Page 109 of The Killer’s Mark

‘Each time we speak, I’ll ask a different question. And I will get an answer.’

‘And if I refuse?’

‘I’ll go on television and tell the world what the Red Chamber do. What they really do. You try recruiting girls when they know that all that’s waiting for them at the end of their twenty-year contract is a bullet to the head and a skinned foot.’

The man didn’t respond.

‘Now, tell me what you want,’ Poe said.

‘That’s simple, Mr Ex-Policeman,’ Dong said. ‘We want the mother. We want Océane Blue.’

Poe closed his eyes. That was what he’d been afraid of. That the Red Chamber was going to ask for something he didn’t have. Something he couldn’t get.

‘Then what happens?’

‘We swap. You get the girl; we get the mother.’

‘Fine,’ Poe said. ‘How long do I have?’

‘Forty-eight hours.’

He bit down a sarcastic response. ‘That’s not long enough.’

‘But it’s all the time you have. And the clock’s already started. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.’

‘What if I can’t get her to you in time?’

‘Then you can stop looking.’

The phone went dead.

‘OK then,’ Poe said, his voice flat, his face monstrously calm.

Chapter 88

‘What can we do now that we couldn’t do ten minutes ago, Tilly?’ Poe said. ‘What’s changed?’

‘Nothing, Poe. We have no new lines of enquiry. The only thing Esmerée’s abduction has done is raise the stakes.’

Poe thought she was wrong, but he didn’t know why. He thought they did know something else, but right now he was too amped to drill into the hidden corners of his mind. He needed to calm down. To breathe. He needed to think.

‘We might not know anything new,’ he said after a beat. ‘But we damn sure have new information. And that means we can try something we weren’t able to before.’

He picked up his mobile and opened the web browser. He searched for the Szechuan Palace and tapped their phone number. When it was answered, he said, ‘Please may I speak with either Xiang or Chao?’

‘May I say who’s calling?’

‘Washington Poe. Tell them it’s urgent.’

He didn’t have to wait long.

‘Yes?’

It was Xiang, the restaurant’s owner. Poe recognised his voice.

‘It’s Poe,’ he said.

‘You shouldn’t call this number, Mr Poe,’ Xiang said.