Plug picked them up from St Barts. Without comment, he returned the SIG Sauer P226.
‘Again, bad idea,’ Fang said as North climbed out. He shrugged – it was the only kind he had available.
The Mayfair street where Chin lived was eerily quiet aside from the odd black cab and the barking of a distant dog. North wondered how many of the five-storey mansions were assets on a foreign balance sheet rather than homes.
Number 56 was an elegant picture of red brick and golden stone, complete with mullioned windows, curlicued black balconies, and box trees either side of the colonnaded front door. He took his time walking up the five steps of the entrance. No sudden movements, he thought. And to the right of the arch, above the doorway, the high-tech CCTV camera swivelled. He heard it re-gear and focus as somewhere in the bowels of the mansion as a meathead in a suit scrutinized his every breath. He held up the dried-out wreck of a business card and did his best to ignore the fact that on the back of his neck the hairs stood at full alert. ‘North for Octavius Chin,’ he said.
There was a moment’s pause as if the gatekeeper was consulting on the matter, before the door swung open and North stepped across the threshold.
The foyer reeked of the incense drifting up from a resin table filled with floating gold coins. Behind the incense sticks was a black-and-white portrait of an obese, unsmiling woman, a wooden tablet inscribed with Chinese characters, a porcelain cup filled with tea, and three small dishes of rice. Chin’s mother, he’d guess, judging by the family resemblance. Aside from the altar against the north wall of the house, the foyer was clear.
The SIG in his hand, he peered into a drawing room. The curtains were drawn and an enormous chandelier dripping with crystals was reflected in the mirror above a gaping marble fireplace. Eau-de-Nil silk lined the walls, and carpets exploding with twining flowers covered the floor between the gilded furniture. Nothing looked like it would bear Chin’s weight without snapping into expensive matchsticks under him.
‘It’s late for a house call, but Mr Chin is willing to see you.’ The silvery voice called to him from across the hallway. He turned to see a vision in a grey cheongsam, her hair loose and shining. He moved towards her and, as he did, she reached out a manicured finger to tap out a code on a control panel on the wall. ‘But I’m afraid I must insist that you leave your gun with me.’
She held out her hand, and North thought about ignoring it, but he needed to see Chin more than he needed the pistol.
‘I want that back,’ he said.
‘We all want something, Mr North.’ She knew his name, and he couldn’t help but like her for it.
The doors of an elevator opened without so much as a breath. She stood back to let him pass and then followed him in, bringing with her the scent of an early summer’s night.
‘You are admiring my dress?’ The vision spoke but didn’t look directly at him. Instead, their eyes met in the polished brass of the doors. ‘It is a replica of one worn by the President’s wife, Peng Liyuan. Mr Chin makes much of his friendship with President Xi Jinping and is a great admirer of the first lady. Mr Chin is a great man and we are all of us honoured to work with him for our country’s greater glory.’
‘That’s a lot of “greats”,’ North said, ‘a few more and I’ll start thinking you’re trying to persuade you as much as me.’ He thought the reflection might have smiled, but he wasn’t sure. ‘What’s the something you want, by the way?’ he added. ‘Perhaps I can help. I’m a helpful guy.’
She looked at him sideways, cool, assessing, but didn’t reply. He had the distinct impression she was considering the question.
The elevator travelled silently down, till they reached somewhere close to the centre of the earth. The doors slid open and his guide stepped aside, gesturing to the dark space beyond. He turned, giving his senses a few seconds to adjust to the noise of the slap and dripping of water and the moving wash of blue. Behind him, he felt rather than heard the elevator rise, sensed the vibrations of the pulleys and pumps and counterweight straining to lift the cab.
Without the distraction of the lift, he realized a blue wall of floor-to-ceiling glass stretched out in front of him, the changing light the result of the bright white spotlights and water behind it. He followed the smells of the sea and rotting fish through a tunnel. In the room beyond, reflections from the glass wall of water gave Octavius Chin the look of something submerged and monstrous. A napkin knotted around his bulging throat, the intelligence agent sat hunched on an ornate gilded throne over a steaming bowl of noodles, the table set with a white cloth and sparkling crystal. His narrow eyes were fixed on the glass.
