Kiss & Die

She twisted the point of her scalpel into the wounds on his chest, deep bloody slashes that now exposed his rib. She scraped it along the bone. He squealed with pain. Ruby giggled. She rocked until she lost herself in ecstasy. She sat for a few minutes to recover, head down, body spent. Then she tilted her head and looked at him as she smiled.

‘I’m finished.’ Ruby picked up the spike and positioned it above his open heart. ‘You ready to die?’

He thrashed his head wildly back and forth and screamed into the gag.

She looked across at his family photo. ‘Hello Belinda…Hello Ben…Hello Goldie…’ She pushed the spike into his beating heart. ‘Say goodbye to your daddy.’

Chapter 2 (#ulink_3ad176ab-8269-52fa-ad56-6f80a5c43648)

‘Yap, yap.’

A toy puppy turned somersaults in the air. It was 10 p.m. and the night market was heaving. A tall man, athletic build, broad shoulders, wearing a black t-shirt and jeans was making his way through the market stalls. The height came from his mother’s side. He was half English, half Chinese. He had a face that reflected his soul: scarred, but with a beauty beneath the sadness. His eyes were always searching. He was thirty-seven but looked older. He had seen a few hard winters. He pushed his ragged fringe back from his eyes, pulled his shades back down and kept walking, weaving his way through the stalls in Mong Kok’s night market. He could have been mistaken for any other tourist except he wasn’t sweating; he was used to it, this was his home. He wasn’t shopping for knick-knacks either, Detective Inspector Johnny Mann of the Hong Kong Police Force was tracking the Triads that were moving through the market. Every few seconds he stopped to listen. Above the noisy bang and beat and Cantonese barking he was listening for one sound: signature whistles. Triads were calling to one another with their high-pitched beeps that varied in length, in intensity. Each society had their secret signs. One society was moving as a pack tonight.

Mann signalled to his officers to fan out. He turned the corner onto Saigon Street where the night market spread into seafood restaurants and noodle bars and spilled out over the roads and pavements. It was August 2006. It was the twenty-fifth day of the Chinese month. It was the chosen day. Beneath the feet of the unsuspecting tourists, a Triad initiation ceremony was being held.

The young recruits stood nervously waiting to pass beneath the sacred archway of crossed swords. Amongst them were five young women and three boys, all of Indian descent, dressed in their plain sackcloth robes, ready for the ceremony. Their feet were bare and their faces smeared in dirt. They had come to give themselves as penniless urchins to the society and be reborn as brothers and sisters, committed forever to the family; 49s in the Triad order. Amongst them was fourteen-year-old Rajini. She waited nervously with the others in the corridor outside. She looked at her hands, there was no ring but it was not a bad age to get committed to someone or something. She looked at her feet; she was barefoot. She didn’t mind that. Her family had walked many miles barefoot on the way to Hong Kong. They had crossed through China and joined the thousands of others making their way to paradise. But paradise was not the place she thought it would be. For twelve hours a day she sat at a machine and sewed. She dreamt of being a doctor, a teacher. But if Hong Kong had taught her anything it was that if you had money you could be anyone you wanted to be. She would become a 49, the rank of a Triad foot soldier, and climb the ladder and earn good money doing whatever they asked her to; she knew there would be risks but she also knew there would be big rewards and then she could pay for herself to go to college and then she could be anyone she chose.

She followed the others under the archway of crossed swords and into the airless, dark room, filled with people, pressed in, hiding in the shadows. The heat in the room took her breath away. There was the sound of a chicken flapping its wings against the side of a crate. The incense smoke was thick in the dark room, which was lit only by the candles on the altar. In the gloom she could make out the Incense Master. He was old, tortoise-like, dressed in the robes of office, a long crimson silk stole over a cassock of white. He wore only one grass sandal, the other foot was bare. On his head was a three-pointed knotted scarf.

‘Who is your sponsor?’ asked the Incense Master. He stood with his index fingers curled into his palm to denote his rank.

‘I am.’ A young woman stepped forward from the shadows.

‘Call forth your recruits.’ The Incense Master lit the joss sticks on the altar and began reciting the sacred poems that had been handed down since the beginning:

‘“I passed a corner and then another corner. My family lives on the Five Fingers Mountain. I’ve come to look for the temple of the sisters-in-law…”

‘You are children of the Wo Shing Shing. You are a group born from its spirit. But now it is time for you to stand alone. You are the Outcasts.’ He finished with a warning. ‘Break the sacred oath you are about to take and you will die as this rooster now dies.’

The sound of the chicken panicking reached a crescendo, the noise of flapping wings and the gurgle of blood escaping from its cut throat rose above the squawking. Its twitching body was held above a brass bowl on the altar.

