunch of skeptical arseholes trampling over everything and ignoring the obvious. Are you going to deal with them, or shall I?"
"Best if I do it," Chen said hastily. Lao had a tendency to become patronizing, and subsequently argumentative, when dealing with non-specialists.
The scientist in charge of the team was someone that Chen had never seen before: a small neat woman of Vietnamese extraction. Chen took her aside and explained the situation as best he could. To his relieved surprise, however, Dr Nguyen volunteered none of the usual inane remarks to which Chen had become resigned over the years, saying only, "I see. Well, we'll take the body back to the lab and I'll make sure that your team gets a look in at the autopsy. Tell me what tests to run and I'll make sure they're completed."
Chen gave her a brief itinerary, then went back into the hallway where Lao was pulling on his coat.
"Can I go back to my dinner now? You won't be needing me any longer," the exorcist said. In the half-light, his long face looked even more mournful than usual, and his rat's tail moustache quivered. "Or so I fervently hope."
"I hope so, too," Chen said, and meant it.
Two hours later, the forensic team completed their work and left. Chen checked back with the station to see how the search for Tang was progressing, and decided that enough was enough. He took a taxi back to the harbor, then walked along the wharf. It was now close to midnight, an hour that Chen preferred not to spend alone. Dark water lapped against the sides of the wharf, and the neon lights of Shaopeng obscured the stars. In the little window of the houseboat, a single candle was burning, welcoming him home.