Snake Agent Page 9

  Chen was watching her closely. He said, “And why was it so important, Pearl? What was he doing?”

  Pearl’s spectral face creased in concentration, but then she said, “It’s no use. It’s gone. I can’t remember. I’m sorry.”

  “All right. What happened then?”

  “It was at the funeral, I think—I could see my mother. I tried to talk to her, to tell them what he’d done, but no one could see me. It was as though they were all behind glass. And then it all went blank and the next thing I remember is someone putting me on a boat. Next thing I knew, I was in Hell. They put me in the brothel with the other girls, we saw clients … and one of them worked for the Ministry of Wealth. I thought, if the First Lord knew that my dad had betrayed him, he might help me, so I got the client to take a message to him.” Her shadowy face showed sudden determination, and for the first time, Chen realized how this dead girl had managed to overcome at least some of the sorry circumstances of her life and death. He leaned across and patted the air above the ghost’s knee.

  “Pearl, I can’t give you back your life. But I can make sure that you go where you belong. We’ll see if we can get you on the next ship to Heaven.”

  “Hang on a minute,” Zhu Irzh said.

  Chen glared at him. “I fail to see what possible use she’ll be to you, Seneschal. She was sent to Hell in the first place to keep her quiet. And Heaven won’t let sleeping spirits lie. She’ll have to go to the right place sooner or later.”

  “I have my instructions,” the demon said stubbornly. “I was told to find her, and bring her back.” He lowered his voice. “She has information, Chen. You heard her—she knows something about whatever’s going on. My employer wants to see her. I was told to bring her back.”

  “You don’t really want to do this, Zhu Irzh.”

  “Are you accusing me of having principles?” the demon said, outraged. Chen did not see the demon move, but the unwavering tip of the katana was suddenly at Chen’s throat. Zhu Irzh took a gliding step forward; Chen backed away until he was up against the wall. He stared along the black blade, to meet the demon’s golden eyes.

  “This is a gateway,” Zhu Irzh said. “As you very well know. I can return to my own world from here. I have license to be here. Besides, your goddess may not be happy with you bringing stray spirits to her door like lost dogs. She might prefer you to sort out your problems by yourself.”

  This was uncomfortably close to the bone. Chen risked a glance at the little statue of the goddess that stood upon the altar, and saw a cold and motionless piece of stone.

  “So,” the demon purred, following his gaze. “That’s the trouble with Heaven: the only thing it ever rewards is impeccability, and so few of us are capable of that, aren’t we?”

  “You’re not taking Pearl Tang back to Hell,” Chen said.

  “Try and stop me,” the demon replied. He raised a hand. The door blew open. Around them, the room began to blur. Red, gritty dust whirled into the room. The two guardian statues turned. Zhu Irzh, momentarily distracted, let the blade waver. Chen snatched the rosary from his pocket and began to chant the Water Sutra: calling on the powers of rain and storm and wind. The guardians creaked back into place and the door slammed shut. The demon shrugged, and once more raised a hand.

  “Before you do anything further,” Chen said, “and we start shuttling between the worlds like a yoyo, I think I should point something out.”

  “Oh? What?”

  “Look around you,” Chen said. Warily, with the katana still at Chen’s throat, the demon glanced quickly over his shoulder. The ghost was nowhere to be seen. An expression of baffled dismay crossed Zhu Irzh’s face. He performed a swift search of the room, while Chen simply stood and watched.

  “Where is she?” Zhu Irzh asked at last, dangerously quiet.

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “No, I don’t lie. Not often, anyway. It gets me into too much trouble with my goddess. It seems the resourceful Pearl Tang has decided to take responsibility for her own future. When you were pinning me like a moth against the wall, she glided out through the door. I didn’t get a chance to stop her,” he added, disingenuously. The demon swore.

  “Then I’ll have to find her,” he snapped.

  “No, we’ll have to find her. Before her father does.”

