The Trophy Taker (24 page)

In the centre of the room was a king-sized bed, draped in purple silk. A red velvet pillow was laid at the top of the bed and on it rested the sleeping head of Georgina. She wasn’t actually asleep, she had been given a dose of Rohypnol and was merely inert. Her hair was brushed and laid out artistically over the pillow. Her cheeks blushed a rosy pink. Her lips were painted red. She was naked. She remained very still as all around her lights were adjusted. She heard the voices of the technicians but could not open her eyes to see their faces. Above the sound of equipment being adjusted and technicians communicating, she heard the sound of people: voices and laughter, but she could do nothing but listen. She was an inanimate object, fully aware of her body but unable to communicate to it.

Then she felt the man’s breath on her face. She felt the crush of his body. She felt him inside her. From some faraway place she felt it – the pain and the hatred. She saw it accurately, recorded it, but could do nothing to reach it. She couldn’t breathe. Squeezing hands were around her throat. She was drowning.

At the same time, at the other end of Hong Kong, Ka Lei stared into the bathroom mirror and began to hyperventilate. Her breath steamed the mirror. She wiped it furiously. Her arms tingled as she gulped the air down into her throat and her legs buckled beneath her. She hit the edge of the sink as she fell, cutting the side of her head. She didn’t notice. Heaving herself upright, she gripped the sink for support and swayed unsteadily on her feet as she wiped the glass with frantic hands and screamed:

Georgina … Georgina …

She stood, reeling, breathless and panting as she stared into terrified eyes – her own eyes.

Wait for me, Georgina, wait
…

She ran out of the flat to the landing and yanked open the French doors that led to the balcony where washing usually hung, but which was empty now. A cold sheet of torrential rain momentarily blinded her as it hit her in the face, and she stood for a few seconds, disorientated. Then, shielding her eyes with her hand, she saw the railings. She came to the edge of the balcony and placed one foot at a time onto the first rail. She became unbalanced as a gust of wind almost tipped her over before she was ready. She swung backwards. Then she stepped up again, in control this time, and inch by inch she let her weight tip forward until she fell. Over and over she tumbled in the air.

Back on the silk-covered bed, Georgina slipped into unconsciousness and fell with her. They fell through the bottom of the world, arms outstretched, holding on to one another. They turned around and around in the rain and laughed so hard. Georgina had never felt so happy. But then her hands lost their grip and she was slipping away from Ka Lei. Suddenly the distance between them was too great, and all around her was darkening. She watched Ka Lei grow distant at the same time as she saw the room reappear. She hovered above her own body and watched it being brought back to life.

Lucy switched her phone back on as she exited the MTR station. There were five missed calls. She held a piece of card over her head to shelter from the storm and ran towards home. The pavement was awash with rainwater. Her legs were soaked as she ploughed through the puddles, making no attempt to avoid them. She didn’t care; she needed to get home as fast as she could. She had an anxious feeling that had been growing for the last two hours. She’d never meant to leave Ka Lei for so long. She knew in her heart that she shouldn’t have left her at all, but she also knew she must reel Big Frank in now that he was on the hook. And she had been right. He had asked her to marry him. She couldn’t just say ‘thanks very much, and I’ll be off now’. Still, she had felt very uneasy in that last hour; it had become torturous for her to stay. In the end he had let her go, with the promise that she would return the next day.

The cardboard over her head dropped, soggy and useless. The wind and rain battered her face. She was panting with exertion and there was a small wheezy noise like the squeak of a frightened animal in her lungs as they fought to keep pace with her legs. She wished she hadn’t worn heels, but she didn’t dare stop, she was nearly there now. Just around the corner, a few more strides and she would be able to see their block, make out their balcony, see the light glowing from within, and see Ka Lei just where she had left her.

She rounded the corner and slowed down. There was a group of people, standing with blown-out umbrellas, pieces of card, flapping plastic bags held above their heads. All gathered around an object on the pavement outside the supermarket entrance. Some of the people were talking about which balcony it must have been. Lucy listened. What did they mean? She didn’t know. They were looking at her balcony, and at the French doors swinging in the rain and catching the light. The crowd parted as she walked towards them.

