‘Okay, thank you, Inspector.’ He held up his hand, closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose. ‘That’s all I need to know.’ He snapped his eyes back open and stood up straight, business-like. ‘I can tell you, Inspector, that, after my examination, I conclude that her hands were severed by something other than a chopper or a saw, or a knife. They were severed by something as sharp as a razor but with three blades to it. It bit into her wrists, it snagged there and it cut right through. Yes, each cut is clean but there are so many that her wrist was torn apart.’
‘Have you ever seen that kind of damage before?’
‘No. Now you must excuse me, Inspector. I have much to do and the morning is coming. It is good to see you, come again soon.’ Kin Tak paused and turned and looked at Mann, as if he wanted to say something, then he shook his head and scurried on towards the door.
Mann walked back across the gravel car park to his car, his feet crunching on the surface. When he got to his car he paused and stood there for a few seconds. Whether it was the sound of his feet on the gravel or the smell of the shrubs around the edge of the car park that had done it, his memories would not allow him to get into his car or drive off. They demanded to be acknowledged. He stood for a few moments in the dark, listening to the first bird calling dawn, and he remembered that day when he had said his final farewell to Helen’s body. When he had stood where he was standing now, but could not cry. All he could do was rage inside. Two years ago he had felt as near to the edge as he had ever been. That was, until now. Now, he felt he had built a platform over that edge and he was living, sleeping, existing on it and all around him was a sheer drop.
Chapter 7
It was 8 a.m. when Mann stood with ten other officers in the incident room. Next to him were the two men he shared an office with: Detective Sergeant Ng and Detective Constable Li – a.k. a Shrimp.
‘Okay, this is how I see it.’ Tom Sheng addressed the new team.
The incident room was on the twentieth floor of the police headquarters building. It was split into three sections. The first section at the entrance was where the Senior Investigating Officer set up base. The SIO was the person in charge of the enquiry and decided which line it would take. A screen separated that from the largest part of the room, the central section that had the bulk of the PCs, filing cabinets, and a large desk with four interfacing PCs. Along the back of the room was one long desk and a further five PCs and a phone between each. The third section was a staff room and a general ‘spilling over’ room for impromptu meetings. Each section was separated by screens. Each screen a multi-purpose white board.
‘We work together on this. We need to move fast.’ Tom Sheng paused and looked around the room. ‘Collaboration is the key word here. I want no fucking egos taking over on this one. Chief Inspector Mia Chou and I will be allocating jobs to those best qualified, not those in a certain department.’
Mann looked over at Mia. She was perched on the edge of the central table with her arms crossed over her chest. She was immaculate as ever, just a small strand of hair had worked its way loose from the knot at the back of her head. She flicked it away irritably. She never wore lipstick. She played her looks down, looks distracted from the seriousness of her career. She was a good cop, conscientious, steady. That’s why she’d been promoted over him. There were very few other female officers of her rank. She’d worked hard for it. Mia did everything by the book. Mann did everything by his own rules. They were chalk and cheese but somewhere in the middle they both wanted the same things.
‘There will be no favouritism,’ Tom Sheng continued. ‘First of all, let’s be clear about events. What happened last night, Mann?’
Mann stepped up to the white board. He began pinning up photos. They were images of Rajini’s body squashed into the box; her arms were sticks in front of her face, held up to the camera. Her hands and the rooster were thrown into the box with her. There were shots from the autopsy. Mann didn’t need to look; he had it all stored in his brain whether he wanted it or not.
‘We got an anonymous call through to the hotline at 9 p.m. saying that there would be an initiation ceremony taking place that evening in Mong Kok.’
‘Any trace on it? Any chance of voice recognition?’ asked Sheng.
‘No. I’ve played it back. It’s someone being paid to read the details. It’s been sent via a third party. I left with Officers Li and Ng and we split into three teams, each covering a different section of Mong Kok.’ Mann put up a map of the area. ‘There were thirty officers altogether.’
‘So, you didn’t have enough manpower?’ Tom Sheng interrupted.
‘It wouldn’t have mattered if we’d had a fucking hundred times that amount,’ Mann snapped back. ‘It’s the most densely populated area in Hong Kong. Every doorway leads to a dozen more. In the end, it was all bullshit. It was in Yau Ma Tei, not in Mong Kok. It was off the night market here…’ Mann pointed to it on the map. ‘We were set a false trail. We were never meant to arrive on time, just meant to arrive.’
‘Why would someone want to run the risk of you finding it?’ Tom Sheng asked.
‘Because it was a special night. They knew we wouldn’t find it but they wanted to make sure it was acknowledged. Not only was the girl sacrificed but a new society was born. It is a branch of the Wo Shing Shing. I found their emblem amongst the burnt oaths. And I found this…’ Mann pinned up a photo of a lone wolf howling inside a circle. ‘Someone wants their birth announced.’
‘What’s the purpose of these new societies? Why change the format? Why start recruiting girls and ethnic minorities? What is the need for it?’ asked Sheng.
‘The Triads have always targeted the teenage underdog. The young Indian population feel abandoned. They feel marginalized. They can no longer compete. The Indians and the other minorities used to be on a level playing ground, now someone’s dug up the goal posts and moved them. School places are allocated by a points system and the higher up the social scale you are the more points you seem to have. Plus you have to read and write Mandarin.’
‘What do we know about the victim?’
‘We don’t have a name for her yet. The autopsy showed she died due to asphyxiation when her throat was cut. We know she was of Indian descent, approximately fourteen years of age.’
‘What’s the latest on Operation Schoolyard?’ asked Sheng.
Mia answered, ‘We have one operative in the school. She’s twenty but looks much younger. It’s been hard to infiltrate; hard to get someone convincing enough. She joined a month ago as a student in the senior school. Her aim is to infiltrate into the new gangs. It’s a tricky area, new to us, dealing with girls, and immigrants.’
‘This initiation was brutal,’ said Mann. ‘She’s young to handle this.’
‘She’s twenty,’ said Mia. ‘There are people in this room who went undercover at that age. The difference is, she’s a woman. But that isn’t a problem. We need to play the same game and keep up.’
‘All right.’ Tom Sheng looked around the room. ‘There’s one thing we haven’t covered. Operation Schoolyard is all about infiltrating the ranks of the new Triads. What we need now is someone to give us an insider’s view on what is really going on at the top. We need to know who’s making all the decisions that filter down to these kids. Who’s pulling the strings? We need an insider.’ Tom Sheng looked at Mann, He had a hard job keeping the smug look off his face. ‘I think that’s your job, Mann, don’t you?’
Chapter 8
Mann was grateful to get out of the building. He left Headquarters and walked through the small lush garden that fronted it. The palms were being watered with a fine mist. It clung to his skin and cooled quickly as he took the steps up to the elevated walkways slung between Hong Kong’s buildings like Tarzan ropes, allowing the city’s seven million residents to escape the pavements and move from building to building all in the name of commerce. Money was king, queen and country.
Mann stood six foot two and weighed a hundred and eighty pounds. It was less than his usual weight. But he had been ill. He’d caught malaria in the jungles of Burma. He’d nearly died rescuing his eighteen-year-old half-
