The uniformed officer who had been guarding the door nodded. 'If it is even a person. We're not sure.'

'Oh, it is.' That was her instinct talking; instinct honed by experience. She could tell when she entered a murder scene, even if nothing outwardly showed. 'I'm sure the forensics will tell us that much.' She patted the officer on the shoulder, seeing him steady a little. 'I've never seen anything like it either. Who found the this this?'

The officer consulted his notebook. "The building's caretaker. He had come in response to a request from the resident - made yesterday -to check the air conditioning. The caretaker found the door ajar, and the apartment empty but in the condition you see.'

'Where's the caretaker now?'

'Downstairs in his flat in the basement. There's a uniform with him; we thought you'd want to speak to him.'

'Right.' Before she spoke with the caretaker, Siao wanted to see the scene for herself. She hated being in places of death, but it was part of the job, and it helped her to get a feel for whatever had happened. Here, unfortunately, the only feeling she got was a strange creeping dread, of a kind normally reserved for the couple of days before her annual physical fitness exam was due.

She knelt by the burnt patch, trying not to breathe in too much of the burnt-pork smell that hovered around it. Forensics types were scraping samples from it and the carpet into test tubes for analysis, but she already knew the results would prove the patch to be human ash. She'd seen it before, and smelt it too, and had never, despite her best efforts, managed to forget it.

Inspector Siao?' The voice was female, but clipped and impersonal; all business and no courtesy. It sounded to Siao like the bureaucrats were coming down to a crime scene for once, and that always meant bad news.

When they and political appointees came out into the field, it usually meant the case would be high-profile in the media for some reason. That in turn meant there had best be a quick solution to the case, or else people would get fired to save the aforementioned bureaucrats' pensions.

She straightened with a groan and turned. There were two newcomers, a man and a woman. The man looked Japanese to her, but the woman seemed Chinese, with typically dark hair unlike Siao's red-tinted crop.

Siao got nervous enough in the presence of the police's own SWAT team, or the Royal Navy and Marines personnel who sometimes assisted in operations to stop fishermen smuggling illegal immigrants. So she really didn't like the look of the two newcomers. Their plain black combat fatigues were probably simply meant to be restrained and unobtrusive but came over as sinister. And their lack of insignia or rank markings didn't help -their only decoration was on their berets: a winged globe which, on closer inspection, turned out to be the UN symbol.

'I'm Inspector Siao, Hong Kong Police.'

The military types smiled almost convincingly. 'Colonel Tsang,' the woman continued, 'and Lieutenant Nomura, United Nations Intelligence Taskforce.'

Tsang handed over some impressive documentation, which didn't ease Siao's mind at all.

'What can I do for UNIT?'

'Actually it's more what can UNIT do for you. This case would appear to be quite unusual, and the new and unusual are within UNIT'S purview.'

'True, but we haven't called you in yet. If we need to, you'll be the first to know.' Siao knew it was too confrontational a reply, but she had to say something while she tried to work out how they had turned up so fast. 'How exactly did you hear of this?'

Tsang was looking down at the greasy ashes. 'On a police scanner.'

"That's not exactly legal. But you must have heard many crime reports; what's so special about this one?' Siao turned, watching as Nomura moved into another room. He was conducting a search, she realised. She suppressed the urge to throw them both out.

'Because,' Tsang admitted with visible reluctance, 'we were on our way here anyway, with a search warrant.' Siao wondered how true that was, despite the officer's performance. Nomura had returned, shaking his head almost imperceptibly.

'What are you looking for here? And don't tell me "that's classified" because I doubt you can make a UN concern outrank a sovereign country's judgement of what's important.'

'Since it's not here, it doesn't matter what it is.'

'Well, then,' Siao replied with equal politeness, 'if it doesn't matter, then there's no reason for you not to tell me.'

The credibility of Tsang's smile lessened visibly. 'It may not be classified, but since its presence or absence might affect the safety of my people in Operations, I'd call it confidential confidential.'

'Spelled B-U-L-L B-U-L-L?'

'Not at all. It was evidence relating to an ongoing operation in the field.'

Tsang handed Siao a business card. 'You can reach me here night or day.

I think it might be worthwhile to pool our resources.'

'Once we've completed our investigation here, I'm sure that can be arranged,' Siao agreed politely. She had already decided that the arrangement would depend on some questions being answered. It was probably 50-50 as to whether they would be.

Tsang and Nomura were back in the traffic in their plain saloon before they spoke to each other. Tsang was quite impressed by the stocky detective; she hadn't kowtowed to them as easily as most people did. While admirable, it was a damned nuisance. 'Back to base,' she told Nomura, who was driving. Then she picked up a walkie-talkie with a keypad for scrambling the signal. 'Lotus to Dragon One, come in please.'

'Dragon One here,' a male Australian voice replied. 'How did it go, over?'

'We're not sure. The police are being uncooperative so long as we aren't telling them what the thing is. Don't worry, we'll buy the truth from one of them tonight.'

