Mia was waiting for Mann when he got back from the autopsy.
‘Saheed confirms, it’s the same killer.’ He looked at her face and looked away. She was pale: angry, upset, disappointed, the adjectives went on and on. Mann knew that he couldn’t keep Lilly a secret, and he didn’t intend to, but first he had to work out what had happened before it was too late.
‘And the same killer that was in your bedroom. I am going to have a hard job from stopping Sheng breaking out the champagne. How do you think it reflects on the rest of us? We are supposed to be a team, Mann, have you forgotten that?’
Mann tried to focus on what she was saying but his mind kept coming back to the thing that felt more immediate, more gruesome than anything else right now. Was what Lilly had said true? Christ, could he have done it? Could he have had sex with Lilly? He shook his head. He didn’t remember. How had they ended up back at his flat? He didn’t remember anything.
‘You listening, Mann?’
‘Someone went to a lot of trouble to plant that head in your apartment, why did they do that?’
‘The perp gets off on that. She loves the thrill. She doesn’t care any more. For some reason she doesn’t care about her own life. She doesn’t use a condom. She doesn’t care about leaving her DNA. She’s left traces of herself everywhere.’
‘It’s all linked to you, Mann.’
Mann looked across at Shrimp and Ng. Mann could see by their faces that even they were beginning to wonder what was going on in his head.
‘Who was Peter Thorne to you?’
‘He was a man I met in a bar, the night I found Max Kosmos’s body. There is nothing more for me to say, Boss.’
‘Why you?’ Mia crossed her arms over her chest and frowned. ‘It has to be someone with a personal grudge against you for some reason. It could be a past girlfriend of yours, Mann.’
‘I’ve dated my share of nutters but I don’t remember one who had all the makings of a serial killer.’
‘The head could have been brought in by someone posing as your cleaner, Genghis. When we went to your apartment the other day the doorman said the cleaner had just left but she hadn’t cleaned, had she?’
Mann shook his head. ‘I’ve already talked to the man on the desk. He doesn’t know one cleaner from another and this isn’t his usual block. They work a rota. The way he described her it could have been anyone. Anyway, I cancelled my cleaner and I left instructions at the desk telling them not to allow anyone in to my apartment, not my cleaner or anyone else.’
Mia shook her head and ran her hand back through her hair to scrape back the few strands that had fallen down from their clasp. ‘I’m sorry, Johnny. I’m under pressure, that’s all. We all are.’ She turned to Ng. ‘Did Thorne have any connection to the Leung Corporation?’
‘No. He had never worked for them.’
‘Or to Mann?’
‘No.’
‘We know Victoria Chan is out to get you. She has the power. She has the contacts.’
Mann shook his head. ‘I certainly wouldn’t rule her out of this. But murder? I can’t see her getting her hands dirty.’
‘Oh, I can. I can see her bathing in virgin’s blood and using testicles for earrings,’ said Mia. ‘She’s as ruthless as they come. And you still don’t remember who she was you were with last night?’
Shrimp’s eyes darted back and forth and always back towards Mann. He ran the pencil through his fingers like a cheerleader’s baton, a nervous tic.
Shit…Mann wanted to throw up. Had he raped Lilly? Had he had underage sex with a child? Had he abandoned every moral fibre in his body? If he had, what else was he guilty of? Did he know himself any more? Did he trust himself?
Mann shrugged. He didn’t know anything any more. Nothing seemed real. Nothing was fitting. ‘Well, we do know now that Michelle has to be innocent. We have to let her go. Unless it was someone working for or with her?’
‘She was in prison. She can’t have snuck back and left the head. It has to be someone else.’
‘I need to talk to her again,’ said Mann. The eagle flew by the window. Mann wanted to reach out and jump on its back.