Mann ran down the corridor and burst into the Superintendent’s office.

‘We’re ready to leave.’

‘How many are you taking?’ The Superintendent was on his feet. The place was buzzing with adrenalin.

‘Twenty.’

‘Is now the best time?’

‘Yes. We want to get there when the brothers are at work. I want to have a look around first.’ Mann’s heart hammered and his eyes burned with impatience, but he knew it had to be done right. He wanted to find Georgina alive.

Mann, Ng and Li parked outside the four-storey building situated three-quarters of the way along Herald Street, at the lower end of Sheung Wan, Western District, where the Fong family lived. Normally it was a peaceful, dusty old street with a permanent smell of rotting vegetation and an aura of general decay. But this evening there was a pink pre-storm light. The air was charged.

Mann looked up and down the street. It had once been busy – thriving with shops – but now it was waiting to be knocked down. There were only a few shopfronts still in use. A few kids were tinkering with their mopeds at the far end of the street. An old tramp sat waiting for nightfall.

They walked up to the house. A woman was coming downstairs. She was a resident of the top floor, on her way to the market. Mann showed his ID. He asked her about the Fongs. The brothers were not at home, she said, only old Father Fong was upstairs. They occupied the apartment on the first floor and they still rented the surgery and shopfront on the ground.

‘Is this the surgery?’ Mann pointed at the door just inside the entrance.

‘Yes. It used to be where the old man held his practice and sold his herbs. I haven’t seen anyone go in there for years. I don’t know why they keep it.’

Mann thanked her and sent her on her way. He radioed to the rest of the team waiting further down the street. They split into pairs and spread out along the road.

‘Ng, you and Li go on up and try to get the keys to this room for me. Don’t let the old man out of your sight.’

Mann went outside to check the metal shutter at the shopfront. It had been a long time since it had been opened – it was completely rusted up. There was no noise coming from the old surgery.

Ng returned with a set of keys.

‘How was the old man?’

‘A bit confused – agitated. He’s housebound – sick. He thinks it’s one of these keys, he doesn’t know which.’

‘When does he think his sons will be home?’

‘He expects Man Po at any time now. Max, not till the morning.’

‘Don’t let him out of your sight.’

‘Shrimp’s with him.’

The fourth key fitted. Mann nudged the door with his foot. It opened a fraction. He stood in the doorway. There was absolute darkness – thick and stagnant. There wasn’t a sound. But there was a smell. Herbs, disinfectant and something else. He knew, without entering, that this was
the
room. This was where the women had been kept. The air inside was rancid with a musty heat – the smell of fear and sweat trapped within the walls. This place had been a prison.

Someone had been held here recently – he felt their presence, smelt their adrenalin. He nudged the door a little further. Directly opposite him was a mattress. On the mattress was a discarded piece of duct tape and a length of rope, one end still attached to the wall.

He stepped further in and shone his torch around. At the far end of the room, twenty feet away, were the old metal shutters. He flashed his torch to the right of them and saw a shelf stacked with specimen jars. Inside one of the jars, something glittered. A black wig that was hanging from a hook beneath the shelf caught his attention. He looked at it again. It wasn’t a wig, it was a human scalp and next to it hung bunches of skin, taped together. It was then that he felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle and he knew he was being watched.

From behind the mattress a wall of death stared at him. He flashed his torch over the images. Lolling heads and blanched faces stared out in flaccid colour from cheap glossy Polaroids. He searched methodically, left to right, along the rows. He paused at each one, looked hard, tried to see past the distortions of death. He searched for anyone he knew. He recognised Gosia, defiant-looking, even in death – her features hard and lean. She glared back at him, her lightless eyes accusing. He flicked across the photos, searching, straining to recognise the dead women. Looking for Helen. Praying he would not find Georgina.