  Leaving the disconsolate demon standing in the temple, Chen made a quick and thorough search of the courtyard, softly calling the ghost’s name. But the gates of the temple rattled in the rising wind, and there was no trace of her in the rain-lashed streets beyond. The storm was rising, filling the air with driving rain. The ghost could have gone anywhere. Soaked and weary, Chen eventually gave up and returned to the temple, and there behind the door he found a single trace of the ghost: a spectral fragment of scarf. It lay in cobweb fragility across his fingers; he tucked it into his damp pocket with utmost care. Zhu Irzh sat in a corner, silently sulking and indistinguishable from one of the surrounding statues. Chen sat down and removed his sopping coat, then stared fixedly into the shadows above the altar. With the demon’s immobile presence only a few yards away, the last thing Chen intended to do was go to sleep.

  13

  A miserable Zhu Irzh stood on the porch of the temple and waited for the rain to stop. Above the roofs, a faint gray light shimmered; it would soon be dawn. The demon shivered, then prowled back into the temple. Detective Inspector Chen lay peacefully upon his back on the carpet, head resting on a ceremonial cushion, his mouth open. He snored slightly. The demon gazed down at his adversary and ally. Chen had promised to help him find the ghost, and Zhu Irzh believed him. But although he understood some of the constraints that the goddess must have placed upon her follower, and although he therefore considered it unlikely that Chen would lie to him, it seemed that the policeman had developed a convenient habit of omitting crucial parts of the truth. Zhu Irzh admired this, and even conceded to himself that it made things more interesting, but it was also an additional problem. And there was always the possibility that Chen might try to trap him here; pull some slick trick. The policeman might work closely with Hell at times, but there was no doubt that it was still his enemy. Chen was uncorrupted, and, more importantly, incorruptible: Zhu Irzh knew this as firmly as he knew that Chen was Chinese. The demon sighed in frustration. He could not return to Hell without the ghost of Pearl Tang: failure would not make his life worth living. The First Lord of Banking did not enjoy being thwarted. Yet Chen had the capacity to make things difficult for him here. Once the ghost was located, Zhu Irzh decided, it might be best to dispatch the policeman, to prevent further tangles. A pity. He liked Detective Inspector Chen, but there you were.

  His meditations were interrupted by a sound; a quivering of the air like a distant bell. Zhu Irzh glanced up to see a pair of lambent eyes gazing at him from the statue on the altar. As he realized what was happening, the goddess assumed her human form and size, mantling herself in folds of diaphanous air. She stepped from the altar and walked down the aisle towards the demon. He could not look away. Her face was a mask of glacial perfection; her gaze as cold as the bloom on a plum. The look she bestowed upon Zhu Irzh was all the more quelling for being so devoid of expression; the goddess simply stared, as though he was something quite without significance. Her pale robe glittered, as if with frost. With difficulty, Zhu Irzh found his voice, “Ma’am?”

  “I caught,” the goddess said icily, “a thought of murder.”

  Zhu Irzh hastened to reassure her. “A hypothesis briefly entertained, nothing more.”

  “Even so, there was enough intent in your hypothesis to attract my attention. And your kind needs little enough excuse to kill.”

  “I’m a pragmatist,” Zhu Irzh said warily. “Unlike some of my kin, I don’t kill without reason.”

  “Be very careful, demon. I may not always interfere—Heaven runs by its own rules—but I am always watching.”

  “I’ll be mindful of that,” the d
emon said, trying vainly to match her hauteur. Kuan Yin reached out and tapped him lightly and contemptuously on the cheek with her stone-cold hand. Zhu Irzh’s head rang like a gong. The world turned around into a nightmare negative. When the hollow pounding inside his head finally stopped, he found that he was on his knees. The goddess had vanished. Chen had raised himself up on his elbows and was staring quizzically at the demon.

  “Good morning. What happened to you?”

  “Bad dream,” the demon said indistinctly. He hauled himself to his feet and leaned against the wall, breathing hard.

  “Well,” said Chen, eyeing him curiously. “We’d best get started.” Zhu Irzh rubbed his eyes, which felt as though someone had sandblasted them.

  “Where do you suggest we begin?”

  “I need to call the precinct, and I also need to talk to a spirit-sensor, see how we might track down Pearl. Lao’s a good choice—he’s the police exorcist.”

  “I know,” Zhu Irzh said, grimacing. “I’ve run into him a couple of times.”

