Shadow Creatures (29 page)

He found himself hoping that Natalie and Gecko were having better luck with their creature.

The map was a two-dimensional display, he realized. It showed where on the ground the signal was coming from. The problem was that the building was not a two-dimensional object. Yes, the map
would tell him where, looking downward from space, the signal was coming from, but it might actually be on any of the seventeen floors, or the roof. And while he was trying to discover which level
it was on, people might be dying in there.

Shaking his head, he walked off Nathan Road, through an entranceway beneath a large cracked marble sign saying
Tungking Mansions
and into the building. The first two levels were large
open spaces, like car parks, shadowy and dripping with condensation, lit only by streetlights. People moved slowly – old women pushing shopping trolleys, young kids in gangs shoving each
other around, girls in slinky silk dresses who watched him from lowered eyes as he passed, old men with leathery, emaciated faces and wispy white beards walking with sticks. He moved past them,
trying not to be noticed, but he was European and reasonably well dressed, and so he stood out like a badger at a vicarage tea party.

The place stank of a thick mixture of curry houses, urine, rotting pak choi leaves and animal waste. Rhino tried to breathe through his mouth as he moved, but quickly found that even if he
couldn’t smell the place any more he could taste it. He found a stairwell, dripping with moisture, the origins of which he didn’t like to think about, and he climbed up, past the first
floor, to the terrace from which the five main blocks actually started.

As he left the stairwell and tried to walk out on to the terrace – a flat expanse of concrete open to the sun, peppered with sunken areas of soil in which scrubby plants grew, and from
which the five towers erupted like great concrete cliffs – a group of young men pushed past him and surrounded him. He felt hands expertly running across his pockets and trying to get inside
his jacket. He had to stop this, and quickly. Grabbing one particularly invasive hand, he twisted it hard, ducking underneath and taking the arm behind its owner’s back so that the kid had to
suddenly bend forward, cursing and grunting with the pain. There was silence and an abrupt cessation of the movement that had surrounded him. Seven sets of eyes were directly on him. He could sense
hands moving to belts and pockets, ready to pull out knives.

‘No harm, no foul,’ he said quietly but with force. ‘I’m here on business, and I’m going to leave as quickly as possible, with everything I came in with.’

No sound, no movement – just the watchful eyes.

‘There are eight of you,’ he went on calmly, ‘and that’s probably enough to take me down, if you want to, but I promise you that I can kill two of you and cripple another
two before you manage it. The question you have to ask yourselves is: is the chance that you get killed or crippled worth it, compared to the chance that you get to search me for the money I may or
may not have?’

He looked around, meeting all the eyes of the youths who were watching him. He didn’t see any acceptance of his points, but he didn’t see any argument either. Blank, watchful faces
all round. He just had to hope that he’d been promoted in their minds from
victim
to
potential threat.

He released the man he was holding. The man staggered forward. He turned as if to lunge at Rhino, but one of his friends caught him and pulled him back. And then the group of eight was moving on
into the stairwell, chatting and shoving as if nothing had happened.

That had been close. Too close. Despite the heat, Rhino felt a sudden chill run through him.

Checking his mobile again, he noticed that that the flashing symbol was moving. He zoomed in, trying to track it. The symbol was moving through Block D – on some unknown level – and
it was travelling quickly between apartments – probably through ceiling or floor spaces or ventilation gaps.

Then it seemed to pass through the block wall and out into empty space, and Rhino suddenly knew, with a rush of euphoria, where it was. The only places that there was a continuous stretch of
ground over which the centipede could travel were the first two levels – the common spaces beneath the blocks. It was somewhere near him, and downward!

He looked around reflexively. He had to check each of the two lowest levels and locate the thing before it moved up into one of the blocks. If it did that, his chances of catching it would
plummet to almost zero.