There was the head that had slipped onto the waiter’s foot – Roxanne Berger’s. It was as he had seen it that day in the car park at the New World restaurant, but someone had taken time to try to hide the wounds made from the rope that had nearly decapitated her. Her blonde curly hair was placed neatly around her severed neck to cover it. Someone cared about the way she looked in death – wanted her to look her best.

As Mann looked at the pictures he could see that all the women had been posed – their hair brushed, their faces cleaned. Some of them had had their pictures taken several times from different angles. He stepped closer to the wall and squatted above the mattress. He looked hard at each image – searching. Halfway along the fifth row he found what he sought.

The street was cleared of loiterers. Twenty officers were in position. Three of them were on the second floor. Ng and Li were on the first-floor landing, outside the Fong apartment. They were sweating profusely in the heat. It ran down their faces, poured down their arms and backs, but they held absolute silence as they waited in the dark. Up and down the street, officers sat it out. Inside the old surgery, Mann crouched and waited. He didn’t feel the heat. He wasn’t bothered by the sweat. Every pore in his body was listening, breathing, poised ready. Every sensory receptor was activated. He listened, he watched. His hands itched to get hold of the brothers.

Man Po arrived home. He parked his truck outside the house and walked leisurely around it, inspecting its tyres, making sure he had locked the back. He looked around and it occurred to him, momentarily, that the street was very quiet. Usually there was a group of youngsters standing around mopeds at the far end of the street. They weren’t there. Neither was the old beggar who came to sleep in the doorway opposite at about this time. But Man Po did not dwell on it. He went back to lock his truck – for the second time. Eventually, checks done, he walked towards his front door and stood searching for several minutes for his key. Just as he turned, as if to go back to the truck and look for it there, he dug deep enough in his pocket and found it, and lumbered over to his front door. Key in hand, he stepped through into the unlit hallway and hovered there for a few seconds staring at the old surgery door. Something wasn’t right, it was ajar. He called out to Max, thinking he must be inside, but he got no answer. He walked straight in and stopped a foot from Mann. He looked frantically around for an explanation. Where was Max? Ng and Shrimp raced down the stairs.

‘Man Po, you are under arrest for murder. You have the right to remain silent. If you do not …’

Man Po turned to run. Ng stood with Shrimp and two other officers and attempted to block Man Po’s escape. He threw them off with the strength of a cornered rhino in his first charge, dragging them with him as he made for the door. Ng brought a rubber baton down on his head, which threw him off balance for a second as Mann kicked his legs from beneath him and brought the big man crashing down.

Mann took Ng’s baton. It shook in his grip. He wanted to kill Man Po. He raised the baton above Man Po’s head. Just one or two heavy, hard shunts, that’s all it would take. No. He took a deep breath and lowered his hand. He wanted this man alive. He held Man Po facedown on the floor whilst Ng sat on him and cuffed him. Man Po began blubbing then bellowing.

Max heard it as he drew up outside. He had come home to make sure his father was all right. He hadn’t been well recently and Max had taken a few fares then returned to check on him. The sound of his brother wailing gripped Max by the heart, just like it had always done. He got out of his car and was immediately surrounded by ten officers and thrown onto the bonnet, where he was held and cuffed. Then he was dragged inside the surgery. He screamed at the policemen to get off his prostrated brother.

‘Tell him to calm down,’ said Mann.

Man Po twisted his head and looked at his brother. He was wet-faced from sobbing and he was stuck, chest down, on the floor.

‘Stop crying now, you’re all right,’ Max said, still shaking with anger at being held.

Man Po stopped sobbing and looked about him. ‘Do we have to go?’ he said to his brother.

‘Yes,’ replied Max. ‘We have to go.’

Ng got off him and helped him to his feet.

‘Can I take my photos with me?’ Man Po asked, staring lovingly at the wall of dead women.

While the SOCOs moved in to take the old surgery apart, Mann headed back with the brothers. He sat with them in the back of the van. He wasn’t going to take his eyes from them for a minute. Max stared at the floor while Man Po cried. At Headquarters they were separated and taken to opposite ends of the cell accommodation.

