LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 4

      Mann waited until the girl’s body had been taken to the morgue before he headed home. He needed a change of clothes. He needed to shower away the smell of death.

      Mann lived in a vertical village built around a shopping mall. It was devoid of character. The only trees were in pots. It housed thousands of middle earners. He lived on the fortieth floor in one of the older two-bedroomed flats. It had parquet floors, white walls and minimal furniture: a table and two armchairs and a large home cinema system. He had bought the flat eight years ago. It was a great location for work, just a few stops away on the MTR. But, it didn’t matter how convenient it was, Mann was hardly ever in it. He lived there alone, but he hadn’t always done.

      A woman got out of the lift as he stepped in. He didn’t recognize her. Even though he didn’t know his neighbours well, he knew them well enough to nod to them when he saw them in the lift. This woman was a stranger. New tenant, visitor? He didn’t know which. She wasn’t keen to make eye contact. She hurried past him, her hair over her face, sunglasses on. Mann looked at her feet: pretty shoes. By the time he looked up she had gone.

      He got to his floor, walked along the corridor and came to a halt outside his flat door. He put the key in the lock, turned the key and hesitated. Why did he always do that? He walked in, slammed the door shut behind him and threw his keys angrily down onto the coffee table. He knew that one day he’d break the glass top by doing it. It was a white cane table shaped like an elephant – ludicrous, feminine. He stepped over the piles of papers, documents his lounge was littered with and took off his t-shirt. Secured across his chest and beneath his arm he wore a pouch containing two sets of throwing stars, shuriken. Shuriken meant ‘hidden in the hand’. They were the weapons of his enemy: concealed, versatile street weapons. Sometimes they were homemade or customized. Mann had designed his own. He had been fascinated ever since one cut a groove into his face when he was young. He still bore the scar high up on his left cheekbone, it was pale like a quarter moon.

      He unstrapped the leather pouch from his arm. It contained six six-inch darts. They were feather tipped, needle pointed, weighted for direct, fast, hard impact. He took a slim dagger named Delilah from his boot and placed her on the table as well. She was his favourite; she had saved him many times.

      He poured himself a vodka on the rocks and then stood looking out of his window. The block opposite was lit up sporadically: squares of life in the darkness.

      He checked the messages on his home phone. His mother’s voice came over clipped and awkward. It made him smile the way she talked to the answer phone machine as if she expected it to answer her at any moment. Pausing, giving it time to answer her back and then continuing in a fluster when it didn’t. He would call her tomorrow. She didn’t ask, but she needed him to. She wasn’t one for showing or asking for affection. She was a great bottler of emotions but the past few months had left her needing reassurance. Mann was all she had. Her world had been rocked by secrets that refused to stay hidden. And, where there was one, there were a hundred.

      He phoned his boss.

      ‘I heard it was you who found her.’ The voice of Chief Inspector Mia Chou. Always succinct. Straight to the point. They had known each for a long time. ‘The ceremony was definitely an initiation one?’

      ‘Not just…I found yellow papers.’

      ‘So a new branch of a society has been created.’

      ‘I found an emblem printed on paper: a lone wolf.’

      ‘Anyone see anything?’

      ‘No, the tourists never see anything; it’s all strange to them. The locals see it all but they pretend not to. The building had been empty about twenty-four hours. It only took them a few hours to set it up. Tom Sheng’s called a meeting for six.’

      ‘Good.’

      Mann could hear in her voice that she knew already. Whatever conversation she had had with Sheng it was probably face to face. Mann knew his thing with Mia wouldn’t last. Sheng had been through most of the good-looking women at the station. It never bothered him to mix work and pleasure.

      ‘We’ll know more after the autopsy. Grab some rest,’ said Mia. ‘See you at the office in a few hours.’

      He stripped off and went in for a shower. He bowed his head in the water and let the needle jets pummel his tired shoulders. He hadn’t been back home for days. It wasn’t home. It was a punishment, a reminder of mistakes made. He should sell the apartment but it would be admitting defeat.

      He came back into the lounge in his boxers and dropped the louvre blinds. He sat down in one of the two armchairs, plonked his vodka on the elephant table then he sat back in the chair to close his eyes for a few minutes, try and get some rest. He rolled the vodka glass across his chest. The only noise in the flat was the sound of the ticking clock in the bedroom. He closed his eyes, they felt as if they had sand under the lids. His jet black hair fell across his forehead. The image of the dead girl flashed into his head. His eyes snapped open. There would be no sleep for him tonight. He went into his bedroom and pulled open the laundry pack his maid had left. He slipped on a fresh t-shirt and pulled on his jeans. He picked up his weapons and keys from the elephant table and slammed the door on the way out.