LEE WEEKS

The Trophy Taker

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2008

Copyright © Lee Weeks 2008

Lee Weeks asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9781847560780

Ebook Edition AUGUST 2008 ISBN: 9780007281879

Version 2018-05-24

Dedication

For my dad, Brian Davies Bateman, who gave me the gift of self-belief.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty One

Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter Twenty Three

Chapter Twenty Four

Chapter Twenty Five

Chapter Twenty Six

Chapter Twenty Seven

Chapter Twenty Eight

Chapter Twenty Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty One

Chapter Thirty Two

Chapter Thirty Three

Chapter Thirty Four

Chapter Thirty Five

Chapter Thirty Six

Chapter Thirty Seven

Chapter Thirty Eight

Chapter Thirty Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty One

Chapter Forty Two

Chapter Forty Three

Chapter Forty Four

Chapter Forty Five

Chapter Forty Six

Chapter Forty Seven

Chapter Forty Eight

Chapter Forty Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty One

Chapter Fifty Two

Chapter Fifty Three

Chapter Fifty Four

Chapter Fifty Five

Chapter Fifty Six

Chapter Fifty Seven

Chapter Fifty Eight

Chapter Fifty Nine

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty One

Chapter Sixty Two

Chapter Sixty Three

Chapter Sixty Four

Chapter Sixty Five

Chapter Sixty Six

Chapter Sixty Seven

Chapter Sixty Eight

Chapter Sixty Nine

Chapter Seventy

Chapter Seventy One

Chapter Seventy Two

Chapter Seventy Three

Chapter Seventy Four

Chapter Seventy Five

Chapter Seventy Six

Chapter Seventy Seven

Chapter Seventy Eight

Chapter Seventy Nine

Chapter Eighty

Chapter Eighty One

Chapter Eighty Two

Chapter Eighty Three

Chapter Eighty Four

Chapter Eighty Five

Chapter Eighty Six

Chapter Eighty Seven

Chapter Eighty Eight

Chapter Eighty Nine

Chapter Ninety

Chapter Ninety One

Chapter Ninety Two

Chapter Ninety Three

Chapter Ninety Four

Chapter Ninety Five

Chapter Ninety Six

Chapter Ninety Seven

Chapter Ninety Eight

Chapter Ninety Nine

Chapter Hundred

Chapter Hundred and One

Chapter Hundred and Two

Chapter Hundred and Three

Chapter Hundred and Four

Chapter Hundred and Five

Chapter Hundred and Six

Chapter Hundred and Seven

Chapter Hundred and Eight

Chapter Hundred and Nine

Chapter Hundred and Ten

Chapter Hundred and Eleven

Chapter Hundred and Twelve

Chapter Hundred and Thirteen

Chapter Hundred and Fourteen

Chapter Hundred and Fifteen

Chapter Hundred and Sixteen

Chapter Hundred and Seventeen

Chapter Hundred and Eighteen

Chapter Hundred and Nineteen

Chapter Hundred and Twenty

Chapter Hundred and Twenty One

Chapter Hundred and Twenty Two

Chapter Hundred and Twenty Three

Chapter Hundred and Twenty Four

The Trafficked

Preview

Chapter One

Chapter Two

About the Author

About the Publisher

1

Hong Kong 2003

Glitter Girl crouched in the darkness. Sweat trickled down her back to the base of her Lurex halter-top and her denim miniskirt rode up around her waist.

She didn’t dare move. She couldn’t see a thing. She tried to rub away the melted make-up that sweated into her eyes and made them sting, but she couldn’t – her hands were tied tightly behind her back. So instead she blinked as hard as she could and stayed absolutely still and hoped that it would come to her in a moment – something would tell her where she was and how she got there. So far, nothing. She did her best not to cry. She could hardly breathe as it was, through the tape over her mouth. She would definitely suffocate if she cried.

As her eyes searched the gloom, shapes began to appear, outlines to form. She looked down at her bare feet and saw that she was squatting on a thin mattress. Long ago it had had some sort of willow pattern, but now there were only dark-rimmed stains, bleeding into one another. To her right, two metres away, was the door through which she must have come, if only she could remember. She twisted around to her left to see what her hands were tied to and recoiled from what she saw. The wall behind her was covered in photos of women. They weren’t nice pictures – not even porno ones like the sort that Darren had up in his garage. The women in these photos stared out, slack-jawed and cloudy-eyed. They were all dead.

2

Detective Inspector Johnny Mann stepped out of his car and straight into a sauna. In the half-hour he’d been driving, cocooned in air-conditioning, the morning heat had arrived outside, sucked all the moisture from the ground and left the air as thick as a wet blanket.

He put on his sunglasses, pushed his black hair away from his face and looked up at the sky. His dark eyes were swamped with blue. Clear – good. He scanned the horizon … not for long. A bank of clouds sat pregnant with rain and ready to drop. A typical Hong Kong summer – forty degrees and a hundred per cent humidity – the perfect time to go somewhere else. But Mann wasn’t going anywhere. This was the end of a long night and the beginning of an even longer day. He had been on the first response team when they’d found the body. Hong Kong was used to murders, but not like this one.

He checked his watch and looked around the car park – one other vehicle – an unmarked police car. He was relieved. It meant he wouldn’t have to hang about. The autopsy was scheduled for eight. It was twenty to. The sooner they got going, the sooner they’d be able to get out. The mortuary was a place he’d never got used to. The bodies didn’t bother him but the smell – dentist meets butchers – stayed in his nostrils like school dinners and old people’s homes – there for life.

He took off his jacket and draped it over the back seat before reaching in and pulling out his briefcase. Then he slammed the door shut and strode across the gravel to the mortuary entrance. Mann had a tall, athletic English frame along with high cheekbones and a square jaw. He had hooded eyes: deep set, dark chocolate, and smudged with sadness.

His finger was barely off the buzzer before Kin Tak, the young mortuary assistant, appeared. He was smiling – enthusiastic as always – glad to see that Mann was early and eager to begin the morning’s autopsy rota. Dressed in his off-white coat, Kin Tak had that permanently dishevelled look of someone who had never known youth and had spent far too much time caring for dead people. In the mortuary hierarchy Kin Tak was a Diener. He moved, handled and washed the bodies. He didn’t get to do the technician’s job of removing and replacing the organs or sewing up the bodies afterwards, although he was hoping to do that someday. He practised his stitching whenever he could and when no one was looking.

Mann shivered as he hit the wall of cold just inside the door of the once ‘clinically clean’ but now slightly grubby autopsy room. The room had to be kept below minus five to stop further decomposition on bodies awaiting identification and autopsies. He stood squinting beneath a flickering fluorescent strip-light.

‘Full house?’ He looked around at the stainless-steel fridges that ran along three sides of the room.

‘All but two drawers. We had a gang fight come in overnight – twelve chopped – lots of needlework to be done. Lots of practice.’

Two men emerged from a doorway on Mann’s left. He knew one of them well – Detective Sergeant Ng. They’d worked together at the Organised Crime and Triad Bureau. The other man – young and slight – Mann had never seen before.

‘Good to see you again, Ng.’

‘Hello, Genghis.’ Ng came forward to shake Mann’s hand warmly. Ng was portly, in his mid-forties and already losing his hair, but still a notorious flirt. His soft brown puppy eyes, quick smile and deep intelligence made him a magnet for women. He always seemed to find one to look after him. ‘Thought they’d managed to lose you in the New Territories,’ said Ng with a lopsided smile. ‘I’m glad to see they didn’t.’

‘You know me, Confucius – easy-going type, can’t think why some people don’t like me.’ Mann grinned. ‘How’s it going with you?’

‘Not bad, not bad at all, thanks. Still working too hard for too little pay. We miss you down at the OCTB – things are really quiet there without you.’

Mann shrugged. ‘Yeah, well, I didn’t leave there willingly.’

‘I heard. You irritated the wrong people too many times – that was your trouble. You need to be more careful, Genghis. You should know by now: when you go up the mountain too often you eventually encounter the tiger.’

‘Yeah, but you cannot fight a fire with water from far away – unless of course you’re pissing in the wind, which you do all the time. Then it’s possible.’

Ng’s face broke into a big crooked grin.

‘Very good. Very good. But what does pissing in the wind mean?’

‘Very old English saying. I’ll explain it to you one day.’

‘You’ve been swotting up on your proverbs.’

‘Yep! Thought I’d give you a run for your money …’

Ng turned towards the officer just behind him. ‘Have you met Detective Li?’

Mann looked at the young man who was grinning up at him and evidently itching to speak. He was wearing a brown, seventies-style pinstriped suit with the widest orange kipper tie Mann had ever seen. Mann never remembered going through that fashion stage, although he guessed he must have. He hoped it hadn’t lasted long.

‘I know! I know!’ Ng rolled his eyes towards Li and put his hand up to his mouth to hide what he was about to say. ‘They get younger every year! But …’ he slapped the young detective on the back, ‘he may be only twenty-two and wet behind the ears … talks like a Yank and he definitely hasn’t found his dress sense yet … but …’ Detective Li’s anxious eyes flicked from one man to the other ‘… this guy passed with honours from cadet school. He can Kung Fu kick ass and he knows all about computers. He’ll get there – eventually. Hey, Li?’ Ng pulled him forward by the sleeve. ‘Don’t be put off by the look of this guy,’ he said, gesturing towards Mann. ‘He may look big and white. He may only be half Chinese but he’s still the meanest cop you’ll ever meet. Meet Genghis Khan.’

Clutching his laptop under one arm, the young detective stepped forward and stared up into Mann’s face.

‘Awesome,’ he said. ‘Truly awesome. Heard all about you, boss – honoured.’ His eyes stayed fixed on Mann’s face as he shifted his weight from one snakeskin boot to the other and grinned inanely. ‘You’re a legend – a one-man triad annihilator. Never heard you called Genghis Khan before, though.’

Ng thumped Mann in the ribs. ‘I named him that because he is a tenacious warrior and he looks like a wild man.’

Li giggled nervously – high-pitched and girly. Ng put a protective hand on his shoulder and edged him further forward.

‘And I have decided to call Li “Shrimp”, owing to his peculiar resemblance to one.’

The boiled-sweet complexion; the random crests of over-gelled hair. Mann could see what he meant.

‘Shrimp here is a regular Bruce Lee. Aren’t you?’ said Ng proudly.

Detective Li blushed a deeper scarlet and his eyes darted around the room. ‘I wouldn’t say that … but …’

Mann shook Li’s hand with an extra-firm grip that left Li wincing and Ng chuckling. ‘Good man – useful to have around. Take no notice of Confucius. Good to have you on the team, Shrimp.’

‘Thank you, boss …’ Li beamed, his mouth showing more gum than teeth. ‘Awesome.’

‘We called in at headquarters earlier, Genghis. The place is heaving. There are people there I haven’t seen for years,’ said Ng.

‘I know. This is big. The top brass want it dealt with super-fast, before we lose what few tourists we have.’

‘Is it true it’s a Gwaipoh?’

‘Yes, a white foreigner. She was discovered sixteen hours ago, dumped in a bin bag on a building site out in the New Territories, near Sha Tin. A workman found her when he started moving some rubble. She’d been there a few days.’

‘Anyone notice anything?’

‘No. There’s a constant stream of construction vehicles twenty-four hours a day. It’s easy to get in and out of the site. She could have been dumped at any time – day or night.’

Kin Tak appeared beside them, ready to start the autopsy.

Ng turned to Li. ‘You ready for this, Shrimp? You’re about to attend the autopsy of a murdered white woman – a rare thing over here. We usually only get to see dead triads, don’t we, Mann?’

‘Yes, and the more we get of those, the better,’ Mann said, and signalled to Kin Tak that they were ready for what was to come.

3

Morning finally arrived outside. Glitter Girl watched the faint rays of light squeeze through the cracks in the far wall. She watched them widen, soften and fill with spinning dust particles. She felt a little calmer. She loved pretty, sparkly things. She thought of home: Orange County, USA. It was a Saturday night and she was sixteen. It was her first ‘proper’ dance and her first date with Darren. Her mama said her dress was too tight, too revealing. She’d had to smuggle it out of the house in a bag and change in Darren’s car. That had been the most special night of her life, spinning round and round in Darren’s arms, showered with light beams from a rotating disco ball. Darren’s strong arms held her so tightly that she’d thought she would faint. That was the night she knew he was the one for her. How wrong she had been.

And then it occurred to her – the room was the same size as the one she and Darren had started out their married life in – in the days before he’d started hitting her. When he’d started that, there had been no stopping him. Oh sweet Jesus! Why did it remind her of that room? Was it because Darren had beaten her so badly in that room that she’d thought she was going to die, and now she actually was? Her mama always said she’d come to no good and she was right. She was right about a lot of things – especially about Darren.

Glitter Girl looked at the photos of the women. Some of them were staring straight at her, but their eyes were blank. She’d seen eyes like that before. When she was a little girl on the farm she’d fallen on the dung heap and, as she’d struggled to get out of the muck, she’d turned and the dead piglet had been right there in her face. Its eyes were cloudy too, and although it wasn’t alive it was moving with maggots.

In the dim light she tried to make out the room. On the far side, hanging from a hook beneath a row of shelves, she saw what looked like a piece of fur and strips of pale animal hide. On the shelf itself there were jars like the ones her grandma kept pickles in. She was trying to make out what was inside when she stopped, held her breath and looked towards the door. A key was turning. Someone was coming.

4

‘Okay, gentlemen, shall we begin? It’s a Jane Doe, is that right?’

Mr Saheed, the pathologist, had arrived. He was a tall, wiry fifty-five-year-old, originally from Delhi and now settled in the region. He had an abrupt manner, and a habit of grunting his reply, but it was just his way. He was a very good pathologist who never minded questions as long as they weren’t too puerile. Mann had learned a lot from him over the years and on the several occasions they had met over a mortuary slab.

The detectives waited while Saheed rammed his feet into a pair of white rubber boots and pulled on a starched white coat and plastic apron. He looked over his glasses and raised an eyebrow at Mann.

‘Yes. It’s a Jane Doe, sir, and I’ll be recording,’ Mann said, in answer to Saheed’s silent enquiry as to which of the detectives would be taking the role of assisting Kin Tak. ‘Ng here is photographer, and that leaves Detective Li to do the dirty work. Scrub up, Shrimp,’ he said, remembering the first time he had attended an autopsy. It was at the height of the invasion of the Vietnamese boat people. A pregnant woman and her two children had been washed up after spending a week in the water. It was an experience he’d never forget.

