Читать книгу: «Kiss & Die»
Kiss & Die
Lee Weeks
For my Aunt, Jean Rossiter.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Fourteen Days in Summer
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
In Conversation with Lee Weeks
Acknowledgements
About the Author
By the Same Author:
Copyright
About the Publisher
Fourteen Days in Summer
Chapter 1
August 2006
He would be beginning to feel the pain now, the dehydration. In a few seconds he would try to move his arms but he would not be able to – his tendons were cut. He would try to lift his legs but she had strapped them to the bed whilst she cut through his hamstrings. Now he would feel the panic. Now he would feel the true meaning of pain and pleasure. Now he would understand the price he had paid for it.
He would open his eyes and look around the room and then he would understand he was just waking to die.
‘Hello, Mr Big Businessman.’ Ruby pulled up his eyelid. ‘Wakey, wakey. Feel that?’ Ruby twisted the scalpel into his shoulder joint and scraped it against bone. His body was covered in lacerations. His flesh was sprayed across the walls and ceiling.
He groaned in pain behind the ball gag. His eyes rolled in his head. He tried to move. He wasn’t going anywhere. ‘You’re as helpless as a baby, aren’t you, big man?’
His eyes were locked on hers. He was fully awake and terrified. He stared at Ruby, wide eyed, not understanding how or why he had ended up in hell with this angel. His eyes pleaded with her. He looked back and forth from her to the door. They could hear noises outside in the corridor. There were people passing. They heard a man mutter and swear as he made his drunken way down to his room.
She followed his eyes as he looked desperately at the door, so near to help but so far. She swigged from the champagne bottle and then turned back to stare at him, a cynical smile on her face. ‘What? You’re not having a good time? You want to leave? You want your money back?’
She picked up his trousers from the floor and took the wallet out of the pocket. She came around to the side of the bed and leaned over him; her long black hair fell in his face as she tilted her head one way and then the other and tutted. ‘But we’re not finished yet.’ She flipped open his wallet and took out his money. ‘Now, how much am I worth? I’ll tell you: more than the champagne.’ She started taking out the notes. ‘More than the cost of this room.’ She took out more. Then she opened the wallet out fully and pulled out a photo. ‘Nice family you have.’ A pretty blond woman was kneeling between two pretty blond kids, a boy and a girl. A golden retriever sat in front of them. The little girl had a tooth missing at the front. The boy was lean, strong, with broad shoulders and freckles across his nose. She turned the photo over. Love you Daddy from Belinda and Ben. P.S. Goldie says woof. ‘Very cute. Very sweet, your kids.’
Ruby removed the protective cup from his cock, lifted his limp member and injected into the shaft’s base. ‘We’re still having fun, aren’t we, big boy? You ready for more?’
He groaned.
She leaned closer and watched his cock grow hard. The process never ceased to amuse and delight her. She went over to the cloth she had laid out on top of the mockleather writing desk. Her instruments were neatly lined up. There were two left that she had yet to use. One was a butcher’s knife that she would need afterwards; the other was a long, thin spike. Ruby came back to him and tightened the length of thin wire she had tied around his testicles. She twisted it until they bulged purple. He whined in agony. She ran her fingers over his body, and poked her fingers into the deep cuts in his flesh. He rolled his eyes and snorted in pain. Ruby climbed on top of him, her sex already eager, wet. She talked to him as she slid herself over him. Her palms outstretched on his chest, they slid beneath her. Ruby rocked back and forth, her pelvis sliding on his blood.
He turned his head from side to side, aware of the pain, not aware of the pleasure. Each of his joints was cut to the bone, his tendons, his muscles sliced through. She took him inside her like a child sucks a thumb – for security, comfort, familiarity. She was addicted to the sensation. It always made her feel special, wanted, loved. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to forget everything else and concentrate on the pleasure. For those few moments as she rocked back and forth on him and rolled her hips to take him deeper, she felt contented.
But it didn’t last long. She reached behind her and picked up the end of the wire attached to his testicles and wrapped it around her hand and pulled so hard that his scrotum tore open. His body went into spasm with the shock and the pain. She picked up the scalpel from the bedside table and sang to him as she began to make deep cuts over his heart, ‘Cross my heart and hope to die…’
She reached across him and picked up the photo, now bloody with her prints. ‘Nice wife, nice kids. A dog even. You have everything.’ She leaned forward and ran her fingers through his hair.
He groaned, his eyes rolled back.
She held the photo in front of his face. ‘But it wasn’t enough was it, Mr Big Man? You wanted Ruby didn’t you? You wanted big fun.’
