by Lee Weeks
‘What does it say, Rosario?’
Rosario wiped her tears from her face with the heel of her hand.
‘It says they were taken to the UK, in a lorry. They were held prisoners. They were badly hurt.’ She looked up at her friend and smiled. ‘But they are on their way home.’
84
‘Mum?’
Mann rang his mother whilst standing with Ng in Lantau Airport. It was mid-afternoon and Shrimp’s flight from London had already landed, they were just waiting for him to clear customs. At the other end of the phone Molly answered with the cat in her arms.
‘Are you home now, Johnny?’
‘I’m back. I’ll be over to see you tomorrow, if you’re free.’
‘Of course—I look forward to it…’
Molly hesitated. There was concern in her voice. ‘I’m sorry about last time.’
‘Don’t be. I think you’re right, it’s about time I learned about Dad, warts and all. I can’t keep hanging on to this childish memory. I’m a grown man, after all. David White sends his love, by the way.’
‘I bet he misses the cat.’
‘Ha…I told him he misses it a lot more than it misses him. See you tomorrow, Mum, love you…’
‘And you, son.’
* * *
Shrimp emerged from behind the arrivals screen.
‘Did you have a good flight?’ Mann asked, and pointed to the enormous case he was pulling behind him. ‘What have you got in there?’
Ng chuckled and shook his head.
Shrimp rolled his eyes skyward. ‘Had to pay excess—bummer.’
Mann lifted Shrimp’s case and groaned. ‘I am not surprised.’
‘I spent a fortune in the vintage clothes markets. Anyway, wassup? What are you two doing here? I was making my way in to do my report now. You didn’t have to escort me.’
‘We need to have a meeting before we face the Super,’ said Mann. ‘We thought we might as well have it here.’
They made their way over to sit on an empty row of seats in the huge open and airy terminal. Shrimp sat between Ng and Mann.
‘There are a few things we need to get straight, to clarify,’ said Mann.
‘…to make sure we all understand it the same way…’ said Ng.
‘We need to leave someone who was involved out of the equation,’ said Mann. ‘We have to forget the role that someone took in this and look past it.’
‘Ah…yes…’ said Shrimp. ‘…Gotcha. I wasn’t sure whether we would all come to the same conclusion…’
‘At the same time…Yes.’ Mann finished his sentence for him. ‘We know that this person is fundamentally good, and I think we have to overlook this one incident.’
‘A diamond with a flaw is preferable to a common stone,’ said Ng.
85
Mann waited till he got back to his apartment to make the call.
‘Why did you do it, David?’
He heard his old friend sigh deeply down the phone. He knew that he would have his eyes closed and he would be smoothing the top of his head with his free hand. For so many years Mann had watched him do that, sitting behind his big oak desk at Headquarters, surrounded by rugby trophies and family photos. Now Mann recalled one person on those photos that he should have recognised earlier.
‘I knew you’d find my connection to him in the end. I swear to you that once I realised what he was up to, I tried to put a stop to it at once. I left a message for Micky. He’s a good cop, I knew he’d manage to infiltrate them. Is Amy Tang safe?’
‘Yes, she’s safe. We never counted on the X-factor—the CK genes. She’s more than safe as she killed her jailor. How did you get into it in the first place, David?’
‘Alex Stamp is my nephew. I thought you might have recognised him. He came out to Hong Kong a couple of times when he was a lad. I had a photo of him and my sister in the office. I always had a soft spot for him. He didn’t have much of a childhood; his father was a pig to him. He asked me for help to get some new business off the ground. I agreed to introduce him to contacts I had made over the years. One of them was Fredrico. From there it just snowballed. I think there isn’t a villain that Fredrico doesn’t know. It was only when I started investigating for you that I found out the extent of Alex’s misdeeds. I am sorry. I will hand myself in.’
‘You don’t need to. Nobody else knows about this but me, Shrimp, Ng and you. They are too fond of you to see you put inside for it. By way of penance I have volunteered you to help Father Finn in his fight against the western paedophiles. It will mean flying out to the Philippines every few months, and quite a lot of hard work in-between. It takes him a long time to set up strong cases against these men.’
‘Hard work is what I need, Mann.’
‘Are you ready to trap Blanco?’
‘Did you manage to do that thing I asked you to?’
‘Yes, I did, sitting at a beach bar in Puerto Galera.’
86
A phone call came from Father Finn. ‘Mercy had a baby boy. Two weeks early. They’re calling him Johnny.’
‘Ha! That’s great. How is Becky?’
‘She is doing fine. She’s missing you already, I think. They are all helping each other through the process of healing. It will be a long route for some, but we will get there, no? I have heard from your friend—David White. He is coming out here in the next few weeks and we are going to start the clean-up all over again.’
