When Irene and Seulgi's long-overdue romantic dinner is rudely interrupted by an armed robbery attempt, all they can do is wonder is about how bad their luck really is.

But when four other restaurants across Seoul are robbed at the same time, they realise that something much greater - and much more ambitious - is on the table. And Seulgi has a little problem of her own, one that she can't hide from Irene for long.

Rated T for: Language, The Occasional Miami Vice Reference, Mild Violence, Incompetent Detective Work

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AUTHOR'S NOTE: This was basically just me getting used to writing (and especially writing action) again, since I've been really busy recently, so I apologise if I'm a little rusty but that's what happen when you write a ridiculous amount and then step away for a while hehe. Hope ya enjoy! :) 💕

Four Little Diamonds

Part I

‘Are you sure this is the place?’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi said. ‘Why? Is there something wrong with it?’

Irene took a step back out of the vestibule and looked up and at the sign and back at the amber glare in the glass and shrugged.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ Irene said. ‘Nothing at all. It’s not what I expected.’

‘In what way?’

‘I expected more…I dunno. Lower class?’

‘Lower class? Seriously?’

‘Okay, that came out wrong. Made me sound like a capitalist or something. I meant, like, y’know. Not as nice. Not as fancy.’

‘Because I can’t afford it.’

‘Just didn’t think it was your style, is all.’

Seulgi gave a meek shrug. ‘It’s your treat,’ she said.

‘My treat.’

‘As a thank you.’

‘Took you long enough,’ Irene said with a grin. Seulgi looked at her there in the outer doorway. In the dark light she looked rather incredible and it was hard to look anywhere else. Her hair was pinned back and she wore bright diamond earrings and smiled that knowing smirk that Seulgi had become so accustomed to in recent months. That smile that said so much with so little. She held her arm out by her side and smiled again.

‘Shall we?’

Seulgi straightened her suitjacket and took Irene’s arm and went in and checked in with the clerk on the right. She showed them to their table by the back of the room under the window awning with a smile and handed them their menus and a bottle of red wine chilled prior in an icebucket and two iced glasses. She said they could order whenever they liked. Seulgi thanked her and she disappeared while Seulgi sat reading over the menu for a while. When she looked up Irene was studying her across the table.

‘What?’

‘What’s this?’ Irene said.

‘What?’

‘The wine.’

‘Just something I thought I’d have them prepare.’

‘You rang them ahead of time to prepare a bottle of wine for us.’

‘For you,’ Seulgi said, shifting. She wasn’t blushing but she thought she might. ‘I mean, you know.’

‘And here I was thinking romance was long dead.’

‘Well.’

‘What is it?’

‘The wine?’

Irene nodded.

‘I don’t know.’

‘What?’

‘I just asked for something red.’

‘Huh,’ Irene said, folding her menu away and resting her arms on the table. ‘Maybe it is dead, after all.’

‘What? What’s wrong with that?’

‘What if I was allergic to red?’

‘Are you?’

‘No.’

‘Well then.’

‘But that’s not the point, babe.’ She stopped a minute and looked about. The waitress was smiling at them from across the room. It smelled of lemongrass and faintly of polish and perfume. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘the point is you’re supposed to go all out for something like this, you know? Like, if you’re going to book a place this fancy you can’t then just turn around and say I’ll have whatever wine. It’s like going to a tailored suitmakers and saying I’d like a white suit like Don Johnson.’

Seulgi looked at her.

‘What?’

‘That didn’t even make sense.’

Irene took the bottle and twisted off the plastic wrapping and thumbed up the cork and poured herself a glass and drank with a grin.

‘You just wanted to make fun of my clothes, didn’t you?’

‘Me? Doing something like that? Never.’

‘What’s wrong with what I wear?’

Irene drank. She looked at Seulgi and squinted and poured herself a second glass and drank again.

‘What?’

‘Relax,’ Irene said. ‘Nothing. You look fine. You look really good. It’s just funny seeing you like this sometimes, you know?’

‘Like what?’

‘Dunno. Squirming, I guess? I don’t know how to describe it. I’m not really good at that sort of . I leave that to you. You’re alright, though. Even in all white. But – and don’t take this the wrong way or anything – it’s not as cool without the car, you know? Speaking of which—’

‘I know.’

‘You didn’t even let me finish.’

Seulgi took the bottle from Irene and poured herself a glass. ‘You were going to ask why Wheein and the others have got the van and we’ve got nothing.’

‘Well,’ Irene said. ‘Yeah. I was. But you could’ve let me finish. Still, the question stands.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Good answer. Seriously though, why? I mean, it was ours.’

‘It’s Wendy’s.’

‘Who, by proxy, is ours! It’s like Cold War , you know? Like, she’s technically involved without ever really being involved because of us. Something like that.’

