Femme Fatale Read online

  ‘Stay there. Don’t move. I’m going to put my thumbs into your mouth and press down on your lower molar teeth, understand? You won’t be able to bite me, so don’t even try. Then I’m going to push your jawbone downwards and quickly upwards to get it back in the right place. Try and relax. The more tense you are the worse it will be.’

  He nods his head a little, which is about all he’ll be able to manage. If they did this in a hospital, they’d give you some muscle relaxant first. He looks frightened, but he’d be even more frightened if he knew that I’d never done this before. I stick my thumbs in his mouth and press down on his lower teeth, holding him firmly beneath the jaw with my fingers.

  Then, with one quick, hard movement, I push his jawbone down and ram it upwards into the correct location. I can feel a dull thud as it engages. His eyes roll up. He screams. He faints.

  I let him fall to the floor and go into the kitchen to get him some water. When I get back he’s still lying on the floor. He’s semi-conscious, babbling and drooling. I can do without him getting feverish. I decide to use this water to wake him up. I throw it over his face then go back and fill the mug again.

  When I return he’s calmed down a little. His eyes are open now, he’s breathing rapidly and he’s looking straight at me, probably wondering what the hell just happened and who I am. I hold the mug of water out to him.

  ‘Drink this. Don’t speak. Try not to open your mouth suddenly. Try to avoid coughing or sneezing.’

  He takes the mug and half-heartedly slurps at the water. Most of it falls out of his mouth, down his chin and over his shirt. I drag one of the transparent chairs over so I can sit down a couple of feet away from him. I fish my mobile out of my pocket and call Caroline. She answers immediately.

  ‘My God, baby. I was just thinking about you. You treated me so good. I’m still in bed. I’m naked. Talk to me. Tell me things. Tell me bad things.’

  ‘OK. How about this. I’m in Rikki’s flat. The one in Slade Court. Some Chinese guy just broke the door down and tried to kill me. I think he’s one of yours.’

  ‘Tell me to do things. Tell me what to do. Instruct me. Be really fucking strict. I want to obey you. I’m such a bad girl.’

  ‘Five foot ten, around two hundred and thirty pounds. Could be in his mid-thirties. What’s going on?’

  ‘Shall I tell you what I’m doing, Daniel? Just hearing your voice? What I’m doing right now? Ask me. I’ll tell you. Do you like me? Oh, Jesus.’

  God Almighty.

  ‘Any idea who he might be, Caroline?’

  She sighs. ‘You’re spoiling things for me, baby. Are you punishing me? You’re punishing me. I like it that you’re punishing me. It’s delectable. Let me talk to him. Jesus. You owe me bigtime for this. You better make this up to me. Fuck.’

  ‘OK. Just to let you know, he’s suffered a recent dislocated jaw so you may find it difficult to understand him.’

  ‘What? How did that happen?’

  I hand him my mobile. He looks baffled.

  ‘This lady would like to speak with you.’

  I can hear Caroline fire off a volley of bad-tempered, rapid Cantonese which lasts for two straight minutes. My new pal listens with a dull look of despair on his face. He’s sullen, then he’s angry, then he’s horrified, then he’s terrified, then he’s stupefied. I’d love to know what she’s saying.

  When he replies, his voice is slurred to start with, but he soon adjusts and quickly learns to speak coherently with the minimum of mouth movement. I notice his face is looking a little swollen. Whatever Caroline has asked him about, he’s giving a hell of a long reply. He sounds despondent. He gets another icy high-speed blast of invective from Caroline and then hands the mobile back to me. He takes a sip of water from the mug and looks at the floor.

  Caroline sighs impatiently. ‘OK. Ready? This is so fucking tedious, yeah? This guy is called Lee Ch’iu. He’s a 49er.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Lowest rank. He’s one of Rikki’s boyfriends from the old days.’

  ‘Rikki’s gay.’

  ‘Oh yeah. Didn’t I tell you? Anyway, he’s been worried about Rikki, even though they’re no longer an item or whatever you call it. He’s had a round-the-clock surveillance on the flat without Mr Sheng’s permission. He thinks he’s in trouble now, so we can use that if you want to question him. He knows who I am and he knows you’re working for Mr Sheng so he’s peeing his pants.’

