Trophy Taker Read online

  LEE WEEKS

  The Trophy Taker

  For my dad, Brian Davies Bateman, who gave me the gift of self-belief.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Chapter Thirty Four

  Chapter Thirty Five

  Chapter Thirty Six

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty One

  Chapter Forty Two

  Chapter Forty Three

  Chapter Forty Four

  Chapter Forty Five

  Chapter Forty Six

  Chapter Forty Seven

  Chapter Forty Eight

  Chapter Forty Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty One

  Chapter Fifty Two

  Chapter Fifty Three

  Chapter Fifty Four

  Chapter Fifty Five

  Chapter Fifty Six

  Chapter Fifty Seven

  Chapter Fifty Eight

  Chapter Fifty Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty One

  Chapter Sixty Two

  Chapter Sixty Three

  Chapter Sixty Four

  Chapter Sixty Five

  Chapter Sixty Six

  Chapter Sixty Seven

  Chapter Sixty Eight

  Chapter Sixty Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy One

  Chapter Seventy Two

  Chapter Seventy Three

  Chapter Seventy Four

  Chapter Seventy Five

  Chapter Seventy Six

  Chapter Seventy Seven

  Chapter Seventy Eight

  Chapter Seventy Nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty One

  Chapter Eighty Two

  Chapter Eighty Three

  Chapter Eighty Four

  Chapter Eighty Five

  Chapter Eighty Six

  Chapter Eighty Seven

  Chapter Eighty Eight

  Chapter Eighty Nine

  Chapter Ninety

  Chapter Ninety One

  Chapter Ninety Two

  Chapter Ninety Three

  Chapter Ninety Four

  Chapter Ninety Five

  Chapter Ninety Six

  Chapter Ninety Seven

  Chapter Ninety Eight

  Chapter Ninety Nine

  Chapter Hundred

  Chapter Hundred And One

  Chapter Hundred And Two

  Chapter Hundred And Three

  Chapter Hundred And Four

  Chapter Hundred And Five

  Chapter Hundred And Six

  Chapter Hundred And Seven

  Chapter Hundred And Eight

  Chapter Hundred And Nine

  Chapter Hundred And Ten

  Chapter Hundred And Eleven

  Chapter Hundred And Twelve

  Chapter Hundred And Thirteen

  Chapter Hundred And Fourteen

  Chapter Hundred And Fifteen

  Chapter Hundred And Sixteen

  Chapter Hundred And Seventeen

  Chapter Hundred And Eighteen

  Chapter Hundred And Nineteen

  Chapter Hundred And Twenty

  Chapter Hundred And Twenty One

  Chapter Hundred And Twenty Two

  Chapter Hundred And Twenty Three

  Chapter Hundred And Twenty Four

  The Trafficked

  Preview

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Preview

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  Hong Kong 2003

  Glitter Girl crouched in the darkness. Sweat trickled down her back to the base of her Lurex halter-top and her denim miniskirt rode up around her waist.

  She didn’t dare move. She couldn’t see a thing. She tried to rub away the melted make-up that sweated into her eyes and made them sting, but she couldn’t – her hands were tied tightly behind her back. So instead she blinked as hard as she could and stayed absolutely still and hoped that it would come to her in a moment – something would tell her where she was and how she got there. So far, nothing. She did her best not to cry. She could hardly breathe as it was, through the tape over her mouth. She would definitely suffocate if she cried.

  As her eyes searched the gloom, shapes began to appear, outlines to form. She looked down at her bare feet and saw that she was squatting on a thin mattress. Long ago it had had some sort of willow pattern, but now there were only dark-rimmed stains, bleeding into one another. To her right, two metres away, was the door through which she must have come, if only she could remember. She twisted around to her left to see what her hands were tied to and recoiled from what she saw. The wall behind her was covered in photos of women. They weren’t nice pictures – not even porno ones like the sort that Darren had up in his garage. The women in these photos stared out, slack-jawed and cloudy-eyed. They were all dead.

  2

  Detective Inspector Johnny Mann stepped out of his car and straight into a sauna. In the half-hour he’d been driving, cocooned in air-conditioning, the morning heat had arrived outside, sucked all the moisture from the ground and left the air as thick as a wet blanket.

  He put on his sunglasses, pushed his black hair away from his face and looked up at the sky. His dark eyes were swamped with blue. Clear – good. He scanned the horizon … not for long. A bank of clouds sat pregnant with rain and ready to drop. A typical Hong Kong summer – forty degrees and a hundred per cent humidity – the perfect time to go somewhere else. But Mann wasn’t going anywhere. This was the end of a long night and the beginning of an even longer day. He had been on the first response team when they’d found the body. Hong Kong was used to murders, but not like this one.

  He checked his watch and looked around the car park – one other vehicle – an unmarked police car. He was relieved. It meant he wouldn’t have to hang about. The autopsy was scheduled for eight. It was twenty to. The sooner they got going, the sooner they’d be able to get out. The mortuary was a place he’d never got used to. The bodies didn’t bother him but the smell – dentist meets butchers – stayed in his nostrils like school dinners and old people’s homes – there for life.