She twisted the point of her scalpel into the wounds on his chest, deep bloody slashes that now exposed his rib. She scraped it along the bone. He squealed with pain. Ruby giggled. She rocked until she lost herself in ecstasy. She sat for a few minutes to recover, head down, body spent. Then she tilted her head and looked at him as she smiled.
‘I’m finished.’ Ruby picked up the spike and positioned it above his open heart. ‘You ready to die?’
He thrashed his head wildly back and forth and screamed into the gag.
She looked across at his family photo. ‘Hello Belinda…Hello Ben…Hello Goldie…’ She pushed the spike into his beating heart. ‘Say goodbye to your daddy.’
Chapter 2
‘Yap, yap.’
A toy puppy turned somersaults in the air. It was 10 p.m. and the night market was heaving. A tall man, athletic build, broad shoulders, wearing a black t-shirt and jeans was making his way through the market stalls. The height came from his mother’s side. He was half English, half Chinese. He had a face that reflected his soul: scarred, but with a beauty beneath the sadness. His eyes were always searching. He was thirty-seven but looked older. He had seen a few hard winters. He pushed his ragged fringe back from his eyes, pulled his shades back down and kept walking, weaving his way through the stalls in Mong Kok’s night market. He could have been mistaken for any other tourist except he wasn’t sweating; he was used to it, this was his home. He wasn’t shopping for knick-knacks either, Detective Inspector Johnny Mann of the Hong Kong Police Force was tracking the Triads that were moving through the market. Every few seconds he stopped to listen. Above the noisy bang and beat and Cantonese barking he was listening for one sound: signature whistles. Triads were calling to one another with their high-pitched beeps that varied in length, in intensity. Each society had their secret signs. One society was moving as a pack tonight.
Mann signalled to his officers to fan out. He turned the corner onto Saigon Street where the night market spread into seafood restaurants and noodle bars and spilled out over the roads and pavements. It was August 2006. It was the twenty-fifth day of the Chinese month. It was the chosen day. Beneath the feet of the unsuspecting tourists, a Triad initiation ceremony was being held.
The young recruits stood nervously waiting to pass beneath the sacred archway of crossed swords. Amongst them were five young women and three boys, all of Indian descent, dressed in their plain sackcloth robes, ready for the ceremony. Their feet were bare and their faces smeared in dirt. They had come to give themselves as penniless urchins to the society and be reborn as brothers and sisters, committed forever to the family; 49s in the Triad order. Amongst them was fourteen-year-old Rajini. She waited nervously with the others in the corridor outside. She looked at her hands, there was no ring but it was not a bad age to get committed to someone or something. She looked at her feet; she was barefoot. She didn’t mind that. Her family had walked many miles barefoot on the way to Hong Kong. They had crossed through China and joined the thousands of others making their way to paradise. But paradise was not the place she thought it would be. For twelve hours a day she sat at a machine and sewed. She dreamt of being a doctor, a teacher. But if Hong Kong had taught her anything it was that if you had money you could be anyone you wanted to be. She would become a 49, the rank of a Triad foot soldier, and climb the ladder and earn good money doing whatever they asked her to; she knew there would be risks but she also knew there would be big rewards and then she could pay for herself to go to college and then she could be anyone she chose.
She followed the others under the archway of crossed swords and into the airless, dark room, filled with people, pressed in, hiding in the shadows. The heat in the room took her breath away. There was the sound of a chicken flapping its wings against the side of a crate. The incense smoke was thick in the dark room, which was lit only by the candles on the altar. In the gloom she could make out the Incense Master. He was old, tortoise-like, dressed in the robes of office, a long crimson silk stole over a cassock of white. He wore only one grass sandal, the other foot was bare. On his head was a three-pointed knotted scarf.
‘Who is your sponsor?’ asked the Incense Master. He stood with his index fingers curled into his palm to denote his rank.
‘I am.’ A young woman stepped forward from the shadows.
‘Call forth your recruits.’ The Incense Master lit the joss sticks on the altar and began reciting the sacred poems that had been handed down since the beginning:
‘“I passed a corner and then another corner. My family lives on the Five Fingers Mountain. I’ve come to look for the temple of the sisters-in-law…”
‘You are children of the Wo Shing Shing. You are a group born from its spirit. But now it is time for you to stand alone. You are the Outcasts.’ He finished with a warning. ‘Break the sacred oath you are about to take and you will die as this rooster now dies.’
