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bottle was. He ordered crispy fried duck, sweet and sour pork balls, beef and peppers and fried rice. The girl had a glass of orange juice. She said, ‘What are you going to do now?’
    ‘I have other lines of inquiry.’
    ‘You must tell the local police.’
    Jian had no confidence in that. He knew how missing persons went. You opened a file, sent a rookie out to do interviews, and took the rest of the afternoon off. Every cop knew, missing persons was hopeless. They either turned up or they didn’t.
    He excused himself. The toilets were downstairs, and there was another door beyond them. It was locked, but only by a catch, so Jian slipped his Bank of China Great Wall debit card into the crack. Back home they called these locks the housebreaker’s friend, they were no security at all. But this version was sturdier than its Chinese equivalent and, however he wiggled, the card the catch wouldn’t click.
    He wiggled harder, a crease in the card whitened and cracks appeared. He imagined a cluttered staffroom beyond the door, and perhaps it had evidence inside and probably not, but he wanted to know one way or the other. The card snapped in two and the broken half flipped back into the corridor. He sighed in exasperation. Things were so much easier in China.
    Someone was coming down the stairs. He supposed it was the old man checking up. A lighter footstep was the new arrival stepping off the bottom stair and onto carpet. It was too late to look for the broken half of the card. He stepped into the nearest toilet and got the door closed just as someone padded round towards him.
    He considered a vase of plastic flowers on the cistern and a poster of a Hong Kong heart-throb. He did not like skulking around, and especially not in toilets and especially not in the ladies. Really though, what did he expect to find? A rota with his daughter’s name, her bag hanging on a hook,her picture in the staff outing photo album? He didn’t need evidence, he knew the old man was lying.
    Someone still loitered outside, so he put the remains of the card on the edge of the sink and flushed the loo and ran the taps. The card slid off and twirled into the corner. The broken card was bad news, it meant he couldn’t use an ATM. He’d be stuck for money as soon as his slim wad ran out. He bent to pick it up and paused. Chinese characters, barely half a centimetre high, were written along the grouting between wall tiles. ‘Dull dull dull’ – then a doodle of a sunflower with a smiling face.
    He spotted another strip of discreet graffiti: ‘My boss is a colour wolf’ – a sleaze. There was more, but he did not need to examine it. It was just like his daughter, he could see it – the resentful waitress, stretching out a toilet break, venting her frustrations on the only receptive surface.
    The owner stood outside, trying to look like he had something to do. Jian nodded and went upstairs.

( 9
    ‘How about this,’ said Song. ‘She started a career as a model because she could, she was very good-looking, and she didn’t want to tell you because she knew you wouldn’t approve. Then she went out to… some desert island on a shoot, and she got into some little trouble and called you, and she dropped her phone, with all her numbers in… She was on a yacht and she dropped it in the sea.’ She had come up with a pleasing story to lighten the mood and seemed tickled at her inventiveness. ‘I did that once, I mean lost my phone, it was a nightmare.’
    She was so happy and straightforward. Jian knew her type. The modern urban Chinese girl, a doted-on only child, well educated, used to getting her own way, brought up in a cosy world that just kept on giving.
    Was there ever such a gilded generation as the urban Chinese born in the Eighties? Their whole lives they had surfed the edge of a glorious wave of progress. Taught to aspire to a bicycle and a watch, televisions and fridges had come, then cars and computers. For them, the world could be