Before the door slams closed behind him, I can see into a small courtyard area with a dumpster. It’s a possible escape route. He walks over to us and the bouncer hands over the cleaver.
My captors switch their grips and each of my arms is held by two hands. They pull me over to the food preparation area and against every ounce of resistance I can muster, my right hand is held down on the wooden cutting block.
“Show fingers or I take hand off.”
I do as he tells me.
He looks long and hard into my face. Without breaking his gaze, he takes a phone from his pocket. He holds it up to his face, then turns it in my direction.
There is a picture on the screen.
It’s a bed in a white room. A hospital bed.
His thumb swipes across the screen. The second picture is a close up. It’s Tina.
My gut feels like it’s going to explode.
“When you leave here,” he says, “go to hospital. Look after friend. When she’s better, go home. Vancouver. OK?”
There are a thousand things I want to scream at him but I just say, “Yes.”
He puts away the phone and looks down at my hand.
“Please, no.” The words make me feel like a complete coward but I can’t keep them inside. “Please.”
He sneers at me, raises the cleaver… I can see little smears of fish blood on its razor-sharp edge…he smiles…
From behind me a hand covers my mouth. I try to shout “NOOOOO!” but it comes out as little more than a muffled groan.
The cleaver comes down and I feel an unbearable stab of pain permeating my hand, then my arm, until it takes over the right side of my body. I scream into the hand clamped over my mouth.
In horror, I look down.
There’s no blood.
All my fingers are intact.
But the pain is excruciating.
Then I see the cleaver. Leo must have reversed the blade and brought down the back edge across my fingers. My relief at not being dismembered is balanced by the pain of broken bones.
He puts the cleaver back, nods at my captors and pushes through the door into the club.
Within seconds, I am outside, standing beside the dumpster, cradling my injured hand. The door slams behind me.
With my good hand, I hang on to the rim of the dumpster for a moment, trying to steady myself. Although the May air is warm, I feel the chill of evaporating sweat, which is covering every square centimetre of my body.
Although I’ve paid a price, I have learned something: Leo, the owner of the Golden Dragon, is the man in the hat, Zelena’s 'new guy’ in her first Instagram post after disappearing.
It answers one question but spawns a hundred others.
Questions someone else will have to answer.
On wobbly legs, I head down the alley and on towards the hospital.
22
Zelena
There were only two clients tonight. In the third round, no one bid for me. I don’t know whether to be relieved or worried. Relieved that I didn’t have to live out yet another man’s rape fantasy and worried that if they stop bidding for me, I will become of no value to them. Then, what will they do to me?
The soup is hot and delicious. I’m trying to live in the moment and just enjoy the meal. That lasts about two seconds. Leo stamps into the kitchen, slamming the door behind him. It’s never good when he does that. He marches over and sits beside me.
He hands me my phone. “Do it,” he says.
I open it and look for text messages but there are none. In my old life there would have been so many. I can feel tears pricking my eyes. I mustn’t cry. I don’t want to show them. I go to Instagram. There are lots of comments and likes on my last post. I comment back to some of them. He is watching me like an evil old crow. I cannot believe I ever thought he was cute. I go to the Matt Standing account. I try to keep my face straight. His first post is an album cover: 'On Our Way’. I feel my heart skip. If there’s only even the smallest chance someone’s on their way, I’ll be able to hang on. The second post says, 'I just played this with my kid brother. He’s great at solving puzzles.’ The picture is the cover of a game or a book. It’s an underwater illustration with what look like long intertwined strands of spaghetti. But it’s the title that matters: 'Can You Help Us Find The Way?’ My mind is revving hard. I comment, 'Looks cool, I’m going to try that.’
“Post new pictures,” he says.
With a newly-spurred confidence, I say, “If I don’t interact with my friends, they’ll know something’s wrong.”
He grunts.
I post a couple of the pictures we took the last time we went out, all the time trying to think of something to post that will help them find me, whoever they are. Nothing comes. I’ve been shuffled out of the building into the van and back again but then we’ve driven somewhere to take the pictures for my posts. While I try to come up with something, I comment on various posts.
He snatches the phone away from me. “Enough for today,” he says.
He stands up and puts the phone in his pocket. “Tomorrow special, we take you to see special client.”
This is a complete break with the routine. The clients always come here and bid for the girls. The way he says it gives me a very bad feeling. “I don’t want to,” I say.
He looks at me and smiles. “You do it or we hurt your brother again.”
I can’t trust myself to answer.
I just nod.
At least I’ll be going out. Then I remember the first day they took me out to take photos. It was near here. And I remember when they brought me back. I just need to find a way to tell them on Instagram.
23
Nick
Adry bursts into the office. “Did you see the email from Cal?” she says. I did but I’m not sure what to make of it. “You don’t think we should drop the case do you Nick?” It’s the question that’s been bugging me for the last fifteen minutes.
“What do you think?” I ask her.
I can see from her face that she’s not made up her mind. “I understand why Cal wants to drop it: he and Tina are both in danger if he stays on it. But I keep thinking of poor Zelena. She’s being held captive somewhere and we’re starting to get close to maybe finding out where she’s being held.”
