Technically, of course, I’ve only been on this job for a single morning, so it’s going pretty well. I’ve ascertained that psycho enforcer Rikki is gay, that he hangs out with an arty, semi-Bohemian crowd, that he supplies a variety of drugs to his pals, he has a knockout flat, he’s a burlesque fan and that a gweilo unconnected with his new friends has been giving him some sort of undisclosed hassle which he didn’t like. Also, that he’s rubbed someone up the wrong way enough for them to plant a savagely murdered corpse in his cultivated pad.
I have to keep in mind that there’s almost certainly someone working in his block of flats that was a party to this. It’s unlikely to be a disgruntled or cranky neighbour, so I must assume it’s an employee. Who that might be or what their motivation might be I have no idea. Not yet, anyway. My only lead at the moment is the delightful Miss Véronique D’Erotique, who I’ll be checking out this evening. If that turns out to be a dead end, I’ll be well and truly stumped.
I turn into Richmond Buildings and notice there’s a Chinese travel agency right on the corner. The Soho Hotel is straight ahead. For such a flash, expensive hotel, the road that leads up to it is pretty shabby, which must please them immensely. I take the latex gloves out of my pocket and dump them in a bin. My hands smell like condoms.
Once inside, I’m directed to the bar and restaurant. The bar is an astonishingly hip, well-decorated place, with big, aggressive, abstract oil paintings hung over ultra-loud floral wallpaper. Everything in it, from the furniture to the lighting, manages to be retro and unmistakeably ‘now’ at the same time.
I can see Caroline Chow standing at a table next to a big wrought iron cage filled with a display of antique glass bottles. There’s a smart-suited Chinese guy in his early thirties sitting across from her on a tall bar stool. At his feet, there’s a red Woodworm cricket duffle holdall with the white handle of a cricket bat poking out of the top. For a moment, I think it’s Rikki Tuan, but on closer inspection it clearly isn’t. Rikki is a little slimmer than this guy, but it was an easy mistake to make as they have similar hairstyles and face shapes. Then it suddenly clicks who this guy might be and why he’s here.
Caroline looks stunning in a tight-fitting, sleeveless, ivory cocktail dress patterned with embroidered red roses. Silver high heels. Red nail varnish on her fingers and toes which matches the flowers on her dress. When she sees me approach, she walks over and we air kiss as if we’re ordinary people meeting in a bar. She gives my shoulders a slight squeeze as she holds them.
‘I want to introduce to you someone, Daniel.’
She nods at the Chinese guy who stands up and grins at me.
‘This is Jiang Weisheng. He will be helping us sort out the business at Ebury Street. He can be trusted with all details and minutiae. Jiang – this is Mr Beckett, of whom we have spoken.’
We shake hands. ‘I am very pleased to meet you, sir,’ says Jiang, the grin never leaving his face. ‘Shall we sit down and have a small chat?’
I sit down next to him. Caroline goes to the bar to order drinks. Jiang’s eyes follow her. ‘She is a very handsome woman, sir. Do you not think so?’
‘She certainly is.’
‘She has a firm, aggressive, seductive and carnal manner, yet I suspect beneath that there is an insecure young woman who needs to be loved and cared for.’
‘Have you known her long?’
He shrugs. ‘Ten minutes?’
We look at each other and laugh.
Caroline returns with a vodka and soda for me, a green concoction for Jiang and what looks like a vodka martini for herself.
‘Why don’t you sit down, Caroline?’ I say, smiling at her.
‘Thank you. I’m good. I can stand.’
‘We might be here for a while. You’ll be more comfortable if you sit.’
She purses her lips, tilts her head to the side and flashes me a frosty and meaningful stare that Jiang doesn’t catch. ‘Standing will be fine,’ she says, her voice glacial.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Quite sure.’
‘Miss Chow has told me the basics, Mr Beckett,’ says Jiang, sipping at what turns out to be a Green Mist. ‘The item has been there, you think, for three days.’
‘I would guess so. That pans out with Mr Tuan’s absence. With the heating turned on as it was, the odour and insect activity was about right.’