  He took off his jacket and draped it over the back seat before reaching in and pulling out his briefcase. Then he slammed the door shut and strode across the gravel to the mortuary entrance. Mann had a tall, athletic English frame along with high cheekbones and a square jaw. He had hooded eyes: deep set, dark chocolate, and smudged with sadness.

  His finger was barely off the buzz
er before Kin Tak, the young mortuary assistant, appeared. He was smiling – enthusiastic as always – glad to see that Mann was early and eager to begin the morning’s autopsy rota. Dressed in his off-white coat, Kin Tak had that permanently dishevelled look of someone who had never known youth and had spent far too much time caring for dead people. In the mortuary hierarchy Kin Tak was a Diener. He moved, handled and washed the bodies. He didn’t get to do the technician’s job of removing and replacing the organs or sewing up the bodies afterwards, although he was hoping to do that someday. He practised his stitching whenever he could and when no one was looking.

  Mann shivered as he hit the wall of cold just inside the door of the once ‘clinically clean’ but now slightly grubby autopsy room. The room had to be kept below minus five to stop further decomposition on bodies awaiting identification and autopsies. He stood squinting beneath a flickering fluorescent strip-light.

  ‘Full house?’ He looked around at the stainless-steel fridges that ran along three sides of the room.

  ‘All but two drawers. We had a gang fight come in overnight – twelve chopped – lots of needlework to be done. Lots of practice.’

  Two men emerged from a doorway on Mann’s left. He knew one of them well – Detective Sergeant Ng. They’d worked together at the Organised Crime and Triad Bureau. The other man – young and slight – Mann had never seen before.

  ‘Good to see you again, Ng.’

  ‘Hello, Genghis.’ Ng came forward to shake Mann’s hand warmly. Ng was portly, in his mid-forties and already losing his hair, but still a notorious flirt. His soft brown puppy eyes, quick smile and deep intelligence made him a magnet for women. He always seemed to find one to look after him. ‘Thought they’d managed to lose you in the New Territories,’ said Ng with a lopsided smile. ‘I’m glad to see they didn’t.’

  ‘You know me, Confucius – easy-going type, can’t think why some people don’t like me.’ Mann grinned. ‘How’s it going with you?’

  ‘Not bad, not bad at all, thanks. Still working too hard for too little pay. We miss you down at the OCTB – things are really quiet there without you.’

  Mann shrugged. ‘Yeah, well, I didn’t leave there willingly.’

  ‘I heard. You irritated the wrong people too many times – that was your trouble. You need to be more careful, Genghis. You should know by now: when you go up the mountain too often you eventually encounter the tiger.’

  ‘Yeah, but you cannot fight a fire with water from far away – unless of course you’re pissing in the wind, which you do all the time. Then it’s possible.’

  Ng’s face broke into a big crooked grin.

  ‘Very good. Very good. But what does pissing in the wind mean?’

  ‘Very old English saying. I’ll explain it to you one day.’

  ‘You’ve been swotting up on your proverbs.’

  ‘Yep! Thought I’d give you a run for your money …’

  Ng turned towards the officer just behind him. ‘Have you met Detective Li?’

  Mann looked at the young man who was grinning up at him and evidently itching to speak. He was wearing a brown, seventies-style pinstriped suit with the widest orange kipper tie Mann had ever seen. Mann never remembered going through that fashion stage, although he guessed he must have. He hoped it hadn’t lasted long.

  ‘I know! I know!’ Ng rolled his eyes towards Li and put his hand up to his mouth to hide what he was about to say. ‘They get younger every year! But …’ he slapped the young detective on the back, ‘he may be only twenty-two and wet behind the ears … talks like a Yank and he definitely hasn’t found his dress sense yet … but …’ Detective Li’s anxious eyes flicked from one man to the other ‘… this guy passed with honours from cadet school. He can Kung Fu kick ass and he knows all about computers. He’ll get there – eventually. Hey, Li?’ Ng pulled him forward by the sleeve. ‘Don’t be put off by the look of this guy,’ he said, gesturing towards Mann. ‘He may look big and white. He may only be half Chinese but he’s still the meanest cop you’ll ever meet. Meet Genghis Khan.’

  Clutching his laptop under one arm, the young detective stepped forward and stared up into Mann’s face.

  ‘Awesome,’ he said. ‘Truly awesome. Heard all about you, boss – honoured.’ His eyes stayed fixed on Mann’s face as he shifted his weight from one snakeskin boot to the other and grinned inanely. ‘You’re a legend – a one-man triad annihilator. Never heard you called Genghis Khan before, though.’

  Ng thumped Mann in the ribs. ‘I named him that because he is a tenacious warrior and he looks like a wild man.’

  Li giggled nervously – high-pitched and girly. Ng put a protective hand on his shoulder and edged him further forward.

  ‘And I have decided to call Li “Shrimp”, owing to his peculiar resemblance to one.’

