Blood Runs Deep

Part III

The morgue room was two floors underground at the very bottom of the precinct building. It was a small room and obscenely cold. Outside ran a single corridor circled with dim ceilinglights as pale as ice and a lone double door that led back out into the rest of the building. The glass in the windows was bulletproof, just in case. There were two long tin trays on wheels to the left of the room and a row of white morgue lockers at the back where the bodies were kept after having been drained and embalmed and laid to rest. The lone light hummed mutely, the thin cone terribly still. When Jinho the mortician walked in the two trays carrying bodybags had been there almost fifteen minutes.

He was a small man and particularly wiry. He carried tucked under his armpit a small doctor’s bag and a laptop and he wore his glasses low on his nose and walked with a certain bend in his spine that suggested years of poor posture. Or maybe some sort of birth defect. He entered and set his bag and laptop down on the table at the back and snapped on a pair of fresh white surgeon’s gloves. For a minute he just stood there listening to the rooflight buzz ever so slightly. Then he opened the second drawer behind his little desk and produced a plastic tray of instruments that he sat atop the table and sorted through. There were two pairs of surgical scissors and a suture kit and a scalpel and a fresh bottle of formaldehyde. In the other corner by the door he the motorized embalming machine and stepped back and sorted through the instruments again. He did not know who his guests were on the table slabs and he did not care. With great patience he held the scalpel up in the narrow cone of light and turned it twice and then satisfied he ped the first of the bodybags about halfway down. Then he stopped and blinked twice.

He did not know what he had expected to see. People died in various ways and many of them grisly. He had seen more death than he thought was psychologically healthy. Heads squished, brains gunked, the watermelony remains of a couple poor souls who had been unceremoniously run over by a steamroller on New Years Day. Once there had been a man who had choked to death on a plug socket, strange as that was. He had seen deaths that sounded like punishments made up from stories of old, delineated time and time again in spoken myths. So much so that when he opened the bodybag and peered down he expected to see the very worst. What he absolutely had not expected was Kang Seulgi looking back up at him with apologetic eyes and an awkward smile on her face.

‘I’m so sorry about this,’ she said, and punched him square in the mouth.

He stumbled back and dropped the scalpel and fell. The plastic tray of mortuary instruments went tumbling across the floor. The glass bottle of formaldehyde shattered in a hazardous watery mess. Seulgi shimmied her arms up and out of the bodybag and ped it all the way down and stepped out and ran a hand through her hair. She took only a second to catch her breath before realising where she was. Then she ped Irene’s bodybag and helped her out of it.

‘Jesus,’ Irene muttered. ‘I thought I was going to ing die in there. Like, literally die this time. No pretending.’

‘That’s why she cut holes in them.’

‘Yeah, well. Next time you talk to Wheein, be sure to tell her this was a ing stupid plan. Maybe the most stupid plan in the history of plans. And there have been a lot of plans in history, I’m sure of that.’

‘You can tell her yourself.’

‘You know how hard it is to stay perfectly still in one of these things?’

Seulgi shrugged. ‘We’re in the same boat, you know. I had to stay still as well.’

‘It’s ing hard,’ Irene said. ‘And why did we have to be facedown in the first place? Swear I've thrown my back out from that. It's like planking, except you're...you know, in a ing bodybag.’

‘Because I knew you'd crack up laughing the moment Taeyeon opened up your bodybag.’

‘Damn. Imagine that. I'm sure it'd freak her out for a good while. A laughing corpse.’

‘For about fifteen seconds. Before she decided to shoot you again and put you out of your misery.’

‘If I were laughing, wouldn't really be misery, would it now? And what if that guy hadn’t come in for another two hours? What if he had decided to treat himself to a succulent meal or something? Maybe some fried chicken. A plate of party sausages. Cocktail sausages. Whatever. Or what if he’d fallen asleep at the wheel of his car and crashed and died on the way? Then he’d be coming here in a bag of his own. Imagine that. The ing irony.’

‘He’s not dead, is he, though?’

‘Suppose not.’

‘So stop entertaining hypotheticals.’