‘What the are you talking about?’

Irene sipped her wine. She set the glass down and wrapped her fingers around the stem and tipped her head to the side as if in greater ponderance of something for a moment. Then she said, ‘I don’t really know. I’ve lost my train of thought now. You ready to order?’

‘Sure.’

She called the waitress over and they ordered and Irene asked for a second bottle of wine. She asked if it was free with the food and the waitress politely said no.

‘How much is it?’ Irene said. ‘This one, I mean.’

‘This one is four hundred thousand won a bottle.’

‘We’ll take two more.’

‘Uh, no,’ Seulgi said. ‘We won’t.’

Irene offered the waitress a lopsided smile. ‘Ignore her,’ she said. ‘Please bring the bottles with our food.’

Before Seulgi could say anything else the waitress had taken their menus and disappeared into the back of the room again. Seulgi sat glaring at Irene across the table for a minute. Irene picked up her glass and wobbled it about and watched the bloodcoloured liquid slosh in the pale light with a kind of unusual attention. She drank down the rest of the glass and set it down and poured herself another.

‘Are you ignoring me on purpose now?’ Seulgi said.

‘A little.’

‘Because you know I’m mad.’

‘Yeah. Kinda.’

‘That’s my money you’re throwing away.’

‘Not really throwing it away, am I? Have you tasted this? It’s pretty good. I mean, for that price it’d ing better be, but still. I’ve had a lot worse before. And didn’t you say this was your treat to me? Finally, a romantic dinner. Just the two of us.’

‘Yeah, but—’

‘Well then.’ She raised her glass and toasted to nothing and drank again. The glint in her eyes was dangerous, deceitful. ‘Here’s to us,’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi said reluctantly. ‘To us.’

The waitress came out with their food fifteen minutes later and asked if they needed anything else and they said no. She went into the back and came out with their bottles of wine chilled in ice and set them on the table with a serviette and Seulgi thanked her and she left them again. They ate steaks with fries and salad greens in a small china bowl and shared a bowl of coleslaw between them. They ate quietly for a while. They watched the anneal simmering of the city through the windows. People came from the darkness beyond all pooled light of the streetlamps and along the far end of the street were returned to that selfsame darkness like figures bound to repetition in the night.

‘Why do you do that?’ Irene said.

Seulgi looked at her. ‘Do what?’ she said.

‘That. Eat your steak like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘Rare.’

‘Is there a problem with that?’

‘Look at all that. Just look at it.’

‘At what?’

‘The blood! I think I can still hear it ing mooing, poor thing. You might as well go and hunt a cow yourself, you know? I mean, you probably could, knowing you. It’d be easier. Probably cheaper, too. Assuming, you know…it was a random cow in a field. And not someone’s property.’

‘Are you going to eat your food?’

Irene cut away a small piece of her steak and mopped it in her gravy and ate. ‘See?’ she said. ‘This is what a proper steak looks like. Medium. This is how proper men eat their steak.’

‘I’m not a man.’

‘It’s a figure of speech. God.’

‘Eat your food.’

‘What, are you my mother now or something?’

‘No,’ Seulgi said. She wiped with the corner of a napkin and sipped her wine and set it down again. ‘But I paid a lot of money for this, so you’d better eat it all and appreciate it.’

‘Wow.’

She looked at Seulgi. Sometimes she could only half tell if she was being serious or not. So incapable of joking as she occasionally seemed to be. She ate a couple of the fries and drank again and toasted and Irene raised her glass and toasted with her.

‘What to?’

‘To us,’ Seulgi said.

‘How sweet of you. Hey, I’ve got a question.’

‘I’m sure you do.’

‘How come we haven’t seen the newbies lately?’

‘We saw them last week.’

‘Sure. But like, compared to how often we see Wheein. Almost as much as I see you. Which is kinda crazy, when you think about it.’

‘Probably because they’re busy.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Their jobs.’

‘Yeah,’ Irene said. ‘Sure. But Wheein is busy—’ She stopped and looked at the expression on Seulgi’s face and then she said, ‘Okay. Maybe not Wheein. But the point sort of still stands. What are they actually doing?’

‘I don’t know. You’d have to ask Hongki.’

‘Who’s looking after them?’

‘They’re not kids.’

‘Yeah. But they’re new. Who’s gonna make sure they don’t, you know. Step out of line.’

‘Step out of line.’

‘Yeah. You know.’

Seulgi chewed a piece of her steak and swallowed. ‘I don’t think anyone is,’ she said. ‘At least, not to my knowledge. We don’t really have that many people working for us.’

‘Yeah. And don’t I know it. So they’re out there right now?’

Seulgi nodded.

‘Right at this minute?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘On their own?’