“I know.” I kick it over in my mind. “Zelena’s a bright girl. You saw her last post right? She said, 'Looks cool. I’m going to try that.’ She’s gonna find a way to let us know where she is, but we need Rogan on the ground over there to follow up. She might give us a clue we can’t understand because we’re not there.”
“Exactly.” She sits deep in thought. I let her think it over. She’s bright. In lots of ways brighter than me and Rogan. “What about we work with the Hong Kong detective Cal’s been working with, Phil Jiang. Cal says he’s a good guy.”
“Good idea.” I check my watch. “It’s one in the morning over there, I’m not gonna call him right now but I’ll email him for Phil Jiang’s contact details.”
I fire off the email to Rogan and say, “Good work last night Adry.”
She smiles. “Just doing my job,” she says.
“And doing it well.”
“What did you do with his gun, Nick?”
“On my way home, I handed it in at the Cambie police station. They’re gonna run it through ballistics and prints and see if there’s anything that could come back and bite Lee on his scrawny ass.”
“That would be great,” she laughs.
“Do you want to hear the good news?” I ask.
“Do I ever.”
“After Jason and I searched Lee’s car last night, we got his name and address from the car’s registration papers—his name’s Lawrence Charles Linsky by the way—so I just did a search for him. We were right, he’s got a record. He’s got three or four small summary convictions for fraud but he also got done for major fraud. He was running a con-game selling phony securities to rich seniors. That’s an indictable offence but he was lucky, he got aw
ay with it. I guess he had a good lawyer.” I stop speaking.
Adry looks at me and sees the smile on my face. “Who?” she says.
I just grin at her.
Then I see it on her face before she speaks. “Big… Bob… Pridmore.”
“Bingo.”
“We were right the first time,” she says. “The slime ball who was blackmailing Marly Summers a year ago is behind this scam.”
I just nod. But something is still not right. “Do you remember how scared Lee was last night? He said he wouldn’t tell us anything because 'They’ll kill me if I tell you.’ It can’t only be Bob Pridmore behind this. I think Pridmore is just the front man.”
“Who do you think it might be?” she asks.
I think it over. “You know,” I say, “it’s always bothered me that Bob was prepared to fork over a quarter of a million bucks for drugs to plant on us. What if the people behind him have easy access to drugs?”
“Some drug gang?”
“Not just any drug gang, one that has it in for Rogan and me.”
“There must be a few of those,” she says with a grin.
“Yeah, but there’s one in particular.” I tell her about the murder of Rogan’s best buddy five years ago and about the drug gang we, or should I say he, uncovered as part of the investigation. “The guy running the gang has been in Millhaven for the last four years. If anyone has a grudge against Rogan it’s him.”
“Yeah, but does he have a connection with Pridmore?” Adry asks.
“Big Bob has defended a lot of bad guys in his time. Maybe we should do some digging into court records and see what we can find.”
“Sounds good but right now, all we’ve got to go on is Pridmore.”
“You’re right.”
“So how do we stop him?”
“That’s what we’ve gotta work out. Then we have to follow up on the other thing in Rogan’s email. I made the appointment already.”
“Right. Looks like another Sunday shot to hell,” she sighs.
“No. We’ll work out what to do about the Pridmore deal on the way over. Then we can call it quits for the day. We all need a break.”
“Why did you lie to my colleague, Cal Rogan?” Adry says it gently, no accusation in her voice.
“What about?” She looks confused but I’m betting she’s faking it.
Adry turns her phone around. “You said you didn’t recognize the man in this picture. The man with Zelena. The man in the hat.”
Stephanie White has the good grace to blush. “I’m sorry,” she says.
“So why did you lie Steph?” Adry repeats it, still gently, still good cop. But I can feel the bad cop in me.
“Leo’s a good guy. There’s no way he could be involved with Zel.”
“But that’s no reason to lie to Cal in the first place.”
She bites her bottom lip. “Harvey told me not to tell.”
Jeez. What is the matter with this girl?
Adry keeps her quiet tone. “Do you know why?”
“When we saw that first Instagram from Zel, Harvey said if she was with Leo, she must be OK. He said she obviously didn’t want her parents to find her. So he said not to say anything to Mr. Rogan.”
My bad cop bursts out. “Listen, Stephanie. Your friend Zelena is being held captive somewhere in Hong Kong and your precious Leo has something to do with it.”
“How can you say that? She keeps posting on Instagram. She sends me texts. She’s fine.”
“No she’s not!” I bark at her. I get some odd looks. I guess people don’t raise their voices in Caffè Artigiano in Kerrisdale. I take a breath. I just broke one of my own rules. Don’t let a witness know what you know. Anyway, too late for that. “Stephanie,” I say, barely able to hold back the anger. “Rogan is in Hong Kong trying to find Zelena. Already, his girlfriend’s been stabbed and he’s been attacked and injured by Leo. Zelena is in a lot of danger and if there’s anything you know, you have to be honest with us. We have to find Zelena and her brother.”
“Is there anything else you can tell us Steph?” Adry asks, still in good cop mode.