‘Speaking of him,’ Irene said. She nodded over Seulgi’s shoulder. Jinho the mortician stood wobbling a slight and holding his bleeding nose with a bloody hand. He touched it and winced and cursed. The formaldehyde seemed to be almost hissing across the white linoleum. He looked at Seulgi and Seulgi shrugged. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m really sorry about that.’

‘What the is going on?’

‘We’re, uh, not dead.’

‘Am I dreaming?’

‘Sorry.’

‘You broke my ing nose!’

‘Again, sorry.’

Irene tapped her on the shoulder. ‘So,’ she whispered, ‘what are we gonna do now? I mean, we can’t keep him here like this.’

‘I know.’

‘So.’

‘I’m thinking. Let me think.’

‘We could kill him.’

Seulgi looked at her and she replied with a curt shrug.

‘It’s just a suggestion.’

‘We’re not killing him,’ Seulgi said.

‘How about knocking him out, then? You’ve got quite a bit of experience with that, y’know.’

They looked at him again. He had stopped holding his nose and was listening to them. ‘I’m very sorry about this,’ Seulgi said. It occurred to her that in all her time at the precinct she’d only seen Jinho perhaps two or three times and talked to him less. And in that same moment of pure clarity she realised that there was a lot more to the precinct than just her department. Three whole floors, in fact. And then another floor on top of that.

‘What the is going on?’ he asked again. As if he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Seulgi muttered, ‘but I’m going to have to punch you again. I hope you understand.’

‘What?’

‘We need you to be knocked out for the time being.’

‘No, you.’

He stepped forward as if to ward her away. Seulgi turned to push Irene back but Irene had disappeared off to the side rather quietly. ‘I’m sorry,’ Seulgi said, unable to say much of anything else. ‘I know you probably didn’t expect this tonight. I bet it’s not often you get dead people that are actually, well…not dead.’

‘Is this some sort of sick joke?’

‘I apologise for having to knock you out.’

‘You’re not coming within five ing feet—’

Before he had the chance to finish he was already dropping to his knees. The look in his pale eyes had gone glassy and distant. He collapsed forward in a slump, an enormous messydressed slug unconscious on the cold linoleum in front of her. Irene stood holding his laptop behind where he had fallen and grimacing at the sight. ‘Jesus,’ she said, ‘I knocked the out of that guy.’

‘Yeah. Thanks for that.’

‘Is he…y’know.’

‘What?’

‘Is he dead?’

Seulgi stepped around him and bent down and held a finger to his neck. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘he’s still got a pulse. So he’s good for now.’

‘Define good.’

‘Not dead.’

‘That’s a start,’ Irene said. She put the laptop down and dusted herself off and tied her hair back in a ponytail. Seulgi took a moment to adjust to the stark of the lights in the corridor outside. It felt not unlike a hospital ward. She took two small plastic devices from her trouser pocket and passed one to Irene. They looked like offbrand hearing aids. She fixed one around her right ear and told Irene to do the same with hers.

‘What are these for again?’ Irene said. ‘You going to run me through all of this? I mean, we didn’t really have much time before. It was all just, “You’re going to pretend to be dead after I pretend to shoot you, blah blah blah.” You know what I’m saying?’

‘You didn’t listen?’

‘Not really. Should I have been?’

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘I mean, I was just looking forward to some action, you know?’

‘This was important,’ Seulgi said.

‘Yeah, well. Something about Taeyeon and guns and bad .’

Seulgi sighed. She looked at Irene and almost had to stifle a laugh and was suddenly very thankful Wheein hadn’t actually killed them. She pointed to the device in her ear. ‘This whole building is bugged,’ she said. ‘Top to bottom, hearing bugs everywhere. Every floor. According to Wheein, at least.’

‘By Taeyeon?’

‘Yeah. Apparently so.’

‘And these—’

‘They’re like mini-EMPs. They interfere with and dissipate any incoming signals.’

‘So she can’t hear us, you mean.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why didn’t you just say that, then? Why did you have to say, “Interfere with and dissipate?” You sound like Wendy.’

