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the
wujing
against the lights of the trucks, so they became anonymous, threatening shadows. And the arrests were very clear—the old woman dragged down the street, her feet juddering across the wet black asphalt. Mangan could feel the structure of the piece forming. It would tell well in straight chronology. This, then
this.
    But they had nothing from the roof. The worst of the violence—the ponytailed boy bleeding into the gutter—was all on the card confiscated by Grey Suit. The intensity, Mangan realized, built and came to not much. It would be a story without an end, he knew, a compromise.
    He was bleeding. From where, though?
    Peanut kneeled on the clinker, swaying. It was evening, he thought.
    He wiped a hand across his mouth and the back of it came away smeared with blood. Was he bleeding from the nose? It seemed so. He was, he supposed, close to unconsciousness. A train passed a few feet from him, but the roar of the diesel, the
clack
of the wheels, seemed far away.
    He began to crawl.
    Far to his left, he could make out engine yards and beyond them the station. The darkening sky had to it the pale orange wash, not of sunset, but of a city’s lights.
    He had damaged himself when he jumped from the freight car, but he couldn’t understand how. He crawled further away from the tracks, towards a low brick building with broken windows, weeds growing at the base of its walls. He was very cold and his tongue was thick in his mouth. For twenty-four hours, clinging to the coupling, he had eaten and drunk nothing. The wind chill had left him stunned.
    He reached the brick building and slumped against the wall, from which, he now saw, a faucet protruded. He hauled himself to it and turned the tap. The faucet hissed and shook, and belched an intermittent spray of cold water. Peanut cupped his hands and drank, retched, drank more, and sluiced his face clean of blood.
    His head began to clear. He flexed his limbs, rubbed his hands. Then, tentatively, he stood. He looked to the skyline, saw illuminated towers rising in the dark, flickering and silver. He’d never seen the like.
    Xining. The city.
    He looked up the tracks towards the station and saw flashlights, their beams dancing on the steel rails. He turned, felt in his pocket for the plastic bag cinched at the top with an elastic band, and found it between his fingers. Then he ran.
    In an alley off the freight yards he stood and watched from the shadows. A girl sat in a doorway beneath a green neon light. She wore tight pink jeans. A man stood over her, murmuring to her with an expectant look. Or a greedy look, Peanut thought, as if he were contemplating some rich food. The man carried beneath his arm a small black bag with a loop for the wrist. The bag suggested its owner to be a man of business, a man of accoutrements. Peanut had seen such bags carried by visiting officials in the prison and had fixed upon them as the likely location of valuable items.
    The man looked extremely valuable. He wore a blue jacket of a soft, slithery material, a striped shirt and cream slacks, and shoes that to Peanut’s eye had the shine of polished wood. The man was balding and bulky and leaning over the girl, and she nodded and picked up a handbag that lay at her feet.
    What did the valuable man think he was doing here at night in an alley off the freight yards, talking to girls in doorways?
    Peanut stepped from the shadows and walked towards them. The man looked up and frowned. Seeing Peanut, in filthy green trousers, stained tracksuit top, he backed away a little. The girl sat very still and watched Peanut.
    “What?” said the man.
    Peanut held his hands open and moved closer to them.
    “I just need a little help,” said Peanut.
    “Piss off,” said the man. He sounded uncertain. Peanut made a regretful face. He stepped quickly to the man’s left side in a feint. The man lashed out ineffectually with both arms. Peanut stepped in close and gripped his jaw and rammed his head