CHAPTER 20: THE CONNECTION
Brixton Bedsit, Railton Road — August 21, 2010, 7:40 AM
The building directory took forty minutes and a £3 printout from the UCL administration office, obtained by telling the receptionist I was considering renting office space and wanted to know who my neighbours would be. She'd been helpful. Universities always were — the staff assumed anyone polite and professional was faculty, and faculty never lied about anything important.
Except about their publication records.
I pinned the directory to the corkboard next to the Blind Banker preparation sheet. Six offices on the fourth floor. Three faculty — Hoyt, Pratchett, Mehta. One meeting room. One storage. And B. Lukis, East Asia Trade Consulting.
The morning run had cleared my head. Six miles through Brockwell Park, the August air thick enough to chew, sweat soaking through my t-shirt by mile three. The body was getting stronger — not fast, not dramatically, but the daily accumulation of effort was reshaping it into something that could keep up with the demands I was placing on it. The knees held. The lungs didn't burn until mile five.
I sat at the counter with a mug of builder's tea and my laptop — a second-hand ThinkPad I'd bought for £80 from a student at the Brixton Market two weeks ago, my first real investment in infrastructure — and started researching Brian Lukis.
The public record was thin. A LinkedIn profile that hadn't been updated in fourteen months: Brian Lukis, Freelance Journalist and Trade Consultant, specialising in East Asian markets. Previous employment included three years at the Financial Times covering commodity trading, a stint at a Shanghai-based English-language business magazine, and freelance work for various trade publications. Languages: Mandarin (professional), Cantonese (conversational).
The private record was thinner. Electoral register: registered at a flat in Deptford. Companies House: East Asia Trade Consulting Ltd, incorporated 2008, sole director B.R. Lukis, registered address matching the UCL office. Annual accounts: micro-entity, revenue under £10,000.
A man who'd covered Chinese trade for years, spoke the language, had connections on both sides, and was running a consulting business that barely covered its rent.
Classic profile. Same as Eddie Van Coon at the bank — people who travel to China regularly, who speak the language, who have access to the import-export pipeline. The Black Lotus recruits them as smugglers. Antiquities, mostly. Jade pins, ancient hairpins, pottery — small items, high value, easy to conceal in personal luggage.
And when they stop being useful — or start being a liability — the symbols appear.
I pinned Lukis's photograph — pulled from his LinkedIn — next to the directory. Drew a red line to Hoyt's office. A blue line — suspected — to a box I labelled Black Lotus Tong.
The corkboard was filling again. The serial suicides section had been cleared weeks ago, the pins and string repurposed, the map filed in my notebook. Now new connections spread across the board like a web being spun by a spider who hadn't decided which fly to catch first.
My phone rang at nine-fifteen. Charlie.
"Nathan. You awake?"
"Since six. What've you got?"
"That Holmes bloke again. Murder at a bank — Shad Sanderson, one of those big glass towers in the City. Dead banker in his office. And — you'll want to hear this — Chinese symbols painted on the wall inside. Inside a locked office."
I sat down. Then stood up. Then sat down again.
"When?"
"Last night. Found this morning. All over the news, mate. And Holmes was there before the police even got the tape up. Someone at the bank called him direct."
Eddie Van Coon. The banker who'd been smuggling Chinese antiquities through his business trips. Shot with a handgun in his locked flat — or office, in this version — made to look like suicide. The first confirmed Black Lotus killing.
"Charlie, listen. The symbols at the professor's office, the ones I told you about yesterday — they're connected. Same system, same organisation. This is bigger than one scared academic."
A pause. Charlie processing. He did that — went quiet when information needed sorting, the way a computer goes silent during a heavy calculation.
"How big?"
"Chinese smuggling ring. Multiple targets. The professor is collateral — the actual target is someone else in his building." Is Lukis. "And the banker that was murdered — he's part of the same network."
"Bloody hell." Another pause. "Want me to pull anyone in?"
"Not yet. I need you to expand the symbol monitoring. Not just Chinese graffiti — any unusual markings near banks, import businesses, or auction houses. Especially in the City and along the Docklands corridor. And Charlie—"
"Yeah?"
"Tell the network to observe only. No approaching anyone, no engaging. If they see anything that looks like organised crime — anything at all — they call you, you call me. Nobody plays hero."
