Dragon Head - A Beatrix Rose Thriller: Hong Kong Stories Volume 1 (Beatrix Rose's Hong Kong Stories Book 3) by Mark Dawson Page A

and regrets above her where they couldn’t trouble her any longer.
    “ Hey .”
    She felt the hand on her shoulder and a shaking, gentle at first and then harder. She reached up for it, dug her fingers into the soft flesh beneath the wrist, applied the pressure that would send pain coruscating around the owner’s body.
    “Get off me!”
    She opened her eyes and blinked until she could see again.
    It was a middle-aged Chinese man. He was wincing in agony.
    “What?” she mumbled.
    “Get off my wrist!” he gabbled through the pain in harshly accented English.
    “What do you want?”
    “Your phone. Your phone. It ringing.”
    She heard it now. She let go of him and reached into her pocket. Before she could think of just cancelling the call, switching the phone off and returning to her pipe, she had answered it and pressed it to her ear.
    “What?”
    “Where are you?”
    It was Chau.
    “What do you mean?”
    “You said you wanted to meet. The money?”
    “No, I didn’t.”
    “Yes, you did. You called me.”
    “When?”
    “Yesterday.”
    Had she? She didn’t remember.
    “You said three o’clock on the ferry. It is four. Where are you?”
    Had she said that? Really? It was possible. She thought about it some more and remembered that she had wanted to see him. The money. He had money for her. She wanted the rest of what she was owed. There was a lot and she was going to need all of it. She had called him. He was right. She had.
    “Where are you?”
    “Kowloon. Where you said. Where are you?”
    “Sheung Wan.”
    “You want to come to me?”
    She paused, trying to clear the fumes from her brain. “No, come to me. Sun Yat Sen Park in an hour.”
    #
    CHAU WAS WAITING next to a small Buddhist shrine that was strewn with the flowers of the locals’ frequent offerings. The street was full of kerbside vendors, doing a brisk evening trade. There were clouds of pungent smoke and the sizzle of hot oil and a wide variety of morsels: fried grasshoppers, fried grubs, fried beetles, all served hot from bubbling oil in parcels of white grease paper. There were roast-blackened baby sparrows, roast-blackened chicken feet, straight from the grill on skewers of splintered wood.
    Chau was sitting at a wooden picnic table. He was picking at an open paper bag of fried grasshoppers. She went over to him and sat down. There was a bag at his feet.
    He indicated the insects. “You want?”
    “No, thanks.”
    They watched as a local hooker approached the shrine and deposited an offering amid the detritus that had already been left there.
    “She ask for busy night with pleasant customers,” he suggested.
    They watched the girl as she made her prayer, turned and walked away to rejoin the busy street.
    “The girl?” Chau asked. “Grace?”
    “Safe.”
    “Where?”
    “She’s safe, Chau. Leave it at that.”
    “What about us?”
    “What about us?”
    “What are we going to do? Ying is looking for us.”
    “Do what you want. Move away. Stay here. I don’t care.”
    “He will kill us if he finds us.”
    “Didn’t you hear me? I said, I don’t care.”
    He looked at her with concern. “What is the matter, Beatrix?”
    “I’m done with all of it, Chau. Ying, the triads. All of it.”
    “What about me?”
    “You’re a big boy.”
    He looked at her as if she had slapped his face.
    “I’m sorry, Chau. It’s just…I’m tired. I’m tired of all of it. We took care of Donnie Qi and now we’ve got Ying. The triad…” She shook her head. “It’s like a hydra. You chop off one head and two more grow back. We can’t keep fighting. Look. You’ve got money now. We made a lot, right? Use it. Go away somewhere. Never come back.”
    “You’re giving up?”
    “You can call it that if you like.”
    His eyes went narrow as he regarded her. “What is wrong with you?”
    “Nothing.”
    “You are high. You are on drugs!”
    She waved it off.
    “No,” he persisted. “You are. Your eyes. I know signs. You are