The Trophy Taker (22 page)

In Bar Paris Edith Piaf crackled away as Ka Lei picked at the candle wax around the old wine bottles and sipped her warm Coke. She checked her messages again and again. She didn’t know where Georgina could be: Georgina was never late. In fact, she was usually early.

Every time the door at Bar Paris opened, Ka Lei searched the faces of those entering, sure that one of them would be Georgina. But, as each stranger stepped inside and closed the door behind him, a small panic surged upward in her chest and a voice in her head said:

Georgina isn’t coming … Georgina isn’t coming.

But Ka Lei couldn’t bear that thought: she needed Georgina so badly; she had waited all day to be able to see her. Georgina was the only one who could make her feel better. And now it was over an hour and a half since they were due to meet and the panic inside continued to squeeze her. Caught like a rabbit in a boa constrictor’s grip, she couldn’t breathe, and she couldn’t swallow the scream that was wedged in her throat. She instinctively knew something awful had happened.

She left Bar Paris and ran all the way home. Georgina wasn’t there. Lucy was. Ka Lei ran into the flat calling: ‘Where is Georgina?’ She stared wide-eyed at the scattered belongings in Georgina’s room. ‘Why are all her things in such a mess? Where is she?’

Lucy came towards her with her arms outstretched, tears welling in her eyes. Ka Lei fended her off. ‘What’s wrong, Lucy?’ She looked past her into the bedroom. ‘Where is she?’

‘Ka Lei, I think Georgina must have gone.’

‘Gone where? What do you mean?’

Lucy walked across the room to the dressing table. ‘Look – this is the place she always kept her passport, and now it’s gone – see! And her things are in such a mess, as if she left in a hurry. She took just what she needed and left the rest. Sorry, huh?’

Ka Lei stood in the middle of the room, shaking her head in disbelief as Lucy showed her the empty box that had held Georgina’s passport. She took the box from her sister and stared into it, willing the passport to reappear.

‘And her toiletries, her papers – other important things, they are all gone.’

Ka Lei’s hands shook as she held on to the box and her saucer-eyes froze with panic as she surveyed the evidence of Georgina’s departure.

‘Did you know she was leaving? Did she say anything to you, Ka Lei?’

Ka Lei shook her head and, as she did so, swollen tear drops spilt down her face. She began searching for her phone.

Mandy was setting up for the evening when the call came.

Lucy stood poised, just outside the bedroom door, listening – straining to hear the one-sided conversation.

‘Mandy? It’s Ka Lei here. Georgina cousin. Please – have you see Georgina? … Oh no … not here also … I see … no … I solly … yes please…yes… okay … I will … thank you. Bye bye.’

Then Ka Lei went into the bathroom and locked the door behind her.

As soon as Mandy got off the phone to Ka Lei, she called Mann.

‘No, she doesn’t know where she is … no … no idea. It’s unthinkable that she doesn’t know where she is. The two are always together and Georgina’s just not like that, and with the murders going on … I thought I’d better call you.’

Mann put the phone down. A cold cramp spread out from the pit of his stomach. It turned his blood to ice. Had Georgina become the latest piece on the killer’s chess board?

He went straight round to the flat. Ka Lei was in such a state of shock and panic that she couldn’t speak.

Lucy explained. ‘Only Georgina would take these things. She has taken the only possessions that matter to her,’ she told Mann.

‘She didn’t take
all
her things?’

‘No, maybe she just didn’t want the rest. I hope she’s okay. Maybe she just went back.’

He turned to Ka Lei, who was slumped on Georgina’s bed and hadn’t moved since he’d got there.

‘Was there anything worrying her?’

Ka Lei looked at him and then at Lucy. He thought she was going to say something but then she shook her head and went back to staring at the floor.

Mann finished going through Georgina’s belongings. He didn’t find her passport, but he found something else – a small photo album. Photos from the beginning. Georgina as an infant, wrapped in white, nestled in the crook of a very proud-looking man. Underneath was written:
Me and Dad
. Her mother,
me and Mum
, a photo of a small woman standing beside Georgina, a tall teenage girl, her arm around Georgina’s waist. Then there were countless photo-booth montages of Georgina and Ka Lei.

He knew there was no way that Georgina would have left either the photo album or Ka Lei behind. No way.

‘It’s broad daylight, Mann. Her passport’s gone. She packed up and left. I don’t know why you think any different. In any case we wait forty-eight hours, like you’ve been doing, see if she turns up like the others have done.’ Superintendent White walked back to his desk, sat down heavily and leaned back in the chair.