The sound of the chicken panicking reached a crescendo, the noise of flapping wings and the gurgle of blood escaping from its cut throat rose above the squawking. Its twitching body was held above a brass bowl on the altar.
‘You will die as he did. No mercy will be shown. We come together today to be reborn. You leave your last life behind you. You are 49s. Four for the oceans that our ancestors believed surrounded the world. Nine for the sacred oaths. You belong to an ancient family dating back to the time of the Qing dynasty. You belong to one another. Never forget you are brothers and sisters, forever joined in blood.’
From the corner of her eye Rajini watched the officers close in around the door and secure it. She looked back to her sponsor. The Incense Master swung the smoking silver perfumed ball in the air and chanted the oaths. The body of the chicken lay still on the floor and the bowl of blood was tipped into a cup from the altar. The Incense Master came to each recruit in turn. Rajini waited. He repeated the oaths to each one.
‘With this blood we are united. With this blood we are one. Together we remain until death.’
Each recruit replied: ‘I will never disclose the secrets of the Outcasts, not even to my parents, my brothers or sisters; I will be killed by the sword if I do so. I shall never disclose the secrets for money; I will be killed by the sword if I do so. I will never reveal the Outcasts’ secret signs or oaths when speaking to others outside the Outcast society; I will be killed by the sword if I do so.’
The Incense Master passed the cup to each recruit in turn. ‘You will be like no group before you. You will kill without mercy. You will belong only to your new family, cast away the old. You belong to the Outcasts.’
‘Bound forever to serve one another.’
Rajini closed her eyes as the blood tasted thick, warm, it touched her upper lip and coated it. She sipped from the chalice.
The Incense Master looked deep into her eyes. ‘No one leaves. No one ever betrays.’ The blood sat in her mouth like the taste of a nosebleed. ‘This is your new family. You will serve no other.’
Rajini bowed her head to him.
‘Yes, Master,’ all the recruits repeated together. The incense left a plume of smoke overhead as it passed along the line, each one tasting the blood of the killed chicken. At the end of the line the Incense Master placed the chalice back onto the altar. He stood and looked at his disciples.
‘You are now 49s, foot soldiers. But, one of you here has already transgressed. One of you has spoken of their coming here tonight. One of you gave information away. Now that one must be punished. They will be an example to you all. The Outcasts will not tolerate betrayal. When you leave this place you must do so quickly and disperse fast. Outside now there is one who is coming. He comes because we have a traitor amongst us.’
The Incense Master looked towards the sponsor. She nodded. ‘All who are present here must witness the result of your transgression.’
He turned to Rajini. ‘You share the fate of the rooster.’
As Mann turned the corner he saw the telltale sign: a red card taped above a doorway. Two girls came out, one Indian, one mixed race. Mann hung back and watched; an Indian lad was the next to emerge, he staggered out of the doorway and looked about to throw up. Mann hung back out of sight. He signalled to his officers to follow the lad, whilst he headed towards the entrance. It was the same as all the other buildings on the street and yet it wasn’t. Above its door was a shirt maker’s sign. The night shift should have been pounding away but the place was quiet. To the right a flight of stairs led up to a pink neon sign advertising a woman’s services and a massage parlour. To the left was a small Chinese medicine store selling loose herbs, dried fish and centipedes by the scoop. In between was a corridor. A metal grille, unlocked and half opened, gave way easily when Mann pulled it. Mann stepped into the corridor and listened. Further on, a solitary light bulb gave off a stark hue against the black walls.
Mann unclipped the gun holster that was strapped around his waist, but left the Smith and Wesson revolver where it was. Instead, he reached down and took out the knife from his boot. This was not a place to fire a gun. He needed silence, stealth. He needed caution. He held the knife tightly now as he walked on down the corridor and stopped at the door on the left. Above its arch were the symbolic crossed swords. He pushed the door open and stood in the doorway. The room was dark except for the light of one candle at the far right of the room. The air was thick with the smell of incense, smouldering paper and heat of the people, now gone. He heard the scratch of a rat’s claws as it ran the perimeter of the room and stopped and the sound of another joining it. Cockroaches scurried over walls and ceiling to watch the rats. He looked down at his feet; he was walking on the red summoning cards of hundreds of Triads. He crossed the threshold, beneath the arch of swords, and propped the door open with a discarded wooden thread spool. There was little else to show that this had been a garment factory, so far as he could tell the room was empty of equipment: the machines all gone. All that remained were tatters of material and empty crates. The candle on top of a stack of upturned crates: a makeshift altar. Mann walked across to it. Beside the altar were the discarded sackcloth robes of the Triad initiates, left to rot, no longer needed, and on top of them a shimmering Indian sari. From the corner of his eye he saw a rat jump into a box, two sticks protruded from its end. Mann got close. They were not sticks; they were arms. He looked down into the box. The rats were already feasting on the young girl’s body, the cockroaches tumbling from the box’s sides on top of her.
