They took a taxi to a decent love motel. It was the upmarket kind: warm towels and fountains. It had a brochure full of various themed rooms: Haiwaiian, Parisian, rubber, wet. Lucy giggled dutifully while Big Frank pontificated over the list of extras. His fingers, like blanched sausages, turned the laminated pages and ran down the menu as he read the items aloud: five-speed waterbed, pulsating Jacuzzi and a fruit basket.

Gotta have me one of those, honey.

Eventually he picked the most expensive room, with all the extras – the Paradise Suite.

Lucy didn’t like wasting time like this. She was just about to get started when, from the corner of the room, above the plastic palms, came the offbeat soundtrack of a porn flick starting up. The TV screen came to life with close-up flesh and lurid colour. Big Frank took off his polo shirt and his buff-coloured slacks and stripped to his underwear. He unstrapped his reinforced girdle and left it standing to attention on the rattan chair before flopping onto the waterbed – which tsunamied beneath him – and propping himself up with pillows, ready to settle down and watch the movie.

Lucy had seen it before. She went into the bathroom, slipped out of her clothes and had a shower. Wearing only a towel, she re-entered the room just as the housewives’ fantasy was starting. She stood, blocking Frank’s vision, and let the towel slip. But instead of appreciating her warm, rounded body, he craned to look past her as rabid panting came from the direction of the television.

She threw the towel onto the chair, where it hung draped over his corset like a magician’s trick. Then, lying down, she rested her head on his stomach and traced his triple-bypass scar down to his navel hair, which she proceeded to wind around her fingers. His wheezing grew louder and his heart thumped in her ear.

‘You know what, honey, I bet you have a girlfriend we could call to come over?’ he wheezed.

‘Oh I sollleeee …’ She exaggerated her Suzie Wong voice. ‘All busy tonight.’ Lucy had no intention of letting some other girl in on the act. Frank was all hers. ‘Never mind, Flank.’ She moved onto her hands and knees and turned her bottom towards him. ‘We gonna have fun. Okay?’ She slapped her hand against her right buttock and said ‘Spanky!’ over her shoulder. Big Frank’s chest hair bristled. ‘Coz I think I bin …’ she sank onto her elbows, ‘I think I bin naughty girl.’

27

Johnny Mann was heading east from Lan Kwai Fong, the nightclub end of Central District, and working his way along towards Causeway Bay, when he decided to pay another visit to Club Mercedes. He didn’t intend to stay long. He’d come back to the club in the hope of talking to Lucy and taking some more details from her about the foreign women who had stayed in her flat. When he got there he found out from Mamasan Linda that Lucy was out with a customer and that there was a new foreign girl working there – Lucy’s cousin. So he asked to interview her.

It wasn’t busy. He was given a table at the front of the club. It was an area far enough from the band that you could talk easily and be heard, but it didn’t afford the privacy of one of the VIP booths around the dance floor.

He was deep in thought when pink toes and gold strappy sandals appeared in his line of vision. Then there were long legs, smooth rounded thighs, a tiny waist and small full breasts to get past. But it didn’t even end there … Shit! That was a face to die for … It was heart-shaped with high cheekbones and large amber-coloured eyes. She had pale skin, a splatter of freckles across her nose, a long, slender neck and espresso-coloured hair that cascaded around her shoulders in pre-Raphaelite curls. She was not just pretty. She was breathtakingly beautiful.

‘Miss Johnson … is that right?’ he almost stuttered.

She nodded and a small anxious smile flitted across her beautiful face. As it did so, Mann saw that her mouth formed an almost perfect circle, topped with a cupid’s bow complete with a small turn up at either end – perfect.

‘Please sit down.’

She did so in a slightly uneasy fashion, as if she were neither used to the dress nor the heels. She seemed very young, thought Mann, and very out of place.

‘Mamasan says you’ve just started at this club. Is that right?’

‘Yes, tonight is my first night.’ She perched on the edge of the seat.

‘Did you work anywhere else before here?’ He tried a smile to relax her.

‘No.’

‘When did you arrive in Hong Kong?’

‘Two days ago.’

‘And what reason did you have for coming to Hong Kong?’

She paused, reluctant to answer, then blurted: ‘I came to find my cousins.’

‘Cousins? Ah, yes, Lucy! Have you any other relatives here?’

‘No. Just Lucy and her sister Ka Lei.’

‘You came all the way here to find them? It’s a long way.’

Mann felt a pang of pity. He wondered why someone so obviously inexperienced in life had come to the other side of the world, and at the worst time possible?

He paused for a moment and studied her. ‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-two.’

Yes, she could be twenty-two, he supposed: she had the face of someone much younger but the body of a grown woman.

‘Why did you choose a job in a nightclub?’

Georgina looked uncomfortable.

‘Do your parents know you are working here?’

‘I never really knew my dad. My mother died two months ago.’

Her amber eyes clouded over and she turned her face away. He instantly regretted asking the question. He knew what grief was like. Just when you thought you had it sorted and you could cope with people’s questions – BANG! The emotions came at you from behind like a tidal wave suddenly appearing over your shoulder. From a young age, from the time his father had died, Mann had learned how to cope by turning grief to rage – anger made a much better survival tool than pity. He learned to read the signs, to know when it was coming. So when he knew the wave was just about to outrun him he turned and faced it, waited for the spray to hit, then he jumped on board and rode the mother all the way to the beach.

‘Here in Hong Kong?’

‘No, back in England.’

‘I am very sorry to hear about your parents.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, with a flicker of a smile.

‘That’s your home – England? London?’

‘Devon, in the countryside. Do you know it?’

‘Not well. I was sent to school in England, in Hertfordshire. I went to Devon with the rugby team. We got hammered. They were all enormous – farmers’ sons.’

She laughed and sat forward in her chair, animated. ‘How did you end up in a school in England?’

‘My father was Chinese but my mother’s English. It was her idea.’

‘So you’re Eurasian, like me?’

Mann was struck by the strangeness of her childlike naivety as she beamed at him. This new knowledge had instantly bonded them in her eyes. It was like a secret handshake between them. ‘Now I can see it,’ she said. ‘You have Chinese eyes.’

Mann laughed. ‘Chinese eyes, a Celtic chin and ears like Mr Spock from Star Trek. See!’ He turned his head to the side and brushed his hair back with his hand.

‘They are a bit pointy,’ she admitted. Her laugh was young and spontaneous. There was more to her than met the eye. ‘Did you go to university in England?’

‘No.’ He hesitated, unused to divulging his life history to a stranger, but if it was putting her at ease it was worth it. ‘No, my father died. I had to come home to look after my mother. I wanted to,’ he corrected himself. ‘Then I ended up joining the police force.’

‘Is your mother still here?’

‘Yes, she is. She lives in a flat out at Stanley Bay in the south of the Island. I go over for Sunday roast when I can, take her some washing, keep her happy. Have you been to the market out there? Although we are not supposed to encourage the sale of counterfeit goods, it’s a great place to buy every type of fake T-shirt or Armani watch.’