Kiss & Die (17 page)

Tammy had been staring at the text from Mann for most of the day. It was 9 p.m. She had four missed calls from him. She was following new orders. Tammy understood but it didn’t feel right. She had no choice. It was just after 9 p.m. She was on the way to meet Lilly. In preparation for her initiation, Lilly was going to introduce her to someone further up the Triad ladder, a
Red Pole
in the Outcasts. She hoped it would lead her to Victoria Chan. That would be the ultimate prize for Tammy. It’s what Mann had wanted. If she could find evidence against Victoria then she would be doing him a massive favour. Her loyalties lay with him. Tammy hoped he’d understand that in the end. She hoped he’d know she didn’t want to disobey his orders, she had no choice.

Lilly was waiting for her outside the MTR station.

‘Where are we going?’ Tammy stepped in beside her as they walked away from the station.

They walked along the backstreets of Yau Ma Tei for ten minutes, dodging in and out of the stallholders setting up along the way, wheeling their stalls along the street. They moved in and out of the crowds of tourists making
their way through the night market: two skinny Chinese girls with attitude.

‘I told you, the boss wants to meet you,’ answered Lilly. Tammy knew something was wrong; Lilly wasn’t able to look her in the eyes. ‘You do want to meet her, right?’ Lilly was texting, looking around. She seemed nervous.

‘Yeah, sure. But…does she live around here?’ Tammy knew the area well. It was not a prestigious address. It was a sprawling low rise of old tenement blocks and a place where jade was sold, where old men bartered their bright canaries in the bird market.

‘No, but we just have to meet the others first.’

Tammy followed Lilly as they slipped past the tourists and onto Saigon Street, a side road that led to the night market. It was ten thirty and the market was in full swing. Bubbling tanks offish and crustaceans blocked the pavement as they stepped into the road and Lilly led Tammy into the side entrance of the Seafood Grill.

They passed the owner who scowled at them, looked like he was about to object but was in too much of a flap, his once-white apron covered in fish entrails, his face bright red from working in the heat of the kitchen.

‘Come on,’ said Lilly as she led Tammy through to a basement stacked high with boxes of defrosting prawns.

Tammy looked around her as they left the road behind. One way out, one way in. If Lilly planned to kill her then this was the ideal place to trap her. She looked at Lilly’s demeanour, the tension in her upper back, the way she walked purposefully as if she only had to get somewhere as fast as possible. Lilly sensed her hesitation, caught her glances over her shoulder at the diminishing exit and she
moved quicker down the corridor. Lilly looked at the kitchen porter as he stood back to let them pass, his pale face pocked with volcanic acne. He glanced first at Lilly and then at Tammy. She slowed, levelled with him and looked into his eyes. They flicked towards Lilly’s back as she carried on down the corridor and then he gave a small, almost twitch-like shake of the head as he looked back to Tammy.

Tammy turned and ran. Lilly was a second behind. Tammy pulled the boxes of prawns over behind her as she bolted past. The waiting staff, their arms laden with dishes, yelled at her to stop, but she didn’t. She ran through to the street outside. She knew it would take Lilly just a minute to catch her. She heard the telltale whistles calling for back-up. She knew it wouldn’t take long before they found her. She ducked into an alleyway and phoned Mann.

‘I need you, Boss.’ She hadn’t hesitated. Mann was the one she trusted to help her now.

‘Where are you, Tammy?’ Mann was stood in Mia’s office.

‘I’m in the night market, Boss. They’re coming after me, the Outcasts. I need help. I thought I was meeting Victoria Chan. I’m sorry, Boss.’

‘Stay out of sight. I’m coming.’

Tammy slipped back out of the alley and took a round-about route that led her back to the middle of the night market. It was only just getting going, stalls were still being set up. She picked up a black peak cap from a stall with Iron Maiden written on the front and threw the stallholder some money. He looked at her, looked at the note, shrugged and put it into his money pouch as he turned away without a word of thanks. Pulling the cap down over her eyes, she headed towards the busiest part of the market, between the road junctions. The plastic canopies that met above the busy street trapped the heat and the din of toys and music and shouted Cantonese.

She pulled on the cap, kept her head down and attached herself to other groups of people. Tourists were out early with their kids. The market was full of foreign voices. But, above it all, Tammy heard the whistles. She lifted her eyes enough to look either side, to the back of the stalls where they met the pavement, and sensed movement alongside her. They were looking for her. She was being closed in on. She stopped, ducked down beneath a stall and crawled on her hands and knees over the boxes of merchandise,
the discarded food cartons and the scavenging rats. She only had to wait a few more minutes. It wouldn’t take Mann longer than that to get a unit here. She just needed the noise of a police siren to scare them off. She could hear her breath as she squeezed through the minute spaces. She doubled back on herself slowly, crouching low, and waited. Above her head a stallholder was arguing with an irate mother whose child had bought a duff toy an hour ago.

