Dragon Head - A Beatrix Rose Thriller: Hong Kong Stories Volume 1 (Beatrix Rose's Hong Kong Stories Book 3) (7 page)

His eyes went narrow as he regarded her. “What is wrong with you?”

“Nothing.”

“You are high. You are on drugs!”

She waved it off.

“No,” he persisted. “You are. Your eyes. I know signs. You are high.”

She stood. She felt a blast of shame. She didn’t want to admit what she had been doing, and that all she could think about was going back to do it again.

“You are leaving?”

“My money?”

“Here.” He nodded to the bag at his feet.

She reached down and took it. She didn’t bother to check it was all there.

“Thank you, Chau.”

“For what?”

“For this. And for helping me with Grace. I appreciate that. You didn’t have to do it.”

“You can’t just leave me!” he protested pitifully. “Ying will kill me.”

“Then
go
,” she repeated. “Go to China. Go anywhere but here.” She put out her hand and, after a moment of hesitation, he took it. “Goodbye, Chau.”

She turned her back on him and walked away.

TIME PASSED. Beatrix visited the
Hua-yan jian
every evening. Sometimes she would stay for an hour and other times she would stay all night.

Each pipe removed her from her worries and anxieties. But when she awoke, they were all there again as if they had never been away. They developed. Like cancers, they mutated and spread. Her memories, far from being erased, became malignant reminders of her failures.

She found that, as she cared less and less about herself, she cared more about what had happened to Grace. She was unable to forget what had happened to the girl. The look in her eyes, when she had taken her from the brothel, haunted her dreams. Even the depth of her narcotic slumber was unable to cloak it from her. She remembered Grace’s tears as she had left her outside her aunt’s house. She remembered her thought, fully realised now, that the girl had been robbed of her childhood. Beatrix’s anger, never completely extinguished, had flickered back into life. She could control the flame with each new pipe. But as soon as she revived, it was like a gust of pure oxygen had been directed onto the restive embers and it flared again.

And then, one day, she found that she had diverted from her usual path to the den so that she was in Wan Chai, on Lockhart Road, opposite the Nine Dragons. It was incredibly foolish of her—she had no weapon, for a start—but she had been drawn there, and was unable to resist. She bought a ball cap and a pair of sunglasses and put them on. There was a karaoke bar opposite the club. The place had an open façade and she had taken a seat there, nursing a drink for thirty minutes as she watched the comings and goings on the other side of the street.

The idiocy of what she was doing finally dawned on her, and she had just scattered enough change on the table to cover the check when a car drew up alongside the club and Fang Chun Ying stepped out. She angled her head away and watched through the big mirror that was fixed on the wall behind the bar. He was with two of his lieutenants, a broad smile on his face as if he was without a care.

She waited until he had descended the stairs into the club, collected her bag and left the bar.

She took out her phone, opened a browser window and navigated to the Facebook page that she and Chau used to communicate with one another.

She stopped so that she could type.

—MEET ME. SAME PLACE AS LAST TIME. 9PM.

CHAU WAS waiting at the same picnic table in Sun Yat Sen Park, wearing the same ridiculously garish Hawaiian shirt that he had been wearing before. He was looking in the other direction, out into the harbour, and she took a moment to stop at one of the street vendors so that she could buy him a packet of fried grasshoppers. She paid the vendor and took the food to the table.

“Chau,” she said.

He started with alarm. “Beatrix, I did not see you.”

“Because you always have your eyes closed,” she said.

“I did not think we would meet again.”

“I’ve had a change of heart. Here. Peace offering.”

She gave him the fried grasshoppers.

“Thank you,” he said, but he left them untouched. “What is it, Beatrix? I am confused.”

“You didn’t leave.”

“I think about it, but I do not know where to go. But I know you are right. I cannot stay.”

He was nervous, too, she thought, but that was not out of character for him. He was a nervous man by disposition. And, she reminded herself, there was no reason why he would have expected to hear from her again. He would have anticipated bad news, perhaps something that would have repercussions for him.

“Maybe you can.”

“Stay?”

