‘Which troops? Do you mean the government? They chickened out. We saw them driving away in a trail of dust. Your government took off in the other direction. We saw them when we were on the way in here. New day—new deals—get the picture? They decided this wasn’t for them. The men in black got an urgent call back at the mother ship.’ He sniggered.

Mann kept still. He was lying behind Comfort’s dead body. He realised he had been hit. A bullet had passed right through Comfort and into Mann’s side. It had lodged in the muscle there.

‘And here we have—Johnny Mann. What about you? I bet you wish you were somewhere else right now? We seem to find each other wherever we go, don’t we? Now I have come to tell you that you have failed your mission.’

‘The time isn’t up yet. I still have another five hours to find Amy Tang. The Teacher knows where she is, and so do others.’

‘We believe that the little girl is dead.’

‘Has CK ordered this strike?’

‘No one will tell him it started early, and he doesn’t care as long as he gets something out of it, and he will. He will take over all. It starts now.’

Two Wo Shing Shing officers held on to the Colonel. Stevie Ho spoke to a third officer.

‘Tie the madman to the chair and keep an eye on Mann and that priest. No one moves from here until I say.’

Mann looked at Father Finn to see if he was all right. He nodded back an affirmation.

‘Can I help Johnny? Is he badly wounded?’ Father Finn asked Stevie.

Stevie looked Mann over. He knelt down beside him and lifted his jacket with his finger. He saw the splintered rib that was protruding out of Mann’s shirt and he saw his side drenched with blood from the wound at his waist.

He got up, unimpressed. ‘He’s had worse. Stay where you are.’

Mann tore away the material that was frayed around his broken rib and pressed it into the wound on his side. He held it tightly closed with his fingers. He couldn’t afford to pass out. He might never wake up. He stayed as still as he could. From his position on the ground he watched as Stevie walked away from him, past Comfort and Brandon, over to the Colonel.

‘Strip him,’ he ordered his officers. ‘Make sure you tie him tightly.’

The Colonel began shouting—cursing and spitting out his hatred of all things Chinese and foreign. It was as if the act of tying him in, of restraining him, had finally brought his predicament home to him. His madness had reached full pitch now. He was dribbling and spitting and his eyes boiled in his head.

Stevie held out his hand to his deputy, who placed a rolled-up long leather roll into it. Stevie took out the long thin-bladed knife from inside. He came to the Colonel’s side, reached across him and cut him, a long, smooth, precise cut across his chest with the blade. The Colonel let out a howl of agony as the flesh parted and the cut bled along its entire length in a smooth line. Large globules of dark blood peeled down his chest and spread around the folds of blanched skin on his stomach.

Stevie stood back to admire his handiwork. He was in no hurry. He took hold of a roll of fat on the Colonel’s abdomen and sliced through. The Colonel screamed in his agony. Stevie dropped it from his hand.

‘Now, I want you to understand what is happening to you,’ Stevie said. He dug the point of the knife into the Colonel’s shoulder, where Comfort had shot him, tugged it in an upward movement to open the wound further, then he twisted it until it scraped on the shoulder bone. The Colonel had to be held down. He was shaking the chair apart.

‘You had the audacity to think that you could form your own triad society. You don’t know the meaning of the word triad. You know nothing of its history or its sacredness. But, a triad you claim you are, and you will die a triad’s death. I will bestow on you a fitting honour, ling-chi, death of a thousand cuts. It is an ancient and a ceremonial death reserved for traitors and motherfuckers and triad pretenders like you. I will carve your body up bit by bit. Until, in the end, when you are begging for me to end it, I will make a decision either to bury you alive or give one final piercing into your heart and end your agony. Lucky for us that you are a Shabu addict. Oh yes—I have studied you and your habits—it is well to know one’s enemy. You will be with us to the end. You will be wide awake to feel every cut.’

He laughed, and so did his deputies.

‘Do you think I fear you? Go to fucking hell you chink bastard,’ the Colonel laughed. ‘I fear no man. You want to kill me, go ahead.’

‘Fighting talk, old man. Soon you will have less to say.’

He cut the Colonel again, ten neat slashes that opened his back and crisscrossed the spine from across the shoulders downwards. Stevie slipped the knife beneath the skin and slid it along to separate it from the flesh. The Colonel began choking on his vomit. Stevie lifted sections of flesh from his back.

‘I hope somebody’s counting: fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and let’s make seventeen a good one.’ He cut off his ear. ‘The only place I will not cut is your vocal cords—I want to hear you beg for mercy, beg for the end.’ Maya began whimpering softly.

The Colonel had the strength of a bull. He dragged the men with him that held him on the chair. The blood ran down his neck. His tendons stood out like tightened cables in his neck and shoulders. His face was a puffy red mash of anger as he screamed obscenities skyward. When he had stopped cursing he moved his head slowly back towards Stevie, breathing so hard that at every breath he sprayed blood and mucus out.

‘Wait. Wait,’ he said. ‘We have only just begun here. We have the richest, most powerful, most corrupt contacts from around the world in with us. You can be a big part of it. I can share what we have.’

Stevie laughed cynically.

‘We do not need

you.

We have followed your every move. We know every move you’ve made since the beginning. We have spies everywhere. You thought you had been so smart. The truth is…’ Stevie cut deep into the chest fat as he spoke ‘…whilst you were busy raping children, we were busy buggering you.’ He twisted the knife and scooped out the flesh. The deputies laughed.

Mann lay still. He had to keep movement to a minimum. He could feel the blood wet and sticky on his clothes. The pain was beginning to kick in. Mann watched the Colonel’s world collapsing. His Angeles—a few dirty streets were his kingdom. The whores and the whorists were his subjects. Angeles—for the sad, the lonely and the screwed. The Colonel’s world, was turning against him. His subjects were in hiding. His paid help had had a better offer.

‘Do not forsake me!’ he bellowed to the corners of his kingdom.

From a parallel road came the sound of girls laughing and dogs howling all to the boom-boom of the bar music. Father Finn started to pray.

Stevie went around to the front of the chair. He dragged a heavy wooden palm plant-pot with him. The Father scrabbled out of the way as Stevie rested the Colonel’s leg on it. An officer came forward to hold it in position. He held his hand out to one of his men, gesturing that he wanted what the man held secreted in his jacket. He was handed a razor-sharp small chopper. The Colonel’s face pulled and contorted as he screamed. He was snorting like a bull, chained and about to be castrated. Every sinew in his body fought the restraint and screamed with anger as he twisted and writhed.

Stevie came around to the front. He pressed the Colonel’s foot flat onto the wooden rim of the pot and chopped off each of the Colonel’s toes.

‘Please. Please.’ The Colonel’s head was down.

‘You beg too soon. You are a coward. What you fail to realise, my white brother, is that the world is a small place and CK already owns a lot of it. You have only begun to scratch the surface. You think you have created this super-group of powerful allies. Think again. CK has been building his up for fifty years. He can call in any favour he desires. Whilst you, white boy, you are just a little boy wearing his big brother’s trousers.’