Chapter 3
Mann picked up the squealing rat from the box and flung it at the far wall. He stood in the solitude with the dead girl, listening to the police siren scream to a stop outside.
‘Looks like the party’s over.’
Mann turned to see a large frame in the doorway: Inspector Tom Sheng of the Serious Crime Division. ‘The ambulance is on its way.’
‘Too late. She was dead when I got here.’
Sheng and Mann had crossed paths more than either wanted. They weren’t the best of friends. Tom was brash, arrogant. He played hard and worked even harder. He was a hard-hitting movie-type cop who forgot he wasn’t an actor and life wasn’t a set.
Sheng walked in and shone a light around and into the box with the dead girl. He squatted level with Rajini’s arms, just visible at the rim of the box, held in front of her face as if she were offering them. ‘Why did they cut her hands off? Why torture her first? Why not just execute her? We’ve never seen them mutilate like this before.’
‘They must have wanted to show what they were capable of, put the fear into their new recruits,’ said Mann, picking up the discarded initiation robes and Rajini’s sari.
‘Why strip her first?’
‘Not worthy to wear the robes, more degradation. New rules, new society. Set the tone, scare the hell out of the new recruits. Kids are bound to be different.’
‘Fucking kids are like that these days. Playing sick video games, watching sick movies. Their minds are warped…Plus…’ Sheng stood, pulled at his tie. ‘This fucking summer is driving everyone mad. This was supposed to be my first night off in a fucking month.’
Mann didn’t answer. He knew that if Sheng had been somewhere important when the call came it wouldn’t have been at home. He spent his few nights off playing poker and trying to stay out of his family’s way. He loved his kids but he no longer loved his wife. He did things his way or not at all. But his way wasn’t Mann’s way. They could both be brutal. It was in Sheng’s nature. It was nurtured in Mann.
Tom Sheng moved his torch to the ground. ‘This place is littered with red slips. It must have been a big meeting. We’re going to have to be quicker than this if we’re ever going to catch the bastards.’ He flicked light up at the ceilings to see the cockroaches scuttling into the corners. ‘We’ll let CSI get in here. I’ll see you in the office at six.’ He dusted off his hands and walked back over the stone floor towards the door. He paused in the exit. ‘I have a poker game waiting. Try not to fuck with anything before they have a chance to get in here.’
Mann didn’t answer. He knelt, picked up the burnt oath papers and debris from the stone floor and crumpled it in his hand. Amongst the red dust on his finger tips was a tinge of yellow. He went back over to the box. Beside the young girl’s body in the box was the rooster, headless, draped on paper over her hands. He reached in and eased the paper from beneath and held it up to the light of the candle. On it he saw a circle outline, inside was a lone wolf howling to the sky.
Chapter 4
Mann waited until the girl’s body had been taken to the morgue before he headed home. He needed a change of clothes. He needed to shower away the smell of death.
Mann lived in a vertical village built around a shopping mall. It was devoid of character. The only trees were in pots. It housed thousands of middle earners. He lived on the fortieth floor in one of the older two-bedroomed flats. It had parquet floors, white walls and minimal furniture: a table and two armchairs and a large home cinema system. He had bought the flat eight years ago. It was a great location for work, just a few stops away on the MTR. But, it didn’t matter how convenient it was, Mann was hardly ever in it. He lived there alone, but he hadn’t always done.
A woman got out of the lift as he stepped in. He didn’t recognize her. Even though he didn’t know his neighbours well, he knew them well enough to nod to them when he saw them in the lift. This woman was a stranger. New tenant, visitor? He didn’t know which. She wasn’t keen to make eye contact. She hurried past him, her hair over her face, sunglasses on. Mann looked at her feet: pretty shoes. By the time he looked up she had gone.
He got to his floor, walked along the corridor and came to a halt outside his flat door. He put the key in the lock, turned the key and hesitated. Why did he always do that? He walked in, slammed the door shut behind him and threw his keys angrily down onto the coffee table. He knew that one day he’d break the glass top by doing it. It was a white cane table shaped like an elephant – ludicrous, feminine. He stepped over the piles of papers, documents his lounge was littered with and took off his t-shirt. Secured across his chest and beneath his arm he wore a pouch containing two sets of throwing stars, shuriken. Shuriken meant ‘hidden in the hand’. They were the weapons of his enemy: concealed, versatile street weapons. Sometimes they were homemade or customized. Mann had designed his own. He had been fascinated ever since one cut a groove into his face when he was young. He still bore the scar high up on his left cheekbone, it was pale like a quarter moon.
