Page 148 of The Killer’s Mark

Poe’s initial plan had been to take Océane’s evidence, including a video statement and a summary of what their investigation had uncovered, fashion it into a social-media-friendly package and threaten the Red Chamber with public exposure. He’d hoped the prospect of their business model being severely disrupted might be enough to make them release Esmerée unharmed. If what they did, what they really did, got into the public domain, it would, in theory, dampen the recruitment of concubines. And no concubines meant no business.

It could have worked. The triads were profit-orientated. Money was their god. Threatening their income, their extravagant lifestyle, might have given them food for thought. Letting everyone get on with their lives would be the pragmatic choice.

Only the Red Chamber were triads. Hardened gangsters. They couldn’t always make the obvious choice. Sometimes they needed an impact statement. It was why Mexican drug cartels still hanged bodies from overpasses, why paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland used kneecappings as a punishment, and why Frenchwomen accused of ‘horizontally collaborating’ with the Nazis had been tarred and feathered. The Red Chamber might decide the pragmatic choice was to take a temporary hit on recruitment but reinforce the message that they were serious players. Ruthless gangsters. Not to be messed with.

And the cold reality was that there would always be vulnerable women and there would always be men to exploit them. The Red Chamber would find a way to recruit such women. Their lies about the pot of gold at the end of the twenty-year rainbow would be believed.

When Poe had run some mental calculations, he figured his plan had a fifty-fifty chance of success. It was why he’d given Towler and his merry men the nod to assist. If the Red Chamber decided they were better off making an example of them all, Towler would effect a noisy and messy – no guns – extraction. It would be a temporary reprieve, though. Detective Chief Inspector Gilliard had confirmed that if Océane agreed to testify against the Red Chamber, she would get the bells-and-whistles protected witness status. Esmerée too, if she wanted to go with her. Everyone else would have to fend for themselves. And it would be for months. Years even. Océane’s evidence was compelling, but there was no forensic chain of custody. It might be enough to get an arrest, a warrant for some dawn raids, but it wouldn’t take the Red Chamber off the streets for long. And even if the agencies investigating them did manage to join the dots and build a transnational case, because of the way the Red Chamber was compartmentalised they wouldn’t get everyone. They wouldn’t know everyone. Dongyang Dong’s so-called legion of members would be left to carry out retaliatory attacks.

Bradshaw had said that was unacceptable. That the risk was too great. She’d said she had a better idea. And holy guacamole, did she. When Poe had finally convinced her to tell him what it was, she’d said she didn’t want to appeal to the Red Chamber’s pragmatic side, she wanted to appeal to a higher authority. He’d said, ‘God?’ but he’d been on autopilot. He’d asked her to continue. She had. And when she’d finished, the only thing he could think to say was ‘Crikey’. Because her plan didn’t threaten the Red Chamber’s business model, it threatened their lives. She’d asked him who the Red Chamber feared. He’d said no one. They had money, they had connections and they were ruthless. They were virtually untouchable. She’d said that wasn’t true. So Poe had thought about it some more and said, ‘Of course.’

Because the Red Chamber did fear something.

They feared the Forty-Fours.

Chapter 125

Ever since they’d tangled with the Red Chamber, Bradshaw had been researching the Forty-Fours triads. Poe hadn’t bothered asking her why. She’d only have said something knobby like, some of the world’s greatest discoveries had come from undirected research. She was always saying that when Poe caught her wasting time.

So Bradshaw knew who the key players were. Knew that the dragon head, the Forty-Fours’ leader, was an outwardly respectable seventy-three-year-old man called Li Jie Wang. He was born and raised in Macau but had lived in New York since 1989. He had ruthlessly worked his way up the Forty-Fours’ ranks and was made dragon head in 2010. He oversaw five thousand men and women, ruled them with an iron fist. The Forty-Fours’ turnover was estimated to be nine figures per annum. Over a billion pounds.

