Snake Agent: A Detective Inspector Chen Novel

Snake Agent
© 2005 by Liz Williams
 
This edition of Snake Agent © 2008 by Night Shade Books
 
Cover art by Jon Foster
Cover design by Michael Fusco
Interior layout and design by Jeremy Lassen
 
All rights reserved
 
ISBN 978-1-59780-107-2
 
Night Shade Books
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Detective Inspector Chen:

Snake Agent
The Demon and the City
Precious Dragon
The Shadow Pavilion (Forthcoming)
Banner of Souls
Bloodmind
Darkland
Empire of Bones
The Ghost Sister
Nine Layers of Sky
The Poison Master
The Banquet of the Lords of Night and Other Stories

Hanging by his heels and twisting slowly in the draught that slipped beneath the crimson door, Detective Inspector Chen tried desperately to attract the demon's attention. Yet despite his whispered pleas, the demon's eyes remained tightly shut, and his wet, black lips moved faintly, as if in prayer. Hearing the alchemist's heels retreating down the passage, Chen tried again. "Tso! Listen to me!"

The demon's only response was to squeeze his eyes even more firmly closed. Chen sighed. Tso had never liked to confront uncomfortable realities, and had gone to some lengths to avoid them, but now he, too, was dangling by his heels from a hook in the ceiling and—thought Chen, bitterly—the truth of what the demon had done must finally be faced.

"Tso, I know you've probably had a bang on the head, but I'm quite well aware you're still conscious. We have to find a way of getting down," Chen insisted.

"No use," the demon whined, without opening his eyes. "There's no way out of here."

"Nonsense," Chen said, more firmly than he felt. The blood was rushing to his head and making him dizzy: the metal walls of the chamber seemed to tilt and spin. Reflected within them, his face was no more than a blurred, unhappy moon. He tried not to think about Inari, but it was hard to keep anxiety at bay.
Stop fretting about your wife,
he told himself.
The badger will look after Inari; all you have to do is worry about getting down and getting out of here.
To the demon he said, "The alchemist will be back in a little while, and then we'll really have problems. Now, listen. My rosary's on the table to your right—can you see it? I want you to try and reach it."

The demon's eyes opened at last, dazzling and sudden. Chen stared, blinking, into the hot-coal heart of the demon's gaze.

"Reach your rosary?" Tso said, nonplussed. "How? My hands are tied."

"You'll have to swing over and see if you can grab it with your tongue."

"But my tongue will get burned!"

"When that nightmare of an alchemist comes back you'll have a damned sight more to worry about than a sore tongue," Chen said with barely restrained patience. The demon's mouth opened and Tso emitted a long, hissing breath that stank of offal. Chen was unable to repress a shudder.

"Oh, very well!" the demon complained. "I'll try."

He began to swing, dangling like some monstrous piece of bait from the hook in the ceiling. Chen watched, holding his breath, as the demon came within a couple of feet of the table. The long, black tongue shot out and flickered over the surface, missing the rosary. Tso tried again, anchoring himself to the table-leg with his tongue. The barbed, sensitive tip probed over the surface of the table, flicked the rosary, and recoiled.

"Hurts!"
the demon said, indistinctly.

"I'm truly sorry. But if we don't get out of here. . ."

Tso tried again, and this time flicked the rosary off the table with all the neatness of a toad catching flies.

"Well done!" Chen enthused. The demon hissed with pain as the rosary seared the end of his tongue, but the barbs held it securely. Swinging back, Tso flicked the rosary in the direction of Chen, who lunged for it with his teeth and missed. The rosary, detaching itself from Tso's tongue, wrapped around an ornately carved pineapple that decorated the edge of the alchemist's desk, where it hung, dangling tantalizingly out of reach just as the alchemist stepped back through the lacquered door, ceremonial machete in hand.

