Lee Weeks - Death Trip

Published by Avon

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2009

This edition published 2016

Copyright © Lee Weeks 2009

Lee Weeks asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

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.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9781847561268

Ebook Edition © May 2016 ISBN: 9780008185268

Version: 2016-04-08

For my children Ginny and Robert who have given me so much more then I’ve given them.

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Chapter 92

Chapter 93

Chapter 94

Chapter 95

Chapter 96

Chapter 97

Chapter 98

Chapter 99

Chapter 100

Chapter 101

Chapter 102

Chapter 103

Chapter 104

Chapter 105

Chapter 106

Chapter 107

Chapter 108

Chapter 109

Chapter 110

Chapter 111

Chapter 112

Chapter 113

Chapter 114

Chapter 115

Chapter 116

Chapter 117

Chapter 118

Chapter 119

Chapter 120

Chapter 121

Chapter 122

Chapter 123

Chapter 124

Chapter 125

Acknowledgements

About the Author

By the same author

About the Publisher

‘Down on your knees!’

Saw Wah Say forced Anna to kneel as he pulled her head back by her blonde ponytail and held a knife to her throat. All around them, bamboo houses burst into flames, sending plumes of sparks up into the night sky.

Saw’s bare chest rose and fell, wet from blood and sweat, glistening in the hellish glare of the napalm. He stood over Anna and twisted her hair in his hand. He watched it fall like liquid gold through his gnarled fingers as he stretched her neck up.

Anna squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath as he ran the blade along her throat. Saw grinned at the other four young volunteers, dragged out from their hiding place and now held at gunpoint. All around them people ran screaming, trapped within the barbed wire walls of the refugee camp, whilst Saw’s men picked them off.

‘What do you want from us?’ Jake cried out. ‘We have no money.’

Saw grinned at Jake; his teeth were stained dark red from betel berries; his eyes were black as a rattlesnake’s. Saw’s head was shaved like a monk’s but Saw was no priest. His soul had long since dropped into some place dark. Anna gasped and a trickle of blood ran down her neck.

‘Stop, you bastard.’ Jake lashed out. But Saw’s deputy Ditaka was strong and he held Jake’s face down in the dirt. Jake could smell the napalm gasoline on his hands. Saw tilted his head to the side to look at Jake. He grinned.

‘You came into my kingdom. I did not invite you. Here I am God.’ Ditaka pushed Jake’s face further into the dirt. Saw’s men began closing in on the five like hungry wolves. Saw threw his head back and howled to the burning sky as Anna whimpered and the blade cut deeper into her neck. Then his black eyes came back to stare coldly at Jake. ‘Your parents will pay, or you will die. The world will know the name…Saw Wah Say.’

Johnny Mann was bathed in the pink warm glow of Casa Roso before he got anywhere near it. Two-metre-high photos of flushed-faced couples threw off an oozy glow.

‘With drinks,’ Mann said as he collected his tokens before taking a left and climbing the illuminated stairwell into the bar and small upper viewing area.

In exchange for one of his tokens he got a large vodka on the rocks from the golden-haired cherub behind the bar. Mann looked around. The place was empty except for a handful of bored-looking American lads who occupied the front two rows.

He took his seat and sat back to watch the show. On the stage below, a pink circular bed was beginning its slow rotation and a man, a woman and a bottle of baby oil were in position.

Mann suddenly felt the full weight of tiredness hit him. He’d just come off a thirteen-hour KLM flight from Hong Kong to Schiphol airport, Amsterdam. It was a long way to come for the weekend and he hadn’t been able to sleep. His mind was a jumble of questions but no answers. Now, he needed sleep badly, or he needed a hard, punishing workout. But he wasn’t going to get either. Instead he was sitting in Casa Roso watching one of the eight shows an hour, audience participation welcomed, and he was waiting to meet the person who had asked him to come all this way.

He rolled the iced vodka glass around in his hands and took a good slug of it whilst he watched the couple dispense with the oil and move into position. He glanced over at the American lads. They were trying to make conversation and ignore the act. Mann smiled to himself. He knew that if there was one sure way of spoiling their evening it was seeing a big black guy with a huge cock showing them how it’s done to a white girl.

From his seat on the left side of the auditorium, back against the side wall, Mann watched two men emerge from the top of the stairs. They were short, dark-skinned Asians, wearing black puffer jackets. They bypassed the bar and sat down on the opposite side to Mann and stared at him. Either, thought Mann, they had been in the Casa Roso too often and had seen the same eight shows an hour too many times, or they found Mann more interesting. He stared back. Nestled against the underside of his forearm Mann felt the reassuring coldness of his favourite shuriken, Delilah. Shuriken meant ‘sword hidden in the hand’. He had several such throwing stars: some were no bigger than a coin, individually scored along the edges and made razor sharp. Mann had firsthand knowledge of what they could do. It had been such a coin that had turned his boy’s face into a man’s as it sliced a crescent moon into his high cheekbone; a scar which now always stayed a few shades lighter than his tanned face.