Kin Tak checked a number on a fridge door against one on his list, pulled out one of four drawers, slid a white body bag out onto the trolley and wheeled it over to the stand above a drain in the centre of the room.

Saheed began dictating into the microphone clipped to his breast pocket:

‘The head of a Caucasian woman … late twenties … frozen after death. Bluish discoloration around the mouth … no obvious sign of injuries.’ Mann looked over his shoulder as Saheed shone a light inside her mouth.

‘She looks like she’s had a fair amount of work done, sir.’

‘Yes. She should have dental records somewhere.’

‘Cause of death, sir?’

‘Asphyxiation of some kind – we will have to wait for the x-rays to be sure. Let’s move on. There’s plenty more of Jane to get through. Wash her hair, please, Kin Tak. Sieve the contents and send them off for analysis.’

Kin Tak unzipped the bag along its length and lifted out a woman’s thigh, dissected at the knee and hip. He weighed it in a set of scales suspended above the table, before placing it on the slab. Ng measured it and recorded its dimensions on his pad.

Saheed turned the leg over twice, examining it closely before lifting his head to address the policemen. ‘Tell me what your observations are, Officer,’ he said to Li, who had managed to avoid getting too close to the table so far.

Li stepped forward and stared nervously at the leg. ‘Uh …’ His eyes darted hopelessly around the room in search of an answer.

‘And yours, Inspector?’ Saheed turned to Mann.

Mann pointed to the knee joint. ‘Pretty impressive, sir. Someone enjoys his work. Likes it to look neat.’

The pathologist grunted his agreement before addressing Li again. ‘Do you cook, Officer? Ever had to joint or bone meat? No? Well, let me tell you, it’s a skill. You need to be at least a competent surgeon or at worst a good butcher. You need a very sharp knife and you need to know where to saw, chop and cut. Like here,’ he said, tapping the open knee joint with his scalpel. ‘Now, let’s see what else we have … Victim is approximately twenty-five years old, five foot five inches tall, and … what’s this?’ He paused to study a mark on the inside of the thigh.

‘We have us a biter,’ Kin Tak blurted out, unable to contain his excitement.

The pathologist looked up, nodded and smiled at his assistant. He allowed Kin Tak his little eccentricities and his almost Tourette’s-like need to voice his observations. ‘Yes … There is a human bite mark here on the inside of the thigh, made after death occurred. Within twelve hours, I would say.’ Ng stepped forward to photograph the bite mark and measure dimensions in preparation for a cast to be made. ‘She had been dead at least a week before being dismembered.’

‘So, someone hung on to her after they killed her and before they froze her?’

‘Why would they do that?’ Li looked at Mann.

‘All sorts of reasons, Shrimp. None of them nice.’

5

Reasons? He shrugged. She had made him feel good – reason enough. He hadn’t wanted to let her go. He had a video of her death, which he watched often. He was watching it now – sat in his chair, remote in one hand, cock in the other. Ready to pause and rewind at his favourite bit. The look on her face when she knew this time was the last! He loved that bit.

He watched himself turn and grin at the camera, a length of twine in his hand. The girl, frantic, trying to get away from him. But she couldn’t. She was tied tightly to the chair. Only her pretty little head moved in tiny shakes as she squealed into the gag. There was nothing she could do. Her fate was in his hands. Wait … It was coming to his favourite bit now. Tourniquet in place. Turn it once, twice … turn and tighten. Hold it for longer this time … Yes! She knows this is it! Her eyes bulged. Her body convulsed. The shaking stopped. Still he carried on watching. This was his favourite part of the film. She was dead but he wasn’t finished with her. Pause. Rewind. Pause. Rewind.

6

Saheed waited for Ng to finish photographing the bite mark before continuing:

‘The right arm of the victim has been cleanly dissected at the shoulder joint. Obvious signs of injury around the wrist: deep lacerations, residual debris.’ He picked out some fibres enmeshed in the flesh. ‘Rope fibres,’ he said, holding his tweezers aloft for Li to take the sample from him. ‘The hand is still attached, two fingers remain intact but lifted from the bone …’ Saheed scraped beneath the nails, and tapped the scrapings into a plastic dish, ‘which is common with bodies found in water.’ He cut the lifted skin from the woman’s finger.

‘Found in water, sir?’ Li spoke.

‘They had been frozen, hadn’t they? When they thawed they created a lot of liquid. Give me your hand,’ he said, at the same time reaching over and taking it. He wrapped the woman’s cut skin around Li’s index finger before passing his hand to Ng to take a print. Ng rolled Li’s finger, and the woman’s, in the ink several times. Pressing hard onto the pad, he held it there to ensure a good print. Li’s boiled face blanched.

‘You all right, Shrimp?’ It looked to Mann like he was about to throw up.

‘Totally.’ Li cleared his throat while managing a half-smile. ‘No problemo.’

‘Good lad.’ Mann and Ng exchanged grins.

‘Okay, gentlemen, let’s move on, shall we?’ Saheed peeled off his gloves and apron and pulled out a new set from the box above the sink. He indicated to Li to do the same and resumed his dictation:

‘The torso is showing greenish-black discoloration on the abdomen – a sign of decomposition. There is a deep cut which runs directly across from one hip bone to the other, measuring …?’

Mann stepped forward. ‘Twenty-one centimetres,’ he announced, holding the ruler while Ng photographed.

‘A large-bladed knife with a sawing action made this wound, and it was made at least twelve hours after death.’

Li shook his head with disbelief. ‘How do you know that? How do you know the size of the knife? Awesome!’

Saheed paused, looked over his glasses at Li, then, with a small upward jerk of the head, he beckoned him nearer.

He’ll learn … thought Mann, as Li hesitated. The hard way …

‘Come closer, young man. I want to show you something.’ Mr Saheed guided Li’s hands to the edge of the wound. ‘Put your fingers in there and gently pull back the surrounding flaps of skin … Now what do you see?’

Li reached in gingerly.

‘A pattern of straight and jagged cuts, sir …’ he held his breath, ‘along the length of the wound.’ He stood up and turned his head away to breathe.

‘Stay there!’ Mr Saheed said as he held on to Li’s retreating hand. ‘Give him the ruler, Inspector.’ Mann handed it over. ‘Now … how long are the horizontal cuts?’

‘Four centimetres, sir.’ Li measured it with his free hand.

‘How far into the muscle and flesh has the knife travelled? Fingers in, young man, get on with it!’

‘Right through, sir. The cut goes past the fat and through the muscle.’

‘As far in as the length of your thumb, would you say?’

‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Okay. So the blade has to be at least that thick, doesn’t it? Does that answer your question, young man?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Li stood up and backed away to safety. He looked like he was about to throw up.

Mann winked at him. You had to admire his guts – he’d just had to ask, and that was a sign of a good detective. You had to be a good listener and a great questioner. Of course, timing was also important, but Shrimp hadn’t learned that bit yet.

Saheed moved his attention to the upper half of the torso.

‘There is a cluster of small burns across the chest area – cigarette burns by the look of them.’ He scanned the scatter of black dots, a centimetre in diameter, that were spattered across her chest and collarbone.

‘They were made over a period of days and are at different stages of healing.’ Li didn’t ask, even though he wanted to. Mr Saheed hovered over her chest. ‘And there is a tattoo here above the left breast. Can’t make out what it is.’ He paused, peeled off his gloves, and waited while Mann and Ng finished photographing and plotting the position of the tattoo. As he waited he was handed a slip of paper from a mortuary technician. He took it, studied it, picked up his file and flipped back over his notes.

‘Something else, gentlemen. According to the results of these blood tests …’ he checked his notes again and looked over his glasses at the detectives ‘… there isn’t just one woman on this table.’

The video stopped. He sat back, satiated, weary. He closed his eyes. Then the crying started. Behind him Glitter Girl cowered in the corner of the room. Still sat in the chair, his head relaxed against the back of the seat. Still holding the remote. He opened his eyes and looked at her.

‘Your turn will come – be patient. You just paint your pretty nails like I told you – make them sparkle.’

7

‘All three Caucasian?’

‘We may never know for sure, but the measurements, the forward curve to the femur, they tally.’

‘We may get lucky with some IDs,’ said Mann. ‘We have one skull, in pretty good shape at least, and a tattoo.’

‘And a fingerprint,’ added Li. He wasn’t going to let them forget that.

‘We’ll download these photos we’ve taken onto Detective Li’s laptop – get them straight across to headquarters so that they can begin working on it,’ said Mann. ‘Let’s hope it’s enough to positively establish the race and identity of these women. One Gwaipoh is bad enough – three will start a mass exodus.’

‘What about the texture of the skin?’ asked Li. ‘Would that help to give the ethnicity of the victim away, sir?’

‘How?’

‘Everyone knows that Gweilos have really rough skin and are very hairy.’

Mann looked at him, half-amused, half-appalled. ‘Yeah, that’s about as true as the one about all Chinese men having tiny cocks. Oh wait! That one is true!’ He turned back to the pathologist who was suppressing a grin.

‘Any theory about cause of death, sir?’ asked Mann.

‘We need to wait for the toxicology results to be sure about poisoning, but I suspect the cause of death to be asphyxiation again – manual strangulation or with the aid of a ligature. We’re just waiting for the x-rays to come back; that might give us an idea of how it was done. Right, let’s see what else we can find.’ He pressed his fingers inside the wound again and eased it apart.

‘We’re quite lucky here – because of the freezing process we still have some organs left intact. However …’ his gloved fingers disappeared inside ‘… some are not where they should be.’ He looked at Li.

‘Sir?’

‘The ovaries and uterus are missing …’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Li, before he could stop himself.

The pathologist paused and looked at him. ‘It means … young man …’

Li blinked back at him, ready for the worst, but before Mr Saheed could answer, Kin Tak exploded:

‘We have a trophy taker …’ and immediately smacked his hand across his mouth to silence his excited giggle.

8

Before the process of reclaiming land from the sea, Hong Kong Island was just a big rock. Now, the further up the Rock you lived, the more prestigious the address. At the top, the Peak represented the pinnacle of affluence. Its lofty head rose above the smog and heat, affording some respite from the stifling summers. Its wooded areas were a welcome contrast to the skyscraper world below. It was where the fabulously wealthy lived; where fleets of lucky-numbered Bentleys sat idling in air-conditioned garages. Up to two million US was paid in Hong Kong for a lucky number plate. Two stood for ‘easy’ or ‘fast’. Three for ‘living’ or ‘giving birth’. Six for ‘longevity’. Eight for ‘prosperity’. It wasn’t just number plates and the numbers weren’t always lucky. Four stood for death. Two and four combined – fast death.

Halfway up the Rock towards the Peak were the Mid-levels, a sought-after residential area populated by high-earning professionals. At the foot of the Rock was the business heart of Hong Kong: Central District.

Headquarters was situated at the top of Hollywood Hill, on the rise above Central District towards the Mid-levels. It was a wonderful Victorian colonial legacy: big, white and smack-bang at the top of the hill. At one time Headquarters was a ‘one-stop shop’ where criminals could be held for questioning, interviewed, judged, sentenced and incarcerated all in one place. Now it was the centre for all serious crimes.

In room 210 Superintendent David White sat behind a heavy oak desk. On one side of the desk were photos of his grandchildren. On the other was an engraved cigar box and a small silver rugby ball on a stand – a trophy from his coaching days, awarded for surviving five unbeaten seasons and presented to him by his beloved police rugby team.

In the centre of the room a colonial-style fan hung down from the ceiling and whirred lazily at half speed.

Superintendent White was not only the senior officer in charge of the investigation but also Mann’s mentor and an old friend. He commanded great respect in the force, one of the only non-Chinese senior officers to speak fluent Cantonese. Not that he needed to with Mann, who, with a Chinese father, English mother and educated in England, was fluent in either language.

David White was approaching retirement. He had given his life to fighting crime in the colony and now was being gently phased out under Chinese rule. He knew it was time to go but it didn’t stop him mourning the end of an era. He had arrived in the colony in the sixties when the police force had been one of the most corrupt in the world. When the clean-up came in the seventies he lost many of his good friends. Accepting pay-offs from triads, even working with them to keep the crime level under control, was the norm at that time. Some officers admitted their guilt and did their time. Many more took the money and ran. David White stayed. He helped the Hong Kong police force to develop into one of the finest in the world. He wished he felt happier about leaving it to others.

‘DNA?’

He didn’t wait for Mann to sit down. He had the photos from the autopsy spread over his desk.

‘No chance, David. The bin bag is a great place to rot – makes two days look like seven.’

‘Any reports of missing foreigners?’

‘Fifty in the last year, and those are just the ones we know about. They’re the ones that someone cares enough about to report missing. We don’t know whether there’s a particular ethnicity he goes for. It could be black, Asian, mixed race … we have no idea yet. And I’ve asked to go further back than one year, David. I have a hunch the head we found is much older.’

‘Bloody hell!’ White rubbed his bald head with his hands – a sure sign he was stressed. ‘Hong Kong can be proud of this one. It’s all we bloody well need,’ he moaned. ‘We are going to have so much heat on our backs, Mann. Say goodbye to life as you know it till this is solved. This is going to be our home for the foreseeable future.’

The Superintendent got up from his desk and walked over to the window where he pulled at the louvre blind to observe the day. The morning smog was lifting and rapidly being replaced by rain clouds. ‘But, on the positive side …’ He let the blind go and turned back to Mann, smiling. ‘At least you’re back at Headquarters.’

Mann grinned back at his old friend. ‘Ten months, David! It felt like a lifetime,’ he said, shaking his head with relief. ‘I thought I was going to be forgotten in Sha Tin. Lucky for me they found the bodies out there. You have no idea how good it is to be back.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘I still don’t understand why they transferred me. I’d only been at the OCTB for eighteen months. I expected to stay there for at least three years. I thought I was doing a good job – making some progress.’

‘Yes, well … You were making progress, that was the problem. There are some people, Mann, and not just at the OCTB, who hoped they’d never see you again. You never know when to ease up on the triads, Mann. You could do with having a bit more respect for death. You might be a big lad, but there are still plenty of foundations out there that need filling. Sometimes I think you go looking for trouble.’