Bradshaw didn’t stop with the dragon head, though. She used every database she had access to and went deep into Li Jie Wang’s private life. Into the life of his wife. His brothers and sisters. His wife’s brothers and sisters. His friends and associates. She found out everything she could about his children. His grandchildren. She downloaded videos of them. Some of the footage had been filmed by the police as part of their ongoing operation against triad activity. Other footage came from social media, from wedding videos and Chinese New Year celebrations. Not all the dragon head’s relatives were triads. In fact, none of his grandchildren were in the family trade. They seemed to have made a point of distancing themselves from their grandfather. Their lack of culpability didn’t matter to Bradshaw – she targeted them ruthlessly. She already had access to Red Chamber footage obtained by the NCA, the FBI, a whole host of other law enforcement agencies, and using her dangerous-as-hell program, she and Estelle went to work creating the most damaging deepfakes ever generated.

In Bradshaw’s parallel world – of which the evidence was now absolute – the Forty-Fours’ dragon head was the person who had ordered the deaths of the Red Chamber concubines. His wife, Hsiu-Ch’in, was heavily involved in the recruitment of the girls, his children in their training. It had been his wife’s idea to skin their feet and sell the tattoos back to their clients. Bradshaw had even digitally concocted footage showing the dragon head’s favoured granddaughter, a gifted pianist called Fang, discussing over a latte in New York’s Central Park how she had spontaneously orgasmed when watching one of the concubines being murdered. Every person close to Li Jie Wang was implicated in the trafficking, torture and murder of vulnerable women. If it got out, the stain on the family’s honour would last ten generations.

It was all fiction.

But because the technology to prove that it was synthetic media wouldn’t exist for ten years, it was simultaneously true.

Schrödinger’s truth.

The world’s foremost deepfake experts would examine the footage and declare it genuine. That nothing had been manipulated.

That was what Bradshaw had done.

Instead of pointing the finger at the Red Chamber, she had blamed every atrocity on the only organisation they feared. And because in the eyes of the criminal underworld the Red Chamber were little more than vassals of the Forty-Fours, everyone who mattered would believe it.

Dongyang Dong, the man with the boss-eyed dragon tattoo, certainly believed it, and he knew it wasn’t true. He looked utterly defeated.

Poe said, ‘When the countdown on that iPad reaches zero, the footage – all the footage, as this is just a fraction of it – will be circulated to every major media outlet in the world. To every person implicated in the video montage you’ve just watched. To their friends. Their colleagues. The boards of the clubs they’re members of. The footage of the dragon head’s granddaughter talking about how she gets off on watching women being murdered will go to every philharmonic society of renown. She won’t be able to get a job as an organ grinder. Even the Chinese Communist Party will be sent copies.’

Dongyang Dong wiped his wet eyes with the back of his hand. ‘What do you want?’ he said, his voice soft and flat.

Poe checked his watch. ‘You have fifty-three minutes to convince me that what’s on that iPad should stay on that iPad.’

Chapter 126

Dongyang Dong would have agreed to anything. Each time Poe told him one of his demands, he said, ‘Yes.’ Towards the end, he was agreeing to things Poe hadn’t even finished asking for.

It was one thing fucking with the collected might of the world’s law enforcement agencies, another thing entirely to fuck with the most feared triad in the world. The NCA, the FBI, Europol and Interpol all played by the rules; the Forty-Fours didn’t.

Poe said, ‘To clarify, Esmerée comes back with me. Océane comes back with me. There will be no repercussions. No reprisals. None whatsoever. If anyone I know gets so much as a hangnail, this goes viral.’

‘Your terms are understood and accepted,’ Dongyang Dong said.

‘Please tell your man to let Esmerée go.’

He shouted something in Chinese. The small man holding Esmerée blinked in surprise. She twisted herself free and sprinted over to Poe, standing to his side, one step behind. The way Edgar did when he was frightened of something. He’d run towards the danger if Poe did, but he’d prefer not to.