Yin Yang Tattoo (22 page)

‘What does it say?'

Bobby stared blankly through welling tears. He ran a big soothing palm slowly back and forth over the short-cropped hair on the crown of his son's head.

‘It says, ‘Next time he doesn't come back'.' Bobby lifted Min-tae from the bench and walked towards the entrance to the apartment building. I hurried after them.

‘Bobby.'

‘I don't want to deal with you right now.'

‘I understand, but there's another small problem.' Bobby turned around, still moving backwards, forcing me to follow.

‘What now?'

I felt like a drug addict with the shakes cornering commuters. ‘We left the hotel so fast I came out with no cash. Could you sub me a taxi fare?'

Bobby gave me a look of pure contempt. Hitching Min-tae onto one hip, he dipped into his trouser pocket.

‘I'll
lend
you your
bus fare
.' A handful of coins bounced on my outstretched palm as he spun on one heel and strode away, murmuring gently in his son's ear.

I asked around until I located a bus stop, ascertained the correct bus number from a couple of rebel teenagers with tea-coloured hair and nose rings, and eventually got myself on an express bus. The last thing I needed right now was a stop-start torture session hanging from a handrail in an overcrowded city bus.

I got stuck with the unpopular seat above the rear wheel arch and sat with my knees at my chin. Every thought I had shouted ‘disaster' in my ear, but still I saw no other option than to do my job, take every photograph as instructed, ask no questions, rock no boats, and tell only the lies that I was expected to tell. I might even stop bedding Jung-hwa if it would help me get out of Seoul with my money.

Back at the hotel I nearly made it past Reception before I heard my name being called. I looked over to see Miss Kim, the receptionist, edging her slender frame through a narrow gap in the counter.

‘My front desk manager would like to talk to you.'

‘Not right now thanks. I am very tired, and must go lie down – '

‘It will only take a few moments.' She pushed at a featureless section of marble wall, which surprised me by sliding smoothly back to reveal a short corridor of neat windowless offices, where she stopped and pointed at a doorway. I went into the room, and the man behind the small desk cut short a phone call and rose to shake my hand.

‘My name is Park,' he said. I knew that. A gold perspex badge on his lapel said it in big letters. ‘How are you enjoying your stay with us?'

I flopped into a well-worn swivel chair in front of his small desk.

‘What is the problem?'

‘It is a matter of your bill. It is hotel policy to seek an
arrangement
whenever a bill reaches a certain level.' He paused. My turn. I let the pause go on for a few seconds before responding.

‘What level is that?'

He looked at a sheaf of computer print-outs that topped a pile on his desk.

‘At the moment, the amount outstanding is a little more than two thousand US dollars.'
Chicken feed for a five star hotel. Doubtless Schwartz or Chang were behind this; they were doing anything they could to keep me reeling. Not that any such plea would impress Park.

‘That is based on a ridiculous full-priced rack rate. K-N Group will take care of this, almost certainly on a corporate account at their normal rate of discount.'

‘But I am afraid we have heard from nobody at K-N – '

‘In any case, you have my credit card details.'

He frowned some more and picked up a fax from his desktop.

‘It appears the VISA Corporation will authorise no further expenditure on this account.'

‘There must be a mistake.' I knew there was not.

‘Perhaps you can leave us the details of another credit card.' He was doing this strictly by the numbers.

‘Tomorrow I will talk to K-N and get this sorted.' I surprised him by standing up. Instinct and years of training and cultural conditioning made his hand shoot from his cuff to meet mine.

‘Thank you Mr Park for your help and for being so understanding. Goodbye, Miss Kim.' They nodded, professional faces fixed in place. As I peeled around the door jamb I stopped.

‘Could you please do one more thing for me?'

‘Of course.'

‘Ask Room Service to send up a bottle of Stolichnaya and everything else I need to make Bloody Marys, will you?' He knew how to make me squirm, but there were ways for me to return the compliment. Treating him like a room service waiter while I racked up my tab on imported liquor was one of them.

‘Certainly.'

I left him reaching for the phone, his face an emotionless mask, only the eyes flickering with fury.

I took the elevator up and walked the corridor towards my room, fishing for the keycard, ready to call room service and tell them to get a move on with the Stolichnaya. Vital supplies. Tonight I had my sights set on a familiar sanctuary. Oblivion. Again. So what if I had a hangover tomorrow. The bastard of a hangover I had today turned out to be the least of my worries.

I was still looking for the keycard when I got to my room door. It lay ajar. I looked for a chambermaid's trolley, but the corridor was deserted. I pushed the door wide with my foot and Detective Kwok looked at me from the seat in front of my desk. A cigarette burned in a saucer full of butts. Spread around the saucer were papers and documents that I had left locked in my room safe. One hand moved to his belt. Behind him the muted television flickered with
Ssirum
, Korean traditional wrestling, Sumo without the decorum or the beer-bellies. Kwok's two side-kicks looked up from their work, and one of them pushed past me to block my exit. The room was trashed again. I looked at my watch. Three o'clock. Another nine hours until the day was over. Surely to Christ it couldn't get any worse than this.

Something gleamed in Kwok's hand. ‘Alec Brodie, I arrest you on suspicion of murder.' The handcuffs were open and waiting.

I nodded to nice Mr Park as we passed Reception in tight formation. He responded with a cold professional glance which transformed into a glowing smile the moment he saw the handcuffs behind my back. Maybe he wouldn't beam so broadly when he remembered my unpaid bill.

Seoul's traffic was uncharacteristically light, and in minutes we were at the north end of the Namsan road tunnel that, day and night, floods the city centre with traffic. A few hundred yards downhill stood the capital's most ritzy department stores and upmarket boutiques, but here we faced a two-storey 1970s eyesore painted a uniform flat grey. Windows thick with filth hid behind sturdy iron grilles fixed in place by chunky countersunk bolts that might have come straight from a shipyard.