  The boiled-sweet complexion; the random crests of over-gelled hair. Mann could see what he meant.

  ‘Shrimp here is a regular Bruce Lee. Aren’t you?’ said Ng proudly.

  Detective Li blushed a deeper scarlet and his eyes darted around the room. ‘I wouldn’t say that … but …’

  Mann shook Li’s hand with an extra-firm grip that left Li wincing and Ng chuckling. ‘Good man – useful to have around. Take no notice of Confucius. Good to have you on the team, Shrimp.’

  ‘Thank you, boss …’ Li beamed, his mouth showing more gum than teeth. ‘Awesome.’

  ‘We called in at headquarters earlier, Genghis. The place is heaving. There are people there I haven’t seen for years,’ said Ng.

  ‘I know. This is big. The top brass want it dealt with super-fast, before we lose what few tourists we have.’

  ‘Is it true it’s a Gwaipoh?’

  ‘Yes, a white foreigner. She was discovered sixteen hours ago, dumped in a bin bag on a building site out in the New Territories, near Sha Tin. A workman found her when he started moving some rubble. She’d been there a few days.’

  ‘Anyone notice anything?’

  ‘No. There’s a constant stream of construction vehicles twenty-four hours a day. It’s easy to get in and out of the site. She could have been dumped at any time – day or night.’

  Kin Tak appeared beside them, ready to start the autopsy.

  Ng turned to Li. ‘You ready for this, Shrimp? You’re about to attend the autopsy of a murdered white woman – a rare thing over here. We usually only get to see dead triads, don’t we, Mann?’

  ‘Yes, and the more we get of those, the better,’ Mann said, and signalled to Kin Tak that they were ready for what was to come.

  3

  Morning finally arrived outside. Glitter Girl watched the faint rays of light squeeze through the cracks in the far wall. She watched them widen, soften and fill with spinning dust particles. She felt a little calmer. She loved pretty, sparkly things. She thought of home: Orange County, USA. It was a Saturday night and she was sixteen. It was her first ‘proper’ dance and her first date with Darren. Her mama said her dress was too tight, too revealing. She’d had to smuggle it out of the house in a bag and change in Darren’s car. That had been the most special night of her life, spinning round and round in Darren’s arms, showered with light beams from a rotating disco ball. Darren’s strong arms held her so tightly that she’d thought she would faint. That was the night she knew he was the one for her. How wrong she had been.

  And then it occurred to her – the room was the same size as the one she and Darren had started out their married life in – in the days before he’d started hitting her. When he’d started that, there had been no stopping him. Oh sweet Jesus! Why did it remind her of that room? Was it because Darren had beaten her so badly in that room that she’d thought she was going to die, and now she actually was? Her mama always said she’d come to no good and she was right. She was right about a lot of things – especially about Darren.

  Glitter Girl looked at the photos of the women. Some of them were staring straight at her, but their eyes were blank. She’d seen eyes like tha
t before. When she was a little girl on the farm she’d fallen on the dung heap and, as she’d struggled to get out of the muck, she’d turned and the dead piglet had been right there in her face. Its eyes were cloudy too, and although it wasn’t alive it was moving with maggots.

  In the dim light she tried to make out the room. On the far side, hanging from a hook beneath a row of shelves, she saw what looked like a piece of fur and strips of pale animal hide. On the shelf itself there were jars like the ones her grandma kept pickles in. She was trying to make out what was inside when she stopped, held her breath and looked towards the door. A key was turning. Someone was coming.

  4

  ‘Okay, gentlemen, shall we begin? It’s a Jane Doe, is that right?’

  Mr Saheed, the pathologist, had arrived. He was a tall, wiry fifty-five-year-old, originally from Delhi and now settled in the region. He had an abrupt manner, and a habit of grunting his reply, but it was just his way. He was a very good pathologist who never minded questions as long as they weren’t too puerile. Mann had learned a lot from him over the years and on the several occasions they had met over a mortuary slab.

  The detectives waited while Saheed rammed his feet into a pair of white rubber boots and pulled on a starched white coat and plastic apron. He looked over his glasses and raised an eyebrow at Mann.

  ‘Yes. It’s a Jane Doe, sir, and I’ll be recording,’ Mann said, in answer to Saheed’s silent enquiry as to which of the detectives would be taking the role of assisting Kin Tak. ‘Ng here is photographer, and that leaves Detective Li to do the dirty work. Scrub up, Shrimp,’ he said, remembering the first time he had attended an autopsy. It was at the height of the invasion of the Vietnamese boat people. A pregnant woman and her two children had been washed up after spending a week in the water. It was an experience he’d never forget.

  Kin Tak checked a number on a fridge door against one on his list, pulled out one of four drawers, slid a white body bag out onto the trolley and wheeled it over to the stand above a drain in the centre of the room.

  Saheed began dictating into the microphone clipped to his breast pocket:

  ‘The head of a Caucasian woman … late twenties … frozen after death. Bluish discoloration around the mouth … no obvious sign of injuries.’ Mann looked over his shoulder as Saheed shone a light inside her mouth.