Chapter 80
It was Jasmine Gold’s big day. Her forty-first birthday.
Payday. For the first time in twenty years, Richard Lloyd, her Red Chamber benefactor, had treated her to breakfast in bed.
A pain au chocolat and a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.
Her favourite. He’d given her an exquisite pair of diamond earrings to remember him by, then taken her to lunch.
They’d gone to Chicago’s most exclusive restaurant, where they’d eaten Rappahannock oysters and drunk Louis Roederer champagne.
They’d reminisced about the last twenty years and discussed her future.
She was, as Richard explained, about to become a very wealthy woman.
He hoped she would keep in touch. She’d laughed and said her replacement was probably already paid for.
Richard didn’t disagree, which kind of hurt Jasmine, but not enough to spoil her mood.
After lunch, Richard took her to see her Red Chamber contacts, the men who had managed her money for the last twenty years.
It was an emotional day for them as well, he’d said, but more importantly, she’d need the passwords to her new bank accounts.
He had arranged to meet them at a veterinarian’s office thirty miles out of the city.
He said that although the Red Chamber guys were always under police surveillance, this was for her protection rather than theirs.
If the IRS ever got wind of her money, she’d lose half of it in taxes.
Jasmine had replied that the IRS were money-grabbing idiots and she was leaving the US the very next day.
She’d planned to have a year in the Bahamas while she decided what she would do with the rest of her life. Richard had said that was a good plan.
He drove his Jaguar fast and hard and they were soon there.
He led her into the unlocked veterinarian’s office.
Three Red Chamber men were waiting for her.
They smiled, seemed glad to see her one last time.
To say goodbye properly. One of them handed her a glass of fizz, another opened a briefcase and removed some documents.
He passed them to her. The third filmed the event.
Richard said it was so he could see the shock on her face when she realised just how rich she was.
Jasmine fell to the floor.
Deader than disco.
Two of the Red Chamber guys put her in a waiting wheelchair.
The third checked the floor for spots of blood.
Richard watched dispassionately. He reached down and retrieved his diamond earrings.
Slipped them in his pocket. When they’d taken her body into the staff-only area, he left the building without a backwards glance and climbed into his Jaguar.
If he was quick, he could make his dinner reservation.
The Surgeon, capital S, was waiting for Jasmine in a back room. The pet incinerator was already roaring. The Red Chamber guys heaved her corpse onto the veterinarian’s surgery table.
The Surgeon leaned in and studied the sole of her cooling right foot. They didn’t rush him. Didn’t ask him to get a move on.
Eventually, as Richard selected a jaunty tune for his drive back to Chicago and the opening notes of Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ sounded through the Jaguar’s superb speakers, the Surgeon began to cut …
It took him an hour to remove the tattoo. He could have completed the procedure quickly. He could have used a plastic surgeon’s dermatome machine, the kind that looked like an electric vegetable peeler, but the Surgeon preferred his knife. It was more intimate, more in tune with his compulsions.
He placed the excised tattoo on a surgical kidney tray and passed it to the waiting man.
The man picked up the strip of flesh and studied the tattoo. Even after all these years, he could still make out the image. The detail was incredible. The colours – yellows and golds and ochres and a hundred other shades – were as vibrant as they’d been twenty years earlier.
It was a remarkable piece of portrait art.
And after the fat had been scraped off and the moisture removed with salt, after it had been stretched and air-dried and mounted, it would be a remarkable keepsake.
The film of Jasmine Gold’s murder would be delivered to Richard on a Kingston IronKey tamper-proof USB drive. He would pay six figures for it.
The tattoo was free.