Mann touched Ng on the shoulder. He didn’t move. He’d been hit.

99

‘How is he?’ Superintendent White stopped Mann on the stairs on the way down from his office.

‘We don’t know yet. They’re working on him. He was hit twice: once in the shoulder, once in the stomach. We’ll go down and see him in a few hours when he comes round. Are the teams on their way to Sixty-Eight?’

‘Yes, they are there now, but Mann … we need to talk. I will do what I can, but it’s not going to be straight-forward. I had a difficult job getting permission to send the rest of them in, over the border. It’s not in our jurisdiction. There were stipulations – concessions.’

‘But these women are our responsibility. They were kidnapped from Hong Kong and taken to mainland China, where they were murdered. Plus, we have child-trafficking charges, added to the murder of an Irish citizen. Surely that’s enough to get some attention?’ Mann was descending the stairs as he spoke.

‘It’s not the kind of attention that’s wanted, Mann,’ Superintendent White called after him.

‘Sorry, David. Got to go. Can you get Li to brief you further? I need to interview the brothers. If I am to have any hope of finding Georgina alive and getting Chan, I have to move fast.’

Mann disappeared, leaving the Superintendent halfway up the stairs and only a fraction of the way to telling Mann what he wouldn’t want to hear. White stood for a few minutes, listening to Mann’s footsteps, then he swore under his breath and walked into his office, slamming the door behind him.

100

It was late, but then there was no clock to watch in the cells. Man Po was slumped in the corner, his head resting on his chest. His T-shirt was saturated with dribble. He was heavily sedated. They had had to. He cried all day long. He wanted to see his brother. He wanted to see his father and he wanted to see his photo collection of dead women. Because he didn’t get any of those things he had spent the previous twelve hours hitting his head repeatedly against the bars of the cell. One side of his head was a mush.

Mann looked at him. He had better get used to it, he thought. He was going to spend the rest of his life tied up, knocked out, and kept in conditions befitting an animal.

Mann called to him. He didn’t answer. He couldn’t even lift his head. So Mann went to talk to Max, who was housed in the opposite side of the building to his brother. When he got there, Max was sitting on his bunk, his head in his hands. One bare lightbulb shone down into the cell. He didn’t move or look up as Mann approached him.

‘You ready to help, Max?’

Max didn’t answer.

‘I know about Club Sixty-Eight, Max. I know that at least some of the women met their deaths there. You want me to help you and your brother, you need to talk to me now.’

Max shook his head miserably and wrung his hands as he stared up at Mann from his bunk.

‘What have you got to lose, Max? What are you afraid of?’

Max blinked up at Mann.

‘I don’t know how you came to be involved in all this, but I don’t see you as a killer, Max. But you and your brother played an important part in it, and you will stand trial and go to prison for it. I can’t alter that, but I can help you make some recompense for what you’ve done.’

Max’s eyes stayed fixed on Mann’s face.

‘Nothing is going to save you or your brother now, but you could help me save Georgina.’

At the mention of her name, Max grew agitated. He turned away.

‘You liked Georgina, didn’t you?’

Max’s head sunk to his chest.

‘Where is she, Max? Where will Chan have taken her? You know him, Max. He’s your cousin. He would trust you more than most. Where would he go to hide for a few days and wait for transport?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know these things.’

‘Tell me what you do know, Max.’

‘I never killed anyone.’ Speaking softly, he stared at the floor, wringing his hands.

‘And your brother?’

Max looked up at Mann. His eyes were darting all around the cell, alighting on Mann’s face then flitting past.

‘My brother didn’t mean to. It’s not Man Po’s fault. He’s a simple man. He never meant to hurt anyone.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘Twenty years ago, Man Po was driving along in his truck in Stanley, delivering meat. It was early morning. A white girl flagged him down. She was drunk. She starts coming on to my brother like a bitch on heat. She has no shame. She lifts up her top, exposes her breasts. She hikes her skirt up, shows him her legs – he’s never seen a woman’s legs like that before – and she takes his hand and starts rubbing it between her legs. I told you she was a bitch on heat, shameless – an animal. He didn’t mean to squash her. He put his weight on her. He doesn’t remember how long it was, but when he turned her over she was dead.’

‘What did he do with her?’

‘He put her under the pigs, in the back of the lorry, and he brought her home. For a couple of days he hid her. He didn’t tell me.’

‘Hid her where?’

‘Inside the old surgery.’

‘And when you found her, what did you do?’

‘I asked my father. He said he knew someone who could help. Someone in the family who owed us a favour. He would tell us what to do with her.’ Max shook his head. His shoulders heaved as he sighed heavily. ‘We went to Chan. He was a young man then – ambitious, mean. He’d just joined the Wo Shing Shing. We asked him for help.’

‘He was your cousin, after all?’

‘Yes, he was – and my father paid for him to go to school in England. He owed us.’ Max looked at Mann, his eyes sharp, shining in the gloom of the cell, eager to share the injustice of the situation. ‘He was supposed to help us dispose of it. Hide the evidence. He was supposed to do all that to repay his debt to my family. He was supposed to help.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He told Man Po to take the body to work, cut it up and feed it to the pigs when he went to the farms. He said he’d go to Stanley, to the place where it happened, and make sure there was no evidence there to convict Man Po.’

‘And then?’

Max got off the bunk and started pacing agitatedly around the cell.

‘For ten years, nothing – then it started. He came to me and said he wanted me to kidnap a girl he knew from a club. He said he would get her drunk, put her in my cab, and I was to do the rest. I had to keep her in the old surgery for a few days, then he would call me, tell me where I was to take her.’

‘Why did you go along with it?’

Max’s arms flapped in the air. ‘Huh? He said he had evidence. He said one word from him and Man Po and I would be arrested. I had no choice.’

‘So, you did what you were told. Then what?’

‘He called me. I had to give her a sedative, get her in the cab again … drive out into the New Territories. I had to take her to him late at night. He had a different club then, not Sixty-Eight – small, just beginning. We met in a car park. I gave him the girl. I thought it was all finished. Then, after a month, he called me again – told me to get Man Po to pick up her body and dispose of it the way he had the other one. Man Po didn’t want to. We had no choice. Chan made us do it. He used us. We had no choice.’

‘You had a choice.’

‘No … no … no!’ Max dissolved into a heap in front of Mann and clung to the bars as he slid down to his knees. ‘He said we owed him a lot. It was never enough – one girl, ten, twenty, never enough. I had to keep bringing them to him. I had to keep them in my house, in the old surgery, make them nice, make them scared.’

‘How did you choose the girls, Max?’

‘Huh? Sometimes Chan told me to pick someone up. Sometimes I got to know them myself.’