The Trophy Taker (34 page)

Big Frank awoke with a smile on his face. He bounced out of bed and sang his way into the shower. The maid came and put his breakfast tray on the table. He shouted his thanks from the bathroom and emerged, his hair extensions dripping and a flapping hand towel slung around his waist. He just missed the maid as she disappeared at bullet-speed out of the door.

Big Frank was in the best of moods; everything felt right about the day. He strapped himself into his corset and, while humming the Wedding March, sat down to eat his hash browns and grits and wait for Lucy.

Lucy gave up packing. She called Max’s number again – he didn’t answer. She hadn’t seen him since she stopped working at the club.
Where was he? Sleeping?
It wasn’t like him not to answer her calls. She would have liked to have said goodbye to him, but it wasn’t to be.

She called another cab and while she waited she sat back, staring out of the window at the Hong Kong she would not see again for a long time. She was moving to Florida with Frank. She would be his wife, and they would have children and she would be the best-kept hostess on the planet. She shook her head sadly. How ironic: the dream – marry a passport, get a ticket out – only now it wasn’t a ticket for two; her beloved Ka Lei was dead and now she must go alone.

She sniffed, wiped her nose, stood and straightened the creases from her trousers. She looked towards the door. For a moment she thought she heard a key turn. She listened again. Nothing. She was getting jumpy. The sooner she got out of Hong Kong, the better.

Frank was waiting for her. His bags were packed – he was ready. He squeezed her so hard that she squealed in pain. She was still feeling the effects of the attack.

‘Flank, you gonna kill your little Hong Kong girl before we get married?’

‘I’m gonna eat you, honey.’ He scooped her up and carried her into the bedroom.

‘We gonna miss the flight, Flank!’

But he didn’t answer – his mind was elsewhere…

They arrived at the airport late. Lucy raced Frank through to check in. She stood nervously by Frank’s side, tucking herself as close to him as she could get, as they waited for their tickets and passports to be checked. She looked furtively around her. She didn’t want to make eye contact with anyone, but she was searching for small groups of smart-looking men. It didn’t even have to be a Wo Shing Shing member. Rival triad societies made pacts with each other in order to carry out a crime more effectively. She might never be safe from Chan. Wherever there were Chinese businesses there were triads.

Lucy hurried Frank through to Departures and straight to the boarding gate. She clung to his arm the whole way. They wouldn’t dare take Frank out too, she thought. They would have to separate them first, and there was no way she was going to let that happen.

Twenty minutes later they boarded an American Airways flight to Miami. Lucy’s eyes were fixed on the window. The minute the plane took off she knew she would be able to relax. They fastened their seatbelts and Lucy sighed gratefully as the plane began its taxi down the runway.
Phew
–
that was it
. She smiled at her reflection. She was safe, for now at least. She turned back from the window and smiled sweetly at Frank.

‘Not long, Flank. We gonna be husband and wife. Did you make the arrangements?’

‘I sure did, honey, you gonna be mine forever.’

Lucy smiled at him. ‘You’re so sweet. Yes, I am, Flank. I’m never gonna leave you.’

‘I know that, honey. You know why?’

Lucy shook her head.

‘Becoz,’ Big Frank slid his massive hand beneath Lucy’s fleshy bottom, ‘I’m gonna brand you. That’ll stop you runnin’ off. I’m gonna put a big fat F brand here.’ He pinched her hard.

Lucy tried to wriggle away. ‘Oooh! That’s enough, Flank! You’re hurtin’ me.’

Frank leaned across. ‘Enough? Enough, honey? I’m just gettin’ started.’

Lucy noticed that Big Frank’s left eye had gone into spasm again.

Georgina awoke three hours after Mann had left. It was lunch time. She got up and showered. She was starving. She rummaged through his kitchen cupboards and found a lonely Pot Noodle and a pack of Earl Grey tea. That would do for now. She sat in the lounge and waited for Mann. She really hoped that he would come back soon. She wanted the chance to talk to him properly.

The mid-afternoon sun stretched in through the lounge window and warmed Georgina through. She waited. Mann would be back soon, she was sure, and yet the day was trickling away. She turned on the TV and waited.