He unstrapped the leather pouch from his arm. It contained six six-inch darts. They were feather tipped, needle pointed, weighted for direct, fast, hard impact. He took a slim dagger named Delilah from his boot and placed her on the table as well. She was his favourite; she had saved him many times.
He poured himself a vodka on the rocks and then stood looking out of his window. The block opposite was lit up sporadically: squares of life in the darkness.
He checked the messages on his home phone. His mother’s voice came over clipped and awkward. It made him smile the way she talked to the answer phone machine as if she expected it to answer her at any moment. Pausing, giving it time to answer her back and then continuing in a fluster when it didn’t. He would call her tomorrow. She didn’t ask, but she needed him to. She wasn’t one for showing or asking for affection. She was a great bottler of emotions but the past few months had left her needing reassurance. Mann was all she had. Her world had been rocked by secrets that refused to stay hidden. And, where there was one, there were a hundred.
He phoned his boss.
‘I heard it was you who found her.’ The voice of Chief Inspector Mia Chou. Always succinct. Straight to the point. They had known each for a long time. ‘The ceremony was definitely an initiation one?’
‘Not just…I found yellow papers.’
‘So a new branch of a society has been created.’
‘I found an emblem printed on paper: a lone wolf.’
‘Anyone see anything?’
‘No, the tourists never see anything; it’s all strange to them. The locals see it all but they pretend not to. The building had been empty about twenty-four hours. It only took them a few hours to set it up. Tom Sheng’s called a meeting for six.’
‘Good.’
Mann could hear in her voice that she knew already. Whatever conversation she had had with Sheng it was probably face to face. Mann knew his thing with Mia wouldn’t last. Sheng had been through most of the good-looking women at the station. It never bothered him to mix work and pleasure.
‘We’ll know more after the autopsy. Grab some rest,’ said Mia. ‘See you at the office in a few hours.’
He stripped off and went in for a shower. He bowed his head in the water and let the needle jets pummel his tired shoulders. He hadn’t been back home for days. It wasn’t home. It was a punishment, a reminder of mistakes made. He should sell the apartment but it would be admitting defeat.
He came back into the lounge in his boxers and dropped the louvre blinds. He sat down in one of the two armchairs, plonked his vodka on the elephant table then he sat back in the chair to close his eyes for a few minutes, try and get some rest. He rolled the vodka glass across his chest. The only noise in the flat was the sound of the ticking clock in the bedroom. He closed his eyes, they felt as if they had sand under the lids. His jet black hair fell across his forehead. The image of the dead girl flashed into his head. His eyes snapped open. There would be no sleep for him tonight. He went into his bedroom and pulled open the laundry pack his maid had left. He slipped on a fresh t-shirt and pulled on his jeans. He picked up his weapons and keys from the elephant table and slammed the door on the way out.
Chapter 5
It was 4 a.m. when Ruby slipped out of the hotel room, into the lift and out onto Nathan Road. She took a taxi to Stanley on the east side of Hong Kong Island, a place famous for its markets selling replica goods and for its beach. But Ruby wasn’t interested in either. The hour was late. It was a winding road that took her there. Wrapped in plastic, the head rocked gently in her lap. She placed her hand on it to settle it.
She told the driver to drop her at the market, then she crossed the street and slipped out of view. The dark night gave her the cover she needed. She turned away from the brightly lit restaurants and bars and headed towards the water. She knew just the place. She walked quickly; her bag was heavy. The head knocked gently against the outside of her thigh as she walked. Inside her thighs were wet. His semen was inside her and his blood on her hands. She reached the place and, in the darkness, put the bag by her feet and leant over the wall, feeling for the line. She found it and pulled it up; she had strong arms, hard hands. After five minutes, the basket came to the surface. Ruby pulled away the strands of seaweed caught in the bamboo struts and rested it on the jut in the wall just below sea level. She reached down and took the head from the bag, unwrapped it, then she placed it just inside the basket and leant over the wall as far as she could whilst holding the head in her hands. She felt the cold water cover her wrists as she gripped the head and lowered the basket into the water. She held it there for a moment, waited until the water had made it too heavy for her to maintain her grip. She stared into the half-closed, glassy-looking eyes before she leant further over the parapet. The sea water was cold as it rose over her wrists. Her hands lost their grip as she gasped, ‘Goodbye my faithless lover.’
