Page 158 of The Killer’s Mark

‘Send him up.’

Chapter 133

The old man who entered Poe’s office had wispy white hair and deep eye sockets. He carried an ornate cane and walked slowly. Limped. Bradshaw had said that in his youth he’d taken a bullet to the femur in what was undoubtedly an ‘exciting incident’. His trousers were loose, and he was holding them up with his free hand. His cardigan was frayed at the sleeves and the buttons were in the wrong holes. He looked like he’d just climbed out of a care home window.

Li Jie Wang, the Forty-Fours’ dragon head, was, Poe thought, a proper scruffy bastard.

He’d come on his own, which Poe took as a good sign.

Poe stood up to greet him. He gestured at one of the seats at his small conference table. The dragon head sat gratefully.

‘Old bones,’ he said.

‘Comes to us all,’ Poe replied. ‘Would you like a drink?’

‘I’m fine.’

Poe picked up his mug and downed his now cold espresso.

‘You don’t seem surprised to see me, Mr Washington Poe.’

‘Poe’s fine. No honorific. And no, I’m not surprised to see you. I know who you are.’

‘Yet you seem unafraid.’

‘Cautious, maybe.’

‘And why is that?’

Poe shrugged. ‘Beware of an old man in a profession where men usually die young.’

The dragon head chuckled. It sounded dry. ‘Very good. I may use that.’

‘It’s not my quote,’ Poe said. ‘A US Navy SEAL called Kevin Lacz penned it. But it fits our situation. I’m not afraid, but I will pay you the respect you undoubtedly deserve.’

‘You sent me some videos,’ Li Jie Wang said. ‘I think they were to get my attention?’

‘More a clarion call.’

‘I employ many people, Poe, and some of them work in … how can I put it … our cyber division. They are world leaders in phishing and cloning cards and identity theft. They tell me they have never seen deepfakes of this quality. They say they are of such high quality they would stand up to legal scrutiny. One even suggested they must be genuine.’ He smiled politely. ‘That man is no longer in my employ.’

‘Is he in anyone’s employ?’

‘I think not.’

‘That’s a shame.’

‘The videos you sent were not nice videos, Poe. I found them difficult to watch. I found the one with my granddaughter particularly upsetting. She is as pure as I am corrupt. The white to my black.’ He seemed upset. Poe didn’t care. ‘I initially wondered how someone could conceive something like that. But I haven’t got to where I am by not thinking about why someone would conceive something like that. Their motivations. And then I thought about what I would do if someone was a threat to my family. And when I realised you were doing what I would do, everything became easy to understand. My advisers said I should call your bluff. That this was a man bound by rules and honour. But the more I studied you, the more I understood that this was not a man who bluffs. This was not a man constrained by rules. I even thought this was a man without honour.’ The dragon head smiled. His rheumy eyes twinkled. ‘I did not mean that as an insult. Men of honour are for fairy tales. It is the men without honour who get things done. Who achieve great things.’

‘I didn’t take it as an insult,’ Poe said. ‘It’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me.’

‘And that is why I was a little later than you might have expected me to be. A man who doesn’t bluff has demands. I was anticipating your demands and pre-empting them.’

‘OK,’ Poe said.

‘We knew that the men you went up against, this Red Chamber, were stealing from the women they employed. We knew this because it is what we would have done. We did nothing because they were sending us a lot of money. We didn’t care that we didn’t get what we were owed from the money they stole. They’re criminals and that’s what criminals do. So we let them keep it. But we did not know that they were killing these women. Skinning them. Even with our extensive network, that remained hidden to us.’

The dragon head cleared his throat. He reached into his cardigan pocket and put a small bottle on the table. He unscrewed the cap and removed two white pills.