He was at Block A, and he needed to get to Block D. The quickest route was to go through blocks B and C. He ran for the nearest entrance and raced down a corridor that was redolent with curry
fumes and filled with backpackers. He ran past shops selling dresses, handbags and high-end electronics, most of them probably counterfeit. He came out the other side of the block, bursting from
shade into light, and raced across the terrace to the next block. The corridor that ran across it was much the same as the previous one, and for a second he thought he was trapped in a recurring
dream. Out the other side and into another wide corridor, identical to the previous two. He found a stairwell and rapidly clattered down the steps to Level 2.

A market had been set up in the open common level – rows and rows of stalls beneath tarpaulins selling, strangely, only one thing – jade. Every stall was covered with either jade
jewellery in gold or silver settings, jade carved into small figures of people or dragons, or polished but unset and uncarved lumps of the green stone. The stalls were lit by fluorescent lights,
and the thousands of pieces of semiprecious stone glittered like a galaxy of stars. Tourists who had been lured into the market by the promise of cheap jewellery bartered with the stall owners.

Rhino pushed his way through the crowd. He was about to check his map again, but a commotion at the far side of the market caught his attention. Someone was screaming. It might be just an
attempted pickpocketing, like the one he’d narrowly avoided, but it might be something else. It might be the giant centipede. He quickly shoved people out of the way, heading like an arrow
towards the source of the disturbance.

A fist caught him beneath the ribcage, and he folded up on the damp, dirty ground, agony blazing through his body.

On the other side of the bushes was a stretch of grass, which gave on to a set of wide white stone steps. Gecko noticed that every second step had a long wooden pole stuck in a
hole in the stone. At the stop of each pole was a triangular yellow silk banner. Some of the banners had sinuous blue dragons embroidered on them, while others had red Chinese calligraphy in
vertical columns.

The stone steps led up to the top of the hill, and to a typically Chinese gate: four square red pillars with inset Chinese calligraphy, topped with a complicated double-beamed roof. Through the
gate was a Chinese temple: many single-storey wooden rooms in a variety of sizes, apparently all open to the air and connected to each other, all under tiled roofs that curved upward at the
end.

The scarlet pillars on the gate confused Gecko for a second, but then he saw the scarlet of the giant centipede’s exoskeleton rippling its way up the steps towards the temple, seeming to
spend as much time weaving left and right as it did going straight ahead. Tourists on the steps screamed and jumped out of the way. Maybe the noise and the movement were confusing the centipede,
because it didn’t attack anyone but just headed for the relative safety of the dark temple.

Gecko and Natalie ran up the steps, following the creature. Gecko’s breath burned in his chest; despite his years of free-running, the heat and humidity were getting to him. His legs felt
like those noodles he’d glimpsed being stretched earlier.

The two of them burst into the temple. It was a spacious building: made of red and gold-painted wood and hung with long silk banners. Light came in from all sides, giving it an airy feel, but
its ceiling was wreathed in smoke and covered in soot. Stone and metal statues of various Chinese figures, all life-sized or larger, were set into niches in its walls. Bowls containing smouldering
bunches of incense, chrysanthemum flowers and fruit were set all over the floor space. Worshippers who had been sitting or kneeling in front of the statues, some throwing wooden sticks on the
flagstones and some apparently burning money as an offering, looked around in confusion at the sudden noise. Priests in long yellow robes and flat black hats who had been chanting from scrolls or
banging small drums dropped whatever they were holding and ran in from all sides to see what was desecrating their temple.

The giant centipede headed for one of the pillars that held up the ornate ceiling. Reaching it, the creature scrambled up the column, vanishing into the smoke that hung there.

Without thinking, Gecko rushed forward towards the pillar. Almost immediately he realized that it was too wide to climb, so he diverted sideways towards one of the statues.

Behind him he heard Natalie shout, ‘No, Gecko, this is a
temple
! People are
worshipping
!’ but it was too late. He was committed.

A priest grabbed at his shirt as he ran past, but he tore himself free and speeded up.

