Chapter 81
‘They skin them?’ Poe said.
Gilliard had just finished explaining that as well as the snuff movie, Vice Admiral Boyer’s daughter had also found a dried and mounted tattoo in his AegisBox. Tests concluded the skinning had been completed skilfully just after death.
‘Jesus,’ Poe said. ‘They’re given keepsakes.’
‘Yes,’ Susan replied. ‘And no.’
Poe frowned.
‘Each tattoo is incomplete,’ she explained. ‘Or Vice Admiral Boyer’s was at least. Part of it had been surgically removed immediately after it had been inked.’
‘It’s a safeguard,’ Poe said. ‘By keeping part of the tattoo, the Red Chamber force compliance from the men. Even if the murder of their concubine comes as a complete surprise, no one will go to the authorities. Not when the missing part of the tattoo could turn up at a police station. They’d be implicating themselves.
’ He paused for a beat. ‘It would only work if there was a way to demonstrably link the Red Chamber’s client with that specific tattoo, though.
Otherwise he could just say he bought it from a black art dealer.
The same way shrunken heads are bought and sold. ’
Gilliard nodded. ‘We think that somehow the client’s DNA is put into the piece the Red Chamber keep. That way they link the tattoo with the man.’
‘Probably blood,’ Poe said. ‘It can be mixed with the ink. And if part of the tattoo is immediately cut off, the DNA in the blood can be preserved indefinitely.’
‘We think blood too,’ Gilliard said. ‘You can understand why this is such a large investigation?’
Poe nodded. ‘The vice admiral’s movie? It definitely showed the murder of his concubine? It hadn’t been tampered with?’
‘It’s genuine. It shows the woman being shot in the back of the head. No sexual abuse, no torture. No emotion whatsoever. Just a straight-up bullet to the head. It was as if they were slaughtering a food animal.’
‘Jesus,’ Poe said again. Bradshaw leaned across and touched his arm. Reminded him she was there with him. It was reassuring. He said, ‘And his daughter thought, “Sod the damage to the family name, I’m going to the cops”?’
‘Believe it or not, that’s exactly what happened.’
‘Which kick-started a transnational investigation?’
Gilliard nodded.
‘Then a few years later, me and Tilly come along with a photograph of a Red Chamber woman who very clearly isn’t a concubine any more.
More importantly, she’s not dead. And because I’m ex-NCA and still have friends there, I ask someone to search the name Vincent du Buk.
That trips an alarm with Susan, who tags along to my meeting with DCI Flynn.
Does some sly interrogation. Realises Tilly and I are looking for the same woman you’re looking for. ’
‘Océane Blue was Vincent du Buk’s Red Chamber concubine,’ Gilliard said.
‘We believe that two years before her contract was due to finish, she found out it didn’t end with champagne and caviar after all.
She killed du Buk and fled. We further believe she took whatever it was she saw that convinced her she was in mortal danger. ’
‘Which is why the Red Chamber are also desperate to find her,’ Poe said. ‘Proof like that will put them away for life. Some of their clients too.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Did you know she was alive?’
‘No,’ Gilliard replied. ‘Until you started asking about her, we’d assumed the Red Chamber had caught up with her. But your photograph showed that not only was she alive, she was until recently living in England.’
‘OK,’ Poe said. ‘It seems we’ve stumbled into something much bigger than we’d thought. We’ll tell you everything we know.’
‘Including who hired you?’
The office door opened. Esmerée stomped in, flaky pastry all down her T-shirt. She was chewing a Greggs sausage roll the same way Edgar chewed a Greggs sausage roll. ‘These are sooooo freakin’ tasty,’ she said. ‘I must have eaten six of the suckers on my way back from the deli.’
‘No,’ Poe said. ‘I won’t be telling you who my client is.’