Chapter 133
The old man who entered Poe’s office had wispy white hair and deep eye sockets.
He carried an ornate cane and walked slowly.
Limped. Bradshaw had said that in his youth he’d taken a bullet to the femur in what was undoubtedly an ‘exciting incident’.
His trousers were loose, and he was holding them up with his free hand.
His cardigan was frayed at the sleeves and the buttons were in the wrong holes.
He looked like he’d just climbed out of a care home window.
Li Jie Wang, the Forty-Fours’ dragon head, was, Poe thought, a proper scruffy bastard.
He’d come on his own, which Poe took as a good sign.
Poe stood up to greet him. He gestured at one of the seats at his small conference table. The dragon head sat gratefully.
‘Old bones,’ he said.
‘Comes to us all,’ Poe replied. ‘Would you like a drink?’
‘I’m fine.’
Poe picked up his mug and downed his now cold espresso.
‘You don’t seem surprised to see me, Mr Washington Poe.’
‘Poe’s fine. No honorific. And no, I’m not surprised to see you. I know who you are.’
‘Yet you seem unafraid.’
‘Cautious, maybe.’
‘And why is that?’
Poe shrugged. ‘Beware of an old man in a profession where men usually die young.’
The dragon head chuckled. It sounded dry. ‘Very good. I may use that.’
‘It’s not my quote,’ Poe said. ‘A US Navy SEAL called Kevin Lacz penned it. But it fits our situation. I’m not afraid, but I will pay you the respect you undoubtedly deserve.’
‘You sent me some videos,’ Li Jie Wang said. ‘I think they were to get my attention?’
‘More a clarion call.’
‘I employ many people, Poe, and some of them work in … how can I put it … our cyber division. They are world leaders in phishing and cloning cards and identity theft. They tell me they have never seen deepfakes of this quality. They say they are of such high quality they would stand up to legal scrutiny. One even suggested they must be genuine.’ He smiled politely. ‘That man is no longer in my employ.’
‘Is he in anyone’s employ?’
‘I think not.’
‘That’s a shame.’
‘The videos you sent were not nice videos, Poe. I found them difficult to watch. I found the one with my granddaughter particularly upsetting. She is as pure as I am corrupt. The white to my black.’ He seemed upset.
Poe didn’t care. ‘I initially wondered how someone could conceive something like that. But I haven’t got to where I am by not thinking about why someone would conceive something like that.
Their motivations. And then I thought about what I would do if someone was a threat to my family.
And when I realised you were doing what I would do, everything became easy to understand.
My advisers said I should call your bluff.
That this was a man bound by rules and honour.
But the more I studied you, the more I understood that this was not a man who bluffs.
This was not a man constrained by rules.
I even thought this was a man without honour.
’ The dragon head smiled. His rheumy eyes twinkled.
‘I did not mean that as an insult. Men of honour are for fairy tales. It is the men without honour who get things done. Who achieve great things.’
‘I didn’t take it as an insult,’ Poe said. ‘It’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me.’
‘And that is why I was a little later than you might have expected me to be. A man who doesn’t bluff has demands. I was anticipating your demands and pre-empting them.’
‘OK,’ Poe said.
‘We knew that the men you went up against, this Red Chamber, were stealing from the women they employed. We knew this because it is what we would have done. We did nothing because they were sending us a lot of money. We didn’t care that we didn’t get what we were owed from the money they stole.
They’re criminals and that’s what criminals do.
So we let them keep it. But we did not know that they were killing these women.
Skinning them. Even with our extensive network, that remained hidden to us. ’
The dragon head cleared his throat. He reached into his cardigan pocket and put a small bottle on the table. He unscrewed the cap and removed two white pills.
‘For my heart,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I will trouble you for some water?’
When Poe returned with a glass of water, Li Jie Wang gulped down his medication.
‘The Red Chamber fools who fled to mainland China have been found and … dealt with,’ he said after he’d put away his pills.
‘They will not be troubling anyone again. A man who called himself the Surgeon, the failed doctor who removed their tattoos, is dead. His body is in Germany, but it will never be found.’
‘And the rest?’
The dragon head reached into his inside pocket. He handed Poe a piece of paper.
‘What’s this?’
‘It’s a location. Or to be precise, it’s a grave. When the authorities exhume it, they will find twelve men. Bound, hooded and shot in the back of the head. One of them also has a nasty bullet wound in his knee, but that wasn’t our doing.’
Poe said nothing.
‘Another has a dragon tattoo on his hand. The eyes are not well drawn. I believe you had already discussed this with him?’
The dragon head straightened in his seat.
Gone was the deceptively courteous old man; instead, Poe saw the cold-hearted, ruthless gangster that he was.
He held Poe’s eyes. Poe thought this must be what the gopher saw when it had been run to ground by the rattlesnake.
