The Trophy Taker

by Lee Week

  Mann inched closer to the red and white exclusion tape. His eyes focused on the bag and all else in his vision fell away.

  ‘Do you want to get a little nearer?’

  By the time the question was asked, Mann had already done so. He had crossed the exclusion zone. He was contaminating the crime scene. He walked straight across to the bag.

  Ng shouted to him.

  Daniel Lu looked up as Mann approached.

  ‘Mann … what the fuck! Get the hell away! Get back!’

  Mann didn’t hear him – he just kept walking. His eyes were focused on the bag – nothing else mattered. Like walking into a huge mirror and having it shatter around him, piece by piece his world disintegrated – until all that was left was the arm hanging from the bag. The arm that was wearing Helen’s bracelet.

  60

  ‘You shouldn’t be here, Genghis. You need to get away – anywhere but here.’

  Ng and Li stood beside Mann in the mortuary. Mann didn’t answer Ng. He hadn’t said anything for hours, all through the agonising time it had taken for the SOCOs to give the okay for her to be moved. All that time Mann had stood apart, watching and waiting, never taking his eyes from her.

  Kin Tak was unusually quiet as he attended to the tasks of washing and weighing, measuring and finally laying the parts of Helen’s body out on the mortuary slab.

  Mr Saheed arrived. As he stepped into his boots and pulled on his latex gloves he looked at the policemen. They looked at Mann. ‘Gentlemen? Something I need to know?’ They all looked at Mann. ‘Inspector Mann?’

  Mann didn’t answer, he just shook his head. ‘Okay.’ Mr Saheed picked up his notes. ‘Found this morning. Is that right?’

  Ng nodded.

  ‘Do we have an ID for her?’ He looked over his glasses at Mann.

  ‘Her name is Helen Marie Bateman,’ Mann said, without taking his eyes from her face.

  Saheed looked questioningly at Ng, who replied by rolling his eyes towards Mann. Mann caught it and shook his head. ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘Let’s begin then. Helen Bateman – torso and head are still attached, arms and legs have been dissected from the body at the hip and shoulder joints. She was frozen after death. There’s a bluish tint around her mouth. She was probably killed by asphyxiation. No signs of a ligature, or bruising around the neck. No signs of asphyxial haemorrhaging, probably suffocated using a bag. She has several small wounds on her torso, concentrated on the buttock and upper-thigh area. I would say that they have all been made by the same instrument. Not sure what yet.’ He took a swab from one of the wounds while Li photographed and measured them.

  ‘A metal-tipped whip,’ said Mann. Although he kept his eyes on her face, he had noted her injuries while Kin Tak had been laying her body out for examin ation. He had done it subconsciously. He hadn’t even registered he was doing it. Even if the lover didn’t want to see it, the policeman in him had no choice.

  ‘We’ll see what the lab comes back with.’ Mr Saheed paused as he looked over his glasses at the three officers. Li and Ng remained silent.

  ‘She looks very thin,’ Mann said quietly, almost to himself.

  The pathologist paused and looked at him. ‘Yes, skin is slack, indicating rapid weight loss. There is a wound across the lower abdomen, and there’s this.’

  Mr Saheed turned her arm over, and the needle marks were plain. Mann was fighting for breath now. He could see nothing but Helen’s beautiful face: laughing, smiling, crying, screaming, pleading for mercy. It was as if he had murdered her with his own hands. He felt so much pain that it made him want to crumble, to dissolve into the ground. He also wanted to run as fast and as far as he could from her dead body. At the same time he longed to take hold of her, even now, even when the stench of her rotting body stayed on his hands. He wanted to protect her. But he was too late.

  He couldn’t stay to watch Saheed cut her. He knew the man had to do it, but he wouldn’t have allowed him to touch her while he watched. Not his Helen.

  He stood outside the mortuary door and put his hand against the wall for support.

  Ng came out to find him when the autopsy was over. He placed a hand on Mann’s shoulder.

  ‘You all right, Genghis?’

  ‘She looked so …’

  Ng patted his back. ‘I know what you want to say – It is the beautiful bird who gets caged. I am sorry, Mann.’

