Page 98 of The Killer’s Mark

Jasmine fell to the floor.

Deader than disco.

Two of the Red Chamber guys put her in a waiting wheelchair. The third checked the floor for spots of blood. Richard watched dispassionately. He reached down and retrieved his diamond earrings. Slipped them in his pocket. When they’d taken her body into the staff-only area, he left the building without a backwards glance and climbed into his Jaguar. If he was quick, he could make his dinner reservation.

The Surgeon, capital S, was waiting for Jasmine in a back room. The pet incinerator was already roaring. The Red Chamber guys heaved her corpse onto the veterinarian’s surgery table.

The Surgeon leaned in and studied the sole of her cooling right foot. They didn’t rush him. Didn’t ask him to get a move on.

Eventually, as Richard selected a jaunty tune for his drive back to Chicago and the opening notes of Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ sounded through the Jaguar’s superb speakers, the Surgeon began to cut …

It took him an hour to remove the tattoo. He could have completed the procedure quickly. He could have used a plastic surgeon’s dermatome machine, the kind that looked like an electric vegetable peeler, but the Surgeon preferred his knife. It was more intimate, more in tune with his compulsions.

He placed the excised tattoo on a surgical kidney tray and passed it to the waiting man.

The man picked up the strip of flesh and studied the tattoo. Even after all these years, he could still make out the image. The detail was incredible. The colours – yellows and golds and ochres and a hundred other shades – were as vibrant as they’d been twenty years earlier.

It was a remarkable piece of portrait art.

And after the fat had been scraped off and the moisture removed with salt, after it had been stretched and air-dried and mounted, it would be a remarkable keepsake. The film of Jasmine Gold’s murder would be delivered to Richard on a Kingston IronKey tamper-proof USB drive. He would pay six figures for it.

The tattoo was free.

Chapter 81

‘They skin them?’ Poe said.

Gilliard had just finished explaining that as well as the snuff movie, Vice Admiral Boyer’s daughter had also found a dried and mounted tattoo in his AegisBox. Tests concluded the skinning had been completed skilfully just after death.

‘Jesus,’ Poe said. ‘They’re given keepsakes.’

‘Yes,’ Susan replied. ‘And no.’

Poe frowned.

‘Each tattoo is incomplete,’ she explained. ‘Or Vice Admiral Boyer’s was at least. Part of it had been surgically removed immediately after it had been inked.’

‘It’s a safeguard,’ Poe said. ‘By keeping part of the tattoo, the Red Chamber force compliance from the men. Even if the murder of their concubine comes as a complete surprise, no one will go to the authorities. Not when the missing part of the tattoo could turn up at a police station. They’d be implicating themselves.’ He paused for a beat. ‘It would only work if there was a way to demonstrably link the Red Chamber’s client with that specific tattoo, though. Otherwise he could just say he bought it from a black art dealer. The same way shrunken heads are bought and sold.’

Gilliard nodded. ‘We think that somehow the client’s DNA is put into the piece the Red Chamber keep. That way they link the tattoo with the man.’

‘Probably blood,’ Poe said. ‘It can be mixed with the ink. And if part of the tattoo is immediately cut off, the DNA in the blood can be preserved indefinitely.’

‘We think blood too,’ Gilliard said. ‘You can understand why this is such a large investigation?’

Poe nodded. ‘The vice admiral’s movie? It definitely showed the murder of his concubine? It hadn’t been tampered with?’

‘It’s genuine. It shows the woman being shot in the back of the head. No sexual abuse, no torture. No emotion whatsoever. Just a straight-up bullet to the head. It was as if they were slaughtering a food animal.’

‘Jesus,’ Poe said again. Bradshaw leaned across and touched his arm. Reminded him she was there with him. It was reassuring. He said, ‘And his daughter thought, “Sod the damage to the family name, I’m going to the cops”?’

‘Believe it or not, that’s exactly what happened.’

‘Which kick-started a transnational investigation?’

Gilliard nodded.

‘Then a few years later, me and Tilly come along with a photograph of a Red Chamber woman who very clearly isn’t a concubine any more. More importantly, she’s not dead. And because I’m ex-NCA and still have friends there, I ask someone to search the name Vincent du Buk. That trips an alarm with Susan, who tags along to my meeting with DCI Flynn. Does some sly interrogation. Realises Tilly and I are looking for the same woman you’re looking for.’