He paused, looked squarely at Mann and waited for a reaction. Realising he wasn’t going to get one, he sat down heavily.

‘I was just doing my job, David,’ Mann replied. ‘Since when did that become a crime?’

White shook his head and sighed. ‘Your job, and a bit extra, Mann. You forget I’ve known you all your life. I knew your dad when we were both wet behind the ears – him just starting out in business and me just off the boat. I was proud to know him, proud to call him a friend. After his death I was delighted that you wanted to come into the police force. You’ve proved your worth many times. There are few policemen with your level of intuition for a case, Mann, but there are none so reckless of their own safety either. I know how you think. I’ve seen you on the cricket field. I’ve watched you on the rugby pitch. I was proud to be your coach for many years. You were the best player the police team ever had. I know what kind of sportsman you are: you give everything you have and a little more, and you hate to lose. But, more than that, good sportsmanship is paramount to you. And that’s all right on the sports field, Mann, but not in real life. Right or wrong, black or white, there’s no grey area with you. But there is in real life. Your father was just the same – a strong, upright and honest man – but it was his inability to see the grey that led to his death …’

White stopped abruptly. He wanted to say more, but one look at Mann told him he had already overstepped the boundary.

‘My father stood up for what he believed in, David. He died because he refused to pay protection money to a bunch of thugs. Just because it’s the norm doesn’t make it right. My father died rather than compromise his beliefs.’

‘I know. I know.’ White held his hands up, calling for a truce. ‘But it was such a great loss … Such a huge loss for you and your mother. For all of us.’

Mann knew that the Superintendent meant it – White missed Mann’s father. He missed all the good men he had known in his life. He was coming up to that point when he looked back and reminisced more than he looked forward. The last year had seen the Superintendent shrink inside the uniform that he used to fill with such pride. His retirement couldn’t come quick enough now, and yet it was the last thing he really wanted.

White inhaled deeply and shook his head, world weary.

‘And now I begin to despair that anything will make a difference any more. Fighting against the triads is useless. They have moved north to do their business in China. It will be impossible to control them now.’

It was the first time Mann had heard him speak in those terms. It took him by surprise. He had never thought of his old friend as a quitter.

‘I know things have been difficult since the Handover, but we will win in the end, David. Believe me, we will find a way to defeat them. I’m not prepared to give up. And you’re right – I don’t see a grey area when it comes to justice.’

‘Mann – let’s face it, you love to tread on toes. Since the Handover there are a lot of well-connected criminals that the Chinese government call patriots who we are supposed to accept as pillars of the community – when we all know them to be nothing but gangsters.’ White shook his head sadly. ‘And the trouble is, you don’t know whose toes they are until you step on them too hard and it’s too late to say sorry.’

‘I’m not going to apologise for any of it, David. If people have nothing to hide then they shouldn’t fear me. I didn’t join up to allow the triads to run Hong Kong … I just don’t get it – returning to China was supposed to mean tougher penalties on triads – they used to shoot these guys daily. But now the Chinese government is making deals with them. How does that work?’

‘I don’t know. It’s hard to know who’s pulling the strings these days in the government and in the police force – especially at the OCTB.’

‘Tell me about it.’ Mann pinched his thumb and forefinger together. ‘I was this close to nailing that bastard Chan. I was getting really close to finding out exactly what he was up to, when whoosh.’ He threw his hands up in the air. ‘They virtually took my chair away from beneath me and posted me out to the back of beyond.’

The Superintendent sat back in his old leather chair, which had served him for the last thirty years but was now beginning to show its age, just like its owner. Then he sat up, looked hard at Mann and slammed his forearms on the arms of the chair.

‘But, for now, I need this case solved – ASAP. And that’s what we need to concentrate on, not the triads and definitely not Chan. I know how much you hate him, Mann. I am with you on that, but I want no personal vendettas played out now. His time will come, I promise you that.’

He paused for a moment as if he intended to speak further on the subject, but then thought better of it. Mann knew what he was going to say. He was going to say that Mann would be a better policeman if his judgement wasn’t sometimes clouded by his hatred of all things triad and especially of all things Chan-related. And that Chan was not responsible for the death of Mann’s father. But David White didn’t say it. He merely paused, and the pause said it all.

‘Now, as for the workings of it all,’ he said, businesslike once more and changing tack. ‘I am to head the investigation. You will be my second-in-command. We will set up an operations room at the end of the hall downstairs. We have recruited officers from all over the district to help. Some are already here. The rest will be arriving tomorrow. Detective Sergeant Ng and Detective Li will share an office with you. It’ll be a bit cramped and hot, but then you know what it’s like at Headquarters – no such thing as working air-con.’

‘Hot and sweaty – just the way I like it.’ Mann got out of his chair and picked up his jacket.

‘Remember what I said, Mann – be careful, but most of all be clever, and don’t let that hot head of yours take charge.’

‘You know me, David …’

‘That’s what I’m worried about. I promised your mother I’d keep you alive at least until I retire, and I’ve only got six months left. Please wait till I’m safely back home with my garden gnomes and Sunday papers before getting yourself killed, will you? Now, where are you going to start?’

‘In the Sports Bar.’

‘It’s a bit early, isn’t it?’

‘Not for the person I want to talk to.’

9

Mann picked his way past the police officers on the stairs and paused in the entrance hall before passing through the heavy oak doors. He stood on the black and white tiled floor and breathed in the smell of lavender wood polish and Brasso and allowed himself a self-congratulatory moment. He had been given a reprieve, for which he was extremely grateful. Now he was back in the building he loved, working on a proper investigation instead of chasing traffic offenders. If he was lucky they wouldn’t transfer him back when the case was finished. If he was lucky and very good … so not likely then.

He went outside, crossed the car park and walked the steep road down to Central District. The area was number one in the region for shopping and commerce, with its golden skyscrapers, plush shopping malls and one of the most prestigious hotels in the world – The Royal Cantonese. Many deals were struck by an elite few in its Sports Bar, past the Doric columns and just left of the foyer.

James Dudley-Smythe was propping the bar up as Mann walked in. Originally from Cambridge, he had lived most of his life in Hong Kong. He was fabulously wealthy, with a large house on the Peak. He owned a fleet of Rolls-Royces and employed two full-time chauffeurs. But money really hadn’t brought him happiness. Besides his massive drinking problem, rumour had it that he could only achieve an erection when indulging in rough sex. Pain was what did it for him, if anything did any more.

He picked up hostesses on a nightly basis, but half the time he couldn’t remember whether he’d got what he paid for or not. Most of the girls were wise to it and knew that if they gave him enough drink he would pass out and they could get their money for doing nothing. Some weren’t quite so lucky.

Mann sat down on the stool next to him. ‘How’s it going, James?’ he asked, as the waiter brought him a vodka on the rocks.

Dudley-Smythe was, as always, impeccably dressed: sports jacket, cravat, pressed trousers and shiny brogues. He liked to say that you could always tell a man’s breeding by the state of his fingernails. He never missed his weekly manicure.

‘Rather well, thank you, Mann. And yourself? Married yet? I thought you were going to marry that pretty English girl?’

‘No, afraid not.’ Mann shifted his weight on the bar stool. ‘Been too busy. Talking of which, I’m working on a big case at the moment. Maybe you can help me with it?’

James replaced his glass on the bar, a little unsteadily, and motioned to the barman for a refill. ‘Shame that … I thought she looked perfect for you. Feisty little thing, wasn’t she?’ James Dudley-Smythe took a sideways glance at Mann.

Mann said nothing – he’d let the old drunk have his fun a little longer. He waited while the barman finished pouring his drink.

‘Still playing cricket? You’re a damn fine bowler, you know, Mann. All those years in private school in England did wonders for you. Of course, it helps having an English mother – big-boned stock.’

‘No time for cricket right now, James. Too busy – as I said.’

‘Sorry. Do go on, dear boy … Big case … I’m all ears.’

Mann hailed the barman to refresh James’s empty glass and thus ensure his concentration.

‘Over the last twenty years, have you ever heard about either a Gweilo or Chinese who took his S&M way too far?’

James knocked back his newly arrived scotch and motioned to the barman to pour another. He looked visibly uncomfortable with the reference to his sexual practices. Mann had had to reprimand him once after a new foreign girl (who didn’t understand the rules and didn’t know to ply him with drink) had found herself handcuffed to a bed and at the receiving end of one of Dudley-Smythe’s party games that involved a whip and a blindfold. She had to be briefly hospitalised. She made a complaint but didn’t press charges and was miraculously recovered by the time the cheque cleared.

‘Well, that was some time ago now, Mann. I explained about that …’

‘James, bottom-smacking is one thing, torture is quite another. I want to know if any of the women have mentioned someone who goes much too far, someone who scares them? Has there been any talk like that?’

James took a large gulp of scotch and said thoughtfully: ‘That’s more of a Filipino thing. That’s where you can get away with more these days – if you know what I mean. Haven’t seen many Chinese indulging in that sort of sport, mainly Europeans. But then, you’re not describing something that has to do with sex, are you, Mann? You’re after a psycho?’

Mann had to smile at the wily old drunk – he still had his lucid moments.

‘Yes, you’re right, James. But he takes trophies from his victims, of a sexual nature. He enjoys inflicting pain on women. It might have started like that.’

‘Can of worms, old boy. Can of worms.’ Dudley-Smythe shook his head remorsefully. Mann wasn’t buying it – he could see the glint in the old pervert’s eye.

‘Yeah, well let’s keep it legal, hey, James? Over sixteen would be good.’

‘Of course! Absolutely! Wouldn’t dream of it, certainly not! You know, come to think of it, there is someone who might be able to help you. It’s who we all go to …’ he wetted his thin, livid lips with whisky, ‘all of us who enjoy a spot of spanking. Club Mercedes – girl named Lucy – Chinese. She’s the one to talk to. She’s a specialist. One of a kind.’

Mann could swear he saw James shiver.

10

Glitter Girl was supposed to run – that was the game. It was always the same one. She was supposed to run and to hide and then he would come and find her.

She ran barefoot through the newly planted forest. The bark was rough beneath her feet and the spiky leaves scratched her face. She ran till her lungs burned, ready to burst. She ran till her legs wobbled like jelly. She knew she was running in circles and that there was no way out. When she could run no more she crouched in the vegetation and made herself as small as she could and stayed absolutely still. Listening hard, she prayed silently: Sweet Jesus, save me. I’ll be good – I promise. Save me, Lord … She didn’t hear a reply from Jesus. All she heard was, Ready or not … I’m comin’ …

11

In the skies over Hong Kong, on a packed plane from Heathrow, Georgina Johnson prepared to touch down. She was tired. It had been a long journey and she hadn’t slept at all on the plane. She looked around. People were returning to their seats to get ready for landing. One woman, sitting across the aisle to Georgina, had been doing her make-up for the last hour. All but two of the passengers were Chinese. Georgina had never seen so many Chinese people before. Sometimes, as a child, out shopping with her mother in their hometown of Newton Abbot, a medium-sized market town in Devon, she had seen small family groups of Chinese. There were never more than two noisy children at a time, happily chasing their parents’ heels or pulling on their arms. The family only had eyes for one another – protected in their Chinese capsule. As if the rest of the world were a dream that they could choose to step in or out of, but in which everyone else was trapped. Every morning Georgina’s mother, Feng Ying, walked the three miles from their home on the outskirts, into the town centre to the produce market next to the multi-storey car park. There she haggled and badgered the stallholders for the best vegetables, the cheapest meat. Then, content with her dealings, she allowed herself a social call – a brief visit to the Golden Dragon, the town’s only Chinese restaurant. It was situated above the multi-storey and looked down over the market. The Golden Dragon was owned by the Ho family, a family of Hong Kongese who had come over with just enough money to open a take-away, which, within a few years, expanded to a restaurant. For Feng Ying, the Golden Dragon provided an oasis in the pasty-white town of expanding new-builds where she had lived since the day her husband Adam Johnson had brought her to Britain. Where she’d lived alone, since the day her husband had not come home. He had left for no apparent reason. From that day she’d set about making do without him. She lived on the small savings that her husband had put into an account for her and she crocheted decorative pieces of linen, bedspreads and tablecloths for the upmarket handicraft shop in town. At times, when they needed her, when they had a large function which required her artistic eye at decorating and table setting, she helped in the Golden Dragon. But Feng Ying’s main job was to bring her infant daughter up as best she could. She was a foreigner in a country she barely knew but she found strength through her child. Every day she bundled her pink, washed and pampered baby into the pram and manoeuvred it into the outside world. She faced all life’s obstacles for this child and forged a bond between mother and daughter that was dependence and love entwined. Now Feng Ying was dead and Georgina must make it alone – something she had never imagined in her twenty-two years that she would have to do.

After clearing passport control Georgina collected her case and made her way through the new airport, a massive high-ceilinged hangar on Lantau Island. Pulling her heavy case behind her, she looked anxiously along the line of names written on cardboard held up by eager-looking drivers. Most were written in Chinese. It took her a few minutes before she saw hers. Georgina written in red felt pen on brown card and held up by a leathery-faced old man. He greeted her in Chinglish, smiling and nodding profusely as he picked up her case. Georgina tried to explain that it had wheels and that he could pull it along if he wanted. But he didn’t understand and it didn’t matter. He hardly struggled with the weight. Small and wiry he might have been, but he was definitely strong.

As they stepped outside, the bright sun slapped Georgina in the face and the heat wrapped itself around her like cling film. By the time they reached the taxi, less than a minute’s walk, she was sweating and couldn’t wait to find shade inside the cab.

The taxi driver’s name was Max, but it hadn’t always been. A teacher handed out the English names in class. He had been allotted the name Maxwell, which he later shortened to Max on the advice of an American tourist. Fong Man Tak was his birth name; he preferred Max.

Max was not altogether sure what age he was: there was no definitive documentation. But he had counted the years from when he was told by his mother that he had reached the age of eight. So now he thought he was sixty, and his mother was long dead.

Max had been a taxi driver for the last thirty years, and most of the time it brought him a modest income. Taxis were thick on the ground in Hong Kong so he had to work long hours to make it worthwhile.

