Cheung opened one of the packages. Rolled a pill out onto his hand. It was astonishingly white, with a little black dot on it, so that, with the exercise of a little imagination, it looked like a real fish eye.

“Are you ready to do this?” said Tak-Wing, his last living son.

“I’d take it myself, but if they work, my ghost will have to do the poisoning.”

Tak-Wing nodded toward the Supreme Court. At its back door the torturers threw their victims’ remains to the city’s ravenous dogs, who made them disappear.

Cheung shuddered. “I don’t want to go there.”

“I’ll go. I’ll lure one.”

“With what? A choice leaf of baby bok choy? Those dogs are the only ones in this cursed city who are not hungry.”

Tak-Wing asked Cheung to give him a small piece of pork sausage, which the steward did only reluctantly. Meat these days was more precious than gold. Tak-Wing opened the back door and called to one of the skinnier dogs, one of the last in line for the human sacrifice for which those unfortunate beasts gathered daily. This one was scrawny and young. A pale tan colour with an upturned tail. Cute.

“Come, little dog,” called Tak-Wing. “Gow tsai. Come, puppy.”

While the others clamoured at the side door of the Supreme Court, the little dog crossed the street to Tak-Wing. It sniffed around his legs and feet. Its brown eyes shone bright and its ears perked, sensitive to the men’s every movement.

Tak-Wing gave it the sausage with the Carp’s Eye poked into it. The dog gobbled it down, joyful and grateful, as though happy to be eating something other than human flesh. It wagged its upturned tail.

The last humanitarian creature on this cursed island, Cheung thought bitterly.

Before long, the dog lay down on the back step, curled into a furry ball, and went to sleep. The two men smoked cigarettes and watched the dog rest, peaceful and soft.

Cheung went back inside. Tak-Wing followed. They watched from the kitchen window while Cheung chopped leeks and potatoes to make vichyssoise for the club’s evening meal in the first-floor bar.

“Seems like a good immortality pill,” he said. “See how relaxed its face is?”

But then its body twitched. They rushed back outside to watch.

Cheung’s eyes widened with a twisted combination of hope and horror.

It came to nothing. The dog was still and peaceful again.

Then, another twitch.

A little yelp.

The yelp stirred in Cheung a feeling of pleasure, but it was pleasure of a diabolical kind, not the easy pleasure of spending time with his family, or enjoying a beer after work with co-workers. This pleasure was sleepy and smoky and hungry for someone else’s suffering as an antidote to his own. Was this the feeling that those twisted military police had become addicted to?