Above their arguing she heard sirens and her heart leapt. She shook her head in relief. It was then that the stallholder saw her and reached in and dragged her out. ‘Thief! Stealing my toys whilst I am being distracted. What are you? A team of thieves?’

Tammy tried to shut him up. ‘I’m a police officer. Do as I say. Shut up for Christ’s sake. Please…shut the fuck up.’

The stallholder lifted his voice again. ‘Thief!’ He had heard her well enough but he wanted a distraction away from the argument with the irate mother.

She had no choice but to run. She looked up to see what appeared to be the whole market closing in on her. Either side of her the tourists stared as the gang members wove between them. Tammy saw the first knife flash bright amongst the tack and plastic. She ran.

‘Police officer down,’ Detective Inspector Johnny Mann shouted into the radio.

The noise all around him was deafening.

‘I said police officer down. For fuck’s sake get an ambulance here.’

The woman clutched her little girl to her as she stood staring down at Mann and Tammy who was convulsing on the pavement amidst the nodding puppies, replica toys, t-shirts and sunglasses.

‘At the junction of Saigon Street. There could be other casualties…I don’t know…Just move it.’

Mann knelt over Tammy’s unconscious body and pushed his fingers over the wound in her chest to try to stop the bleeding. ‘Give me that. Quick…’ he shouted to the woman who was still holding the white silk shawl she had been haggling over. ‘Another one…more. Quick! Quick!’

She looked around, flustered, threw it to him. He pressed the fabric into the wound. Above the screams of frightened tourists, Mann heard Ng shouting for him.

‘Over here, Ng. It’s Tammy, she’s hurt.’

Ng crouched beside them for a second. Shrimp ran past. Ng called out to him: ‘Check if there’s any sign of them, Shrimp.’

‘I’m on it,’ Shrimp answered, leaping over the smashed stalls, dodging the screaming tourists who were caught in the middle of it, frantic to get away. He caught sight of the backs of running gang members and increased his pace. As he exited out from the tunnel of stalls he heard voices. He came face to face with an Indian boy holding the bloody knife in his shaking hand.

Shrimp pinned him to the ground and read him his rights.

The ambulance screamed down Saigon Street and came to a halt as its lights filled the night sky above the bright stalls.

Mann felt Tammy’s pulse…nothing. He knelt over her, locked out his arms, placed one hand above the other over her chest. Tammy’s body bounced under Mann’s pressure as he pressed hard and fast rapid presses onto her chest. Blood seeped through his fingers turning the white silk shawl crimson.

Mann watched one of PJ’s customers dip naan bread into the bright red tandoori sauce and wipe it around the metal bowl. His stomach knotted. Tammy’s blood was ingrained in his fingertips. It had been a terrible night and it showed. Mann was ashen faced and his eyes were smudged and dark with tiredness. Mann had helped the paramedics for forty minutes. They had stabilized Tammy before leaving the market but she was barely alive. He waited for PJ to finish wiping his hands on the white starched napkin that hung over his arm, traditional waiter style, then he called him over.

‘Is everything all right, Inspector?’ PJ smiled, but his eyes showed concern as he looked at Mann’s face. Mann gave a small nod and half a smile by way of answer and thanks for the concern. He took a sip of water and wiped his mouth on the cloth napkin – a nice touch, cloth napkins in a place where all you could eat came for less than a coffee in a plush hotel.

‘Please sit down at a table, eat.’

Mann kept one eye on Hafiz as he talked. He kept glancing over. He worked hard to serve all of the tables;
the place had a hundred customers all crammed into what was only ever meant to be someone’s front room.

Mann raised his hand and shook his head. ‘No time, thanks, PJ.’

He looked across at Hafiz who was waiting on the tables. Mann watched him work the tables. Hafiz passed them on the way to the kitchen. Mann grabbed his arm, held on to it tightly. ‘You all right?’

Hafiz was sweating heavily. He looked at Mann’s hand on his arm and then he turned to answer the shouts for service that went up from a table behind them. He nodded. Mann released his arm.

‘Walk me to the hall, PJ. I have some questions.’ Mann got up to leave.

PJ did as he was told and they stood in the airless landing outside the restaurant. PJ stood eye to eye with Mann. The two men: tall, broad-shouldered Mann, PJ with the weight of fifteen more years around his girth and too many poppadoms.

‘Tonight there was trouble in Yau Ma Tei. The Outcasts were involved. Several were wounded. Many were arrested. A young police officer was badly hurt.’ Behind them, through the glass door, Mann could see Hafiz watching them.

‘I am so sorry, Inspector. It is a terrible thing. When people risk their lives in public service.’

‘The thing is, PJ, some Indian youths were amongst those arrested.’ A look of confusion crossed PJ’s face. Mann continued. ‘And your son Mahmud was one of them.’

