Kiss & Die - Lee Weeks [31]
‘How did it go?’
‘Interesting. I met Victoria Chan.’
Mia raised an eyebrow. ‘What was she like?’
‘Ruthless, serpent-like, ice cold like her father, just like he was in the old days, greedy for power and wealth. She has taken over Chan’s job of advisor – Paper Fan.’
‘CK seems on board?’
‘Yes. I’d say he’s grooming her to take over one day. But this is her proving time. She has to get this right.’
‘Why is she interfering with recruitment?’
‘He’s letting her make decisions on all levels. He is letting her prove herself. She doesn’t have to work her way up the ranks. She’s jumping straight in at the deep end.’
‘It’s a brave choice for both of them. CK must have a lot of faith in his daughter,’ said Mia.
‘Or maybe he’s setting her up to fail?’ said Mann. ‘Either way, we’ll see, but she’s not to be underestimated. It feels to me like she has waited, bided her time and now she is ready to strike. She has been using her time wisely over the years with Chan. I get the feeling she knows a lot about what her late husband was really up to, more than you’d expect a trophy wife to. I think she made it her business to know, and she’s been playing a game. She’s not even making pretence at playing the grieving widow – she’s reborn.’
‘All those years she’s been planning this?’
‘I think so. But there is something about her – she has many faces. She can be many things. She played the dutiful wife, she plays the dutiful daughter. I think she was just waiting for her time to come and now it has. Marriage to Chan must have been a living hell. He was a lowlife. I did her a favour when I made him swim for the shore.’
‘You left him in the middle of the ocean knowing he couldn’t swim and had a phobia about the water, that’s not quite the same.’
‘I don’t feel bad. The sharks would have finished him before he drowned. That was nothing to the agony and suffering he caused to countless others…’ Mann’s voice trailed off. Helen’s face came into his head. But it wasn’t the face he wanted to remember, it was the face of her dying, stretched plastic across it. He shook his head. ‘I did the world a favour. She wouldn’t disagree. I liberated her. But perhaps I swapped one enemy for a worse one. She has already done a good job of setting me up. It’s going to get really tough convincing anyone I’m in it for the right reasons soon, Mia. I’m not sure I’m ready to offer myself as the sacrificial lamb to the slaughter. I am not sure there’ll be enough of me left to go round.’
Mann smiled at Mia. He opened a drawer and pulled out a bottle of vodka. ‘For emergencies.’ He got out two glasses. ‘It’s been too long since we had a drink together.’
‘Yeah, just make it a small one.’ Mann poured her his idea of a small one and handed it to her. ‘Jesus. I’m glad I didn’t ask for a big one. Mann, how much of this stuff are you getting through?’
‘Not enough. Work keeps getting in the way.’ He grinned at her. She didn’t smile back. When she frowned her forehead had one long crease in it, it made her look like a confused child.
‘Don’t ever get Botox for that.’
‘What?’
‘That frown that goes right across your forehead. It makes me smile every time I see it. It reminds me of the night you got drunk when we graduated from police academy. Do you remember that night?’
They’d been young together. They’d had fun once. They had seen one another go through a lot of things and come out alone. Now nearly eighteen years later neither had found themselves a family. Mia had been mixed up with one married man after the other. The worst was Daniel Lu, another policeman, the head of Crime Scene Investigations. He had been her biggest weakness and it had been a bad one. She had wasted twelve years on him before he called it a day and went back to his wife. With Helen, Mann had probably come as near to finding love as he was ever going to and lost it. But he didn’t think he was ever capable of loving totally. He had