  “He’s good at his job,” Chen said with a smile.

  “I know that, too. Is it still raining?”

  Chen opened the door of the temple and peered out. “No, it’s stopped. Looks as though it’s going to be a nice day. Not too many people around, either.”

  “That won’t matter. I’ve taken precautions,” Zhu Irzh said, thinking of the mantle of spells that he had invoked to prevent his presence here being too obvious.

  Even at this early hour, there were a few people going about their business in the temple courtyard. They glanced up uneasily as Zhu Irzh and Chen walked past; it seemed that no one was a seer, but they could still sense the presence of evil. Zhu Irzh wondered for an idle moment how they saw him: a dark, glittering vision crossing the corner of the eye. He rather liked that idea; it seemed glamorous.

  “Don’t worry, you’re not very noticeable,” Chen said. Zhu Irzh gave him a hurt look, but the policeman ignored it. “Now,” Chen said. “I suggest we go first to Lao.”

  The demon had never taken a taxi before, and found the experience a novel one. The windscreen was hung with all manner of gaudy charms: plastic rosaries, gods and bells and flowers. There was even a little figure on a cheap gilt cross; the dead God of the Christians. None of it was enough to trouble a being of Zhu Irzh’s standing, but his skin prickled in fleeting reaction, and then he sneezed. Eyes watering, he watched with interest as they sped through Xiangfan and skirted the Garden District, then turned down into Shaopeng. Morning light glinted from the myriad mirrors that bedecked the facade of the First National Bank. The driver ducked his head and swore, blinded by stray shafts of reflected light. Zhu Irzh was overcome by momentary dizziness. He shook his head from side to side, trying to clear it.

  “What’s wrong?” Chen said with some concern.

  “Ch’i. From the feng shui mirrors. I do not like these configurations,” the demon snapped. His head hummed like a hive.

  “Close your eyes,” Chen told him. “Put your head between your knees.”

  In the rearview mirror, Zhu Irzh glimpsed the startled face of the driver, who had just realized that his passenger appeared to be talking to himself. Zhu Irzh leaned forward, intrigued to see that his own face appeared as no more than a fleeting apparition in the mirror, the glitter of an unnatural eye. The taxi swerved towards the curb, sending the charms into a frantic dance.

  “What the hell—?” the driver said. Chen reached into his pocket and took out a wallet, which he displayed to the driver.

  “Don’t let it worry you,” Chen said. The driver’s face assumed the professionally stony expression of someone who does not want to risk further involvement. He nipped sharply around the back of a tram and accelerated into the Shaopeng traffic.

  “What’s that?” Zhu Irzh asked, pointing to the object in Chen’s hand.

  “My badge.”

  “May I see?”

  Chen handed him the wallet. Inside was inscribed the policeman’s precinct and rank, the visa stamp which proclaimed his license to enter Hell, and a truly dreadful photograph which made Chen look as though he had recently escaped from a lunatic asylum. The demon suppressed a smile.

  “Looks nothing like you,” Zhu Irzh said encouragingly. There was a faint, dark miasma around Chen’s head, as though the photo had been smudged: the characteristic taint of those who associated too closely with Hell. The taxi veered past the improbable dome of the Pellucid Island Opera House and cut through a maze of back streets, passing go-downs and cyber-shops and market stalls. Zhu Irzh smelled ghambang and chowder; caught the tail-end of other people’s dreams. A spirit stepped from beneath an awning and yawned, unscrolling a long, pale tongue, then drifted up into the branches of a tree. The taxi turned down a road which no one had bothered to pave; water pooled in the overflowing gutters from last night’s storm. Clad in a skimpy kimono, a prostitute sat with her feet balanced on a deck chair, reading a cheap movie magazine. Zhu Irzh could smell sex and fever threading through the air like old musk. He trailed a hand out of the open window of the taxi, enjoying the sudden humid heat. Chen tapped the driver on the shoulder.

  “You can drop us off anywhere here.”

  The demon stepped out onto packed, peaty earth. His boots were soled with iron, but he could still feel the warmth of the world. He turned to Chen. “A protected place?”

  Chen nodded. “Lao’s. He takes precautions.”