Two uniformed cops stood guard over an entranceway of battered aluminium double doors that rattled as Kwok's men shouldered them wide, pulling me behind. Inside the plain grey hallway another cop sat behind a scarred desk with a wide plastic-bound logbook in front of him. Like the guards outside he snapped to attention and saluted Kwok as we walked past. He stared at me with unabashed curiosity, and it wasn't lost on me that the logbook remained closed, his pen capped. I was never here.

The two flunkies pushed and prodded me down a side corridor. A wrench at my hair pulled us up at a rusty blue door with a covered peephole. They threw back a deadbolt and launched me into the room so hard I stumbled and fell to the concrete floor. I pivoted on one knee and stood up to face the two men who a few minutes earlier had been rooting through my belongings for the second time in under a week. The door rang shut behind them.

Next came the cupped hands to my ears and the blows to my solar plexus and the double-sided Velcro straps around my ankles and the telephone books to the kidneys.

 

I awoke face down in my own vomit for the second time in a few hours. While out cold I had been moved from the chair to a recovery position on the floor, where I made the next in a long line of mistakes. I tried to get up. Having my wrists cuffed to a table leg and one ankle Velcroed to a chair proved troublesome, but the real problems lay everywhere else. Shooting pains dug their claws deep within my back and ripped through my abdomen and chest, spiralling around my innards until I emptied my lungs in one long, throat-searing scream that only set the pain sensors jangling some more.

I lay still in the vain hope of refuge from blinding aftershocks, my breathing reduced to irregular, fit-like hiccups that fired yet more waves of pain.

‘Having fun?'

I spoke without opening my eyes. ‘Sure, Chang. I enjoy a good beating.'

The toe of a shoe probed gently into my right kidney. It might as well have been a stiletto blade. My eyes were screwed shut, but still tears found their way down my cheeks.

‘Kwok-Susa.'
Detective Kwok.

‘Nae.'
Yes.

Chang spoke a few rapid words of Korean. The sound of footsteps retreating towards the door was drowned out by the rasp of Velcro torn apart, and my leg flopped to the floor. Rubber-gloved hands took my wrists and a rattle of keys released the cuffs. I was lifted so high my toes dragged along the floor. My whole body shrieked in protest and I sang along until a rubber glove that smelled of fake strawberries fixed itself over my mouth. Only then did I manage to open one eye. Bright corridor lighting, doorways receding like parked cars in a slow-motion film clip, a clumsy scramble down two flights of stairs to an open door and an agonisingly-bright, white-tiled room. A deserted basement bath-house, rows of sinks and showers, deep plunge pools and steam and sauna rooms attached.

The two cops threw me to the floor. I sat up gingerly, conscious of the stink that rose in waves from my body and clothes – and looked into the brass nozzles of two thick hoses. Icy jets tore the buttons from my shirt sending two halves flapping behind me, pausing only while a uniformed cop forcefully stripped me of what remained of my clothing. He backed away and the powerful blasts pummelled every square inch of my battered body. After the telephone books, the hoses might as well have been spitting bricks.

They stopped when Kwok threw a tired-looking towel and a pair of faded boxer shorts to the wet floor in front of me.

‘Cover yourself up.' Another cop appeared with two wooden chairs, which he set down, facing each other, in the middle of the bath-house floor. Kwok sat in one, and nodded to me to take the other. A pair of men in uniform stood guard over the only exit. It took me several agonising minutes to pull on the shorts. I sat down and gently explored my abdomen with the rough towel. Big Cop and Small Cop stood breathing down my damp neck.

‘Did you bring me here just to pound the shit out of me, or did you have something else in mind?'

‘You know exactly why we have you here.'

‘Even if
you
don't.'

He didn't take the bait.

‘I am in the course of a murder investigation and I strongly suspect that you may have the answers I require.'

‘Shouldn't that be the answers you were told to get?'

Kwok's head flickered to my right, Big Cop latched onto my shoulders – and little brother stepped forwards to repeat his right-hook-to-the-guts trick.

I doubled over and retched, taking as long as I could to recover, and when I finally looked up, Kwok stared at me, his face devoid of emotion.

‘Start again?'

I nodded.

‘What happened in your hotel room on the two nights you spent with the prostitute?'

‘There's nothing to tell. On the first night I got back to the room and she was waiting for me. Chang must have sent her. We spent a few hours doing what she was paid to do. We drank a lot of whisky, and she left while I was asleep. A couple of nights later she surprised me in the lobby, and we went up to my room again. I didn't plan for her to be in the hotel, she just turned up. When I woke up in the morning the second time, she was gone again. I never saw her – '

‘Until an unidentifiable caller just happened to deliver her navel to your room.'

‘Exactly. Can I go now?'

‘Let's talk about cameras.'

Here we go.

‘You took Polaroid photographs together, didn't you?'

‘You know we did. You have the photographs. Souvenirs, nothing more.'

‘So tell me about the missing video camera.'

‘I have explained that a half-dozen times already. I left it in London because my baggage was overweight.'

‘And the video tape wrappings in your hotel room?'

‘Left over from a shoot I did in London last week.'

Kwok shook his head like a schoolteacher disappointed at his student's transparent fibs.

‘It's the truth.'

As I spoke, the brother cops moved in, expertly handcuffed my hands behind my back, and pulled me to my feet until I faced a broad plunge pool that came up to my waist. They lofted my wrists, forced my head forward and down, and two strong hands on the nape of my neck finished the move. Face-down underwater in two seconds flat. No time to snatch even a token breath.