The dirt-streaked facade of the Garley Building is cold and silent, shrouded in netting to catch loose debris.
A street-sleeper has made his home on the marble-tiled doorstep of Chinese Arts and Crafts. Above him, smoke-stained decorations summon shoppers to the 1996 Christmas sale.
Striped police tape hangs from a water pipe and plaques tell of dentists and doctors on the top floors. Pedestrians pass without a glance.
On November 20 last year, dentist Kenny Leung Kai-yuen, 40, called his nurse after smelling smoke. Assuming a fire drill was being run, but hearing no alarms and seeing no flames, the pair walked down from their 14th-floor surgery.
Dr Leung sat on the kerb and gazed at the inferno until 9 pm, when the flames reached his office. The next morning he began hunting for a new surgery.
'Sometimes I go past,' he said yesterday. 'I look up. There are memories, sad memories. I've thought about friends who lost their lives there.' Next door, low gold prices have boosted business for the Chow Sang Sang jewellery shop. It shares a wall with the building in which 22 of its staff died after the glass doors of their 15th-floor workshop melted.