‘Yes.’

‘With our van?’

‘Jesus, what is this? 20 Questions?’

Irene shrugged. ‘I’m just curious,’ she said. ‘This is good steak. Like, prime rib , you know? I think you picked a pretty good place.’

‘Yeah?’

She smiled. She leant awkwardly across the table and kissed Seulgi and sat back and sipped at her wine and swilled it around the bottom of the glass. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘You did good, partner.’

‘Thanks,’ Seulgi said, blushing. She cut a piece of her steak and wiped it across the gravy and ate and refused to look at Irene across the table.

‘Babe.’

‘What?’

‘Thanks. For this, I mean. I didn’t expect you to actually do it.’

‘You didn’t expect me to buy you dinner ever?’

‘I mean, not really. Not that I mean anything by that, you know? Just— What? What is it?’

She was looking toward the front of the store and when Irene turned she knew very quickly where her eyes were going. Four men by the vestibule about to enter. They were dressed in black suits and wore black leather gloves like bikers and they wore a set of clown masks painted in a collective rictus of expression like performers at an archaic Greek carnival. One of them carried a black dufflebag slung over one shoulder. They stood a moment. The server at the door eyed them with a smile and saw their masks and dropped any pretense of that same smile within a second. The man with the bag took it from his shoulder and dropped it on the floor and ped it and drew four black automatic military-issue rifles and handed three to the other men and then zipped shut the bag and slung it across his back again.

‘What the ?’ Irene said. She wiped her eyes. ‘Am I dreaming? Is that a set of clowns with machineguns?’

Seulgi said nothing. She watched them enter. She watched the server turn to them again and scream and then the rest of the patrons turning began to scream as well. The men stood in the doorway and raised their rifles and told everybody to remain seated and not to make another sound. The man with the dufflebag wore a clown’s mask with green hair painted on and green lips and the man pointing his assault rifle across the room and telling people to shut up and sit still wore a bluehaired mask and a watch around his right wrist.

‘What the is going on?’ Irene said.

‘We’re being robbed.’

‘What?’

The man with the dufflebag spoke to one of the others. They said something and then grabbed one of the waitresses and asked her something they couldn’t hear and disappeared behind the side of the desk and began emptying the moneycounters into the bag bill by bill, coin by coin. Seulgi eyed them all carefully.

‘Robbed by clowns,’ Irene said. ‘I’m sure there’s some irony in that somewhere. Or something. I dunno.’

‘Be quiet.’

The man with the blue mask told again to be quiet but nobody had spoke and you could hear a pindrop in the room.

‘Robbed by ing clowns,’ Irene said, laughing dryly. The men behind the counter zipped shut the bag and the one with the green hair slung it over his shoulder and made a roundabout motion in the air with his finger and went on out ahead of the others. They all watched the last man leave. He still had his rifle trained on them when they backstepped through the vestibule and out into the dim night and somewhere across the parkinglot and then were gone. Seulgi had stood before Irene even realised. Before they were halfway to the black Mercedes parked at the far end near the turnoff into the road.

‘What the are you doing?’ Irene said, standing after her. It was a sort of unconscious move of hers, to follow wherever Seulgi went. Nobody paid them any attention.

‘Their guns were fake,’ Seulgi said.

‘What?’

‘Their guns. They were fake.’

‘How the can you know that? What are you even saying?’

‘You pick up on things like this.’

‘Okay. Cool. So, now what?’

‘We do our job,’ Seulgi said. She was already by the door when Irene came out after her into the cold, pulling on the hem of her dress.

‘Our job. What the do you mean we do our job? What’s that supposed to mean? Is it our job to fight clowns now? What am I even saying? I don’t even work here. I’m just the tag-along.’

‘There,’ Seulgi said. She pointed to the Mercedes with the tinted windows and the engine running near the parkinglot entrance. It turned and pulled out into the street in a wet nimbus of tiresmoke and drove northbound against the dying of the light. Seulgi made out into the street following it. She wasn’t running but Irene could barely catch her.

‘What are you doing?’ Irene said. Seulgi looked about. She looked north. She crossed to the other side of the street and took her badge from her pocket and flashed it against the window of a parked Hyundai and made a gesture to the woman sat looking through her bag in the driver’s seat. She rolled down the window and looked at Seulgi.

‘Police business,’ she said. ‘We’re going to need your car.’

‘What?’

‘Please step out of the vehicle. You’ll get it back, don’t worry.’

She looked at Seulgi and looked at Irene over her shoulder and Irene shrugged. As if to say: Don’t ask me! Then she opened the door and stepped out with her bag and Seulgi stepped in and started the car before Irene had even finished closing the passenger door.

‘Babe.’

Seulgi pulled out into the street and set off.

‘Babe, wait.’