  The guy in the Chevy. Of course.

  ‘So who did he think I was?’

  ‘He didn’t know and didn’t care. He’s a bit hot-headed. He assumed that if a gweilo was in Rikki’s flat then it couldn’t be a good thing and that you might have killed Rikki and were going to steal his stuff. He probably thought you were one of Rikki’s new crowd. He doesn’t like Rikki’s new crowd and thinks they mean Rikki harm, even though he’s never met any of them. He’s a bit fucked-up and jealous. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what guys like this are like. They’re OK for blunt instruments, but give them a five-year-old’s jigsaw puzzle and they go into a catatonic trance, know what I mean?’

  ‘What would have happened if he’d killed me? Did he think of the possible consequences? I don’t mean regarding Mr Sheng. I mean generally.’

  ‘Oh. Getting rid of your body, you mean? No problem. There are ways. When are you seeing the other flat? Can I see you today? You should see my body this morning. I feel branded. I want to show people. I want to be photographed.’

  ‘I want to talk to this guy first, then I’ll see the other place. I won’t know what I’m doing until later. I’ll call you.’

  ‘OK. He’ll tell you anything you want to know. He speaks English so don’t let him pretend otherwise. Be careful with him, though. He’s a hothead. Let me know if anything happens.’

  ‘Like if he kills me.’

  She laughs. ‘Yeah.’

  I end the call and watch Lee take another sip of water. He places a hand against the side of his face. He has more colour now and enough energy to give me a resentful, petulant stare. I make eye contact with him and he looks away.

  ‘OK, Lee Ch’iu. I don’t have much time. I’m going to ask you questions and I want quick answers. Bullshit me and the jaw comes off again. Got it?’

  He nods his head. I can tell he’d break my neck if he got the chance.

  ‘Miss Chow told me that you thought I was one of Rikki’s new crowd. Tell me about them.’

  His voice is London, but with a hint of Cantonese, which I think is an affectation. ‘Rich cats.’

  ‘Men and women?’

  ‘Yeah. They have dinner parties,’ he sneers.

  ‘What sort of people? What are their jobs?’

  He shrugs. His speaking voice is slow and listless. I don’t know whether this is his usual voice or the recent jaw damage. ‘Rikki, he doesn’t always say, but sometimes he told me. One guy worked in the theatre. Something to do with the lights or something. Lighting. A technician. And there’s a woman who owns an art gallery. Somewhere near St James’s Park or maybe Green Park. I can’t remember. One guy writes books on where to go in London for tourists.’

  Sounds like a crazy little clique. ‘Can you think of anyone else he’s told you about?’

  He holds his chin in his hand and thinks. This may be a waste of time, but it enables me to build up a picture of Rikki’s life. Lee has a deep think about this. I can see the big wooden cogs turning. ‘Oh yeah. One guy who makes hats. Big hats. Fancy hats. Hats with feathers for showgirls, you know? Like Las Vegas stuff, I think. And there’re a couple of actors maybe. Or maybe a film director. I can’t really remember.’ He sniffs and looks sullen. ‘I don’t really pay much attention when Rikki talks about that shit.’

  ‘I take it that you don’t know people like this. How did Rikki get to know these people? Did they hear of his wit and charm through some Bohemian dinner party grapevine?’

  He frowns. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know how he met them. I
think he sold stuff to some of them, if that’s any use.’

  ‘Drugs?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What sort?’ I don’t tell him about the cannabis and heroin I just discovered.

  ‘Whatever, you know? Coke, smack, dope, bufotenine, ketamine: anything, really. Anything they wanted.

  ‘But Rikki isn’t involved in the drugs side of your business, is he.’

  ‘What? No. No, this was like a sideline.’

  ‘OK. Let’s leave that for a moment. When was the last time you saw Rikki?’

  ‘There was a meeting we were both at. I can’t tell you…’

  ‘I don’t care what the meeting was about. When was this?’

