The Black Dragon by Julian Sedgwick Page B

two frosted glass doors. And one of them is ajar.
    Watched by the life-sized dummies, they move across the wooden floor, senses straining. Still not a sound to be heard.
Weird when you think how loud the rest of the city has been
, Danny thinks. He reaches the half-open door—listens hard—then shoves it with his foot.
    Inside there are ten or so camp beds crammed together, covered with a tangle of sleeping bags, blankets, and kit bags, unwashed rice bowls, cups, teapots, overflowing ashtrays. Smoke and sweat hangs heavy on the air.
    â€œSmells like the Khaos Klowns trailer after a show, no?” Zamora wrinkles his nose. “Think they were too macho to use deodorant or something.”
    Danny picks up a half-emptied cup. The coffee is scummed over, but still lukewarm.
    â€œCan’t be long gone. Let’s try the other room.”
    The second door squeals appallingly on its dry hinges, loud against the silent gym beyond, making them pause and listen. But there’s no answering sound.
    This room is smaller, almost empty. It contains a single camp bed and—thrust in a corner—Laura’s leather shoulder bag! Danny’s heart thumps hard in his ears as he goes to pick it up.
    â€œShe must be close,” he says. “She’s here somewhere!”
    â€œOr was here.”
    Something crunches under Danny’s foot and he looks down to see the guts of what looks like a laptop. Chips, keys, black casing hacked to bits. Laura’s is black.
    â€œShe’s going to be mad about that,” Zamora says.
    â€œBut where is she?” Danny moans. She must be here. It’s gone so well, following the clues, reading Ponytail, penetrating this labyrinth. There must be some reward! But apart from the bag and the wreckage of the laptop, there’s nothing else to see. Three acupuncture charts in frames hang at uncertain angles on the grubby wall, their bodies pierced by hundreds of black dots.
    â€œMiss Laura!” Zamora shouts suddenly. “Miss Laura, can you hear us?”
    His voice booms out into the gym beyond.
    Any thrill Danny has felt about the success of the hellstromism is fading—replaced by a growing sense of failure. He bites his lip, thinking hard, the bag still in his hands. It feels lighter than normal, and he peers in. Virtually empty: the usual jumble of reporter pads, cough sweets, pens all gone—along with her wallet. He shakes it upside down, and a packet of tissue and a lipstick go rattling out across the floor. The top’s missing from the stick and it leaves a red gash on the boards.
    That’s unusual. For one thing Laura seldom wears the stuff, and—if she does—she always takes special care of it. “After all,” she would say, “it’s only once in a blue moon that I slap it on.” She’d have hardly paused to put on makeup in the midst of being kidnapped, would she?
    Zamora has wandered back into the gym and is still bellowing, “Laura! Laura!” Not the best of ideas, Danny thinks. But you can’t hold a strongman back forever. He looks at the lipstick mark on the floor and a thought strikes him. Quickly he unzips the bag wide and turns it inside out, but there’s nothing to see. No messages. The packet of tissues is still sealed. He glances around the room.
    The acupuncture charts stare back at him. One of them shows a narrow slice of clean wall between its frame and the pervading grime. Must have been moved recently. Danny goes over and shoves it with his finger, revealing more clean white wall underneath. A bit more . . .
    And there’s the message he’s looking for. In chunky lipsticked writing, it says:
    CHEUNG CHAU
    And, under it, scribbled in haste,
    LOOK FOR WHITE SUIT
BE CAREFUL
    He looks down again at the gouge of lipstick on the floorboards. For some reason it holds his attention and makes him think of the dead fish on the floor of the Bat.
And that should link to something