10

HOW TO REVEAL HIDDEN MESSAGES

Thirty minutes later they’re sitting by the window in their hotel room. Across the South China Sea the last of the lightning is guttering away to nothing.

Danny looks at Zamora. “So you were going to tell me about the dots.”

The dwarf looks thoughtfully at his hat as he twirls it in his stubby fingers.

“Please.”

“I don’t know much. Honest. Your aunt always keeps things close to her chest, you know. Remember, it was three weeks before anyone even knew she was in prison!”

“You were Dad’s closest friend,” Danny presses. “He trusted you. I need to know.”

“Well. There’s always been a rumor. A rumor about a criminal organization—a global organization—that pulls all the strings behind the big gangs and crime families. That’s what Laura told me. She got interested in it some time ago. But she was sure it was just a myth. Like Bigfoot, or UFOs. She thinks some gangs use it to scare people . . . you know, what do they call it—a bogeyman.”

“Go on.”

“Laura wrote about it a year or so ago. And then she got a number of anonymous notes and emails via her editor. That same symbol on each one. She thinks it’s just some crank trying to put the wind up her and make out that it really exists.”

“That what exists?”

“It’s called the Forty-Nine. Because there are meant to be forty-nine members from affiliated gangs around the world. A kind of supercrime syndicate. Always forty-nine. When one dies—or disappears—another takes his or her place. Sounds fantastical really, but now with the dots turning up all over the place, well . . .”

“And what has it got to do with the Black Dragon?”

“Laura didn’t say. She just wanted to bring you along to . . . show you Hong Kong. What with school being shut and all.”

“And that’s all you know?”

Zamora turns to look out the window, but Danny catches his reflection in the glass. Caution. His hands are tensing slightly, as if holding on to something.

“That’s all I know about the stupid dots.” Something definitely unsaid. Danny goes to challenge him, and then decides to let it pass. He will trust Zamora. People always said that Zamora had the word honest running through him like a stick of rock candy says Brighton. If he’s not being a hundred percent truthful he must have his reasons. So forget about it for now. Find the right way forward.

It was Dad’s contention that any problem—almost any problem—could be solved if you just broke it into small enough parts. He would sit Danny down, with a mug of tea for each of them, at the big table in the trailer, then write a problem in capital letters at the top, like HOW TO DO THE BURNING ROPE ESCAPE.

“But it could equally well be how to mend a tap or how to make a cup of tea,” Dad said. “The principle is the same. I call it my atomic strategy. The main thing is that your problem contains masses of other little ones hidden inside it. Maybe ten, maybe a hundred. You have to take it to pieces, so it becomes something like: ‘How to escape from a burning rope, while you’re held fast in a straitjacket and you only have sixty seconds to get free.’ Then you can see how to break it down further, stage by stage . . .”

He started to draw radiating lines, write down new subheadings, expanding the problem across the sheet.

“And so, old son, the burning rope part has at least nine elements including thickness of rope, the kind of fuel you put on it, and so on . . . and then those can subdivide.”

And pretty soon his tea would be cold and the paper would be covered in writing and lines.

“But that looks impossible,” Danny said.

“No, it’s not. It just looks bad. But now all the problems are little ones. Solvable. It’s just a matter of working through it one by one. You write them in the order you need to solve them and then you just go at it one at a time, Danny. Lock by lock, so to speak!” And then he crumpled up the paper into a tight ball, tucked it down into his left fist, blew on it—and it was gone, vanished into the bright light from the window. “But we don’t want anyone getting their hands on trade secrets, do we now?!”

Danny grabs his notebook. He takes a pen and writes down HOW TO RESCUE AUNT LAURA.

He looks at the problem and adds a new line. How to find Aunt Laura. How to release her.

Zamora looks over his shoulder. “We’ll need clues.”

“We’ve already got some,” Danny says. “The man in the Bat had a Star Ferry ticket marked today. Yesterday, I mean. The ticket had our room number on the back. He must have been stalking us. And he had a shoe repair receipt for somewhere called the Wuchung Mansions.”

“How do you know?”

“From the man with the ponytail. I checked his pockets.”

“Maybe you should have left that to the police?” Danny shakes his head. He writes down a new line: Work out who to trust.

“What do you mean?” asks Zamora.

“When we were answering Lo’s questions, he wasn’t typing what we said. Not all the time. I could see where his fingers were going. He typed our names all right. But when you said ‘Golden Bat’ he typed something that had at least three p’s or o’s in it. Top right on the keyboard. Like ‘Happy House’ for example. Something like that.”

“Madre mia—you sure?”

“Sure. Same again when we told him what Laura was doing in Hong Kong. He didn’t type ‘journalist.’ I think it was ‘shopping!’”

“That’s the last thing your aunt would do.”

Danny draws two lines from the last question and puts Detective Lo and Detective Tan in little boxes.

“Better add Charlie Chow to that list. I don’t trust him at all,” Zamora says, tapping the sheet. “Not at all. Made himself scarce. That girl too.”

Danny’s hand hesitates for a beat. And then reluctantly he adds Sing Sing to the list.

“We might have one more clue here,” he says, taking the blank Post-it note from his back pocket. He holds the paper up to the light, turns it side on.

“I don’t see what that’s going to tell you,” Zamora says. “I saw you swipe it, of course. Nicely done.”

Danny takes a pencil from his bag and the craft knife he uses to sharpen it. He snaps the pencil in two, and quickly pares away the wood from one side, exposing the graphite core. He spreads the note out, rubbing the cored pencil across it.

“Clever lad!” Zamora says, leaning over.

Clearly revealed—negative white lettering through the graphite—is the imprint of what Inspector Lo scrawled on the sheet above.

A short string of Chinese characters—and two numbers below: a 4 and a 9. The goosebumps prickle up Danny’s skin.

“Are you still sure this is just a wind-up, Major?”

“I’m not sure about anything, to tell you the truth.”

“And Detective Lo claimed to know nothing about it. We need to find Laura’s notebook. That’s what she shouted as they pushed her into the car. It’s the one she always keeps on her.”

He adds WHERE IS THE RED NOTEBOOK? to the list of problems.

“Let’s start at the Golden Bat. There must be a reason that Lo wanted to divert attention away from it.”

“I take it we won’t be following his advice then?” Zamora says with a smile.

Danny shakes his head.

“But we’re going to take my advice,” Zamora says, straightening himself to his full height and stretching. “We’re going to eat something. And get forty winks. Recharge. No good running around on empty. We’d just make stupid mistakes. Like that time I fell off the Wall of Death. I was just tired.”

He rubs his thigh thoughtfully at the memory, the old break aching there like it always does when the weather’s stormy.

“Strength and balance, Danny, that’s what Rosa always said. Doesn’t matter whether we’re doing trapeze or acrobatics or voltige or cyr wheel or tightwire or cloud swing or any of the other skills. We always need to be balanced—and we always need to keep our strength up. That way we don’t make mistakes. Take our ringmistress’s advice even if you won’t take mine.”

Danny nods, remembering the way Rosa could manage the wilder elements of the company. Get the best from everyone with her Italian charm. Or turn on the anger just when it was needed.

“You’re right. But just a few hours. And then let’s get on with it.”