The statue was a tarnished bronze colour, about twice his size. It seemed to be a representation of a muscular warrior, clad in a sheet wrapped round his waist. His face was grimacing and his
ears were stretched out to unusual proportions, the lobes dangling down to his shoulders. Some kind of strange ribbon wound round his neck and shoulders, and floated free around his body. The great
thing about it as far as Gecko was concerned was that there were various projections that he could use to climb up – bent knees, outstretched hands, the ribbon . . . He leaped for the statue,
and scrambled upward with as much grace as he could muster under the circumstances. From behind him he could hear shouts of dismay from the priests and worshippers, and gabbled apologies from
Natalie.

Standing on the statue’s head, his own head was in the layer of smoke that hung from the ceiling like gauzy curtains, shifting back and forth with the breeze. He could see the underneath
of the roof, dimly, two metres or so above his head. It was supported by horizontal wooden rafters and braced by smaller diagonal ones. He jumped for one of the rafters. His hands caught the rough
wood and he pulled himself up until he was crouching on top of it. He glanced around rapidly, feeling the sweat running down his sides and back. His hands burned, partly with the effort of pulling
himself up and partly because of the giant centipede’s poison.

Somewhere up here the creature was either running, hiding or preparing to attack.

The coiling smoke made it difficult to judge distances. As it moved it revealed momentary glimpses of distant rafters, beams, parts of the roof, the tops of other statues and the stone floor
below. For a second he saw Natalie, surrounded by gesticulating priests, and then the smoke covered the scene up again and revealed a crowd of worshippers all heading for the temple steps.

He tried to quell his beating heart and rasping breath, listening out for the
scritch
of claw on wood, or the
hiss
of a scared and angry arthropod.

Something crimson flashed towards him from his left side. Something with pincers held wide.

R
hino came round within seconds, cheek pressed against the gritty concrete. He didn’t move – just listening in case he could
pick up anything from whoever had hit him. It didn’t do any good.

‘He’s still conscious,’ a familiar voice said. ‘You’d have to hit old Rhino a lot harder than that to knock him out. Get him to his feet – I want to have a
word with him.’

Hands clamped on his shoulders and pulled him up into a standing position. He opened his eyes.

Craig Roxton was standing in front of him.

The man’s long blond hair was brushed backwards, and his face was as pale as Rhino remembered. His blue eyes were as cold as chips of agate. He was wearing chinos and a polo shirt beneath
a light cotton jacket. The heat didn’t seem to be bothering him at all.

The two men standing on either side of Rhino were dressed similarly, but they were bigger than him. Despite the size difference it was clear, however, that Roxton was the leader.

‘Mark Gillis – my word, it’s been an age since we last saw each other.’

‘Not long enough,’ Rhino said quietly. His thoughts were racing. Apart from Roxton’s meeting with Gillian Livingstone, the one Rhino had glimpsed at Waterloo station, his
former colleague’s last known whereabouts were in Georgia, working for Nemor Incorporated. He was a mercenary, a trained Special Forces man who was prepared to hire himself out to anyone if
the money was right. Calum had told Rhino that Nemor was sending a small team to Hong Kong – Roxton must be the man in charge.

‘Still working in hostage rescue?’ Roxton asked. ‘Not much money in that. More to be made in the actual taking of hostages, I think.’

‘Still working for some big, anonymous corporation, taking orders from men in suits?’ Rhino riposted. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that was your idea of a perfect career
path.’

Roxton smiled. ‘Ah, I see that the young girl – Natalie, was it? – has been talking. Yes, I work for Nemor Incorporated, but believe me, Rhino, they are so much more than just
another big American corporation.’ He paused. ‘I could arrange a job interview, if you like?’

‘Or I could give you the names of some charities you could donate some time to,’ Rhino countered. ‘Greenpeace, maybe, or the World Wildlife Fund . . .’

‘Funny.’

Rhino was about to say something else when a fourth man, dressed the same anonymous way as Roxton and the other two, appeared from behind Rhino.

‘There’s a tracking app on his mobile phone,’ he said in a grating voice that sounded as if he’d been hit in the throat once too often. ‘I think he’s got a
location for the creature. Looks as if it’s not too far away.’