Nancy produced a son that evening. Her pelvis was too small and the large baby had to be pulled from her like a calf. Consequently, the baby’s head was misshapen and his look somewhat strange. Nancy didn’t care for the ugly baby at all – she was still mourning for her dog.

She finally left the Fong household for good when Man Po was one year old.

After she left, the surgery dwindled until it became just an occasional knock on the shutter to ask for this and that. Then Father Fong would pull down the dusty jars and rummage through old boxes and tins until he put together a prescription, but his heart wasn’t in it any more.

Now, the shutter outside their house no longer opened and closed; it was firmly shut. They continued to live in the two-bedroom apartment on the first floor. Old Father Fong slept in one room, while the brothers slept in bunks in the other. But Father Fong was mainly housebound now. Arthritis had crept into his joints and settled in the marrow, drying them up like abandoned riverbeds. His physical world had narrowed to just a few rooms, and every year saw him shrink a little more. His old slippered feet wore a path on the floor tiles as he shuffled painfully back and forth from kitchen to bedroom to sitting room, only stopping to make kissing noises to the bright yellow canary that twisted its head this way and that as it watched the old man from the confines of its bamboo cage. He spent his days preparing food for his sons and waiting for them to come home.

Man Po was fourteen years younger than Max, which made him nearing forty-six, but he would always look like a baby. He had a round face and large eyes and the hair on his head looked as if it had been hand-stitched like a doll’s. He dribbled from the lazy corner of his mouth. The things he enjoyed in life were simple. He loved his work – driving his lorry. And he especially loved butchering the pigs.

16

Club Mercedes was Hong Kong’s newest and most exclusive nightclub – for the moment. It occupied the top floor of the most prestigious shopping mall in Hong Kong, situated in the heart of Central District on Peddar Street in the Polaris Centre – a landmark in privileged shopping. On its seven floors were the pick of top European designers, jewellers by royal appointment and Rolex suppliers. Club Mercedes sat on top of all of it on the ‘lucky’ eighth floor.

The club was officially owned by a consortium of top businessmen. It was really owned by the Wo Shing Shing triad society and provided a useful way to launder money.

Over three hundred hostesses of various national ities worked within its golden walls. Plenty of Gwaipohs for a murderer to choose from, Mann thought.

Mann decided to pay Lucy a visit that evening, while, at the same time, checking up on how many foreign girls were working there. He made his way past Dolce and Gabbana and Yves St Laurent and reached the foot of the conical glass elevator that would take him up to the top floor.

A stunning Asian beauty in a cheongsam greeted him as he stepped inside.

‘Welcome to Club Mercedes,’ she said, bowing and pressing the ascent button in one perfectly choreographed move.

Just as the doors were closing a Chinese woman stepped in. She stood at a discreet distance from Mann and kept her eyes floor-bound – except for the odd flutter of lashes and tilting of the head to see if Mann was still looking at her – which he was. Mid to late twenties, he reckoned. She had that ‘been around the block look’: black leather trousers, black polo neck and a gold chain snaking her collarbone. He surmised rightly that she was a hostess going to work.

When the elevator slid to a silent halt and the cheongsamed lovely had completed her farewell bow, Mann and the woman both stepped out onto a red carpet. A pair of solid gold crouching dragons met them (strategically placed according to feng shui), as did two impressively built doormen. As they made their way up the narrrow strip of carpet, a smiling woman in a red and gold cheongsam appeared. Mamasan Linda was a petite Chinese with an outwardly kindly nature but an inwardly frozen heart that could only be melted by money in her hand. She was a former hostess herself. When her appeal had begun to wane she was lucky enough to have made the right people happy over the years, and was rewarded for her services to mankind by being placed in a lucrative job.

‘Aye! Good girl, back so soon, huh?’ Mamasan Linda said to the woman from the lift. ‘Customers waiting! Go change, quick-quick!’ She ushered her past and into the club. Then she looked towards Mann, bowed and smiled respectfully. ‘Can I help you, Inspector?’

Mamasan Linda had not met Mann before, but she had seen him and knew all about him. Even though Hong Kong was one of the most densely populated places on earth, it was still just a big village at heart. Plus, there weren’t many six-foot-two Eurasian policemen around, and there definitely wasn’t another like Mann. His reputation for tough justice singled him out. He had earned the respect of cop and criminal alike because Mann feared nothing, and in Hong Kong society, no matter what side of the law you were on, that was attribute number one.

‘Good evening, Mamasan. I need to speak with the foreign hostesses you have working here. I won’t keep them long – just routine enquiries.’

Mamasan Linda listened with a fixed smile on her face, then nodded and beckoned Mann to follow her.

He had plenty of time to look around the half-empty club as they made their way through; Mamasan Linda wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry in that tight dress. It seemed funny, thought Mann, quaint even, all the money spent on the club: Italian lighting, rivers of red velvet, herds of black leather, yet there was still something else: the inevitable gold, red and chintz and those irrepressible ‘lucky fish’. No matter what the designer had originally planned for the club, in Hong Kong you could never get away from the slightly tacky look. He loved his birthplace for it – that wonderful mix of East and West that never let itself be corrupted by ordinary style.

Mann was shown into a VIP room at the back of the club. Most of the rooms in the club were themed, and this one was traditional Mandarin and housed an impressive collection of antique black lacquered furniture inlaid with abalone shell, silk-painted screens and ornately carved wooden seats.

Mamasan Linda left him in the care of Mamasan Rose, one of the newest mamasans at the club. She brought the foreign girls to him one at a time. Eleven were in so far that evening, out of twenty-five, she explained.

One of three sunny-faced, robust-looking Australians came in to be interviewed first. Her name was Angela. She and her two friends were working and living together, sharing a flat in Kowloon. They’d been in Hong Kong for two months and were working their way around Asia. They’d already done the lucrative Tokyo circuit, missed out Thailand (where holidaying Westerners weren’t interested in paying for white women and locals couldn’t afford them), and had made a detour around the Philippines where there were a lot of lonely wealthy Westerners but no hostess clubs to work out of. Finally they had stopped in Hong Kong en route to Singapore. From there they were headed home to resume their jobs as dental nurses.

Mann asked Angela if she’d had any friends go missing unexpectedly. What? Was he serious? she answered. People were always moving on. What did he expect? Had she heard anything about a problem client? She shrugged. Nothing she couldn’t handle.

Mann interviewed the rest quickly: the other two Australians, who were clones of the first, two Kiwis, three Brits, two Americans, and a tall Irish girl named Bernadette. They all said the same thing – they were used to people disappearing, it happened all the time. People came and went continuously. Hong Kong was a transient society. Girls came to work there from all over the world; they did their business and left. They brought with them a new alias, but their identity was always the same. Mann had seen it many times. They were game players looking for easy money – looking to turn their God-given assets into cold hard cash. But at the moment the game wasn’t going all their way. Someone else was having fun making his own private collection of foreign dolls.