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Fascinated, Grand Cherokee looked up. Time seemed to stand still.

Then the Silver Dragon plunged into the somersault.

He heard the screams even through the glass.

What a moment! What a demonstration of its power over body and spirit, and, in turn, what a triumph to ride the dragon, to
control
it! A feeling of invulnerability overcame Grand Cherokee. He tried to grab a seat on the ride at least once a day, because he was fearless, free from fear of heights, just as he was free of self-doubt, free of shame and scruples, free of the cantankerous voice of reason.

Free of caution.

While two dozen Dragon riders were experiencing their neuro-chemical inferno above him, he pulled his mobile out and dialled a number.

‘I’ve got something,’ he said, trying to stretch the words out so he sounded bored.

‘You know where the girl is?’

‘I think so.’

‘Wonderful! That’s really wonderful!’ The man’s voice sounded relieved and grateful. Grand Cherokee curled the corner of his mouth. The guy could try as hard as he liked to play the dear uncle, but it was obvious he wasn’t looking for Yoyo so he could take care of her. He was probably Secret Service, or the police. It didn’t matter. The fact was, he had money, and he was prepared to part with some of it. For that the guy would get information that Grand Cherokee didn’t even have, because in actual fact he didn’t have the faintest idea where she was, nor where she might be. Nor did he know who or what had caused the girl to go into hiding, or even whether she really had gone into hiding at all or perhaps had just taken off on holiday without telling anyone. His stock of knowledge on the matter was as empty as his bank account.

On the other hand, he wondered what it would sound like if he told the truth:

‘Yoyo works in the World Financial Center with Tu Technologies downstairs. I’m in charge of the roller-coaster station at the top, for everyone who wants to piss their pants up here in zero gravity. That’s how I met her. She turned up here because
she wanted to ride the Dragon. So I let her have a ride and then afterwards I showed her how you steer the Dragon, and she thought it was – well—’

The truth, Grand Cherokee, the truth!

‘—she thought it was a damn sight cooler than I was, even though that usually does the trick, I mean, letting them ride for free, then a trip with me, then a drink afterwards, see? She was crazy about the Dragon, and was looking for a place to crash because she wasn’t getting on well with her old man or something, and Li and I happened to have a room free. Although – Li wasn’t too happy about it. He says girls disrupt the chemistry, especially when they look like Yoyo, because if they do you end up thinking with your cock instead of your brain and then friendships fall apart, but I insisted, and Yoyo moved in. That was only two weeks ago.’

End of story. Or, perhaps just a little more:

‘I thought that if Yoyo stayed with us I’d manage to get her into bed, but no such luck. She’s a party girl; she sings and likes everything, which I like about her, even though it’s incomprehensible.’

And then:

‘Sometimes I saw her hanging around with guys from the real down-and-out neighbourhoods. Biker types. Could be a gang. They have these stickers on their jackets: City Demons, I think. Yeah, City Demons.’

This was the only thing that was worthy of being called information.

But he’d be lucky to get any money for that. So it was time to make something up.

‘So where is she now?’ the voice on the phone wanted to know.

Cherokee hesitated. ‘We shouldn’t discuss that on the—’

‘Where are you? I can come right away.’

‘No, no, I can’t right now. Not today. Let’s say first thing tomorrow. Around eleven.’

‘Eleven isn’t first thing.’ The other man paused. ‘If I understood you correctly, you want to earn some money, right?’

‘You did understand me correctly! And
you
want something from
me
, don’t you? So who makes the rules?’

‘You, my friend.’ Was it his imagination, or could he hear the man laughing softly? ‘But how about ten regardless?’

Grand Cherokee thought for a moment. He had to tend to the roller-coaster at ten; it opened at half past. But on the other hand, perhaps it was a good idea to speak to Mister Big Money alone. If notes were going to change hands, the fewer onlookers there were the better, and at ten they would be completely alone: him, the man and the dragon.

‘That’s fine.’ Besides, by then he would have thought of something. ‘I’ll let you know where you need to come.’

‘Good.’