Georgina peered silently out of the window. She was mesmerised by the cars all around her. She hadn’t envisaged Hong Kong looking quite so un-British. She’d thought, as a former British colony, that somehow it would mirror London in miniature. Or perhaps it would look like a Victorian seaside town with mock Tudor B&Bs, maybe with a dilapidated pier. She didn’t know quite which, but she certainly hadn’t expected it to look so completely different. It seemed to her to be a futuristic alien world of skyscrapers.

She tilted her head at the window and stretched her eyes upwards. ‘Gods,’ she thought, the skyscrapers were like gods’ legs: perfected from glass and chrome, glinting gloriously in the sunshine. There were so many different kinds: some were honeycombed like rectangular wasps’ nests; others were skeletal, jutting skyward as bony white fingers. And the strangest thing of all were the building sites that bridged the gaps between the buildings like gums between teeth.

All the time Georgina studied her new environment, Max studied her in the mirror. He was fascinated by her cascading curls and her pale, luminescent beauty. It was not the first time he’d had a foreign girl in his car. Many girls had sat where she sat now. They were strange, unearthly creatures, the Western girls. They didn’t seem real to Max. They were images from a film: plastic, false. Sometimes Max thought about the other girls, the ones who had ridden in his cab. He wondered where they’d gone.

One of the girls who’d sat in the back of Max’s cab, where Georgina was sitting now, had not gone far. Part of her now resided in a drawer of a mortuary fridge. The rest of her was still waiting to be found.

12

Max turned the cab into a narrow street – typical of the ones found just a stone’s throw from the main tram line on Johnson Road. The road was so narrow that the washing hung from poles, jutting out from the overhead balconies and meeting in the centre of the street, hanging down like heavily laden tree branches, providing a canopy over the busy street. They trapped smells and dust, but afforded some welcome shade in the heat of the day.

The cab pulled up outside the mansion block on a side street in Wanchai.

Georgina thanked Max, took her case from him and wheeled it into the building. She checked her piece of paper, the one that Mrs Ho had written the address on, in both Chinese and English: fourth floor, apartment 407. She took the lift – a small oppressive space that only had room for her and her case. As she wheeled the case out onto the fourth-floor landing, she paused outside the apartment door to gather her thoughts. She had come a long way to reach this point. She hoped it would prove worth it. She took a deep breath, rang the bell and waited.

A young woman in a dressing gown opened the door. She looked like she’d just got up. She wore no makeup and her hair was a mess. Her face was as rounded as a full moon, while her nose was small and flattened, emphasising the largeness of her visage. Her eyes were set slightly wide apart, and then there was the mouth, like Georgina’s, a family trait – lips that formed an almost perfect circle topped by a cupid’s bow.

The woman grinned. She had a gold crown just behind one of her eyeteeth.

‘You got to be Georgina, right?’ Her voice was loud, deep and brackish. The words had a hint of American, but the accent remained pure Hong Kong staccato.

Georgina nodded. ‘Ka Mei?’

‘Yeah, thaz me. Call me Lucy – English name more easy. Come in, please. Let me help you.’

She pulled Georgina’s case in and ushered her forward into the dimly lit flat. Immediately in front of them, as they entered, was a small lounge area. Beyond that was a fifties-style Formica breakfast bar. Behind it there was a one-ring cooker, a microwave and a decrepit water heater that appeared to cling to the wall by its fingernails. There were two rooms on the left, and a bathroom ahead. Lucy pulled Georgina’s case into the middle of the lounge.

‘Sorry. I expect you later. But no worries, huh?’ She patted Georgina on the arm. ‘You very pretty girl – so tall.’ She laughed. ‘Ka Lei!’ she called. ‘Come, meet your cousin …’

There was a screech from the bathroom and a young woman came flying out. She looked quite different from her sister. She was taller, but much slighter. Her features were also long and thin, accentuated by her hair that fell from a centre parting and divided into two shiny black sheets falling either side of her face. She was so excited. She had been on a high ever since they had known that Georgina would be coming.

She barged past her sister (falling over Georgina’s huge suitcase, which filled the tiny lounge) and threw open the bedroom doors. Ka Lei squealed with delight as she pulled her cousin out of the room and dragged her around the tiny flat, pointing things out as they went. There was always something else she absolutely must show her.

‘Here is our bedloom,’ shrieked Ka Lei, as she dived into the first open door and jumped onto the bed in the centre of the room.

Lucy came behind her, scolding but smiling. Georgina squeezed past the bed to look at the view from the oversized windows, more out of politeness than anything else. All she could see was the side wall of the adjacent building. By pressing her face against the pane and looking up she would have been able to see a corner of sky, and, looking down, people’s heads would have been just visible below. But she didn’t; she stood politely, staring through the never-been-cleaned glass at the blacked-out windows of the building opposite, which was so near you could almost reach out and touch it. Georgina was used to looking out of the window and seeing fields. Now she knew what it was to feel claustrophobic.

They eventually collapsed onto the bed in what was to be Georgina’s room. It was identical to the sisters’: the same two lazy bamboo blinds hanging lopsided against the oversized panes, the same wallpaper peeling from the wall and the same air-conditioning unit droning away in honour of Georgina’s arrival.

All three sat on the bed.

Ka Lei reached for Georgina’s hand. ‘We hope you happy here … wit us,’ she said.

Georgina felt too overwhelmed to answer. It was all so strange. So many new things to take in. She looked around her. Had she left England for this – this scruffy, dark and damp-smelling apartment? Then she looked back at Ka Lei, sitting on the bed, waiting expectantly, smiling at her, and she knew it didn’t matter what the flat was like – she had found her cousins and they were happy to see her.

‘Ayeee …’ Ka Lei looked at her watch. ‘I late … muz go … I wor until ten o’clock, okay?’

‘Okay,’ Georgina mimicked, laughing.

Lucy moved forward to usher her sister out. She spoke sternly to her in Cantonese about being late. Georgina found she could understand quite a lot of what they said. The years of listening to the workers in the Golden Dragon had meant she’d absorbed a lot of the language without realising.

Ka Lei grabbed her bag, kissed her sister and her cousin, and flew out of the door amid uncontrollable shrieking. Her energetic presence diminished with the descending elevator.

Max was heading home. He lived with his brother and his father. The old man would be waiting for him now, dozing in his chair, waiting for the sound of his son returning. Max had been so exhausted before he picked up the young woman but now his mind was alert, jumping. He craned his neck to look up at the sky. A storm was coming. The electricity in the air charged Max’s weary old brain. Now he had the girl to think about too. He would not sleep today.

13

Lucy went behind the breakfast bar to make tea.

‘See Ka Lei later. She a student nurse. Works at the government hospital not far from here. One more year be qualify. Very good girl.’

As Lucy busied herself making tea, Georgina took the opportunity to study her. Lucy wasn’t pretty. Her looks were brash, hard. Georgina felt a small pang of disappointment. Lucy looked very different from her mother, whose beauty had been subtle and soft. Then she was cross with herself. She hadn’t come all this way to find fault with her cousins.

‘So funny, when you write me, huh? My sister and me, we talk juz couple of weeks ago. We say: we wonder how old you are and if we ever meet you. Funny, huh? We never thin you come Hong Kong. It’s pretty strange, huh – meeting like this for firs time? How you fine us?’ Lucy asked.

‘My mother left a list of people I should contact …’

Georgina felt sadness surge. She swallowed hard and tried to stay focused, not think about her mother for just a few seconds. She was jumpy and tired. It would be too easy to get over-emotional.

Lucy placed her hand on Georgina’s arm. ‘Very sat, about your mommy … very sat.’ She turned back to wait for the water to boil.

‘She had been ill for a long time. Four years,’ Georgina said in hushed tones, more to herself than anyone else, as Lucy had her back to her and was busy washing cups.

Georgina thought about those years. She had nursed her mother through two relapses. She’d never really expected her to die. She never thought her mother would ever leave her. She wondered how she had survived those early days, after her mother’s death. At the time she had felt so completely lost. She had gone back to work. The bookshop was just as she’d left it. Iris, her co-worker, was still wearing the same brown court shoes and pink blouse as she had always done, and the same coral lipstick that clung to the edges of her front teeth. Nothing was different, except Georgina.

Iris had never been good with emotions. The sight of Georgina’s distress had made her uncomfortable.

‘Have you no other family?’ she’d asked. ‘No one? Are you sure? You must have some relatives?’

‘I have two cousins in Hong Kong but I’ve never met them,’ Georgina told her.

‘Maybe you should take some time off and go and visit them, Georgina. Hmm? I can cope here. I have to take on some temporary staff nearer to Christmas anyway. I’ll take on somebody now, to cover for you, just until you get back. How’s that?’

Then Georgina had sat down on one of the unopened boxes in the storeroom. ‘I don’t know what to do any more.’ She had put her head in her hands. ‘I feel as if I don’t belong here, without my mum.’

‘You may find what you’re looking for in Hong Kong, Georgina.’ Iris had knelt down beside her and smiled kindly. ‘Who knows? You can only try. Life is a challenge. Sometimes it just throws up loads of shit at us, for no reason. It makes no sense at the time, but it makes us stronger, makes us grow. You need to grow, Georgina. You are twenty-two years old. You’ve been in this shop for five years now. You came in here with all sorts of plans. You were going to go to university. You were going to travel. You had a boyfriend. What happened to Simon?’

‘It just didn’t work out.’

‘You did a marvellous job looking after her, but it’s time for you to live your life now. It’s time to find your wings and learn to fly.’

It made Georgina smile to remember how Iris always erred towards the theatrical. But it had stirred something within her, and that afternoon she’d gone to see the Hos. They sat at a table overlooking the market. Mrs Ho stayed with her while Mr Ho went to fetch her some of her favourite wonton soup. When he returned, Georgina told them she was thinking of going to Hong Kong.

‘Good idea,’ Mr Ho had replied.

‘Don’t be stupid!’ Mrs Ho had retorted angrily in Cantonese. ‘How will she cope out there, on her own? Look at her! Skin and bone!’

Mr Ho had stood his ground. ‘But she’s not coping here, is she? Better go where she has some family to look after her. New start for her.’

Mrs Ho had scowled at her husband, turned back to Georgina, and spoken to her in English.

‘You better stay here, Georgina. You have friends here, don’t you?’

Georgina pushed the wontons around her soup.

‘Not really,’ she answered. ‘Most of my friends went to university when I stayed here. I have you and Mr Ho. I have Iris. That’s it, really.’

‘Better stay here with us then, huh?’ It had broken Mrs Ho’s heart to see her so sad.

Then Georgina put down her spoon and looked past Mr and Mrs Ho, down to the market below where the stallholders were shutting up shop, and for a second she thought she saw her mother. She looked away quickly.

‘They are my cousins. But I’ve never met them. Do you think they would even want to see me?’

‘Of course they would want to see you, Georgina. Why wouldn’t they? But maybe it’s not such a good idea to go there right now.’

‘But I think, perhaps, I should.’ For a few seconds she felt the sadness, which seemed to be cemented to her heart, crack and fall away and hope begin its return.

Mr and Mrs Ho had looked from one to the other. Then Mrs Ho had shrugged and smiled resignedly. Reaching over, she’d brushed Georgina’s hair away from her face and kissed her cheek.

‘Okay then. Maybe you should go,’ she had said with a sigh. ‘Maybe you should go to Hong Kong, Georgina, and find your family.’

And now, for better or worse, Georgina had found them.

14

‘I’m gonna make you some tea, okay?’

‘Yes … sounds good … thanks.’ Georgina yawned and sat down heavily on the stool.

‘I hope I’m not stopping you from going to work, Lucy. I’ll be fine here by myself, honestly.’

‘Hey, no worry, right?’ Lucy handed her tea in a chipped cup. ‘Working later.’ She smiled, turned away and began busying herself. ‘Good, huh? Give me more time to get to know you, huh?’

‘So you work when you want to?’

‘For sure!’

Lucy turned away from Georgina and searched for something in a cupboard. ‘And what kind of work do you do, Lucy?’

There was a pause, as Lucy pondered the question that she knew she would have to answer sometime. She stopped and turned and met her cousin’s gaze.

‘I work in nightclub.’

‘You’re a singer!’ Georgina exploded. ‘How cool!’

Lucy laughed. ‘No … but my mommy was a singer, did you know that? Ah! Juz a momen. I remember something I want to show you.’ Lucy slipped out from behind the breakfast bar and shuffled into the bedroom. She stood on a chair and pulled down a box. ‘Georgina, come see what I have here,’ she called as she carried on rooting through the box’s contents and pulled out an old tattered photograph. She held it aloft to show Georgina as she walked in behind Lucy. ‘See anyone you know?’

Georgina sat on the bed beside Lucy. She took the photo from her and studied it. It was an old black and white print of a man and woman and two girls, all in traditional Chinese dress. They were posing in front of a painted backdrop: tranquil water and weeping willows. Georgina turned it over – there was writing on the back: December 1950, Hong Kong, and some Chinese script. Turning it back, it was her mother’s smile she recognised first, then the shape of her face. Feng Ying was the smaller of the children, holding on to her elder sister Xiaolin’s hand, and she was staring into the camera with her head tilted to one side.

‘Nice picture, huh?’

Georgina nodded, transfixed by the treasure she held in her hands. ‘So beautiful.’

‘I’m gonna get you a copy, okay?’

As Georgina looked up and nodded her appreciation, Lucy saw that her cousin’s eyes were watery. She jumped up. ‘More tea! We need more tea!’ And she scurried back out to the kitchen. ‘Chinese tea, the best! Do you like it?’ she called.

Georgina didn’t answer: she was transfixed by the photograph. Lucy came in again, carrying a tray. ‘Long time ago, this picture, huh? You know this picture was taken when our family first moved here to Hong Kong. See! There is father, mother, and two little girls. My mommy and yours, see? When our family came from mainland China, long time back … they had big hopes then, but …’ she shrugged ‘… didn’t work out so good, huh? But your mom, she did fine,’ Lucy continued. ‘She was good in school … learn a lot … worked in a bank. Really good how she manage to get that kind of job.’

‘She met my dad in that bank.’

‘Yes! Very lucky. My mommy not so lucky.’ Lucy shrugged. ‘Maybe she not so clever …’

Lucy poured out more tea. Georgina was still looking at the photo. ‘Have you got any more photos?’

‘No, shame, I have very little of our family. Now not many of us left, huh, juz the three of us now.’

‘Lucy, I am very grateful to you for letting me stay. But what about you and Ka Lei? You have to share a room now?’

