The Black Dragon (22 page)

It's gone. The quad bike leaps forward down the hill, with Danny desperately clinging on, trying to regain his seat. The trailer's chaotic path catches their chasers off guard. It bangs against a wall, upsets a crate of watermelons tucked beside the path, and then flips over right in front of the buggy. Machine and passengers go flying head over heels, through the rolling watermelons, slamming into a stack of plastic crates. Looking back, Danny just has time to see the chaos: pulped green watermelon, fishing nets and traps, starfish cascading in the streetlight . . .

Then an almighty crunch as metal and bone and jaunty canopy slam into the wall. It sounds bad.

A few minutes later, following the flow of the land back down to the sea, they find themselves emerging onto the bay road near the spiraling stone steps. Not a trace of any of the triads.

And no sign of Sing Sing.

“Another lap?” Zamora says, looking grim. “Or shall we get moving?”

“The pier's all we've got. If Sing Sing got free she'll head there,” Danny says. “And if they got her then we've no idea where she is. Let's keep going.”

They head south again, following the bay road as it twists and turns through a darker, more ragged part of the bay. The sea surges below them, white surf thrumming on the rocks.

A few hundred feet further on, a tourist sign gives directions in both Chinese and English.

CHEUNG PO TSAI CAVE. 1.5 KM
SAI WAN PIER. 2 KM

The trail leads them around the curve of the bay, past holiday chalets, thicker trees, and undergrowth. And then they glimpse a long finger of concrete stretching out into the waves of the bay, a dark line on the water. It looks deserted.

A few more bends and they have arrived.

There are no boats tied up against the pier—and not much else to see. Just a few posts, a lifebelt, some steps at the far end for embarking and disembarking. The waves sigh against the rocky beach. No other sound but the high-pitched ringing of a set of windbells hanging from the gutter of a long, low concrete shed.

If this is it—their destination, the big hope from all the clues—then it's a big anticlimax. Not quite the moment of destiny that Danny has been anticipating. No confrontation with the Dragon. No sign of Laura struggling to free herself. Just an empty, stained concrete pier and the sea beyond.

He turns his attention to the shed—it seems there are actually three of them, rammed together back to back. Every window is dark. Nothing is parked out front, and there's no sign of life. Weeds and wildflowers force through the cracked roadway.

Danny gets off the quad bike and walks over, eyes piercing the gathering gloom.

“Laura?”

The windbells shake in the strengthening wind.

“Sing Sing?”

No reply.

A sign is tacked to the door on the first of the sheds. In rough lettering under a string of Chinese characters: CHARTER BOAT TO WANSHAN AND OTHERS.

And then, below it, chalked at ankle height, is that same dotted pattern once again. The forty-nine dots. Small, but neatly and deliberately done. Same one circled as on Ponytail's tattoo.

Danny feels his stomach tightening, palms sweating. His mouth is dry.

“Come on, Major. We must be getting warmer. Even if there's no one here now.”

“Want me to smash the lock?”

Danny nods.
There's no time to spare
, he thinks.
And my hands are shaking. Wouldn't do so well with the picks now.

He looks out at the empty pier, the wide, dark sea beyond, and wonders if they have—after all—reached the end of the trail.

Whether they are too late.

30

HOW TO COAX A BEAM IN THE DARKNESS

Zamora picks up a heavy boulder and brings it down sharply on the padlock, sending echoes racing away across the water. He nods to Danny and they push through the door.

It's dark and silent in the first of the sheds. A smell of dead fish, mold, damp wood choking the air. Just enough light spilling through the doorway to show a desk, a lamp, some mismatching office furniture. Thick gloom beyond that.

“Hello?” His voice is swallowed, silenced by the thickening atmosphere.

Danny clicks on the lamp on the desk. It shows a slew of papers covered with scribbled Chinese characters, a couple of nautical charts. He moves them around, squinting for meaning among the indecipherable glyphs. On one sheet there's a string of what look like times. Twenty-four-hour clock.
Tide tables?
Danny wonders.
Or sailing times?

There's an apple core half chewed amongst the clutter, browning in the fetid air.

“Someone was here earlier today. Not long ago,” he says, shuffling on down through the papers, fingers working as quickly as they can. Must be something more there to show that their journey has not been a wild chase to nothing. A new clue to follow—

His hands go still as soon as he sees the image, and he takes in a sharp breath. He grabs the crackling sheet of fax paper and holds it to the light. On it—grainy but reproduced clearly enough—is a very familiar face: his own. It's the school photo from Ballstone. The one they took in the first week when he felt all at sea. His startled eyes popped wide in the photographer's flashbulb. The mouth forcing a smile, but the whole face clouded with anxiety.
Easy to read
, he thinks.
I look as though I'm frozen with fear
. His hand is shaking less now, but still it sets the thermal paper whispering in the silence.

“Come and look at this, Major.”

Zamora has been keeping watch by the half-open door. He swears when he sees the photo.

“They've got a picture of
me
!” Danny says. But it's no surprise now. Just confirmation of the chain of events steadily winding around him, snaring him tighter and tighter. Everything and everyone pulling him in toward this moment.

“What do they want with
me
?!” It's more indignation than inquiry. He slaps the fax back on the desk.

Zamora furrows his brow.

“Let's not rush to conclusions, OK?”

Danny looks back at Zamora.

“It's me they're after,” he says calmly. “You guessed as much, didn't you? Some time ago? I knew there was something you weren't telling me.”

“Mister Danny. It was only a feeling. And I didn't want to scare you.”

“I'm not a little kid anymore.”