  He has a think. He’s more than a bit slow, I decide. ‘Almost two weeks ago.’

  ‘Can you be more exact?’

  He bites the inside of his mouth. He drools a little. ‘Thirteen days. The ninth.’

  ‘Did you talk to him?’

  ‘Yeah. We still talk, you know? But he wasn’t happy. I only talked to him for about ten minutes. We had a coffee together in this place. I had an apple Danish.’

  ‘Why wasn’t he happy?’

  He looks down to his left. He takes another sip of water. He rubs the side of his face. ‘It was just, uh, he said he’s been having hassle from these guys. Gweilo. It wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle, he said. It was just annoying him. He said he was going to take care of it.’

  ‘Were these people connected with the crowd you just told me about?’

  ‘Oh no. Not them. I don’t know who this was. We’re expanding business, you know? Bigtime. We have dealing with gweilo more and more. Business. But this was nothing to do with that. This was something else. He was a bit puzzled. He was a bit angry. It was like an irritation or something, you know?’

  ‘Any names?’

  ‘No names, yeah? He said he’d had hassle from some guy and it bugged him. That was it. He didn’t say what the hassle was. But it’s no surprise to me he has hassle. He hangs around with the gweilo. He’s inviting hassle.’

  ‘Can you give me any length of time? When you last saw Rikki about two weeks ago, did he give you any idea about when this hassle started?’

  His face goes totally blank and I mean totally blank. He’s trying to think. I let him get on with it. He shakes his head slightly from side to side, as if the info isn’t forthcoming. After maybe three minutes he speaks again.

  ‘He said he was feeling good about himself, because, uh, Mr Sheng said that he was gonna give Rikki two more guys to be in charge of. I think that might have been last month, but I can’t be sure. It might have been the month before that.’

  ‘So it was because he was feeling good about himself that this hassle – whatever it was – had brought him down. So the hassle didn’t happen before this meeting with Mr Sheng.’

  ‘I guess not. No. It was after that. It was like he was saying he was feeling good about the Mr Sheng thing and then this happens.’

  ‘OK. When your smoking guy in the Chevrolet outside called you, did you think I was one of the people who’d been giving Rikki hassle?’

  He looks surprised that I spotted his man. ‘Well, I didn’t think it was one of his fancy crowd! No way. They don’t know about him and they don’t know about this place. I know he has a place somewhere else to entertain them, but I don’t know where it is. He never invites me there.’

  ‘So as far as you were concerned, I was possibly one of the people who’d been giving him hassle.’ I’m getting tired of this now, but Lee is one of those people who has to be prodded slowly and patiently.

  ‘Sure. You can’t have been one of his fancy crowd as they didn’t know about this place. He was ashamed of this place. He told me. He was always worried that Mr Sheng would find out that he had a nicer place. The gweilo we do business with – that’s always done somewhere else, so they wouldn’t know about this place, either. You never invite them to your home. No business is done in homes.’

  ‘So why was your first instinct to stick a knife in my head?’

  ‘Rikki is my buddy. If someone does hurt to him then they do it to me.’

  ‘So even though you didn’t know who I was or what I might have done, you were going to stick the knife in my head and ask questions later.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I crouch down in front of him and grab his jaw in my hand. He grimaces with the pain.

  ‘I’m going to give you two pieces of advice, Lee Ch’iu. First of all, get yourself to a hospital and get that jaw checked out. That’s the friendly advice. Now the unfriendly advice. Look into my eyes. If I ever see you again, I’ll kill you. If you ever see me, just make damn sure you disappear into thin air. Understand?’

  He purses his lips, looks down and nods his head.

  As I’m taking the stairs down to the entrance, I hear the bleep which means I’ve got a text. Unknown number. It’s from Daniella, the plus size blonde cryptographic consultant from the wine bar yesterday. She must have found my business card in her bag.

  ‘You are a bad boy. Call me. Please.’

  This message is accompanied by a kittenish naked selfie taken in her bathroom. She has amazing breasts. I’ll call her when this is over.

  I decide to have a quick chat with Caroline. She answers instantly.

  ‘You can’t keep away, baby. You have to hear my voice.’