“Maybe.” She indicated the bag of insects. “You’re not going to eat those?”

He pushed them to the middle of the table. “I am sorry. I have lost my appetite. What are you talking about?”

“Ying. I saw him yesterday.”

“What? Where?”

“The Nine Dragons.”

“Why would you go there?” he said, his eyes bulging with panic.

“I don’t know. I had an itch. Needed to scratch it.”

“Did he see you?”

“What do you think, Chau?” she chided. “Of course not.”

“So?”

“So I’ve changed my mind. I can’t let a man who has done the things that he has done—the things that he is still doing—breathe the same air as my daughter. He needs to go, Chau. Do you understand what I mean by that?”

“Of course. How?”

“That’s why we’re talking. I need you to help me, Chau.”

He shook his head violently. “No, Beatrix—”

“Relax, Chau. You have to do very little.”

He started to stand. “I have to do
nothing
.”

“Sit down.” Her eyes were full of cold fire. She knew that his fear of her was all she needed to control him.

He sat. “What do you want?”

“I watched him. He is well guarded. As far as he is concerned, I’m still here. He’ll be careful until he’s sure I’m gone.”

“So?”

“So there will be somewhere he lets his guard down. His home, his mistress, a restaurant he likes to visit. Somewhere he feels safe. Do you still have your police connection?”

“Yes,” he said. Chau was friendly with an officer in the Organised Crime and Triad Bureau of the Hong Kong Police Force. The officer was bent and could be bought.

“Speak to him. Tell him you want to know everything he knows about Ying. I want his routine. They’ll have had surveillance on him. They probably still do. And then you tell me what he tells you. I’ll look at it and pick out the weak spots. That’s the first thing.”

“The second?”

“I need a weapon.”

BEATRIX HAD ignored the urge to smoke that night and had stayed in her cheap hotel room, watching Chinese television. She managed five hours of almost uninterrupted sleep and awoke to feel more refreshed than she could remember.

When she opened the Facebook group, she found there was a message for her from Chau.

—MIDDAY. SAME PLACE.

CHAU WAS waiting for her.

“You still want Ying?”

“I do.”

He looked terribly nervous. “I…I…”

“What, Chau? You what?”

“Then I know how that can be done.”

“Really?”

“Like you say—I have friends, Beatrix. I ask.”

“The police?”

“No. Friend in Wo Shun Wo.”

“You never mentioned him before.”

“There was never reason to mention him. He says that Ying plays poker every Wednesday night. There is a warehouse he owns. The game is there. Four other players play with him. Old triad friends. High stakes. He will be there tonight.”

“Where is it?”

“It is on Ap Lei Chau. Lee Nam Road.”

“Security?”

“Some. But it is Wo Shun Wo, Beatrix. No criminal is going to rob them, and police are not going to raid triad poker game. Triads own underworld and own police. What do they have to fear?”

Me, Beatrix thought. They have
me
to fear.

But she knew that Ying would be careful, and she didn’t dismiss the potential for security quite as readily as Chau did.

“Your friend. Is he involved?”

“He will be there. He is croupier. He will leave a door open for us if we pay him well enough.”

“How much?”

“Not too much. Don’t worry about that, Beatrix. I sort it. I benefit, too.”

Beatrix considered the possibilities. It was an opportunity. Somewhere quiet, out of the way. No one to get in the way. Somewhere he would feel safe and secure. That was all good. But there would be security. It would be easier, but it wouldn’t be easy.

Chau reached down and collected a bag that was resting by his feet. He passed it around the table to Beatrix. She opened it and put a hand inside. There were two pistols wrapped in oilcloth inside.

“I don’t need two,” she said.

He looked at her and tried to put a little confidence in his voice. “I will help.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “When he is gone, things better for both of us. The other players will be armed. Two of us will stand a better chance than one.”

That was true. “You have to be sure, Chau.
Completely
sure.”

He held her eye. “I am sure, Beatrix. This will work. The end of problems for both of us.”

