Half the World Away

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

‘There!’ I point to the bend in the river, to the two towers higher than the others. I’m almost certain, but it’s only when we’ve come closer that we can see the third tall tower that completes the shape we’re looking for.

Tom takes a picture, like Lori’s, the reflections outlined in the water.

Where did she go next? Where were the pictures of peeling paint and lichen? ‘What’s the timing for those next two images?’ I say, and study the chart. ‘Ten forty and ten forty-one.’

There is a bridge just beyond the curve in the river. ‘She could’ve crossed. It’ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack,’ I complain. ‘I think we should forget these two pictures, they’re too abstract – they could be anything, anywhere.’

‘Same with the Buddha stencil?’ Tom says.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘People might recognize that – something quirky. It could be graffiti on a wall near here. Though it’s hard to tell how big it is.’

We try asking. Tom pulls up the Buddha picture on his phone and we say ‘Zài nǎli, where?’ and point to the image.

The first woman we ask shakes her head and hurries on. The man we stop next points back south of the river, the way we came. I open the map. He smiles and points. ‘Wenshu,’ he says. He thinks we want the monastery, to see some Buddhas.

A young couple we talk to have some English but they have not seen the stencil.

We try maybe twenty more people, zài nǎli, zài nǎli? Xiè xie, thank you.

A middle-aged woman pushing a child on a tricycle tries her best to help. She nods at the photograph and jabbers away in Chinese. ‘Wǒ bù míngbái,’ I say. I don’t understand.

She signals for my pen and the map and starts writing Chinese characters down. I shake my head. ‘Wǒ bù míngbái.’ She pats my arm and indicates we should go with her. The little boy sings happily as he pedals the trike. Every so often he stops and squeezes the hooter, which parps loudly. We cross the bridge and the woman stops at a café on the corner, apparently conferring with the owner, who waves her arm, signalling up the street.

We carry on and then the woman stops and shows us the shop, smiling. It’s a Buddhist gift shop: the window is full of statues of Buddha, packs of incense, prayer flags, saffron-coloured robes and incense burners.

We thank her profusely.

Once she has turned the corner, Tom rolls his eyes. I say, ‘We could ask inside.’

The man behind the counter looks at the stencil and shrugs.

Maybe he thinks we want to buy a stencil. ‘Zài nǎli?’ I say pointing to the photo, then outside to the street, swinging my arm in a semi-circle.

He shrugs again.

It’s useless.

Tom wants cigarettes so we walk to the corner and look up and down for a mini-market. With none in sight we try the next road and find one there.

‘Where now?’ I say, as he lights up. Though I’m not sure where we are on the map any more.

He takes a drag, blows out a stream of smoke. I flex my fingers – the skin is even tighter and my scalp feels hot from the sun.

Like the previous three pictures, the overhead cables and trees don’t include any landmarks, anything to narrow down where they might be. And the streets we’re in don’t have any overhead wires. The newer parts of the city, the redeveloped areas, have all the utilities underground.

‘Maybe it’ll be easier to find the neon sign,’ I say. I try to hide my mounting sense of futility. We lost the trail, if it actually is one, back at the river. But what else can we do?

I look at the map. ‘If we cover these main streets, a block at a time?’ I don’t let myself dwell on how far we’ll have to walk, how huge the city is. We can’t stop now. Even though I’m limping, my blister bloody and seeping through the plaster, another coming on my other foot, I promise myself that we will walk all day till it’s dark. And again tomorrow and the day after, and the day after that until our flight home. And if we haven’t found her by then, we will come back as soon as we can, or Nick will, and we’ll keep looking. Because how could we ever stop?

‘Yes, OK,’ he says. He’s not about to give up either.

It seems like every other shop has yellow signage. But we are looking for yellow on a dark blue background, which helps to rule out several as we travel the next few streets. We turn left and it takes me a moment to see it, the clutter of poles and cable in the trees. ‘Are these Lori’s cables? The overhead wires.’

Tom opens the gallery on his phone and flicks through them. We look and look again. It’s impossible to tell if these are the same wires, the same trees and poles. The only background that can be distinguished is part of an air-con unit in the middle snapshot where there’s a gap in the foliage. But the buildings are littered with them.

‘Keep walking?’ I suggest. ‘See how many streets have the overhead wires?’

The next block has market stalls in a square selling all sorts, leather goods and huge fancy vases, silk scarves, phone cases, headphones and portable speakers, noodles and patties and toy pandas.

The wires and the trees are all over this neighbourhood. A group of people playing mah-jong outside a café stop their game to stare at us.

I think of Bradley’s vintage bike, the one he is restoring, and of the yellow neon sign. Could it be blurred because Lori was travelling at speed? Maybe he gave her a ride and she snapped the picture.

I ask Tom. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘There’s only a minute between that photo and the last.’ He shows me the final photo, the bundle of coloured cables. ‘This one isn’t blurred.’

Maybe her hand was shaking, then, when she photographed the yellow sign. Was she scared? Or laughing? Maybe she was laughing. Bradley said something amusing as she took the picture.

If he did take her on the bike, there might have been an accident. That might account for his lies. But not for the bones in the suitcase.

What will they think, Dawn and Shona, Rosemary and Oliver, when they hear that their friend Bradley has been arrested, the skeleton of a Chinese or Japanese woman found in his apartment? When they learn that he was the last person to have contact with Lori? Does any of them have the slightest idea?

‘What time was the yellow sign taken?’ I say.

‘Eleven oh one,’ Tom says.

At a zebra crossing, we let a tricycle go past and two taxis, then a pickup truck, with a gated back, carrying pigs, crammed in on top of each other, every which way. Alive and struggling.

I’m about to step into the road when there’s a long blast of a horn and a white van comes at me, the driver yelling furiously. I feel the air displaced, the draught on my forearms as I rear back just in time.

‘Shit!’ I almost overbalance. I turn to watch the van drive on, tempted to stick two fingers up, and then I see it. On the road to our right, the road we were crossing, a couple of hundred yards along. Yellow characters on a dark blue background.

‘Tom, look.’

‘I think that’s it,’ he says. ‘It is, that’s it.’