North looked across to the moving water. He could see nothing in it to merit Chin’s close attention, aside from tumbled rocks in the far corner. The tank was huge. Chin had to have dug out not only the basement under this house but under the houses of his neighbours. China must own the whole terrace.
‘Have you offered comfort to the grieving widow, or is it too soon?’ Chin’s eyes moved to his guest as he mopped at his fleshy lips with a napkin, leaving blots of chilli, red like fresh blood.
‘I’m planning to bake her a pie,’ North said. ‘Does that count?’
Chin snapped his fingers and from the shadows two dark-suited figures appeared carrying another seat, this one lower and less ornate, which they placed to one side of their boss. Chin waved at it and North sat. A waiter placed a bowl of rice in front of North but he shook his head. He only ate with people who didn’t make his skin crawl.
‘My great-great-grandfather turned a beggar away at the door.’ Chin slurped up another oversized bundle of slimy noodles. ‘Since then, no son has known anything other than hunger, whatever the food they consume, whatever their wealth and their power. A curse. Nonetheless, this is something of a celebration – I’m a fortunate man to be alive when at the museum it could so easily have been otherwise. You too, North.’
Without waiting for his response, Chin put back his head and used a pair of ivory chopsticks to hold a small pink octopus over his pursed mouth, sucking in first one tentacle and then the head. ‘Did you know that when you cut the head away, the arms still move on the board. Occasionally I eat them raw, so I can taste the movement.’
He chewed, the noise filling the room. The tail end of a tentacle hung from his greasy lips, and his pink tongue searched for it before finding it and scooping it back in, leaving only a trail of crimson sauce to prove it had ever been there. North fought not to let the disgust show on his face, but he thought Chin caught something of it and it pleased him.
‘What is it you want from Octavius Chin? Do you come like another beggar-man to my door?’
‘I know Yan works for you, and you used her to get close to Paulie to get the medical tech.’
‘Yan failed me in countless ways, but not in that,’ Chin said, his mouth open as he chewed, tentacles everywhere.
‘Hawke wanted it to happen, did you know that? He hated Big Pharma. He used you.’
Chin glowered. He liked to be the smartest person in the room, North thought.
‘Did you sabotage the Lamborghini?’
Chin put down the chopsticks with a clatter. Now that he wasn’t chewing, North could hear the sound of sobbing coming from somewhere close. Chin seemed oblivious.
‘Why would we?’
‘To show Hawke that you knew his game.’
‘To what end? Why wouldn’t we slide in, and then take what we wanted with him none the wiser?’ With some delicacy, Chin wiped the corners of his mouth with his napkin.
The weeping sounded like someone’s heart was broken. Like someone was hurting and North knew he was meant to hear it. He gritted his teeth – it had to be Yan. ‘Were the shooters at the gala yours?’
Chin still had Yan. Yan, who had fallen in love with Paulie and confessed all to him. Yan, who had been desperate to escape. He wondered if Chin was shipping her back to China. So much for Esme’s attempt to play Cupid.
‘You are a dangerously curious young man. So many questions. That would be an act of war, would it not, North? To set armed fighters down on to the sovereign soil of another nation and order them to kill that nation’s civilians.’
North didn’t trust the Chinese agent for a second, but he’d seen his bodyguards almost carry him bodily from the gala, and Chin’s shock had seemed genuine. ‘If those men weren’t yours, then you don’t have what I’m looking for and I’m wasting my time.’ North made as if to stand, but two sets of strong hands held him down in the chair.
‘The British intelligence service are normally more subtle when they deal with me. But then you are a blunt tool, are you not, North, so I will make allowances for your naivety. And I will teach you a lesson in the ways of this shadowy world in which you now walk.’ Chin clasped his hands over his belly and sat back in his chair. Teacher and pupil. ‘If I had the stolen tablet – and yes, I know what’s on it – why would I hand it over to you? If I had Syd, I would already be on a plane back to my political masters. Our top scientists are already working on a kill switch of our own. There is indeed an argument that it would be safer for everyone if Syd found a home in China.’