Dusk came, and she found herself still sitting alone. She began to feel panicky. Surely if Mann wanted her to stay he would be back soon? She got up and walked around the flat. The evening’s shadows made her shiver. The flat felt suddenly cold and unwelcoming. Then she realised it wasn’t just the flat. She didn’t really belong in Hong Kong. Hong Kong hadn’t been kind to her. It had chewed her up and spat her out. Maybe, she thought, it was time to go home. She wished Mann would come back and reassure her, provide her with the answers, tell her what she should do. But then she wasn’t sure he could or would do that.

Mann called in to the Albert. As he walked into the bar he saw Peter Farringdon. The surgeon didn’t see Mann – he was in the midst of greeting an elderly Chinese. The way they clasped one another’s hand struck Mann as slightly awkward, and then he saw it – the surgeon tapped his little finger three times on the outside of the other man’s hand.

‘How is she, Johnny?’ Mandy left the busy bar and came around to see him.

‘Georgina has been through such a lot, Mandy. It’s going to take time but I think she’ll be all right in the end. I have faith in her.’

‘Is she going to stay in Hong Kong?’

‘It’s for her to decide.’

‘Do you want her to?’

‘She knows I will be there for her if she needs me but she must make up her own mind. She’s a grown woman. She’s been through a lot but she’s survived. Her strength will see her through, I’m positive of that.’

‘But what do you want her to do?’

‘I want her to be the woman she is meant to be.’ He stood and kissed Mandy goodbye. As he made his way out he turned back and nodded in the direction of the surgeon who had been watching him. Mann held his gaze a few seconds longer than was comfortable for the surgeon. Did he know what he’d got himself into? Mann doubted it.

He who rides the tiger is afraid to dismount
.

Mann had to make one more stop – back at the office. He needed to pick up some things if he was planning to take time off. Headquarters was relatively quiet. Shrimp had gone home to rest. David White was still packing up. As soon as Mann walked into the office he saw it – a small brown package on top of his desk. He picked it up and turned it over in his hands – no sender’s address. It had been hand-delivered.

He looked around the office as if something might tell him where it had come from, but Ng’s and Li’s desks were empty. Mann held the package in his hands for a few more moments before carefully slitting it open. His heart began to beat faster. He reached inside and slid out the contents – a black plastic DVD case. He opened it: a DVD, no title.

Mann watched his fingers perform the ordinary task of preparing his laptop, flipping it open and firing it up as if in slow motion. Smoothly and slowly, these familiar actions were taking him to the point he dreaded. His heart was racing now, his palms were sweating.

He inserted the DVD into the drive and waited. He heard Helen’s voice before he saw her – begging for mercy. There she was – her arms tied together at the wrists, suspended from a hook in the ceiling. It was in Sixty-Eight, at the same station where Kim had died.

Helen’s arms were pulled high. Her feet barely touched the floor. A black cloth bag was over her head. He knew it was her. He knew every inch of her body. Even as it looked now, thin, bruised and battered, he knew it was her.

A man came into view, his back to the camera. He was European, of slight build, short, his skin saggy with age, his shape testimony to years of debauchery and bad living. His spindly legs were overhung by a flabby gut. He started whipping her.

It killed Mann to watch but it was worse to look away. He pulled his laptop closer to him. He had to be with her. He had to feel the full weight of it in his heart.

For minutes she screamed, twisting her body away from the pain. Then, the man paused. His shoulders heaved with the exertion. He wiped the blood and sweat from his face. Mann caught his profile. In that second his death became a certainty.

The man removed her hood. The camera zoomed in on her face. It was blotchy and swollen. Her eyes were petrified. Mann’s heart was breaking. The man unhooked her hands and dragged her across to a table. Helen was trying to get away – screaming. Mann would hear that scream – the sound of pure terror – for the rest of his life. The camera angle changed. Now Mann was down directly above the table. Helen was strapped down. Only her head was moving now – thrashing wildly from side to side as she tried to get away from the man’s hands and the polythene bag he held in them. But, she couldn’t. The camera zoomed down onto her face. Mann found himself looking through the mask of clear plastic into the eyes of his beautiful Helen. He watched the light in them slowly extinguish and he listened to the background sound of a man grunting. Helen died at the same second as James Dudley-Smythe ejaculated.