‘And bring a nice bulging wallet with you.’

‘Don’t worry. I won’t give you cause to complain.’

That sounded good.

Did it sound good? The cars rushed in and braked to a halt. The ride was over. Grand Cherokee looked over at the twenty-four pairs of trembling knees. He mentally prepared himself to provide support to the weakest ones.

Yes, it sounded good all right!

Yoyo’s shared flat was on Tibet Lu in a neighbourhood of identical-looking concrete towers. Just a few years ago there had been a night market here. Crouched gabled houses had thronged alongside one another in the shadow of the skyscrapers, an island of poverty and decay on just four square kilometres, with insufficient water supply and continual blackouts. Traders used to spread their wares out on the pavements, opening shops and doors so their living space took on the function of a stockroom and salesroom in one, or simply transforming their entire house into a street kitchen. Practically everything was for sale: household goods, medicinal herbs, roots to strengthen the libido, extracts to combat evil spirits, and souvenirs for tourists who had stumbled across the market accidentally and couldn’t tell the difference between plastic and antique Buddhas. Pots steamed in every corner, a smell of fried fat and broth filled the narrow passageways. In no way unpleasant, as Jericho remembered from having strolled through there shortly after his arrival. Some of the things which had changed hands in exchange for a few coins had tasted incredibly good.

And yet a life was considered wretched if the people living it were forced to share a chronically blocked-up toilet between ten, assuming, that is, that their building even offered the luxury of a toilet. Logically then, when the real estate companies and representatives of the town planning department rushed in with their offers, one might have expected collective joy. There was talk of light and airy apartments, of electronic hobs and showers. But none of the residents’ eyes had reflected the sparkle of sanitary promise. There was neither excitement nor resistance. They just signed the contracts, looked at one another and knew that their time had come. This life would come to an end, but it had still been a life nonetheless. The simple houses had seen better times, back before China’s economy had started to accelerate
in the early nineties. They were run-down, without a doubt, but with some good will they could still be called home.

Months later, Jericho had gone back there. At first he thought there must have been a bomb attack. A troupe of workers had been busy razing the entire quarter to the ground. His initial surprise had turned into disbelief when it dawned on him that a good half of the inhabitants were still living there, going about their usual business as wrecking balls swung all around, walls collapsed and dumper trucks transported off tonnes of rubble.

He had asked what would happen to the people once the whole quarter had disappeared.

‘They’ll move,’ one of the builders enlightened him.

‘And where to?’

The man’s answer never came. Jericho, filled with consternation, had wandered around as darkness crept in and the stage was set for an amputated night market, its protagonists seeming to stubbornly deny the destruction taking place around them. Whenever he asked someone about it, they simply assured him, calmly and politely, that it was just the way it was. After a while Jericho became convinced that it couldn’t solely be down to the broad Shanghai dialect that he only ever understood that one sentence, and that it must actually be the standardised reaction to every kind of catastrophe and injustice.
Mei you banfa
: There’s nothing one can do.

Once night fell, a few people became more talkative. A plump old woman, preparing delicious little dumplings in broth, told Jericho that the compensation from the building authorities wasn’t anywhere near enough to buy a new apartment. Nor was it enough to rent one for any considerable length of time. A second woman who came over said that each of the inhabitants had been offered a much higher sum to start with, but that no one had received the amount they had been promised. A young man was considering making a complaint, but the plump woman dismissed that with a subdued flick of her hand. Her son had already complained four times. Every complaint had been rejected, but on the fourth time they had locked him up in a cell for a week, only showing him the door after they had administered a number of kicks.

Jericho ended up leaving as clueless as he had come. Now he had returned for a third time, and there was no indication that there had ever been anything here but towers with air-conditioning in front of the windows. The blocks were numbered, but in the advancing dusk the numbers blurred against the background. Some idiot had clearly thought it would be chic to paint pastel on pastel – in huge numbers, admittedly – but in poor light they were as hard to make out as snow-white mountain hares in a snowstorm. Jericho didn’t waste time marching up and down the streets. He pulled out his mobile, entered in the number and let the GPS figure out
his location. A grid-section of the city from satellite perspective appeared on the screen. Jericho projected the map onto the wall of a nearby house. The beamer was strong enough to generate a brilliantly clear image measuring two by two metres. The street he was standing on ran diagonally over the wall, along with a number of side and parallel streets. He zoomed in. One blinking signal pinpointed his current location down to the nearest metre, another marked out Yoyo’s address.