‘Just listen.’

‘Yes ma’am.’

Seulgi took a deep breath and looked about. As if they might have been followed in. But they were all alone save the soundly sleeping body of Jinho the mortician bleeding all over his nice linoleum tiles and the soft buzzing of the light over their heads. ‘I hope she’s right about this,’ Seulgi said.

‘Well, if she isn’t, it’s gonna be a hell of a story, no? I mean, we already know Taeyeon wants us dead for whatever reason. We heard her there under the bridge. So, we know that much.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And there’s no Hongsuk.’

Seulgi sighed again.

‘That’s ing crazy, really.’

‘I thought we were going to get him.’

‘And then it turns out it’s not him at all. You know, I knew there was something wrong with that Taeyeon from the moment I had my eyes on her. Just from the way she was talking to me. The way she kicked me out like that.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘I guess my hunches are never wrong.’

‘Don’t start that now.’

‘Start what?’

‘That,’ Seulgi said, hands in her pockets. She looked at the bodybags and almost had to laugh at the audacity of it all. The sheer lunacy. She reached around under the back of her shirt and pulled out a small emptied blood squib that had dried and cracked with fake blood. ‘You can get rid of this now,’ she said.

Irene pulled hers out and held it up and tossed it away. ‘Trust Wheein to have fake blood packs on her, right?’

‘It’s not like she just walks around with them in her purse all day. She planned this.’

‘Well, yeah. I suppose so.’

‘She did. That’s what she was saying under the bridge earlier. Did you listen to none of it?’

‘Not really.’

‘Jesus.’

‘She pointed a ing gun at me,’ Irene said. ‘Kinda hard to think about anything after that. You know, for a minute there I genuinely thought she was going to kill us. Guess that says more about me and my trust for others than it does about Wheein, no? Damn. Maybe I’ve been the bad guy all along.’

‘Will you listen for a second?’

‘Were you sad?’

‘What?’

‘When I was about to die. Were you sad?’

‘What a stupid question,’ Seulgi said.

‘Did you cry?’

‘Did I look like I cried?’

‘Were you thinking about crying?’

‘Look, we don’t have much time.’

‘I bet you were. I don’t blame you. I would’ve probably cried too in your position.’

‘Oh, so you weren’t going to cry anyway?’ Seulgi said. ‘You weren’t sad about me possibly dying?’

‘That’s silly. Of course I was, but I’d be dead first. I can’t cry if I’m dead, you know.’

‘We’ve got to move.’

‘Before he wakes up?’

‘Before Taeyeon or anyone else realises anything is wrong. Before she realises we’re not actually dead and Wheein’s gone behind her back, and not just for our sake.’

‘For Wheein’s.’

Seulgi nodded gravely.

‘What do you think she’ll do now?’

‘I don’t know. Go into hiding, I suspect. Wait for us to help her out.’

‘So, if we don’t, she’s ed?’

Seulgi nodded again. The buzzing of the light seemed to be growing ever louder. ‘If she’s right about this,’ she said, ‘and all the info she’s been collecting over the past month is accurate, then this is bigger than the department. This might be bigger than even the Seoul police force. This is as big as Korea.’

‘As big as the we’ve been through before?’

‘Well, this time our lives are at risk. She’s already tried to kill us three times now.’

‘And somehow we’re still alive. Miraculously. I’m starting to think it’s impossible for us to die. Well, impossible for you to die, since I’ve…you know.’

Seulgi ignored her and continued. ‘If she’s even doing half the stuff Wheein thinks she’s doing then this could be the end of the police force as we know it. This corruption runs far too deep to let them get away with it.’

‘How deep? And how much ?’

‘Embezzling of official police funds, theft, gambling, ion, arms dealing. I'm sure there was more but she had like, what, five minutes to explain it all? Basically everything she accused Hongsuk of doing. And you can add attempted murder to that list now too.’

‘Well, isn’t that some .’ Irene looked around. ‘So, what do we do?’

