Nine Dragons - A Beatrix Rose Thriller: Hong Kong Stories Volume 1 (Beatrix Rose's Hong Kong Stories Book 2) (2 page)

She folded the triangle again, took a small clutch from the bag, and slipped the ricin inside.

She zipped up the bag and looked around the small room. She lowered the lid of the toilet and stood on it, reaching up to the ceiling. It was comprised of UPVC panels. She probed with her fingers until she found a point of weakness, then pushed up until she separated the panel from its neighbours and opened a small aperture. She stuffed the bag inside, then slid the panel back into place.

She pressed the earphones back into her ears and held the mic to her throat.

“Chau?”

“
Still here
.”

“The target?”

“
He has not come out
.”

“Stand by. I’m going dark.”

“
Dark?
”

She rolled her eyes.
For fuck’s sake.

“Quiet, Chau. I’m going
quiet
.”

She removed the earphones and put them and the phone into her clutch, unlocked the door and went outside.

SHE FOUND her way to the bar. Doss was there, sitting at the same stool that he had chosen when she had scouted him last week. He was a regular, well known enough to the bar staff that they didn’t need to ask him what he would like to drink. The bar was growing busy, but he was the only one sitting there. She was able to sidle alongside without too much bother.

The barman turned to her.

“Yes, madam?”

“Gin and tonic, please.”

“Which gin?”

“Hendrick’s. With cucumber and lots of ice.”

The barman nodded, took a glass and filled it with ice. He took a bottle down from the lit display rack, unscrewed the lid and free-poured a generous measure.

Doss turned to her.

“You know your gins. Most people drink Hendrick’s with lime.”

Beatrix smiled, making sure it came across as a little tentative. “It’s my one vice.”

The barman added tonic and gave it to her with the bill. “Eighty, please.”

Doss pointed to the bill. “Put it on my tab.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Beatrix said.

He waved her half-hearted objection away.

“Thank you.”

“I’m David.” He extended a hand.

“Suzy. Nice to meet you.”

She shook his hand. He had a limp, damp handshake. Unimpressive. Weak.

She had investigated his background thoroughly before accepting the assignment. The Independent Commission Against Corruption was an attempt by the authorities to at least make it appear as if effort was being expended in tackling the triads. It was a PR move, but it still had the ability to be a nuisance.

Doss had caused a commotion with one investigation in particular. Ten years earlier, a huge fire had wiped out the Shek Kip Mei Squatter Area, rendering fifty thousand Chinese homeless. The government had awarded a billion dollars’ worth of contracts to build new accommodation on the site. The local triads, sensing an opportunity to gorge on the largesse, had swarmed in like sharks around a bloody corpse. They formed dozens of small construction firms and, building cheaply and quickly, were responsible for a good proportion of the renewal work. In order to increase their margins, substandard materials were used. Corners were cut. Rules on safety were flouted, with inspectors paid generous backhanders or threatened with violence in order for the works to be approved.

And then, two years ago, one of the blocks had collapsed and trapped more than two hundred people amid the rubble. Fifty-three were killed. The press, unusually, found its voice. ICAC was charged with investigating the original contracts, and the early word was that evidence had been secured that implicated several very powerful triad figures. There was a rumour that the evidence led all the way up to a Dragon Head, one of the men elected to govern the loosely affiliated organisations. Despite his limp and ineffectual appearance, Doss had proven himself to be a tenacious investigator.

The job had been passed to Beatrix in the same way as the others. Mr. Ying had contacted Chau, and the two of them had met on the Star Ferry in the harbour between Wan Chai and Kowloon. He had provided a name, a photograph, and an envelope that contained two hundred and fifty thousand Hong Kong dollars. Twenty thousand sterling. Thirty-two thousand US. It was a down payment. The second two hundred and fifty would be paid upon completion of the job. Chau contacted Beatrix to provide her with the target’s details and her half of the money. Beatrix took over then, running a full scout on the person she had been tasked to eliminate. Doss had been no more difficult than any of the five other men that had been unfortunate enough to cross her path.

