Kiss & Die (30 page)

Shrimp lay in the absolute darkness trying to work out where he was and how he had got there. It was so dark he didn’t know whether his eyes were open or not. He tried to move his legs and arms and couldn’t. He was aware that he was naked. The last recollection he had was of being with Nina and now he was here in a place that smelt of death. There was an odour in the room of guts, faeces, carnage. He was lying on plastic. There was only darkness around. Next to him Sheng’s body lay. Shrimp felt its presence but he couldn’t see it. He could hear someone in the room with him.

‘Nina?’ he called. He could hear the sound of someone moving closer. ‘Nina?’ he said again.

The heat in the room was unbearable.

‘Nina?’ He was beginning to feel fear now. Then soft hands reached out to touch him in the darkness. ‘Nina, is that you?’ Someone ran their hand over his body lightly and then he felt the sting as a knife dragged across his thighs. Just once. Shrimp heard movement again, she was gone.

Ruby left Shrimp with a taster of what was to come
later. For now she was busy. She went into the other room. She had to get her nurse’s outfit on, ready for the hospital. She took her spare urumi out from the cupboard, She had unfinished business with Mann. She knew which hospital they would take him to. There weren’t many capable of reconstructing a hand. Ruby slipped on her mac over her uniform and left.

Mann lay in the hospital bed. His dreams took him flying on the back of the eagle. His eyes were on the horizon. He soared on the air currents, turned and faced the wind and then swooped. The wind was in his face, feathers beneath his hands, the sun on his back. Then he was falling through the air, hearing Lilly scream, seeing the terror in her face and hearing Helen calling him. ‘Wake up wake up sleepy head.’

Mann tossed and turned. He felt the stitches throb in his hand. Three hours of surgery had reconnected two of his fingers, but the third one, the forefinger, the eagle had recovered from the gardens below the Mansions and eaten it; it had developed a taste for fingers. The wounds from the urumi had cost him two hundred and forty stitches. Thirty of them were across his face; one more scar to add to his collection. He touched his face as he came out of the anaesthetic, prodding it with his numb bandaged hand. The fingers weren’t going to be working for a while.

He looked around the room. He heard Mia’s voice. He felt panic. He didn’t know why.

He heard the footsteps in the corridor. He lay there
listening, hearing his heart hammer as he fought to come out from the anaesthetic. Mann heard the swish of a uniform, starch, shoes, leather soles slapping on linoleum. Mann stirred in his drugged stupor. Helen was talking to him again now. ‘Get up! Move. Run…run…she’s coming for you, darling.’ Click, clack down the corridor…He stumbled out of bed and doubled over with the pain. He pulled his clothes from the locker and rested against the bed as he got dressed.

Run, Johnny, run.
He staggered as he bounced off the walls of the hospital. He felt the adrenalin in his body as it met drug sedation head on and had nowhere to go. In the middle line they fought for ground. He ran down the corridor, his legs buckling.
Click, clack.

He heard Mia’s voice. ‘Where’s Mann? He’s not in his room. Find him, quick.’

Mann didn’t know why but he knew he had to get away.
Turn left at the end of the corridor, first right, now stay, stay, stay…breathe…wait, listen. Shush…
He slid down the wall and stayed there.
Click, clack…click, clack…

He crawled along on his hands and knees, his eyes struggling to keep focused, he was seeing double on double. His bandaged hand was bloody now.

He turned a corner and looked down the empty corridor – he could see the empty reception. He stood, found his balance, lurched on his feet and very carefully inched forward.

Now Ruby came click-clacking down the corridor, the urumi coiled in her hand. She would finish him off. She would flail him to death whilst he was lying in his hospital
bed. Ruby could be anyone; nurse, patient, saviour, murderer. Ruby was Ruby.

He felt a hand on his arm, guiding, supporting. A young police officer looked at him. ‘You all right, Inspector?’

‘Yes. Where’s your car? I’m borrowing it.’ He took the keys from the flustered young officer. He staggered outside and unlocked the car door. He slipped into the driver’s seat and managed to manoeuvre his body into a position where he could drive. He switched on the engine, slammed it into reverse and then sped forward and away from the hospital.

He got halfway back to his flat when he got a call. It was CK.

‘Hello, Inspector. I heard about your unfortunate accident this evening. I do hope you will feel recovered enough to accept an invitation from me.’

‘I’m busy right now.’

‘Nursing your wounds? I have a friend here who wishes to talk to you.’

Mann heard Ng’s voice. ‘Genghis…don’t do it. They will kill me anyway.’