‘Ah, yes,’ says Jiang. ‘I have taken precautions for that.’ He reaches down into his cricket bag and pulls out an aerosol of Raid fly and wasp killer.
Caroline glares at him with alarm. ‘Tsh-tsh!’ she says, as he drops the tin back in his cricket bag. None of us can help laughing at this. Jiang’s expression of mild offence is so inscrutable that I can’t tell whether this was a joke or not. A couple further down the bar look over at us and they start laughing, too. Caroline puts her hand on my arm.
‘You will see that Jiang bears a moderately striking resemblance to Rikki. That is why Mr Sheng has loaned him to us for a while, quite apart from his expertise. Mr Sheng made sure that Jiang was clothed in an approximation of Rikki’s manner also, to avoid suspicion and wariness when he goes to Ebury Street,’ says Caroline, still standing.
‘I would like to be able to walk in and get on with my work, Mr Beckett,’ says Jiang, as if he’s talking about reading the electricity meter. ‘Can you give me an idea of the way I should do this? What I will be seeing when I get there? How I should act?’
‘Of course. There’s a reception area with one or two people usually present. There are a couple of lifts to the left of this. You can’t miss them. When I was there, there were seven people floating round, two of them at the reception desk. Keep in mind this isn’t a hotel. Be confident. No one will stop you unless you are plainly someone who doesn’t belong.
‘Occupy your mind with something unrelated, like your last holiday. Your red cricket bag with the bat poking out is a good idea. It’s the last thing any unauthorised person would carry. That will help. Do you have sunglasses?’
He produces a pair of Ray-Bans from inside his jacket. ‘These OK?’
‘Fine. Wear them as you go in, but then remove them immediately. That may be noticed, but it won’t be noticed. Understand? Five steps in, take the keys out your pocket and hold them in your hand. Look as if you’ve got intent. Look as if you’ve got nothing to hide. But don’t make eye contact with anyone. Go straight to the lift and press the button. Get the lift to the fifth floor. When you get out of the lift, turn right, Rikki’s place is two doors along. Don’t hesitate for a second, and if someone is there, glance at them, then ignore them.’
‘Rikki is not antisocial, but he doesn’t make small talk or chitchat,’ says Caroline to Jiang. ‘Even if someone on the reception desk said something cordial to him, he would do nothing more than give them a polite, noncommittal smile. He does not like to engage with people who are not his friends.’
‘I’ve double-locked the door to his flat.’ I produce the keys and slide them over the table to Jiang, who picks them up and puts them in his suit jacket pocket. ‘Open the mortice lock first, then the Yale. Open the door quickly and close it quickly. Don’t slam it. Once you’re inside, lock it and get gloves on.
‘It’s not smelling too badly in most of the flat, but you don’t want to take risks. I’ve opened a few windows and they’re still open now. When you leave, you can close them again and lock them, too. When you get in the hall, walk straight on, then take a left. You’ll see the bathroom right ahead of you. The bedroom you want is the first door you’ll come to on the way to the bathroom. The smell in the bedroom is…’
‘It’s OK. I’ve got a face mask. What’s the damage?’
‘A pretty deeply slit throat. That’s it. She isn’t wearing any clothes and I don’t think they’re anywhere in the flat, though you might want to confirm that. There’s blood on the bed and the floor. The sheets and mattress are fucked. You’ll have to make your own mind up about the bed frame. If you think the frame’s OK, you
’ll have to put something on top to make it look as normal as possible.’
‘Got you. Weight? Height?’
‘Rough estimate? Somewhere around a hundred pounds and maybe five foot six.’
‘Got you. Prints?’
‘I’ve cleaned up after myself, so you don’t have to worry about that. The girl’s prints are another thing altogether. If I was doing this, I’d make sure she could wander around the place and was allowed to touch as many things as possible as part of the stitch-up. It’ll have to be a full wipe down, if you have the time. Try and imagine there’s an advanced police forensics training session there tomorrow.’
‘Okeydoke. One thing. I forgot. Any ideas of the best time to do this?’
