From the start of RED MANDARIN

An electric bell, shrill and jangling. Running feet, a gate closing, a whistle. An engine, harrumphing clouds of smoke at the second-class passengers on the lower deck . Mariners in blue uniforms casting off ropes that are as thick as biceps; an ageing ferryboat edging out into dark, warm, rubbish-strewn water.

Overlooking all this is a wall of glass a thousand feet high, remorselessly, blindingly post-modern - the eighties buildings are already beginning to look dated on Hong Kong Island, which is where the crammed mass of travellers on the ferry Shining Star are going to work.

It's just another day for these commuters; few look up at the skyscrapers, or up at the luxury tower blocks above the skyscrapers, or up at the magnificent sawtooth skyline above the tower blocks - a skyline still clinging to its absurd imperial names: Mount Gough, Victoria Peak, Mount Cameron, Magazine Gap. Instead, people are reading newspapers - more stuff about 1^st July 1997, so soon now, and nobody really knows what's going to happen when the Chinese take over. Or they're listening to Cantopop on Walkmans, or chatting, or brushing the last of the sleep from their eyes.

'It's a mystery,' says one passenger to the person next to him - they don't even know each other's names, but they often occupy the same seats and have slowly struck up a relationship based purely on discussing the contents of newspapers. 'Four days ago he disappeared from that place in Stanley, and he hasn't been seen since.'

'I hope he's dead,' the other replies. The first man laughs. The story is about a missing Chinese official, a'Red Mandarin', and he knows his travelling companion hates the mainlanders, having fled the Cultural Revolution nearly thirty years ago.

'Come the handover we won't be able to read about this sort of thing,' the companion goes on. 'How much freedom of the press is there in China? We probably won't even be allowed to discuss things; there'll be a dog in the row behind, listening to us, noting it all down.'

The news story is not headline - that is yet another row about the composition of the Legislative Council - but it's front page. New China News Agency are of course denying it. Zhang Fei has returned to the motherland for a few days' leave. But the rumour has leaked out, as rumour does, especially when so many eyes are on one place, on one small group of people.

'Perhaps he's done a bunk,' says the first man, 'and gone off to America like the last one did.' The first envoy Beijing sent to its prospective new Special Administrative Region defected and now lives in the USA.

'They'll get him in the end if he has,' says his companion morosely. 'They've memories like elephants, Communists.'

'Ai, you worry too much. They want the money this place makes; they're not going to mess it up.'

'They want power. If we don't pat the horse's arse they'll be out in the streets "liberating" us, just as they did in Tiananmen Square.'

They ... They ... The Communists. Mysterious and terrifying and soon to be the Sons and Daughters of Heaven in the booming colony.

The ferry is halfway across from Kowloon now. It gives a blast on its hooter, but the sampan heading across its bows doesn't even bother to change course. The fisherman at the helm of the latter has sailed this, the busiest stretch of water in the world, all his life. He misses the ferry comfortably, by several feet. The Morning Star, coming the other way, gives a toot of amused sympathy. Bloody Tanka, with their tinpot fishing boats ...

'Look!' Suddenly there is shouting from the decks of the Shining Star Even the two discussers of news break their conversation to attend to the commotion.

'Out there!'

Something black, floating past. About the size of -

It can't be.

But the shape ...

It is.

A human body, all puffed and distended, head down in the oil-black water. With its hands - see? - behind its back, handcuffed like a criminal.

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