Detective Inspector Chen brushed aside the chaos on his desk and carefully lit a single stick of scarlet incense. Smoke spiraled up into the air, contributing to the brown smear that marked the ceiling like a bloodstain immediately above Chen's desk and adding to the heat of the city outside. The air conditioning had failed again, a lamentably regular occurrence in the steamy South China summer. Chen bent his head in a brief prayer, then picked up the photograph and held it over the stream of smoke. The girl's face appeared by degrees, manifesting out of a dark background. She was standing in the doorway of a go-down, gazing fearfully over her shoulder. Her hair was still scraped back into its funeral braids, and her white face gleamed out of the shadows like the ghost she was. Studying the photo, and the expression on the girl's face, Chen was aware of the sudden hot glow of rage in his heart. How many more young women might have gone the same way after their deaths, unnoticed and unmourned? But whoever was behind all this had made a mistake this time, choosing the daughter of Singapore Three's premier industrialist rather than some nameless prostitute. Chen held the photograph out to the woman sitting on the other side of the desk and said gently, "Let's begin at the beginning, Mrs Tang. Are you sure that this is your daughter?"

Mrs Tang's grip tightened around the handle of her Miucci handbag as she studied the photograph. In a little whispery voice she said, "Yes. Yes, that's Pearl."

"Now, you say someone sent this to you?"

"Yesterday. I didn't go out of the house, and I'm sure no one came in—it was the servants' afternoon off. But when I walked into the living room, the photo was sitting on the bureau. In a red envelope. I didn't know what it was at first. There was a note, telling me what to do." She gestured towards the spiraling incense. "You can see her face for a little while, but then it fades again."

"And did you notice anything—strange? Apart from the envelope?"

Mrs Tang moistened dry lips. "There was some ash. Like dust. At first I thought the maid hadn't been cleaning properly, but it was white and soft. Like incense ash."

"I see. Mrs Tang, I know how hard this is for you, but at least we have a lead. You must try and be hopeful."

Mrs Tang's face began to crumple.

"You will find her, won't you?"

Reaching across, Chen patted her hand. "Don't worry. We'll find your daughter, and we'll make absolutely sure that this time she completes her journey to the afterlife." He did his best to sound reassuring.

"Thank you," Mrs Tang murmured. She pushed her expensive sunglasses to the top of her head and rubbed her eyes; they were rimmed with redness. "I'd better go. I couldn't tell my husband I was coming here; he'd be furious if he knew I'd gone to the police. I told him I was going shopping."

Chen sighed. This was an added complication, but hardly an unfamiliar one. "Is there anything you can do to change your husband's mind?"

"I don't think so. H'suen's a hard man to talk to sometimes. I've tried discussing it with him, but he won't listen." Mrs Tang gave a brittle, bitter smile. "He says it doesn't make any difference; Pearl's dead and that's that. You see, he adored Pearl. At first, anyway. She was such a sweet little girl, but then she started growing up. I mean, she was always a—well, she was a lovely,
lovely
girl, but she could be a little bit difficult. Willful. She was fourteen, and I used to say to him: 'What do you expect these days?' They all go out with boys, and Pearl was very popular. He used to get so angry. . .And then he found out that she'd been charging money for what she did and of course he was
furious
, we both were, but I said Pearl needed help, not scolding. . .And I think her eating problems started around then. . ."