‘No problem. We always share.’

‘My room is always empty?’

‘An American girl had your room. I don’t know where she is now.’ Lucy rolled her eyes and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Nice girl, very pretty; blonde hair, long nails.’

He liked her nails. It was one of the first things he’d noticed about her. He liked women who looked after themselves. He had made her paint her nails especially, on that last day before he chased her through the forest. He’d made her paint them in stars and stripes, like the American flag. She had painted her nails with expert precision, each stripe was perfectly in line. In the centre of each nail she had painted one red star and sprinkled it with glitter. He smiled to himself, satisfied. Now he would always know which finger was hers.

15

Max lived in Sheung Sai Wan, Western District. It was an area that, despite its name, was the least westernised district of all Hong Kong. It was also the place that the British had first settled in, then hastily fled from when malaria came biting at their heels. Industries in the area were small and family run. Life was as it used to be. Profits were small and everyone had something to sell. Traditional skills and oriental sundries crowded the cobbled alleyways. Bolts of silk that were rolled from one-hundred-year-old spools. Chinese calligraphy that was carved into ornate ‘chops’ made from ivory and jade. Snakes had their gall bladders removed and presented to the purchaser to drink, before being placed back in their wooden box – gall-bladderless. But Western District’s days were numbered: new developments were poking their bony fingers out of the living decay and time-debris. The Fong family – Max, his brother Man Po and his father – lived on Herald Street. It was one of the broader, quieter roads at the lower end of the district. Most of the buildings on Herald Street had a shop front. Some shops were still in full use, merchandise spilling out and obstructing the pavement. Others had rusted-up metal shutters and decrepit doorways that had been a long time silent. There was a peaceful, dusty old quiet about Herald Street, but there was also a permanent smell of decay there: rotting, fermenting vegetation, cultivated by years of neglect. The Fong family lived in a four-storey building situated three-quarters of the way along the street. They had had a thriving business once. Father Fong had been a well-respected doctor. He had held his practice on the ground floor of the house, and the shop front had served as the dispensary. Queues had formed from the shop entrance and continued down Herald Street on most days, with people waiting patiently to see him. He was so respected that it was widely accepted he could perform miracle cures, and his notoriety spread in both Chinese and Western circles.

The shop was crammed with all manner of cures and herbs, dried skins and animal parts. It was all kept in perfect order. That was in the days that his wife was alive. It was she who had structured the day-to-day running of the surgery. Under her supervision, Max had helped his father, dispensing the medicine, weighing out the various herbs, bagging them up according to prescription. He had started to train in acupuncture and showed an aptitude for it. His mother spent a lot of time nurturing Max’s abilities. Those were happy days in the Fong household – before his mother died suddenly. She was shopping for groceries when she was hit on the head by a piece of falling construction material being used to build one of the new tower blocks. The shock was too great for Father Fong. His world was shattered, and only the chore of looking after his twelve-year-old son and treating his patients kept him from ending his own life. The business would have gone to pieces, if it hadn’t been for the employees who took over as best they could, keeping things ticking over. One of them, a young woman by the name of Nancy, who had been in their employ since the age of fifteen, and who Mrs Fong had not only trained but had been particularly fond of, came to the fore and did a good job of running the show. She proved herself to be more than just adept at running things – she set her sights on marrying management. It didn’t take her long to work out the best line of approach, and in her attempt to seduce Father Fong she stuck to him tighter than a pressed flower and made it very obvious she was easily plucked.

Father Fong had panicked into marrying her – anyone was better than no one, and the boy needed a mother. But, once married, Nancy quickly grew discontented and let the business fall into decline. Then, as luck would have it, just as Father Fong’s patience was stretched to breaking point, she fell pregnant and became so tired that she had to sit in the upstairs lounge all day, feeding the canary and eating buns. In jubilation at her pregnancy, Father Fong forgave her laziness and bought her a dog, a small white toy Pekinese. All you could hear all day long was the tap tap of the ping-pong ball and the yap yap of little ‘Lucky’, as Nancy played with her beloved dog.

That summer, when Nancy was pregnant and Father Fong too busy to see her cruelty, she poured pints of vindictive venom on her stepson, whom she hated with as much perverse energy as she loved the dog. Max was beaten and starved and locked in the store cupboard, which had no artificial light, just a tiny barred window. It had been summer and the storms had come, lightning illuminating the room for seconds at a time. The heat made his clothes stick to his body, so that he had to pull them off and sit naked, squashed up in the suffocating darkness, panting, breathless with fear and excitement, screaming as the lightning blinded him and the rain came lashing down.

That summer he became a man. He touched his body in the darkness and felt its yearnings and longings. He became a man, caged in that cupboard, howling at the storm.

One day, in the last stage of Nancy’s pregnancy, while she was resting, Max found himself alone with Lucky. The dog sat watching him from its place on the leather-look sofa. Its pink tongue protruded as it panted in the heat. It kept its bulbous eyes on the bedroom door, patiently waiting for its mistress to wake. Max looked at the dog and gave in to an overwhelming desire to kill it. Taking Lucky by the throat, he shook and squeezed the little dog until its eyes bulged from its head and its body stopped running in midair. As Lucky collapsed, limp in his hands, Max jammed the ping-pong ball – Lucky’s favourite toy – into the back of its throat to make it look as if the ball had been the cause of the animal’s demise. Then, trembling, he ran to his bunk to hide and waited for Nancy to awaken and find her beloved dog. When she did, she screamed so loud that Max felt a spurt of hot pee shoot down his leg. The neighbours heard her screams and came down from the floors above to investigate; and Father Fong came rushing up from the surgery below to find the reason for her anguish. It was Father Fong who, after examining the dog, discovered the ping-pong ball. Max’s trick had worked. He was safe.

Nancy produced a son that evening. Her pelvis was too small and the large baby had to be pulled from her like a calf. Consequently, the baby’s head was misshapen and his look somewhat strange. Nancy didn’t care for the ugly baby at all – she was still mourning for her dog.

She finally left the Fong household for good when Man Po was one year old.

After she left, the surgery dwindled until it became just an occasional knock on the shutter to ask for this and that. Then Father Fong would pull down the dusty jars and rummage through old boxes and tins until he put together a prescription, but his heart wasn’t in it any more.

Now, the shutter outside their house no longer opened and closed; it was firmly shut. They continued to live in the two-bedroom apartment on the first floor. Old Father Fong slept in one room, while the brothers slept in bunks in the other. But Father Fong was mainly housebound now. Arthritis had crept into his joints and settled in the marrow, drying them up like abandoned riverbeds. His physical world had narrowed to just a few rooms, and every year saw him shrink a little more. His old slippered feet wore a path on the floor tiles as he shuffled painfully back and forth from kitchen to bedroom to sitting room, only stopping to make kissing noises to the bright yellow canary that twisted its head this way and that as it watched the old man from the confines of its bamboo cage. He spent his days preparing food for his sons and waiting for them to come home.

Man Po was fourteen years younger than Max, which made him nearing forty-six, but he would always look like a baby. He had a round face and large eyes and the hair on his head looked as if it had been hand-stitched like a doll’s. He dribbled from the lazy corner of his mouth. The things he enjoyed in life were simple. He loved his work – driving his lorry. And he especially loved butchering the pigs.

16

Club Mercedes was Hong Kong’s newest and most exclusive nightclub – for the moment. It occupied the top floor of the most prestigious shopping mall in Hong Kong, situated in the heart of Central District on Peddar Street in the Polaris Centre – a landmark in privileged shopping. On its seven floors were the pick of top European designers, jewellers by royal appointment and Rolex suppliers. Club Mercedes sat on top of all of it on the ‘lucky’ eighth floor.

The club was officially owned by a consortium of top businessmen. It was really owned by the Wo Shing Shing triad society and provided a useful way to launder money.

Over three hundred hostesses of various nationalities worked within its golden walls. Plenty of Gwaipohs for a murderer to choose from, Mann thought.

Mann decided to pay Lucy a visit that evening, while, at the same time, checking up on how many foreign girls were working there. He made his way past Dolce and Gabbana and Yves St Laurent and reached the foot of the conical glass elevator that would take him up to the top floor.

A stunning Asian beauty in a cheongsam greeted him as he stepped inside.

‘Welcome to Club Mercedes,’ she said, bowing and pressing the ascent button in one perfectly choreographed move.

Just as the doors were closing a Chinese woman stepped in. She stood at a discreet distance from Mann and kept her eyes floor-bound – except for the odd flutter of lashes and tilting of the head to see if Mann was still looking at her – which he was. Mid to late twenties, he reckoned. She had that ‘been around the block look’: black leather trousers, black polo neck and a gold chain snaking her collarbone. He surmised rightly that she was a hostess going to work.

When the elevator slid to a silent halt and the cheongsamed lovely had completed her farewell bow, Mann and the woman both stepped out onto a red carpet. A pair of solid gold crouching dragons met them (strategically placed according to feng shui), as did two impressively built doormen. As they made their way up the narrow strip of carpet, a smiling woman in a red and gold cheongsam appeared. Mamasan Linda was a petite Chinese with an outwardly kindly nature but an inwardly frozen heart that could only be melted by money in her hand. She was a former hostess herself. When her appeal had begun to wane she was lucky enough to have made the right people happy over the years, and was rewarded for her services to mankind by being placed in a lucrative job.

‘Aye! Good girl, back so soon, huh?’ Mamasan Linda said to the woman from the lift. ‘Customers waiting! Go change, quick-quick!’ She ushered her past and into the club. Then she looked towards Mann, bowed and smiled respectfully. ‘Can I help you, Inspector?’

Mamasan Linda had not met Mann before, but she had seen him and knew all about him. Even though Hong Kong was one of the most densely populated places on earth, it was still just a big village at heart. Plus, there weren’t many six-foot-two Eurasian policemen around, and there definitely wasn’t another like Mann. His reputation for tough justice singled him out. He had earned the respect of cop and criminal alike because Mann feared nothing, and in Hong Kong society, no matter what side of the law you were on, that was attribute number one.

‘Good evening, Mamasan. I need to speak with the foreign hostesses you have working here. I won’t keep them long – just routine enquiries.’

Mamasan Linda listened with a fixed smile on her face, then nodded and beckoned Mann to follow her.

He had plenty of time to look around the half-empty club as they made their way through; Mamasan Linda wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry in that tight dress. It seemed funny, thought Mann, quaint even, all the money spent on the club: Italian lighting, rivers of red velvet, herds of black leather, yet there was still something else: the inevitable gold, red and chintz and those irrepressible ‘lucky fish’. No matter what the designer had originally planned for the club, in Hong Kong you could never get away from the slightly tacky look. He loved his birthplace for it – that wonderful mix of East and West that never let itself be corrupted by ordinary style.

Mann was shown into a VIP room at the back of the club. Most of the rooms in the club were themed, and this one was traditional Mandarin and housed an impressive collection of antique black lacquered furniture inlaid with abalone shell, silk-painted screens and ornately carved wooden seats.

Mamasan Linda left him in the care of Mamasan Rose, one of the newest mamasans at the club. She brought the foreign girls to him one at a time. Eleven were in so far that evening, out of twenty-five, she explained.

One of three sunny-faced, robust-looking Australians came in to be interviewed first. Her name was Angela. She and her two friends were working and living together, sharing a flat in Kowloon. They’d been in Hong Kong for two months and were working their way around Asia. They’d already done the lucrative Tokyo circuit, missed out Thailand (where holidaying Westerners weren’t interested in paying for white women and locals couldn’t afford them), and had made a detour around the Philippines where there were a lot of lonely wealthy Westerners but no hostess clubs to work out of. Finally they had stopped in Hong Kong en route to Singapore. From there they were headed home to resume their jobs as dental nurses.

Mann asked Angela if she’d had any friends go missing unexpectedly. What? Was he serious? she answered. People were always moving on. What did he expect? Had she heard anything about a problem client? She shrugged. Nothing she couldn’t handle.

Mann interviewed the rest quickly: the other two Australians, who were clones of the first, two Kiwis, three Brits, two Americans, and a tall Irish girl named Bernadette. They all said the same thing – they were used to people disappearing, it happened all the time. People came and went continuously. Hong Kong was a transient society. Girls came to work there from all over the world; they did their business and left. They brought with them a new alias, but their identity was always the same. Mann had seen it many times. They were game players looking for easy money – looking to turn their God-given assets into cold hard cash. But at the moment the game wasn’t going all their way. Someone else was having fun making his own private collection of foreign dolls.

17

‘Is Lucy working here tonight?’ Mann asked Mamasan Rose when he’d finished interviewing the foreign girls. Mamasan Rose smiled curiously at Mann, said she was, and left to fetch her.

As soon as she entered Mann recognised her as the woman from the lift with the leather trousers. Now she was wearing a lilac-coloured figure-hugging evening dress that she didn’t quite have the figure for, and an extra coating of lip-gloss. He waited while she sat and readied herself.

‘Hello again, Inspector.’ She smiled sweetly, a very practised smile, and adjusted her dress to show a flirtatious amount of leg.

Surprising, thought Mann. She was nothing special to look at; her sickly sweet smile was set into an over-rouged face. But then she didn’t have to be beautiful. According to James Dudley-Smythe she was extremely talented in other ways.

She giggled, batting her eyelashes and feigning shyness under his scrutiny.

‘Are you the only Lucy working here?’

‘Yes, just me, Inspector. There’s only one Lucy.’

‘Well, it must be you I want then.’

Lucy raised an inquisitive eyebrow and pursed her lips into a ‘butter wouldn’t melt’ smile.

‘I have heard that you provide certain services for men who like something special.’

Lucy’s face was a picture of surprise but her eyes betrayed her. Mann could see that she was as sharp and as calculating as they come – but most of all she was a survivor. She had seen right into the depths of men’s souls. It may not have been a pretty sight, but boy was it lucrative.

‘I mean that you cater to certain tastes. Men who like to feel pain, feel it and inflict it.’

Lucy held his gaze, kept the smile, and inclined her head in a small movement.

‘Tell me, Lucy, have you had any problems with a particular client? Anybody go too far? Anyone scare you? Hurt you more than you wanted or were paid for?’

Lucy kept the smile, lowered her eyes and shook her head slowly.

‘No, I don’t think so. It’s just fun – you know?’

