Lee Weeks - The Trophy Taker

When the elevator slid to a silent halt and the cheongsamed lovely had completed her farewell bow, Mann and the woman both stepped out onto a red carpet. A pair of solid gold crouching dragons met them (strategically placed according to feng shui), as did two impressively built doormen. As they made their way up the narrow strip of carpet, a smiling woman in a red and gold cheongsam appeared. Mamasan Linda was a petite Chinese with an outwardly kindly nature but an inwardly frozen heart that could only be melted by money in her hand. She was a former hostess herself. When her appeal had begun to wane she was lucky enough to have made the right people happy over the years, and was rewarded for her services to mankind by being placed in a lucrative job.

‘Aye! Good girl, back so soon, huh?’ Mamasan Linda said to the woman from the lift. ‘Customers waiting! Go change, quick-quick!’ She ushered her past and into the club. Then she looked towards Mann, bowed and smiled respectfully. ‘Can I help you, Inspector?’

Mamasan Linda had not met Mann before, but she had seen him and knew all about him. Even though Hong Kong was one of the most densely populated places on earth, it was still just a big village at heart. Plus, there weren’t many six-foot-two Eurasian policemen around, and there definitely wasn’t another like Mann. His reputation for tough justice singled him out. He had earned the respect of cop and criminal alike because Mann feared nothing, and in Hong Kong society, no matter what side of the law you were on, that was attribute number one.

‘Good evening, Mamasan. I need to speak with the foreign hostesses you have working here. I won’t keep them long – just routine enquiries.’

Mamasan Linda listened with a fixed smile on her face, then nodded and beckoned Mann to follow her.

He had plenty of time to look around the half-empty club as they made their way through; Mamasan Linda wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry in that tight dress. It seemed funny, thought Mann, quaint even, all the money spent on the club: Italian lighting, rivers of red velvet, herds of black leather, yet there was still something else: the inevitable gold, red and chintz and those irrepressible ‘lucky fish’. No matter what the designer had originally planned for the club, in Hong Kong you could never get away from the slightly tacky look. He loved his birthplace for it – that wonderful mix of East and West that never let itself be corrupted by ordinary style.

Mann was shown into a VIP room at the back of the club. Most of the rooms in the club were themed, and this one was traditional Mandarin and housed an impressive collection of antique black lacquered furniture inlaid with abalone shell, silk-painted screens and ornately carved wooden seats.

Mamasan Linda left him in the care of Mamasan Rose, one of the newest mamasans at the club. She brought the foreign girls to him one at a time. Eleven were in so far that evening, out of twenty-five, she explained.

One of three sunny-faced, robust-looking Australians came in to be interviewed first. Her name was Angela. She and her two friends were working and living together, sharing a flat in Kowloon. They’d been in Hong Kong for two months and were working their way around Asia. They’d already done the lucrative Tokyo circuit, missed out Thailand (where holidaying Westerners weren’t interested in paying for white women and locals couldn’t afford them), and had made a detour around the Philippines where there were a lot of lonely wealthy Westerners but no hostess clubs to work out of. Finally they had stopped in Hong Kong en route to Singapore. From there they were headed home to resume their jobs as dental nurses.

Mann asked Angela if she’d had any friends go missing unexpectedly. What? Was he serious? she answered. People were always moving on. What did he expect? Had she heard anything about a problem client? She shrugged. Nothing she couldn’t handle.

Mann interviewed the rest quickly: the other two Australians, who were clones of the first, two Kiwis, three Brits, two Americans, and a tall Irish girl named Bernadette. They all said the same thing – they were used to people disappearing, it happened all the time. People came and went continuously. Hong Kong was a transient society. Girls came to work there from all over the world; they did their business and left. They brought with them a new alias, but their identity was always the same. Mann had seen it many times. They were game players looking for easy money – looking to turn their God-given assets into cold hard cash. But at the moment the game wasn’t going all their way. Someone else was having fun making his own private collection of foreign dolls.

17

‘Is Lucy working here tonight?’ Mann asked Mamasan Rose when he’d finished interviewing the foreign girls. Mamasan Rose smiled curiously at Mann, said she was, and left to fetch her.

As soon as she entered Mann recognised her as the woman from the lift with the leather trousers. Now she was wearing a lilac-coloured figure-hugging evening dress that she didn’t quite have the figure for, and an extra coating of lip-gloss. He waited while she sat and readied herself.

‘Hello again, Inspector.’ She smiled sweetly, a very practised smile, and adjusted her dress to show a flirtatious amount of leg.

Surprising, thought Mann. She was nothing special to look at; her sickly sweet smile was set into an over-rouged face. But then she didn’t have to be beautiful. According to James Dudley-Smythe she was extremely talented in other ways.

She giggled, batting her eyelashes and feigning shyness under his scrutiny.

‘Are you the only Lucy working here?’

‘Yes, just me, Inspector. There’s only one Lucy.’

‘Well, it must be you I want then.’

Lucy raised an inquisitive eyebrow and pursed her lips into a ‘butter wouldn’t melt’ smile.

‘I have heard that you provide certain services for men who like something special .’

Lucy’s face was a picture of surprise but her eyes betrayed her. Mann could see that she was as sharp and as calculating as they come – but most of all she was a survivor. She had seen right into the depths of men’s souls. It may not have been a pretty sight, but boy was it lucrative.

‘I mean that you cater to certain tastes. Men who like to feel pain, feel it and inflict it.’

Lucy held his gaze, kept the smile, and inclined her head in a small movement.

‘Tell me, Lucy, have you had any problems with a particular client? Anybody go too far? Anyone scare you? Hurt you more than you wanted or were paid for?’

Lucy kept the smile, lowered her eyes and shook her head slowly.

‘No, I don’t think so. It’s just fun – you know?’

She looked up from beneath her lashes with a hint of a proposition, as if maybe he did know and it was always worth her while testing the water.

Mann had the distinct impression she was imagining him with a whip in his hand and his pants around his ankles.

‘What about the foreign girls here? Are you friendly with them?’

‘ Quite friendly. I rent some of them a room in my apartment, Inspector,’ she said, moving to sit slightly to one side; her best side.

‘Your apartment?’

‘Yes, I live with my sister in Wanchai. We have a spare room which we let to foreign girls from the club. They pay more.’

‘Any of the foreign girls talk to you about a bad experience they might have had?’

Lucy thought for a few seconds and then swung her head slowly from side to side while keeping her eyes pinned on Mann – still holding that sweet, simpering smile, which was beginning to grate on him.

‘Any of the foreign girls gone missing that you know of?’