Kiss & Die - Lee Weeks [49]
She stopped to listen to him calling her from the bedroom. He sounded different, tired. She checked her watch. It had been ten minutes. The drug would be working by now. ‘Clever girl, Ruby,’ she said to herself in perfect English. ‘You’re a clever girl, Ruby. Now you get your reward.’ She opened her handbag and gently slid her hand inside. She felt the cold metal of the scalpel and of the saw’s handle. She felt the handcuffs. She patted them. ‘Soon…very soon…’
Mann left the bathroom and took two steps further into the room. Mann’s feet trod silently on the hotel carpet: browns, golds, mottled blood, soft and sticky underfoot. The room was cold and still, and had the smell of a morgue. The air con hummed like a waterfall. From the television came a newsreader’s droning voice. The colours from the screen seeped into the room’s atmosphere. Mann listened hard. There was no sound of breathing or sleep. To his right the wardrobe door was open. The safe door was locked. The bed was just around to his left now, past the bathroom wall. The corner was coming into view.
Ruby emerged from the bathroom and walked around the corner. He was sat in the chair by the bed.
‘Why aren’t you naked?’ She went over to him and he tried to pull her onto his lap. His speech was slurred, his eyes rolling. She giggled and wriggled away. He tried to stand but he lurched and stumbled down again. He fell against the chair and tried to pull himself upright. He shook his head to try to clear it. His body swayed as he tried to stay standing. Ruby steered him towards the bed. His hands were grabbing her. She pushed him down on the bed. She stood over him and waited. She heard his breathing deepen and felt his body slump.
‘Cheers.’ She saluted his unconscious frame and poured champagne over his face to see if he would stir. His chest rose and fell. She placed the ball gag into his mouth and dragged him a little further up the bed. She lifted his arms above his head, handcuffed them and then tied them around the headboard; she took off his trousers, slowly, carefully, then his boxers. She opened his legs wide, took her tape and secured each leg to the bed. She took out her scalpel and cut around the shoulder joint, watching him all the time to make sure she had got the dosage right. His brow wrinkled and he groaned in pain. Ruby cut deeper. Yes, she was a clever girl. She knew how much to give him so that he could not move but he would still feel every cut she made.
Mann stepped over clothes scattered on the floor: a man’s shoes, a pair of men’s jeans: one leg inside out. He looked up. There were arcs of blood across the ceiling. The edge of the bed came into view. He saw a man’s feet. He came around the corner. The bed was turned dark brown with blood.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he uttered aloud as he looked at the headless, pulped body of a man lying on the bed.. He walked around to the side of the bed. On the bedside table lay a family photo covered in blood.
Chapter 33
Mann stepped back from the doorway and allowed Daniel Lu through. He had already got the hotel to erect a barrier on that side of the landing and to stop allowing guests back up to the floor. As the first officer on scene it was his job to secure it, stop it getting contaminated. Daniel handed him a protective forensic suit. ‘Put this on. You can help me till the rest of the team arrive. This is the only point of entry, in and out. Perp must have touched it. Dust the door for me.’
Daniel Lu was the best CSI investigator there was. He was tireless, he was meticulous. He had been the one to first examine Helen’s body when it had been found dumped in a bin bag at a reservoir in the New Territories. He’d never lost that look of sympathy and awkwardness whenever they met. It had been a hell of a day, a hell of a time.
Tom Sheng arrived straight after Daniel. ‘Who found the body?’ He didn’t bother with pleasantries. There was little love lost between Daniel