‘You will die as he did. No mercy will be shown. We come together today to be reborn. You leave your last life behind you. You are 49s. Four for the oceans that our ancestors believed surrounded the world. Nine for the sacred oaths. You belong to an ancient family dating back to the time of the Qing dynasty. You belong to one another. Never forget you are brothers and sisters, forever joined in blood.’

From the corner of her eye Rajini watched the officers close in around the door and secure it. She looked back to her sponsor. The Incense Master swung the smoking silver perfumed ball in the air and chanted the oaths. The body of the chicken lay still on the floor and the bowl of blood was tipped into a cup from the altar. The Incense Master came to each recruit in turn. Rajini waited. He repeated the oaths to each one.

‘With this blood we are united. With this blood we are one. Together we remain until death.’

Each recruit replied: ‘I will never disclose the secrets of the Outcasts, not even to my parents, my brothers or sisters; I will be killed by the sword if I do so. I shall never disclose the secrets for money; I will be killed by the sword if I do so. I will never reveal the Outcasts’ secret signs or oaths when speaking to others outside the Outcast society; I will be killed by the sword if I do so.’

The Incense Master passed the cup to each recruit in turn. ‘You will be like no group before you. You will kill without mercy. You will belong only to your new family, cast away the old. You belong to the Outcasts.’

‘Bound forever to serve one another.’

Rajini closed her eyes as the blood tasted thick, warm, it touched her upper lip and coated it. She sipped from the chalice.

The Incense Master looked deep into her eyes. ‘No one leaves. No one ever betrays.’ The blood sat in her mouth like the taste of a nosebleed. ‘This is your new family. You will serve no other.’

Rajini bowed her head to him.

‘Yes, Master,’ all the recruits repeated together. The incense left a plume of smoke overhead as it passed along the line, each one tasting the blood of the killed chicken. At the end of the line the Incense Master placed the chalice back onto the altar. He stood and looked at his disciples.

‘You are now 49s, foot soldiers. But, one of you here has already transgressed. One of you has spoken of their coming here tonight. One of you gave information away. Now that one must be punished. They will be an example to you all. The Outcasts will not tolerate betrayal. When you leave this place you must do so quickly and disperse fast. Outside now there is one who is coming. He comes because we have a traitor amongst us.’

The Incense Master looked towards the sponsor. She nodded. ‘All who are present here must witness the result of your transgression.’

He turned to Rajini. ‘You share the fate of the rooster.’

As Mann turned the corner he saw the telltale sign: a red card taped above a doorway. Two girls came out, one Indian, one mixed race. Mann hung back and watched; an Indian lad was the next to emerge, he staggered out of the doorway and looked about to throw up. Mann hung back out of sight. He signalled to his officers to follow the lad, whilst he headed towards the entrance. It was the same as all the other buildings on the street and yet it wasn’t. Above its door was a shirt maker’s sign. The night shift should have been pounding away but the place was quiet. To the right a flight of stairs led up to a pink neon sign advertising a woman’s services and a massage parlour. To the left was a small Chinese medicine store selling loose herbs, dried fish and centipedes by the scoop. In between was a corridor. A metal grille, unlocked and half opened, gave way easily when Mann pulled it. Mann stepped into the corridor and listened. Further on, a solitary light bulb gave off a stark hue against the black walls.

Mann unclipped the gun holster that was strapped around his waist, but left the Smith and Wesson revolver where it was. Instead, he reached down and took out the knife from his boot. This was not a place to fire a gun. He needed silence, stealth. He needed caution. He held the knife tightly now as he walked on down the corridor and stopped at the door on the left. Above its arch were the symbolic crossed swords. He pushed the door open and stood in the doorway. The room was dark except for the light of one candle at the far right of the room. The air was thick with the smell of incense, smouldering paper and heat of the people, now gone. He heard the scratch of a rat’s claws as it ran the perimeter of the room and stopped and the sound of another joining it. Cockroaches scurried over walls and ceiling to watch the rats. He looked down at his feet; he was walking on the red summoning cards of hundreds of Triads. He crossed the threshold, beneath the arch of swords, and propped the door open with a discarded wooden thread spool. There was little else to show that this had been a garment factory, so far as he could tell the room was empty of equipment: the machines all gone. All that remained were tatters of material and empty crates. The candle on top of a stack of upturned crates: a makeshift altar. Mann walked across to it. Beside the altar were the discarded sackcloth robes of the Triad initiates, left to rot, no longer needed, and on top of them a shimmering Indian sari. From the corner of his eye he saw a rat jump into a box, two sticks protruded from its end. Mann got close. They were not sticks; they were arms. He looked down into the box. The rats were already feasting on the young girl’s body, the cockroaches tumbling from the box’s sides on top of her.