‘She didn’t.’

‘Didn’t what?’

‘She didn’t just leave.’

‘Okay. Let’s look at the facts. So far as we know, Bernadette, Roxanne and Gosia were all taken at night. This girl was last seen in the day. The others dis appeared from Club Mercedes. This one wasn’t working at the club any more.’

‘That doesn’t mean there isn’t a connection,’ said Mann. ‘And she lived with Lucy.’

‘Yes, Mann, and we come back to the passport, and the fact that she packed up and took what she needed, left the rest. Her cousin seems certain …’

‘Her cousin’s lying. I asked the other occupants in the building, shopkeepers, street vendors outside, and they remembered seeing her that day. She left on foot, walking towards Causeway Bay. She wasn’t carrying anything, just her handbag. She wasn’t on any of the passenger lists of flights out yesterday. I checked.’

‘She could have left on a ferry. I can’t afford to waste man hours. She might well have just decided to leave. I still feel we ought to wait forty-eight hours to see if she turns up.’

White looked at Mann. He knew it wasn’t what Mann wanted to hear. The rest of the team looked at Mann as well. They knew he was trying his best to stay calm, but those of them who had ever seen him angry before were also aware that he didn’t give much warning when he blew.

‘She could be lying on a beach somewhere, Mann, sunning herself. She could be with a boyfriend. She could be anywhere.’

‘And she could be being tortured and be minutes from death.’

‘I am going to pull rank on you with this one, Mann. I think you are too involved – your judgement is not as sharp as it should be and I need you to see things clearly. There is a system in place – we need to follow it. We wait forty-eight hours.’

‘I see things crystal clear.’ Mann was hanging on to his temper by a thread. ‘I will find her myself. Fuck the system!’ He grabbed his jacket and stormed out of the office.

Georgina came to, semi-awake, on a cold stone floor. She was aware that she was naked. At the same time as she reached to cover herself, her arm gave way and she slumped to one side. She felt the rough cold stone against her skin. Her body was too heavy to move and she could do nothing about it.

She heard the sound of men’s voices in the room with her – Chinese voices. Through a nauseous semi-sleep she heard them talking. Her head thumped against the side of her skull. She tried hard to open her eyes but they were too heavy – they stayed open for a second then dropped shut.

Someone switched on the shower above her head. She flinched as the jet of cold water hit the back of her head.

‘Wakey, wakey, SHOWER!’ A man’s voice.

She struggled to sit up, managed to straighten herself a little, then stopped. Her head fell forward onto her chest. Two men watched her from the corner of their eyes as they chatted.

One of the men walked over to her.

‘UP. STAND UP!’

She tried to lift her head but the weight of her wet hair forced it back against the wall. Her hair stuck to her face. She stared up at the men for a few seconds then her eyes slid closed.

‘Fuck. She looks ill.’

‘He gave her too much. If she dies we’d better be ready to cover for each other.’

‘She’s not going to die.’ The man nearest Georgina nudged her with his foot.

‘Hey, wake up. STAND UP, I said.’ He kicked her thigh with his foot. Georgina groaned and slid further down the wall.

‘Watch. Cover for me. I’m going to wake her up,’ he said to his companion as he unzipped his flies and took hold of Georgina by her wet hair, dragging her head upwards. Her eyes were closed, her mouth hung open.

‘Let’s see if she likes Chinese dick,’ he said, turning to his friend and grinning.

At that second Georgina vomited.

‘Fucking bitch.’

He threw her back against the wall and turned the shower on himself to wash the vomit from his trousers.

The next thing Georgina heard was a loud knock at the door and a woman’s cockney accent shouting, ‘Open this fuckin’ door.’

Mann went back home to think. Somewhere, amid all these images on his lounge floor, there was the answer. He had to get Georgina back. He had to find out who killed Helen.

He stared hard at Roxanne’s photos. The person who had killed Roxanne was walking around now. This wasn’t two years ago, or twenty, this was now.

He closed his eyes, leaned back in the chair, took a large swig of his vodka tonic and let his mind drift.

Roxanne: the picture he had in his mind was electric-blue eye-shadow; short, stumpy legs; permed frizzy hair. She wanted fame at all costs, but she was a tough little woman. She had put up with a lot of abuse in her life and had come out the other side. She knew that she was lucky compared to others. She also knew you had to make your own luck.

