Nine Dragons - A Beatrix Rose Thriller: Hong Kong Stories Volume 1 (Beatrix Rose's Hong Kong Stories Book 2)

by Dawson, Mark

  A woman came into frame. She sat on the edge of the futon and reached down to take off a pair of high-heeled shoes.

  “You know her?” Chau asked.

  Beatrix nodded. It was the woman that she had seen in Grace’s apartment. The girl’s older sister.

  A man’s legs came into frame. A conversation commenced in Cantonese.

  “It is small talk,” Chau said for Beatrix’s benefit. “They seem to be familiar with one another. He calls her Liling.”

  “And him?”

  She caught the woman saying the name just as soon as she had asked.

  “Zhào.”

  Chau turned to her, an expression of befuddlement on his face. She ignored him, her attention fixed on the screen. The man’s legs retreated into shot as he moved away from the camera, revealing more of himself. He was wearing a suit and shoes that had been polished to a high sheen. He sat on the bed next to the woman and reached forward to work his shoes from his feet. He was looking at her, his face obscured, but then he turned and looked right at the camera.

  “It is him,” Chau breathed out.

  “Who?”

  “Zhào Gao. He is businessman. Very important. Very rich. Influential. There are rumours he works with triads.”

  They watched for another minute as the two of them undressed each other. The café had restrictions on what you could watch and Beatrix had no interest in drawing undue attention to themselves if the proprietor happened to notice what was on the screen. It was obvious what was about to happen. She paused the footage just as Zhào was looking into the camera again.

  “You think he knows the camera is there?”

  “No,” Beatrix said. “It’s hidden.”

  Chau was agape. “Zhào’s company depends on his image. He is a family man. But this…” His voice trailed away.

  “Whoever he is, someone set him up. That’s why they filmed it. It’s either her acting alone or someone else is behind it. Probably Ying.”

  “I could understand it if it was her. He is rich. Extortion would be very profitable. But Ying? Why?”

  “Same reason. Blackmail. Or, if Zhào was working with the Wo Shun Wo and they needed to keep him in line, he could be threatened with this.”

  “But the woman had the file?”

  Beatrix nodded as she closed down the video player. “And now she’s either dead or on the run because of it. And it’s going to get her little sister killed.”

  “She is not our problem,” Chau said, his voice clipped and taut.

  “No. She is. I’m not just going to abandon her. We need to help her get away.”

  “To where?”

  “She has family on the mainland.”

  “Then give her the money for bus ticket and be done with it.”

  Beatrix sighed, fighting impatience. Chau was fundamentally a good man. But he was also a coward with a selfish tendency towards his own preservation. She had no illusions about that. If his life depended upon it, he would serve her up to Ying or to anyone else who was threatening him. That was a good reason for the separation between them both that she insisted upon, and for the frequent reminders she gave him that she was just as dangerous as the men they served.

  “Her sister got her into this,” she explained with exaggerated patience. “Liling has been working for the triads. Liling has been working for Ying. Liling got into trouble. Not Grace. It’s not her fault.”

  “And neither is it our fault, nor our responsibility. Send her away. That will be that.”

  “Her sister could be dead, but maybe she isn’t. Maybe she’s still be out there, hiding somewhere. But she won’t be able to stay hidden for long, and you can bet Ying will want to know where she is even more now that his men have been killed. The girl’s an addict. You think she won’t tell him about her little sister if he pushes her even a little? Maybe she tells him all about the relatives on the mainland. You think Grace will be safe there?”

  Chau bit his lip, then shook his head. “No.”

  “I can’t take the chance of sending Grace away until I know, for sure, that she will be safe. He’ll think that she has this footage. He’ll find her, bring her back, find out what happened. And if he finds her, maybe she tells him about the Chinese man who looks a little like Jackie Chan who worked with the blonde Western woman to clean up the dead body in her apartment. Maybe he comes and asks what you know about what happened.”

  “But she didn’t see me.”

  Beatrix knew that she was close to persuading him. Self-preservation was his pressure point. A lie would be the final gentle nudge he needed. “She was watching through the peephole when you came to clean her apartment. She saw you, Chau. She can describe you.”

  The trembling got worse. “You said I was safe. You said—”

  “You are safe, as long as the girl is safe.”

  He started to get to his feet. “I… I… have to leave.”

  She took his wrist again and held it. “No. Where would you go?”

  “I… I…”

  “You don’t need to run. We can control this situation.” She took the stick from the USB port and tapped her finger against it. “We have this.”

  “What do we do?”

  “I think it’s time I met our employer.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  BEATRIX WATCHED as the funicular climbed the side of the Peak. Grace was sitting at the table next to her, turning a straw this way and that in the glass of lemonade that Beatrix had bought for her. The girl had become a little surly, staying in the hotel for the last few days. That wasn’t surprising. It was a small room and there was very little to do save watch the television and the counterfeit DVDs that Beatrix had bought from a kerbside tout.

