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

  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.

  CHAPTER TWO

  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, li
ke 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?”

  “He came out an hour later.”

  “And?”

  “He was unwell. Very white. Sick.”

  “To be expected.”

  “How long will it take?”

  Beatrix was uncomfortable with discussing any of her business over a medium that could be intercepted, even if the precautions they took with this particular arrangement made it practically impossible to eavesdrop on them. Still, her caution was deeply rooted and she let the question pass without answer. “When are you speaking to our friend?”

  “He will call me when he knows it is done.”

  Two or three days, then, she thought. “Very good. Contact me when you know.”

  “Beatrix—” he said as she replaced the receiver.

  She gritted her teeth in vexation. No names, she wanted to remind him. No names. She knew that he was trying as hard as he could, but he could not prevent himself from making stupid mistakes. He wouldn’t have lasted half an hour in the Group, but he was all she had, and, if she wanted to maintain her income, and continue to fund the investigators searching for her daughter, she had no choice other than to work with him.

  Beatrix had met Chau six months earlier in Kowloon. He was in his early fifties, and, with the deep creases in his forehead and around his eyes, he had something about him that reminded her of Jackie Chan. He wore the most awful clothes, typically favouring garish Hawaiian shirts, white slacks and pristine white trainers. There was no question that he was an unusual man. His English was passable, but so heavily accented that it was almost a pastiche. He was intelligent, but hid his acumen behind a veil of bad jokes and goofy expressions.

  Their meeting had been inauspicious. Beatrix had not long arrived from London. She had received bad news from the investigators and she had decided to drink herself into a stupor to forget the hopelessness of her situation. She had only halfway accomplished that when Chau had introduced himself. Her initial thought was that he was coming onto her and she extricated herself from the conversation, retreating with the glass of sake that he had bought for her. She had been working her way through that when three triads, one bearing a meat cleaver, had come into the bar with the intention of amputating his finger.

  It was a punishment to be meted out on behalf of the Dai Lo of the Wo Shun Wo clan. He had been recruited to work for the man, the boss in charge of a small part of Kowloon’s clubland. Chau had a profitable business as an industrial cleaner, but allowed himself to be blinded by greed. The Dai Lo, a meth addict by the name of Donnie Qi, had recruited him to clean up the bloody messes that accompanied the brutality with which he enforced his rule. Chau was good at making blood and gore disappear, and had graduated soon enough to making dead bodies disappear, too. It was only when Donnie pressed him to kill an ex-lover that Chau had finally reached the point at which he was prepared to go no further. That refusal had offended Donnie, and the three men had been sent to persuade him to reconsider.

  Beatrix had often wondered what would have happened if she had stayed at her table, finished the sake and then left the bar. Things would have been different. She would have found the money she needed from somewhere else, most likely, and wouldn’t have voluntarily gone back to her old profession.

  That was moot, now, for she had intervened.

  Normally, the three men would not have stood a chance against her. She had disabled all of them, or so she thought, but the drink had dulled her edge and she had turned her back on one of them. He had taken a knife from the bar and stabbed her in the side. Her own foolish fault. She would have died, but Chau had pulled a pistol and had shot all of them. Then, when he could very easily have run for his life, he had helped her from the bar, taken her back to a dingy flat in Chungking Mansions, and, with the assistance of a doctor Beatrix had never met, he had saved her life.

  Their actions had earned the enmity of Donnie Qi. But Chau’s talents were in demand, and he had negotiated with Donnie’s rival, Mr. Ying. The price for Chau’s loyalty was that Ying must provide them with the opportunity to do away with Donnie.

  Ying agreed, and Beatrix had killed Donnie.

  They had been working for the Dai Lo ever since.

  She entered the station, descended to the platform, and took the first train that was heading west.

  She thought about Doss.

  He would shortly be the sixth victim of their arrangement.