CK took back the phone. ‘That’s enough talk from Sergeant Ng. What he meant to say was that we have rekindled an old acquaintance, him and I, and now we have made a deal. You sign your father’s estate over to me and I will give you his life in exchange. Friendship is a dreadful thing, just like the love one feels for a woman, a daughter even. It weakens a man. It makes him vulnerable. But, your friend’s fate depends on you. How much is his life worth to you? I have the document ready. You just have to sign it. It means I take everything out of your
hands. You no longer need to worry about your conscience. It will be as if you never knew. How does that sound?’

Mann heard an awful sound of Ng screaming and choking.

‘Meet me on the top floor of the Piccadilly Club in Central.’ CK hung up.

Mann went home to pick up the one weapon he would be able to conceal beneath his bandages: Delilah. This time she was modified, made special. He re-strapped himself to keep her pressed flat against his chest. He drank a large vodka to take away the pain.

He got back in the car and phoned Victoria en route.

‘Thanks for asking. I’m okay.’

‘I went with you in the helicopter, don’t you remember? I left you when you went in for your operation. I’m glad you’re okay. Thank you, Mann. They would have killed me on that roof if you hadn’t come. Someone set me up. I thought it was you at first. But then I realized you wouldn’t do that kind of thing. You feel something for me, don’t you, Mann?’

‘No. I can’t and I won’t. I am going to see CK. He has my friend, Sergeant Ng. He wants to exchange his life for my father’s estate. He wants me to sign it all over to him.’

‘Don’t do it, Mann. It’s a trick.’

‘I know but I am going to kill CK, Victoria. Don’t come near me as I may have to kill you too.’

He drove back into town and parked outside the
Piccadilly Club. The street was being watched. He saw CK’s men everywhere. He would have a hard job getting out alive but then he wasn’t thinking that far ahead. He hoped his body would last long enough to do the job he came to do and to rescue his friend. He realized now that nothing meant more than that to him. He had weathered so many storms with Ng’s help. He would lay down his life for him now if he had to.

The bodyguards on the street nodded to him. They frisked him. They checked his boots and up his sleeves. Mann had known they would. He had hidden Delilah along the gap between two ribs. They were rough enough to open up some stitches. He knew they would. He had purposely left his bandage bloody across his chest.

The bodyguard looked at the blood on his hands and stepped back in disgust. ‘Jesus Christ, let him through. He isn’t carrying anything.’

Mann took the lift up to the top; eighty floors in a highspeed elevator.

‘No Mann, please…’ Victoria had raced straight there. She met him as he got out of the lift, she tried to make him turn around. ‘You’re sick. You’re bleeding. Leave it now. Look at your face.’ Victoria went to touch his swollen, stitched cheek. He pulled away. ‘I’m sorry for what has happened. It’s all gone wrong.’

‘Get out of my way, Victoria. You play around with people’s lives all for your own gain. You leave a trail of destruction everywhere you go. You’re a fucking tornado destroying everything in your path. You’re just like him.’

CK’s bodyguard was waiting at the door for him. He held a gun to Mann’s back. Mann put his hands in the air
and walked slowly into the Red Salon. As he entered he saw Ng on his knees. His head was bowed. CK stood over him with a gun at his head.

‘Ng? You all right?’

Ng lifted his head and Mann could see his mouth was pouring blood. He looked at Mann with the hopelessness of one in the world between life and death where there was only pain and fear and sad regret.

‘You bastards.’ Mann lunged at CK, the bodyguards held him back and punched him in the mouth. ‘I should have killed you a long time ago, CK.’ Mann wiped the blood from his split lip.

The bodyguards pinned Mann’s arms back. CK smiled. In the gloom of the office Mann saw it was a strange sight like a grinning dog that should not be able to grin.

‘Then why didn’t you? You were not able to then and you are not able to now.’

CK looked Mann up and down. Mann’s wounds were breaking open on his legs. Blood seeped in dark patches through his jeans. Victoria looked anxiously at Mann.

‘Show him.’ CK turned to his bodyguard. ‘We saved it for you.’ The bodyguard came forward, opened his palm and showed Mann Ng’s tongue. ‘You can have it sewn back on if you hurry. Now sign it.’ CK pointed to a table where the contract was waiting for him with a pen.

Ng shook his head at Mann. The front of his shirt was saturated with blood. CK swiped Ng’s head with the butt of his revolver. ‘Sign it. You are wasting precious minutes.’

Mann went over to the writing desk. Its handmade parchment paper contract, a gold Duofold Parker pen waiting for Mann to use. He picked up the document. He
glanced over it. He picked up the pen, held it tightly as he pressed, there was the faintest sound of a snap. He signed and leant over the desk, resting as he wiped the blood from his mouth. He recovered, stood back up. His body stopped hurting. His head cleared. His pulse slowed. His bleeding stopped. Mann’s body was turning to icy hatred. A bodyguard stood behind him, a gun at his back.

