Back | Next
Contents

Twenty-One

The sinister garden that now stood in the place of Tang's house had been sealed off, and a team of exorcists, under the grumbling supervision of Lao, had been moved in to secure the area. Chen made a hasty, covert search for the demon but found nothing. Evidently Zhu Irzh had taken the disturbance as an opportunity to go off on his own pursuits. Nor was there any sign of the ghost-tracker. Chen was about to return to the houseboat when Ma appeared, still pale, and bearing orders from Captain Sung that Chen was to report back immediately. Chafing with annoyance, and certain that any chance he might have had of locating Pearl Tang had been blown, Chen went back to the precinct with Ma and the demon-hunter.

The covert glances darting in his direction in the back of the SWAT vehicle uncomfortably reminded Chen that he had not changed his clothes since the previous day, and there had been the intervening sojourn in the sewers. . . Using this as his excuse, Chen made a brief detour to the men's locker room and phoned home, but there was still no answer. Frustrated, Chen took a hasty but thorough shower and fished out a spare pair of trousers and a sweatshirt. These were crumpled but clean; at least he would be able to face No Ro Shi and the captain with some semblance of decency. He'd get this interview over, then see what he could do about finding Inari, Chen thought, stifling a now-familiar rush of dismay. There was nothing he could do about Zhu Irzh now, but if he could only get No Ro Shi off his back. . . As he was folding the rest of his noxious clothes into a plastic bag, the door of the locker room sprang open and Sergeant Ma walked in.

"Oh! Sir, I thought you'd finished in here. I just wanted to freshen up before we speak to the captain, and—"

"Don't worry, Sergeant," Chen said. "I'm sure this locker room's big enough for both of us. Anyway, I'm on my way out." He slapped Ma on the shoulder as he left the room. He had to reach up to do so, but nonetheless he had an uncharacteristically sadistic pleasure in seeing Ma flinch.

When he got upstairs, he could see the demon-hunter's unyielding back standing to attention behind the glass wall of the commander's office.

"No Ro Shi's brought you up to speed on what happened last night, I understand," Captain Sung said as Chen came in.

"On the phone this morning," Chen replied. Deeming it best to make the first move, he added: "I understand I've had a home visit. Must have rattled someone's cage, then. I'm inclined to think it's a promising sign."

No Ro Shi gave a small, tight grimace, which after a moment Chen recognized as a smile of approval. "My thoughts exactly. Whoever's behind all this must be someone of reasonable importance, otherwise they'd never have the authority to send a hostile after you. Tang clearly hasn't been working alone. Now. We need to make sure that your home's secure, or find you alternative accommodations."

"I'd rather go home, if you don't mind," Chen said hastily. "Most of my working implements are there. I'm quite capable of securing things myself—I'm a licensed feng shui practitioner, after all. I'll ask Lao to give me a hand."

"What sort of wards did you set originally?" No Ro Shi asked, frowning. "Whatever was occupying your houseboat last night clearly didn't have any problems breaking through."

"The place was heavily warded, as a matter of fact," Chen explained. "But certain spells grow a little stale over time. I've been meaning to upgrade, but things have been pretty busy recently and I just didn't get around to it. My mistake."

"Well, we'll leave all that up to you," Captain Sung said, clearly keen to move on, and to Chen's relief, No Ro Shi simply nodded.

The ensuing conversation was brief and pragmatic. Once Chen had expressed his wish to be relieved of duty for a few hours in order to go home and sort things out, it was decided that No Ro Shi should resume the search for Pearl Tang. Chen informed him of the day's progress, or rather lack of it, and handed over the fading scrap that was Pearl's scarf. He was compelled to discuss Zhu Irzh's involvement in the case; predictably, No Ro Shi was horrified.

"This is most unorthodox! To knowingly involve a hostile in the course of an investigation displays a degree of ideological unsoundness that I can only condemn."

"Well, I didn't have a great deal of choice," Chen said. "And he helped me out at Tang's mansion last night. If it wasn't for Zhu Irzh, I might not have been able to free Pearl."

"Only to lose her again as a direct result of the demon's interference."

"True. But if he hadn't interfered in the first place, Pearl might have disappeared with her father when the mansion imploded. At least now we have a faint chance of finding her."

"Perhaps the mansion was destroyed because Tang let his daughter slip," Ma suggested. Chen had to admit that the sergeant had a point, but it wasn't what he wanted to hear.

"Look," the captain said wearily. "How sure are we that Tang's dead?"

"There was no trace of a body, but frankly, that doesn't mean a whole lot."