‘You know a great many things you shouldn’t, Mr Chin.’
‘You would be surprised at those who confide in me, North, for their own reasons. Perhaps you and I can do business after all. If you find Syd, my government would not be slow to show its gratitude.’
‘Your government has nothing I want.’
Chin shrugged, and under the silk jacket the fat rolled in waves and was slow to settle. ‘We can offer peace of mind. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to those around you, would we?’
North’s stomach dropped. Did he mean Fang? And Plug? Did he mean Esme?
Chin’s tone was neutral. ‘Young girls have to be so very careful these days.’
He meant Fang.
North reached for Chin’s throat and the heavies hauled him back into the seat. One of them punched him in the head.
‘The one-eyed man that you work with – Edmund Hone – has no loyalty to you or to your little friend. I think even you know that. You are pieces in his game. He won’t help you keep her safe. He can’t. Only you can do that.’
The sound of hysterical pleading was getting louder and more desperate. There was a huge bang, as if Yan had been thrown against something or fallen, then silence.
‘I’m going to do you a favour, Chin, and forget you just threatened a friend of mine. But part of that forgetting means you need to give me Yan. In return for her, I’ll think about letting you have Syd as and when I find it.’
He wouldn’t, but Hone could sort that out. The more immediate problem was that he couldn’t let them take Yan back to Beijing in disgrace. She had succeeded in bringing in the medical tech but in doing so had fallen in love, and in falling in love she had wanted to share her life with Paulie and forgotten her patriotic duty to be first, last and only ever an agent of the Chinese government – how many years in prison did that get you in China?
‘Did you know that an octopus can undo a jar, master basic puzzles and recognize patterns?’ Chin was looking at North, but North wasn’t listening any more. He was imagining Yan unconscious. What had they done to her? Was she dead? North prayed for the weeping to start again. ‘They can negotiate a maze and ring a bell for treats. Toss a simple clock into the tank and they put it back together. But still, they are not so intelligent that they manage to stay out of the bowl. I can see my talk is boring you, but the lesson has barely begun.’
North didn’t see the signal but there must have been one because, twisting his arms behind his back, the two suits dragged him from his chair across to the glass, before smashing his nose against it. He heard the crunch of cartilage, and blood splattered the glass in the same moment as the red-hot pain hit him. Blood gushed down his throat and he struggled against the two heavies holding his face flat against the glass. His arms pinioned to his sides, retching, he tried to clear his airways and shift the excruciating pressure on his face.
‘You will give me Syd, North, and I hope for your sake and for the sake of Fangfang Yu that you do find it.’ Behind him, he heard Chin’s chair legs scrape against the floor as if he was standing up from the table. ‘Yan failed her country. Her hairless lover was fired and is of no further use to us.’
Could you drown in your own blood? Definitely, and North felt a frisson of distaste from the men holding him as he attempted to bring up and spit out what was pouring down his throat.
‘Tobias Hawke is dead, and Syd is gone when it should already be ours.’ Chin was using Yan as a convenient scapegoat for his own failures, North realized.
All of a sudden, the weight lifted from the back of his head, allowing him to bring his face back from the glass. More pain, just of a different kind, as fresh blood gushed from his broken nose and he heard the crackle of the settling cartilage. He sensed the attention of the men holding him shift to the tank. Behind the glass, water moved. North strained his neck to make out the rocks on the far side, and as he did so a klaxon shrieked, on and off, three times. Again, the water moved. Was there something in the tank? Was it empty? Suddenly, Yan’s body plummeted past him amid a storm of bubbles, as if she had landed with some force. She must have been thrown in unconscious and the shock revived her, because as she sank through the water her eyes opened and her limbs stirred.
‘Yan will serve me one more time,’ Chin said. ‘To show you what happens to silly girls who swear allegiance to the wrong men.’
They were going to drown her in front of him.
‘Get her out – I told you we can deal,’ North said, frantic to get to the girl and drag her from the water. A cold muzzle of a gun ground its way into the nape of his neck. ‘Shhh!’ Chin’s breath reeked of dead things.