  Beatrix had persuaded Chau to meet with Ying. The rendezvous had been this morning, on the deck of the Star Ferry as had become their usual modus operandi. She would typically have observed the meeting, but she had stayed with Grace instead. She had instructed Chau to be fastidious in ensuring that he was not surveilled, and then, and only then, if he was satisfied that he was alone, meet her here. She would have to trust that he had exercised the necessary caution. She had the Glock in her bag in the event that he had not.

  She watched as he climbed the ascent to the top of the Peak. He stopped halfway, as she had instructed, and she observed the people that were following behind him to see whether any of them stopped, too. No one did. If he was being followed, it was by a team. And she saw nothing to suggest that was the case.

  She relaxed, but only a little.

  He approached the table.

  He looked down at Grace. “Is this her?”

  “This is Grace,” Beatrix said.

  The girl looked up at him and smiled. Chau, who looked as if he was about to say something gruff and abrupt, held his tongue.

  “Hello, Mr. Chau. Thank you for helping me.”

  Chau melted and managed to smile back down at her.

  “Grace,” Beatrix said. “Mr. Chau and I need to speak. We’ll just be over there. Do you want anything to eat?”

  “No, thank you,” she said. “I am fine.”

  Beatrix stood and led Chau to a table where they could talk without the girl overhearing them.

  “Well?”

  “He will see you.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “What you told me to say. That you have the video he is looking for.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He was unhappy.”

  “But?”

  “He did not say no. He said you should come to the Nine Dragons. Do you know where it is?”

  She knew his club and said that she did. “When?”

  “Tomorrow. Noon.”

  That made sense. The place would be empty at that time of day.

  “Will you go?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  Chau nodded. She noticed that he was fretting with a hangnail on his right thumb.

  “Chau,” she said. “This w
ill soon be finished. I’ll sort it all out. But, while I’m gone, I need you to look after Grace.”

  “And then?”

  “If the meeting has gone well, the heat will be off. I’ll drive her to Tianjin.”

  “You know how far that is?”

  “Two thousand kilometres. I know.”

  Chau suggested that she should fly, but she had already dismissed that. The airports in China were sophisticated, and she knew that there would be no possibility of her not having her details—perhaps even her photograph—input into a computer. She knew that Control and the analysts of Group Three would be looking for her, and she had no interest in making that search any easier. Driving, and staying off the grid, was preferable.

  “What now?” he asked.

  She looked back at the table. Grace was gazing out over the incredible vista, an expression of wonder on her face. She might never have been up here before, Beatrix realised. What would have been the point? Her own horizon was hemmed in by circumstance; her prospects offered a much narrower world than the one that was laid out from here. What would be the point of tempting herself with things that she could never have?

  “Come to the Sohotel in Sheung Wan. Get a room. Stay in the hotel. Don’t leave, not for anything. Don’t open the door. Don’t answer the phone. I’ll leave at ten in the morning. I’ll need you to stay with Grace until I get back.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Thank you, Chau. I appreciate it.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE NINE DRAGONS was a cheap, tatty, and thoroughly down at heel sort of place. The entrance was below ground, accessed by way of a steep staircase that was guarded by a doorman who stood behind a lectern.

  Beatrix walked up to the staircase, glanced down into it to fix it in her mind, and then walked on.

  She circled the building, following the block formed by Lockhart Road, Tonnochy Road, Jaffe Road, and Marsh Road until she had skirted it front and back. In addition to the main entrance, there was a ramp that led down to a basement where goods could be delivered. There was also a metal fire escape that had been fixed to the rear of the building. There was no way of saying whether either of those exits would be passable, but it might be useful to know that they were possibilities.

  She returned to Lockhart Road and the front of the club. She descended the stairs. One of the walls was decorated with posters of ’80s film stars and the other was mirrored, floor to ceiling.

  Beatrix paused at the lectern.

  The doorman was a big man with a cruel face. He was wearing a cheap-looking white sweatshirt with the club’s name embossed on the breast, a pair of black slacks and cheap patent leather boots. “Club closed,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “What you want?”

  “I’m here to see Mr. Ying.”

  The man looked down at her sceptically. “He not here.”

  Beatrix glared at him with unmasked impatience. “Yes, he is. Tell him that Mr. Chau’s friend is here. And that she doesn’t like waiting.”

  Slow realisation dawned over his face. “You?”

  She wondered how much he knew. “Go and tell him before I lose my temper.”

  The man told her to wait and hurried around the corner into the club.

  She felt vulnerable. It went against all of her instincts to walk into a place like this without a weapon. Ying, and the men he led, were dangerous and amoral. He would not hesitate to kill her. After all, she had been killing for him for the last six months. She was visiting him on his turf, in a place with which she was unfamiliar, without anything to defend herself apart from the contents of the memory stick and the leverage that might provide her. She had to hope that she hadn’t overplayed its importance.

  The doorman returned.

  “I search,” he said, nodding at her.

  “Fine.”

  He patted her down, sliding his hands up and down her ribcage and then frisking her legs. It was an unprofessional job. She would have been able to bring a weapon into the club with her, but she had not anticipated that they would have been so perfunctory about it. The doorman stood away from her and then stepped aside.

  “At bar. He see you now.”

