Kiss and Die

Chapter 95

Mann didn’t answer the door straight away. He sat in his armchair in the lounge; Daniel Lu had let Mann keep the lounge furniture. The bedroom was empty; every item removed and now being scrutinized in the lab. The telly blaring. He thought it was Ng. He shouted, ‘Fuck off,’ and turned the volume on the telly up. The knock came again. Then Mann realized the knock was different; it wasn’t Ng’s. He paused the film and slipped out of the chair. He walked to the side of the door and called out.

‘Who is it?’

A woman’s voice answered. ‘Victoria Chan. I need to speak with you. It’s urgent.’

Mann looked through the spy hole. Victoria Chan looked back.

‘What do you want?’

‘To talk, as I said.’

She raised her hand, knuckles at the ready to knock again. She wasn’t going to go away. He unlocked the door and walked back into the room, his back to her. She walked straight in and seemed oblivious to the mess. She was wearing a black pencil skirt, a checked jacket, red stilettos, matching red handbag, red lipstick. Her hair was tied up.

She strode over to the armchair and sat down. ‘There were things I didn’t want to discuss in public, things that are just between us.’

Mann looked at the TV. He threw the mess off the other chair and sat down. He cleared the glass-topped table and placed the bottle of vodka down on it. He studied her with a cold eye.

‘You have nothing to say that will interest me.’

‘I had nothing to do with the death of your officer. I cannot help the fact that I used the information given to me and told of her infiltration into our ranks.’

‘Shut up. I don’t want to listen to you. I know where the blame for it lies. I have been suspended, and when I look at you, I see you had a big hand in it. Congratulations. But, before you start gloating, it won’t be for long. And just because I am suspended from the force doesn’t mean I have switched sides.’

She sat with her legs to one side, her hands on her lap. She looked around the room. ‘I can’t see you getting reinstated in a hurry, can you? I see that you have been going through your father’s papers.’

Mann studied her. She had balls. She was a woman who would never give up. She looked at the pile next to Mann’s chair. He’d been going over Tammy’s autopsy report. He picked it up and moved it out of her line of sight. ‘Believe it or not, there’s a system to this chaos. Now, can we get to the point? I’m a busy man.’

Victoria settled back into the chair. ‘Take the afternoon off. Let me get some food in. You look like you could do with some time out. Take a shower, relax. I may not be a friend but I am a business associate whether you like it or not. We have things to talk about. I expect by now you have seen that what I said is true. Many of your late father’s enterprises are linked with the Leung Corporation dealings.’

Mann rubbed his face. He pushed his hair away from his eyes. He suddenly felt completely drained. She was right, at least in that one small thing, he needed a break. ‘Okay.’ He stood up. ‘There’s a list of numbers in the kitchen. They all deliver. You choose.’ Mann got up and began to pick up the piles of papers.

‘I’m surprised you live alone here. No adoring girlfriend?’ she called to him from the kitchen. ‘Although it does look like a woman lived here once. There are things in here that no man would buy.’

‘My private life is none of your business.’

‘Of course it isn’t, but you’re a good-looking man. You are not short of women wanting to marry you, I’m sure. But you choose to stay single. Why is that?’ She took off her jacket and draped it over the chair. Beneath it she had on an expensive white lace blouse sheer enough to see a broderie anglaise slip beneath.

‘Why do you bother asking? You already know all about me.’ Mann marched back and forth to his bedroom, armed with the piles of papers.

Victoria followed him. ‘I knew about Helen, yes. I don’t know all the details but I can guess. I know Chan was capable of terrible cruelty. You weren’t the only one to suffer at his hands.’ Mann turned to see her standing in the doorway, a genuine look of sadness and regret in her eyes. ‘My marriage was a living hell. Every day of it was torture, physical and mental. I was glad for the fact that he liked to be away from home more than he liked spending time with me.’

‘You knew about his business?’

‘I knew about a lot of it. I followed him when he wasn’t looking. I saw the people he did his business with. I never knew about the existence of his private club where he kept the girls hostage and used them in those films.’

‘Snuff movies. That’s what they were. That’s how Helen died-in the process of pleasing sick perverts like Chan.’

‘I am sorry for you. Sorry for all of us.’

‘But you chose to stay with him. Why did you never leave him?’

She shook her head sadly. Her eyes drifted away as she thought. ‘It is not the Chinese way, is it?’ she smiled ruefully. ‘I was educated in England. I was brought up to feel like I was just like every other young woman-that the world lay ahead for me; anything I wanted to achieve was possible. But then I returned home. Suddenly I had to conform, put aside all my hopes and dreams. I wanted to be a lawyer. Instead of that I was married off to one. He was handpicked by my father: ruthless, ambitious, an asset to the firm. I was his prize for coming into the Wo Shing Shing fold. I was his guarantee that he would someday be chosen to take over as the Dragon Head. I was his insurance. For years I did as I was told by my father and by my husband. I had no one to seek help from. I made up my own mind on how I would handle it. I shut my feelings away. I stayed out of his way. I planned for the day that I would be released. And then you came along and you did it for me. We have a lot in common, you and I.’

‘No, we don’t and I didn’t do it for you.’

‘No, but that was a happy coincidence for me that you were the other person who hated him as much as I did. You did me a favour. You knew you had at the time. Now let me do something for you. Let me help you become the man you are meant to be.’

Mann walked angrily away. ‘I will die before I become a Triad.’

‘You don’t have to join the ranks. Just look on it as a business deal.’

‘It’s dirty money.’

‘All money is dirty, Mann.’

He picked up the last of the piles of documents and took them into his bedroom. ‘There’s no way I trust you not to pry into my business so I’ll save you the trouble of trying whilst I go for a shower in peace.’ He locked the bedroom door and came back into the lounge with a towel and shut the bathroom door behind him.

Mann was drying himself off when he heard music coming from the lounge. The telly had been switched off. He heard Victoria moving around and then he heard her come to stand outside the bathroom door.

‘You know, Mann, I have never felt so much in common with anyone else as I do with you. I have never spoken to anyone before about my life with Chan. In some strange way I feel I can trust you more than anyone else.’

Mann stopped his towelling and listened. In some awful way he understood but it didn’t make him happy. It scared him that she was right. In some ways they understood one another.

The door opened. She stood in the doorway with a drink in her hand. Her hair was down over her shoulders. Her blouse was open to the third button. ‘Thought you might be thirsty?’ She had a vodka in each hand.