Текст книги "Kiss & Die"

Автор книги: Lee Weeks

Соавторы: Lee Weeks
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Chapter 31

He caught up with Michelle in the ladies and jammed his foot in the toilet door just as she was shutting it. ‘A word?’

‘Christ, don’t I get any privacy?’ Michelle said, quickly stuffing something back in her bag.

‘Is it my imagination or are you avoiding me? Give me your bag.’

A woman came in to use the bathroom. ‘Sorry love, we’re closed.’ Mann leaned against the door to stop her from entering.

Michelle closed her eyes, took a deep breath and handed him her bag. He tipped the contents out in the sink, took out his pen and started turning over the contents. He flicked out a man’s wallet. He opened it up. There was a driving licence on one side, a space on the other where a photo should have been. Michelle sighed heavily. ‘I never saw that before, I promise, Inspector.’

‘What were you going to do? Wait for him to be busy at the bar and then take a quick trip up to see if he’d left anything interesting in his room?’

‘I don’t know what that’s doing in there, Inspector, I swear.’

Mann put the wallet in his pocket. He picked up a box of Viagra.

‘It’s for the old guys…it helps.’

‘Very thoughtful, Michelle. And this?’ He picked up a bag of meth amphetamine. Underneath were three foil strips of small white pills. He turned it over in his hand. ‘That’s a lot of GHD. You having to knock people out first these days are you, Michelle?’

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. ‘Give me a break, Inspector. Some people get a bit nasty. It calms them down. It doesn’t do them any harm. They think they had a good time.’

Mann shook his head and gave her a scathing look.

‘I have kids to feed.’

‘Your eldest is Lilly, right? I went to her school today. Did you know she was a budding young Triad? If she hasn’t already, it won’t be long before she takes the oath and then there’s no going back. A young girl was murdered. Is that what you want for Lilly?’

She slumped back to rest her bottom on the basin and sighed heavily, closing her eyes for a few seconds. ‘I don’t know what she gets up to any more. I tried my best. I honestly did, but she is nothing but trouble. I wash my hands of her. Night after night she’s out, I don’t know where. Rizal says he can’t keep an eye on her. He’s busy with the other children and the business and Rizal and Lilly don’t get on – they fight all the time. If you can teach her some manners, go ahead.’

‘How’s the stall going? You making money?’

In the harsh make-up mirror Mann could see how spent she looked. Her eyes were dark and puffy.

‘It’s okay, I make the food before I come to work. Rizal sells it—’

‘Or he gets a girl to sell it whilst he plays dice with his friends and then takes all the money, right?’

Michelle nodded but rolled her eyes and shrugged.

‘You’re a mug, Michelle. He’s more of a pimp than a partner. I thought you would have learnt your lesson by now. You don’t make it easy on yourself’

‘I know. I know.’ She shook her head and turned back to check her make-up in the mirror. ‘Ah well. It’s my fate, huh? It’s the way of the world. I must have been something very bad in my last life, huh?’ She shook her head. ‘Have a heart, Inspector. I know you’ve helped me out now and again and I appreciate it.’ She tilted her head to one side and smiled at Mann.

‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll make a deal with you, Michelle. I’ll keep an eye on Lilly and do what I can, if you start being a proper mother to her and look after her, keep her off the streets. If you don’t, I’ll charge you with stealing from the hotel guests and you’ll be back to singing in the slums of Manila.’

Michelle began shovelling her belongings back into her handbag.

‘You are very kind to me, Inspector.’ She stopped, mid-lipstick application. ‘You are a good man. Are you married yet?’

Mann took that as his cue to leave. ‘Sorry. I’d love to talk about my private life but I have to go. Remember, I’ll be keeping an eye on Lilly for you, Michelle, but get a grip on your life before it’s too late. You have a lot to offer the right person, don’t put up with shit and get clean so you can think straight.’

Michelle had switched off. Her eyes were on the bag of ice. He knew she was just waiting for him to leave before having a quick snort – enough to see her through the next hour or two.

On the way out, Mann passed Peter Thorne. ‘Remember,’ Mann picked up his drink and downed it, ‘regret’s a bastard to live with.’ Peter Thorne blinked rapidly, his eyes magnified by his glasses. ‘Take care.’

Chapter 32

‘What can you tell me about this guest?’ Mann showed the receptionist his badge and the ID card he’d found in the wallet he’d taken from Michelle.

She tapped away on the PC. ‘Mr Max Kosmos. American engineer. He has been with us for three nights and is due to check out tomorrow. He is a regular customer of ours.’

‘Do you know where he is right now?’

‘I rang his room an hour ago but got no reply. He missed a reservation he made for dinner in the restaurant here.’

‘What’s the room number?’

‘One sixteen, on the sixteenth floor.’