‘The Red Chamber no longer exists, Mr Poe. It has been dismantled. The remaining members – the ones who were unaware the women were being murdered – have been assimilated into my organisation. They are no threat to you or your family.’
Poe had just heard Li Jie Wang say he’d ordered twelve murders.
Another in Germany. More in mainland China.
He didn’t know how he was supposed to process that.
Those men had died because of actions he’d taken.
He’d known it was a possibility, of course.
Probable even. How could it not be? When you poked the snake, you’d better do it with a long stick, because it was going to bite something.
He thought about it some and decided he didn’t care.
Those men had been ghouls, the true epitome of evil.
With Nazi-like efficiency, they’d monetised murder.
And no court in the land could have touched the architects.
Some of the foot soldiers might have seen the inside of a cell, but the men who mattered wouldn’t have lost a day’s liberty.
It was why the Red Chamber had been compartmentalised the way it had.
To protect the bosses from leaks, from intrusive and effective investigations.
A compartmentalised organisation didn’t mean shit to the Forty-Fours, though.
That was why Poe had used them the way he had.
The dragon head mistook his silence for indifference. He said, ‘You don’t seem upset.’
‘You’ve seen what I’ve done. Tell me, Mr Wang, is there anything you think I won’t do to protect this girl? My family?’
The old man answered immediately. ‘No, I don’t think there is.
’ He got to his feet. It looked awkward, painful.
He reached for his cane and leaned on it.
‘And now I think our business is concluded,’ he said.
‘You’re an impressive man, Mr Poe. I would very much like it if we never crossed paths again.
No good can come of it. I think we would both suffer. ’
‘Not so fast, old-timer,’ Poe said.
The dragon head sat back down. Sighed.
‘You haven’t heard my demands yet.’
‘But what else is there? Everything I’ve learned about you tells me that you won’t try to shake me down. If you did, I would pay – you’d leave me no choice – but it would leave an unexpectedly sour taste in my mouth. I think I would be disappointed.’
‘I don’t want your money, Mr Wang.’
‘You’re going to make a citizen’s arrest? Try to tie me to the mass grave I’ve just told you about?’
‘I don’t want to arrest you either,’ Poe said. ‘I’m sure there are active investigations into the Forty-Fours. Not my circus, not my monkeys. I’ll let them get on with it.’
‘Then what?’
‘I want the names of every Red Chamber client. Every rich sociopath who bought a woman and stood by while she was murdered. I want every sick bastard with a film in their safe and a mounted tattoo on their wall. I want their names and I want evidence. The Red Chamber snipped off a piece of each tattoo before the ink had even dried. That could only have been done to preserve DNA. To guarantee the men’s silence.
And don’t think of shielding a favoured politician or a man of influence.
We’ll run a parallel investigation, and if I uncover just one name you’ve kept from me, the videos go public.
We press the button.’ Poe paused. ‘Do you believe me?’
The old man nodded. ‘I do.’
‘Then do we have an agreement?’
‘I’ll get you the names. I’ll get you your DNA evidence. It might take some time.’
‘You have two weeks.’
‘I think that’s possible. Is there anything else?’
‘The girl is safe from reprisals.’
‘That goes without saying. What about the mother? I understand she bred the daughter as a sacrificial lamb.’
Poe hesitated, but not for long. ‘The mother is safe too.’
‘Anyone else?’
‘Kai Jin.’
The dragon head looked puzzled. ‘I don’t know who this person is.’
‘He’s the tattooist,’ Poe said. ‘He was unaware of what happened to the girls after he’d tattooed them. When he asked questions, Dongyang Dong cut out his tongue. He is to be afforded the same protections as Esmerée. No reprisals. His debt to the triads will be forgiven.’
‘Agreed.’
Poe reached into his wallet and pulled out a piece of paper. On it was a list of names. His own, Bradshaw, Estelle, Esmerée. Towler and his daughter. A few others. Océane was on it too, although she’d been crossed out a couple of times.
‘If everyone on this list stays safe, and continues to stay safe, those deepfake videos will never see the light of day. They’ll stay inside the most secure computer system there is. If any one of us has an unfortunate accident, well …’
‘Well what, Mr Poe?’
‘You and your family will become the most reviled people on the planet, of course.’
After the dragon head had left his office, Poe called Bradshaw.
‘It’s over, Tilly. We can all go home. Will you let Estelle know?’
‘She’s here now.’
‘I’ll see you back at Highwood. I have a couple of things to do first, but I won’t be long.’
‘Did it go OK, Poe?’
‘Better than I expected, worse than I thought. One thing’s for sure, we won’t be bothered by the Red Chamber any more. They no longer exist.’
‘Gosh. You’ll tell me when I get home?’
‘I will.’
‘And what about the other thing?’
‘If Estelle agrees, we’ll do it tonight.’
‘Good.’