‘Here’s my card, David. You find out everything you can about who’s controlling these kids, who’s at the heart of it and I will do everything I can to find out what happened to your brother.’

Shrimp looked at the black men and he saw their faces. Each one homesick, sad and scared of dying.

David gave Shrimp his card in exchange and he held on to it with two hands and looked Shrimp in the eyes. ‘We will meet again, Shrimp. Remember my face and I will remember yours.’

Chapter 30

Mann left Victoria in the Oceans bar and headed back to Nathan Road. He needed a drink. He walked through the lobby of Vacation Villas.

In an overcrowded town where there often wasn’t room to walk on the pavements it was strange to feel lonely. Mann didn’t recognize the concept of loneliness. He just didn’t like going home. Home was where he had things to face. Out on Hong Kong’s streets is where he belonged. He walked through the lobby and up the sweeping staircase into the large lounge area. It was all deep, cushioned sofas and leather armchairs, low wooden, glass-topped coffee tables. At the far end was a massive TV screen relaying the latest sport coverage from around the world. He said hello to the hovering waitresses in their unattractive cheongsams that looked like they had been made by the same tailor who made the sofa covers and curtains, and walked straight through to the bar: a twenty-foot rectangle. People sat around it like bored guests at a dinner party, trying not to make eye contact with one another.

As he walked in, Mann gave a discreet nod to one of the three Filipinas singing on a stage at the end of the room. They wore matching dresses and had the same hair extensions. But only one had a good voice – that was Michelle, the oldest on the far right. She clocked him and gave a nervous nod of the head back as she kept up her pretty good rendition of Dolly Parton’s ‘Nine to Five’whilst the other two, Cindy and Sandy, practised their synchronized hip movements. A Filipino named Trex banged out the tune on the drums and a Chinese named Tim played the keyboard. They worked right through the night every night, as long as the bar was open so were they. Michelle looked tired, thought Mann. Her face was rubbery, her features barely registering the changes of emotion from one line of the song to the next. Her eyes kept flicking back to him.

Mann made space at the bar, ordered a large vodka on the rocks and checked out his other inmates around the rectangle. They were the usual suspects – forty-somethings, lonely men staring into their drinks, flicking the odd peanut into their mouth. Next to him three men in their late forties were huddled around a young Chinese hooker in her early twenties. They were transformed from boardroom ball breakers into beaming schoolboys. What was it about Western men and Asian hookers? Unlike Asian men, who were the biggest users of prostitutes in their own countries, the foreign man liked to believe he was getting a girlfriend for his money. He took her on holiday, walked hand in hand along moonlit beaches.

Mann didn’t have any moral high ground to even teeter on. He had paid for sex himself, but only the once. It had been as sexy as taking a crap. Mann liked to please his women. He liked to feel they were both in the same sexed-up space. For him any sex was definitely not better than no sex. He liked to take his time, it gave him pleasure. He didn’t feel like it when there was a meter running. He looked across at Michelle, she was getting more nervous. She looked about to leg it. If Michelle was looking shifty, she had a reason.

He took his drink from the barman and was about to take his first sip when it was almost knocked out of his hands.

‘I do apologize,’ a man next to him spoke. He was English, in his mid-forties, with black curly hair, large light-grey eyes. ‘Let me get you another.’

‘No need.’

The barman handed Mann a napkin to wipe his arm.

‘Please, I insist.’ He signalled to the barman who replaced Mann’s glass with a fresh one. ‘Cheers.’ He raised his glass. ‘My name’s Peter Thorne.’

Mann raised his. ‘Johnny Mann. Thanks for the drink. You passing through?’

‘Yes. Here for three nights then on to the mainland. What about you? You live here?’

Mann nodded. Two girls walked past and gave them the eye. He grinned at Mann. ‘Temptation everywhere you look here. How does a married man cope with it?’

Mann shook his head. The alcohol had reached the spot, he began to feel mellow.

‘I’m not married; I can get tempted all I like.’

‘Clever man. Stay single. I try to be good but it’s a lonely world on the road. I’m away from my family for eight months of the year altogether. I sometimes wonder what I’m doing it for. Like tonight – I ring home,’ he picked up his phone, looked at the screen and then dropped the phone back on the mat, ‘no reply. My wife texts me. She’s out, of course, having fun.’ He shook his head. ‘Don’t get me wrong, she’s entitled to a life. It’s not her fault I have to work so hard.’

‘Yeah, this looks like hard work.’ Mann glanced around the busy bar at the businessmen on expense accounts.

Peter Thorne grinned sheepishly. ‘I suppose you’re right. What do you do?’

‘This and that. Import export. Excuse me.’ Mann looked back at the stage – Michelle was gone. ‘I’ll be back.’ He put his drink on the bar and went after Michelle.

Chapter 31

He caught up with Michelle in the ladies and jammed his foot in the toilet door just as she was shutting it. ‘A word?’

‘Christ, don’t I get any privacy?’ Michelle said, quickly stuffing something back in her bag.

‘Is it my imagination or are you avoiding me? Give me your bag.’

A woman came in to use the bathroom. ‘Sorry love, we’re closed.’ Mann leaned against the door to stop her from entering.

Michelle closed her eyes, took a deep breath and handed him her bag. He tipped the contents out in the sink, took out his pen and started turning over the contents. He flicked out a man’s wallet. He opened it up. There was a driving licence on one side, a space on the other where a photo should have been. Michelle sighed heavily. ‘I never saw that before, I promise, Inspector.’

‘What were you going to do? Wait for him to be busy at the bar and then take a quick trip up to see if he’d left anything interesting in his room?’

‘I don’t know what that’s doing in there, Inspector, I swear.’

Mann put the wallet in his pocket. He picked up a box of Viagra.

‘It’s for the old guys…it helps.’

‘Very thoughtful, Michelle. And this?’ He picked up a bag of meth amphetamine. Underneath were three foil strips of small white pills. He turned it over in his hand. ‘That’s a lot of GHD. You having to knock people out first these days are you, Michelle?’

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. ‘Give me a break, Inspector. Some people get a bit nasty. It calms them down. It doesn’t do them any harm. They think they had a good time.’

Mann shook his head and gave her a scathing look.

‘I have kids to feed.’

‘Your eldest is Lilly, right? I went to her school today. Did you know she was a budding young Triad? If she hasn’t already, it won’t be long before she takes the oath and then there’s no going back. A young girl was murdered. Is that what you want for Lilly?’

She slumped back to rest her bottom on the basin and sighed heavily, closing her eyes for a few seconds. ‘I don’t know what she gets up to any more. I tried my best. I honestly did, but she is nothing but trouble. I wash my hands of her. Night after night she’s out, I don’t know where. Rizal says he can’t keep an eye on her. He’s busy with the other children and the business and Rizal and Lilly don’t get on – they fight all the time. If you can teach her some manners, go ahead.’

‘How’s the stall going? You making money?’