The Last Six Million Seconds

doesn’t quite take it in until one arrives on the ground. They say that all the really big disasters of the next hundred years will probably be caused by China.”

He smiled without warmth, finished his cigarette slowly, went back to the table to find an ashtray, drummed thoughtfully on the top.

“Just out of interest, why?”

“Partly because if there’s a trial, there’ll be a huge bloody public row, partly because it will jeopardize relations between China and Hong Kong and partly, I confess, a measure of personal sentiment.”

“Really?”

“Radiation sickness is horrifying. There’s no other word for it.”

“Yes, I heard something about that. No danger for my chaps, I hope?”

“None at all as far as I can gather. The damnable part, though, is that these three will probably get off. There’s only circumstantial evidence to link them to the uranium.”

“Get off?”

“Murder. Look, just as background, let me show you something.”

Cuthbert went to his office and returned with some photographs. He began with the two divers in the hospital. Higgins he saved to last. He watched Fairgood dwell on that one: an Englishman, a white man, fair-skinned, about his age, his body bloated and distorted like some monstrous sea creature. Fairgood nodded slowly, whistled.

“I see.” He raised his eyes. Cuthbert’s stratagem was pretty crude after all. “Well, I’d better be going.”

“Of course,” Cuthbert said. “Take the pictures if you like. Your men might want to know the kind of people they’re dealing with.”

Fairgood nodded again. “Just the one will do.” He picked up the picture of Higgins, slid it into a pocket.

On his way out Fairgood said: “Even if the men were sympathetic, which is by no means certain, there would have to be a cast-iron guarantee of no publicity and no repercussions-especially not legal ones. Cast-iron.”

Cuthbert smiled again. “This isn’t Gibraltar, Major. On important issues the media do as we tell them over here. And these three are supposed to be dead already.” Fairgood raised his eyebrows. “You have my word,” Cuthbert said.

They shook hands at the door.

50

They. In Chan’s dream they can change shape, race, sex; they can even manifest as animals or spirits. He has seen them pass through walls; no matter how fast he runs, they are by his side, one step to the left and half a step behind. In some legends from ancient Chinese sorcery, death approaches from the left too. Are they fundamentally Chinese? At first he thought so. Little by little, though, they acquired some British attributes; one of them even appeared with a red face and a monocle. They stalk him. When he can stand it no longer, he turns to face them, daring them to kill him. They seem baffled by such behavior. He turns away; they resume their positions by his side, half a step behind. It’s not exactly a nightmare, not even a dream, because when he wakes, they are still there. The explanation is simple. He is going insane.

He knows why. He saw it on the face of Chief Inspector Jack Siu. Brushing past other senior officers in the corridors of Mongkok Police Station and even more so at Arsenal Street, he notices a change in manner, a subtle distaste that they try to hide. Little by little it has filtered down to the lower levels. When the rumor, whatever it is, reaches inspector level, they will pounce. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you. Two days after Emily’s body was found he felt the atmosphere like a glass wall between him and the other officers. As he entered the police station, faces averted, then stole glances after him. In his office Aston wouldn’t look up when he entered.

“Any messages?”

Aston, red-faced and embarrassed, raised his eyes. “Just something from Siu at Arsenal Street. They’ve made an appointment for you to go over there at eleven this morning.”

Aston lowered his eyes. In the canteen Chan saw that the rumor had descended to the tea lady. For traditional Chinese, bad luck is a social disease. She would not look in his eyes and disappeared into the pantry as soon as she had given him his tea. He heard her whispers to the other staff: bad joss. From the canteen he walked downstairs to the front doors and out into the street. In the crowds he found a way to bury his disgrace. He sat at a cafe smoking until ten-thirty, then took the underground to Arsenal Street.

At reception it was obvious that he was expected. He was shown into a large conference room where Commissioner Tsui headed a small group of senior officers, including Riley. Jack Siu was the least senior. He sat in the middle of the table with a thick file on his left. On his right lay a transparent plastic evidence bag containing a woman’s black patent leather Chanel belt. Chan was told to sit at the far end of the table, opposite Tsui. Tsui said something about asking Riley to begin. A shorthand reporter whom Chan had not noticed in a corner of the room began writing with pencil in a notebook; she also used a tape recorder, which she switched on while Riley was saying something about deep regret and embarrassment. After a long, rambling speech he turned to Jack Siu.

“Your prints were on the belt that was around her neck,” Siu said, looking Chan in the eye. “There may be an innocent explanation. If not, we’re going to charge you with murder.”

“Normally I would suspend you from duty until conclusion of this matter,” Tsui said, avoiding Chan’s eyes. “However, in view of the pressure on the mincer case, you will proceed with that and that alone-until further notice. You’ll need a lawyer. Don’t try to leave Hong Kong; you’re on the stop list. You can go.”

51

From Western spoors strange cultures grew. As a kid Chan had visited the west of the New Territories often, mostly to go clamming. He remembered paddy and duck ponds with fish. The symbiosis of the ponds fascinated his Chinese side: All day ducks sat on the still water and shit. Their droppings fertilized the ponds, causing algae and other vegetation to burgeon, which in turn were eaten by the fish. Either you fed the fish to the ducks or you sold the fish and the ducks at the end of the season. It was an example of money growing from nothing, Oriental magic at its best.

The ducks, though, didn’t pay half so well as the container companies. Coming over a low hill, he saw it now, a horizontal city floating in the heat; closer, it was a necropolis of steel tombs, stacked two high, that came in two sizes: twenty feet by eight feet by eight feet or forty feet by eight feet by eight feet. “Roll on, roll off,” abbreviated to roro, had entered the Cantonese language. It was a mantra that conjured money from nowhere. Nothing defecated, nothing grew, but the rent came rolling in. In twenty years Hong Kong had become the second-busiest container port in the world, after Rotterdam, and those outsize trunks had to be put somewhere. Southern China, the destination of most of the goods, had no facilities for moving containers around, so the contents were emptied onto trucks in the container yards, and the containers left to wait in the parks until a ship needed them again. Roro, ho ho: it had happened so quickly the government hadn’t any legislation in place for regulating this particular use of land.

Photographed from the air, it could look eerily regular in layout; on the ground a certain Chinese chaos intervened. Paths between the rectangular boxes lurched, some of the steel was rusted; in the older, discarded containers families had begun to keep pigs and chickens; some of the newer containers were raised on jacks to provide shelter for domestic pets and, occasionally, ducks. Old cars, stolen cars, disemboweled cars crouched in the shadows. The narrow corridors that were created, lengthened or closed off each time a container was parked remained uncharted and changeable; only local children were reliable guides.

Good place to hide, Chan, murder suspect, had to concede. Driving an unmarked car with Saliver Kan beside him in the passenger seat, he had no plan how to proceed. He slowed down as they came alongside the first huge double-stacked boxes, which carried the EVERGREEN logo. It was like being a child again, unable to see over the furniture.