Chapter 66
Kai Jin was in trouble.
This was nothing new. He’d been in trouble ever since his gambling debts had got out of hand.
His mother had warned him that the odds were always in the Forty-Fours’ favour.
That they didn’t run illegal mah-jong games as a community service.
They ran them to make money and to trap people.
They liked it when people couldn’t pay their debts.
It was why they were so happy extending credit.
But Kai had been young and foolish. He didn’t worry about debt.
His art would always make money. But when he went to the Forty-Fours to negotiate more time, he found that the Red Chamber had bought his debt.
And they weren’t interested in what he could get for his art, they were interested in what his art could get for them.
That had been decades ago. Years and years of misery. Only the thought of what the Red Chamber would do to his dear mother had stopped him from taking his own life.
But the trouble he was in now had nothing to do with his gambling debts.
It was why he was strapped to a beef carcass in a Kühllager in Düsseldorf.
A German cold room. The men, none of whom he had worked with before, had taken care not to touch his hands when they’d tied him to the beef and hoisted him in the air.
A man they called the Surgeon checked his pulse and his blood pressure, then nodded. Satisfied.
The cold room door opened. A triad Kai did recognise walked in.
He was a boss. Maybe the boss. Kai didn’t know his name, but he had a badly drawn tattoo on his hand.
A dragon with uneven eyes. It made the dragon look simple.
Kai had known him twenty years, and each time he saw him, he disliked him just that little bit more.
The triad was wearing an oversized fur coat and a hat.
‘I’ve just got off a plane, Kai,’ he said without preamble. ‘Do you know why I’ve had to leave Newcastle at such short notice? Why I’m neglecting our business interests?’
Kai shook his head. He had no idea.
‘Because someone has been asking after you,’ the boss said. ‘He’s been looking for you.’
Kai said nothing.
‘Can you explain that? He shouldn’t even know of your existence. Yet somehow he knows your name.’
‘I can’t,’ Kai said, shaking his head again. ‘I’ve not been out of Germany this year. There’s no point. You won’t let me visit my mother. The only people I see are my contacts here.’
‘What about Greta?’
‘My girlfriend believes I’m a regular tattooist. She doesn’t know about the Red Chamber. She would leave if she did.’
The triad didn’t doubt it. His own wife didn’t know what he did. She thought he sold fish. ‘I’m told you’ve been asking questions,’ he said.
‘Once,’ Kai said. ‘I asked the nurse why blood needed to be added to the tattoo ink. He didn’t answer.’
‘Why did you ask? You haven’t before.’
Being strapped to a beef carcass made it difficult, but Kai did his best to shrug. ‘I hear things.’
The triad didn’t react. It was as if he’d expected something like that. ‘Things you didn’t like?’
Kai nodded.
‘But you haven’t asked anything else?’
‘No.’
‘You haven’t asked one of the girls to smuggle out a message?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Yet a private detective is asking about your tattoos. Why is that, Kai?’
‘I don’t know.’
The boss sighed. ‘What do you think we should do to people who hear things they don’t like and ask questions they aren’t supposed to ask?’
Kai didn’t reply. It sounded like a rhetorical question.
‘You don’t know?’ The triad nodded at the men either side of Kai. One moved behind him and gripped his shoulder; the other grabbed his head. ‘Fortunately, I do.’
He held out his hand. One of his men passed him a meat hook. A small one. Used for a joint rather than the whole carcass. He stood in front of Kai.
‘The simplest solutions are often the most elegant,’ he said. ‘Open your mouth.’
Kai didn’t.
‘If you don’t open your mouth, Kai, I’ll smash your teeth out with a hammer.’
Still Kai’s mouth remained shut.
‘And whatever you force me to do to you, I’ll do to your mother when I return to Newcastle.’
Kai closed his eyes and began to tremble. But he opened his mouth. The triad didn’t hesitate. He pressed the tip of the meat hook into Kai’s tongue and forced it all the way through. It was like he was baiting a hook.
‘Open your eyes, Kai,’ he said.
Terrified of what the man might do to his dear mother, Kai complied.
And saw the triad was now holding a boning knife. The kind used to trim fat and tendons from cuts of meat. Well used and honed to cruel perfection.
The triad pulled the meat hook, stretching Kai’s tongue so far it felt as though he might rip it out.
He didn’t.
Not that it mattered. Not when he sliced off Kai’s tongue at the root.
‘Now you can’t ask questions you shouldn’t ask,’ he said calmly.
He jiggled the meat hook until the severed tongue fell to the floor.
It sounded like dropped liver. He kicked it aside the way he might kick away a piece of trash, then, without warning, he leaned in, pressed the tip of the meat hook into Kai’s left ear and ruptured his eardrum.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t that painful. Not compared to his tongue.
The triad repeated the process with his right ear.
‘And now you can’t hear things you don’t like,’ he said to the now deaf Kai. He turned to the Surgeon. ‘Sew him up. I need him back at work next week.’