She seemed to have forgotten that she had been on the point of leaving. Patiently, Chen listened as she talked, building up a picture of the dead girl. Disobedience, anorexia, promiscuity and what amounted to prostitution did not make a pretty picture, but Chen said nothing. Years of police work had taught him that sympathy won more confidences than judgment, and anyway, it came more naturally. Chen didn't feel that he was in any position to judge anyone else, certainly not these days. He sat gazing at Mrs Tang, making sympathetic noises while she rambled on about her daughter, and occasionally handing her a tissue to dry her eyes. Yet despite the tears, Chen was increasingly beginning to feel that there was something not quite right about this exhibition of maternal consideration. It was a little too artless, a little too staged. He could smell a lie, somewhere, like the stink of rotting meat beneath spice, but he did not yet know where it lay. Perhaps it related to nothing more than guilt over the peculiar combination of self-indulgence and neglect that the rich habitually displayed towards their offspring, perhaps to something darker. What had driven the fourteen-year-old daughter of one of the city's most privileged households not only to provide sexual services, but to seek payment for them? Chen mentally ran through possibilities with the hard-won objectivity of a man who has seen much to revolt him. At last Mrs Tang wiped her eyes and said, "You've been very kind, Detective Inspector. I know you'll do your best in finding Pearl." She looked momentarily embarrassed, as though she'd said too much. She leaned forwards, peering curiously at the framed photograph that sat on Chen's desk. "Oh, she's pretty. Is she your wife?"

"That's right." Once again, Chen cursed the impulse that had led him to place Inari's photo on the desk. Everyone noticed it and this was a problem, but it made his job easier, somehow, if he could glance at her face occasionally. He should just keep a picture in his wallet – but that made him feel as though he was shaming her somehow.

"What's her name? She looks Japanese."

"She's called Inari." Chen shifted impatiently in his chair. He got the impression that Mrs Tang was delaying her return home, but then again, it didn't sound as though she had a lot to look forward to.

Mrs Tang said, "She's lovely, even behind those big sunglasses. Is she a model? You know, my sister runs an agency and she's always looking for people. If you like, I could take your wife's number."

Chen said hastily, "I think maybe not. It's very flattering, but actually Inari doesn't really like going out all that much and—anyway, thank you."

"What a pity. She really is beautiful."

Chen allowed himself a small, smug smile, then stifled it. It didn't do to dwell too much on his marital luck.

"I'm very fortunate," he murmured. Mrs Tang sighed, no doubt thinking of her own lack of fortune in that department.

"I really should go now," she said reluctantly, and rose from her chair.

Chen saw her to the door of the precinct, then made his way slowly to the vending machine. Sergeant Ma was bending over it, thumping the side with an immense fist.

"Damn machine's not working again. I—oh." He stood hastily back as he saw who it was.

"Take your time," Chen said politely.

"No no no no no. It's quite all right. It's all yours," Ma muttered, and made a rapid, waddling exit in the direction of the canteen. With a resigned sigh, Chen managed to extract a paper cup of green tea from the machine, and carried it back to his desk. As he turned the corner, he saw that Sergeant Ma had come back and was surreptitiously waving a blessing paper over the vending machine. Chen was used to being a pariah, but some days his colleagues' aversion to him got him down. He sipped his scalding, tasteless tea and contemplated the girl's photograph for a few moments longer, then collected his jacket from the back of his chair and left the precinct.

It was only the beginning of summer, but already the heat had built to oppressive levels. Despite the heat of the precinct, stepping out onto Jiang Mi Road was like diving into a warm bath. Chen glanced at the pollution meter on a nearby wall, but the results were too depressing to take seriously. He walked slowly down towards the harbor, lost in thought. By the time he reached the edge of the typhoon shelter, the weather had grown a little cooler. There was a storm building out over the South China Sea, and the air tasted of lightning and rain. Chen smiled, picturing Inari resting her elbows on the windowsill of the houseboat, waiting for the thunder to break. His wife loved storms; she had once told him that they reminded her of her home.
The only good thing about the place,
she had added bitterly. The ferry terminal lay a short distance along the quay, and Chen sat down on the bench to wait. Someone had left a newspaper, and he picked it up, beginning idly to read. Singapore was opening yet another franchise city, this time along the Myanmar coast. Chen could remember a time when Singapore Three was the last in the franchise line; this new development would be the sixth city. Chen read on, learning that this version of Singapore would be developed along the same lines as all the others, and he smiled again, fancifully imagining another Detective Chen sitting on an identical ferry terminal bench, several thousand miles to the south.