‘We stick to the plan. We get upstairs, we find the documents Wheein was talking about, we find anything else incriminating, and we get the out of here as fast as we can.’

‘You think she’s gonna have incriminating evidence left around in her office or something? Like, oops, guess I just left all my illegal transactions out on my desk! Really now?’

‘Probably not. But everything leaves a paper trail. First we check her office. If there’s nothing we find there, we go to the top floor and check the records room.’

‘I didn’t even know this place had a records room. Come to think of it, I didn’t even know it had a morgue, so I guess that shows much I know.’

‘Come on.’

Irene looked down at the mortician on the floor with a grimace. ‘Don’t have to tell me twice,’ she said, and followed Seulgi out of the room.

♣ ♣ ♣

She had never been in the precinct that late at night and everything beheld within it a strange sort of sorcery that unnerved her. The quietness of it all. The way she could hear the clock in Taeyeon’s office from outside the department room. How she half expected something to grab them at any minute but it never did. She crept into the department room with Irene in tow and spent a moment trying to adjust to the narrow moonlight from the windows. Motes of dust dancing slantwise in the thin shafts. Wheein’s desk looked like Wendy’s house. It was evident that she had not been back there at all and for good reason. ‘I wonder if she already knows,’ Irene said.

‘Who?’

‘Taeyeon. I wonder if she knows Wheein doublecrossed her.’

‘Was it still technically a doublecross if Wheein was never on her side? And was just pretending the whole time?’

‘Dunno. Semantics, I suppose.’

Seulgi tried the doorhandle to Taeyeon’s office and shook her head. ‘Locked,’ she said.

‘Let me.’

‘With what?’

‘You got any paperclips?’

‘Somewhere, probably.’

‘Not really much of a help, are ya, babe?’

Seulgi sighed. She filed through her desk drawers and then Wheein’s and finally Tzuyu’s and produced a small plastic tub of paperclips and handed two of them to Irene. Irene bent them in half and turned them so that they made a contraption that almost looked like chopsticks and bent and fiddled with the lock while Seulgi watched her. She looked entirely at home doing that. It had been so long that Seulgi had almost forgotten she had even been a master thief at all. That the whole reason they had met in the first place was because of Irene’s mastery of thievery. Or her oddly efficient doorlock picking skills. She remembered how enthusiastic Irene had been about sharing the inner workings of bump locks and key picking when they’d first been assigned to the Leeum case. How long ago that was. Practically a different lifetime.

‘There you go,’ Irene said. The door gave a faint click and then a second. Irene stepped away and bowed in mock gratitude and said, ‘Voila.’

‘You should stop doing that.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s illegal.’

‘Oh, sorry. Next time I’ll just stand here and we can gawp at the door together praying for a way to open it. And besides, it’s not something I can forget. I learnt it.’

‘Then unlearn it.’

‘No.’

Seulgi looked at her. Arguing was futile and arguing over something that ridiculous even more so because Irene would win that argument every single time. She put her hand on the doorknob and turned it and pushed the door in. The room inside looked as it had a day prior. Only the clock kept them meagre company. ‘Look around,’ Seulgi said.

‘For what?’

‘For anything. Anything at all that might be relevant.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Irene said. But Seulgi had already pulled the top two desk drawers open so violently they almost came off their rollers.

‘Is that a good idea, babe? She’s gonna know someone’s been in here.’

‘She’ll know soon enough that we’re not dead anyway. Probably right around the time Jinho wakes up and tells her that he was jumped by two corpses.’

‘Point taken.’

‘Keep looking.’

They rifled through documents and folders and files and tossed them everywhere. In the second drawer Seulgi found a pencil sharpener and a holepunch and a role of stickyback labels and a couple more files and nothing else. The bottom drawer was locked shut. She tried it a second time and then tried to tear it off its hinges and failed spectacularly.

‘,’ she muttered.

‘Locked?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’ve got you, don’t worry.’

‘Need some more paperclips?’

‘Just the two, actually.’

She sauntered over and bent down and played with the lock on the front of the drawer while Seulgi stood awkwardly looking about. She thought for a moment she heard someone come in but it was only Irene opening the drawer for her. ‘There you go, sweetie,’ she said with a wry smile.