Mann reread the notes on her – on her death. The autopsy was more detailed than the others because she was the most recent and hadn’t been frozen. What had she had to eat on that last meal again? He read that she’d had steak and potato. That wasn’t a Chinese meal. He’d been starving her up to that point, then he gives her steak. Did he make her eat it with him? She had heroin and a trace of Rohypnol in her urine. Someone wanted Roxanne to look like she was enjoying it, or at least not to care. Someone wanted her to last the distance. Why?

Electric-shock torture? A cattle prod? He must have neglected to put something in her mouth because she bit her tongue, and that was careless. Dressing her up? Role play? Why? The fantasy aspect of the death was important to him. Serial killers tended to re-enact the same fantasy, look for the same type of victim. Were all the others dressed as cave girls, like she was? It didn’t appear so. Only Roxanne had traces of calf skin on her. Maybe the fantasy was broader than that, maybe the calf skin wasn’t the crucial part of this fantasy? Maybe it wasn’t always the same man?

All this time that Mann contemplated Roxanne’s death he couldn’t look at Helen. Her photos remained at the top of the room, obscured from his view. He would take time to come to them. He wasn’t ready to know what Helen had to tell him.

He looked again at Roxanne and imagined her last minutes. He saw her dressed in a calf ’s hide.
Cave girl
… She died by a ligature applied around her neck.
She was hung, most likely
. Mann closed his eyes for a few seconds and imagined the scenario. He saw her dressed up, rope around her neck, but she wasn’t hanging.
No
–
she wasn’t
. Roxanne was
lassoed
. The cave girl was dressed in an animal skin to
become
an animal. She was cattle-prodded and she was lassoed and she was dressed as a calf because that’s what she was to someone, an animal to be branded and slaughtered … branded with an F. Who or what did the F stand for?

Ng was in the office when Mann arrived the next morning.

‘What did you come up with, Genghis?’ Ng asked as Mann walked in.

‘Roxanne Berger.’

‘Me too. Cave girl. Hung and electrocuted. We want to look at the others again – they may all be the same.’

‘She was dressed like an animal, she was treated like one, not a cave girl. The person who did this, he gets off on pretending she’s one of his herd. She wasn’t hung either, she was lassoed. The more she struggled, the tighter the noose got. But he didn’t let her die. He kept bringing her to the point where she passed out. He brought her round with the cattle prod, that’s how she came to bite her tongue. He raped her in between. She must have been submissive with the Rohypnol.’

‘Why did he give her that?’

‘It has the effect of making a woman become sexually abandoned, but at the same time it is a powerful sedative. I haven’t had one case of it here before. The drug is just becoming known here.’

‘Not a thing your average rapist or murderer would bother to get, even if he knew how to source it.’

‘Or your ordinary pig farmer. This man takes his pleasure very seriously and he’s willing to pay for it.’

‘Any news on your friend? Has she turned up?’

‘No. Georgina’s not going to turn up, Ng. This may represent a new twist, but she is definitely a victim of the Butcher. CSI have been around to the flat to see if they could find anything. I am going to visit Lucy again later. She has an infinite ability to lie, and I think that’s what she’s doing now. Haven’t figured out what’s in it for her yet, but I presume it has something to do with money.’

Ng picked up his papers and tidied them into a pile. ‘What about the other women? What about Helen?’ He didn’t look at Mann as he asked.

‘I’m working my way through them. I haven’t looked at Helen’s case yet. Have you?’

‘Just briefly. I think it should be done urgently. We only have two complete victims, after all. She is one of them.’ His eyes finally met Mann’s. ‘We have to get as much information from her death as we can.’

‘Of course. I am going to look at it tonight. Definitely.’

Li walked into the office. He’d been out in the clubs all night, but he’d still had time to think about the way the women died.

‘Any more on any of the others, Li?’

‘Gosia. The cigarette burns on her. They form a pattern.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They look like the Islands – Lantau, Lama, Cheung Chau.’ He pulled out the photo and set it on the desk. ‘See!’ He traced the outline of the Islands.

Ng squinted at the photo. ‘Well, what’s that? A passing ship? A shoal of tuna? And that? What is that?’ asked Ng. ‘You need to get some sleep, Shrimp, you’re hallucinating.’

Li blushed and giggled, embarrassed.

‘Anyway, Shrimp, you’re sure there are sixty-eight, right?’ said Mann. ‘Keep working on it – there is something significant about these burns. Some role play, some clue. Some fucking game or other. It’s good to keep looking at it and trying out ideas. Even if some of them are shit.’

Ng patted Li on the back. ‘What else?’ He could see Shrimp was bursting to tell.

‘I was with a girl last night. She said she’d seen a film. She said it was a snuff movie. She said it had a white woman in it.’