  ‘You know the wheel of life, Ng? Well, whatever I was in the last life, it wasn’t nice.’

  ‘The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials, Genghis. You’ll be okay.’

  ‘I’m not being perfected, Ng – I’m being punished.’

  ‘Don’t even think that. Helen’s life was not dictated by you. She chose her own path, it was just unfortunate that there was someone waiting for her along it.’

  Li caught up with them, and Mann turned to him as he drew level.

  ‘What else did you find out, Li?’

  Just as Li was about to answer, Ng put up a hand behind Mann’s back to silence him before he could say it. There were some things Mann just wasn’t ready to know.

  Meanwhile, Kin Tak waited till everyone had left, then he slid Helen’s body out from the fridge, wheeled it to the centre of the room, unzipped it and put it back onto the slab, piece by piece.

  61

  Back at Headquarters there seemed to be a distinct lack of policemen in the building. Those who were there quickly averted their gaze from Mann and made themselves busy with anything that involved walking the opposite way to him.

  Inside room 201, David White was waiting. He came around from behind his desk.

  ‘I am sorry, Johnny, truly sorry.’ He put his hand on Mann’s shoulder.

  Mann slumped. ‘You should have seen her, David. She was emaciated. Her body was covered in wounds. She suffered such a lot. Who could have done this? And why Helen? She had no connection to Club Mercedes, or to the nightclub world any more. She’d been working as a PA for the last two years.’

  ‘I don’t know, Johnny. I wish I did but I don’t.’

  ‘God help him when I find him, David. His last minutes will be filled with more pain than he can imagine.’

  ‘We’ll double our efforts, I promise you. We’ll have an answer for you, but you must go home now. I’ll come around later to check on you. I’ll bring a bottle of something. We’ll get drunk together.’

  ‘The only thing I want to do now, David, is find the bastard who did this. I don’t want to go anywhere.’

  ‘I know you don’t, Johnny, but you have to. You can’t investigate your own girlfriend’s death. You just can’t. I won’t allow it. Rest for a couple of days, then we’ll talk about what you can do.’

  ‘Don’t pull me off this case, David. Don’t do it.’ The blood returned to Mann’s face.

  ‘Go home for now. Rest. I’ll be around in the evening. We’ll talk it through then.’

  But when White got to Johnny Mann’s apartment later that evening, Mann wasn’t there.

  Mann was waiting for Mandy in the smoking room – the alley at the back of the pub. He sat in the half-light, tucked against the wall. He had been knocking back the vodka for hours but he seemed to have drunk himself sober. Nothing helped numb the shock or the pain. Nothing could turn back time. He had come to talk to Mandy. He had to talk to someone else who knew Helen well. He had to understand what had happened.

  ‘You knew her, Mandy,’ he asked when she joined him. ‘Did you think she meant to leave me?’

  ‘Johnny, what’s the point in all this? She’s dead. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. There’s just no point in torturing yourself.’

  ‘Did she, Mandy? I need to know.’

  ‘All right, Johnny, I’ll tell you. She loved you. She wanted to stay with you. But she was tired of waiting for you to commit. She came to see me a couple of weeks before she left. She said she was going to go back to England if you didn’t try to stop her. At least, she int
ended to disappear for a few days and wait to see what you did. I warned her that pretending to leave you wasn’t a good idea, that you’d never been one for emotional blackmail and that it might backfire on her. Anyway, she obviously went through with it. She phoned me just after she left. She was in the taxi. She said that you’d been there when she’d left. She said you didn’t try to stop her, and she said she was going to lie low for a few days and then decide what to do. I waited for a call from her to say where she was staying. When it never came I just presumed she had gone through with it after all and had returned to England. That maybe she did want a clean break after all. I’m sorry, Johnny. Maybe I should have said something before. I never dreamed that …’

  ‘I know, Mandy. That she was being held somewhere, tortured, starved, and finally murdered. It’s not the kind of thing you could imagine happening to someone you know.’

  Mandy placed a hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

  ‘She loved you, Johnny. That’s a rare and precious thing in this world. You threw it away. But you didn’t kill her.’