  ‘Is it that obvious?’

  ‘You like it when my voice is soft? You like to hear me gasp?’

  ‘You’re killing me, Caroline. Can you find out from Mr Sheng the exact date he told Rikki that he was going to get two more helpers? It might have been last month or the month before.’

  ‘Sure thing. Am I your little girl?’

  ‘Get up and get dressed. It’s late.’

  ‘Oh!’

  I hail a cab and head to Ebury Street.

  10

  SHUTDOWN

  I sit outside a small patisserie with a coffee and an unidentifiable chocolate item that I liked the look of. Ebury Street is definitely a step up from Great Titchfield. It’s quieter, greener, cleaner, considerably more posh and is full of chichi little restaurants, art galleries and elegant shops that most people would find too intimidating to enter.

  I try to make sense about what I now know about Rikki’s ‘other life’. Apart from the fact he did a bit of dealing on the side, not much, really. Caroline said he was a witty guy, so I’m sure that has something to do with him being popular. People can get drugs anywhere. If Rikki was dull and boring, they’d soon get tired of him and he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of buying a flat just to entertain, assuming that’s all it’s for.

  The first thing that occurred to me when Lee told me that Rikki was getting hassle from these other gweilo, was that it was something to do with the drug sales, as if, perhaps, he was stepping on someone’s toes by selling stuff to these people. But the more I think about it, the more that seems unlikely. As Lee said, this was something else. But what? Rikki was irritated, angry, annoyed, puzzled and bugged. Those were the words Lee used. This was hassle and it was a kind of hassle that Rikki wasn’t used to and didn’t like. I somehow imagine that Rikki’s usual reaction to hassle would be quick and violent, but maybe not this time.

  I finish my coffee, cross the road and head towards Rikki’s flat, which must be about three hundred yards away. As I walk along, I look out for Rikki’s car. I don’t think finding his car is that important per se, but I’d still like to have a look inside it just the same.

  There are a lot of smart-looking, three-storey private townhouses here, and I wonder how much they must cost.

  When I find Frampton House, I realise that I’m going to have to change tack. I take a quick look and keep walking. There’s no way on earth I can just walk in here and let myself into his flat. Rikki’s posh pad is in one of three new seven-storey blocks situated in a leafy and impressively large acreage. Rikki’s is on the left, which is something, at least.

&n
bsp; Each flat, from what I can tell, has a spacious balcony which is festooned with flowers and other assorted hanging greenery. I can see a woman on a silver extension ladder spraying water over the plants on the second floor of the centre block.

  There’s a main gate with an electronically-controlled barrier to prevent unauthorised vehicles using the grounds as a free car park. I can see eight cars parked about a hundred yards away from the gate, but none of them was the Mazda.

  There are six security cameras aimed at the main gate and four on each entrance to the three blocks. Each block has a reception area. Frampton House reception seems to be unattended at the moment, but the other two aren’t. I’ve come across places like this before. The reception staff are usually sharp-witted creatures who know exactly what all the residents look like and can spot a stranger without looking up, even if that stranger has a set of kosher keys and is acting like they were born and bred there.

  There’s a right turn into a wide street which runs along the left-hand side of Rikki’s block. I walk down it as if I know where I’m going, taking in as many details of the building as I can. In ten yards, there’s another vehicle entrance with a barrier like the one in front, more security cameras and another car park, once again lacking that elusive Mazda MX-5 Miata.

  There are ordinary houses on the other side of this road and a strip of resident-only car parking. A huge guy with a beard is standing outside one of the houses, talking to an old lady who obviously lives in one of them. With enough bad luck, any wall-scaling in broad daylight here would probably get the police on your tail, even if the security cameras didn’t spot you first.

  Then I see a way in. Next to the wall of one of the ground floor flats is a tough-looking metal structure with a thick concrete base. There’s a big hazard symbol on the side: yellow background and a black lightning bolt. Next to that, a sign reading: ‘Electrical Shock Hazard – this equipment is to be serviced by trained personnel only’. I immediately recognise what this is: a service connector block for the electricity supply.