‘Is this the first you’ve heard of Mahmud running with the Outcasts?’
‘Yes. It’s the first I’ve heard of that.’ He shook his head, dazed, in shock. ‘If Mahmud got caught there then it was an accident. You couldn’t get a smarter boy than him. There’s no way it was what it looks like. Mahmud is too smart for that. What is the charge?’ His voice came out loud but shaky.
‘Attempted murder of a police officer.’
Chapter 53
Mann went to the hospital and sat in the chair by Tammy’s bed. He watched the nurses come and go, checking on their patient. The machines breathed for her. The drips fed into her system. Pouches of blood hung from hooks. Mann looked at her and wondered what she was dreaming of. Mann’s dreams scared him. He was too frightened to fall asleep any more. He was frightened to be alone. He felt he belonged to the life of shadows more than ever. Nothing made him happy. Everything brought him a heavy burden. He hadn’t smiled in a long time. He hadn’t had a good sleep for weeks. Mann had so many snapshots of hell locked into his brain that he could barely contain them. When he slept, someone let them out. He longed to run on the top of a mountain range, to lift his head and feel the icy wind cut into his lungs. He longed to be free of the burden of knowing too much, feeling too much. He closed his eyes briefly. He listened to the comforting sound of the machines. He didn’t want to go home. Home was where his heart had been broken. Home was where he didn’t belong.
His body felt heavy. He listened to the sounds of voices in the corridor outside and was comforted by the noise, the odd shout, laugh, whispered concerns and the swish of a uniform, the rolling of trolley wheels. Now, in the quiet of the room, listening to the comforting electronic beep of Tammy’s heart, he felt safe enough to close his eyes and try to sleep. He tried to find that mental paradise – once it had been a white sand beach, listening to the gentle lapping of the waves, feeling the sun on his face and the breeze over his skin. He and Helen dreamed of escaping to a beach hut somewhere. That was in the early days of their relationship. That was when Mann had let his guard down and Helen had found the cracks in his armour. But it hadn’t lasted and over the five years they were together by the end, they were almost strangers again, come full circle. Helen knew it was over, that’s why she had pushed so hard to go to the next stage in their relationship: marriage, kids. The more she pushed, albeit gently, the more Mann realized it was never going to be for him. The more she loved him the more trapped he felt. It was then that he realized he wasn’t someone who would find happiness through loving another. He was irrevocably damaged.
He was just a scrawny eighteen-year-old, when the men held him back and forced him to watch his father’s execution. His father had taken twenty minutes to die as each man aimed his cleaver and felled his father like a tree. The last blow split his skull. Mann had been as helpless as a baby to stop it happening. The men had left him weeping. He had crawled on his hands and knees to his father, and cradled his bloody body. Mann had scars in his heart and soul that would never heal, no matter how much Helen tried. So Mann had let her go when she called his bluff. He had let her leave when she said it was now or never. He hadn’t realized the taxi would take her to hell.
He sat back in the chair and willed sleep to come. He felt his body become heavy, his muscles released their tension. Mann’s dreams were often in English. But his dreams were nightmares in any language. The background noise of the corridor outside filtered in as dull lullaby, comforting, droning and then it stopped resisting and let the muscles go and Mann drifted into an uneasy sleep. He found himself back with Helen. She was laughing, smiling. For a few seconds he was so happy to see her face and then her expression changed. Mann couldn’t wake up. He was caught in hell with her. He was twisting with pain. His head was inside the hood. He was with Helen. Her voice was his. Her screams coming out of his own mouth. From outside the darkness he heard two men talking. Mann had always believed he killed the man who took the last breath from Helen until now.
‘Sir?’
He was awakened, startled by a nurse staring into his face. He could smell her starchy uniform, hear it crackle. It was light in the room.
‘Any change?’
The nurse turned away and went back over to check on Tammy. She changed her drip and set up a new bag of blood and saline. She moved around the bed with a hypnotic calmness, a precision that Mann could have watched for hours. Her tasks were executed in sequence, in silence. Her hands moved, her starchy uniform touched the bed and creased. Her eyes watched and her ears listened. She shook her head as she finished taking Tammy’s obs.
‘She’s holding on,’ she said with that look of sympathy that Mann knew well. It said, you should go; there are worse times to come, go and get some rest. Mann knew she was right but he also knew that he had scores to settle first.
Chapter 54
Mann stormed past CK’s shrieking PA. He grabbed Victoria by the arm as she sprang out of her chair and tried to get away. He pushed her across the room.
‘Is this what you’re all about? Is this what you want me to be a part of? You pleased with yourself? A young woman lies seriously wounded in the hospital. Do you want another death on your hands?’
Victoria backed away. ‘I did not order the attack on your officer.’ But her eyes were shining triumphant; they told him that she had known he would come. He was still a piece on her chess board.
‘You sick bitch…’
She backed up until she could go no further. ‘You want someone to blame, look in the mirror. I warned you.’ She flinched as he pushed her again and she knocked into an Andy Warhol original. It juddered against the wall.
‘She is worth a million of you – you power hungry, mercenary, twisted…’
He watched her eyes flick to something behind him. He turned to face the two same bodyguards from the Oceans bar. Mann reached inside his jacket and took out a set of six two-inch-diameter stars. He sent them out in an arc and they spun through the air and cut into the face and arms of the two square-set guards. One of them pulled his gun. Mann unleashed Delilah, her cord attached. She struck the bodyguard’s hand before he had time to aim. The gun fell to the floor, his forefinger still attached. He shrieked in pain and clutched his bleeding hand. Delilah recoiled back into Mann’s hand and he held it to Victoria’s throat.
‘It’s all right, leave us,’ she hissed.
The bodyguard reached down to pick up his gun and retrieve his finger.
‘Leave it.’ Mann glared at him. The bodyguards shuffled out. The PA hovered. ‘Get out,’ shouted Mann, ‘before I cut your fucking head off.’
‘Leave,’ Victoria rasped.
She turned to him when they were alone and he released his hold, took Delilah away from her throat. ‘You ought to learn some manners if we are going to work together.’
‘The only thing I am interested in doing is watching you die. Slowly. You disgust me.’
‘It is your fault the young policewoman got injured. If she dies, it will be blood on your hands. I merely passed on the information that she was an officer in the Hong Kong police. The Outcasts have their own rules.’
Mann relaxed his grip on her and threw her down into her chair. She landed awkwardly with a muffled scream; her tight dress rose up over her thighs.
She smiled up at him as she turned her chair to face him. ‘I told you I would play dirty. I warned you when we met. You did not listen. This is my time to get what I want. I didn’t suffer all those years of living with a bully like Chan for nothing and I will stop at nothing to get what I want. And there is so much more to come. The wheels are set in motion. But you can change everything. You can stand in the road and stop it from happening. Only you have the power. I want you to take it.’
She reached down to the hem of her dress and eased it slowly back down over her legs. ‘You have a bad temper, Inspector. You should learn to step back from your feelings. I could teach you.’ She brushed her hair back