‘Thanks.’

‘Well. Go on, then.’

Seulgi emptied out the contents and opened up the files and read through each of them in turn. The look on her face went from concerned frown to scowl to frown and back again slowly. Irene folded her arms and watched her read the documents. When she was finished she tossed everything on the desk and sighed.

‘Well?’

‘Nothing,’ Seulgi said. ‘Nothing of note.’

‘Then what the do we do now?’

‘Go upstairs.’

‘Can we get in?’

‘You can pick the lock.’

‘Oh, can I now?’

Seulgi shrugged. She was halfway to the door when she looked back and caught sight of the little office garbage can beside Taeyeon’s chair. It was filled with shredded lines of paper and rubber bands. ‘Wait,’ she said.

‘What is it?’

She picked up a handful of the scraps and splayed them out on the desk and began trying to piece together something from them like parts of a jigsaw puzzle.

‘What the is all this?’ Irene said.

‘That’s what I’m trying to find out. Let me think.’

She sorted through them. A couple had headers and numbers that looked like invoices and lists of transactions. One had the title ANAMCO in bold printed letters. Irene coughed and tapped on the door.

‘Do you think this is—’ she stopped, acutely aware of the fact she could hear footsteps on the stairs outside the department room. They froze and turned to each other. The horror on Irene’s face would have been comical under more favourable circumstances. They listened. The footsteps were getting closer and closer still.

‘,’ Irene muttered.

‘That must be Jinho.’

‘What the do we do? Babe. Babe, what do we do?’

‘We have to go. Now.’

‘Go where?’

‘Anywhere but here.’

‘Not the most helpful answer, really. Where the we do go?’

She thought about it for a second and only a second. Then she said, ‘Okay, here’s what we do.’

‘What?’

‘Follow me.’

They left Taeyeon’s office door open and sat tucked under Dahyun and Chaeyoung’s desks and waited. The footsteps were right outside. They heard the department door open and someone step in and held their breath. In the dark they could make out almost nothing at all. They listened to the footsteps grow and grow and slowly fade. Seulgi looked at Irene. As if to say: Now. Go now.

Then she mouthed: ‘Now. Go now.’

They pulled themselves up and were gone. Seulgi vaulted the desk and Irene stepped around into the aisle and made for the door and didn’t look back. Jinho was in Taeyeon’s office when he heard them get up and go. He called to them and told them to stop and naturally they did not. By the time he was standing at the top of the stairwell Seulgi and Irene were already outside and making for the end of the street, lost against the night dark, phantoms back from the dead.

♣ ♣ ♣

‘Babe, what’s Stealth? Where the are we going?’

Seulgi leant down and smiled at the cab driver and handed him a couple bills and watched him go. ‘Somewhere close by.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean? Where are we?’ Irene looked about for a moment. They were standing on a street corner in an upscale part of town. That much was obvious. Down the avenue the neon bar boards and flickerlights shone like a synthetic dawn. People came and went in droves, drunk and drunker yet. ‘Are we in Gangnam?’ she said. ‘Could’ve sworn I heard you say Gangnam to that driver back there.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why? And what the is Stealth?’

‘There’s a club at the end of this street called Stealth.’

‘Oh. Not really sure it’s the right time for that, babe. But by all means.’

Seulgi ignored her as they walked.

‘Babe. C’mon.’

‘There’s a payphone in the foyer we can use.’

‘What?’

‘In the club, there’s a payphone that still works. I know because I’ve seen it before.’

‘You brought me all this way to use a ing payphone? Have you got some sort of mid-eighties thing going on again? I mean, like, a thirst for payphones or something?’

‘I don’t mean it like that.’

‘Well then.’

‘I need to ring Wheein,’ said Seulgi. ‘I threw away my cell and it’s the only working payphone I know of in this whole ing city.’

‘You think she’s gonna pick up?’

‘No. Not at all. But I have to try. I don’t have anyone else I can turn to right now. Not anyone that isn’t already in trouble with something.’