‘Is this key going to work?’ Mann took out the key from Max Kosmos’s wallet and handed it to her. She fed it into the key holder.

‘Yes, sir. That’s the one he has been using. He has two keys issued to him.’

Mann took the elevator to the sixteenth floor. He looked down the corridor: turquoise carpet, dried flowers in brass bowls on three-legged tables. He looked back to the door. The ‘Do not disturb’ sign was still hanging from the doorknob. A newspaper was propped up against the wall. The trolley of fresh linen was halted where it had been waiting to change the sheets in the nearby rooms.

Mann knocked. ‘Mr Kosmos. Security. I need a word.’

No reply.

Mann knocked harder. He waited. Still no reply. He slipped the card key in and out and the lock light turned from red to green. He turned the handle and pushed the heavy door open just enough to see that another room key was already in the power slot just inside the door. Someone was home. He slid Delilah from his boot and pushed the door open further. The room was lit by a sidelight. To the left of the door the bathroom light was on. The room was silent except for the air con. It was cold.

Mann held the door open with his foot whilst he stood for a few minutes in the doorway. Even though Mann couldn’t see it, he smelt it. The first rule of a crime scene: take in everything, let your senses register it all. Now he smelt it the way connoisseurs smell wine, the overtones of blood, the undertones of butchery and death. This was a big room – plush. He couldn’t see the bed. The television was on low in the background, it was an English channel, BBC World News. Mann stepped further inside the room. The door sprang closed with a click behind him. To his right was a wardrobe, desk and minibar. There were a couple of used glasses, whisky miniatures and small can of Coke. A half-drunk bottle of champagne was further along the desk. Just where Ruby had left it.

‘Oooh, champagne.’ Ruby picked up the bottle in the top of the fridge. ‘For me?’ she pouted.

‘You must be joking. It cost more than you. Put it back.’ Max Kosmos laughed hard at his own joke.

Ruby pretended to laugh with him. She squeezed his arm. ‘You got great physique. What you weigh, two hundred twenty pounds?’

‘Two hundred and twenty-five pounds of pure beef, baby.’ He laughed.

Ruby smiled as she turned her back to him. She stuck her bottom in the air and hitched up her dress a little to distract him as she reached inside the small fridge to get his drink out. She turned to look at him over her shoulder, made sure his eyes were glued to her rising skirt whilst she stirred the sedative into his drink. She would start with a small amount; she only wanted to make him tired enough so that she could tie him up. She didn’t want to knock him out so that he wouldn’t feel the pain. She poured herself a small shot of gin and a lot of orange.

‘Here, big man.’ She handed him the drink and clanked her glass against his. ‘Down in one, yes?’ She needed to make him drink it fast. She watched him drink it down and she swallowed hers in one gulp and then she poured him another.

‘Cheers.’

She clashed her glass against his. She could see his lips were wet, she smelt his sweat beneath his aftershave. She knew what he’d be thinking: he could handle his drink, and that it wouldn’t be him who was drunk. He would think he was being clever and that he knew these Asian women. They took some loosening up. A few drinks and she’d be legless with her arse in the air. He could be in for a good night. Cheap too: he could probably get away without paying her. After all, who was she going to complain to? She was nobody and he was Mr International Businessman.

Mann pushed the bathroom door open just enough. This was a plush room, marble finish. Toiletries lined up on the back of the basin, once neatly rolled facecloths now soaked with blood. Someone had cleaned up in there and not cared about the mess. Blood ran down the sides of the sink. Bloody pools washed over the marble top. Blood stained the fluffy white towels. He looked at the mirror. In the centre were smudges: kisses in pink.

Ruby breathed onto the mirror and drew a heart in the mist and put an arrow through it. On one side she wrote Ruby and on the other she wrote a man’s name, then she leant forward and kissed the cold mirror. She drew back sharply as her lip caught on a minute crack in the glass. A round drop of blood quickly bulged on her top lip and then dribbled down, she tasted it with her tongue, she touched it and watched it spread across her fingertips, a pretty colour: ruby red. She told herself that was why she had called herself Ruby. Rubies were precious, rare, the colour of a fresh cut just made, fresh blood spilt. But, someone else had named her it, the man who never came back, the man who left her to carry her baby alone and it had all been too much for her to bear. He had named her Ruby but it wasn’t because she was precious.

