Typhoon

42

Miles Coolidge was going to the movies.

In a city built on commerce, Xujiahui-pronounced Shoo-jahwe — is a modern Mecca of Shanghai shopping. Seven separate malls and department stores are located at the junctions of Hengshan, Hongqiao and Zhaojiabang roads, about a mile south-west of Joe’s apartment in the French Concession. At all hours of the day, but particularly in the early to late evening, Xujiahui teems with tens of thousands of Chinese, buying and selling everything from computers and electrical equipment to children’s toys and the latest clothes from East and West. You would not describe it as an area of outstanding natural beauty. Traffic clogs the packed streets. Subway exits lead to a warren of interconnected underground tunnels which are so hot in summer that to pass through them is to be suffocated by stagnant, putrid air. Horns and jackhammers puncture the atmosphere. A pretty steepled church and an old library, set back from nearby Caoxi Road, are all that remain of the colonial era. Progress has claimed the rest.

Miles pulled up in a cab outside the Paradise City mall, the huge, seven-storey edifice where, just a few weeks later, TYPHOON would reach its horrific zenith. He passed a twenty-yuan note through the driver’s perspex separator and waited as his receipt chugged out of the meter. A vast, fifty-foot-high photograph of David Beckham gazed down at him from an advertising hoarding slung from the facade of the Metro City mall on the opposite side of the intersection. Miles stepped out of the taxi and held the door for two Chinese girls dressed head to toe in Western brands. A moped swept past him, buzzing its horn. He tried giving one of the girls the eye, but she ignored him and slammed the door.

The Paradise City was a sanctuary of air conditioning which released Miles from the cloud-trapped pollution outside. Surveillance footage shows him stepping around a salesman handing out leaflets for skincare products and taking an escalator to the first floor. He bought a latte and a chocolate muffin from a branch of Costa Coffee. Tables were arranged at the perimeter of a balcony which afforded panoramic views of the gleaming white atrium. Ahead of him, Miles could see all seven floors of the mall, the branches of French Connection and Nike Golf, the bubble lifts and sliding banks of escalators, the giggling girls gassing on mobile phones.

The meeting was set for seven-thirty. At half-past six, he walked round to the opposite side of the atrium, where he caught a lift to the seventh floor. Heading to the north-western corner of the mall, Miles entered the Silver Reel cinema multiplex and purchased a ticket for the 6:50 movie showing in Screen Four. There were extensive queues at the popcorn concession but he waited in line under the watchful eye of Elmo and Bugs Bunny, purchasing a tub of salted popcorn and half a litre of Diet Coke. This was his usual routine. There was no security as he handed over his ticket, just a Chinese girl standing at the gate who said, “Hello, sir,” in English, indicating the entrance to Screen Four behind her. Miles made his way along the darkened corridor, entered the cinema and sat in his usual seat at the end of row Q. The advertisements had already started and he leaned back in his chair, waiting for Ablimit Celil.