A film set.
Yes, that was exactly what it was. The more his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, the clearer it became to him that films were being made there. Phalanxes of unlit floodlights, perched on stands and hanging from the ceiling, peeled from the darkness; folding chairs, a camera on a tripod. The set seemed to be divided into parts, some furnished with equipment, others bare, possibly something like a green-screen so that virtual backgrounds could be added later. Checking in all directions as he walked on, he made out little beds, furniture, toys, an artificial landscape with a children’s house, meadows and trees, a dissecting table from a pathology lab. Something on the floor looked unsettlingly like a chainsaw. Cages hung from the ceiling, surrounded by various utensils and something that might have been a small electric chair; tools were mounted on the wall – no, not tools: knives, pincers and hooks – a torture chamber.
Somewhere in all that madness Ma was hiding.
Jericho walked on, heart thumping, putting one foot in front of the other as if crossing ice that might crack at any moment. He reached the crates. Turned his head.
A boy looked at him.
He was naked and dirty, perhaps five years old. His fingers clutched the wire mesh between the slats, but his eyes looked apathetic, almost lifeless, the sort of eyes familiar in people who had withdrawn deep inside themselves. Jericho turned his head in the other direction and saw two girls in the cage opposite, barely clothed. One of them, very small, lay on the ground, clearly sleeping, the other, older, leaned with her back against the wall, hugging a cuddly toy. She lethargically turned a swollen face, and fastened sad eyes upon him. Then she seemed to understand that he was not one of the people who normally came here.
She opened her mouth.
Jericho shook his head and put his finger to his lips. The girl nodded. Holding the gun rigidly out ahead of him, he peered in all directions, checked again and again and ventured further into the hell of the little emperors. Still more children. Only a few who saw him. He gestured to them, the ones who raised their heads, to be silent. From cage to cage it got worse and worse: dirt and degradation, apathy, fear. A baby lay on a grimy blanket. Something dark rattled against a bar and yapped at him, so that he instinctively flinched, turned round and held his breath. The sickly stench seemed to have its source right in front of him. He heard the buzzing of flies, saw something darting across the floor—
His eyes widened and he felt nauseous.
That brief moment of inattention cost him his control. Dragging footsteps echoed, a draught brushed the back of his neck, then someone jumped at him, pulled him back, laid into him, screamed incomprehensible words.
A woman!
Jericho tensed his muscles and jabbed his elbows back again and again. His attacker wailed. As they whirled around he recognised her – Ma’s wife or whatever role she might have played in that nightmare – grabbed her, pressed her against one of the columns and held the barrel of the Glock to her temple. How did she get here? He had seen her leave, but he hadn’t seen her come back. Was there another entrance to the cellar? Could Ma finally have escaped him?
No, it was his fault! He had been sloppy on the way from the car to the factory. He had neglected to keep an eye on his computer. At some point during that time she must have come back here, to—
The pain!
Her heel had driven itself into his foot. Jericho reached out and slapped her in the face with the back of his hand. The woman struggled like a mad thing in his clutches. He gripped her throat and pushed her harder against the pillar. She kicked out at him and then, surprisingly, she abandoned all resistance and stared at him with hatred.
In her eyes he saw what she saw.
Alarmed, he let go of her and spun round to see Ma sailing through the air in a grotesque posture, coming straight at him, his arm outstretched, swinging a huge knife. He wouldn’t have time to shoot him, to run away, he would just have time to—
Jericho ducked.
The knife came down, sliced whistling through the air and through Mrs Ma’s throat, from which a cascade of blood sprayed. Ma staggered, thrown off balance by his own momentum, stared through blood-sprinkled glasses at his collapsing wife and flailed his arms. Jericho hammered the Glock against his wrist and the knife clattered to the floor. He kicked it away, kicked Ma in the belly and again in the shoulder, at which the child-abuser toppled forwards. The man groaned, collapsed on all fours. His glasses slipped from his nose. He felt around, half blind, struggled to his feet, both hands raised, palms outwards.
‘I’m unarmed,’ he gurgled. ‘I’m defenceless.’
‘I see a few defenceless people here,’ Jericho panted, the Glock aimed at Ma. ‘So? Did that help them at all?’
‘I have my rights.’
‘So do the children.’
‘That’s different. It’s something you can’t understand.’
‘I don’t want to understand!’
‘You can’t do anything to me.’ Ma shook his head. ‘I’m sick, a sick man. You can’t shoot a sick man.’
For a moment Jericho was too flabbergasted to reply. He kept Ma in check with the gun and saw the man’s lips curling.
‘You won’t shoot,’ said Ma, with a flash of confidence.
Jericho said nothing.
‘And you know why not?’ His lips pulled into a grin. ‘Because you feel it. You feel it too. The fascination. The beauty. If you could feel what I feel, you wouldn’t point a gun at me.’
‘You kill children,’ Jericho said hoarsely.
‘The society you represent is so dishonest. You are dishonest. Pitifully so. You poor little policeman in your wretched little world. Do you actually realise that you envy people like me? We’ve attained a degree of freedom of which you can only dream.’
‘You swine.’
‘We’re so far ahead!’
Jericho raised the gun. Ma reacted immediately. Shocked, he threw both hands in the air and shook his head again.
‘No, you can’t do that. I’m sick. Very sick.’
‘Yes, but you shouldn’t have made that attempt to escape.’
‘What attempt?’
‘This one.’
Ma blinked. ‘But I’m not escaping.’
‘Yes, you’re escaping, Ma. You’re trying to get away. This very second. So I find myself forced—’
Jericho fired at his left kneecap. Ma screamed, doubled up, rolled on the floor and screeched blue murder. Jericho lowered the Glock and crouched down exhaustedly. He felt miserable. He wanted to throw up. He was dog-tired, and at the same time he had a sense that he would never be able to sleep again.
‘You can’t do that!’ Ma wailed.
‘You shouldn’t have tried to get away,’ Jericho murmured. ‘Asshole.’
It took the police a full twenty minutes to find their way to the factory, and when they did they treated him as if he were in cahoots with the child-abuser. He was far too exhausted to get worked up about it, and just told the officers that it would be in the interest of their professional advancement to call a particular number. The duty inspector pulled a sulky face, came back as a different man and handed him the phone with almost childlike timidity.
‘Someone would like to speak to you, Mr Jericho.’
It was Patrice Ho, his high-ranking policeman friend from Shanghai. In return for the information that the raid in Lanzhou had thrown up a paedophile ring, although it hadn’t been possible to prove a connection with the Paradise of the Little Emperors, Jericho improved his evening with the news that Paradise had been found and the snake defeated.