Necropolis

continuing on his way.
    "What was that?" Scarlett demanded.

    "What?" Audrey Cheng looked at her with empty eyes.
    "That man…"
    "What man?"
    "He called out my name. Then everyone closed in on him." She still couldn't take in what she had just seen. "He had a letter. He wanted to give it to me."
    "I didn't see him," Mrs. Cheng said.
    "But I did. He was right there."
    ''You still have jet lag." Audrey Cheng signaled, and Karl drew up in the car. "It's easy to imagine things when you're tired."
    Scarlett was glad to get back to Wisdom Court even though she wished her father had been there to greet her. She was going to sleep in his room. Audrey Cheng had taken the guest bedroom. Karl, it seemed, would spend the night elsewhere. She had been completely shaken by what she had seen. How could a whole crowd behave like that? She remembered the way they had suddenly turned. They could have been controlled by some inner voice that she alone had been unable to hear.
    She ate dinner, said good night to Mrs. Cheng, and went to her room. She hadn't finished unpacking, and it was as she took out the last of her clothes that she made a discovery. Someone had placed a guidebook for Hong Kong at the bottom of her suitcase. She assumed it must have been Mrs. Murdoch, and if so, it was a kind gesture — although it was odd that she hadn't mentioned it. She flicked through it. The World Traveler's Guide to Hong Kong and Macao.
    Fully illustrated with thirty color plates and comprehensive maps. It was new.
    But that wasn't the only thing she found that night.
    Scarlett had brought a little jewelry with her — a couple of necklaces and a bracelet Aidan had given her on her last birthday. She decided to keep them safe by putting them into one of the drawers in the dressing table. As she pulled, the drawer stuck. That was probably why nobody had noticed that it wasn't completely empty. She pulled harder and it came free.
    There was a small, red document at the very back. It took Scarlett a few seconds to recognize what it was, but then she took it out and opened it.

    It was her father's passport.
    Paul Edward Adams. There was his photograph. Blank face, glasses, neat hair. It was full of stamps from all over the world and it hadn't yet expired.
    The chairman had lied to her.
    If her father had left his passport in the apartment, he couldn't possibly have traveled to China. And now that she thought about it, there had been something strange about the note he had left her. Why had he typed it? It hadn't even been signed. It could have been written by anyone.
    It was eleven o'clock in Hong Kong. Four in the afternoon in England. Scarlett got into bed, but she couldn't sleep. She lay there for a long time, thinking of the passport, the passport official with the crocodile eyes, the chairman joking about the cry for mercy, the man who had tried to give her a letter.
    She had only been in Hong Kong for one day. Already she was wishing she hadn't come.
    SEVENTEEN
    Contact
    Over the next few days, Scarlett tried to forget what had happened and put all her energies into being a tourist. There had to be another explanation for her father's passport. He might have a second copy. Or maybe his company had been able to arrange other travel documents for his visit to China. It was, after all, just the other side of the border. She made a conscious decision not to think about it. He would be back soon — and until then she would treat this as an extended holiday. Surely it had to be better than being at school.
    So she took the Star Ferry to Kowloon and back again and had tea at the old-fashioned Peninsula Hotel
    — tiny sandwiches and palm trees and a string quartet in black tie playing classical music. She went to Disneyland, which was small and didn't have enough fast rides but was otherwise all right if you didn't mind hearing Mickey Mouse talking in Cantonese. She went up to The Peak, a mountain standing behind the city that offered panoramic views as if from a low-flying plane. There had been a time when you could see all the way to China from there, but pollution had put an end to that.
    She visited temples and markets and went shopping and did everything she could to persuade herself that she was having a good time. But it didn't work. She was miserable. She wanted to go home.
    For a start, she was missing her friends at school, particularly Aidan. She had tried texting him, but the atmosphere seemed to be interfering with the signal and she