The head stared back at her as it sank. Ruby turned away and left to go back home.
Back in the Mansions she turned the key in the door, slipped inside her flat and into her room, then she leant against the door, closed her eyes and sighed, relieved. She was safe but she had the feeling she always got afterwards: lost, empty. Her heartbeat was calming. She opened her eyes and looked around and smiled. Her dolls stared back at her, their bright eyes looked at her adoringly.
‘I’m sorry, my babies, I couldn’t bring your daddy back with me. He wouldn’t come, I had to leave him in the hotel room. He wasn’t a very nice daddy. He wasn’t kind to Mummy. We didn’t like him, did we?’ She looked around the room at her dolls. They stared back. ‘Mummy will find you a better one tonight. Mummy will find you one we can keep forever.’ She clapped her hands in delight. From inside a cupboard a baby cried in answer. Ruby opened the cupboard door and took the baby doll from the shelf; it was still crying, ‘Mummy, feed me, Mummy.’
‘Shush,’ she patted the baby’s back, ‘in a minute my love, Mummy will feed you in a minute.’
Ruby put the doll back and as her hand lingered in the cupboard it traced the outline of something lying there. It was small, no bigger than a mobile phone, it was dry and hard. Ruby touched its face and started to cry. ‘Daddy wasn’t nice to Mummy at all.’
Chapter 6
Kin Tak, the mortuary technician, looked at the clock on the wall: it was almost 5 a.m. ‘Quick, quick,’ he said out loud. ‘No wasting time now. Finish the job. Finish it.’
Kin Tak had a form of Tourette’s syndrome that had been allowed to grow in the dark environment of the mortuary. He tried to curb it. He tried to suppress it but he was on his own for most of the day and night and he talked to himself incessantly. He talked to the people in the drawers. He talked to the dead that roamed his icy rooms, looking for their heaven.
He had worked through the night to make the girl ready. He washed her young body. He worked methodically, meticulously, marvelled at her beauty as he passed a cloth over her young skin. He talked to her as he washed her hair to remove the blood. Now he dried it with a towel, it crinkled into black glossy waves. Kin Tak held it in his hand, ‘Lovely, lovely.’ It was as soft as cotton wool, as springy as air. He marvelled at her slender arms, her slim thighs. She had no imperfections. Her skin was smooth and flawless as the day she slid from her mother’s uterus, fighting for breath in the outside world.
Now he hummed to himself as he pierced the young girl’s eye with the syringe and extracted fluid from the back of the eye. He was practising. Now that the pathologist had done his work it was Kin Tak’s turn. The fluid, vitreous humour, was a vital source of information for determining time of death. But they knew when she had died. She had died a few moments before they had run away and a few moments after they had cut off her hands and slit her throat. Now Kin Tak was allowed to practise his forensic skills before he did what he liked doing best.
Kin Tak was a diener, a mortuary technician. His job was to assist the pathologist in a post mortem examination, take tissue samples, weigh organs, take samples for the lab and record the findings of the post mortem. But Kin Tak was more than that – he was a student of the art of beautifying the dead and he was a student of pathology. He was a devoted mortuary technician who lived and slept amongst the dead. His skin seldom felt the sun, wind or rain on it. It had become cheese-like in its appearance. He practised his stitching whenever he could. Choppings gave him plenty of practice. But this was not a chopping tonight; these were wounds he had not seen before. He picked up the severed right hand. It was not a clean cut. It was a broad, layered wound, some of the flesh was missing. He would have to improvise by stretching what skin he could to stitch neatly. But not yet, he wasn’t ready yet. He moved down her body. Her small hips, not yet spread by childbirth. He combed her pubic hair.
The bell rang. Kin Tak felt the excitement turn his stomach but he was agitated. He hadn’t finished with the young woman’s body. It would have to stay where it was.
‘Fuck. Fuck.’ He snorted a giggle out of his nose and clamped his hand over his mouth to suppress it. ‘Sex. Sex.’
He knew she would come tonight. She wouldn’t mind the young woman’s body being on view. She would be pleased. She was still learning and he had such a lot more to teach her. She would pay him the way she always did. She would give him her body. She would take off her clothes and lie on the autopsy table; he would gently part her naked thighs and stroke her warm wet sex; but she would never let him do any more. She said that if she did, she would have to kill him.