Chapter Three.

Silent Services

Although a government services plane had made the first landing at the new Chek Lap Kok airport a couple of months previously, in February, there would be no passenger services there until the summer of 1998. This disappointed Sarah Jane Smith; the approach to Kai Tak airport was one of her least favourite in the world.

A plane coming into Kai Tak took a perilous descent between Hong Kong's skyscrapers, pulled a 90-degree turn to avoid running straight into Diamond Hill, and then tried not to drop off the end of the runway into Kowloon Bay.

When this Far East tour was being planned, Sarah had hoped she would be able to avoid that particular set of manoeuvres.

Once she was through customs and immigration, Kai Tak was busier than she remembered; presumably the people who could afford to fly were the ones who were most nervous about the impending handover of rulership.

Beijing would be taking back control of the colony from Britain in less than a month. Perhaps because of this, most of the new, increased business seemed, thankfully, to be in flights out, so the queue at customs and immigration had been relatively bearable.

In spite of the lightweight cotton clothes she was wearing, Sarah felt the mugginess of the colony almost immediately. Hong Kong was one of the more humid places on Earth that she had visited in her time and, though she loved its atmosphere and people, the climate left a little to be desired.

The airline had managed not to lose any of her luggage, so she wasted no time in getting out and hailing a taxi to take her to her hotel.

From where Tom Ryder was sitting, relaxing behind a China Daily on the concourse outside the arrivals point, the pastel-blue trouser suit looked fine on Sarah. The hint of sweatiness just added to the effect, as far as he was concerned. He was glad to see she looked none the worse for wear after her tribulations in Thailand.

She didn't spot him, which was as he had hoped. He was dressed casually in shirt and slacks, and kept a couple of rows of occupied seats between her and him as she headed for the exit. Once she was at the doors, Tom abandoned the paper and rose, his long legs carrying him to another exit door just along from Sarah's.

While Sarah had to signal for a taxi outside, one simply drew up to allow Tom to get in. He opened the door and hopped in so quickly that the car didn't really stop as such, before following Sarah's cab.

Katie Siao sat in her hatchback, trying to tune out the usual protests that were coming in over her mobile phone. 'I can't pick them up, Eddie,' she said quickly, as soon as an opportunity presented itself. 'I'm stuck in traffic in Mongkok, and I've a lot of work to do today.'

'More paperwork?'

'No, well, yes, that too. There's a new case.'

'Murder?' Eddie always liked hearing the gory details. Sometimes she thought that's why he'd married her. But she knew better.

'Ye-Actually, we're not sure yet. That's one of the reasons I'll be late.'

There was a sigh from the other end of the phone. 'You're going to tell me all about it?'

'Yes. Now, you'll pick them up? Put the meter on for the trip, if it makes you feel better.'

'I might. I could dock the fare from their pocket money.

'Just make sure they do their homework after dinner.'

'OK. Love you.' She'd known he would acquiesce. He always did, and the protests were little other than a game between them.

'And you,' she replied, embarrassed. She switched off the phone quickly.

'And they say you've no heart,' Detective Sergeant Mark Sing chuckled.

She hated talking to family when other cops were around, and could already hear Mark imitating her at the station to the rest of the homicide team.

'It's just in safekeeping,' she told him. 'Keep your attention on the road.'

'Don't worry. The Cannonball will be on target and on time, as always.'

'You sound as if you're looking forward to this.'

Mark grinned. 'Given the choice between sitting in on an autopsy and dinner with the family when my sister's round, I'll take the former any day'

Nobody could ever escape the constant thrumming or random popping sounds that filled the cramped spaces of a submarine. After a while, though, you acclimatised and stopped noticing them. Either that or you went stir-crazy and had to be taken off the boat. Nobody wanted that, as it meant a court martial and punishment for weakness, so most of those who went crazy tried to hide it and stick out the tour of duty.

No wonder, Gennady Morozich thought, that the submarine fleet was so screwed up. At least his boat wasn't nuclear-armed, so he didn't have to worry about the crazies starting a world war. Though he thought of the Zhukov as his boat, he wasn't the captain, merely the chief of the boat.

Captains came and went, but he was always there.

He squeezed his way into the conn, which wasn't easy for him aboard such a cramped boat, and cast an eye over the depth gauges and pressure gauges at the helm. A tap on his shoulder alerted him to a sunken-eyed, unshaven figure in red coveralls. 'What's up?'

'Don't ask,' Radzinski said, rubbing at his greying hair. 'I was doing the morning walk-through when I started picking up something.' He handed Morozich the Geiger counter. 'Try it.' Morozich switched the detector on, and it clicked, ticking over slowly but steadily. Morozich could feel the eyes of the conn officers on him, and led Radzinski out into a narrow passageway. The ticking accompanied them.

Morozich frowned at the counter. 'Another reactor leak? I thought you and Putov had fixed fixed'

Radzinski shook his head. 'Whatever it is, it's not a reactor leak. I took this counter through the boat, and the level is the same everywhere; no peaks in any of our vital areas. It must be an outside source.'

