‘This is totally out of your depth, Genghis, but okay. You will need help and you will have it. I will get Shrimp working on it.’

‘Thanks, Ng. I knew I could count on you. I need you to do something else for me…I need you to investigate my father. I need to know what he was doing in Amsterdam. I need some closure on all of this, Ng. This has made me realise that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life searching for answers. I want to move on.’

‘You may never know the truth, Mann. Sometimes we have to accept and leave it there.’ Ng shook his head. ‘Life isn’t that black or white. People are not just parents, they are flesh and blood. Men are built to sow their seed.’

‘Maybe, or maybe it was love. The last summer I spent with my father was great. It was the happiest I had ever seen him. He seemed different, quick to laugh. He seemed like he wanted to get close to me. The night when I came back to the house and found him being tortured, when I saw him executed, I accepted that he was a brave man who had died because he wouldn’t pay money to triads. But, do you know what, Ng? I don’t even know who he was. Everything I believed in is gone.’

20

Magda had gone to bed ages before and Alfie was still waiting for Katrien to sign on to her messenger account. He was getting stir crazy staring at the screen. The camera wasn’t a tracker. He only got to see her when she was sitting at the monitor; he was hoping that would be enough. He had sound, he had visual; now all he needed was for her to log on.

At midnight katcream69 was online and typing. She was sitting in her bra and pants. The webcam box was too small for him to see who she was looking at. He couldn’t log in at the same time as her. It would cut her off if he did that. She seemed to be waiting and then she leant forward and looked into the webcam.

‘Have you missed me?’ Her voice was childlike, soft. There was no audible reply. Someone was typing. ‘I know, it won’t be long now, my love, and we will be together, just you and me and everything we have ever dreamed of…nothing will separate us then. No, there isn’t enough money. We need to do this. It has to be this way, believe me, it will be worth it. We all have our part to play in it. You know what yours is, my love. He is coming out to you soon. Watch him, stay with him. Keep in touch. I need to know where he is all the time.’

‘If you have to, yes. You’ve killed before and you can do it again. I was right then, wasn’t I? I am right now too. Remember, you can’t trust anyone but me. I’ve always been there for you. Of course I love you, baby. I love the way you kiss me. I love the way you taste.’

Alfie watched her shoulders rise and fall. She was playing with herself. He couldn’t help feeling that she probably gave herself more satisfaction than any man could. ‘Remember, baby, they’re all against you, it’s just you and me till the end.’ She was getting excited now; Alfie listened to her moaning as she writhed in the chair and brought herself to orgasm. Then she blew a kiss into the webcam.

‘Remember, baby. it’s just you and me against the world, like it always has been, since we were kids.’

As she signed off, Alfie heard her talking to someone else; she was now out of camera range. He heard another voice in the room—it was a woman’s.

21

‘I just want to know, that’s all.’

Mann was waiting for his mother to answer. He made her sit whilst they talked. It was all too easy for her to avoid it otherwise. She sat opposite him in the lounge on the white, French furniture, ornate, never meant to be comfortable. It was nothing like they used to have. She had got rid of all of that. Behind her were photos of Mann with his father on the sideboard in silver frames. Molly had moved into the small flat after Deming died and the furniture from the big house had been culled, but still the room seemed overcrowded and the furniture out of keeping in its new surroundings. Then, Mann hadn’t understood why she had to downscale quite so much; now he did. The whole area had an air of ‘seen better times’ about it. As much as Mann kept nagging her, Molly never once spent the money she had sitting in the bank. Now he knew why.

She did not look at her son. He didn’t mind waiting. He was used to waiting for her to say what it was that was bothering her. He knew this was her least favourite scenario, being forced into talking about a subject she’d rather never mention.

Mann sipped his tea and watched her. Her shoulders were narrow and stiff. Her hair was wound in a silver and pewter coil, and secured with an antique tortoiseshell clasp. She was getting thinner in her old age, but still upright as she sat perched on the edge of the chaise longue, as if there was a rod up her back, but the flesh on her arms was thinned and freckled with the sun damage. Her hands were long and graceful but papery thin. Mann put his cup down on the lace doily on one of a set of three mahogany side tables, and he sat back in the narrow, tall-backed armchair. Ginger, the cat, came to sit in front of Molly, waiting for a sign that it was allowed to jump onto her lap, waiting for her to sit back and make space. Molly put her cup down and gave an exaggerated sigh.

‘I don’t see what the point is in unearthing all these things about your father. He was a man like any other. He had his faults and his virtues. Why do we have to do it now?’

Mann looked at her; he could see she was trembling. He felt sorry for her and he spoke gently. ‘Because it affects us now. Because, if they are not dealt with, secrets have a habit of reappearing, don’t they? Nothing stays hidden forever.’

‘It should have done. Why did we have to know about it? What business is it of ours? Your father made a mistake.’ She was getting prickly. Ginger sensed it and backed off. ‘We shouldn’t let it ruin our lives. He has been dead for nineteen years. You spend too much time thinking about things like how he died. Who ordered his death? You waste your energy on things that cannot be answered and, even if they could, it would make no difference, it would not bring him back. You should stop thinking about these things, son, and move on. Put them behind you.’

‘I won’t give up the search for Dad’s killer, Mum, I can’t do that. I live with the image of his death cemented in my brain. But I realise now that I hardly even knew him. Now it turns out that he had secrets that affect us all and they might explain his death. I need to know them. I have a right to know them—everything, good and bad.’

Mann paused for a minute. He knew he was on tricky ground. If he pushed his mother too hard he would never get her to cooperate. She was better at building walls than any construction worker. She had turned her attention out towards the balcony where a bird had come to feed from the bird table. ‘Mum, I know it’s hard for you but it’s too late to undo what’s done. I don’t know about you but I would rather not sit around and wait for that to unfold. I’m not too keen on surprises.’ He saw her shoulders rise and fall and he knew she was trying hard to be calm. ‘There was a time, not so long ago, that you wanted to talk about things. You mentioned that your relationship, your marriage wasn’t so good.’

‘That was before all this came up.’ She snapped back. ‘I don’t see why she had to contact us. The children are nothing to do with us.’ There was no anger in her voice, just exasperation and sadness. Mann could see she was upset. She started fiddling with the hem of her beige Marks and Spencer’s cardigan that he had bought her last Christmas.