He rushed to answer it. He squinted at the bright security light at the entrance haloed in moths. He was ready for her, he opened the door and stepped back, startled as he saw Mann standing there. He craned his neck to look past him into the darkness to see if there was anyone else and then he shook his head, agitated, disappointed: ‘Fuck.’
He stood back to allow Mann inside, then he scurried behind him almost tripping over in his haste to overtake him and get through the doors first. ‘Fuck. Shit. Too late now.’
Inside the autopsy room he turned and stared at Mann. He couldn’t take his eyes from Mann’s face. He remembered all too well every bereaved, haunted person who ever stood in that place. He felt the sorrow as well as the beauty of death: he collected it like a library of loss. When he looked at Mann he remembered the dead person that Mann had loved. He remembered Helen. Kin Tak had developed his senses to a point where he could see the restless spirits as they followed the living around. Helen followed Mann. She hadn’t always done. She had come back for a reason now. With a shiver, he unfroze his stare.
Mann followed him into the curtain of cold that lay behind the mortuary door. The place was always the same; even though it had recently had a facelift – new equipment, tables, the works – it still smelt the same: formaldehyde and meat.
‘How’s it going, KT? I hope you don’t mind me dropping in. I knew you’d be here. Is the autopsy completed on the Indian girl brought in last night?’ Mann looked over at the girl’s body laid out on the autopsy table.
‘Yes, very busy. Just finishing.’
‘I want to know your opinion about the weapon that was used to cut off her hands. What can you tell me?’
‘Ah. She was killed when her throat was cut. But…’
‘Yes?’
‘She would probably have bled to death just as quickly. The severing of her hands cut through the main artery. The blood must have been everywhere.’ Kin Tak’s eyes darted from Mann to the girl.
His eyes settled back on Mann and he waited. He wasn’t prepared to go on until Mann had met his side of the deal. Give a little: get a little in exchange. Give and take. Mann understood. In Kin Tak’s dead world his entire existence relied upon the knowledge of the whole story; he must know every detail about the death and how they came to have a date of birth on the outside of their mortuary drawer and a date of death ticket wrapped around their toe. But Mann could see that as much as Kin Tak wanted to know the details, he kept looking at the clock on the wall – he was nervous.
‘There must have been two hundred people there. She was part of a Triad initiation ceremony. We don’t know why she was killed. I found her in a dungeon. She was hog tied, her throat had been cut. I found her hands in the box.’
‘Okay, thank you, Inspector.’ He held up his hand, closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose. ‘That’s all I need to know.’ He snapped his eyes back open and stood up straight, business-like. ‘I can tell you, Inspector, that, after my examination, I conclude that her hands were severed by something other than a chopper or a saw, or a knife. They were severed by something as sharp as a razor but with three blades to it. It bit into her wrists, it snagged there and it cut right through. Yes, each cut is clean but there are so many that her wrist was torn apart.’
‘Have you ever seen that kind of damage before?’
‘No. Now you must excuse me, Inspector. I have much to do and the morning is coming. It is good to see you, come again soon.’ Kin Tak paused and turned and looked at Mann, as if he wanted to say something, then he shook his head and scurried on towards the door.
Mann walked back across the gravel car park to his car, his feet crunching on the surface. When he got to his car he paused and stood there for a few seconds. Whether it was the sound of his feet on the gravel or the smell of the shrubs around the edge of the car park that had done it, his memories would not allow him to get into his car or drive off. They demanded to be acknowledged. He stood for a few moments in the dark, listening to the first bird calling dawn, and he remembered that day when he had said his final farewell to Helen’s body. When he had stood where he was standing now, but could not cry. All he could do was rage inside. Two years ago he had felt as near to the edge as he had ever been. That was, until now. Now, he felt he had built a platform over that edge and he was living, sleeping, existing on it and all around him was a sheer drop.
Chapter 7
It was 8 a.m. when Mann stood with ten other officers in the incident room. Next to him were the two men he shared an office with: Detective Sergeant Ng and Detective Constable Li – a.k.a Shrimp.
‘Okay, this is how I see it.’ Tom Sheng addressed the new team.
The incident room was on the twentieth floor of the police headquarters building. It was split into three sections. The first section at the entrance was where the Senior Investigating Officer set up base. The SIO was the person in charge of the enquiry and decided which line it would take. A screen separated that from the largest part of the room, the central section that had the bulk of the PCs, filing cabinets, and a large desk with four interfacing PCs. Along the back of the room was one long desk and a further five PCs and a phone between each. The third section was a staff room and a general ‘spilling over’ room for impromptu meetings. Each section was separated by screens. Each screen a multi-purpose white board.
