Lights Out (28 page)

“You and I are going to become good friends, unless of course you
prefer it otherwise”, the voice said as the knife was pushed a little harder,
causing
Luk
to suck in some air as the pain started
to register. He was relieved of his gun as it was expertly slipped from his
hand and placed into the man’s jacket pocket.

Luk
nodded silently as he was guided down a narrow
side street between two high rises, to a hidden doorway. His attacker opened
the door, still keeping the knife pressed against his side, and opened it
ushering
Luk
to go ahead. Once inside it took
Luk
a while to adjust his eyes. The room was dark and dingy
with a strong smell of
mould
and an acrid smell of
urine. There was a dripping noise to his left where he could make out the
entrance to a toilet. In the middle of the room was a small table and two
chairs and in the corner a stained mattress on the floor. It was clearly a drug house, the place
where people came to shoot up in privacy. The urine stench was so overpowering
that it made
Luk
gag and he covered his mouth.

“Cozy isn’t it”, his attacker said pushing
Luk
toward one of the chairs.

“Make yourself comfortable” he said.

Luk
sat down with a thud on one of the old metal
chairs. The beads of sweat across his forehead from his recent run were now
turning cold making him shiver in the dank room.

“I knew we would be friends when I first set eyes on you Officer…?”
he probed for Luks name.

“
Luk
”, he said simply.

“Officer
Luk
. I’ve been missing a police
friend for a few months now and I think you are going to be perfect.” His
attacker stated, stretching a thin smile across his ugly mouth.

“Did you know Officer Liu?
Such a shame.
He
started out well. He helped us a lot, and of course we helped him too. His wife
was delighted with their house in Clearwater Bay, three bedrooms, and a nice
garden. But then he made a few mistakes, put us in a difficult position and,
well, we don’t like mistakes.” The attacker finished menacingly.

Luk
wracked his brains. He had heard of Officer Liu.
He’d been killed a few months earlier. He couldn’t remember all the details,
but the message was clear. He could feel a sickening surge in his stomach and
he tried to repress the urge to vomit.

“Today you’ll go back to the station, because you didn’t manage to
catch any of the bad men. But you will hear from me very soon. We’ll look after
each other and you’ll start to see the benefits. Your work won’t be difficult.”

Luk
assessed the man before him. Clean cut in his
dark suit. His collar was undone at the top button and his black tie slightly
loose at the knot.
Luk
thought that he was maybe in
his early forties. He looked fit and had managed to outrun
Luk
easily. In the dark room he stood out. At first
Luk
thought it was because of his white shirt, but then he realized that it wasn’t
that at all. It was his pale skin. He almost glowed.

“And if I refuse?”
Luk
said.

Within a second
Luk
was bent over the table
on his back, a hand pressed tightly around his throat cutting off his breathing
and the sharp tip of the knife was hovering millimeters from his left eye. He
could feel the man’s rancid breath and see the rage in his attackers eyes
bearing down on him. It was the look of a man unhinged, prepared to do
anything, including kill a police officer.

Suddenly
Luk
found himself released and he
slumped back into the chair, allowing the air into his lungs as he rubbed his
throat. He watched as his attacker wiped the saliva from his mouth with the
back of his hand, panting as he did so. His hair had flopped forward out of its
slicked back style and he pushed his fingers through it, tidying himself up.
Once composed he looked again at
Luk
.

“If you refuse, my dear new friend, it will be the last thing that
you do.”

With that his attacker slipped out of the door, leaving
Luk
alone in the dark room. He was shaking uncontrollably
now. No longer able to suppress the nausea,
Luk
stood
and vomited next to the table. He wiped his mouth, and exited the room,
relieved to be in the narrow alleyway. Glad of the rush of fresh air as he
stepped outside. He scanned the alleyway in front and behind him, but his
attacker was gone.

He didn’t say anything when he met up with his colleague. Just that
he had lost him in the chase. They went back to interview the woman, and did
their paperwork.

Luk
only had to wait two days before he received his
first message. It came in a bouquet of flowers, delivered to his desk. There
was no note, just a card with a phone number.

He called the number and waited.

“Ah Officer
Luk
, so nice of you to call.
Did you like the flowers? I thought yellow was your
colour
.
Let’s meet, shall we say, thirty minutes at the Blossom House
dai
pai
dong? Don’t keep me waiting, I hate being kept waiting.” The same voice that
had hissed in Luks ear, now made him shiver. Then the phone went dead.

Telling his colleagues that he had a
Dr’s
appointment,
Luk
left and made his way to the Dai
Pai
Dong.

The first few meetings were all the same,
Luk
would sit and listen and his attacker would talk. He still didn’t know his
name. Then on the third meeting the first request was issued. One of his men
had been arrested, an extortion charge, the evidence was backed up against him
and the hearing was coming up soon. He needed the evidence to become
inadmissible.

Luk
didn’t sleep that night as fought with reason.
Eventually he had decided to look into the case, and if he thought he could do
it without compromising himself, then he would.

It was easier than
Luk
thought. He re-wrote
a couple of the statements, and removed one of the pieces of evidence. It took
him less than twenty minutes to destroy a case that would have for sure sent
the man to jail.

That night, when he arrived home,
Luk
dialed the number.

When his attacker answered he simple said. “It’s done”, and switched
off the phone.