Georgina refolded the same T-shirt again and again, hovering over her small bag. She didn’t want to leave like this, but she didn’t think she should wait any longer for Johnny. She didn’t know why he hadn’t come back. She felt more alone now than ever. All her instincts told her to go home. She stood at the window and watched the lights go on in the block opposite. People appeared in illuminated windows like in an advent calendar. She wrote him a note.

My plane leaves just after midnight. If you want me
to stay, come and find me. X

She took the MTR to the airport. She had hours to spare. When she got there she ambled around, changing seats now and again and staring blankly at unfamiliar faces. She wasn’t feeling well, she was breathless and anxious. She felt better when she kept moving. People brushed past her, children spun around her feet. She didn’t move through passport control into the departure area; she had no baggage to check in, just a small bag which she carried with her. She did not have the resolution needed to cross over to the other side, from Hong Kong into no man’s land. She looked at her watch. There was still plenty of time for him to come – if he wanted.

Superintendent White had just about finished his packing when Mann walked into his office.

‘Jesus, Mann! What the hell?’

Mann slumped straight into a chair and put his head back and closed his eyes. He was nauseous and tired. He felt the cool of the overhead fan on his face.

‘Are you okay?’ Mann heard Superintendent White stop in his tracks. He opened his red-rimmed eyes and stared at a stain on the ceiling. The fan was turning – whooshing rhythmically.

‘I could do with a drink,’ he said, without moving or blinking.

David White unpacked one of his boxes and took out a bottle of vodka for Mann and a bottle of scotch for himself, and two cut-glass tumblers. He set them on the desk and poured out two large ones before walking over and handing the vodka to Mann. Only Mann’s eyes moved – his head remained glued to the back of the seat. He looked at his old friend’s troubled face and smiled ruefully.

‘Sorry, David. I must look a state.’

David White stood, vodka bottle in hand, waiting for Mann to dispatch his drink before he refilled it. ‘Bloody awful.’

‘I feel better than I did a few hours ago.’

‘What happened, Mann?’

‘I saw a film of Helen’s death…’

There was a knock at the door. ‘Go away!’ Superintendent White bellowed. A young officer, who didn’t dare put more than his nose around the door, answered.

‘Sorry, sir. I know you said you didn’t want to be disturbed, but there is an important call for you.’

‘Okay, okay.’ Superintendent White picked up the phone and pressed the extension number. Mann watched him as he listened intently for several minutes. His only contribution to the conversation was:
When…? Where…? Witnesses…? Anything
taken from the scene?

After a few minutes he put the phone slowly and deliberately back onto the receiver. Then he walked over and refreshed Mann’s drink. Mann watched him as he paced mechanically around the room, piecing his thoughts together. Mann waited. After a few minutes White came back to sit at his desk. He poured himself another scotch, put the bottle back into the drawer and drew the air in through his nose in a cleansing gesture of having finally reached a decision. He didn’t look at Mann while he spoke.

‘There’s been another death,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘It’s a man this time. James Dudley-Smythe was found hanging in his wine cellar this evening. Found by his maid – hanging – naked – severely beaten. We don’t need to look for the weapon. A metal-tipped whip was found implanted in his rectum. He probably died of a heart attack in the midst of it all. The maid seems to think there’s nothing missing.’ White glanced at Mann.

Mann sat up. ‘That’s what I was going to talk to you about, David.’

David White put his hand up to stop him.

‘I don’t think we need to waste police resources on this. The officers at the scene have found all sorts of apparatus in his house. It’s most likely he did this to himself. One of those weird sex rituals. Open and shut. He got what he deserved in the end. As you said – karma with laser sights.’

Georgina took out her photo album. She smiled at the pictures of her and Ka Lei, squeezed into photo booths, laughing and making faces at the camera. Then she closed the album and put it back in her bag. She didn’t need to look at photos of Ka Lei to remember her. She would carry her cousin in her heart forever.

She would always miss her and she would always wish things could have been different, but she would never regret coming. She looked up at the screen:

Now boarding
…

She closed her eyes for a few minutes. Inside her stomach was a solid weight of trepidation. But she knew she had to go. She must repair herself and rest. She needed to do this on her own. She was a grown woman now, she had to stand on her own two feet and find her place in the world. She would return one day. Maybe Johnny Mann would still be around. She hoped so. She stood and made her way through to Departures.