The Mercedes had turned right down a narrow street and disappeared but Seulgi had seen it go, had watched it. She hammered the horn and swerved at thirty-five in a twenty and swung the wheel to the right and caught sight it of at the far end of the street, turning off left and northward.

‘Seulgi,’ Irene said. ‘Wait a minute. Just…wait. What the are you doing?’

‘Catching them.’

‘This is crazy. You’re—’

‘Crazy. Yeah. I get it.’

They found the Mercedes stopped along a gravel lot by the side of an abandoned warehouse some five or ten minutes north in Sinsa. The doors were still open. Seulgi pulled the Hyundai up across the street and stepped out and Irene stepped out behind her. She drew her Glock from the holster at her right hip and cocked back the slide and checked the ejection port and the magazine and cocked it again.

‘Woah,’ Irene said. ‘What the ?’

‘What?’

‘You brought your gun.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You brought your gun to our romantic restaurant date.’

Seulgi said nothing.

‘For real?’

‘Sorry.’

‘What, you think we’d run into a bunch of clowns or something?’

‘It was in case of emergencies. Like this.’

‘What are we doing?’

‘Stay behind me. Or stay with the car.’

Irene looked about. The rim of buildings at the far north end of the avenue quivered in the nightcold and all was quiet and there was little traffic. She looked at the warehouse across the street. The big doors had been jammed half ajar where the robbers had opened it and escaped inside.

‘,’ she muttered. ‘Go on, then. Lead the way. Jesus, I swear, if I get dirt on this dress, you’re paying for it. We never even finished the wine.’

Seulgi crossed the street and stood by the side of the door and motioned for Irene to stay behind her. She peered about. Just the darkness of a lone corridor beyond.

‘Well?’

‘Come on,’ Seulgi said. She pivoted and made inside and Irene followed. They stood with the pistol raised to the end of the narrow corridor and listened but there was nothing. At the far end was a solitary ceilinglight pale and sicknesslike and an assortment of old items scattered about the corridor, packingcrates and old cardboard boxes weathered by time and dim paint coracles flaked from the plasterboard walls and a plastic trolley on wheels with nothing on it save dust and an unopened gasoline canister perched upright against the left side of the wall.

‘Looks like some creepy old laboratory or something,’ Irene said.

‘Quiet.’

‘Like something you’d find in a ing horror movie.’

‘I said be quiet. Please.’

‘What are we doing, babe? Can’t we just go home?’

‘This is our job.’

‘This is your job. My job is…actually, what is my job? Do I even technically have one? I guess I don’t, do I? Woah. Deja vu.’

‘Please,’ Seulgi said. ‘Be quiet.’

And for a moment, Irene was. They skirted the wall in silence. They listened. Seulgi drew the gunbarrel up to the end of the corridor and stopped by the wall turning left and listened again for anything but all that remained was the echo of what was and what had come before like some bitter aftertaste. She looked at Irene. Sweating and pale and a little unsure and silently loving every minute of it.

‘Don’t move,’ Seulgi said, voice quiet.

‘What? Where would I move to?’

‘Just— whatever.’

‘What are you doing?’

Seulgi stood a second. As if perhaps she had not heard. Then she leant her head out into the corridor and was met immediately by a puff of dust and the enormous sound of gunfire exploding at the end of the corridor into which she’d peeked momentarily. Dust blew past like chalk. She pushed Irene back and ducked and winced and the sound went tearing through the silence and chattering against the flakes of paint shredded from the walls and then again. They heard the stonework evaporate just behind them. The loud and dull report of an automatic rifle firing. Perhaps a dozen bullets mauling the old paint in a plume of smoke and dust and the stench of cordite and the burst of light with each muzzleflash. When it had stopped they listened to the echo call back ad infinitum like aural afternotes. Irene glared at her.

‘What?’ Seulgi said.

‘Fake guns, yeah?’

‘Sorry.’

‘Fake ing guns.’

‘I got it wrong.’

‘You think?’

Seulgi looked about. ‘We need to do something,’ she said.

‘No. We don’t need to do anything. We need to go and finish our meal, is what we need to do. Not get shot at in a warehouse by ing clowns. Clowns, Seulgi! I hate clowns! I’ve always hated them! I went to this carnival when I was seven once and this ing clown smiled at me in the crowd and I swear to God I had nightmares about that for years. Years! I was this close to going to therapy, you know? Over a buncha men in old masks. Jesus.’

‘Hold your ears.’

‘What?’

‘Put your hands over your ears. This is going to be loud.’

‘What is? What are you doing? Seulgi. Seulgi, look at me.’

