Page 80 of The Killer’s Mark

But Kai had been young and foolish. He didn’t worry about debt. His art would always make money. But when he went to the Forty-Fours to negotiate more time, he found that the Red Chamber had bought his debt. And they weren’t interested in what he could get for his art, they were interested in what his art could get for them.

That had been decades ago. Years and years of misery. Only the thought of what the Red Chamber would do to his dear mother had stopped him from taking his own life.

But the trouble he was in now had nothing to do with his gambling debts.

It was why he was strapped to a beef carcass in a Kühllager in Düsseldorf. A German cold room. The men, none of whom he had worked with before, had taken care not to touch his hands when they’d tied him to the beef and hoisted him in the air. A man they called the Surgeon checked his pulse and his blood pressure, then nodded. Satisfied.

The cold room door opened. A triad Kai did recognise walked in. He was a boss. Maybe the boss. Kai didn’t know his name, but he had a badly drawn tattoo on his hand. A dragon with uneven eyes. It made the dragon look simple. Kai had known him twenty years, and each time he saw him, he disliked him just that little bit more. The triad was wearing an oversized fur coat and a hat.

‘I’ve just got off a plane, Kai,’ he said without preamble. ‘Do you know why I’ve had to leave Newcastle at such short notice? Why I’m neglecting our business interests?’

Kai shook his head. He had no idea.

‘Because someone has been asking after you,’ the boss said. ‘He’s been looking for you.’

Kai said nothing.

‘Can you explain that? He shouldn’t even know of your existence. Yet somehow he knows your name.’

‘I can’t,’ Kai said, shaking his head again. ‘I’ve not been out of Germany this year. There’s no point. You won’t let me visit my mother. The only people I see are my contacts here.’

‘What about Greta?’

‘My girlfriend believes I’m a regular tattooist. She doesn’t know about the Red Chamber. She would leave if she did.’

The triad didn’t doubt it. His own wife didn’t know what he did. She thought he sold fish. ‘I’m told you’ve been asking questions,’ he said.

‘Once,’ Kai said. ‘I asked the nurse why blood needed to be added to the tattoo ink. He didn’t answer.’

‘Why did you ask? You haven’t before.’

Being strapped to a beef carcass made it difficult, but Kai did his best to shrug. ‘I hear things.’

The triad didn’t react. It was as if he’d expected something like that. ‘Things you didn’t like?’

Kai nodded.

‘But you haven’t asked anything else?’

‘No.’

‘You haven’t asked one of the girls to smuggle out a message?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Yet a private detective is asking about your tattoos. Why is that, Kai?’

‘I don’t know.’

The boss sighed. ‘What do you think we should do to people who hear things they don’t like and ask questions they aren’t supposed to ask?’

Kai didn’t reply. It sounded like a rhetorical question.

‘You don’t know?’ The triad nodded at the men either side of Kai. One moved behind him and gripped his shoulder; the other grabbed his head. ‘Fortunately, I do.’

He held out his hand. One of his men passed him a meat hook. A small one. Used for a joint rather than the whole carcass. He stood in front of Kai.

‘The simplest solutions are often the most elegant,’ he said. ‘Open your mouth.’