Bernadette was surprised at the old drunk’s nastiness. Hadn’t she just tried to give him what he wanted? He’d turned on her in a flash – had her handcuffed to the feckin’ bed before she knew what had hit her. Then he’d kept her tied up there for eight feckin’ hours while he snored his head off!

She stood with her back to the mirror and twisted round to look at the damage. Feckin’ bastard! He had marked her good and proper. Thinking about it, she hadn’t got him pissed enough. Ah well! He’d paid her for it – sent his maid to get his stash from the safe. She’d emptied his wallet while he was talkin’ to the maid. Served the nasty old fecker right …

31

Just as the early-morning traffic was beginning to build, and the Tai Chi enthusiasts were finishing their salute to the sun in the parks and on the rooftops, Mann stepped into the cool of the underground station and took a train home. He’d worked through the night and could do no more for a few hours until it all kicked off again. He needed a shave and a shower. He boarded a train for Quarry Bay, on the north-east side of Hong Kong Island. He lived in a great location: it was served by the wonderfully efficient MTR and was just a short distance from Central and Headquarters. But it wasn’t a community. It was a vertical village – fifty tower blocks with a shopping mall in the centre – affordable housing for the young executive classes.

Mann lived in a two-bedroom apartment on the fortieth floor in one of the older blocks. Built in the early nineties, it had wooden floors, white walls, and very little else. Mann didn’t do the homely look. He had cutlery for one, crockery in single units and a solitary armchair that he’d positioned opposite a massive plasma TV in the lounge.

But his apartment hadn’t always been so Spartan. It had been a proper home once. Not long ago someone had stood in his home and in his heart. Helen had been there.

She was long gone now. He wished he didn’t think of her so often. He missed that spontaneous laugh of hers, that optimistic view of life – so different to his cynicism. He missed the little things she cared about. He missed her. But he didn’t regret her going. She deserved more than he could give. He had never seen himself pushing a baby’s buggy or having friends over for dinner. He hadn’t wanted anything or anyone else – just her. But she wanted the whole package, and he just didn’t have it in him to give.

He flopped onto his bed. He knew that he would sleep for a week if he didn’t watch it, so he dozed, waiting for the alarm clock to sound. In that last hour, just as he was dreamless and heavy as lead, it started ringing and ringing as if from some faraway planet, dragging him into consciousness. He hit the clock first, then hit the floor running. He checked his watch – noon, time for a quick shower; the colder the better.

He stepped out of the MTR half an hour later and cut through the park. It was a ten-minute walk up the hill to Headquarters. The midday air was scented with the smell of lush vegetation. The traffic noise was momen t arily lost in a pocket of wilderness and replaced by the sounds of insects – as loud as pneumatic drills.

He cut across the road, up the cobbled alleyways, past skinny kittens and makeshift kitchens, until he hit Soho, an area of fusion restaurants and fancy artefact shops. In the evening it was given over to partying Gweilos who loved its European feel. Cafés spilled over pavements and noisy Italian waiters touted for business.

Mann nodded to a cleaner sweeping the front of a Malaysian restaurant. The man paused, leaned on his broom and inclined his head a fraction Mann’s way. Mann would speak to him later – he was one of three undercover officers working the street.

Mann crossed the packed car park and walked up the well-trodden steps of Headquarters. It took him ten minutes to get past the people waiting to talk to him on the stairs. Finally, he made it to David White’s office.

The Superintendent was alone. He looked harassed. He hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours, and it showed.

‘The post-mortem report makes for gruesome reading, Johnny,’ he said, as Mann walked in and sat down opposite him. The Superintendent was holding the report in his hands. ‘Trophy taker? A torturer? He must hang on to these women, Mann. Where is he holding them? We need to get as many officers out there asking questions as we can. Get some undercover officers into the clubs with foreign hostesses. But for Christ’s sake, make them understand we need discretion.’

‘Don’t worry, David, we’re on to it. But, if he is murdering Gwaipohs, it’s a clever choice. Many of these women work under aliases. They have no family here. He must have picked them quite carefully. We have hundreds of matches for our Jane Does. However, if this man moves in the nightclub world, he must have frightened a few women along the way. There must have been some who got away without even realising it.’

Just then Ng knocked on the door, followed closely by a very agitated Li. ‘Genghis – this just came in from Scotland Yard.’ Ng handed him a file.

Mann flipped it open and scanned it before reading it out:

‘The fingerprint belongs to Maria Jackson. Born in 1963. British. She had form for drug dealing in the UK. She was given a one-year probational sentence in May 1989. Came to Hong Kong in April 1991. Last known place of employment – the Rising Sun in Wanchai. That was in November 1992.’

‘Interpol are trying to trace any family at the moment but have come up with nothing so far,’ said Ng, handing the photo of Maria to the Superintendent. It was a mugshot taken at the time of her arrest.

‘The pathologist put the woman’s age at mid to late twenties. She’d be forty now. That means she’s been dead ten to fifteen years. So, our murderer has been around a long time,’ said Mann.

‘There’s also victim one … the head … belonged to twenty-eight-year-old Beverly Mathews,’ said Ng.

‘When did she go missing?’ asked Mann, scanning the second page of the file Ng had handed him. He pulled out a grainy photo of a woman with big hair and a big smile.

‘Seventeen years ago – July 1986.’

‘You were right to extend the search so far back,’ said Superintendent White.

‘How did you know, boss?’ Li asked, looking very Saturday Night Fever in his wide white-collared shirt and his slicked-back hair.

‘She had nothing but metal amalgam fillings in her mouth, Shrimp – every one of them. Most people over thirty have at least a mixture of new and old – she didn’t.’

Superintendent White left his desk, took the report from Mann, and went to stand at the window to read it.

‘I worked on the case. I remember it,’ he said.

‘Was she a resident here, David? Do you remember?’

‘No. She was a tourist. She’d sold the most Renaults in Reading – she won herself a holiday to Hong Kong.’

Superintendent White picked up the old shot of Beverly Mathews taken at a cousin’s wedding a few weeks before she disappeared. ‘She failed to turn up at her workplace back in England. It was then discovered that she hadn’t returned from her holiday.

‘We searched the area. We found nothing. The case was left open but it was generally believed that she’d decided to jack in her job and her life back home and had probably headed off towards Bali or somewhere similar on the backpackers’ trail.’

‘When was she last seen?’

‘At a party in a local’s house out at Repulse Bay. After a night of heavy drinking she decided she needed to get back to her hotel. She was staying in Causeway Bay. Apparently she couldn’t be persuaded to call a taxi from the house, said she needed to get some fresh air and promptly left.’

‘What time was that?’