Kiss & Die - Lee Weeks [44]
Mann took a step towards her and she stepped backwards until she was pressed against the lift wall. She didn’t panic. She stared up into his eyes and seemed to expect, welcome, the anger. Mann watched as her eyes turned deep river green and she came so close to his face that he felt her breath on his face, tasted it, that adrenalin, that blood sugar.
Outside the noise of engineers clanking away at the mechanism to get it restarted echoed and then the lift started moving and Victoria pitched forwards. Mann held on to her, instinctively. He felt the curves beneath her dress. He pressed her to him. She looked up at him and closed her eyes. He leant forwards and stopped. He slid his hand up over her breast and caught her around the throat. Her eyes snapped open.
‘Don’t cross me, Victoria. You are a small girl playing with the big boys. Don’t fuck with me. You will regret it. Every day I see my life slipping away. I am beyond fear. Beyond happiness. I just might take you with me.’
Chapter 29
‘Immigration police?’ David asked.
Shrimp shook his head, slowly, cautiously, not sure what would be the best reply.
David reached out and slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Good,’ he said in a deep strong voice, still maintaining the grin but this time accompanied by a laugh. David turned and nodded to his friends at the door. ‘He’s okay. Bring him a drink.’
David turned back to Shrimp. ‘You will have a drink with us, Shrimp?’
‘Sure.’
David took the top off a bottle of Coke and handed it to him. Shrimp looked him over. The heat in the room was unbearable. The heady smell of the plastic clothes wrap was overpowering. Shrimp looked back to the corridor. More Africans were staring in at him. Shrimp drank his Coke.
David slapped him again and boomed laughter. ‘I like you. Come.’ He stood and picked Shrimp up by the arm. ‘We will talk of the Mansions with you.’
He led Shrimp to the bar next door. They sat on stools in the small space, just two tables and a dozen stools. David angled a tabletop fan onto them.
‘I’ll help you if you help me. What trouble are you here about? This place is nonstop trouble.’
‘Have you heard of a new young group of Triads called the Outcasts?’
David nodded. He began rolling a cigarette; he licked the edge of the paper with his pink tongue.
‘Of course. They are running wild in here. They take a block at a time. They were running this evening. Every night they pick on someone else. They pick on us a lot. That’s why we stick together on this landing. They don’t dare take us on together. Like little rats they watch all the time. They wait. They whistle up and down the corridors, calling to each other. It wasn’t always this bad.’ He shook his head sadly, looked down at his glass and then out at the corridor. Outside life had returned to normal. The sound of laughter and music returned. David’s face clouded with thought, his eyes filled with a faraway sorrow. ‘This place has been my home for six months. I came here looking for my brother. He’s been missing for a year now. I ask everyone here. I show them this photo.’ He took out a photo from his shirt pocket and slid it across the table to Shrimp. ‘This is my younger brother, Ishmael.’ It was a sunny photo of David with his arm around the younger man’s shoulders, he was taller than David by a few inches. He was less bulky, his young face was full of laughter. He had a baseball cap on his head. On the right side of his face he had a scar that sliced his face from his ear to his mouth.
‘Somewhere in the Mansions there is the answer to where Ishmael has gone. If I cannot find him alive, I will find his body and have something to take home to our mother. Ishmael was a peaceful man. He liked his women, but he didn’t like to get into fights. I want to know what happened to him. Do you understand?’
‘Yes. Can you get me a copy of this photo?’
‘Yes. Take it. I have many.’
‘Do you think it has anything to do with the kids in the Mansions?’
‘Yes. I do. Someone here knows something. One of these kids knows what happened to him.