INCARNATION by Daniel Easterman

the Silk and Mulberry Research Centre. My father used to supervise the mulberry trees. He knew everything there was to know about the trees: which ones grew best in shade, which ones needed regular pruning. He once showed me how trees with dark leaves were best if you wanted silk for dyeing. His father taught him all those things. Grandfather died when I was three. My father worked very hard, and he kept himself out of trouble. Politics meant nothing to him.’ Tursun paused. Something was troubling him.
    ‘Mr Laing, my parents know nothing of all this - the deception, my coming here. Matthew Hyde told my father that he should follow my directions, that they would be given a house in England, and work. You must promise me that. They went through terrible things in the camp, and afterwards, in order to get me to India.’
    David had already worked out that the last thing anybody wanted was to send the family back to China. The boy, in particular, whatever his real story, knew far too much ever to be allowed within a mile of anyone with so much as a drop of Chinese blood in their veins. No sooner had the thought formed than it was followed by another: who had asked Barry Scudamore to tail him that afternoon? Had David himself been the antique dealer’s target, or the twelve-year-old boy drinking Horlicks in front of him?
    ‘I need to speak to some important people, Tursun. It won’t be my decision. But you can rest assured that you won’t be sent back to China. I’m certain of that. Now, tell me how your father came to be arrested.’
    Tursun took another mouthful of his drink. It was so cosy, David thought, as all these meetings were. He’d sat in this library with a succession of men and women, and sipped tea or coffee, and talked about the weather for a while. And from the weather they’d pass on to horrors beyond belief. He wondered if Glynis Hughes had the slightest idea of the things that were said in these rooms. Torture, rape, sexual infidelity, betrayal, murder, suicide, darkness of any and every kind. This boy sipping Horlicks for the first time knew secrets that could affect the lives of millions.
    ‘One day, the police raided the house belonging to my father’s workmate. His name was Abdul Wahhab. There were weapons in a pit under the floor. They arrested everyone connected to him. My father had a Koran in our house. He never read it - he can’t read. But the police said it was a sign of subversion. The court sentenced him to fourteen years in a labour camp. They sent my mother as well. I wasn’t at home then, but I was sent to the camp a month later.’
    David stopped him.
    ‘Before you go on, Tursun, I’d like to know one thing: how do you come to speak such good English? You’re not going to tell me Matthew Hyde taught you.’
    ‘Is my English good?’
    ‘You know perfectly well it is. Even if you’ve never tasted Horlicks in your young life, you could pass as an English child.’
    ‘That was the idea.’
    ‘Whose idea? Matthew’s idea?’
    The boy shook his head slowly. He finished the drink and put the mug on the table between them.
    ‘No,’ he said, ‘that came later. There is a school, a very special school in the east, near Shanghai. There’s a lake called Tai Hu.’
    ‘Yes, I know of it.’
    ‘It has almost fifty islands. One of them is called Chinghua Dao, Jade Island. You will not find it on any map. Chinghua Dao used to house a Buddhist monastery called Iingyin Si. It was shut down shortly after the revolution, and the monks never returned. Fifteen years ago the buildings were converted into a school. Its name is less poetic than the one the Buddhists gave it: Kiangsu Elite School Number Three.’
    He paused, smiling as though something about the name or an image it conjured up amused him.
    ‘Have you heard of the elite schools?’ he asked.
    David shook his head.
    ‘I’m not surprised. They’re a very well-guarded secret. Matthew Hyde had never heard of them either. They