Dragon Head - A Beatrix Rose Thriller: Hong Kong Stories Volume 1 (Beatrix Rose's Hong Kong Stories Book 3) (8 page)

“It is.”

“You do
exactly
as I say. There’s no room for variation.”

“Exactly as you say.”

He looked pale.

She knew she needed to reassure him. “Nerves are fine, Chau. I’ll do most of what needs to be done. You’ll just need to cover me.”

“I know. I got it.”

They got out and Beatrix led the way down the street. She saw nothing that gave her any reason for concern. The business’s trucks were parked on the side of the road, forming a narrow corridor with the building into which small pools of illumination were thrown by the street lights overhead. The roller door was shut and secured by a hefty padlock. The main entrance was shut. As they walked next to the door, she glanced in through the glass panel. The small reception room was dark, save for a sliver of golden light admitted by the gap beneath an internal door that must have led into the warehouse.

Someone was inside.

They walked on until Beatrix was satisfied, then turned and walked back.

The alleyway was dark, but Beatrix could see that the side door was ajar.

Beatrix took two balaclavas from her pocket and tossed one to Chau. “Put it on,” she said.

He nodded and pulled the balaclava over his head, unrolling it all the way until all she could see was the glitter of his black eyes and his thin lips. She did the same.

Beatrix led the way. They advanced into the alleyway.

She reached the door.

She paused there and listened. It was quiet inside. She curled her hand around the Walther P5 and gently pulled the door all the way open.

Inside was a short corridor. It was dark save the light that limned the edges of the interior door at the end of the corridor. Beatrix stepped inside. Her heart beat a little faster. She tamped it down with measured breathing. The adrenaline was good, it would keep her sharp, but she needed to be in control.

She turned her head. Chau was behind her. He had his pistol ready.

She was ready for violence if that was what was needed. Fast, sudden, volcanic violence that would inspire anyone who might doubt her to think again. She would shoot if she had to. She wasn’t fearful of it. It would be an automatic reaction if she found herself in a situation where she determined it was necessary.

She reached the door and paused again. She couldn’t hear anything from the other side.

She turned to Chau, about to tell him to be ready to go, and looked right into the barrel of his raised pistol.

“Do not move, Beatrix.”

“You’ve got to be joking.”

“No joke.”

She shook her head. “Seriously. You’re double-crossing me? You?”

His face was obscured by the balaclava. “You ask me to choose between him and you. I choose him. You are a junkie, Beatrix. I know. I see the signs. How can I trust a junkie? How can you protect me when you don’t even care about protecting yourself?”

A bitter little smile kinked the edges of her mouth. “You idiot, Chau.”

“Take off balaclava and open door.”

She pulled it over her head. She wondered whether there would be any chance of getting to him before he could fire. She concluded that it was too risky. He had cautiously taken two steps back, increasing the distance that she would have to cover. The corridor was narrow, too. The chances of disabling him before he could shoot her were slim.

She cursed herself. Chau, of all people.

He
had fooled
her
.

“Door, please, Beatrix. Open door.”

She turned the handle and opened the door. The room beyond was empty.

There was no table nor any chairs. No sign of a poker game. No sign of Ying.

“Into room, Beatrix.”

She did.

Two men were standing behind the door. They closed it and came forward. One of them said, “Hands behind back.”

“You’re a dead man, Chau.”

He kept the gun trained on her. He was a hopeless klutz, but she knew that he could use it. She had seen him kill before. He was capable of a lot when his own skin was involved. “I am sorry. I have no choice. Now, please—do as he says.”

“Have you listened to a single word I’ve said?”

“I have no choice. Your hands, Beatrix. Do as he says, please.”

She had no choice. She put her hands behind her back and held her wrists together so the bracelets could be fitted. She was pushed into the middle of the room. She turned so that she could get a better look at Chau. He had taken off the balaclava. The colour had drained from his face.

“I’m still going to kill Ying. And now I’m going to have to kill you, too, Chau.”