‘Yes. I’ll make the assumption that most people who live there work in some sort of job and finish at around five or six in the evening. If I was you, I would walk in there at about six-thirty. It’s pushing it a bit, leaving it as it is for another six hours or so, but I think it’ll be the smart thing to do.’
‘Yeah. I agree.’
‘A reception staff changeover time would be useful, but we don’t have that. One more thing: I suspect someone working there allowed this girl to be taken up to Rikki’s flat. It could have been a member of reception. If that person is on duty when you go in, you may be stopped if he thinks your appearance is suspicious in some way. Get an excuse ready. Frampton House is the block on the left. The central block is called Berrycloth House and the one on the right is McCracken House. You could maybe say you thought you were in one of the other two. Keep cool.’
Jiang laughs. ‘I’ll just punch their lights out!’
‘Good plan. What’s in the cricket bag apart from the cricket bat and the fly spray?’
He gives me a broad smile. ‘You don’t want to know.’
Caroline and I shake hands with him and he leaves. There’s some ‘stuff’ he has to go and buy. He didn’t think we’d want to know what that was either, but I have a good idea.
‘You want to come up to my room and have lunch room service?’ asks Caroline sweetly. ‘They have a great menu. We can order drinks and you can tell me what has been going on. Mr Sheng likes to be kept bang up to date whenever possible. No pressure.’ She flashes me a cute smile. ‘Well, no pressure to tell me what’s been going on, anyway.’
‘But pressure to go up to your room.’
‘Oh yes.’
*
As the lift door closes her mouth is on mine immediately. I grab her ass; she gasps and flinches, ferociously grinding herself into me. I grab her shoulders, turn her around and unzip her dress about twelve inches, so I can run a finger gently down her back and see the results of last night’s session.
‘Who does this for you when you can’t find a nice, sensitive guy like me, Caroline?’
Her breathing is so ragged she can barely reply. ‘I pay someone,’ she whispers.
‘Male or female?’
‘Either. It doesn’t matter.’
‘Should I charge you?’
‘If you want. I’m a good tipper.’
She’s booked into an enormous flower-filled three-bedroom terrace suite, stuffed with wall-to-wall abstract art, luxury furnishings, leopard statuettes and a panoramic view of lots of West End rooftops and the BT Tower. I don’t dare ask how much this place must cost to stay in.
We both order spiced chicken breast with sweet potato and black olive tapenade and Caroline insists on getting a bottle of Armand de Brignac champagne plus some Roberto Cavalli vodka. I don’t argue with her.
‘So who the hell is Jiang Weisheng, Caroline?’
She looks downwards and blushes. ‘You bastard, asking me to sit down all the time.’
‘Did you sleep on your front last night, Caroline?’
Her breathing is ragged. ‘Stop talking about it. You talk about it; I’ll want it again. I’m still feverish from the lift.’
‘Tell me about him.’
‘He’s someone Mr Sheng came up with when I told him what would have to be done. He had to find a clean-up guy who resembled Rikki at very short notice. Took him just over half an hour.’
‘Where’s he from?’
‘I don’t know anything about him. Well, one thing.’
‘What?’
‘He used to be OCTB. You know what that is?’
‘Hong Kong police. Organised Crime and Triad Bureau.’
‘Yeah. They do the Triad countermeasures etcetera. He worked for them for seven years but he was really our guy, of course. Something happened – some bad luck – and he had to get out fast. He’s been over here for a while, I understand. He’s older than Rikki but can pass for Rikki’s age.’
There’s a knock on the door. It’s the food and alcohol. That’s some quick service. Both the champagne and the vodka are in ice buckets. We allow the waiter to set everything up on the black marble dining table and wait until he leaves before we continue talking.
I tell Caroline about the drugs I found in the Slade Court flat and Lee Ch’iu’s story about him supplying drugs to his swish new gweilo pals.
‘Yeah. I can imagine that. But that’s nothing, you know?’
‘You don’t think that’s connected to his disappearance in any way?’
This did cross my mind and I dismissed it, but I want to hear her take on it.