  They were standing in front of a low house; its windows shuttered. Bagua mirrors hung from the eaves, deflecting ill magic and dark ch’i. Turning, the demon saw that a hazy azure strip of sea was visible, far away down the hillside. The house faced it; any negativity would be directed down the slope to be swallowed by the cleansing immensity of the South China Sea. Lao’s house lay on the edge of the city; behind, Zhu Irzh could see the steep slope of the back territories, shadowy with trees. The hill seemed suddenly to darken. Light struck the distant surface of the water and Zhu Irzh stepped back with the force of being observed. Something was watching from the hillside, something old and implacable and indifferent to humanity’s concerns, and even to those of Hell. He thought of dragon energy, coiling under the land. It made him shiver. The door of the house was opening.

  “Well, well,” said a very chilly voice. “You’ve outdone yourself this time, Wei Chen.”

  Five minutes later, Chen and the demon were sitting in Lao’s parlor. The exorcist shuffled about, complaining of his bad back and the weather, and made tea.

  “My wife’s gone shopping, otherwise she’d do it. What do you want?” he asked the demon, summarily. “Green? Black?”

  “Do you have any gunpowder oolong?”

  “Somewhere,” Lao said. He gave Zhu Irzh a look of deep distrust and pottered off in the direction of the kitchen. “Now,” he said, when he returned. “You’ve lost a ghost, is that right?”

  “Yes. Pearl Tang.”

  “The daughter of the woman I saw the other night? That’s tricky. Do you know where the mother is now?”

  “Her body’s still in the departmental morgue. Apparently her spirit’s waiting for an exit visa.”

  “Where’s she bound for? Heaven or Hell?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Will they let you into the Night Harbor to talk to her?”

  “I’ve applied for temporary entry. I want to speak to Mrs Tang before she leaves the shores of Earth.”

  “Ask her to stick around,” the exorcist said, with a stony glance in the direction of Zhu Irzh. “She can take her daughter with her. When we find her.”

  “Tell me,” the demon said placatingly, in an effort to establish some rapport with this suspicious character, “how easy do you think it will be to find the ghost of the girl?”

  “About as easy as finding a needle in a bloody haystack. You must know what this city’s like. If we were in Beijing or Shanghai—somewhere ancient, where people understood about the maintenance of proper boundaries between this world an
d others, it wouldn’t be so bad. But the planners had to go and throw this city up any old how, and of course they didn’t consult the feng shui practitioners. It sometimes seems to me that any gwei li jin who pleases can just wander up from Hell and start making a nuisance of itself.” He scowled at Zhu Irzh.

  “Well, sorry,” the demon said. “I know it must be difficult. But not impossible, surely? This ghost is a new ghost; it does not know how to protect itself, it does not know where to hide.”

  “That does make our task a little easier,” the exorcist admitted, grudgingly. “Ghosts are drawn to temples and to séances, for example. We can make a start by ringing round the temples and seeing if any strays have come in overnight.”

  “You mentioned séances. Can’t we simply summon her up?”

  “We can try. I imagine that’s what her dad will be doing right now.”

  “Not if I can help it,” Chen said. “I phoned from the temple. Sergeant Ma’s gone round with a long list of spurious enquiries, which should keep both of them busy.”

  “Do you have any personal items that she might have used?”

  “Indeed,” Zhu Irzh said, anxious to help. “We have this.”

  From the pocket of his coat, Chen took the wisp of scarf that the ghost had left behind at the temple. Now, fading fast in the morning light, it was no more than a shadow across his fingers. Lao sniffed disparagingly.

  “I suppose it will have to do.”

  “If it doesn’t, will you help us track her down?”

  “With my back in the state it is? You must be joking. I can’t walk to the bottom of the garden at the moment without seizing up, let alone traipse all over the city looking for stray spirits.”

  “I understand that,” Chen said. “But I don’t really have the nose for ghosts, and neither, it seems, does Zhu Irzh. We’ll try a séance.”

  “We?” Lao asked, with a frosty glance at Zhu Irzh.

  “You and I, then.”

  “Believe me,” Zhu Irzh said hastily, “I have great experience with this kind of thing. You stand a far better chance of a successful séance with my help.”