Necropolis

of fortune."
    And at the very end of the paragraph, also in pencil, was a message:
    : p.m.
    Scarlett didn't get very much sleep that night. Someone was trying to reach her — and the risk was so great that they'd had to take huge precautions. First, they'd slipped a book into her suitcase. Maybe they'd bribed someone at the airport. Then they'd somehow taken over a whole office block to draw her attention to it. The message had been clever too. PG 70. Anyone whose first language was Chinese would have had difficulty working out what it meant. It had taken her long enough herself.
    She had to visit the temple and she had to be there at five o'clock. Maybe someone who knew her father would be there. Maybe they'd be able to tell her where he really was.
    There was a fire in Hong Kong that night. The office building with the giant screen burned to the ground, and when Scarlett woke up, the air was even darker and hazier than ever, the smoke mixing in with the pollution. She looked out of the window, but she couldn't see the other side of Victoria Harbor.
    The whole of Kowloon was covered in fog.
    Mrs. Cheng was more chatty than usual at breakfast. She mentioned that nine people had been killed and insisted on turning on the television to see what had happened. Sure enough, there it was on a local news channel. The image was a little grainy and the announcer was speaking in Chinese, but Scarlett recognized the building, directly opposite Wisdom Court, right on the harbor front. The images had been taken the night before, and there were flames exploding all around it, the reflections dancing in the black water. Half a dozen fire engines had been called to the scene.
    But the firemen weren't doing anything. The camera panned over them. None of them moved. None of them even unwound their hoses.
    They just stood there and let the building burn.

    EIGHTEEN
    Birds of Fortune
    The Tin Hau Temple was a low, narrow building, crouching behind a wall and surrounded by trees, almost as if it didn't want to be found. There were tower blocks on every side, the dirty brick walls crowding out the sky. But in the middle of it all, there was a space, a wide square with trees that seemed to sprout out of the very concrete itself. Some benches and tables had been set out, and there were groups of old men playing a Chinese version of chess. A few tourists were milling around, taking photographs of each other against the green, sloping roofs of the temple. The air smelled faintly of incense.
    It hadn't been easy getting Mrs. Cheng to bring her here.
    From the very start, Scarlett knew she had to be careful. Mrs. Cheng had shown her the news report for a reason. She hadn't been fooled by Scarlett's act of the night before, and she was letting her know it. If Scarlett asked straight out to go to the Tin Hau Temple at five o'clock, she would be more suspicious than ever.
    "Is there any news from my dad?" As they cleared the breakfast plates away, Scarlett asked the same question she asked every morning.
    "I'm sure he'll call you soon, Scarlett. He's very busy."
    "Why can't I call him?"
    "It's not possible. China is very difficult." She flicked on the dishwasher. "So where would you like to go today?"
    This was the moment Scarlett had been waiting for. She shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know," she said.
    "We could go out to Stanley Village. It is on the beach and there are some nice stalls."
    Scarlett pretended to consider. "Actually," she said, "I wanted to buy some jade for my friend Amanda."
    Mrs. Cheng nodded. 'You can find jade in the Hollywood Road. But it's expensive."
    "Can't we go to a market?"
    "There's a jade market in Kowloon…"

    It was exactly what Scarlett wanted her to say. She had read the entire chapter in the guidebook and knew that the most famous jade market in Hong Kong was just round the corner from the temple. If they visited one, they'd be sure to walk over to the other. And that way she would arrive at Tin Hau without even having mentioned it.
    She still had to make sure that they got there at the right time, so after they finished clearing up, she announced that she had some schoolwork to do. They didn't leave Wisdom Court until two o'clock.
    Scarlett would have preferred to have taken the subway that went all the way there, but as usual, Mrs.
    Cheng insisted that Karl should drive them. That meant he would be with them all afternoon. They were certainly keeping her close.
    The jade market was in a run-down corner of