Two days later a delivery arrived at his home. It was a parcel,
wrapped in brown paper addressed to him. He quickly ripped it open, and was
stunned when he saw that it was a traditional Chinese tea set. It was
exquisitely presented in a lacquered box. It had a bright yellow silk inlay and
a brown clay teapot sat nestled between six small clay teacups. There was a
note attached that simply stated “ Enjoy the tea.’
Luk
was confused. What an odd thing to send.

He walked it through to his kitchen and carefully removed each
delicate piece standing it on his worktop. Then he removed the silk layer.
Underneath taped to the bottom of the box was a brown A4 sized envelope and it
looked full.
Luk
pulled the tape off securing the
packet and he ripped open the top. His mouth dropped open when he saw the
contents. It was stuffed with bank notes.
Luk
emptied
the notes onto his worktop. When he was done counting he stuffed it all back
into the envelope and into the box and closed the lid. He poured himself a
glass of brandy and drained the glass. One hundred thousand Hong Kong dollars
was the final amount that he had counted. That was the equivalent to almost
three months salary to
Luk
. He was stunned, nervous
and excited all in one.

Lam had listened to
Luk
for well over an
hour. She learned that what had started out as small jobs began to shift into
more disturbing territory. By now
Luk
had been
‘working’ for his attacker for a number of years and he had earned more than
double his yearly salary. He reconciled himself that what he was doing was not
so serious, he wasn’t letting killers off the hook,
it
was mainly money laundering and bribery. He figured that if a few triads
managed to slip through the net, they would slip up again and be caught
eventually. So he continued without much guilt.

Things changed when
Luk
was given
information about a rival triad group. It was a drug-related drop that was on
his attackers home turf, and they needed it stopped. He told
Luk
that they expected that there would be in excess of
eighty kilograms of cocaine, and five senior triad members present. Not wanting
to cause an all-out triad war,
Luk
was asked to
intervene. It needed to become a police matter, not a triad one. He was given
everything on a plate, names, the date, time and location. At first
Luk
was reluctant, but then, realizing what this could also mean for his career, he
decided to do it.

Telling his chief that he’d had an anonymous tip off,
Luk
pulled together in one week Operation Sleeping Ghost.
It was one of the biggest drug-related operations that the Hong Kong Police
force had ever seen. It involved forty police officers from several different
units.
Luk
knew that if it all went wrong, then his
career would be up in flames.

The drop took place exactly as indicated at a remote warehouse in
Tsuen
Wan, an industrial area of Kowloon. The police, as
instructed, waited until everyone was in place and
Luk
was ready. He gave the order for the raid and within minutes six people had
been rounded up. Other officers went through vehicles and clothing, and a total
of sixty kilograms of cocaine was recovered. Lam remembered the case well. It
gained a lot of press at the time. Headlines like major
Drug Bust Completes Gang Downfall
stole the front page of the
newspapers. She remembered the street value quoted as being in excess of $100
million Hong Kong dollars.

All six people, five men and one woman, were arrested and charged
with dealing dangerous drugs and drug possession. They received Hong Kong’s
maximum penalty of 15 years.

It was a great success for
Luk
and he
enjoyed the positive attention. Later that same year he was promoted to
Detective and eventually became one of the specialists of the
Organised
Crime and Triad Bureau.

Luks attacker couldn’t have been happier and of course
Luk
was paid handsomely.

He was busy telling Lam all of this, when a sickening thought flashed
across her mind. She stopped
Luk
mid sentence.

“
Luk
, I need to ask you something.”

Luk
sat up in his bed and paid attention, the look on
Lam’s face told him that she knew. It was only a matter of time before she
would work it out. But she had pieced it together sooner than he thought.

“The night that Ng and
Ko
died. That was a
set-up. No one could work out how they knew that we were investigating them.
Everyone was worried that we had a leak on the inside. But that night….” She
trailed off, already knowing the answer.

“It was you….” She said slowly as the true realization hit her. She
glared at the man lying in the bed before her.

“You told them that we were closing the net, and they set us up. You
allowed them to do it. You allowed them to murder three police officers…” her
voice, now raised in anger shook as she spoke. She stood up from the side of
his bed. No longer able to contain the desperate fury that threatened to escape
her body.

“It was Ghost Face all along. He was the one there that night. I
wasn’t seeing a ghost, it wasn’t my mind playing tricks on me, it was
him
. I always knew that one day I would see him again and
then I did, earlier today. CCTV footage of the same man walking out of a dark
alleyway.” She was talking to herself now rather than
Luk
,
who sat as white as a sheet on his bed watching Lam pace up and down.

“I could recognize his face anywhere. And now you….” She stopped and
turned to look at
Luk
. He appeared small now, sitting
there in his white gown, pale faced and all strapped up with tubes coming out
of his arm.

“You’re telling me that this is the same man that has murdered my
partner
Ko
, Ng, and now Chow. The same man that shot
Robert Black, and the same man that
is
responsible for
raping and murdering three innocent women. You can reconcile this with
yourself?”

Luk
sat in silence, knowing that his life as he knew
it was over.

Lam looked at
Luk
with pity.

“I feel sorry for you. You will have to live with what you have done.
You may not have murdered these people yourself. But today you have blood on
your hands, and I will never let you forget it.” Lam finished pacing. Without
saying another word, she grabbed her bag and coat and left the room. Outside
two police officers stood guard. She turned to them.