‘Please walk straight ahead for thirty-two metres,’ said the mobile in a friendly tone. ‘Then turn right—’

He deactivated the voice and set off. He had found out all he needed to know: that Yoyo’s building was just around the corner and easily reached.

Within two minutes he was ringing the doorbell.

It was a surprise visit and therefore an investment of sorts. The relative slimness of the chance he’d find someone at home was cancelled out by the benefits of the surprise attack. The recipient of the visit, if there were one, had no chance to prepare himself, hide things or rehearse lies. According to Jericho’s research, Yoyo’s flatmates had never had a criminal record, nor had they ever attracted the attention of the authorities. One of them, Zhang Li, was studying Economics and English, the other was enrolled in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering. As far as the authorities were concerned he was called Wang Jintao, but called himself Grand Cherokee. That was nothing unusual. In the nineties, young Chinese people had begun to put Western names before their family ones, a practice that wasn’t always carried out that tastefully. It wasn’t uncommon for men, in ignorance of a word’s associations, to name themselves after sanitary towels or dog food, whilst on the women’s side it wasn’t unusual to meet a Pershing Song or White House Liang. Wang, for example, had even selected himself an American four-by-four as a forename.

If Tu was to be believed, neither Wang nor Li was a stay-at-home type, which meant he could have made the journey here in vain. But after he’d rung for the second time, something surprising happened. Without anyone bothering to use the intercom, the buzzer sounded and the door was released. Walking into a bare hallway which stank of cabbage, he took the lift up to the seventh floor and found himself on a whitewashed landing where the neon lighting was flickering nervously. A little further along, a door opened up. A young man came out and looked Jericho up and down coolly.

There was no doubt it was him!

His forehead and cheekbones were adorned with metallic applications, highly fashionable right now. Their arrival had ended the era of piercings and tattoos. Anyone who still dared to have a ring through their eyebrow or silver in their tongue was seen as an embarrassment. Even the hairstyle, smooth and long, fitted in with the trend. It was
known as Indian style, as currently worn by the majority of young men around the globe, apart from the Indians themselves of course, who rejected all responsibility for it. A spray-on shirt emphasised Wang’s muscles, his wet-look leather trousers gave the impression that they were on duty both day and night. All things considered, the guy didn’t look bad, but he didn’t look great either. The warlike appearance was lacking about ten centimetres in height, and the edgy quality of his features might be quite pleasing, but they were devoid of any proportional elegance.

‘And you are?’ he asked, suppressing a yawn.

Jericho held his mobile phone out under Wang’s nose and projected a 3D image of his head, along with his police registration number, onto the folded-up display.

‘Owen Jericho, web detective.’

Wang squinted.

‘So I see,’ he said, trying to sound ironic.

‘Could I have a moment of your time?’

‘What’s up?’

‘This is the apartment of Chen Yuyun, is that correct? Yoyo for short.’

‘Wrong.’ The guy seemed to chew the word before spitting it out. ‘This apartment belongs to me and Li, and the little one just dumped her books and clothes here.’

‘I thought she lived here?’

‘Let’s get one thing clear, okay? It’s not
her
apartment.
I
let her have the room.’

‘Then you must be Grand Cherokee.’

‘Yeah!’ The mention of his forename made its owner suddenly switch into friendly mode. ‘You’ve heard of me?’

‘Only good things,’ lied Jericho. ‘Would you be able to tell me where I can find Yoyo?’

‘Where you could find—’ Grand Cherokee paused. For some unknown reason the question seemed to take him by surprise. ‘That’s—’ he murmured. ‘That’s really something!’