She dropped the Glock on the floor and grabbed hold of the end of the plastic wheelcart with both hands and shook the rust from it and turned it and pushed it almost to the end of the corridor. She doubled back and hauled up the gas canister and set it lengthways on the top of the dolly with the valve handle and the regulator facing in the direction of the clowns. Then she tried turning the valve. She tried again but it would not budge.

‘Babe.’

She looked at Irene and looked back again. She listened but there was no sound, no indication of anyone still being there. She tried the valve handle again and turned it and was rewarded with a pneumatic sigh and the haywire tickticking of the pressure gauge.

‘What the are you doing?’ Irene said.

‘Ears.’

She grabbed the end of the dolly again and shifted to the right only for a second and pushed the cart down the corridor with all the effort she could muster. She saw the muzzleflash first. Then the rifles lit up the dark and the sound swallowed everything part and parcel and then whole. They waited, Seulgi covering her ears and motioning for Irene to do the same.

‘What the did you—’

The sound of the explosion howling through the building was far louder than anything that had come before it. They could feel the force of the blast blow shards of paint down the hallway like shrapnel from there. The gust following. The light of the fireburst like a holy light in the darkness. Irene dropped to her knees and Seulgi winced and turned away and covered her ears. They could smell gas almost instantly. When Seulgi looked at Irene she wished she had not.

‘Irene.’

She rubbed a finger at her ears. ‘What the did you do?’ she said. ‘Jesus, I can’t hear anything! Am I deaf? Maybe I’m deaf! Holy .’

‘Irene.’

'I can see a blinding light.'

'Irene.'

'Am I in heaven? Seulgi, is this heaven?'

'Irene!'

‘What was what?’

‘I had to get them to move.’

‘So you blew them up? What the ?’

Seulgi said nothing. She took the Glock and checked the magazine and cocked the slide and told Irene to follow her. She knew without looking back that Irene was indeed following her. The end of the corridor lay in smouldering ruins. Fire seared the paintwork to a blackened char and the boxes the men had been stood behind for cover had burnt and bubbled in the heat like scoria and the stink of gas was everywhere. The dolly was propped wheelless and partially oblitered by the far wall and the gas canister in a thousand pieces and the little broken and twisted malformation of the pressure gauge sat squat in the middle of the floor like an odd timepiece with its glassless eye wobbling back and forth within.

‘Well,’ Irene said. ‘They either ran, or they were vaporised.’

‘They weren’t vaporised.’

‘Thank you, Detective. They weren't vaporised. That settles it. Case closed. Listen, babe—’

‘Come on.’

‘Are you serious?’

They went right down another corridor. At the far end they dipped left and deeper into the building and came out looking down a long dark hallway at a window by the far end. The glass had been shattered. It smelled of dust and mould and gas. They stood only a moment, Irene catching her breath, Seulgi running a hand through her hair.

‘What are we doing?’ Irene said.

Seulgi never bothered with a reply. They made for the end at a jog and Seulgi looked down and out into the night. They were on the first floor and it was a six-foot drop into a garbage bin at the foot of the window.

‘No.’

‘We have to,’ Seulgi said.

‘Forget it.’

‘They’re only there.’

She pointed to the end of the alley. The men were receding against the darkness like memories once born from it.

‘I don’t care,’ Irene said. ‘I’m not doing it.’

‘Fine. I’ll go first.’

‘No, wait—’

She jumped. She landed amid the old trashbags and slid away from them and climbed up out of the bin and looked up for Irene to follow her.

‘You’re crazy, you know that?’ Irene said.

‘Always.’

‘Don’t look up my dress.’

Irene took one look back. Then she jumped down after Seulgi and landed squat in the cushion of trashbags and garbage and clambered out with Seulgi’s help. Before she had chance to catch her breath Seulgi was by the end of the alley with her gun drawn again. They came out into the road and dodged the traffic and dipped into the alleyway across the street. They had no idea where they were but it was close to the river and they knew that much. The men saw them and turned and raised their gunbarrels.

‘Irene!’

It was perhaps only a second before gunfire erupted in a bright flash. The noise, the echo of it. Seulgi heard the bullets go by only inches from her chest. The gunmen fired perhaps a dozen rounds and turned and ran again. She looked back for Irene but Irene had already risen and dusted herself off.

‘Are you okay? Are you hit?’

‘You for real?’ Irene said. ‘You’re asking me that now? Not, y’know, before they ing shot at me? Yes, babe, I’m okay. No, babe, I’m not a walking pincushion. No, babe, I’m not dead. Yet. God, listen to me. Y'know, three months ago, I'd be loving this . Like, openly loving it. What's gotten into me? Am I getting old? But to answer your question again - no. I'm fine.'

‘Good.’

‘Is that it? What if they’d have shot me? You know how much it hurts to get shot? Oh, I forgot. You’ve never been shot before. Well, guess who has? Yeah.’