‘Pretty unlikely, yeah? He sells them drugs, he gives them drugs. They’re not going to make him disappear for it, are they? He’s got something they want. What’s not to like?’ She drinks half a glass of champagne and starts work on her chicken. ‘And don’t forget, he’s a likeable guy. Very funny. What’s your instinct on these people he hung out with? The gweilo dinner party crowd.’
‘Well, there wasn’t much information on them from Lee; only what they did for a living and that was pretty vague. They seemed harmless enough to me, but there’s a possible link to something else from one of them which I’ll tell you about later.’
‘What else did you get from Lee?’
‘He said that Rikki had been getting unspecified hassle from some unidentified gweilo. It was irritating him and making him angry. Any ideas?’
‘None at all. As far as I know, Rikki’s life was in two camps. His gweilo dinner party friends and his Chinese brothers.’
‘By brothers, you mean…’
‘Yes. There was no third group as far as anyone knows. Basically, he would never have the time. He was on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. He wasn’t secretive about stuff, except for the Ebury Street flat and anyone in his position would have kept that to themselves.
‘It’s not like a big, serious thing. It’s more like obliquity. If Mr Sheng had found out, he would have been shaking his head at the follies of youth, you know? He’d have given Rikki a dressing down about wasting his money and being ostentatious. Ostentatious is attention-grabbing and vulgar. It causes imbalance. Oh, by the way, Mr Sheng told Rikki that he’d be getting two new guys on the sixteenth of last month. That’s five weeks ago exactly.’
‘OK. There were signs in the Ebury Street place that he went to the theatre and visited art galleries.’
‘Sure. But things like that and his dinner parties – those things would have taken up what spare time he had. I can’t see him or anyone like him maintaining a third life, you know?’
‘And he doesn’t strike me as the sort of guy that someone could easily push around.’
‘No. Shall I tell you what the most exciting part of our date was last night?’
‘Sure.’
‘It was when I asked you to put your hand on my leg and you did. I felt very excited saying that to you. I didn’t know how you would react. It was very exciting. Very exciting.’
I smile at her. ‘I’m glad to hear it, Caroline.’
‘It was as if I was asking for your attentions. I felt very bad. Brave and bad. I felt bad because my body was on fire and I knew what I would be asking you to do later on. I felt frightened that you might reject m
e. The anticipation and the threat of humiliation made me tremble. What was the most exciting part for you?’
I drink some champagne to kill the dryness in my mouth. ‘It’s hard to pick out one event, but I quite liked unzipping your dress knowing that you were naked underneath it.’
‘I liked that, too.’
We eat our lunch in silence for a while. She frowns and looks up at me. ‘What was the other thing you were talking about? You said there was a possible link from one of his dinner party crowd.’
‘Yes. Lee mentioned that one of Rikki’s friends made big feathery headdresses for showgirls. He didn’t give me the guy’s name as I’m sure he didn’t know it. When I was in Rikki’s flat, I noticed a lot of evidence that he was a fan of burlesque theatre. Books, DVDs, gig guides…’
She pours out the last drops of the champagne into my glass. ‘So?’
‘There was a picture of a girl on his computer. She’s a burlesque artiste called Véronique D’Erotique. He’d circled a number of club dates on this guide he had and she was performing at all of them. Whether he went to all of them or not I have no idea. There were a number of unopened letters on the hall floor when I got inside the flat. One of them was a ticket to a performance she’s giving tonight at a club near Piccadilly. There were kisses on the tickets and she’d sprayed it with her perfume. At least I assume it was her that did it.’
‘I didn’t think to order soda. Will a neat vodka be alright?’
‘That’ll be fine.’
She pours the vodka into a couple of frosty shot glasses.
‘Do you have the ticket? Can I see?’
I take it out of my pocket and hand it to her. She sniffs it.
‘Issey Miyake. Are you going to go?’
‘Yes.’
‘You think it’ll be worthwhile?’
‘It’s all we’ve got. I don’t think she’s directly part of his crowd. He may have been introduced to her by someone who was: the hat guy. I may find something out that’ll be of use.’
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