He held onto her hand for a beat too long.

“What do you do, Suzy?”

She removed her hand. “I’m in management.”

“Here on business, then?”

“That’s right.”

“What do you make of it?”

She made a show of her guileless grin as she waved her hand about her. “It’s crazy, right?”

He turned all the way around on his stool so that he was facing her. “You haven’t been before?”

“First time.”

“You’ll have to let me show you around.”

“Oh, I don’t know—”

He smiled at her. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s all right.”

“You don’t think me too forward?”

“Of course not.”

She asked him what he did, and he explained that he was a lawyer. What kind of lawyer? she asked. He gave her a five-minute explanation of his résumé that had all the hallmarks of something that he had down pat. He tried hard to make it sound exciting, dropping little hints that he must have imagined would be tantalising to her. She made a show of listening, encouraging him to continue, but she was really assessing the situation. The bar was busy, and getting busier, but she could see no CCTV and there was nothing about the two of them that would stay in the mind any more than any other patron. If there ever was an investigation, she wanted to make it as unlikely as possible that the death could ever be traced back to her. Satisfied that the odds of that happening were suitably long, even if the cause of Doss’s death was correctly diagnosed, and even if there was some way of evidencing the fact of this meeting, it would be impossible to trace it back to her. She was anonymous, a ghost, flitting back into the shadows, hidden among the seven million other souls who were crushed together in the city.

Doss talked for five minutes straight. He was vain and self-important. In the end, he finished his drink, stood, and excused himself to go to the bathroom.

“Don’t go away,” he said.

“I won’t.” She smiled. “What are you drinking?”

“I’ll have one of your gins. Thanks. Tell him to put it on my tab.”

“Thank
you
,” she said.

Beatrix watched him disappear into the back of the room and then ordered another round of drinks. The barman delivered their gins and, when he turned his back, Beatrix reached into her bag for the folded triangle of paper. She checked that the barman was still occupied, and then used the mirror to surveil the space behind her. She wasn’t being watched. She opened the end of the sachet with extravagant care and, hiding it in her hand, tipped the contents into the gin. The particulate looked like table salt, and it fizzed and bubbled as it was absorbed into the liquid. She took out her cell phone and set the alarm to ring in ten minutes.

She saw Doss come back through the door and concentrated on looking as normal as she could. He sat down next to her.

“Just what the doctor ordered,” Doss said, pointing at the drinks.

Beatrix smiled. He took his seat next to her again, collected his glass and touched it to hers. “Cheers.”

“Cheers.”

She watched as he sipped the drink. The ricin was tasteless.

Doss was still talking when her cell phone alarm rang.

She picked it up, pretended to read a message that wasn’t there, and frowned.

“What is it?”

“My boss,” she said.

He looked concerned. “What?”

“He needs me to go in.”

“You can’t stay?”

“I’m sorry.” She held up her phone apologetically. “He’s a bit of a tyrant.”

“Shame,” he said. He reached into his pocket and took out a business card. He gave it to her. “This is me. If you want a guide to show you around, I’d be happy to do it. Just give me a call.”

“Thank you,” she said, smiling brightly at him. “Thanks for the drink.”

He raised the half-finished glass. “Cheers. Lovely to meet you.”

“And you.”

He took her hand and tugged it gently. She ducked down to his level and allowed him to kiss her on the cheek. His lips tarried a little too long, and his breath smelled a little too much of the gin. When she looked into his face she saw sweat on his upper lip and moisture streaming out of one nostril. It confirmed that his business in the bathroom had involved rather more than simply relieving himself. That, she thought, might not be such a bad thing. The poison that was already moving around in his blood would induce vomiting and diarrhoea that would eventually become bloody. He would become dehydrated, and that would eventually develop into seizures. Within three or four days his liver, kidneys, and spleen would stop working and he would die. The evidence of other substances in his blood might confuse the correct diagnosis. Ricin was almost impossible to detect in any event, and it looked as if his lifestyle might be usefully obfuscatory. It was all good.