‘We’re going to lose them.’

Before Irene could reply she turned and made for the end of the alleyway and then right and across the street in a lull in the traffic. They were making for the railings along the footpath leading down to the banks by the river when Seulgi and Irene caught them from across the other side of the street again.

‘What do we do?’ Irene said.

‘Chase them.’

‘Are they gonna shoot us again?’

She waited for the traffic to subside and raised her Glock and fired twice in their direction. The gunshot went caroming across the night like cannonfire and came back and was swallowed up in the enormity of the world. A handful of cars stopped. Seulgi leapt the handrails and made down onto the waterfront. They were starting eastward along the path and toward the bridge. Irene stood by the railings and took one look down and unfastened her heels and hoisted herself up and over the barricade and down the grass and after her. She heard another gunshot. When she caught up to Seulgi just beyond the dark arch of the bridge she was stood watching the figures of the four men slowly recede in the quake of the water like aspects from a dream. They had left the bag on the side of the path with the guns.

‘Why the did they do that?’ Irene said. Seulgi looked at her. ‘I mean leave the money and the guns. Why didn’t they take it with them?’

‘Maybe they didn’t want it to get wet.’

‘Well then why did they run to the ing river in the first place? Useless. You’d think robbers would have more sense about this sort of thing nowadays. It’s not like there’s a shortage of action movies out there or anything. Or heist movies. Whatever. And, by the way, you wanna tell me about those?’

‘What?’

‘The guns. The ones you said were fake.’

‘What about them?’ Seulgi said.

‘Where did they get them?’

‘How am I supposed to know that?’

‘It’s two thousand and nineteen, babe. Not nineteen fifty-one! Why do they have machineguns?’

‘They’re not machineguns.’

‘What?’

Seulgi looked at her. She ran a hand through her hair and safetied the Glock and ejected the spent shell casing from the ejection port and reholstered it. ‘Never mind,’ she said.

‘Are you okay?’

‘What?’

Irene was quiet a moment, head tilted. Perhaps trying to make something of Seulgi there. ‘Are you okay?’ she said.

‘I’m fine. A little tired now.’

‘Well, yeah. Duh. Oh .’

‘What?’

‘I just remembered.’

‘Remember what?’ Seulgi said.

‘We never paid the bill.’

♣  ♣  ♣

When they pulled into the space outside the precinct it was just after midday and everything was quiet and there was little traffic. They stepped out and looked about and went on through without a word and up to the office. To their mild surprise Wheein was sat at her desk. She was in the process of adding playing cards to a rather impressive card pyramid some four feet high, face contorted into a grimace of concentration. They stood in the doorway watching her. She never noticed them arrive. Never even heard the door go.

‘Eyes front, soldier,’ Irene said. She looked at them and placed another card on the left top of the pyramid and pushed her chair away from the desk and into the middle of the aisle and nodded to them.

‘What’s up?’ Irene said.

‘Not much. Not anything, really. Boring .’

‘Nice tower.’

‘It’s a pyramid.’

‘Nice pyramid.’

‘Thanks,’ Wheein said, beaming. Seulgi nodded to the office behind her. The curtains were drawn and there was nothing of the inside they could fathom. ‘Is he in there?’ she said.

‘No.’

‘What?’

‘He’s not in there.’

‘But it’s his job to be in there.’

‘Guess he’s as much a delinquent as the rest of us then,’ said Wheein, and immediately stopped and turned and looked about. As if he might still hold some sort of greater power to hear her blaspheme at him from beyond the room.

‘Where is he?’ Seulgi said.

‘Uh, I dunno, actually. He’s been out all morning. Haven’t seen him since yesterday.’

‘What about the others?’ Irene said. ‘The newbies.’

‘They’re busy. Doing .’

‘What ?’

‘Well, presumably, their jobs. Like I guess we should be doing. But that’s all gone down the drain.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Seulgi asked.

‘What’s right, really?’ She picked another card from the deck on the desk and fit it neatly to the top right of the pyramid and made a protective gesture in the air around it as if the wind itself might choose to be the architect of her misery there and then. But the windows were closed and it smelled of ham and cheese and little else.

‘Wheein.’

‘Yes ma’am.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Well,’ Wheein said, ‘I’m guessing you haven’t heard.’

‘Heard what?’

‘About the robberies.’

Seulgi and Irene looked at each other.

‘Five robberies occurred last night simultaneously at restaurants across the city. Perpetrators all made clean escapes. All wearing—’

‘Clown masks,’ Seulgi said.

‘Yeah. How’d you know?’

‘We were one of them,’ Irene said.

‘Wait, what?’

‘Yeah. No, . That came out wrong. I didn’t mean we were the guys in clown masks. I meant…whatever.’