‘We work together on this. We need to move fast.’ Tom Sheng paused and looked around the room. ‘Collaboration is the key word here. I want no fucking egos taking over on this one. Chief Inspector Mia Chou and I will be allocating jobs to those best qualified, not those in a certain department.’
Mann looked over at Mia. She was perched on the edge of the central table with her arms crossed over her chest. She was immaculate as ever, just a small strand of hair had worked its way loose from the knot at the back of her head. She flicked it away irritably. She never wore lipstick. She played her looks down, looks distracted from the seriousness of her career. She was a good cop, conscientious, steady. That’s why she’d been promoted over him. There were very few other female officers of her rank. She’d worked hard for it. Mia did everything by the book. Mann did everything by his own rules. They were chalk and cheese but somewhere in the middle they both wanted the same things.
‘There will be no favouritism,’ Tom Sheng continued. ‘First of all, let’s be clear about events. What happened last night, Mann?’
Mann stepped up to the white board. He began pinning up photos. They were images of Rajini’s body squashed into the box; her arms were sticks in front of her face, held up to the camera. Her hands and the rooster were thrown into the box with her. There were shots from the autopsy. Mann didn’t need to look; he had it all stored in his brain whether he wanted it or not.
‘We got an anonymous call through to the hotline at 9 p.m. saying that there would be an initiation ceremony taking place that evening in Mong Kok.’
‘Any trace on it? Any chance of voice recognition?’ asked Sheng.
‘No. I’ve played it back. It’s someone being paid to read the details. It’s been sent via a third party. I left with Officers Li and Ng and we split into three teams, each covering a different section of Mong Kok.’ Mann put up a map of the area. ‘There were thirty officers altogether.’
‘So, you didn’t have enough manpower?’ Tom Sheng interrupted.
‘It wouldn’t have mattered if we’d had a fucking hundred times that amount,’ Mann snapped back. ‘It’s the most densely populated area in Hong Kong. Every doorway leads to a dozen more. In the end, it was all bullshit. It was in Yau Ma Tei, not in Mong Kok. It was off the night market here…’ Mann pointed to it on the map. ‘We were set a false trail. We were never meant to arrive on time, just meant to arrive.’
‘Why would someone want to run the risk of you finding it?’ Tom Sheng asked.
‘Because it was a special night. They knew we wouldn’t find it but they wanted to make sure it was acknowledged. Not only was the girl sacrificed but a new society was born. It is a branch of the Wo Shing Shing. I found their emblem amongst the burnt oaths. And I found this…’ Mann pinned up a photo of a lone wolf howling inside a circle. ‘Someone wants their birth announced.’
‘What’s the purpose of these new societies? Why change the format? Why start recruiting girls and ethnic minorities? What is the need for it?’ asked Sheng.
‘The Triads have always targeted the teenage underdog. The young Indian population feel abandoned. They feel marginalized. They can no longer compete. The Indians and the other minorities used to be on a level playing ground, now someone’s dug up the goal posts and moved them. School places are allocated by a points system and the higher up the social scale you are the more points you seem to have. Plus you have to read and write Mandarin.’
‘What do we know about the victim?’
‘We don’t have a name for her yet. The autopsy showed she died due to asphyxiation when her throat was cut. We know she was of Indian descent, approximately fourteen years of age.’
‘What’s the latest on Operation Schoolyard?’ asked Sheng.
Mia answered, ‘We have one operative in the school. She’s twenty but looks much younger. It’s been hard to infiltrate; hard to get someone convincing enough. She joined a month ago as a student in the senior school. Her aim is to infiltrate into the new gangs. It’s a tricky area, new to us, dealing with girls, and immigrants.’
‘This initiation was brutal,’ said Mann. ‘She’s young to handle this.’
‘She’s twenty,’ said Mia. ‘There are people in this room who went undercover at that age. The difference is, she’s a woman. But that isn’t a problem. We need to play the same game and keep up.’
‘All right.’ Tom Sheng looked around the room. ‘There’s one thing we haven’t covered. Operation Schoolyard is all about infiltrating the ranks of the new Triads. What we need now is someone to give us an insider’s view on what is really going on at the top. We need to know who’s making all the decisions that filter down to these kids. Who’s pulling the strings? We need an insider.’ Tom Sheng looked at Mann, He had a hard job keeping the smug look off his face. ‘I think that’s your job, Mann, don’t you?’
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