  He got to his feet unsteadily and walked back down the alleyway. Mandy watched him disappear before going back inside. Georgina looked questioningly at her as she returned to the bar. Mandy just shook her head, wiped her eyes and went back to work.

  Mann went home. He didn’t want to. He was ordered. White had caught up with him in one of the bars in Wanchai and frogmarched him back. He didn’t want company. The Superintendent made sure he was safely inside his front door and then he left.

  Mann didn’t bother drawing the curtains. He slumped in the armchair, drank his vodka, and thought about Helen. He needed to think about Helen. He needed to take the responsibility, the remorse and the regret full on his shoulders. He needed to wallow in it, just for a while. He got up and walked around the flat. He felt her presence in every room. Normally he tried to ignore it, but tonight he drank it in. He went into the kitchen. He could still see her, hand on one hip, the other resting on the work surface, recounting her day to him while he pretended to listen but was really looking at her and wondering if she could get any sexier. He went into the bathroom. Her perfume, Miss Dior, was still there on the side of the bath. He unscrewed the top and held it to his nose. He closed his eyes and remembered how he always smelt it on her neck when she tilted her head to one side and waited for his kisses. She would be laughing because she knew it would tickle, and they would end up in bed and she never refused him. He replaced the bottle and went back to his vodka.

  Two days later he surfaced. Superintendent White sent him home again. He needed a shave and a shower. Instead, he went to the gym. He ran for an hour solid. He ran and he sweated and he cursed the whole of the human race. He felt that anger intensify. His defensive wall was building itself back up. But he wasn’t quite there yet. He needed the comfort of a woman. Just for a while he wanted to hold another human being, soft and warm in his arms and fall asleep touching another living person. He wanted to forget all his sadness and he wanted to put his head somewhere else for a while. He rang Kim’s number. It went straight to answer phone. He phoned Honey’s number. It was engaged. He scanned down the page. His eyes stopped – now that was someone to give him comfort; make him forget his troubles … He rang it. She answered. She had the night off. No, she didn’t mind skipping the meal, having a drink at his place. She understood he was upset. She would be glad to keep him company. She would call a taxi and be with him in half an hour.

  The next morning he awoke and saw Georgina lying next to him. She smiled and reached for him. He just couldn’t. He felt sick with guilt, vodka and regret.

  Mandy called him the next day.

  ‘How the hell could you? She’s such a sweet girl. Why didn’t you just go and find yourself some tart for the night? Why did it have to be Georgina?’

  ‘I’m sorry, all right. I’m not pleased with what I did. I don’t want to make excuses. I like her. I do.’

  ‘What? So you don’t even take her out on a date, you trick her into bed, screw her, then drop her off the next morning as fast as possible? Just a “thanks very much”? “See you around”? That’s caring?’

  ‘How many times, Mandy? I am sorry.’

  ‘Yeah, well, it’s not me you should say it to. She’s a decent girl. When are you ever going to grow up, Mann? It’s almost as if you don’t want to find happiness with someone. As fond of you as I am, I have to tell you – you’re a self-destructive bastard! For Christ’s sake let go and let yourself feel something for someone before it’s too fucking late!’ She slammed the phone down.

  He went into the Operations Room on the ground floor. When he walked in, the animated voices of police officers on computers and telephones became instantly hushed and a sudden busyness developed that meant no one had time to look up and make eye contact.

  He stood in the middle of the room and waited until they stopped their pretend chatting and looked at him.

  ‘Okay, I want every one of you to hear this. My ex-girlfriend has become the latest victim to be found. This investigation has just become personal to me. But it doesn’t stop me from being a professional. Don’t for one fucking second think that I am not here. I want to be brought up-to-date with any new developments and I want to be briefed NOW.’

  There was a shuffle and a muffled chorus of ‘Yes, sir’. Mann walked out and down to his office.

  62

  ‘Ng?’

  ‘She was probably held for several months. Weight loss, systematic torture. Extensive bruising and deep wounds around the wrists. Measurements indicate that she was tied at the wrist and suspended for long periods of time, certainly in the last twenty-four hours of her life.’