"So if Tang is dead, then presumably he'll have to pass through this place you say we all go through when we die, isn't that right? The Night Harbor?" Sung's heavy face betrayed his unease; Chen couldn't really blame him.

"Possibly. It depends how powerful his associates in Hell are. It's feasible that they took him straight there."

Puzzled, Ma said, "Can't you just go to the Night Harbor and look?"

"Sergeant, you have to understand that the authorities aren't very keen on me trooping in and out of the Night Harbor as though it were my own living room. If it wasn't so tricky to gain access, then I could solve most of the city's murders on my own—all we'd need to do would be to go down there once or twice a day and ask the victims who killed them. Unfortunately, as we've discussed, it isn't that easy. Celestial protocols are often more stringent than Hell's, oddly enough. I've had to call in quite a few favors to try to see Mrs Tang."

"See what you can do," Sung told him. "Then go home and sort things out there. Is your wife still at her mother's?"

"Yes," said Chen, lying once more. He did not dare think about the reparation he'd have to make to the goddess later; all this was costing him a karmic fortune in terms of his relationship with his patron deity. "I spoke to her this morning."

"It might be best if she stayed there for a while."

"I entirely agree," Chen concurred hastily. Leaving No Ro Shi with the captain, he returned to his neglected desk and sat down at the flatscreen, where he waited patiently for the bioweb connection to establish itself. Nothing happened. The flatscreen was as blank as the silvery light over the sea. Frowning, Chen pressed the force-quit keys, and when this strategy accomplished nothing, he rebooted the machine, only to get a scrolling sequence of incomprehensible error messages. Giving it up as a bad job, Chen took out his cell phone and tried to access the web that way, with an equally negligible result.

"System's down again," Ma said mournfully, looming over the partition.

"What, not the whole bioweb, surely?"

Ma nodded with the gloomy satisfaction of one who has never believed in technology. "Went down earlier this afternoon, the news said, then they booted it up again and now it's crashed."

"What's causing that?" Chen wondered aloud. "Solar flares, maybe?"

"The news on the radio says it's due to a problem with the—the biolinks. What they call the nexi."

"The nexi are human beings, Ma." Chen said with a frown. He thought of the gherao dormitories he had seen on the television, each with its silent rows of motionless forms: people earning their annual salaries by dreaming the networks of the bioweb . . .What could go wrong with so many? It was a sinister thought, but at least the web crash gave him the excuse to leave the office and return home. He could contact the Night Harbor authorities later, by phone if necessary.

Retrieving the noxious bag of laundry from his locker, Chen went back out into the chancy sunlight. It was just past six, and the sun was already sinking down over the port in a smear of fire. Chen boarded the first available tram, and stood in the midst of a packed crowd of commuters, noting the exhaustion that seemed to hang like a miasma over each figure. No wonder people seemed to have so little time these days to devote themselves to considerations of the afterlife, Chen reflected, and no wonder Hell was getting out of hand. Even twenty years ago it was still common to see the small shrines outside each door, and for the old people to speak of the gods as real, living presences. Now, paradoxically, the other worlds were closer than they had been since ancient times; with new technology to speed up all manner of communication, yet people seemed to take less and less interest in spiritual matters. Perhaps it was simply too much to bear, Chen thought; perhaps it was too much to ask of people to concern themselves with something other than the daily grind. Whatever the reason, it did not make his work any easier.

The tram came to a halt and Chen got off. He walked the rest of the way to the harbor, hurrying through the gathering twilight. If he had not been so worried about Inari, it would have been a pleasant walk: the air mild and filled with the soft slap of water against the harbor wall. The houseboat was dark and quiet. Chen made his way across the decks to his own boat, but as he had expected, no one was home. There was a rusty smear at the entrance to the main door: blood, hopefully No Ro Shi's. Turning on the lamp, Chen checked the voicemail. Someone had clearly been trying to leave messages, but there was only static. Chen thought through his options. This was one of the safest times of day for Inari to be out and about; her kind were best suited to the liminal times and places—dawn and twilight, shores, the heights of the mountains, caves. The shoreline seemed to be the obvious choice, since it was closest. The harbor shore itself was no more than a strip of shingle, but if one walked a short distance along the harbor road, one came to a widening bay, once the site of a peaceful string of fishing villages, but now just another of the city's suburbs. Changing hastily into a dark jacket and his soft karate slippers, and checking the wards on the doors and windows, Chen returned to the harbor road and started walking.

 

Back | Next
Framed