Hungry Ghost by Stephen Leather

a long time since a girl had made him feel the way Petal had. There had been a horrible moment when he thought that maybe he’d read the signs wrong and that she was on the game, she’d seemed almost too willing. Dugan was no stranger to hookers; many was the time he’d gone home with one to fill up an empty night, and he didn’t begrudge them the money. A couple had even become friends, though he still had to pay them. But he’d wanted Petal as a lover, and as a friend, and anything else would have spoiled it for him. But she didn’t force him to shower first, the way that hookers always did, nor did she insist that he wore a sheath. ‘I’m on the pill,’ she whispered. He’d been overcome by an animal passion that almost scared him with its intensity, but it had been coupled with an overwhelming feeling of tenderness. He’d wanted to squeeze her, bite her, eat her, to dominate her and yet at the same time be completely in her power. He’d stroked and caressed her and he was sure she’d come within seconds of his moving inside her, and eventually he’d cried out her name and afterwards she’d curled up next to him like a cat with his arms around her and he’d fallen asleep with her head under his chin.
    He began to grow hard again as he thought of her and when he stepped into the shower he put it on full cold and gasped.

    Howells sat in his rented car and yawned. The sky was smudged with the first light of dawn but he’d already been up an hour. He’d bolted down a room-service breakfast and driven out to Ng’s house, where he’d parked about a quarter of a mile from the junction of the main road and the track that led up to the triad leader’s compound.
    There had been three deliveries: the papers, the milk and the post. Nothing else. Howells waited patiently. He didn’t read a newspaper, or listen to the radio, or do anything else that might distract him from the job at hand – the waiting and the watching. Twenty minutes after the postman had left, an olive-green Mercedes 560 nosed down the track indicating that it was going to turn right, towards where Howells was sitting. The engine was already running because he’d needed the airconditioner to keep from melting. He waited until the Mercedes passed him, then began to follow it, never getting closer than fifty yards. It headed towards Kowloon and there was plenty of morning traffic so Howells wasn’t worried about losing it.
    They followed the road into the built-up area and then the car indicated a left turn as it approached a set of traffic lights and Howells did the same. The lights changed to amber as the Mercedes went through and by the time Howells made the turn they were red. The car in front braked suddenly and he had to swerve around it with a squeal of tortured tyres. He had no choice, he knew that, but he also realized that it was a sure way of attracting attention to himself. He should have waited, but he’d reacted instinctively, the way he usually did, letting his subconscious show the way. He stamped on the accelerator and caught up with the Mercedes, twenty feet from its bumper, then fifteen, and then he indicated he was going to overtake and rattled past it. There were three people in the car: a uniformed driver, a heavily built man in a leather bomber jacket in the front passenger seat, and a small girl in pigtails. She had blonde hair, Howells noticed with surprise. The girl was playing with something, her head down in concentration. The driver looked straight ahead but the passenger gave Howells the once-over and then looked scornfully at the rented car.
    Howells accelerated until he was about a hundred yards ahead of the Mercedes and then he slowed to match its speed, watching it in the driving mirror. Another set of traffic lights came up and Howells slowed. The Mercedes indicated a right turn and Howells followed suit. They were driving through a commercial area now; shopkeepers were opening their small stores, pushing up