Ying stepped out of a room at the back at the mention of his name. He laughed. “Ignore her, Chau. She is in no position to make threats. I am certainly not afraid of her.”

He took off his tracksuit jacket. He was wearing a white T-shirt beneath it. A heavy gold chain sparked in the overhead spotlights. He laced his fingers together and made a show of cracking his knuckles.

Beatrix knew she was about to take a beating. The only question was how bad it was going to be.

“You have caused me many problems, Suzy—or should I say Beatrix? And it is a shame. Really. Now, before we can continue, Chau is going to apologise to me. Isn’t that right, Chau?”

She saw Chau swallow and knew what was about to happen. He went to the table, took a white handkerchief from his pocket and opened it. He took his left hand, the one missing a joint of the little finger, and spread it out atop the handkerchief. One of the men who had been waiting for them took a box cutter from a shelf and joined him at the table. Chau closed his eyes, sweat beginning to run freely down his face. The man extended the blade of the cutter and rested the edge below the remaining knuckle of the same finger.

“Are you sorry, Chau?”

“Yes,
Dai Lo
. I am sorry.”

“Are you
very
sorry?”

“I am.”

At a nod from Ying, the man sliced down with the knife and severed the finger at the knuckle. It was
yubitsume
, the Yakuza finger-shortening ritual that the Wo Shun Wo had appropriated. Chau had faced the loss of his finger after insulting Donnie Qi. Beatrix had intervened to save him then. It was funny how life could be, she thought. His destiny had been predetermined. She could have intervened or she could have stayed in her chair. It would have made no difference to him. The result would have been the same.

For her, though?

Things would have been very different. She was paying a heavy price for trying to prevent an inevitability.

The universe was laughing at her. It was all a big cosmic joke.

The blood drained from Chau’s face and he looked as if he was about to faint. He took a second handkerchief and held it around the bleeding stump. Then, he wrapped the severed knuckle in the first handkerchief and presented it to Ying with a deep bow.

“I apologise,
Dai Lo
.”

“You see,” Ying said, “because he has apologised, I am prepared to spare him. He will be able to work for me again, too. You want to know what his first job will be?”

“I can guess.”

“Yes, I am sure that you can. He will make you disappear when we have finished punishing you for your insolence.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of brass knuckledusters. He slipped the fingers of his right hand through the holes, adjusted the rounded grip until it was settled and punched it into the palm of his left hand.

Beatrix tested the cuffs. They were solid. There was no prospect of being able to get out of them.

She braced herself for what she knew was coming.

It was going to be one of those days.

Ying punched her in the face.

It was more than just Ying. The two men joined in, too. They laughed and joked as they beat her. They were like animals. They kicked or punched, moved out of the way so that another could get in close enough to kick and punch, then swapped places again. She dropped to the floor so that she could bring her knees up and try to protect her organs. She opened her eyes. White flashes sparked across her vision. She blinked through the starbursts and saw them standing over her, feet raised to kick and stamp. She closed her eyes again. She had her chin pressed up tight against her chest. She switched off her mind, but she remained conscious throughout. The boots to her head and sides were alternated with strategically aimed blows to the mouth, ears and kidneys.

There was a pause and she heard Ying issue what was unmistakeably an order, and then Chau responding diffidently. Ying repeated what he had said and she heard feet, shuffling closer, and then felt a half-hearted kick. “Harder,” she heard Ying order, in English this time. “Kick her harder. Show her what it means to interfere in Chinese business.”

She opened her eyes and looked up at him. There was something animal in Chau’s face. There was pain, from the finger. There was relief, no doubt because he felt that his inclusion in this little game signalled that he was well and truly back within the fold, but something else, too. Something base and primal. His diffidence was gone, as if shorn away with every fresh kick. There was fury in his eyes. Why? Because she had constantly rebuffed his clumsy advances? Because she frightened him, made him feel less of a man? Chinese society—triad society, in particular—was patriarchal. A strong woman, like Beatrix, might have seemed like an affront to his masculinity. Now he was righting the balance.