She looked up from beneath her lashes with a hint of a proposition, as if maybe he did know and it was always worth her while testing the water.

Mann had the distinct impression she was imagining him with a whip in his hand and his pants around his ankles.

‘What about the foreign girls here? Are you friendly with them?’

‘Quite friendly. I rent some of them a room in my apartment, Inspector,’ she said, moving to sit slightly to one side; her best side.

‘Your apartment?’

‘Yes, I live with my sister in Wanchai. We have a spare room which we let to foreign girls from the club. They pay more.’

‘Any of the foreign girls talk to you about a bad experience they might have had?’

Lucy thought for a few seconds and then swung her head slowly from side to side while keeping her eyes pinned on Mann – still holding that sweet, simpering smile, which was beginning to grate on him.

‘Any of the foreign girls gone missing that you know of?’

She gave an exasperated shrug. ‘They’re always disappearing, just leaving all their things and moving on,’ she said. ‘An American girl, Roxanne, all her belongings are at my flat at the moment. Such a nuisance.’

‘Is it unusual for girls just to leave all their stuff and disappear?’

Lucy rolled her eyes. ‘She’s not the first. Guess it’s just the way they are … Gweilos, they come and go. Do whatever they like, whenever they like. It’s just the way they are.’

Mann let his eyes fasten hard on Lucy for a few seconds longer than she was comfortable with. He could tell she was curious about him. He had no problem with being mixed race, but others did. They didn’t know whether to speak to him in English or Cantonese.

Mann liked feeding their insecurities. He belonged wherever he wanted to belong. Everywhere and nowhere. If Lucy was seriously trying to flirt with him she was wasting her time and his.

‘Can you give me a description of Roxanne?’ He poised, pen in hand.

Lucy’s attitude changed. She knew she wasn’t going to get anywhere with him. She had to accept defeat, at least for now. She covered up her leg, and shifted uncomfortably in her seat as if she were going numb from sitting so long.

‘Curly blonde hair, bit fat, nice hands – liked to do her nails, manicures, you know?’ She twirled her bright red nails in the air as she spoke and glanced towards the door.

‘You say there have been other girls?’ He looked up from his notes.

‘Five or six maybe, over the years.’ She straightened her dress in preparation for the off.

‘You have no idea where they went?’

She shook her head.

‘I will need you to give me details about these girls, physical descriptions, that kind of thing.’

‘Of course, Inspector.’ Lucy nodded sweetly, batting her eyelashes, but her smile had changed. ‘Always happy to help the police. If that is all …’ She slid off the chair, bowed, and left.

After she had gone, Mann was left with the distinct impression that Lucy was as mercenary as they came – a good Hong Kong girl if ever he met one. But, he couldn’t blame her. In fact, he even kind of admired her. Hong Kong wasn’t the most caring mother to her daughters. It wasn’t so long ago that infant girls were left to die on the roadside. Now there was every type of brothel – floating, high-rise or underground – to keep a girl off the streets.

He’d done all he could. It was time to move on. He thanked the mamasans, said he would be back soon, and made his way out of the club, past the ‘lucky’ fish and the Taiwanese bouncers.

He was just about to step into the elevator when two men stepped out. One was a prominent elderly Chinese politician, Sun Yat-sen. Mann recognised him from some recent publicity shots. He was in Hong Kong promoting trade alliances – creaming off a few backhanders. The other man was the same age as Mann. He was shorter by six inches but made the most of his slight frame with expensive suits and well-tailored jackets. He carried himself with authority. His hair was very neatly cropped, smoothly side parted. His face was narrow, angular with a sallow complexion. His eyes were dark-rimmed and hooded and larger than his triangular face could cope with.

Chan and Mann eyeballed each other for several seconds before exchanging places in the lift. They had not always been enemies. They had been friends once, brothers almost. Mann had even saved Chan’s life when they were at school together in England on a school trip to the Lake District. Chan had wandered too far out in the water and a hidden shelf took him unawares. He couldn’t swim, and Mann had saved him. From that day on they had been best friends, shared their hopes and dreams and supported one another through the years of a sometimes-lonely exile at boarding school in England. In the last year of school the boys had come back to spend their summer vacation in Hong Kong, as usual. They had spent the evening together and parted company at Mann’s house. When Mann went inside he found his father held captive by triads and being tortured and beaten. Mann was seized, held, and made to watch his father’s execution. The boys had vowed to be united forever in vengeance against them. But only one of the boys had kept that vow. The other had joined forces with the enemy.

Mann stood rigid now. His tall, muscular frame tensed as his body willed him to take action against the man he hated. But Mann knew that hurting Chan would only give him momentary satisfaction. Okay, maybe it would last for an hour or two. But it wouldn’t destroy Chan in the long run, and Mann definitely wanted to do that. Because Chan hadn’t just joined forces with the enemy. He had become the enemy. Mann watched them walk away and saw Chan glance back.

Keep looking behind you, Chan, because I’m going to be there.

18

After her interview with Mann, Lucy went back to the Dressing Room to wait for her number to be called. The ‘home from home’ for the girls was a large rectangular space about fifty-five metres long and twenty wide. It was sparsely furnished with lockers and chairs down its left-hand side and starlet-style mirrors arranged in rows down its right. In front of the mirrors were broad shelves used for eating, doing make-up, sleeping. There were stools and chairs scattered around, but never enough.

There were girls everywhere, descended flock-like to roost, at least two hundred at any one time, dressing or undressing. Their glamorous frocks were semi-draped over smooth shiny skin or poured intestine-like from lockers where they had fallen from hangers or been hastily discarded.

The noise of excited girls greeting one another, of locker doors bouncing off their hinges, was deafening, but the camaraderie was touching. Lucy threaded her way through.

‘Hey, Lucy, what’s up?’ The distinctive American tones of Candy could be heard above the racket. ‘You late?’

‘Nah … been out already …’ Lucy sassed over her shoulder as she made her way through.

Candy feigned amazement. ‘Jesus, Lucy! You’re gonna be rich!’

Lucy giggled, then screeched as she heard her number called over the tannoy:

‘NUMBER 169, MISS LUCY … NUMBER 169, MISS LUCY …’

She doubled back and squirmed through the waiting girls to meet her mamasan on the other side of the velvet curtain.

‘You must be good girl now, Lucy.’ Mamasan Linda held on to Lucy’s hand and trotted ahead like a mother escorting a naughty child to receive judgement from a waiting father.

They wound their way through half-full tables, past the Filipino band singing the Police song ‘Don’t stand so close to me’ quite earnestly, considering that a consignment of blow had arrived that day from Manila, past a man from Taipei who was on the dance floor clinging pathetically to the pencil-thin, Lycra-slippery hips of his young date while the changing light patterns on the dance floor stole his drunken feet from beneath him. And past Bernadette, who was leaping from foot to foot in a frenzy of chiffon. Her hair sat rigid on her head like deep-fried roadkill, while the rest of her body hopped madly around the dance floor. Lucy remembered going out on a double date with Bernadette. What a nightmare! She recalled Bernadette straddling a diminutive Taiwanese, his face exploding like a bullfrog on heat at every squeeze of those massive white thighs. Lucy had had to drag her off at the end of the evening with her screaming, But I haven’t feckin’ come yet!

Mamasan Linda stopped in her tracks and turned back to talk to Lucy. She lowered her voice.

‘He’s a good customer. He’s come back many times and asked for you. Look after him, okay? Be a clever girl, huh? Big VIP. He owns all this.’ She swept her hands in the air theatrically.

Lucy gave her a ‘teach grandma to suck eggs’ look and fell into a trot behind her again, following the red and gold cheongsam swishing hypnotically from side to side. They approached a booth that was situated to the back of the club, in the VIP section, overlooking the semicircular dance floor.

‘Here she is.’ Mamasan Linda let go of Lucy’s hand and pushed her forward. ‘Here is Lucy.’

Lucy smiled and slipped in behind the round table until her thigh made contact with her client’s. She studied him but her eyes were still adjusting to the gloom and it took time to recognise him as the man who had bought her out a couple of weeks before and a few times before that. It took time to place body with face – to transcend the gap between leaving the club and leaving the Love Motel. Then she placed him and a surge of adrenalin went through her as she remembered his peculiar tastes that had taken some time to heal.

Chan spent his evenings doing the rounds of the hostess clubs. He was son-in-law to C. K. Leung, the Dragon Head of the Wo Shing Shing triad organisation – the most powerful society in Hong Kong. It was Chan’s job to oversee some of the Wo Shing Shing’s many business concerns and, at the same time, he liked to cherry-pick any new young hostesses who had just come on the market. Chan had a bent towards pubescent girls. He liked his girls to be girls. Surprising then, that he had asked for Lucy, she wasn’t really his type – too fat and certainly, at twenty-four, too old. But tonight he had come looking for her. He had need of her quite extraordinary talents.

‘So, Lucy, how’s things?’

‘Good evening, Mr Chan. Everything is good, thank you. It’s nice to see you again.’

Lucy smiled, met his eyes, and began her usual routine. She feigned ‘coy mistress’ mixed with ‘sure bet’ in as few seconds as she could. The act was wasted. He was busy signalling to Mamasan Linda that he would be buying Lucy out and he was ready to leave.

‘Go change, quick-quick,’ she said, appearing beside the table.

Lucy stood up and left the two to negotiate.

‘See you in a minute, Mr Chan,’ she said. He didn’t answer. He was already busy with his wallet.

On the way she met Candy en route to one of the VIP suites at the back of the club. Her tall figure – broad shoulders, stiff hips and straight back – dwarfed the two Chinese hostesses with her. Her eyes widened in mock disbelief as she glanced at Lucy. Lucy grinned. Candy had no need to worry. She always did well. She lived in an expensive apartment near Tsim Sha Tsui and came to work in the evening to recruit customers for the next day instead. Moving from table to table, she never wanted to be bought out – preferring to make back-to-back appointments for the following day. She was sending the money home to an Italian boyfriend who wanted to open a deli in New York.

Chan dropped Lucy back at the club afterwards. She smiled sweetly and thanked him for his patronage. He wasn’t listening. He was anxious to be rid of her. He was always the same afterwards: curt, cold and callous. He had hurt her, but he didn’t care. He had overstepped the mark, crossed the boundaries, and ignored the signal to stop. Now he couldn’t even look at her. Not because he felt any guilt, but because she repulsed him. Easing herself out of the car, Lucy turned to wave goodbye, but he had already pulled off erratically into the stream of traffic. Lucy wouldn’t be able to work again that night.

19

She packed her evening dress away in her locker, put her leather trousers back on and said her goodbyes to the handful of girls left in the Dressing Room. She had done enough work for one night. It was only when she reached the line of taxis that she decided she wasn’t in the mood to return home just yet – she deserved a little fun after her ordeal. She caught a cab to the Macau ferry terminal, just a short distance away, and boarded the waiting ferry.

The journey would take nearly an hour, but tonight she didn’t mind. Usually she was impatient to arrive; but this time she knew it would give her the time and space to mull things over. Mostly she thought about Georgina, who had just arrived – landed, almost – in their lives. She smiled to herself. Those big hands! That innocent face! She brought out the maternal instinct in Lucy. God knows, that was funny, feeling maternal to a girl just two years younger than herself. But why not? She could take care of them all.

She sat back to take stock of her surroundings and to enjoy the anticipation and the rush of pure adrenalin and excitement that only Macau gave her. Gambling was a need that had grown in her over the last few years. She had become addicted to its thrills, its uncertainty – knowing that she could lose everything she had, or simply win the world. It was a thrill second to none. But it was a deadly game to play. Macau was run, ruined and ruled by triads.

She looked out of the window to see the lights flickering on the horizon. They would be docking soon. She shifted in her seat and smiled to herself. Her buttocks were raw – it had taken her time to get used to it: the pain, the fear. But she had to cut herself a niche in the hostess market. There were just too many pretty Chinese girls out there.

She’d started young – she’d had to, when their alcoholic mother was found floating among the boats in Aberdeen, just another piece of flotsam. Then Lucy had to provide for herself and her little sister. She was twelve when she sold her virginity to a Taiwanese, and when that money ran out she went to work in the clubs. She might not be the best-looking girl but she was one of the smartest. She cottoned on quickly to a dark sadistic side to men that they so desired but never dared ask for. Lucy let them have their heart’s desire – as long as they paid, and paid well. It was a lucrative market. There wasn’t a Caucasian she’d met that didn’t like to inflict pain. Not the Chinese so much, except the ones who were educated abroad like Chan. Middle Eastern men wanted that and nothing else, and the Japanese? Don’t ask! Not only could Lucy perform almost any act of self-degradation, in truth she quite enjoyed it. The sting of smarting flesh, the power of perversity. She liked to look into their eyes at that point of abandonment and steal a part of their soul. But Chan had gone too far tonight, and not for the first time. In Chan she had met her match.

Lucy sighed to herself. It would all be worth it one day, maybe even this day. Perhaps tonight would be the night to change everything. She looked around and sized up her fellow passengers. No one she recognised, which was a relief. A bunch of Americans, over-sized and over-dressed. The men wore a uniform of Farah slacks and club ties. The women dressed too young, had sharp features and orange skin, and ridiculously over-dyed, back-combed hair. That’s not beautiful, thought Lucy. Much better to have a good Hong Kong girl than that!

Apart from the Americans and a few Portuguese returning home, the ferry was practically empty. She stared at the Americans and tried a smile. She might still be able to catch herself a Gweilo. An American passport, that would be the one! Canadian or New Zealand would do very well too. She would even take British if she could get it! At the age of twenty-four she would be happy with any ticket out for her and Ka Lei.

It didn’t work this time, though. The men’s wayward attention was refocused and held in a mental headlock by their eagle-eyed wives.

Lucy gave up and stared out at the lights coming from Macau. They were gliding on the water, on its skin, like oil. Her thoughts returned to the future. Lucy wondered what difference her English cousin’s arrival would make in the grand scheme of things. She and Ka Lei were like twins separated at birth, now reunited. They were so innocent, so young. Both of them were like children: laughing, playing, running around the apartment. And Lucy was like their mother. Something told her that whatever it was that lay ahead, her newfound cousin would feature in it.