  She followed the corridor around the corner and entered the club. It was a large wide room dominated by a dance floor and a mirrored bar. There were low tables and cheap leather sofas set around the perimeter and, beyond the dance floor, a series of dark booths. A TV suspended above the bar was playing a kung fu movie. The film was muted, and the only sound came from a room behind the bar where bottles and glasses rattled and clanked as they were rearranged. A Filipina was collecting empties in a wire mesh tray.

  A man was sitting at the bar with his back to her. He was drinking a cup of tea. His face was visible in the mirrored wall to the side of him.

  “Mr. Ying,” Beatrix said.

  She recognised him from the Star Ferry. He was in early middle age, his face prematurely marked with lines around his nose and eyes. His hair was parted down the middle and was perfectly black, with not even the slightest hint of grey. He was wearing a mauve tracksuit top, a white T-shirt beneath that, and a pair of jeans. He turned to her, his face impassive and cold. A gold necklace glittered in a spotlight that shone overhead. His eyes were flinty. There was no pity there. No emotion. An occupation such as his, not so different from her own, had a tendency to cauterise all empathy and feeling.

  “You are the woman who works with Chau?”

  “That’s right.”

  He cocked an eyebrow, just a little. Ying already knew that Chau worked with a woman. Ying had set up Donnie Qi so that Beatrix could dispose of him. The hit had gone down in one of his brothels, and she had no doubt that the mamasan there would have reported everything back to him, including the gender of the assassin. Chinese society was patriarchal, and the masculine world of the triads especially so. Beatrix doubted that Ying approved, although it wouldn’t have been possible to question her efficiency. She had demonstrated that on six subsequent occasions.

  “What is your name?”

  “You can call me Suzy.”

  “Suzy.” He nodded, his cold eyes staying on her. “English?”

  “That doesn’t matter. And there’s no point asking anything else about me. None of it is relevant.”

  He smiled at her reticence. “You are very good, Suzy. I have been satisfied with the work that you and Chau have done for me.”

  “I’m pleased to hear that.”

  “Our friend Mr. Doss, for example. Tell me, how did he die? He was poisoned, yes?”

  “That’s right.”

  “With what?”

  “With ricin.”

  He nodded and made an appreciative clucking noise.

  “No more questions.”

  He nodded his assent. “You are a very impressive woman. The pay is good, yes?”

  “Sufficient.”

  “Better than sufficient, I think. It is generous. And it makes it difficult to understand why you have done what you have done.”

  He indicated the stool next to him.

  “No, thanks. I’ll stand.”

  He waved away her rebuff. “I do not care about the men you killed, the men who went to the apartment. You did me a favour. They failed. I do not tolerate failure, so I had no further use for them. It is the fact that you are doing this to me now that is troubling. You are not a failure, Suzy. Far from it. You are very useful to me, and now I cannot use you again.”

  “I’ll have to learn to live with the disappointment,” she said. “Look. Let’s get to the point, shall we? This is about Liling and Zhào. I don’t care if she set him up or whether you did. I don’t care about the video, and I don’t care about him. None of that matters to me. But I do care about the sister.”

  “Yes. The girl. Grace.”

  “The first man you sent attacked her. I killed him.”

  “And the others?”

  “The girl was with me. They forced their way into my
apartment. They would have taken her, and I wasn’t prepared to let that happen.”

  “And so you killed them? All of them?”

  “Did I have a choice?”

  “You could have brought the girl to me. We could have found a solution without this unpleasantness.”

  She felt like telling him that she wasn’t a fool, that she wasn’t born yesterday, but she held her tongue. “Grace is innocent in all of this. She doesn’t have the video now.”

  “How did you get it, then?”

  “She knew that Liling had hidden something. She found it and gave it to me. It isn’t her fault. She is not to be hurt.”

  “Who said I would hurt the girl?”

  She couldn’t restrain herself this time. “Come on, Ying,” she snapped. “Don’t waste my time. She has nothing to do with this. She didn’t see the video. She hasn’t copied it.”

  Ying was intransigent. “How can I believe that?”

  Beatrix placed her hand on the bar, opened it, and pulled it away again.

  She left the thumb drive there.

  Ying cocked an eyebrow, but made no move to take it.

  “You have watched it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And copied it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then why do you give this to me? If you still have the contents, we have a problem, do we not?”

  Beatrix knew that they would reach this juncture eventually. She could give Ying the thumb drive, but, as he had already said, that meant nothing. It was the file that was important, and there was nothing to say that Beatrix hadn’t copied it a hundred times.

  “Do you play chess, Mr. Ying?”

  He shrugged. “I prefer mah jong.”

  “This is a stalemate. You can threaten me. I can threaten you. But neither of us will act because we know that would force the other to act. So we’ll do nothing. Won’t we?”

  Ying laid his hand across the thumb drive and rapped his fingers against the bar. He looked at her, trying to intimidate her with his icy gaze. It didn’t work. Beatrix held his eye until he gave up, presenting her with another cold smile. He flicked his finger and sent the drive across the bar so that it slid up to her hand. “I am afraid that I disagree with you. The situation is not as even as you think.”