‘It’s a thankless task, Father.’
‘We are all going to have our work cut out to make a difference. Someone has got to put their hand up and say it’s wrong. The world cannot just sit by and allow its children to live off rubbish dumps and be sold as sex slaves. Otherwise what happens when these children become adults? But, you know what, Johnny? Maya smiled today—so it’s never thankless, Johnny, not in a million years.’
Mann smiled as he said goodbye to Father Finn and headed off to the Cantina—he had a question for Miriam.
Amy had finished her interviews with the police and was allowed to go back to her room to sort out her things. It was good to be back. She unpacked her bag and put her new macramé equipment in the box with all the others. She would go downstairs and find her friends in the common room in a minute. She might have a game of pool or watch the television. There were only sports matches on that afternoon, and Amy was never in those. She wasn’t good at sport, but she was good at other things—like macramé.
Terry sat in the Tequila Station. The place was quiet. Angeles was recovering from the death of the Colonel, whose body had been dumped outside Lolita’s, in bits. All the Colonel’s clubs had been temporarily shut down. The other bar owners had tried to take over his patch, but Terry had asserted his claim very quickly. The Colonel had signed everything over to him a long time ago, because Terry had a Filipina wife, so all the Colonel’s clubs were in her name and therefore it all belonged to Terry.
Terry would give it a day, then he would open them up again. It wasn’t up to Terry to settle everyone’s nerves down. Sophia waited patiently for her father to finish his beer. She was playing with the pink pony he had given her. She combed its hair and held it in her small coffee-coloured hand as she trotted it along the surface of the bar.
Terry closed his laptop and drained the last of his beer.
‘Come on, Sophia.’
‘Okay.’ Sophia clicked her tongue as she slipped off the stool and rode Princess Pony over the side of the bar, across the stool and into the air. She followed her father as he checked his watch and walked down the stairs past the toilets, past the dance floor, and into a back room.
It was Terry’s office. It was a light, white-walled room with just a desk and a chair in the corner. It had a single bed in the centre and on the cover of the bed were pictures of Princess Ponies, like the one Sophia held in her hand, all jumping over a rainbow. Opposite the bed was a shelf with a webcam on it. Terry closed the door behind them. Sophia was still playing with her pony.
Ter
ry sat at the desk. He opened his laptop and waited for it to fire up.
Mann sat in the Cantina enjoying a seahorse or two. He was checking his emails on his phone. He got one from David White.
You ready? Yes.
‘La La La…Love Love Love…Kiss Kiss Kiss Me’ Sophia was singing as Princess Pony galloped in the air.
‘Okay, we’re ready, Sophia.’
She gave him that ‘Do I have to?’ face.
Terry clicked away on the keys of the laptop. It was slow today.
Sophia walked over to the shelf opposite the bed and stared up into the webcam. She put Princess Pony down next to the camera and turned its back to her, then she started unbuttoning the front of her school dress.
At the other end of cyber world, David White was waiting. The Trojan was searching.
‘La La La…Love Love Love…’ Sophia was singing as she made faces into the webcam.
Mann finished his drink just as Miriam appeared with a fresh one for him. She looked beautiful—she was pleased to see him.
‘You doing anything later, Miriam?’
She shook her head and smiled. ‘What have you got in mind?’
‘You know the fancy dress party you had?’
She nodded. ‘The one you never made it to, you mean?’
‘That’s the one. Do you still have the outfits?’
‘Oh yes…’
Terry punched in the password. The Trojan lit up…‘Dance for Daddy, honey,’ Terry said. ‘Look at the nice man and smile.’
‘Nothing’s happening, Daddy.’
Terry waited. The connection was slow but the laptop was working on it. He was through. Terry stared at the screen. It had one thing written on it.
PRESS–
Hello Blanco…your time’s up.
Mann smiled to himself and closed his phone.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my agent Darley Anderson and everyone at the agency for making me feel part of a winning team. Thanks to Maxine Hitchcock who is a good friend as well as a great editor. Thanks to my children, Ginny and Robert, for their insight and their help at tricky moments.
About the Author
Lee Weeks left school at 16 and, armed with a notebook and very little cash, spent seven years working her way around Europe and South East Asia. She returned to settle in London, marry and raise two children. In those 15 years, she worked as a cocktail waitress, chef, model, English teacher and personal fitness trainer. She now lives in Devon with her two children and her dogs. Her debut novel, The Trophy Taker, was a Sunday Times bestseller.
Please go to www.leeweeks.co.uk for more information and visit www.bookarmy.co.uk for exclusive updates.
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By the Same Author:
The Trophy Taker
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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A Paperback Original 2008
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2008
Copyright © Lee Weeks 2008
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