CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

 

 

Dan left his seat and fought his way off the plane, just a few steps behind Heather. They squeezed their way through the aisle towards the exit, avoiding people, bags and excited children as they clambered for overhead luggage, keen to leave their seats after ten long hours of sitting. Heather looked over her shoulder and gave him a friendly smile. A very friendly smile. He grinned back at her.

Having spent most of the triad's cash to buy himself a ticket to Beijing, Dan used the remainder to bribe the businessman next to Heather to swap seats with him. Heather had been impressed with the amount of money he had paid to sit with her, so had the businessman, but Dan didn't disclose where he had got it from. He didn't want to disappoint her just yet, by living up to the loose cannon image that had been painted for her.

Heather was a genuine woman, passionate about her work and the wildlife she tried so hard to protect. She was also intelligent and beautiful. More than once she had caught him checking her out. Far from being offended, she seemed flattered. Or was that just the wine taking effect?

Dan, although sorely tempted, had stuck to coffee throughout the journey and was secretly pleased with himself at this small accomplishment. He knew that it wasn't just willpower alone that had helped him. It was Heather. When they weren't engaged in deep and meaningful conversation about the state of the world's wildlife, Dan found himself able to just sit and relax in quiet companionship with her; sneaking a glance now and then at the inviting lines of her body and the warm smile that permanently played on her lips.

Over the course of the ten hour flight, sandwiched between rows of other passengers and with nowhere else to go, Dan had talked more with Heather than any other woman in his life – his ex-wife included. He had gone too far on some subjects, disclosing to Heather – the stranger he had met only hours before – personal details about himself, both before and after his life changing injury. She understood his anger and didn't seem at all put off by the patch he wore over his eye.

This woman, with her easy way and infectious smile, had caught him off guard. Dan was already losing sight of his mission. In all the planning and scheming he had done over the last months, Dan had not factored in meeting a woman. A woman he liked – a lot.

In Beijing it was two in the morning and, according to Heather, still six hours away from the prearranged meeting with her Chinese informant, Aiguo Chang. If Dan had understood her correctly, Chang worked as a butcher at a wildlife sanctuary in the city of Hangzhou, over seven hundred miles to the south. During the course of his work he had found a microchip in the body of a tiger. The chip traced back to one from a cat which had been poached from a reserve in India. Heather had become very animated at the mention of it and Dan got the impression she was taking this job personally. Much like he was, just without the intended violence.

Heather had little information that Dan could use to find the killers of Michael. She had told him everything she knew of the tiger bone operations and it had all been vague and general. In response, and under intense scrutiny, Dan had twisted the truth of why he so badly wanted to find Michael's killers. Telling her instead that he wanted to see them behind bars for what they had done, rather than dead and buried like he dreamed of. He also got the impression from her that she was frustrated at the lack of bite her role with the Wildlife Investigation Agency could administer and she longed for a free hand to deal with the criminals behind the barbarous acts against wildlife she strived to prevent. Maybe Dan could help her out with that?

At the carousel an awkward silence commenced. They had spoken freely together on the plane for the last ten hours, but suddenly they were lost for words. Dan was unsure of what to say. So unused to having a woman show obvious interest in him, he was tongue tied.

"So...you have a room somewhere nearby?"

"Yeah. For the next three days anyway... I need a shower, so I'll go there now and come back at eight. He said he would meet me at the café in the Arrivals area. He refused to meet me anywhere closer to Hangzhou, so I told him I would pay for his flight to meet me here."

"Look, Heather, I'm really only here because of you. I have no other leads. It's one man that I'm after, and China's sort of big to find him on my own. I hope you realize by now that I'm not some sort of nut job. I just want to find the people that killed my friend. Maybe your contact knows him? Can I hang around a bit longer to see what he says?"

Heather dipped her head and watched the cases as they slowly made their way around the carousel, slowly switching herself back to the serious investigator he had first met in London; all trace of the sexy and flirtatious woman gone in an instant.

"OK. But I'm warning you. You don't speak. I'll do all the talking. This guy's on tenterhooks, and if my boss finds out you're here he'll pull this whole operation."

"Understood."

She grabbed her case as it passed them and loaded it onto a trolley, then looked at him one more time. Dan couldn't read her face, but she lingered for a second and he hoped she would ask him to come with her.

"I'll meet you in the morning then. Seven thirty at the café in Arrivals, OK?"

"OK."

As she walked away, Dan offered her a feeble smile. She offered him the same one back.

Then he looked around for a vacant bench. He was all out of money with six hours to kill.

# # #

Pain, like he'd never felt before, surged through Aiguo's body. His muscle and bones protested when he moved, so Aiguo lay on the floor and summoned what strength he could muster. Lei Wu and his cronies were taking a break, having beaten him relentlessly for the last hour.

An overpowering stench of ammonia filled his nostrils, preventing him from fully retreating into blissful unconsciousness where the pain would at least stop briefly. Aiguo's face was swollen and bloody. His hands bound together and secured tightly behind him. The thin bonds, causing considerable pain on their own, bit into his wrists, numbing his fingers – but that was the least of his worries.

A wave of nausea brought vomit to his mouth and he opened his eyes to the cruel world he had left just moments before, spewing the vomit onto the floor beside him and at the feet of his tormentor.

"Mr Chang! You do not respond well to rough treatment! But this is only the beginning for you. I'm thinking of keeping you here until you're just about dead, then letting your family watch as the tigers maul you to death. A poetic end to your story, no?"

Aiguo's eyes slowly came into focus and his heart sank further still. This was a nightmare of epic proportions. He lay on his side on the cold damp floor of the tiger enclosure at the rear of the Medicine Department; the one were the animals were brought for destruction. Thick metal bars enclosed an area of twenty square metres. The floor was rough concrete covered with old and dirty straw. Here and there, pools of blood had dried into it, mixing with the urine and faeces of the frightened animals awaiting their deaths. Aiguo imagined that if they had known what was happening, it would have been a merciful release for those captive, malnourished creatures that ended up here. But for him it was simply hell on earth. The roles had reversed on this occasion; animals on the outside and the people within.

A bucket of ice cold water was poured over his head, rudely awakening him from his revere. He forced himself to a sitting position to address his captors, in one last attempt to convince them he was telling the truth.

"I swear to you, Mr Wu, I have told you everything. Her name is Heather Walsh. She works for the Wildlife Investigation Agency in London. She is meeting me at eight o'clock this morning at the café in the Arrivals area of Beijing Airport. She said I will know her because she has long red hair and she will be sitting alone. I am to hand her the microchip. That is it!"

"What does she know?"

"Only that I work here at the Hangzhou Sanctuary and that I found the chip in the body of a tiger. I used a reader in the Veterinary Department and the chip came back to a tiger reserve in India. I contacted them, and she called me back."

"Does she know what you look like?"

"No. Please, Mr Wu. Don't hurt my family!"

Lei Wu held the microchip in his hand, examining it closely, ignoring Aiguo's pitiful plea.

"You planned to deceive us! To sell us out for this ! Did you not hold a respected position in this sanctuary? Do your family not live well from the money you receive to work here? You will rue the day you ever walked into this park, Aiguo Chang. You will remain here until Meizhen Chen decides what to do with you. I can tell you this. You and your family will suffer!"

Lei Wu turned and strode out of the enclosure. The cage door locked securely behind him and Aiguo was left alone. He slumped back down onto the floor and his tears mixed with the shit and blood beneath him.