“Are you sure about all this?” she asks.
Adry and I both nod.
“I can’t believe Leo could be involved in something like that. He seems like such a good guy. Poor Harvey, he’ll be devastated to know. Leo was his best friend growing up.” She thinks for a while. “I can’t think of anything that might help you.”
“There is one thing,” Adry says. “Can you send me copies of all the texts you’ve got from Zel.”
She nods, hunches over her phone and taps away. While she does it, I start to worry at another bit of the puzzle. Something I’ll have to talk over with Rogan.
24
Cal
Monday
The voice comes at me from the end of a long, long tunnel. “Cal?” It sounds like Tina. A dream, I guess. I feel a hand on my head. “Cal, wake up.” My head snaps up and a stab of pain shoots through my hand. Her eyes are open, smiling into mine. I grab her hand in my uninjured one and kiss it… several times.
“Thank God you’re OK.” I blink my eyes, fighting for control.
“What happened?”
I stand and lean over her so I can kiss her forehead. I want to hug her but don’t know if I can. I sit back down. “You were stabbed.”
She frowns and looks around the room. “Stabbed?” Her eyes come back to mine. “Why would anyone want to stab me?”
What will my next words do to us? “No one wanted to stab you,” I say. “They were trying to stab me but got you by mistake.”
She takes this all in and looks down at our hands, still clasped together on the bed. She doesn’t speak. I look away. Through the window, I can see the grey light of dawn. A new day. What will come and what will pass away in the next twenty-four hours?
We sit in silence.
Finally, “Cal?” There is a sadness in her voice and in her eyes. “I don’t—ˮ
The door opens. “Oh my God!” I recognize her mother’s voice. It sounds just like when Tina imitates her, rich with the wonderful tones of India. “How did this happen?”
I stand and move away from the bed, letting go of Tina’s hand so her mother can bustle her considerable bulk closer. She pauses only to throw me a glare. It brings me face-to-face with her father. His face stoic, he just nods, “Cal.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “This is probably my fault.”
He nods again and moves to his daughter’s side, leaving me standing apart feeling like an intruder into their family grief.
A nurse and a doctor have followed the Johal’s into the room and take up their positions on the other side of the bed. I look back towards the bed. All I can see of Tina is the outline of her legs and feet under the blankets. I turn and leave.
Stammo’s email is kind of a 'good news/bad news’ deal: we know Big Bob Pridmore, and maybe even George Walsh, is behind the scam being pulled on us, but how are we going to prove it to the satisfaction of the VPD when all our evidence is circumstantial? Steph White has confirmed that the man in the hat is, in fact, Leo but she concealed this when I spoke to her. So what other lies or omissions might she have dealt us?
With Leo complicit in Zelena’s kidnapping, does Harvey—his childhood friend and her boyfriend—have something to do with it too? Does he procure young girls for Leo to enslave? A part of me wants to call him at the Kerry and go have breakfast with him but it’s all moot. I can’t put Tina in any more danger. The unrelenting throbbing in my hand reminds me I’ve been warned off. I’ll just pass the info on to Phil Jiang.
I check my watch: six-thirty; probably too early to call him.
I look around me. I’ve wandered away from the hospital and onto Nathan Road, near the road leading to the Golden Dragon. Like a homing beacon, the throbbing in my hand intensifies. I step up my pace and pass the intersection. The further I move away from the Golden Dragon, the better I feel. I pull out my phone and email Nick,
telling him to contact Janusz Gutkowski on Monday morning Vancouver time and resign us from the case. Zelena’s father can pay Phil Jiang to pursue it for him.
I’ll just take a walk for an hour or so then go back to the hospital to be with Tina and her parents—if they’ll have anything to do with me. I brush away this disturbing thought, straighten my back and quicken my pace.
Getting Tina better is my priority.
I walk into the ICU reception area and nod to the nice woman at the nursing station as I head towards Tina’s room. “Mr. Rogan,” she calls me back. “Did Ms. Johal forget something?”
“Sorry?”
“Did Ms. Johal forget something?” she repeats.
I shrug. “I don’t know. I’ll ask her.”
She reads the confusion on my face and matches it with a confusion of her own. “Didn’t you know?” she asks.
“Know what?”
“Her parents moved her. Against her doctor’s advice they discharged her and took her away in a private ambulance.”
“When?” I ask, my voice in a higher register.
“About an hour ago. That’s why I thought you’d come back to—ˮ
“Which hospital did they take her to?” I interrupt.
“They didn’t take her to another hospital, they took her to the airport. They’re flying her back to Canada.”
I pull my phone out of my pocket and call Tina’s number. No reply. I scroll through my contacts. About a month ago, we swapped emergency-contact phone numbers with each other. It was romantic at the time, another little step forward in our relationship. I call her father, then her mother. No replies. By accident or design?
I run down the hallway knowing there’ll be a red taxi waiting just outside the hospital doors.
I knock on the door with the list of company names meticulously printed on the pebbled glass. The door opens. “Cal?” he says.
Cal Rogan Mysteries, Books 4, 5 & 6 (Box Set) Page 63