Morozich thought hard. He knew as well as anyone that nothing natural could cause such a radiation spike. That left only two alternatives he could think of, both of them bad. 'It must be either a lost warhead or another submarine.'

"There's nothing on sonar,' Radzinski said. 'I checked. If it's another submarine, it must be dead in the water. Either way, it's not one of ours.'

Morozich drummed his fingers on the bulkhead for a moment. Do another walk-through, just to double-check, while I wake the captain.' The captain wouldn't appreciate being woken. He valued his sleep as much as anyone.

The two people walking into the morgue could hardly be more different.

One short and curvy, with short hair streakily dyed a red shade that wasn't found in nature; the other slim, with a ponytail and his shirt not tucked in.

'You two still not speaking?' the woman asked.

The ponytail shook. 'She still thinks I should be willing to negate those forty-seven outstanding traffic tickets, even though they're all from Lam Tin.

And now her kid says he wants to be a cop like Uncle Mark, which is driving her mad. She wants him to be a stockbroker.'

'How old is he?'

"Three, but she's already bought him a calculator for his birthday. Says it's never too early to start learning.' He pushed open a set of double doors, and they walked into the examination room. The pathologist was already there, dictating into a microphone hung from the ceiling. The walls were lined with medical equipment and specimen jars, while three chromed tables with raised sides took up most of the space.

'Inspector Siao, Sergeant Sing,' the pathologist acknowledged, his voice muffled by the surgical mask. 'It's not like you to be late: Traffic,' Sing explained.

The pathologist looked at his watch. 'Oh, I see. Didn't realise it was so late. Rush hour?' Both cops nodded. 'Never mind.' He beckoned them over.

As they approached, Siao could see that the table's occupant was a plastic tray with a few bone fragments and ash. The pathologist's mask was there to protect the remains from contamination by him, rather than the other way round.

'Not much to see in this one anyway,' the pathologist continued. 'The lab results tell us this ash used to be a human male, and that the reduction of the body took place at double the temperature of a normal crematorium furnace.' Siao and Sing exchanged revolted looks. 'From the bone fragments, we can place the deceased somewhere around the thirty-five to forty-five age range. Beyond that, this could be anybody, and there's no way to tell whether he was alive or dead when he was burned. I'm going to have to record an open verdict on cause of death.'

'No chance of an ID, I suppose?' Siao didn't hold out much hope. She noticed that on this visit Sing was looking more interested than sick. At least that was a change for the better.

'You're in luck; we should get a DNA match tomorrow. We'll compare it to swabs taken from the drinking vessels and cutlery at the scene, and at least find out whether he was the regular occupant of the apartment. Best we can do, I'm afraid.'

It wasn't much, but Siao hadn't really expected anything. In her experience, there were two main kinds of homicide, and neither of them involved patient detective work leading to an ingenious solution. The majority were spur-of-the-moment things - brawls and crimes of passion - in which the killer was identified almost immediately, and usually gave himself up. Then there were the stone-cold whodunits, which mostly stayed that way, no matter what. Siao had the sinking feeling that this was going to be one of the latter. 'Was there anything else worth mentioning? Anything at all?'

'If you mean, can I confirm whether it was murder, or suicide, no.' The pathologist stepped away from the table, and removed his mask to reveal a perplexed look on his ageing features. "There's one very puzzling thing.

Despite what people think, a crematorium furnace doesn't reduce everything to ashes. Bone and some of the tougher muscles like the heart survive and are crushed to powder afterwards. Whatever happened to this person reduced him to ashes completely. If it had happened in the apartment, the whole building would have gone up in a conflagration you could see for miles.'

Siao nodded slowly. "Then he might have been dumped there after death?'

She couldn't understand how or why anyone would have arranged the remains into a humanoid outline, but then, she wasn't a psychopath and surely only such a person could have done this.

'But what about the melted coffee table?' Sing asked.

'Beats me,' the pathologist admitted. 'You're the detectives. I'd suggest you'll just have to go out and and detect.' detect.'

'Oh Thank you. I wish I'd thought of that.' Thank you. I wish I'd thought of that.'

Birthday celebrations always leads to chaos in Hong Kong. Firecrackers exploding from the drainpipes and TV antennae while revellers get drunk at a buffet on the roof of an apartment block. Sometimes it could be hard to find enough room between the pigeon roosts for the plastic garden furniture and beer kegs.

Hong Yi Chung knew just how cramped a city could be, but thanked his lucky stars that at least he lived in a district with some character. He'd have been driven stir-crazy if he'd had to put up with living in one of the impersonal new towns over at North Point or SaiWan Ho. At least in Tsim Sha Tsui, there was a street culture that had had time to develop.

His father had already drunk himself to sleep, and his mother was busy in the kitchen, but there were plenty of friends and relatives around to help him party. The only person missing was Emily Ko, whom he had been admiring earlier.