Chapter 3 (#ulink_fdf80cf8-f2b8-582f-8624-7652ac351b28)

Mann picked up the squealing rat from the box and flung it at the far wall. He stood in the solitude with the dead girl, listening to the police siren scream to a stop outside.

‘Looks like the party’s over.’

Mann turned to see a large frame in the doorway: Inspector Tom Sheng of the Serious Crime Division. ‘The ambulance is on its way.’

‘Too late. She was dead when I got here.’

Sheng and Mann had crossed paths more than either wanted. They weren’t the best of friends. Tom was brash, arrogant. He played hard and worked even harder. He was a hard-hitting movie-type cop who forgot he wasn’t an actor and life wasn’t a set.

Sheng walked in and shone a light around and into the box with the dead girl. He squatted level with Rajini’s arms, just visible at the rim of the box, held in front of her face as if she were offering them. ‘Why did they cut her hands off? Why torture her first? Why not just execute her? We’ve never seen them mutilate like this before.’

‘They must have wanted to show what they were capable of, put the fear into their new recruits,’ said Mann, picking up the discarded initiation robes and Rajini’s sari.

‘Why strip her first?’

‘Not worthy to wear the robes, more degradation. New rules, new society. Set the tone, scare the hell out of the new recruits. Kids are bound to be different.’

‘Fucking kids are like that these days. Playing sick video games, watching sick movies. Their minds are warped…Plus…’ Sheng stood, pulled at his tie. ‘This fucking summer is driving everyone mad. This was supposed to be my first night off in a fucking month.’

Mann didn’t answer. He knew that if Sheng had been somewhere important when the call came it wouldn’t have been at home. He spent his few nights off playing poker and trying to stay out of his family’s way. He loved his kids but he no longer loved his wife. He did things his way or not at all. But his way wasn’t Mann’s way. They could both be brutal. It was in Sheng’s nature. It was nurtured in Mann.

Tom Sheng moved his torch to the ground. ‘This place is littered with red slips. It must have been a big meeting. We’re going to have to be quicker than this if we’re ever going to catch the bastards.’ He flicked light up at the ceilings to see the cockroaches scuttling into the corners. ‘We’ll let CSI get in here. I’ll see you in the office at six.’ He dusted off his hands and walked back over the stone floor towards the door. He paused in the exit. ‘I have a poker game waiting. Try not to fuck with anything before they have a chance to get in here.’

Mann didn’t answer. He knelt, picked up the burnt oath papers and debris from the stone floor and crumpled it in his hand. Amongst the red dust on his finger tips was a tinge of yellow. He went back over to the box. Beside the young girl’s body in the box was the rooster, headless, draped on paper over her hands. He reached in and eased the paper from beneath and held it up to the light of the candle. On it he saw a circle outline, inside was a lone wolf howling to the sky.

Chapter 4 (#ulink_2d760851-5684-5ad3-8a20-9fcd65c72abf)

Mann waited until the girl’s body had been taken to the morgue before he headed home. He needed a change of clothes. He needed to shower away the smell of death.

Mann lived in a vertical village built around a shopping mall. It was devoid of character. The only trees were in pots. It housed thousands of middle earners. He lived on the fortieth floor in one of the older two-bedroomed flats. It had parquet floors, white walls and minimal furniture: a table and two armchairs and a large home cinema system. He had bought the flat eight years ago. It was a great location for work, just a few stops away on the MTR. But, it didn’t matter how convenient it was, Mann was hardly ever in it. He lived there alone, but he hadn’t always done.

A woman got out of the lift as he stepped in. He didn’t recognize her. Even though he didn’t know his neighbours well, he knew them well enough to nod to them when he saw them in the lift. This woman was a stranger. New tenant, visitor? He didn’t know which. She wasn’t keen to make eye contact. She hurried past him, her hair over her face, sunglasses on. Mann looked at her feet: pretty shoes. By the time he looked up she had gone.

He got to his floor, walked along the corridor and came to a halt outside his flat door. He put the key in the lock, turned the key and hesitated. Why did he always do that? He walked in, slammed the door shut behind him and threw his keys angrily down onto the coffee table. He knew that one day he’d break the glass top by doing it. It was a white cane table shaped like an elephant – ludicrous, feminine. He stepped over the piles of papers, documents his lounge was littered with and took off his t-shirt. Secured across his chest and beneath his arm he wore a pouch containing two sets of throwing stars, shuriken. Shuriken meant ‘hidden in the hand’. They were the weapons of his enemy: concealed, versatile street weapons. Sometimes they were homemade or customized. Mann had designed his own. He had been fascinated ever since one cut a groove into his face when he was young. He still bore the scar high up on his left cheekbone, it was pale like a quarter moon.