‘Well, fair point.’

They shuffled past crowds of drunks with less than ideal grace, Seulgi in front and Irene trailing close behind her. The sign that said STEALTH was a plasterboard neon green that hummed where it hung dimly above the door. It smelt of smoke and vodka and there was almost no queue. ‘What time is it?’ Irene said.

‘Just gone one.’

‘Jesus.’

‘What? It’s not that late.’

‘I know. That’s the point. We died, came back to life, looted a police office, escaped, and made it here all in…what? Two hours? Two and a half? Don’t let anybody ever tell you we’re not efficient workers, ya know? Babe. Babe, are you listening to me?’

Seulgi was not. She smiled at the bouncer and flashed her ID and Irene did the same and he let them past without a word. He didn’t bother to mention the fact they both had fake bloodstains dried on the backs of their shirts, or that they looked like they had just come from a morgue somewhere. Perhaps there was some irony in that, Seulgi thought. She paid their way in and motioned for Irene to follow her. At the back of the foyer there was a small area under the stairwell and a single ATM and payphone that appeared to have been out of use for the better part of half a century.

‘Wait here,’ Seulgi said.

‘You got change for that bad boy?’

‘Enough to make it count.’

‘I don’t even know what that means,’ Irene said. She stood dawdling while Seulgi rang up the phone digit by digit and waited. The music rose to a great swell and dipped again. ‘Hey, babe,’ she said. Seulgi looked at her. ‘I’m gonna go use the bathroom.’

Seulgi nodded to her. She rang up Wheein’s number again and held it there and waited. It rang and buzzed and made a dim click and went to a silent answerphone. She tried it a third time and then a fourth. She tried it until she had exhausted all her spare change and slammed the received down and cursed under her breath. The girl behind the till at the counter never seemed to even notice. ‘,’ she muttered to herself. She thought about where Wheein could possibly be, or what could have happened to her. Perhaps she was dead somewhere, but Seulgi thought probably not. Wheein was smarter than that. Her obscene procrastination was a perfect cover for the sort of intelligence she actually possessed. She spent a good ten minutes thinking about where Wheein might be and only then did she realise Irene had not returned from the bathroom.

When she stepped into the small bathroom tucked away next to the cloakroom the first thing she noticed was Irene stood by the sink, very pale and very urgent and motioning rapidly with her eyes toward one of the cubicles.

‘Irene?’

The next thing she felt was the cold steel of a gunbarrel pressed against the small of her back hard enough to make her flinch.

‘, babe,’ Irene said. She looked out of breath.

The cubicle at the end Irene had been motioning to was already open. Taeyeon stepped out into the grim light and looked Seulgi up and down and almost broke into an impressed smile. She was carrying a pistol of Beretta design and she swung the gunbarrel up to about Seulgi’s chest and nodded at nothing in particular.

‘,’ Seulgi said.

‘Probably not what you were expecting right about now, is it?’

Seulgi said nothing. She watched Taeyeon pace back and forth very slowly and with great care.

‘I’ll admit,’ Taeyeon said, ‘I wasn’t expecting your little charade with Wheein. That whole faking your death thing? Including blood packs and fake bullets and everything? She’s a lot smarter than I gave her credit for. A lot smarter. But it doesn’t matter now. You’re here. That’s what matters.’

‘What have you done to her?’

‘Wheein? Nothing yet. But when I find her…that’s another matter entirely. Now, tell me something else. What did you find in that office?’

‘What office?’

‘Don’t play coy.’

‘I don’t what you’re talking about.’

Taeyeon laughed. It was the first laugh Seulgi had ever heard from her and she didn’t much like the sound of it. She glanced at Irene uneasily and back at Taeyeon again. ‘Come on,’ Taeyeon said. ‘You think those things that Wheein gave you actually worked? What did you say about them again? That they dissipate incoming signals? Something like that?’

Seulgi was quiet.

‘Thought so. You’re quite unlucky that I was already passing through Gangnam when I heard you getting into that cab, you know. Otherwise you might’ve gotten away tonight. But no. Here you are, and here I am. Funny how fate works sometimes.’