She shifted in her seat again: the sitting was beginning to irritate her and concentrating was becoming more difficult. Anyway, that was enough speculation. She didn’t like dwelling on things to come or things gone. ‘Now’ was what counted. Bernadette had told her that life was like driving a car – you just needed to look in the mirror now and again to see what was behind you. The rest of the time, keep your eyes on the road ahead.

Tonight all roads led to Macau, and one big win would take care of them all: Ka Lei, Georgina, all of them. Lucy knew something big was coming – she felt it.

But, while it was true that tonight would change her life irrevocably, that all their lives would never be the same from this night on, it was not in the way that Lucy hoped. Not at all.

20

Macau was busy – always busy – twenty-four hours a day. Hong Kong didn’t allow casinos, but Macau did. The smartest one was the newest: the Royal Palace. A floating, multi-floored casino that was moored alongside its sister ship, the Portuguese Queen. It had opened only a month previously and it was the first time Lucy had seen it. It was as she was about to enter that she saw Chan. She recognised him from behind: his flat arse swivelled like a woman’s when he walked. Funny, she thought, they had been together just hours before, having sex, and now they were both here! How alike they must be in some ways.

Chan was keeping an eye on things for the Wo Shing Shing. CK was one of two partners in this new casino; the other was a prominent member of the Chinese government. Money was becoming the new Communist ideal, and Hong Kong was more than happy to wet-nurse. The milk of capitalism flowed freely from her bosom – enough for everyone.

CK had been cultivating friendships with state councillors and prime ministers for some time. He’d been working his way up the ladder over the years and had built himself an impressive network of influential friends. He finally nailed it after the Tiananmen Square massacre. He was the only one of the prominent Hong Kong businessmen to step forward and support China’s stand.

Lucy thought nothing of seeing Chan there: he was a VIP after all, and she knew that he was probably involved in many ventures. She watched him walk into the casino and wondered what made him tick. It remained a mystery to her why he had chosen to buy her out on the occasions he did. Surely two concubines and a wife were enough ‘face’ for the man with an erect penis the size of a middle-finger salute? He had weird tastes even by Lucy’s standards: the pretend-virgin thing wasn’t the normal, it was more rape than seduction. And ‘Daddy’, as he wanted her to call him, could certainly inflict pain, but could he take it? No way! ‘Daddy’s’ S&M games were strictly fun for one. Knowing when to stop was a definite problem.

At the entrance to the casino Lucy caught the doorman’s eye and slipped him one hundred Hong Kong dollars. She always over-tipped the doormen. They had helped her out many times, if just to jump the taxi queue, and it was worth it. She paused for a second or two to admire the casino’s flamboyant foyer, and, as she did so, Chan turned and noticed her. He acknowledged her presence with a slight incline of his head and a curious smile, before passing through the carved mahogany doors into the Royal Palace.

That night Lucy moved from blackjack to roulette and back to blackjack with losses that were inconceivable. Nothing stemmed the tide of money lost and the speed with which it disappeared. So strange was this catastrophic losing streak for Lucy, who, as a rule, always gained as much as she lost, that she read into it signs of the wrong kind. She began to believe that some huge win was coming her way – she only needed to keep playing – she just needed to stay in the game. But it wasn’t coming, and Lucy eventually took a loan from a triad, a massive loan that she would never be able to repay.

It was Chan who came to her aid when her money ran out. It was Chan who gave her the loan. It was Chan who moved in on Lucy like carrion on roadkill.

21

‘I’m comin’!’

Glitter Girl had run out of places to hide and he had found her. The more she struggled against the rope around her neck, the tighter it became. In the end, only her body continued the fight. Her mind said:

Let me go … Let it be quick … And please, sweet Jesus, let someone find my body …

Strangely enough, her last thoughts were of Darren, in the days before he’d started hitting her. In the days of disco balls and hot, salty, stolen kisses, fevered embraces and love that should have been forever. She had never truly managed to hate him. She still loved the man she wished he could have been.

Now her photo stared out from the wall, with the others, and her index finger bobbed in a jar of formaldehyde, just like the one her grandma kept pickles in. In certain lights it still glittered.

Tonight he would start his hunt again.

22

Lucy stumbled off the Macau ferry in a daze, right at the start of the morning rush hour. The bright sun stabbed at her eyes and the car fumes caught in the back of her throat. The walk home was tortuously slow. All she could do was keep her head down, shuffle along the crowded pavement, and pray that soon she would find some respite from the raw guilt she felt. One minute her heart beat so fast she couldn’t breathe, and she thought she would pass out; the next it slowed down so much that she thought she must be walking in a dream.

Lucy was in shock, in mourning. She had squatted in the gutters of Macau and aborted all her dreams, and not just hers … All the years she had protected her sister from harm and kept her off the streets, made sure she could follow her dream and become a nurse. Now all those dreams would be shattered. Both their lives would be ruined if she couldn’t think of a way to pay back what she owed – a triad debt was a family debt. The pain of retribution would be shared. In fact, Lucy knew that it would be Ka Lei they would come after first, just to teach Lucy a lesson.

After an hour of shuffling along pavements she finally reached home. She turned the key to the apartment door as quietly as she could and crept inside. There was not a sound in the stagnant gloom of the flat except the plonk plonk of the leaky kitchen tap. Ka Lei had already gone to work and Georgina was still asleep. Lucy listened to the droning of the air-conditioning unit coming from her cousin’s bedroom.

She tiptoed into her room and sat on the edge of the bed, scared to move, frightened to make a sound in case she woke Georgina and then she might have to tell what she’d done. She couldn’t do that. She definitely couldn’t do that.

As the hours passed she stared at the blacked-out windows of the adjacent building, seeing nothing, reliving the events of the previous evening. The light in the room changed hue. Shadows lengthened and altered shape. Somewhere outside, the sun arced in the sky, the earth turned, the universe existed, the day completed its rota. Inside the room Lucy went over the process of self-recrimination countless times. She relived the events that had led to her destruction over and over until she became quite exhausted by the process. She hovered above herself and watched herself lose and lose again. Why had she continued? She knew why. She just couldn’t leave, not then, not when she was so down. She just needed to stay in the game, like she always did. It had happened that way so many times before: lose a lot, win a lot more. She had always come out on top – but not this time. Lady Luck had stabbed her in the back last night. Now Lucy must find a way not just to bear it, but to end it.

Gradually, over the course of the following day, the shock subsided, until, by reworking the events in her mind, they changed shape and became something of far less consequence. She began to reassess the situation. She had survived worse – she would survive this. But now her survival was out of her hands. Lucy had unwittingly made a pact with the devil.

23

She waited in the Dressing Room for two hours before her name was called. She knew when she followed Mamasan Linda past the dance floor that they were heading to Chan’s favourite seat. She knew he would be watching her walk the length of the club, his eyes fixed on her. She knew she had to try every trick in her book to make this work.

‘Hello, Ka Mei, how’s things?’ His cold eyes fixed on her face.

It was the first time Chan had ever called Lucy by her Chinese name. It did not bode well. She was momentarily startled into letting her guard down. In the half-light she could see he was sneering rather than smiling. She looked downwards at her lap, trying to compose herself. Stick to the plan, she told herself, just as rehearsed: slightly submissive, slightly flirty – humble yet brave. She had been over this meeting a hundred times in her head.

Chan was sprawled in his usual place, and as Lucy sat down he extended one arm so that his hand rested on the nape of her neck.

‘Good evening, Mr Chan,’ she said, and waited for an answer. She felt the electricity in his fingertips commute to a burning sensation as he rubbed the same spot at the base of her neck repeatedly. He was a tightened band that threatened to snap at any moment. ‘I have been a bit worried, Mr Chan,’ she said, tilting her head sideways to look at him.

‘Worried?’ He played along, and carried on stroking her neck. ‘Worried about what, Ka Mei?’

Lucy summoned up all her courage. She locked her gaze on his. ‘About the money I owe you, Mr Chan.’

Chan nodded his head slowly, deliberately, like a judge considering the gravity of the situation before passing sentence.

‘Yes, Lucy. You did borrow a lot of money. I hardly remember how much it was now.’ Lucy caught a glimmer of hope and looked up from her lap to see him still nodding. ‘But it was more than is prudent for a girl in your position.’

She would do the ‘what a silly girl I’ve been’ act if that’s what it took.

‘I do have some money to return to you, Mr Chan.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘But I do not have it all … at the moment.’

Chan raised an eyebrow.

‘How much do you have for me … at the moment?’

‘I have thirty thousand dollars. My savings, everything.’ She pleaded silently, trying every trick in her extensive book to find that deeply buried corner of Chan that cared.

Chan switched from nodding his head to swinging it from side to side. ‘Not really enough, is it, Lucy?’

Lucy felt the fluttering of panic begin in her gut. Chan slipped into his soliloquy:

‘You know you borrowed a lot of money from me, and not just from me, from the Wo Shing Shing. And you say to me, “Sorry, Mr Chan, I can only afford to repay you a measly thirty thousand dollars at the moment”, when you owe ten times that amount. Do you think that is fair?’

Lucy shook her head, feeling the blood drain from her face. The actual sum she had borrowed was being inflated as she sat there. Suddenly it seemed insurmountable. She hadn’t reckoned on such calculated cruelty. He couldn’t really expect her to pay all that, could he?

‘So, Lucy, what do you think I should do?’

There was a pause and Lucy returned to staring at her lap and shaking her head miserably.

‘Have you no one to help you?’

Lucy was puzzled. What could he be driving at? He was waiting to spring a trap on her, all her instincts told her so.

‘I know that your sister – Ka Lei, isn’t it? I know that she works at the hospital. She relies on you, doesn’t she, Lucy?’

Lucy’s eyes flitted back and forth across his face, searching desperately.

‘You live with your sister, don’t you? She’s young, isn’t she? She is training to be a nurse. Is that right? There’s just the two of you?’

Lucy nodded her head almost imperceptibly while twisting her hands as they lay in her lap.

‘Not just the two of you at the moment, is there, Lucy? Your English cousin is staying with you. She’s a very attractive girl, I hear. Maybe she can help you? She can’t live off you forever, can she? Plus, she’s family – and this debt is a family debt. You didn’t just borrow from me personally, you borrowed from the Wo Shing Shing. You understand the implications of that, don’t you, Lucy?’

Lucy nodded her head miserably.

‘Maybe she can help you?’

He knew everything. Every small detail of her life. She was doomed. They were all doomed.

‘Georgina’s parents are dead. My sister and I are her only family. I don’t see how she can help, Mr Chan.’ Lucy looked up, suddenly sensing an awful point to Chan’s questions.

‘She can come and work here. We are always in need of good foreign hostesses. Chinese girls are as plentiful as grains of rice; a good foreigner can bring a lot of new customers. Bring her in tomorrow and I will wipe a quarter of the debt away immediately. Then I will see what else I can do to help you. Because …’ Chan placed his hand over hers, ‘I like you, Lucy … really, I do.’ He moved his hand to her thigh and squeezed it hard. Lucy winced. ‘But Daddy has to be strict sometimes.’

24

‘Anyway, juz be for a little while. You like to work with me, huh? Family, huh?’ Lucy put the suggestion to Georgina over breakfast the next morning.

‘I’ve never done any waitressing or anything like this before. Are you sure I can do it?’

‘You got to believe me, it’s perfec job for you,’ Lucy assured her.

‘Is no.’ Ka Lei stood with her arms folded across her flat chest. Her English wasn’t as good as Lucy’s. When she was trying her hardest to find the word she wanted, her hands flitted in front of her face in expressive gestures and her head tilted to one side, then she lifted her eyes skyward and twittered like a starling. Now, she stamped her foot and dug her hands deeper into her sides, and looked much younger than her seventeen years as she blocked Lucy’s way, preventing her from reaching Georgina.

‘Club no goo for Georgie. No goo place. She petter do nudder job.’

They quarrelled in Cantonese. Lucy looked past Ka Lei to Georgina.

‘Juz want show off my beautiful cousin from England. Juz for few days. That’s all.’

‘What would I have to do? …’

‘Juz sit an talk. Drink a little. If the client like you, he buy you out of club for a few hours – take you to dinner, nice expensive restaurant. No problem, huh? Goo money. Nice place.’

With a sigh and a smile Georgina gave in. ‘Okay, Lucy. I’ll give it a go.’

Ka Lei also eventually agreed. After all, hadn’t Lucy always made the decisions for her? And now she would make them for Georgina too. It seemed only natural.

She would start on the coming Saturday. That gave her three days to find a dress.

While Ka Lei was at work, Lucy and Georgina began their search of the shopping malls. It was no good. They were never going to find one to fit. Georgina was too tall, too curvy. One had to be made.

Lucy took her to a tailor in Western District. The tailor stood on a chair to measure Georgina’s chest. After much wrangling and deliberation between Lucy and the tailor, a dress was decided upon. It was black with spaghetti straps and a split up one leg.

The next day she went for a fitting. On Saturday they picked it up. Georgina tried it on for Ka Lei.

‘So beautiful … you be mos beautiful girl in club.’

Georgina stared at herself in the mirror. Her breasts – two white mounds sitting proudly above the neckline of the dress. Not sure this is what Iris meant by ‘finding my wings’. Georgina looked at the unfamiliar image in front of her and felt a feeling of panic.

Ka Lei smiled reassuringly.

‘Be okay, Georgie. Lucy loo atter you.’

That night Georgina and Lucy left for work at eight. They had no need to hail a taxi, as Max was waiting for them.

Lucy explained to Georgina that Max was a friend of sorts. He liked to look after them. He always took her to work as it marked the start of his night shift. All through Lucy’s explanation Max nodded and grinned at Georgina in the mirror. Max was very good to them, Lucy said, and not just her. He had been very kind to all the girls who had lived in Lucy’s apartment. He had looked after them all over the years, and there had been several. He was getting on now and would have to retire very soon.

‘Shame,’ said Lucy. ‘We will miss him.’

Max shook his head sadly and shrugged resignedly. No one would miss the job more than him.

Georgina sat in the back, peering silently out of the window while Lucy and Max chatted. She didn’t bother to try to understand the conversation, it was too fast for her and she had other things on her mind. She was nervous about starting work at the club. She needed a few minutes’ peace to prepare herself. As much as she loved her cousin, Lucy’s voice was pitched at a level louder than comfortable, so Georgina was glad it was directed at someone else for a few minutes.

There was a halt in the conversation and Georgina’s attention was required.