  The men that had been marked for death at her hand had been a varied group. Most of them had underworld connections in one way or another. Beatrix did not ask for the details, but it was quickly apparent when she started to research the targets to assess their habits and patterns, divining their weaknesses and the times when they were most vulnerable. The first had been a member of the Wo Shun Wo who was informing on his brothers to the police. It had been a difficult assignment. The man had been granted police protection, but Beatrix had been able to gather that he visited his mother on Sunday evenings. She had staked out the old woman’s flat and, with his escort waiting in the lobby downstairs, she had thrown him out of the tenth-storey window into the rubbish-strewn shaft between one building and the next.

  Another man had been responsible for laundering triad money. Beatrix guessed that he had been skimming a little from the top, not that the nature of his guilt would have made any difference to her. He liked to go fishing on his private junk every Tuesday afternoon. Beatrix had stowed aboard, drugged him and tipped him overboard.

  The last one had been messier. Beatrix had broken into the man’s expansive apartment in Central, but he had awoken just as she approached him in his bed. She had stabbed him, but there had been a struggle, and she had ended up garrotting him with the electrical flex from the lamp on his bedside table. Chau had been involved in the aftermath, removing the body and cleansing the apartment so thoroughly that there was no trace of what had happened there. Chau was clumsy, and gauche, and unsuited to the preparatory work, but Beatrix was prepared to admit that when it came to clean-up, he was the epitome of professionalism.

  It was midnight when she alighted again at Wan Chai. She made her way back to her apartment block. She had been on edge for hours, and it was tiring. She was ready for sleep.

  #

  HER FLAT was on Lockhart Road, not far from the bar she had been in earlier. It was only a ten-minute walk to the west before she was in the bustling, neon-drenched heart of Wan Chai, but it was a different world. This was the heart of old Hong Kong. The buildi
ngs were a hundred years old, and showing their age. Instead of neon, the small stores advertised themselves with weather-beaten signs that hung above their front doors on creaking hinges. It wasn’t the sort of place with any appeal to tourists save those who stumbled out of the clubs and wandered to the east, looking for Wan Chai MTR station and ending up all the way over at Causeway Bay. Skinny cats lounged on windowsills and rooftops, bathing in the light of the moon. Mangy dogs snouted through garbage, competing with rats that were almost as big as they were for the choicest morsels.

  The small stores were still open, and the owners sat outside their establishments on plastic chairs, often with pots of tea or bottles of Tsingtao on folding card tables. Others wandered by in traditional Chinese dress. Deliveries were made by handcart and Beatrix had to step aside as one youngster pushed his barrow along, struggling with the sacks of rice that he was delivering to the neighbourhood restaurants.

  It was busy and bustling, noisy and alive, and Beatrix loved it.

  She could have stayed in one of the shiny apartment blocks in Central or Mid-Levels, rubbing shoulders with the bankers and lawyers and accountants who retreated there at the end of the day, but she had no interest in that. If she was going to have to stay in a place, she wanted to experience it properly. She wanted the dirt and the grit, the stench and stink. She wanted the colour. There was a more practical motivation to her decision to locate herself here, too. It would be harder to find her if she were submerged within this teeming morass of humanity.

  She diverted to a late night drinking den that she had visited a few times before. It was off the beaten track and did not welcome tourists. Beatrix nodded to the man behind the rickety bar. They had transacted business before, and he nodded for her to follow him to the small room at the back. It was a storeroom, with stacked bottles of Maotai and Guijing Tribute and Tsingtao, a metal desk with a roller chair, a dirty sofa and a wooden cabinet. The barman was a triad, and the bar had been affiliated with Donnie Qi’s organisation. There were two other triads in the room, one of them sitting on the sofa and the other smoking a joint as he leaned back against the wall. The three men all sported variations on the same basic uniform: tracksuit tops, trainers, lots of bling. Beatrix had found the place by asking around. She had not been concerned that she might be recognised. Only Donnie had seen her face, and he was dead.