Ian Hamilton - The wild beast of Wuhan

“Did you get the names?” Ava asked.

It took the woman a second to recognize her, and then she looked around to see if anyone else was listening. “The two you mentioned, plus a third, a woman named Bonnie Knox. They think she was a customer.”

“How did they die?”

“I’m not sure I should say anything more.”

“Please, this is important to me,” Ava said.

The reporter lowered her voice. “They think it was some kind of gangland thing. The three of them were shot in the back of the head, and were probably on their knees when it was done.”

“But why the women, the customer?”

“Innocent bystanders, they think — a robbery gone bad. Hughes must have tried to resist and the women got caught up in the mess,” she said. “It’ll be all over the news in the next hour or two and the police will make some kind of statement before the afternoon is out. Until then, keep this between us, eh?”

Ava nodded and began walking slowly back to the hotel. She met Sam Rice and Frederick Locke on the way. “I couldn’t find a bloody parking spot,” Rice said, breathless. “I’ve been circling for ages.”

“You didn’t miss anything,” Ava said quietly.

“What happened?” Locke asked.

“You can hear about it on the news in an hour or two, I’m told.”

“Is Edwin all right?” Rice said.

She looked away. “No, he’s not, and there’s nothing we can do to help. Now I need to be alone for a while, and you should go back to the office.”

“Ava — ”

“No, Sam, I can’t talk to you or anyone else right now. I’ll call you later and we can continue the discussion we were having this morning. Although I suspect it might be irrelevant now.”

She half walked and half ran to the hotel. “Do you have a room available?” she asked the front-desk clerk.

“Of course, Ms. Lee, and welcome back to the Fletcher Hotel.”

Ava lay in the dark with the drapes tightly drawn, the digital clock by the bed unplugged. Her mind was jumping from one scenario to another; her feelings oscillated from confusion to rage to grief in an instant. Underlying it all was the sickening realization that she had been betrayed.

She didn’t know how long she had been in bed before she finally found the energy to get up. She opened the drapes to a sunny day, the Gardens lit up like — what, a Fauvist painting?

She turned on the television and flipped channels, looking for news of the shootings, but there was nothing. Leaving the TV on, Ava went into the bathroom. She stripped and climbed into the shower, the water as hot as she could bear. For ten minutes she let it pelt her, more punishing than cleansing. Feeling no less lost, she wrapped herself in the hotel’s terrycloth bathrobe, a towel around her head, and went back into the bedroom.

She crawled back into bed. Even in the robe she felt cold, and she pulled the duvet up to her chin. She was listening to a quiz show when she heard the host’s voice interrupted by a reporter’s and the words “multiple shootings.” Ava sat up.

The presenter sat at a desk with three photos displayed behind him. She recognized Edwin Hughes and Lisa. The third picture was of Bonnie Knox, a woman in her early thirties, the mother of two young children. The news report cut to the scene outside the art gallery. The reporter she had talked to was conducting an interview with one of the plainclothes officers. He was subdued, confirming only that three people had been shot dead. There were no suspects and no apparent motive, although they were treating it as a robbery. The reporter pushed the officer to confirm that the three victims had been killed execution-style. “We have no firm motive and we can’t speculate,” the policeman repeated.

Ava turned off the television. It was time to call Hong Kong.

She punched in Uncle’s number. Her call went directly to voicemail. She checked the time. It was midnight in Hong Kong. She left him a message: “This is Ava. Please call me back.”

She hung up the phone and sat quietly. One more call, she thought.

May Ling Wong answered the phone with a tentative “ Wei?”

“This is Ava. I’m in London.”

The phone went deathly silent.

“Why did you do it?” Ava asked quietly. She could hear May Ling breathing. “Why?” she demanded.

“I am so sorry,” May Ling said softly. “But it was necessary.”

“Necessary? You killed the wrong man. Edwin had nothing to do with the Fauvists. He helped us.”

“He led you to Glen Hughes. We thought it wisest to eliminate the connection.”

“And the women — what about the two women?”

“The women weren’t part of this,” May Ling said carefully. “I was distressed when I heard about them. But you know how these things are; you send someone to do a job and something unexpected always happens. The men involved thought it best that there be no witnesses. It’s sad, but it couldn’t be helped.”

“One of them was just a customer. She had two young children. You’ve made orphans out of them.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? You should never have gone near Edwin Hughes. I had him neutralized. He was never going to divulge what he knew.”

“We discussed this — ”

“Who is we?” Ava interrupted.

There was a pause, and Ava felt her spirits sink even lower. “Changxing and me,” May said.

Ava wasn’t sure she believed that. “And the two of you decided that Edwin Hughes had to die?”

“It was necessary.”

“How about Glen Hughes? Are your people tracking him? When does he die?”

“Not yet.”

“But he will?”

“Maybe not,” May said slowly.

You bitch, Ava thought. You sneaky bitch. “You made me a promise,” she said, and then regretted the words.

“And I made it in good faith. But my husband found out about our arrangement. He has had no peace — you saw him in Wuhan. This will help ease his pain.”

“You should never have done what you did.”

“I will talk to my husband about the other man. Maybe there’s a way — ”

“No,” Ava said.

“But if we get our money back he may — ”

“No!” Ava yelled.

The line went silent. Then Ava heard a sigh. She’s calculating, Ava thought. She wants to ask me about the money but she doesn’t want to do it directly. She doesn’t want to push me even further off course.

“Have you spoken to Uncle?” May Ling said.

It was the first time Uncle had been mentioned, and it caught Ava off guard. “No, I haven’t.”

“He wasn’t pleased with us. He wasn’t as angry as you are, but he wasn’t pleased.”

“When did he know?”

“Hours ago.”

“How did he find out?”

“Changxing called him.”

And Uncle didn’t phone me, Ava thought.

“He wasn’t pleased,” May insisted.

“I have to go now,” Ava said.

“Wait — ”

Ava shut the phone, threw it on the bed, and then sat by the window, watching the people below strolling, laughing, talking on cellphones, going about their normal business. That’s all she had been doing — going about her normal business. That was the job. Find the bad guy, get the money. And do it all with a minimum of fuss. And always, always, always keeping the client out of the process. She should have known from the start that the Wongs weren’t going to be passive. They were too rich, too powerful, too used to getting their own way. She’d been naive to think that she could work with May Ling alone when she and Changxing were like one person. Ava guessed that he had known about every conversation she had with May from the outset. And then the two of them had somehow co-opted Uncle, persuading him to pass on information that he normally kept between Ava and himself.