‘Max say how you like Hong Kong? He say when he pick you up you look so frighten that day. You remember?’

Georgina remembered it well. ‘Yes, I do. Tell him I was scared. Hong Kong wasn’t as I imagined it would be.’

Max spoke and Lucy laughed again, loud and hoarse. She turned to Georgina and pointed at Max as if he were mad.

‘Max say you remind him of his mother!’

Max glanced fleetingly into the mirror at Georgina and smiled, embarrassed.

‘Me?’ Georgina said, unsure how she was supposed to react.

Max spoke again and Lucy translated.

‘His mother die when he was twelve year old. He have photo. He say she was a beautiful woman from north of China. Very tall. He say you look like her.’

‘Thank you,’ Georgina said, embarrassed. ‘Does Max live here on the Island?’ she asked, struggling for something to say.

‘Max live in Sheung Wan, Western District. Not too far. Very old part of Hong Kong. I’m gonna take you there. You see many sights. Old traditional Chinese skills. You can drink snake blood there. Have chop made with your name on it. Buy ivory, silk. Max live there all his life. His daddy was Chinese doctor – herbs, acu pun ture, you understand?’

Georgina nodded. Max looked suitably proud, understanding enough to know that his family was being talked about.

‘Is his father still alive? Is he still a doctor?’

‘He alive yes, but doctor no. Max say he very ill in his bones. He just stay at home, look after Max and his brother.’

‘Just the three of them?’ Georgina asked while Lucy translated. Max glanced curiously at Georgina in the mirror. So many questions!

‘Max say his daddy did marry another woman, but she not nice. She left after give birth to his brother, Man Po. Not even feed him. She juz left him for Max and his daddy to bring up. Ah, here we are. We arrive at work now,’ Lucy said, stopping the conversation abruptly and sliding across to help Georgina with the door, which wouldn’t open. She shouted something at Max and turned to Georgina.

‘He forget to unlock door. So stupid!’

Max giggled nervously and apologised profusely.

Lucy pushed Georgina gently from the cab.

As Georgina took her arm and allowed herself to be guided towards the Polaris Centre, she looked back and saw that Max still sat there, his window down and the engine running. He did not pull away. He was watching them.

25

They made their way up in the elevator, past the band warming up, and through the club to the Dressing Room. It was moderately busy: about one hundred and fifty girls. Georgina stood just inside the door, overawed by it all.

Lucy took her by the hand and led her through to the mid section of the room where her locker was. She showed Georgina which locker was to be hers and they changed into their evening dresses.

Candy came over to introduce herself and speak to Lucy. She wanted to know if there had been any news about Roxanne. Lucy couldn’t tell her anything. Candy shook her head sadly; she’d really liked Roxanne, she would miss her. Then she shrugged her shoulders. Candy was hoping not to be here too much longer herself. Her boyfriend had put a deposit down on a deli premises in Little Italy, and just needed a couple more months’ money to stock it.

While they waited for their names to be called, Lucy caught up with the gossip and did her make-up. Georgina was given a bowl of rice and vegetables to eat. Bernadette turned up, looking the worse for wear after a heavy drinking session. She came over, pulling up the arms of her dress. It was layered chiffon, in all the colours of the rainbow.

‘You new?’ Bernadette asked.

Georgina nodded.

Bernadette sat down next to her and started applying her make-up. ‘Where are you from?’ she asked, pulling her mouth into a lipstick grimace.

‘Devon.’

‘What you doing in this place?’ she said disparagingly, as she moved on to hair arranging, which involved jamming it all into a bunch on the top of her head and securing it fast, before it escaped.

‘Just thought I’d give it a try.’ Georgina turned and gestured towards Lucy, who stopped her chatting to acknowledge Bernadette. ‘Lucy’s my cousin.’

‘That Lucy?’ Bernadette pointed. ‘Jaysus!’

‘NUMBER 169 – MISS LUCY.’

‘NUMBER 305 – MISS GEORGINA.’ A voice came over the intercom.

Lucy jumped to her feet with a screech and yanked Georgina out of her seat. ‘Aye! Our number. Come on!’

‘Good luck’ came from the direction of Candy and Bernadette. Georgina followed Lucy nervously through the velvet curtain. Lucy held her back for a second as they were making their way out. She whispered:

‘Don worry, huh? Be okay. Juz sit, talk, laugh. But easy on drink, okay? Just water or Coke, okay?’

Georgina nodded that she understood but her face didn’t reflect it. Mamasan Linda took Georgina’s hand and Lucy followed behind as they trotted off in the direction of the cheaper seats. They were going to sit with a group of three well-dressed office workers on a very expensive night out. The eldest of the three, Don, sat with Georgina, while Lucy sat between the other two.

It was all pleasant enough; not Lucy’s usual kind of punter. Mamasan Linda must have wanted her to help her cousin on her first night. Lucy knew she was wasting her time at the table. They would not be buying her out. They did not have the money. But never mind, she also knew that Mamasan would hoick her off at the first sign of a decent client.

It didn’t take long. Mamasan appeared and excused Lucy. She had a visitor. Someone very important wanted to see her again.

Bernadette passed Lucy on her way to sit with James Dudley-Smythe. Bernie was surprised to see him. He must not have realised that she’d helped herself to the contents of his wallet the last time they’d met – emptied it while he slept. There was obviously something he liked about her. He was an odd old fecker! But Bernie could handle him. It would be a case of him and whose army.

‘All right, James?’

‘Grand, thank you, my sweet. Just super. Fancy a nightcap back at mine?’

‘Sure. Why not?’ Bernie laughed. Like taking candy from a baby.

At one a.m. Georgina was back in the Dressing Room. There was no sign of Lucy, just a dozen girls sitting around chatting. Most of the girls were already at tables or out with customers. Mamasan Linda came to find her.

‘You go home now. Very good girl. Come again tomorrow.’ She patted her on the arm.

Georgina took off her evening dress and put it away in the locker. She changed and walked back through the club. The doormen smiled politely at her as she passed. The woman in the cheongsam stared at her as they descended in the conical elevator.

Ka Lei was still up, waiting for her.

‘Okay?’ She rushed to the door as she heard Georgina open it. ‘Okay?’

‘Yes. It went fine.’ Georgina went into her room to change.

‘Sure, they all love you, so beautiful!’ Ka Lei called to her, and then handed Georgina some tea as she reentered the lounge wearing a sarong.

Ka Lei rubbed her cousin’s shoulders. ‘Cole?’

‘No, I’m fine, really,’ Georgina laughed.

‘Okay?’

‘Yes, Mum!’ Georgina teased.

‘Me? Loo lie your mum?’

‘I didn’t mean it … but maybe a little bit,’ Georgina said, after seeing Ka Lei’s delighted expression.

‘You have photo?’

‘Yes, wait here, I’ll get them.’

Georgina returned holding the small photo album. She turned the pages and Ka Lei held the album.

‘Here is my father, holding me.’

‘Such a big man, thaz why you so tall. Who tis one?’ Ka Lei pointed to the next page. ‘Tis one is you?’ It was a picture of a baby in a high chair, eating a biscuit, chocolate all over its face. Ka Lei laughed. ‘Chocolate baby!’

‘Yep! That’s me.’

The next photo was of Georgina as a young teenager, standing with her arm around Feng Ying’s shoulder.

‘Tis is your mommy?’

‘Yes, we were on a trip to the seaside. We went with the school.’

Ka Lei held the picture closer to her face to get a better look.

‘It make you sat, looking at photos. I am solly. You sat about your mutter?’

‘Yes, I am sad, sad about a lot of things, but I am getting happier.’ Georgina smiled to reassure her. ‘I am getting much happier. Coming to Hong Kong is the best thing I ever did.’

He surveyed his hunting ground. Even the knowledge that he was out there murdering women just like them didn’t stop the girls from working. That was the way they were – greedy little whores.

He looked around the club. Candy was there. He would like to add her to his collection but she had a boyfriend. That meant she had family. The Italian boyfriend might not care for her, but he certainly cared about the cheques she wrote him. He might come looking for her.

Bernie? He’d seen her leave with the old drunk. Bernie was tempting. He had yet to add Irish to his list of nationalities. He was also missing a black girl – English or American would do. Still, he had his eye on one of those already, and it would happen when the time was right.

But tonight he had seen something that excited him greatly. A new girl. A mixed-race girl. Another first on his list – a Eurasian. He’d watched her walk out alone. Just off the boat, he thought. She hasn’t even been paid for sex yet. That thought thrilled him. He would be her first customer.

26

Lucy hadn’t needed to worry. It wasn’t Chan waiting for her – Big Frank was in. Big Frank was a good customer. He was a sixty-three-year-old six-foot-five Texan who liked to tell people he’d made his money from selling shit, but really he’d made it from fertiliser deals. Although he was originally from Texas, he had his retirement home at Dolphin Key, in the middle of the Florida Keys. It was a once-beautiful bird sanctuary that had been completely ruined by the invasion of condos and resorts. Most of which Big Frank, through his myriad of business interests, had been indirectly responsible for.

Big Frank loved it at Dolphin Key and had bought himself the biggest and best penthouse available. It had marble floors and a gold-plated bidet, four-poster beds and an original Norwegian sauna. On one side was the ocean. Imported beaches were on the other.

He loved to open his French doors every morning and stand on his balcony, inhaling the sunshine. He loved to watch the magnificent ocean – alive and dancing – as it slid apologetically into the marina. And even though one boat melted into another, until it all became a jumble of money and yachts, Frank’s keen eyes could always spot it. There in the middle sat the biggest, the most beautiful of all of them – the China Doll – Frank’s baby.

When Big Frank wasn’t fishing and felt in need of a new challenge, he took off on a business trip. At the moment he was dabbling in import/export. Mainly he imported sexual favours and exported Hong Kong dollars for them, and Lucy was his biggest supplier. She had captivated his soul. She had introduced him to a new world of pleasure and pain infliction – and he found he had a taste for it; couldn’t get enough of it; could hardly get through a day without it.

They took a taxi to a decent love motel. It was the upmarket kind: warm towels and fountains. It had a brochure full of various themed rooms: Haiwaiian, Parisian, rubber, wet. Lucy giggled dutifully while Big Frank pontificated over the list of extras. His fingers, like blanched sausages, turned the laminated pages and ran down the menu as he read the items aloud: five-speed waterbed, pulsating Jacuzzi and a fruit basket.

Gotta have me one of those, honey.

Eventually he picked the most expensive room, with all the extras – the Paradise Suite.

Lucy didn’t like wasting time like this. She was just about to get started when, from the corner of the room, above the plastic palms, came the offbeat soundtrack of a porn flick starting up. The TV screen came to life with close-up flesh and lurid colour. Big Frank took off his polo shirt and his buff-coloured slacks and stripped to his underwear. He unstrapped his reinforced girdle and left it standing to attention on the rattan chair before flopping onto the waterbed – which tsunamied beneath him – and propping himself up with pillows, ready to settle down and watch the movie.

Lucy had seen it before. She went into the bathroom, slipped out of her clothes and had a shower. Wearing only a towel, she re-entered the room just as the housewives’ fantasy was starting. She stood, blocking Frank’s vision, and let the towel slip. But instead of appreciating her warm, rounded body, he craned to look past her as rabid panting came from the direction of the television.

She threw the towel onto the chair, where it hung draped over his corset like a magician’s trick. Then, lying down, she rested her head on his stomach and traced his triple-bypass scar down to his navel hair, which she proceeded to wind around her fingers. His wheezing grew louder and his heart thumped in her ear.

‘You know what, honey, I bet you have a girlfriend we could call to come over?’ he wheezed.

‘Oh I sollleeee …’ She exaggerated her Suzie Wong voice. ‘All busy tonight.’ Lucy had no intention of letting some other girl in on the act. Frank was all hers. ‘Never mind, Flank.’ She moved onto her hands and knees and turned her bottom towards him. ‘We gonna have fun. Okay?’ She slapped her hand against her right buttock and said ‘Spanky!’ over her shoulder. Big Frank’s chest hair bristled. ‘Coz I think I bin …’ she sank onto her elbows, ‘I think I bin naughty girl.’

27

Johnny Mann was heading east from Lan Kwai Fong, the nightclub end of Central District, and working his way along towards Causeway Bay, when he decided to pay another visit to Club Mercedes. He didn’t intend to stay long. He’d come back to the club in the hope of talking to Lucy and taking some more details from her about the foreign women who had stayed in her flat. When he got there he found out from Mamasan Linda that Lucy was out with a customer and that there was a new foreign girl working there – Lucy’s cousin. So he asked to interview her.

It wasn’t busy. He was given a table at the front of the club. It was an area far enough from the band that you could talk easily and be heard, but it didn’t afford the privacy of one of the VIP booths around the dance floor.

He was deep in thought when pink toes and gold strappy sandals appeared in his line of vision. Then there were long legs, smooth rounded thighs, a tiny waist and small full breasts to get past. But it didn’t even end there … Shit! That was a face to die for … It was heart-shaped with high cheekbones and large amber-coloured eyes. She had pale skin, a splatter of freckles across her nose, a long, slender neck and espresso-coloured hair that cascaded around her shoulders in pre-Raphaelite curls. She was not just pretty. She was breathtakingly beautiful.

‘Miss Johnson … is that right?’ he almost stuttered.

She nodded and a small anxious smile flitted across her beautiful face. As it did so, Mann saw that her mouth formed an almost perfect circle, topped with a cupid’s bow complete with a small turn up at either end – perfect.

‘Please sit down.’

She did so in a slightly uneasy fashion, as if she were neither used to the dress nor the heels. She seemed very young, thought Mann, and very out of place.

‘Mamasan says you’ve just started at this club. Is that right?’

‘Yes, tonight is my first night.’ She perched on the edge of the seat.

‘Did you work anywhere else before here?’ He tried a smile to relax her.

‘No.’

‘When did you arrive in Hong Kong?’

‘Two days ago.’

‘And what reason did you have for coming to Hong Kong?’

She paused, reluctant to answer, then blurted: ‘I came to find my cousins.’

‘Cousins? Ah, yes, Lucy! Have you any other relatives here?’

‘No. Just Lucy and her sister Ka Lei.’

‘You came all the way here to find them? It’s a long way.’

Mann felt a pang of pity. He wondered why someone so obviously inexperienced in life had come to the other side of the world, and at the worst time possible?

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