Beatrix made her way through the crowded bar to the warm street outside. She glanced across the traffic to the window of the restaurant and caught Chau’s eye. She stared at him without giving him any other signal that could be observed, and then set off in the opposite direction from where she had arrived.

BEATRIX FOLLOWED Lockhart Road to the MTR station at Causeway Bay. She descended the escalator to the eastbound platform and waited for a train. It was quiet, with a few commuters waiting to head home. These were true Chinese, the low-paid menial workers who cooked, washed and cleaned for the Westerners who lived in the affluent districts around Central. A train pulled into the station. Beatrix opened the case of the cell phone and took out the SIM card. She snapped it in half and dropped it into the trash as she boarded the train.

Beatrix was aware of a few lazy glances of disdain as she sat down. She was travelling in the opposite direction that she would have taken to her flat. But it was a habit, long ingrained, that she would check to ensure that she was not followed. Both she and Chau had followed a similar routine as they made their way to Wan Chai that afternoon. Beatrix had taken the ferry to Kowloon and back, partly to satisfy herself that she was clean and partly because she enjoyed the spectacular view from the boat, the high-rise vistas on both sides of the water as if each part of the city was vying to outdo the other.

She remained on the carriage as they passed through Tin Hau, Fortress Hill, North Point, and Quarry Bay.

She alighted at Tai Koo. People had disembarked along the route and, by the time she reached the station, there were only another four people in the carriage with her. She stepped onto the platform, noted that the only others to disembark had been several carriages back, and satisfied herself that she was alone. It might have been unlikely that anyone would have tried to follow her, but that didn’t mean that she was prepared to neglect her routine. Chau had been lax until she had demonstrated to him how easy it was to follow the unwary, surprising him outside his apartment with her fingers pressed against his spine. No one—certainly not Mr. Ying, and not even Chau—knew where she lived, and that was a state of affairs that she intended to maintain.

She waited until the other passengers had departed, ascended to the surface and stopped in a store near the station where she knew she could pick up a change of clothes for a few dollars. She bought a new pair of jeans and a black T-shirt, took them to a public toilet and changed. She removed her make-up, took the dress and the black wig and, ensuring that she was unobserved, shoved them into the nearest bin outside.

She dumped the body of the cell phone into an open drain and walked east to Sai Wan Ho. The district was residential, bounded by Victoria Harbour to the north and the mountains to the south. The hill upon which it had been founded had once been filled with squatter settlements, but those had been razed and replaced with expensive new developments. There was Taikoo Shing, redeveloped from the dockyard, and a swathe of reclaimed land that had been filled in with private housing estates.

Older buildings, like the restaurants and food stores at Tai On, were farther inland. It was a cheaper area, more affordable for locals. Beatrix checked behind her as she walked from the station, pausing several times to ensure that she was not being tailed. She entered the lobby and then walked past the various eateries, deciding what she wanted to eat. There were food stores that were selling egg waffles, congee, fried noodles, fish balls, deep-fried tofu, eggplant and dozens of other dishes. It was a riotous mixture of aromas, each more delicious than the last. Beatrix walked all the way through the building to the café that she knew was near to one of the other entrances. It specialised in cart noodles, served with a delicious soup base and a wide array of toppings. Beatrix chose wonton, vegetable and beef brisket, and took the carton to a table where she broke apart a set of plastic chopsticks and set to eating.

She finished her meal, dumped the sauce-smeared carton in a garbage bin, and walked back to the station. It was dark now, the million lights on the other side of the water leaching their glow into the night and casting long-fingered reflections across the glassy waters of the harbour.

There was a payphone outside the station. She took the paper napkin that she had taken from the restaurant and wrapped it around the handle of the receiver so as to avoid leaving any prints. She pushed a dollar into the slot and, covering her fingertips with a second napkin, dialled the number of the payphone at the corner of Kai Hing Road, close to Chau’s warehouse.

The call picked up.

“I’m here,” he said.

“What did you see?”