CK turned to Victoria. ‘This is the time you have waited for. You see me as old now, you think it is your time. You think that I must have grown tired of the business world and I want to retire.’ He paused. ‘Of course that is what you think, my darling daughter. You think you are being so clever: you would play us all. Ensnare Mann with your beauty and your sex, get your greedy hands on his father’s estate and then have me killed. I have no doubt that you would kill me yourself if you had to. But, it seems your ample feminine charms were not enough to turn him and I must do it myself. You will never be strong enough to be my successor. You have failed, my darling daughter.’

CK called and the door opened. Four more bodyguards entered the room. ‘Mann, before I kill you I want you to know that I watched Helen die. I went to that club often. I enjoyed the company of many women there but I had my favourites. They were friends of yours. Some of them you knew intimately. Helen was one. She was my favourite. She took a long time to die. But you saw that didn’t you? You watched the recording. You weren’t thinking dispassionately when you listened to the voices in the background. You failed to recognize mine. I’ve always suspected you would have in time.’ Mann didn’t speak, he bowed his head. Now he knew why Helen hadn’t wanted to let
him go. He knew why every time he closed his eyes he saw her face, he heard her pain. ‘Thanks for this,’ CK waved the contract in the air, ‘I waited a long time for this. Your father beat me to some of the best deals. He was a very clever man. He turned moral in the end, tried to save the world. See, you are the same type after all? Such a waste but I am too old to keep playing games; now it’s just about the money.’ He turned to his bodyguards. ‘Take my daughter and the inspector and kill them.’

Victoria screamed. ‘No, Father, please.’ She tried to run but the bodyguard held her back. He stared coldly at her.

‘You were never my favourite. Take her…’

Two of the bodyguards came forward and dragged her away from her father. Another walked towards Mann. Mann’s pulse slowed right down. He felt the adrenalin turn his blood to ice. In his mouth he moved the arrow that he had snapped from the Parker pen out of his cheek and into the centre of his tongue and he waited until he was within range, he eased himself to his left slightly and felt the gun in his back travel two inches to his right and then he shot it straight into the bodyguard’s eye. It pierced his retina and exploded his eyeball. At the same time Mann twisted his body away from the gun in his back. The shot missed Mann and hit the bodyguard who keeled clutching his eye. Mann back flicked his fist into the man’s face and he broke his nose, cheek and cracked his eye socket. He dived forward towards Ng and caught him around the shoulders and rolled with him to protect him, laying his body across his, but it was too late. CK had already shot Ng through the head. His skull shattered. His body lifeless beneath Mann’s. Mann gave a cry of pain,
a roar of anger as he turned, rolled away from Ng and reached inside his shirt with his left hand. There, between the cloth and the bandages, pressed around his chest, was Delilah. And on her hilt she bore something precious. The bodyguards reached for their weapons at the same time as Mann dropped to one knee, rolled and fired Delilah over their heads. She turned direction in the air, almost hovered and then dropped blade first as CK looked up to see what it was. A flash of steel, a plume of black. It sunk deep into his left eye, so far that Delilah was pushing to come out the other side of his skull. CK was driven back by the force and smashed against the mahogany book shelf and slid down to the floor.

Victoria screamed. There was a pause as if the room stood still and then she laughed. Mann thought at first it was shock but it gathered momentum and the bodyguards joined in. She went over to her father and stared down at him and giggled at the kite eagle’s long black tail feathers that were a perfect manoeuvring tool in the air. They were still vibrating as they protruded from his eye socket. She went over to CK, put her foot on his face, her Jimmy Choo heel dug into his chin and she pulled on the eagle feathers, wiggled them to dislodge them and then slid Delilah out, brain matter and eye attached.

‘You know, Father, you disappointed me too.’

She came over to Mann, who was knelt beside Ng, feeling no triumph now, only a bitter loss. She put Delilah in his lap. It was as if Mann had stuck to the script when he hadn’t realized there was a whole different play going on.

She leant over to kiss his lips softly. ‘I intend leaving
the country for a while. I will be going to the Philippines. But, don’t think it’s the end for us, Mann, think of it as the beginning.’ She stood up, picked up her bag. ‘And, by the way,’ she tore up the contract and handed it back to Mann, ‘you don’t get out of it that easily. I prefer to be partners, lovers even, who knows, Mann? I never wanted my shares in the Mansions. You own it all, baby.’ Then, she moved towards the door. ‘We have a plane to catch. Don’t hurt him. Drop him back at the Mansions,’ she said to her hovering bodyguards who were still waiting for the satisfaction of kicking the shit out of Mann.

By the time the bodyguards had thrown Mann’s body out of the car and it had rolled to a stop in front of David, he had only three of the hundred and thirty stitches remaining. And three of the four bodyguards would never make it on the plane. Victoria had already left.