The noise of Man Po’s bellowing resounded through the lower floor of the building. He was inconsolable: he wanted his father; he wanted his brother; he wanted his photos. He was getting nothing.

Mann ordered Max to be taken to an interview room on the ground floor.

The room was dark and claustrophobic. There was no air-con in the small room and no natural light. It was never meant to be comfortable.

A table and two chairs had been left in the centre of the room.

Max sat at the table. Ng and Li watched him from opposite ends of the room while they waited for Mann. Max looked every inch a worried old man. He wrung his hands and fidgeted and constantly looked ner vously about him.

Mann was taking his time. He needed to prepare himself. He must stay calm, clever, and, above all, he must stay focused. White had ordered him to pass the interviewing over to someone else. But no one seriously expected him to do that.

He paused outside the room, took a deep breath, shut his eyes for a few seconds and then he opened the door. Ng and Li looked up from their stations as he entered. Ng raised an eyebrow. Mann nodded.
I’m all
right, Confucius – better the devil you know …

Max turned his head at the sound of the opening door. When he saw it was Mann he looked frantically around the room, as if assessing his chances of escape. Then he sank back into his seat and covered his face with his hands.

Mann sat down in the chair opposite Max. Max’s eyes flicked everywhere but on Mann’s face. Mann’s expression did not change. He stared at Max until Max stopped looking at his lap and started making eye contact. After ten minutes Max reached for a cigarette. Mann flicked the packet off the table. It landed at Li’s feet.

As Max looked at him, the image of him loading Helen’s case into the back of his taxi returned. That second when Max had paused, turned and seen Mann.

‘You ready to talk, Max?’

Max didn’t answer.

‘You ready to tell me about the things we found in your place?’

Max looked at his lap again.

‘You want to explain to me how all those pictures of dead women came to be up in your house? You want to talk about the jars full of human remains? You want to talk about the scalp? The lengths of skin?’

Max shrugged and turned his face away and shook his head.

‘Okay, then I’ll tell you. I think you had quite a system going, you and your brother.
You
kidnapped – your brother disposed of the bodies. You want to tell me what happened in between?’ Mann sat back on his chair and rocked on its back legs. ‘Okay, maybe I should concentrate on your brother. We have a lot to link
him
to the murders. There’s the evidence of pig hairs and blood on the women. There’s the knife used to dissect the women, the same knife over the last twenty years. I have a hunch we are going to find out that it’s Man Po’s knife.’ Max shook his head. ‘He’s not right in the head, is he? He’s got a temper, your brother. He’s down there right now raging like a bull, and he bites … doesn’t he?’ Mann grabbed Max’s arm and lifted up his sleeve. Max tried to pull away, but Mann held it in a vice-like grip. ‘He gave you this, didn’t he?’ The scar was still visible – the bite mark that Mann had seen outside the Albert. ‘Do you know how I know he bites?’ Mann pulled out the photo of victim two’s injury from the first autopsy – the bite mark on the thigh. He placed it in front of Max.

‘We made this from the wound.’ He pulled out the cast. ‘We could have a dentist come in and take a cast of your brother’s mouth – see if it matches. I think I’d prefer to pull out each one of your brother’s teeth instead, and
then
see if they fit.’

Max looked anxiously towards the door and tried to stand. Mann stood up and pushed him back down. ‘It was
you
who made the initial contact. It was
you
they trusted. You gave them lifts in your cab. You befriended them.’ Max tried to squirm away but Mann leaned over him. ‘Then you waited for your chance: when they were a bit drunk, a bit vulnerable, when they needed your help the most … and then …
BANG
.’ Mann slammed his hand down on the desk. Max jumped. ‘You seized the opportunity to kidnap, rape, torture and kill. Sound familiar?’ He leaned so far over the table that wherever Max looked he could not escape Mann’s scrutiny. ‘Strange, Max.’ Mann got up and walked around the room for a few minutes. ‘I wouldn’t have put you down for a psycho.’