PJ gasped as he clutched his apron. ‘No, he can’t be.’ PJ shook his head and then instinctively swung round to
look through the glass door at Hafiz who was staring back at his father. ‘I do not understand how this has happened. My cleverest son. He will be a doctor, a lawyer. He is the one who has gone bad?’ PJ turned back to Mann. ‘It must be a misunderstanding. It cannot be true…’

‘It’s serious, PJ. We’re still holding him. He’s not talking to us. He won’t tell us why he joined up and he won’t tell us who recruited him. I can’t help him unless he helps me. He was caught with a knife in his hand.’

The colour drained from PJ’s face.

‘Is this the first you’ve heard of Mahmud running with the Outcasts?’

‘Yes. It’s the first I’ve heard of that.’ He shook his head, dazed, in shock. ‘If Mahmud got caught there then it was an accident. You couldn’t get a smarter boy than him. There’s no way it was what it looks like. Mahmud is too smart for that. What is the charge?’ His voice came out loud but shaky.

‘Attempted murder of a police officer.’

Mann went to the hospital and sat in the chair by Tammy’s bed. He watched the nurses come and go, checking on their patient. The machines breathed for her. The drips fed into her system. Pouches of blood hung from hooks. Mann looked at her and wondered what she was dreaming of. Mann’s dreams scared him. He was too frightened to fall asleep any more. He was frightened to be alone. He felt he belonged to the life of shadows more than ever. Nothing made him happy. Everything brought him a heavy burden. He hadn’t smiled in a long time. He hadn’t had a good sleep for weeks. Mann had so many snapshots of hell locked into his brain that he could barely contain them. When he slept, someone let them out. He longed to run on the top of a mountain range, to lift his head and feel the icy wind cut into his lungs. He longed to be free of the burden of knowing too much, feeling too much. He closed his eyes briefly. He listened to the comforting sound of the machines. He didn’t want to go home. Home was where his heart had been broken. Home was where he didn’t belong.

His body felt heavy. He listened to the sounds of voices
in the corridor outside and was comforted by the noise, the odd shout, laugh, whispered concerns and the swish of a uniform, the rolling of trolley wheels. Now, in the quiet of the room, listening to the comforting electronic beep of Tammy’s heart, he felt safe enough to close his eyes and try to sleep. He tried to find that mental paradise – once it had been a white sand beach, listening to the gentle lapping of the waves, feeling the sun on his face and the breeze over his skin. He and Helen dreamed of escaping to a beach hut somewhere. That was in the early days of their relationship. That was when Mann had let his guard down and Helen had found the cracks in his armour. But it hadn’t lasted and over the five years they were together by the end, they were almost strangers again, come full circle. Helen knew it was over, that’s why she had pushed so hard to go to the next stage in their relationship: marriage, kids. The more she pushed, albeit gently, the more Mann realized it was never going to be for him. The more she loved him the more trapped he felt. It was then that he realized he wasn’t someone who would find happiness through loving another. He was irrevocably damaged.

He was just a scrawny eighteen-year-old, when the men held him back and forced him to watch his father’s execution. His father had taken twenty minutes to die as each man aimed his cleaver and felled his father like a tree. The last blow split his skull. Mann had been as helpless as a baby to stop it happening. The men had left him weeping. He had crawled on his hands and knees to his father, and cradled his bloody body. Mann had scars in his heart and soul that would never heal, no matter how much Helen
tried. So Mann had let her go when she called his bluff. He had let her leave when she said it was now or never. He hadn’t realized the taxi would take her to hell.

He sat back in the chair and willed sleep to come. He felt his body become heavy, his muscles released their tension. Mann’s dreams were often in English. But his dreams were nightmares in any language. The background noise of the corridor outside filtered in as dull lullaby, comforting, droning and then it stopped resisting and let the muscles go and Mann drifted into an uneasy sleep. He found himself back with Helen. She was laughing, smiling. For a few seconds he was so happy to see her face and then her expression changed. Mann couldn’t wake up. He was caught in hell with her. He was twisting with pain. His head was inside the hood. He was with Helen. Her voice was his. Her screams coming out of his own mouth. From outside the darkness he heard two men talking. Mann had always believed he killed the man who took the last breath from Helen until now.

‘Sir?’

He was awakened, startled by a nurse staring into his face. He could smell her starchy uniform, hear it crackle. It was light in the room.

‘Any change?’

The nurse turned away and went back over to check on Tammy. She changed her drip and set up a new bag of blood and saline. She moved around the bed with a hypnotic calmness, a precision that Mann could have watched for hours. Her tasks were executed in sequence, in silence. Her hands moved, her starchy uniform touched the bed and creased. Her eyes watched and her ears
listened. She shook her head as she finished taking Tammy’s obs.

‘She’s holding on,’ she said with that look of sympathy that Mann knew well. It said, you should go; there are worse times to come, go and get some rest. Mann knew she was right but he also knew that he had scores to settle first.