She rolled over and made sure that they could see how weak and pitiful she looked. She wanted them to see. Pride was an irrelevance now that would get her killed. And, although she was not afraid of Death, she was reluctant to surrender to it without taking Ying and Chau with her. So she played the part. She mewled and coughed, letting them know how terrified she was.

She had no idea how long the ordeal lasted. Long enough for them all to work up a sheen of sweat and enough that, when they were finally done, they were all breathing heavily.

Ying said something in Mandarin. His two goons picked her up and dragged her to the back. She let her head hang down low, but not so low that she couldn’t pay attention to her surroundings and where she was going. She tried to tune in again. Get a sense of what their plan was. She was happy for them to think that she was subdued. She could have spat out the blood in her mouth, asked them if that was all they had, but all that would have done was to hasten her end. She was surprised that they hadn’t done it already. Maybe Ying wanted to have a little more fun at her expense before he finished her off.

They dragged her along a corridor, a door on either side. There was a flight of stairs descending at the end.

She found a little strength from somewhere and parlayed that into a wisp of hope.

Maybe they would get lazy.

Maybe they would make a mistake.

Maybe they would take off her cuffs, take their eyes off her for a minute.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Who was she kidding?

THE STAIRS led to a basement. Her legs wouldn’t support her so they dragged her.

She glanced up. There was a corridor with several doors. They took her to the one at the far end and opened it, tossing her inside. She landed on her chest, her chin striking a glancing blow on the concrete floor. Her vision dimmed again. The door was slammed shut. The light disappeared. Complete darkness.

She lay on the floor for a minute. She could feel her face swelling up. Her lips had been split, her left eye was starting to close, her nose was stoppered with clots, and her body was bruised from head to toe. She took careful breaths, unsure whether she had broken any ribs.

The room was freezing. It took her a moment to join the dots. They had tossed her inside an industrial freezer. Was it switched on? She couldn’t say. If it was, she doubted that she would last long. She didn’t mind. This was a respite from the beating. A death from hypothermia would be pleasant, compared to what might have happened to her. She knew the symptoms. Shivering and then tiredness, fast breathing and cold or pale skin. More violent shivering until the hypothermia worsened further, delirium, a struggle to breathe or move, and then the loss of consciousness. That all sounded civilised to what had just happened, and what was likely to happen later.

She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to think around the pounding in her head.

Chau.

Fucking
Chau
.

She couldn’t believe that he had sold her out.

The more she thought about it, though, the less she blamed him. She knew that she was in a mess. The opium. She was smoking too much. She wasn’t sleeping or looking after herself. And who, when presented with a partner who clearly had no interest in her own self-preservation, would willingly go up against a man like Ying?

She
wouldn’t.

She had given him two choices.

First, to work with her. The odds of success were slim. Even if she had been able to dispose of Ying, who was to say that his vendetta against them would not have been adopted by another? No, she admitted. The first choice was not attractive.

The second choice? For Chau to go to Ying and offer the
Dai Lo
the one person he wanted more than himself. Beatrix Rose, delivered to him all wrapped up with a bow on top. For the small added consideration of
yubitsume
, he had been restored in Ying’s good graces. Beatrix wouldn’t have staked very much on the chances of that being a particularly long and mutually rewarding relationship—she would have laid better odds on him turning up in the harbour with his throat slit—but one proposition clearly offered better prospects than the other.

He had made the same choice that she would have made.

That did not mean that she was minded to be clement. Beatrix had never been big on forgiveness, and there were consequences with a choice like that. For now, though, that was moot. She was beaten, cuffed and dumped in a deep freeze. Chau probably felt pretty good about himself and the decision that he had made.

She tensed against the bracelets, but they held firm and the pressure on her swollen wrists made her wince. She lowered herself onto her side and rested her head on the floor. She closed her eyes. She was tired. The last thing that she could remember before she surrendered to the cold was the face of her daughter, but then that, too, was gone.