Wheein looked at Seulgi for an answer. ‘We were robbed,’ Seulgi said. ‘Or, the restaurant we were at was robbed.’

‘No ,’ Wheein said, laughing dryly.

‘You said there were five robberies?’

‘Uh huh. All at the same time. All in different locations. Crazy . So, I’m guessing that’s where Hongki is. Probably trying to sort all that. As for the new recruits? Who knows. Not me. Nobody tells me anything around here. There's nobody to tell me anything around here. , I'm supposed to be the one telling others around here!’

‘Don’t do that,’ Irene said. Wheein looked at her. ‘I mean, don’t put that one there. Other corner. The structural integrity’s compromised.’

‘Huh,’ Wheein said. She fit the playing card to the right again instead and it stood firm. ‘Thanks.’

‘So,’ said Seulgi. ‘Five robberies. All by men in clown masks. All at the same time. A co-ordinated attack.’

‘On restaurants.’

‘On restaurants. Why?’

‘Because,’ Wheein said. ‘It wasn’t on restaurants.’

‘What?’

‘It wasn’t on restaurants.’

‘Uh, it was,’ Irene said.

‘Okay. Yeah. Technically, it was. But what I mean was, it’s more than that.’

Seulgi made a motion for her to continue but before she could say anything else the office doors swung open and in stepped Hongki, hobbling on his crutch and looking at nothing in particular. He walked right past them and stood at the head of the room and leant on his crutch a minute. He watched the window. He seemed not to see them at all. He was wearing a pale blue shirt and there was a packet of unopened herbal cigarettes in his pocket and his trousers were a size too large for him. They looked at each other. The card pyramid wobbled on Wheein’s desk.

‘Morning, sir,’ Wheein said.

‘Afternoon.’

‘Uh, yes sir.’

He turned to them. He had the glare on his face of a stereotype from an old film. Like a certain displeasure at the world and all things contained therein. ‘Well,’ he said, looking at Seulgi. ‘You want to explain yourself?’

‘Sir?’

‘For last night. Oh, yeah, I heard about it. I sure as did hear about it. You think I wouldn’t, Kang? You think this would just fly over my head? I hear everything in this city. This is my city. I'm the goddamned King in this city. King with a capital K!’

‘Uh…’

‘Well?’

She looked to Wheein for help but Wheein was trying not to laugh.

‘Sir,’ she said. ‘We were, uh, at a restaurant last night. And it was robbed. It was one of the five restaurants that was robbed.’

‘Thank you for stating the obvious. That’s not what I meant, though.’

‘Sir?’

‘You want to tell me why you decided the best course of action was to get up and chase four armed men across Gangnam while firing your weapon like ing Scarface in the middle of a built-up area? And why you thought it was even remotely a good idea to commandeer a civilian vehicle from the street and start a car chase like it's the Fast and the ing Furious. The very Furious, I expect, knowing you.’

‘Sir—’

‘Oh, I want to hear this. Go on. I’m waiting.’

She looked at him. She knew in that moment that any possible answer would be futile at best and cost her a twelve-week suspension at worst. Or perhaps longer. Perhaps forever. And then Wheein would laugh again.

‘You’re lucky I’m so close to retirement,’ he said.

‘Sir?’

‘I don’t have time for all this anymore. I’m too tired.’ He looked at the three of them and then he said, ‘Where are the others?’

‘Out, sir,’ said Wheein. ‘Working.’

‘Good. That’s good. And what about you?’

‘Working, sir.’

‘Nice pyramid.’

‘Thank you, sir. I mean, uh—’

He hobbled over to the desk and blew on the pyramid and it collapsed in on itself in a heap on the tabletop. Wheein looked at him. ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said meekly.

‘You’re very welcome. Now, time to get down to work.’

He gestured for them to follow him into his office and they did. It looked no different than before save for a brass bird cage hanging from a clothespeg hammered into the wall behind the cabinet on the right. It housed a small palecoloured bird with green and red wings and a dark beak, like a parrot. They stood studying it while he sat and opened the second drawer and took out a folder of documents and slid them across the desk.

‘Sir,’ Wheein said.

‘What?’

‘Is that a parrot?’

‘It’s a fake.’

‘A fake?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘A fake parror. It’s papier-mâché. That's why it's not moving. It's not dead. It just never lived in the first place, if you follow me.’

‘Uh…’

‘You got a problem with that?’

‘No sir.’

‘What about you two jokers?’

They shook their heads.

‘Good,’ he said. He nodded to the folder on the table and nodded to Seulgi. She took it and opened out the documents and spent only a second flicking through them before folding them away and setting it down on the table again.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘Uh, sir…’

‘What?’

