‘We meet again,’ I said.
‘Just as you predicted.’ His mouth widened in one of his trademark smiles, humourless and fleeting.
We shook hands. He didn’t have a name-badge on, I noticed.
‘I didn’t see you at the ocean,’ I said.
‘I wasn’t there.’ Looking out into the crowd of guests, he sipped from his glass. ‘I hear somebody died.’
‘There was an accident,’ I said. ‘No one died.’
‘Well,’ Ming said, ‘that’s what I heard.’
‘You don’t happen to come from the Green Quarter, do you?’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘I don’t know. Just a feeling I had.’
Ming nodded as if he understood such feelings, as if he often had feelings of that kind himself. ‘Are you going to the club tonight?’
‘What club?’
He reached into his pocket and took out a card that was identical to the one I had been given.
So, I thought. It was a club.
‘I’ve got one of those,’ I said. ‘Someone handed it to me. A stranger.’
‘Are you going?’
‘I’m not sure. Maybe.’ Actually I’d had no intention of going — not until that moment, anyway.
‘I think you’d find it interesting,’ he said.
‘How do you know?’ I said. ‘You don’t know anything about me.’
Ming looked at me. His eyes had the opaque, almost filmy quality of stagnant water. I could read nothing in them, and yet the look seemed significant. Muttering something about the need to circulate, he shook my hand, then turned and moved away into the crowd.
I finished my drink.
Ming had used the same words as the man in the railway station. Was that a coincidence, or were the two men connected in some way? Or — more sinister still — was I mistaken in thinking that Ming didn’t know anything about me? Could he have been assigned to keep me under observation, for example, while I was attending the conference? If so, he clearly lacked finesse. If not, who was he?
‘You look lost.’
I turned. A woman stood beside me, wispy grey-blonde curls hovering around her head like an aura. Her badge said Josephine Cox — Conference Organiser.
‘Just thinking.’ I gave her a smile that was intended to reassure her.
She led me across the room and introduced me to a group of delegates. Almost inevitably, we found ourselves discussing the incident that had taken place that afternoon. The injured man was Marco Rinaldi, a social historian from the Green Quarter. He had suffered a mild concussion, Josephine told us, as a result of which he was being kept in hospital overnight. He was going to be all right, though. He was going to be fine. Just so long as none of us thought it augured badly for the conference. I looked at her carefully and saw that she was only half joking. We all shook our heads, some less convincingly than others.
At one point I glanced around the room. There was no sign of the man in the pale-blue suit. It suddenly occurred to me that he might have been an intruder. After all, he hadn’t been wearing a badge, and the name Ming — as in dynasty — could easily have been a fabrication. He had even managed to avoid telling me where he was from — on two separate occasions. I wondered about the level of security in the hotel. Should I call Howard and voice my suspicions? I faced back into the group of delegates. Wait a minute. Maybe I was overreacting. I nodded vaguely in response to something a bearded man was saying. I should relax, I thought. I should relax and enjoy my stay, as the note from the organisers had encouraged me to do.
That night Josephine took me out to dinner, along with John Fernandez, the bearded man, and two people he had met at previous conferences, Philip de Mattos and Sudhakant Patel. Fernandez was from Athanor, a major port in the Yellow Quarter. He worked as a shop steward in the Transport and General Workers’ Union. De Mattos also hailed from the Yellow Quarter, though he was employed as a stockbroker on the Isle of Cresset, an offshore tax-haven. As for Patel, he came from just around the corner, as he put it. He had lived in Aquaville for the past fifteen years, where he practised alternative medicine — acupuncture and aromatherapy. It was an unlikely group, and on the way to the restaurant Josephine had told me — in strictest confidence, of course — that she was a little nervous at having two choleric men in her charge and hoped that I might help her keep the peace, but in the end her anxieties proved unfounded. We spent three hours together, and I didn’t detect even a flicker of tension or unpleasantness. After dinner, the other men wanted to go to a bar they had heard about, and though tempted by their company, which was exuberant to say the least, I declined, thinking that an early night would stand me in good stead for the many surprises and excitements that undoubtedly lay in wait for me.
Back in my room, I switched on the lights. The dark furnishings and massed rows of dusty second-hand books closed around me. I sat on the end of my bed and looked at the mural — men fishing under a full moon. I had drunk wine with the meal, and then a liqueur, and I finally felt as if I was adjusting to my new environment. Somehow I didn’t feel like sleeping, though. On a kind of impulse, I reached into my coat pocket and took out the card the man in the station had given me.
‘The Bathysphere,’ I said out loud.
It was a club, Ming had told me. In the city I came from, we had all sorts of clubs — dance clubs in Terminus, drinking clubs in Gerrard and Macaulay, strip clubs in Fremantle — and I had been to most of them at one time or another, but I knew nothing about clubs in the Blue Quarter. I glanced at the card again. Applied to a club, the name had a certain intriguing ambiguity, I thought, suggesting immersion in a foreign element, a descent into the deepest, darkest depths. Yes, there was definitely a hint of the illicit. If I went, though, I would be breaking the rules Jasmine had laid down for me. No contact with the locals, she had said. But what if I only stayed for an hour? How much damage could I really do? I’d have a drink — one drink — and see what was going on. I’d satisfy my curiosity. If challenged, I would claim to be meeting Walter Ming, a fellow delegate. Somehow, after all the equivocations and obscurities I’d had to put up with, it seemed only fair to use him as my alibi.
Smiling, I shook my head, then I reached for the phone and pressed the button that said Guest Relations. Howard answered. I asked whether he had ever heard of the Great Western Canal. Certainly, he said. It led out to the airport. I told him I would like a taxi, if that was possible. He didn’t anticipate a problem. Replacing the receiver, I noticed that my heart had speeded up. As I turned back to the mural, one of the rowing-boats rocked quickly, the blink of an eyelid, and a fisherman toppled over the side, into the sea. I looked away for a moment, towards the curtained window. When I looked at the boat again, there was an empty space which I was sure had not been there before. But nothing else had moved or changed. I stared at the area of water into which the man had fallen. He failed to surface. Through the wall behind me I heard laughter followed by a burst of applause. Another hotel guest, watching television. Maybe I was more tired than I had realised. More overwrought. If I went out for an hour, though, I could still be in bed by midnight. Or, at the latest, one.
I passed through the revolving doors and down the front steps. Dwarf palms lined the footpath, and lurking in among the shrubs were urns on pedestals. The flags of the four countries stirred above me like huge birds stealthily rearranging their wings.
I emerged from the garden to find a taxi moored against the side of the canal, its engine muttering. It was one of the older boats, the cabin made of weathered blond wood, the bench-seats covered with imitation leather. I climbed on board and gave the driver the address of the club. He nodded lazily, then revved the engine. According to the licence displayed beside the meter, his name was Curthdale Trelawney. Dozens of charms and trinkets dangled from the narrow shelf above the helm. There were anchors, portholes and lifebelts, all predictable enough, but he had crowns too, and top hats, spanners and bibles and coins, the whole array glinting and swaying with the gentle motion of the boat. A superstitious man, Mr Trelawney.