Kiss and Die

Chapter 71

‘According to the fishermen’s co-ordinates they were just west of here when they dragged up the head in their net.’ The six-man team of divers included Mann. Daniel Lu was along as part of the forensic recovery team. ‘Allowing for the movement from the storm, it could have come off the coast around Stanley. There are places along the wall where people fish, deep areas that you access quite easily. We’ve tried north and now we’ll try south. We’ll take the boat in south of the beach, where the sea defence is deepest.’

‘This has to be the last dive for today, Mann. I have to get back to the office. We’ve been out here since seven o’clock this morning. It’s four now.’

Mann was stood looking towards the beach. It was dotted with families. Either side of it were the tall sea walls, sloped with boulders in places to accommodate the storm swells.

‘If the perp doesn’t have a boat, this place would not be deep enough to throw in a body, even if you rolled it down the stone boulders and into the water.’

‘I understand that, Mann, but Hong Kong is completely surrounded by water. We can’t check every part. People are allowed to fish off any wall, any beach. If someone wanted to weight a body and throw it in they could throw it off countless places.’

‘Sure. I know what you’re saying. It’s a difficult thing to work out but Ng and I looked at drift patterns, storm surge. It hit this defence pretty hard. It could have shifted anything that was underneath. We’ll drop one at a time, at five-metre intervals. We’ll sweep the defence. Further along…there.’ Mann pointed to a place where the wall met an overhang. He shielded his hand from the bright sun. ‘By those small buoys tucked in beneath the overhang.’

The boat came to a stop and bobbed in the water. The first diver dropped into the water at the start of the sea defence. Mann strapped his oxygen tank on. He pulled on his mask and slipped over the side. As he dropped into the murky water, he sucked in air through his mouthpiece and listened to the sound of his own lungs working. He felt the cold water close over his body and scalp. Hong Kong’s harbour wasn’t the cleanest. It was dark. It was full of debris, cloudy and thick. Discarded fishing nets were a major problem; lethal to fish and dive.

He felt the pressure around his ears as he dropped down into the cold darkness. His weight belt took him slowly down. He reached out his hand and touched the stone wall of the defence. He shone his torch towards the wall, to the lines leading down from the buoys, and he shone his torch downwards. The wall had been constructed more than thirty years ago. It looked neat from above the waterline but below it descended into jutting crevices. An eel stared at him, its massive head amplified by the water. Mann hated snakes. This was enough like one to make him jump as it came out towards him and then made a dart into one of the cracks.

He held on to the wall as he worked his way downwards. His hands touched the top of a lobster pot. A creature disturbed the bottom and a flurry of silt clouded up into Mann’s face. Mann recoiled instinctively; he dropped his torch, fumbled and reached out to find for it in the dark waters. He shone it into the pot and a green face stared back at him, an eel had made its home in the mouth. Mann shone his torch to either side. It was not alone.