SHE TOOK a taxi to the address Chau had given her. Ap Lei Chau was also known as Aberdeen Island, and Lee Nam Road was near the docks. It was south-west of the main island, and the taxi passed over the four-lane bridge that connected the two before skirting the busy central district for the industrial zone to the south. She had the driver stop half a mile away, paid him and got out of the cab. She waited until he had pulled away, and started to walk.

Lee Nam Road was a narrow two-lane highway that was pressed in on one side by the shoulders of the warehouses and office blocks and on the other by the sea. There was a concrete berm topped with a wire-mesh fence and then, beyond it, Aberdeen Harbour and the East Lamma Channel.

Ying’s warehouse housed a legitimate business that supplied ice to bars and restaurants around the city. Beatrix scouted it from the other side of the street. The building was right up close to the street, with trucks bearing the business’s livery parked at the edge of the road. A large roller door was open and a truck, backed halfway into the interior, was being loaded. She counted six members of staff. A seventh man was lounging against the wall, smoking a cigarette as he glared dolefully at the comings and goings outside.

She walked on. More warehouses. Lots of trucks. The sound of freight being hefted around, the reversing-alarms of lorries and the busy hum of forklifts. She stopped at the end of the street and watched as the freshly loaded truck was driven away.

She set off in the direction from which she had arrived, pretending to hold a conversation on her cell phone. She assessed the entrances and exits. It was a single-storey building. There were two long windows on the ground floor, both obscured by lowered blinds. There was the roller door, large enough for a truck to pass through. That, she guessed, would be closed and locked as soon as the day’s business had been concluded. It would be too noisy to open and she discounted it as a means to get inside. The main door for those on foot was to the side of the roller door. A frontal assault? If there were guards, that would be where they were concentrated. She discounted it. Too risky.

She walked on a little more. There was an alleyway between Ying’s warehouse and its neighbour. She saw another door, opened, next to a row of industrial bins. Chau’s contact had told them that was how they would get inside. He would leave it open for them.

That was more promising.

There was nothing about the place that looked out of the ordinary. It looked like a working, legitimate business. She had no doubt that Ying was involved with several all around the city. He would need a mechanism to launder his illicit money. This would be as good as anything.

She walked to the terminal at Lei Tung and rode the bus back to Hong Kong Island. She had already started to plan. Could she trust Chau’s intelligence? There was no reason why not. He had just as much motivation to do away with Ying as she did.

No, she corrected herself. Almost as much.

He hadn’t looked into Grace’s eyes like she had.

But he had enough motivation. Ying wanted Chau dead. He had been living a frightened existence ever since Ying had threatened them both. He knew, better than she did, what the man was capable of. He stood to recover his liberty with the
Dai Lo
out of the way. This was his home. And he had more of a reason to live than she did. He was invested.

So how would she do it?

She reassessed. Ying and another five men would be there. Maybe guards, too. She could gamble and do it alone, but she stood a better chance with Chau’s help. She would need someone to cover the others while she collected Ying. She had been wary of his offer, but now she found that she agreed with him. It wasn’t ideal, but nothing had been ideal ever since she had landed here. She would make do.

THEY TOOK Chau’s Mercedes to the island. Beatrix sat in the back and made sure that both guns—her Walther P5 and his Browning Hi Power—were clean and ready to fire. She hoped that getting Ying out of the building could be achieved without violence, but she was not prepared to gamble on that. If it was necessary to shoot, the last thing she wanted was for there to be a misfire.

She told him to drive as near to the warehouse as he could. Parking was not easy, but they found an empty space fifty feet to the north.

She gave the Browning back to Chau and told him to pay attention.

“I’m going to go in first and I’m going to do the talking. I want you to stand by the door and cover them. I doubt they will be particularly frightened by having a gun waved in their faces, so we’re going to be firm and to the point. Businesslike. I’ll get Ying and bring him out. You stay and cover the others, then get back to the car. He’ll be in the back with me. You drive.”

“I understand. Where do we take him?”

“There’s empty land on South Horizon Drive. We’ll take him up there and put him in the trunk. I’ll drive from then. We’ll take him somewhere we can make him disappear.” She looked at him sternly. “Is that all clear, Chau?”