‘It’s—’

‘Empty? Yeah, I know. You wanna know why it’s empty? Because this happened last night, Kang! And we’ve got nothing! Nada, zip, zil— You get the point.’

‘Yes sir.’

He stopped a minute. As if composing himself. Then he leant forward with great effort and began again. ‘There’s a famous jeweller in Jongno,’ he said. ‘Very famous. So famous I don’t even know the name of the place. But apparently it’s big , so big that there’s a vault there containing a number of precious diamonds. You know how it goes – price control, like that. They keep it from the public, push up the value, whatever. I'm sure you've seen that one film with Leonardo DiCaprio. It's like that. Well, there used to a big vault there. Now it’s empty.’

‘Empty?’

‘It was robbed clean. Ten billion won in diamonds. Yeah, you heard that right. Ten billion. All gone. You want to guess when exactly it was stolen?’

‘Last night?’

‘Bingo. Approximately fourteen minutes after these restaurant robberies took place.’

They looked at one another. ‘So,’ Seulgi said, ‘that means these robberies were a diversion? A distraction tactic?’

Wheein shot her a look that said: I tried to tell you.

‘Correct again,’ Hongki said. ‘Makes a change.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘The big thing with this jewellery place is that it’s two streets down from a police station. Imagine trying to rob a jeweller two streets down from a police station, right? Except, they did. Because there was nobody at the station to respond. Because they were everywhere else, responding to reports of men in ing clown masks taking chump change from restaurant tills. So they waltzed right on in the front door and snatched up ten billion won in diamonds and walked right on out and disappeared.’

‘What car were they driving?’ Seulgi said.

‘I don’t know. Nobody knows. They were wearing clown masks, that much is for certain. Reports never mentioned a car. Maybe they just walked off. In their ing clown gear. Jesus, can you believe this? Ten billion won in diamonds! That’s enough to almost buy my wife a birthday present.’

Wheein laughed and looked at him and laughed no more.

‘So here’s where we’re at,’ he said. ‘We’re exactly at square ing one. Square zero. Whatever the expression is. We’ve got jack. Nothing at all. Nada, and all the other ways you can say we’re out of luck.’

There was a quiet in the room. They half expected the stuffed paper parrot to squawk but it did not. ‘What do we have to do, then?’ Seulgi said.

‘Do what you do.’

‘…Sir?’

‘What, you deaf or something now? Do whatever it is you do, Kang. Pull your magic stunt and get me back those diamonds.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, but I, uh…I don’t—’

‘You seem to manage it every other time.’

‘Shouldn’t we be getting the others on this as well?’ Wheein said.

‘The others?’

‘The new recruits. Dahyun, Chaeyoung, Tzuyu.’

‘Oh.’ He sat back. He took a herbal cigarette from the packet and held it to his lips and wiped his eyes and put it back in the packet again. ‘Them,’ he said. ‘Sure. I’ll make sure to tell them that.’

‘Sir,’ Seulgi said.

‘What?’

‘Can we have our van back as well?’

‘Your what?’

‘Our— Never mind, sir. It’s nothing.’

He sat a while. They stood not quite knowing what to do. He had not dismissed them but he said nothing and moved barely at all. When he spoke again it was to Seulgi. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Any ideas?’

‘Sir?’

‘For what to do. You’re supposed to be Seoul’s best detective.’

Irene stifled a laugh.

‘I don’t know, sir,’ Seulgi said. ‘Sorry.’

‘Great.’

‘Wait,’ Irene said. ‘You said diamonds, yeah?’

He gave a grunt in return. Whenever he acknowledged her it was with a strange combination of distrust and begrudging respect. As if he knew her worth but was too proud to admit it or even recognise it properly.

‘I think I know what to do,’ Irene said.

‘Well. Go on, then.’

‘I know someone. A girl. She might know about this stuff.’

‘Who?’ Seulgi said.

‘Someone we’ve met before. I mean, it’s worth a shot at least. What other plans are there?’

They thought about it for a second and concluded that there were, in fact, no other plans.

‘Alright,’ Seulgi said. ‘You lead the way.’

‘Glad to see we’re getting somewhere,’ Hongki said, not at all glad. He motioned for them to get out and predictably called to Seulgi when she was about to close the door. She turned and looked at him. He had one of the herbal cigarettes nestled between his lips again.

‘Sir?’

‘Don’t this up,’ he said. ‘You know what I mean by that?’

‘Don’t go shooting random people, sir.’

‘Bingo. See? Even you can learn. Sometimes. God, it seems like all I ever do is repeat myself with you. I'm sure there's a lesson in that somewhere.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Well, go on,’ he said, gesturing for her to close the door and kindly off. ‘I’ve got birds to feed. Or something. I don't even know that that means. Must be the pills. You know what they put in these things? Yeah. Me neither.'