‘What do you want?’

‘From you? Nothing much. To get rid of you mainly.’

‘Why?’

Taeyeon was silent for a second. As if pondering the true answer to this. Then she said, ‘Because I knew you’d get in my way. You’re the one constant thorn in the side of everything I’ve been trying to do. That’s your problem, Seulgi – you’re too good at everything, especially your job. You keep succeeding in things you shouldn’t succeed in.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Irene mumbled.

‘You should have died more times than I count. And after everything you’ve unearthed, all the people you’ve uncovered…well, I couldn’t risk you getting to me next. It was only a matter of time until you ran into someone that had ran into me and they spilled everything. So, you had to go. Both of you. No hard feelings. It’s just business.’

‘ you,’ Seulgi said. She felt the cold of the barrel press a slight harder into her back.

‘Don’t try anything,’ Taeyeon said. ‘The moment you move he’ll put a bullet in your spine. You know what that’s like? I don’t expect you’re much of a fan of the idea of spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Do you not listen? I just said I don’t want anything from you, except for you to die. Which you appear to be too stubborn to do.'

'Too stubborn to die,' Irene muttered. 'That's kinda badass'

‘You can’t kill me. Not here.’

Taeyeon was quiet a moment. The music outside felt as if it had stopped entirely. ‘No,’ she said, and swung the gun toward Irene. ‘But I can kill her.’

‘Wait.’

‘What? Struck a nerve?’

‘Don’t you dare hurt her.’

Taeyeon cocked back the pistol hammer.

‘Please,’ Seulgi muttered, voice a whisper.

Taeyeon pressed the gunbarrel to Irene’s temple and Irene flinched enough so that even Seulgi could see it. The terror in her eyes. ‘Don’t,’ Seulgi said, almost in tears. ‘Do whatever you like to me. Just let her go.’

‘How noble of you.’

‘You can’t kill me,’ Irene said. ‘Not here. Just like Seulgi said. Too much noise. Too many people outside.’

There was a moment of awful all-encompassing silence where Irene closed her eyes and thought that perhaps she had been incorrect. That her bluff had been called for precisely what it was. Her entire body tensed. She felt the barrel leave her temple and heard the hammer set back. Taeyeon shrugged and lowered the gun. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Well, you’re mostly right. I can’t kill you here. You were smart, Seulgi. Smart enough to realise that. And your friend Wheein was smart enough to not leave everything out on her desk before she decided to shoot me in the back, so to speak. So, now I have a problem. Killing you would be easy, but it would inconvenience me. I’d have to file paperwork, I’d have to go through an internal investigation, probably a deposition or two. I’d have your blood on my hands. And maybe they wouldn’t find anything, but maybe they would. Like you said, everything leaves a paper trail. I can’t risk that. So, we’re going to have to with option B.’

‘What’s option B?’ Irene said.

‘Throw you in a jail cell for the rest of your lives.’

‘Bull.’

‘I’m sure you think it is.’

‘You can’t do that. What if we talk?’

‘Talk to who? Who’s going to listen to you?’

‘You’re bluffing,’ Seulgi said. ‘What would you arrest us for?’

‘I’ve got a few things I can put on your record. A couple strings I can pull. You wouldn’t believe the power I have in this position. It’s almost intoxicating.’

‘So, now what?’

Taeyeon smiled again. The glimmer in her eyes was cold and wicked. ‘Normally it takes months to put someone behind bars. There are trials and courts and charges and all that. Processing, et cetera. But with a couple pulled strings, you’ll be there in twenty-four hours. No more, maybe less.’

‘That’s such horse.’

‘Oh, we’ll see about that. Or not.’

She motioned behind Seulgi. Another man stepped forward and pulled Irene’s arms behind her back and handcuffed her in place. Seulgi felt another pair of handcuffs go tight and cold around her own wrists. She looked at Taeyeon again and Taeyeon smiled.

‘Goodbye, detective,’ she said. ‘Pleasure knowing you.’