He came to stand behind Max’s chair. Max shrank at his approach. ‘But we saw the photos – quite a collection. Some familiar faces there, Max. Some people I know personally.’

Max’s shoulders stiffened. Mann got out the photos and placed them one at a time on the table. Max turned away – he didn’t want to see them.

‘Look at them, Max. Here’s Gosia. Do you remember her?’ Mann picked up the photo that her brother had sent, taken in happier times, and pushed it into Max’s face. He tried to turn away. ‘Look at it! She’s sitting in a park in the sunshine – smiling. Pretty girl, isn’t she? And here she is again.’ He showed the picture of her torso. ‘Not so pretty now, is she, Max?’

Max began to whimper and writhe in the chair. Mann sat back and resumed his staring.

‘Li, get Max a cigarette.’

Li threw a packet over. Mann lit one and handed it to Max. He took it gratefully.

‘There – better?’

Max tried a half-smile as he dragged hard on the cigarette.

‘Nothing like a cigarette to calm the nerves.’

Max stared blankly at him. Mann picked up the photo of Gosia’s torso and flicked it across to Max. ‘These are cigarette burns. There are sixty-eight of them.’

Max’s eyes flicked up at Mann and for a moment Mann thought he would say something but he didn’t. He sank back and stared at the photos as they continued to flash past him in lurid colour.

‘All these women did was to get to know you and trust you, wasn’t it, Max? That was their big mistake – they accepted a lift in your taxi and they trusted you.’

Max shook his head and stared at the table.

‘I have nothing to say.’

Mann went back to walking slowly around the room, just out of Max’s vision.

‘Tell me … not everyone’s photo is up there, is it, Max?’ Mann looked across at Ng. He could sense his colleague watching him. Ng would understand how Mann was feeling right now. He was willing Mann to stay in control – stay calm.

‘Huh?’

Max twisted his head to see where Mann was, but he couldn’t: Mann was standing directly behind him. Mann placed his hands onto Max’s shoulders and squeezed.

‘Where is the Irish girl, Bernadette? Where is Georgina?’

He wasn’t ready to know about Helen yet. He still had a chance of finding Georgina alive – that’s what he must concentrate on.

‘Huh?’

‘You liked Georgina. She liked you. She wasn’t in that prison at your house. She wasn’t one of the photos on the wall. But someone had been there recently, hadn’t they, Max? Who was that? Where is she now?’

‘I don’t know where she is.’ Max stood almost involuntarily. He wanted so desperately to escape.

‘You want to leave, Max? I bet those women wanted to leave too? They didn’t get the chance either.’

Mann pulled Max’s chair out from beneath him and picked him up by the collar. He drove him backwards to the wall, knocking the table over in the process. He pinned him there – gripping him by the throat. Max hung from his hand like a rag doll. His eyes bulged and his face turned blue.

‘You ready to talk, Max?’

Max looked straight into Mann’s eyes, as if he willed him to end it for him. Mann waited an extra second until Max’s eyes grew distant, then he dropped him.

‘Do you think I would make it that easy for you, Max? Oh no! You and your brother have lots to come. Of course, I have the power to make things
slightly
more comfortable – better treatment, maybe even get permission to allow you to stay together if you cooperate. Tell me where Bernadette and Georgina are right now. Are they alive?’

Max wheezed and coughed and shook his head fiercely from side to side. He was still fighting for breath. His arms flailed as he banged his hands on the stone floor, trying to force the air past his squashed throat.

Mann walked away, picked up the table and chairs and sat down again.

Ng picked Max up roughly and sat him back in the chair opposite Mann. Max shrank into the seat and began fiddling with his fingers, while sweat poured down his face and arms.

‘I don’t know where she is. I’m not saying any more.’

Mann turned to Ng. ‘I’m leaving.’ He’d achieve more by leaving Max to ponder his fate for twenty minutes. Meanwhile, he’d go back downstairs and check on the idiot.

‘Let me know when he wants to talk. I’m going to find some pliers – there are some teeth that need pulling.’