Chapter 9: The East Scrapyard

The east scrapyard lay behind a rusted gate at the end of a gravel road.

The dogs started barking before the taxi stopped.

Xiao Chen paid the driver and told him to wait.

Cars were stacked four high in long rows, windows blind with dust, tires gone, doors hanging open.

The wind off the harbor smelled of oil and salt.

"How do we find it?" Shen Yan whispered.

"It is grey. A sedan. The windscreen will be cracked from the left corner."

"I'll look this way."

"Stay where I can see you."

"Yes, Xiao Chen."

They split the first row between them.

A man in a quilted vest and a cap sat in the hut by the gate.

He was eating noodles from a plastic tub.

He glanced up as they passed, then looked down again, too quickly.

Xiao Chen noted it and said nothing.

It took twenty minutes.

Shen Yan found it, in the third row, wedged beneath a flatbed truck with its roof crushed to the pillars.

"Xiao Chen!" He waved, his face smudged with grime. "This one has a plate with a seven and a nine."

Xiao Chen came round the truck and stopped.

The grey sedan sat low on its rims.

The bonnet was crushed flat, and the driver's door had been cut open by a rescue crew.

Brown stains marked the seat.

He had been inside it for four minutes before they pulled him out.

He knew, because the report said so.

Shen Yan stood very close beside him.

He did not touch him, but his shoulder was a warm line down Xiao Chen's arm.

"You don't have to look," he said softly.

"I do."

He reached through the open window, pressed the glovebox release, and the flap dropped on a rusty hinge.

Maps. A torch. A pack of tissues, mouldy.

He ran his fingers along the roof of the compartment.

He stopped where a thin plastic liner met the casing.

The tape was still there.

He peeled it back, and a grey drive no bigger than his thumb fell into his palm.

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