"Understood."
I ended the call and stood in front of the corkboard. Red string for confirmed connections, blue for suspected. The web grew: Van Coon at the bank. Lukis at UCL. Hoyt as collateral. The symbols as warnings. The Black Lotus as the centre of everything.
[Investigation Progress: Parallel case connection established. Target identification: B. Lukis (probable). Network deployed.]
[+15 SP. Total: 299/300.]
One point. One single point from Level 3.
I stared at the system notification hovering at the edge of my awareness. 299 out of 300. Close enough to taste but not close enough to matter. The system didn't give participation trophies — it gave results for results.
The laptop was still open on the counter. I pulled up the news. BBC London: Banker found dead in City office — police investigating. The article was thin — no name released, no details about the symbols. That would come later, when someone leaked it, which someone always did.
I needed to talk to Lukis. Today. Before the Black Lotus's warning became a death sentence.
---
The bus to UCL took thirty-five minutes. I spent them reading everything I could find about Chinese organised crime in London on the ThinkPad's browser, tethered to my phone. The public information was sparse — academic papers on triads, a few Home Office reports on trafficking, nothing specific to art smuggling. The real intelligence was locked behind police databases and MI6 servers I couldn't access.
But I had something better than databases. I had a dead man's television viewing habits from another universe.
The Black Lotus Tong. A subset of a larger Chinese criminal network. London operations: smuggling antiquities out of China through legitimate trade channels. Couriers: people who travel to China regularly — bankers, journalists, traders. Payment: substantial. Penalty for betrayal: death, delivered via a trained assassin called Zhi Zhu — the Spider.
In the show, Soo Lin Yao was the key witness. A former Tong member working at the National Antiquities Museum, trying to escape her past. Her brother was the assassin sent to kill her.
In this world, those people were real. And the killing had already started.
The UCL building's front entrance was propped open — a maintenance worker was hauling boxes from a van, and I slipped in behind him without signing the visitor book. The lift was still broken. Fifty-two stairs.
Fourth floor. Room 402. I knocked on Lukis's door again.
No answer.
I pressed my ear to the door. No sound — no keyboard, no phone, no breathing. The office was empty, or the man inside was very, very quiet.
A tap on my shoulder. I turned.
Professor Mehta — forties, sari under a lab coat, reading glasses pushed up into dark hair — was watching me from her open doorway.
"Can I help you? That office has been empty since Tuesday."
"I'm looking for Mr. Lukis. We had an appointment."
"Haven't seen him in days. His mail's piling up at the porter's lodge." She frowned. "Are you with the university?"
"Private consultant. Working with Professor Hoyt."
The frown softened. "Ah. The graffiti business. Samuel's been a wreck about it. Terrible thing. Well — if you find Mr. Lukis, tell him his recycling bin is overflowing into the corridor."
She closed her door. I stood in the corridor with a growing weight in my chest.
Lukis hasn't been to his office since Tuesday. Five days.
I pulled out my phone. Searched for Brian Lukis in the online electoral register. The Deptford flat address was right there — public record, same as how I'd found Jeff Hope.
The bus to Deptford was forty minutes. I'd go there now, knock on his door, and—
My phone rang. Charlie again.
"Nathan. Turn on the news."
"What?"
"Brian Lukis. Freelance journalist. Found dead in his flat in Deptford. Locked room — same as the banker. Symbols on the wall."
The weight in my chest dropped into my stomach.
[Level 3 Achieved. Title: Licensed Private Detective. +3 Free Stat Points. New abilities unlocked: Danger Sense, Police Relations (Basic), Laboratory Access (Limited).]
The timing was obscene. A man was dead and the system was congratulating me.
I closed my eyes. Opened them. Processed.
Too late. Again. Just like Jeff Hope — the right answer, arrived at too slowly. Lukis had been dead since Tuesday, probably. Five days I'd spent building a case file while a man rotted in his flat.
Different this time. Hope was canon — nothing could have changed the outcome without direct intervention. Lukis... Lukis was someone I could have warned. Should have warned. If I'd come to UCL two days earlier, if I'd knocked on his door on Monday instead of Friday—
The bus stop was fifty metres away. I could be at the crime scene in under an hour.
"Charlie, keep the network monitoring active. I'm going to Deptford."
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