Page 110 of King’s Ransom

‘What do you mean?’

‘In Chinatown,’ Kenneth said, ‘if you have crime problem, you no go to NYPD. You go to Mr Xiao and he investigate.’

‘Is that so?’

I’d heard stories about this.

It was said that certain Chinese communities in America—notably in New York and San Francisco—had their own ‘internal’ police forces who kept criminal matters that arose within the Chinese subculture out of the formal legal system.

The unspoken reality of this parallel police force was that its ‘officers’ were US-based members of the Chinese government. In other words, Chinese spies keeping an eye on the Chinese-American population in the States.

I hadn’t known that Xiao was part of that world.

It was both interesting and alarming, given: (a) it suggested Xiao had close links to the Chinese government; (b) how close he’d got to the super-classified QuantumSpeed-7 chip on December 21st; and (c) his appearance here to check on Audrey, a government agent and the last person to be in possession of that chip.

It also raised another huge question:

Why had a guy like Xiao been included on the list of five detectives brought to Aristo King’s penthouse on December 21st?

Maybe there was more to that list than I first realised.

These thoughts lingered in the back of my mind for the rest of that day as I watched more security footage on fast-forward and the highlights from the funeral played on the TV.

Then I trudged back to my motel and went to bed.

Phelps Hospital Waiting Room

28 December

It was now December 28th, the day Dr Shepherd had said he’d bring Audrey out of her coma, so I once again made camp in the waiting room.

This worked well, since I was still waiting for Georgy to get us permission to view the Grandmaster’s body at the morgue (which, it turned out, was no easy task as it required him to speak to, and then send formal legal documents to, all manner of bureaucrats).

So, while Georgy spent the morning doing that, I spent it hunched over my laptop watching the remaining security footage from 59West.

Throughout December, the routines didn’t change much.

Then I came to the footage from December 21st.

I sat up in my seat, slowed the playing speed a little, leaned closer.

Game day.

And immediately I noticed a deviation in the routine.

It involved the courtesy van.

One constant in the footage till then was 59West’s black Mercedes courtesy van.

Its routines were very reliable: mostly the ladies of 59West used it to go to early-morning yoga around 5:45 a.m., lunch around midday and then dinner in the evenings.

But on December 21st the courtesy van left the garage at 4:33 a.m., much earlier than it usually did.

Its uniformed female driver loaded a crate on a wheeled handcart into the rear of the van, got in and drove away.

And didn’t return.

This created a clear disturbance in the routine when two older female residents arrived in yoga clothes and gripping yoga mats as usual at 5:45 a.m.