She stopped to listen to him calling her from the bedroom. He sounded different, tired. She checked her watch. It had been ten minutes. The drug would be working by now. ‘Clever girl, Ruby,’ she said to herself in perfect English. ‘You’re a clever girl, Ruby. Now you get your reward.’ She opened her handbag and gently slid her hand inside. She felt the cold metal of the scalpel and of the saw’s handle. She felt the handcuffs. She patted them. ‘Soon…very soon…’

Mann left the bathroom and took two steps further into the room. Mann’s feet trod silently on the hotel carpet: browns, golds, mottled blood, soft and sticky underfoot. The room was cold and still, and had the smell of a morgue. The air con hummed like a waterfall. From the television came a newsreader’s droning voice. The colours from the screen seeped into the room’s atmosphere. Mann listened hard. There was no sound of breathing or sleep. To his right the wardrobe door was open. The safe door was locked. The bed was just around to his left now, past the bathroom wall. The corner was coming into view.

Ruby emerged from the bathroom and walked around the corner. He was sat in the chair by the bed.

‘Why aren’t you naked?’ She went over to him and he tried to pull her onto his lap. His speech was slurred, his eyes rolling. She giggled and wriggled away. He tried to stand but he lurched and stumbled down again. He fell against the chair and tried to pull himself upright. He shook his head to try to clear it. His body swayed as he tried to stay standing. Ruby steered him towards the bed. His hands were grabbing her. She pushed him down on the bed. She stood over him and waited. She heard his breathing deepen and felt his body slump.

‘Cheers.’ She saluted his unconscious frame and poured champagne over his face to see if he would stir. His chest rose and fell. She placed the ball gag into his mouth and dragged him a little further up the bed. She lifted his arms above his head, handcuffed them and then tied them around the headboard; she took off his trousers, slowly, carefully, then his boxers. She opened his legs wide, took her tape and secured each leg to the bed. She took out her scalpel and cut around the shoulder joint, watching him all the time to make sure she had got the dosage right. His brow wrinkled and he groaned in pain. Ruby cut deeper. Yes, she was a clever girl. She knew how much to give him so that he could not move but he would still feel every cut she made.

Mann stepped over clothes scattered on the floor: a man’s shoes, a pair of men’s jeans: one leg inside out. He looked up. There were arcs of blood across the ceiling. The edge of the bed came into view. He saw a man’s feet. He came around the corner. The bed was turned dark brown with blood.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he uttered aloud as he looked at the headless, pulped body of a man lying on the bed.. He walked around to the side of the bed. On the bedside table lay a family photo covered in blood.

Chapter 33

Mann stepped back from the doorway and allowed Daniel Lu through. He had already got the hotel to erect a barrier on that side of the landing and to stop allowing guests back up to the floor. As the first officer on scene it was his job to secure it, stop it getting contaminated. Daniel handed him a protective forensic suit. ‘Put this on. You can help me till the rest of the team arrive. This is the only point of entry, in and out. Perp must have touched it. Dust the door for me.’

Daniel Lu was the best CSI investigator there was. He was tireless, he was meticulous. He had been the one to first examine Helen’s body when it had been found dumped in a bin bag at a reservoir in the New Territories. He’d never lost that look of sympathy and awkwardness whenever they met. It had been a hell of a day, a hell of a time.

Tom Sheng arrived straight after Daniel. ‘Who found the body?’ He didn’t bother with pleasantries. There was little love lost between Daniel and Sheng. It wasn’t just that they had Mia between them, they were opposite types.

‘I did,’ answered Mann.

‘You had a tip-off?’ He signalled to the two detectives with him to stay where they were outside the tape.

‘No. I was coming up to give him his wallet. I took it off one of the girls. He didn’t answer the door so I let myself in and found him.’

‘Who is the woman who gave you the wallet?’

‘Michelle. She’s a singer in the lounge bar.’

Sheng shouted out to one of the officers outside. ‘Go and pull in one of the singers, Michelle, have her taken to the station.’

Daniel had stopped in the centre of the room. His head turned methodically, taking in the whole scene. He stood over the corpse and looked up to the ceiling at the arcs of blood. He moved his position, looked up again. He started drawing a plan of the scene in a notebook. Daniel’s mind worked on many planes, he was clever on so many levels. He was sharp and cynical and driven but the one thing that Mann recognized in Daniel was that he was unhappy.

‘Do you know him?’ asked Sheng, in the process of putting on a forensic suit.

‘No. I’ve never seen him before. A man named Max Kosmos is registered to the room, I’m guessing this must be him.’

Daniel Lu walked around to the far side of the bed; he lifted the corpse’s shoulder and checked beneath. ‘The blood’s settled. He’s been dead approximately fifteen to eighteen hours. He was killed here.’

‘That would make it in the early hours of yesterday morning.’ Tom Sheng looked around at the room. ‘Nothing knocked over, no obvious signs of a fight. Motive?’

‘Not robbery,’ Mann answered. ‘The safe is locked and he’s still wearing his watch.’

He looked over the desk. ‘His laptop’s still here, and a briefcase.’

Daniel moved around the body and dictated into a machine as he went.