“
Claro!
I know that, my friend.” Zamora pats him on the back. “I know that.”

“Let's search every inch of this place. And then get out of here.”

At the back of the room a door stands agape. A black rectangle leading into deeper darkness beyond.

There's a flashlight hanging from a nail on the wall, a big chart pinned to the flaking plasterboard, wreathed in shadow. Danny flicks the flashlight's switch and, in its hesitant yellow beam, picks across the now familiar shapes. There's Kowloon, Hong Kong Island and the Peak, Cheung Chau. From this end of the island, presumably from the pier outside, red lines snake away across the South China Sea.

He follows a couple. They run out past Lantau and Lamma to other islands not far from Hong Kong.

Another track loops away into the emptier quarters of the map. Danny traces it with the torch as it curls toward a cluster of islands much farther out into the blankness of the sea. When it reaches the Wanshan Archipelago it starts zipping from one little island to another.

A black cross has been penciled against a couple of islands that stand apart from the rest. There's no charter service joining them to the others.

“X marks the spot?” Zamora says. “There's no sign of Miss Laura here. Maybe that's where we have to look.”

Danny nods, then peers into the second doorway. “Let's check the rest of the sheds, and then get back and find Ricard. Tell him what we've got.”

“And try and find Miss Sing Sing too.”

The flashlight flickers uncertainly. Danny bangs the end of it on the doorframe, coaxing a bit more juice from the faltering batteries. In its feeble beam, the second room gives up a jumble of fishing nets, buoys, chairs, plastic crates, all covered with a thick rime of dust and mildew. The air is heavier still.

There's a path cleared through the junk, and on the objects lying close to it, you can see where fingers and hands have brushed against the grime. Danny lights the pathway with the flashlight. Two long, jagged trails scuffed on the ground. Parallel lines as if something's been dragged in—or out. Zamora nods.

Halfway across the room there's a hand lying on the floor. A dull blood-red. For a moment Danny thinks all his worst fears have been realized—but coming closer he sees it's just a rubber work glove, deflated and forgotten.

Holding my breath
, Danny thinks.
Need to breathe. Next shed either gives us Laura or the Dragon . . . or failure. But if Laura's there, surely she would have called out? If she CAN call out.

The door at the back of the second room is shut fast. Three heavy bolts are slid across it on their side—the whole thing reinforced with metal shuttering. A cell. They listen at the door, but hear nothing save the blood chugging in their ears, the sea's steady voice outside. A tiny window shows nothing but their own reflections, and when Danny tries to shine the flashlight through it, the faltering glow just bounces back off dirty glass.

They slide back the bolts—greased and smooth in their channels—and push the door open, the hair riffling up on the back of Danny's neck. It's all coming down to this door, this moment.
So let's confront it.

The air inside smells worse yet—something he can't place, but which arouses a kind of animal instinct deep down, to be cautious, to keep clear. But, on top of that, there's a telltale note, which Danny recognizes as soon as it hits his nose.

Laura's perfume.

He's never been so glad to smell it. It's as if she's standing there, just out of the flashlight's reach . . . He almost expects to hear her voice call out to him.

“Laura?” He flicks the beam around in a circle.

But the flashlight just shows bare walls, an empty room with a barred window that leads onto the blackened hillside behind.

“She was here, Major,” Danny says, excitement and disappointment mixing in his voice. “She
was
here.”

He scans the wall for any sign of a message or further clues.
Laura would let me know, she'd leave me a sign like before . . .

But there's nothing.

The flashlight stutters out. He bangs it again frantically, and—as he does so—it gives one last burst of light, shining on the bare concrete floor.

And there in its beam is the body of Charlie Chow.

He's lying in the dust, arms and legs bound with wire, head turned at an unnatural angle. Congealing blood soaks his shirt and there's a horrible mess of a gunshot wound to the side of his skull. His eyes are open in surprise, but glazed and empty. He can see nothing now.

“Major!” Danny gasps, his knees sagging under him. “Major!”

A noise behind him, a kind of snuffled sigh. He spins around, flailing the light to see what's there. But then the battery dies and the beam gutters out, darkness enfolding him.

A shadow flits through the door. Someone behind him.

“Major?”

No. There, to the right.

“Major . . .?”

And then his head feels very wrong.

There's no pain, just a heaviness—and it feels like he's falling again: in the laundry chute, down the hillside, somewhere far away.

I've messed up
, he thinks.
Got it all wrong at the vital moment and let everyone down again. Maybe I should ask Dad. No, that's wrong. My fault
. . .

He hears Sing Sing's voice in his head. “Used to call it Death Island.” And then, “Pleased to meet you, Danny Wooooooo . . .”

He gropes for understanding—his mind trying to summon images, thoughts, struggling to keep consciousness. But it's all muddling together: he sees the golden Buddha serene in his darkened temple, skyscrapers and trams and battered taxis, tumbling cards, the blitz of the firecrackers on the stairs, multi-hued fish—now in an aquarium, now swimming around his father's head in the water torture cell.

He sees white sheets falling like distressed ghosts, then a keyboard, each key bearing the seven by seven dotted pattern, and the dots merge into squiggles and shapes inked on the pages of his father's secret notebook, which turn into flapping crows. And then there are Mum and Dad moving toward each other on the highwire across the deep blue of the Mysterium hemisphere, and the snow is falling heavily from its ceiling, drifting thickly across his vision and . . .

. . . and that red fish on the restaurant floor, and the lipstick gouge, and the red glove bleeding on the shed floor . . .

. . . and he's on the floor of a deserted shed on a small island thousands of miles from home and everything has gone utterly . . .

. . . BLACK.