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.’

82

‘How is it going, Georgina?’

She stood before him. She had lost weight. Her collarbones jutted above her neckline. Her skin was sallow and papery and her dark eyes were lightless. ‘Come and sit here.’ He patted the chair beside him. She wavered for a moment, then gave in and sighed heavily as she sat beside him.

‘How long will I have to stay?’ she said, with such weariness and sadness that, if he had been capable of feelings, it would have moved him.

‘Why? Are you in such a hurry to leave me? You know, I have become very fond of you, Georgina.’ He laid his hand on her thigh. She felt the heat of his hand through the fabric of her dress, the warm heaviness of it, and she wilted. The faintest smile appeared on her sad face and she shivered.

‘You are cold. Come here.’ He sat her on his lap. She was heavy and limp, like a child.

Georgina lost track of time as the days fused, and she stopped counting them. She stopped fighting and rolled up her sleeve. She felt them tap her vein and tighten the tourniquet. She felt the rush that started in her abdomen and spread warm relief throughout her body. Hours passed like days as she lay on her bed staring through pupils the size of pinheads – days came and went like years. She was sure she would die there. She would die and no one would ever find her. She knew in her heart that Ka Lei was dead. She felt it and she saw it sometimes. She lay on her bed and slipped into a dream zone and she saw Ka Lei walk around the room in no man’s land, waiting for her Georgina. She saw her own life in celluloid snippets. Hours and lives played out in slow motion. She heard others talk about her. She heard her own heartbeat in her ear. She saw her hands move and wondered who they belonged to. The earth turned and the earth’s core roared beneath her. She listened to it. She heard the women talk Cantonese in the Golden Dragon restaurant. She looked out, with a child’s eye, from within the folds of her mother’s skirt. And she stared deep into her mother’s eyes and relived the last minutes before Feng Ying’s death – listening to the life departing and to the breath that says: I am not the last, not quite, not yet … here I am. She turned her body inside out and sent her blood to the perimeters of the room, in a loop, opening and closing valves, each squirt of blood pumping its way to the room’s corners, smashing into the walls and splintering into a million red droplets, then reforming, back to beat loudly inside her eardrum.