‘Deep lacerations to his torso and legs, cut right through to the bone. The flesh has been scraped away. They cut his hamstrings, his knee ligaments, anterior and interior, his elbow joints, all severed to prevent movement. Whoever it was, they must have done this before. It’s messy but it’s accurate.’

‘Cause of death?’ Sheng was busy opening the safe with the hotel combination.

Daniel looked up from where he was busy measuring the depth of the wounds on the victim’s chest. ‘Leave that,’ he said to Sheng. ‘They might have tried to open it. It’s an obvious place for prints.’ Sheng stepped back, muttering under his breath. Daniel began photographing the injuries. ‘The chest trauma is what killed him. The blood is pooled here…but not before the perp had their fun.’

Daniel Lu looked behind him at the brocade curtains, ‘The splatter pattern around the room means that all these injuries were inflicted whilst he was still alive. And this was a lengthy, prolonged torture. Perp took their time.’ He took a gloved hand and hovered over Max Kosmos’s chest. ‘These are strange wounds, really deep. He was lying down when these were inflicted.’ He traced the wounds with his finger. ‘They extend all the way across. Something literally scooped his flesh out in long strokes.’ He looked up at the ceiling where the three trails of blood and flesh had dried to brown sprays across the ceiling. ‘I don’t know what weapon made these. But someone definitely used our friend here for target practice.’ He went back to his position at the end of the bed. ‘They were standing here and used a downward action. They are about five foot three or four, I would guess. Right-handed.’

‘If not robbery then some kind of revenge, retribution? This man wasn’t just murdered, he was punished,’ said Mann.

‘It looks sexual,’ Sheng said.

‘Maybe,’ answered Daniel. ‘They cut off his penis but waited until after death to do it, unlike the amputation of his testicles which, judging by the amount of blood, was done when he was still breathing. Not a complete job though.’ Daniel Lu lifted the scrotum. ‘Sheng, make yourself useful, come over here and hold this up, I need to take a photo of the injury. ’

For a second Sheng looked as if he was about to pass on the honour of helping Daniel but then thought better of it.

‘Sure.’ He lifted the scrotum to reveal that it was cut through by a wire which was still embedded in the wound.

‘I’ve never seen anything like this done to a man,’ said Sheng, wincing a little. ‘I’ve seen girls left tied to the bedpost, serious injuries from sadistic role-playing. I’ve never seen torture on this scale and in such a public place. Perp took a hell of a risk.’

‘It could have been accidental,’ said Mann, busy dusting for prints around the safe deposit box and the minibar. ‘Cock humiliation, servant-mistress stuff. Some people get off on pain, maybe Max Kosmos was one of them, maybe the game went too far.’

‘It’s not a game I can see me playing any time soon,’ said Daniel.

‘He bought her a rose, whoever she was,’ said Sheng, looking at a single red rose lying on its side by the champagne bottle. ‘Where do people get those on an evening? A restaurant, a bar?’

Mann picked it up. ‘Nobody buys his girlfriend fake flowers.’

‘Perp left it?’

‘Yeah, I don’t think it belongs here.’ Mann took the camera from Daniel and photographed the rose before bagging and labelling it.

Daniel Lu placed the family photo flat between two pieces of absorbent paper and inside a plastic sleeve. ‘Whoever did this was sat on him whilst they delivered the final wound. My guess is they used a butcher’s knife to cut off his head. It must have taken a while. Judging by the saturation of blood here on the pillow I would say they tipped his head forward and cut from behind first. Then I think this print here,’ Daniel examined an oval blood stain on the sheet, ‘is from the perp’s knee. I think the killer knelt on his chest and used their weight to put pressure onto the knife and sever the spine between vertebrae three and four.’ Daniel pointed to the handprints in blood on either side of Max Kosmos’s chest ‘We should get some good results from these.’

‘There are more prints in the bathroom,’ said Mann. ‘Perp cleaned up before they left.’

‘Take what you need from the box and make a start,’ said Daniel, tying bags around the victim’s hands to preserve any evidence trapped beneath the nails.

Mann went into the bathroom. He lifted the bloodied towels from behind the sink and hung them over the wire across the bath – if they got put into an airtight bag they would be ruined. He looked at the lipstick stain on the mirror. A perfect pink pout. He took out some of Daniel’s fingerprint tape and pressed it over then peeled it off in one sharp, exact move. When he was sure it was as good a print as he was going to get, he wrote on the edge and then filed it in an envelope before leaning forwards and breathing on the glass to frost it. A heart appeared. Mann breathed again to see it clearly. He stood back from it, staring. The writing was smudged; all Mann could make out was

Roses are red…written underneath

Sheng appeared beside him and reached past him and sprayed the mirror with a fixative spray. ‘If it was so much trouble to get the head off, why did the killer bother?’

Mann stared at the misty heart in the mirror.

‘And where is it now?’