  ‘Was she dissected by the same man, Li?’

  ‘Yes, boss.’ Li kept his head down while he answered.

  ‘Trophies?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The three detectives were finally alone, inside their office behind closed doors. Mann could ask the questions he didn’t trust himself to ask downstairs in the Operations Room with so many eyes on him.

  He stood at the window, opened the blind, and filled his eyes with the last of the day. A whisper of purple cloud edged the bold and orange streaks that stretched themselves across the sky. The sun set beautifully on a truly horrible day. Mann watched it in silence as Li and Ng sat waiting at their desks. He felt the anger in him dive deep into his soul. He felt it settle into a growling magma layer of hate. Welcome to the world of raw emotions. Mandy was right – it wasn’t a world he chose to visit. Since the death of his father he had avoided it at all cost.

  He let the blind slip and fall as the last of the sun died. Then he turned back to Li and Ng.

  ‘I want you to picture in your head exactly what happened to these women from the minute they said hello to the murderer to when they were found in the bag. Ng – reopen Beverly Mathews’ file. See if there’s any forensic to rework now. See if they ever pulled anyone in for questioning in the original investigation. Shrimp – start swotting up on your torture and find out as much as you can about the sites where the bodies were found, link them up for me and see about tyre prints. When you’re working out scenarios tell me how the bodies got to where they ended up – dragged, thrown?’ Li was writing it down as fast as he could. ‘I want you in the clubs, posing as a tourist – shouldn’t be too difficult – you talk like a Yank. Find those films that Annie talked about. Ask for the foreign girls, or girls that specialise in S&M.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  Mann took copies of everything with him and headed home. The police station was not the place for him to be. He needed peace and seclusion. He was going to devote the next twelve hours to getting inside the heads of dead women.

  He called in at the supermarket. He loaded up with two carrier-bags of decent food and carried them up to his floor. He found his key, opened the door, jammed his foot in it to stop it shutting and picked up his bags. He went straight into the kitchen to unload.

>   Then, he took a shower, poured a large vodka and made himself a stir-fry. He switched on the news while he ate his dinner. There were pro-democracy riots on the horizon. Mann didn’t blame them. If he wasn’t a policeman he’d be out there demonstrating as well. The region was being shafted. The Chinese government was working its way down its list of promises, pre-Handover, and reneging on every one. There was a group of visiting Russians, mafia types, being entertained by top triads – a great combination. The only difference being that the Russians liked everyone to know they were gangsters. The triads liked to keep it a secret.

  He switched the television off, took his plate out to the kitchen and realised he was stalling.

  Understandable, but not acceptable.

  He opened his briefcase and took out all the files, exhibits and photos and set them out in neat groups over the lounge floor.

  Victim one … He placed her photos in the far right corner of his lounge room, under the window. Victim two underneath, clockwise, against the window, and so on – neatly laid out to afford space to walk between them. He arranged them in a circle until he came back to Helen – victim six … he put her at the top, next to victim one, but tucked slightly back from the others.

  He stood and looked at the photos. Then he walked around among the victims. His eye lingered on each group of details as he tried to picture the victim’s death. He started with Gosia – victim three. Gosia’s torso was found in the first bag. The bag on the building site at Sha Tin. There’d been a hundred trucks a day going in and out of that site, so there were no tyre tracks to examine.

  What kind of woman was she? He picked up the photo of Gosia that her brother had sent and placed it in the centre of the group. She looked Eastern European, dark blonde – she was very pretty in an austere, hard way. She was an independent traveller, a loner, a wild child, otherwise she wouldn’t have ended up working in a club in Hong Kong on her own. She only had her brother and yet she fell out with him. She bore grudges. She had issues. She came from a tough background, orphaned. She was strong. She would have fought hard against her attacker. She was held for several weeks. She had been systematically tortured. She’d had electrodes applied to her nipples and she’d been burnt with cigarettes over her chest. Her wounds were made over a period of days. The person who had done this was into humiliation; there was nothing to gain by torturing her except his own sexual gratification. And there was the trophy taking … Mann studied the picture of the abdominal wound, made by a sawing action – carefully made – but not by a surgeon.