North fixed his eyes on the water beyond Yan as something stirred in the murk behind her. Yan kicked her legs, frantically paddling upwards, her arms stretching forward, straining to reach the surface. As she did, there was a movement above her – a cover closing over the top of the tank – and the water darkened. She paddled faster but it was too late. The tank was sealed. The girl used her hands to press against the glass cover, struggling to shift it, but she was too slight, or it was too heavy. There had to be a small gap between the water and the glass because she seemed to take a deep breath before turning and diving back down into the tank. She was going to try to find some kind of drain, North thought. Clever girl. Don’t panic, he willed her. If you panic, you die. Find a way out. Find a drain. Lift a cover. Swim out of there to the sea and beyond.
Chin rapped on the glass with enough force that it seemed to shake in its mountings. For a second, she looked across, the swirling black hair wild in the water, her blue eyes desperate as they took in Chin first, and then North. She held his gaze and took a second to press her hand against her heart and move it away, and he had the idea she was sending Paulie a message, before she turned, spinning as she swam, her arms wide as she raked the concrete walls looking for an opening.
North heard his own groan as if it was from a stranger, as the rocks themselves appeared to move and a monstrous octopus unfolded itself, moving at first slowly and then swiftly through the water. The creature’s body was red and covered with lumps and bumps. North could make out two eyes, one either side of the bulbous head. From some distant memory, he seemed to recall that an octopus had two legs and six arms. They moved and stretched together as it propelled itself through the water and reached for the girl.
It found her.
With a flurry of white water and bubbles, the giant Pacific octopus turned, shielding Yan’s body from the window, and Chin growled in disappointment. North could have sworn that the octopus had made the manoeuvre on purpose.
The octopus turned again and he glimpsed Yan struggling for breath, for escape, her head backwards, her arms reaching for purchase. But her legs were held fast in the octopus’s huge arms, then her waist and her neck, folding her in to the sharp-toothed beak. A swirl of blood emerged from the tight embrace of octopus and girl. A pale pink, then darker. He hoped for the girl’s sake she had swallowed the water, taken it into her lungs and forced out the air and was drowned – that she couldn’t feel the teeth reaching into her innards to feed. He prayed for oblivion.
Beside him, Chin’s hands were pressed against the glass, his breath condensing on it. His black eyes glistened.
‘I call her Octavia and I keep her hungry,’ Chin said. ‘Like me.’
Time stretched into for ever. North wanted to shut his eyes. But didn’t. Watching her die seemed the only thing he could do for Yan now. He didn’t want her dying alone.
After what seemed like an eternity, North sensed movement behind the glass and the octopus let go of Yan. The girl’s ravaged body floated down to the gravel and weeds on the bed of the tank. Tiny scraps of flesh, moving with her, floated up from what had been her stomach.
On Paulie’s stairs, North had held Yan’s arms to stop her falling, and she’d stared at him, pleading for help, as if she knew what was to come. Was this what she feared? Had Chin done this before?
North felt sick. If he could have broken loose of Chin’s enforcers, he’d have strangled him with his bare hands. He reared back as the octopus’s bulbous head banged against the tank close by them, before pulling away. Further down the wall, it brushed back against the glass, the arms and legs moving rhythmically alongside as if it was patrolling its territory. An eye peered out from the water, its attention apparently focused on Chin. North had the distinct impression, as the suckered legs swirled, unfurled, reached and crawled over its prison, that the octopus hated Chin’s guts.
‘It’s too late for Yan, North.’ Chin was back to business. ‘But it isn’t too late for Fangfang Yu. Remember that, if you’re the one to find Syd.’ The goons turned him to face Chin. ‘In the spirit of cooperation between our great nations, I can tell you what I do know. A little bird told me that Hawke was hiding something at St Bride’s Church.’
Chin’s eyes glittered. He already knew what Hawke had hidden, North thought. ‘Something very terrible that your own government will not want you to find. Start there.’
He gestured to the goons. North felt the world turn on its axis as he was turned back round, his head hit the plate glass and everything went black.