Qiu Xiaolong - Don't cry Tai lake

“Everyone going in and out the back door that night is on the tape,” Huang contributed hastily.

It was obvious that Chen had Mi trapped. She opened her mouth helplessly, but no words struggled out.

“Has your memory been refreshed, Mi?”

“So many things have happened of late,” she said at last, repeating what she’d said earlier, “I’ve been so worn out that my memory might not prove to be accurate.”

“A young, energetic office manager is supposed to remember a lot of things,” Chen pushed on relentlessly. “Anyway, the videotape is admissible as evidence in court, you know.”

“Do you need us to play it for you now?” Huang chipped in again.

“You-” She sprang up, as if galvanized, before she swayed, slumped back into the chair.

Chen waited, pouring himself a cup of tea, and another for Huang, without looking at her.

It took only a minute or two, however, for Mi to try to pull herself back together again.

“I worked so hard that evening, Chief Inspector Chen. I might have stepped out, briefly, for some fresh air, and not even thought about it. I’m still not sure, but something like that could have eluded my memory.”

“Now you have perjured yourself repeatedly in a murder investigation.”

“No, I just forgot.”

“You signed your earlier written statements, and we also have your new testimony recorded here and in the presence of Sergeant Huang and me. One small lapse in memory is possible, but not so many lapses in both of your statements. Definitely not. It’s up to the police to decide whether this amounts to perjury or not. Right, Sergeant Huang?”

“If this isn’t perjury, I don’t know what it is,” Huang said.

Instead of responding immediately, she kept staring at them like a melting snowwoman, her eyes like two black coal balls.

She’d been caught lying, trapped in the very act of it. Huang tried to think of all the possible scenarios. Out of all of them, if she kept insisting that it was just memory lapse, she might still get away with it. After all, leaving through the back door didn’t have to mean going to Liu’s home office. Huang guessed there was no security camera there. There were no witnesses or evidence against her. No motive, either.

What’s more, Internal Security could simply brush aside the scenario of her and a co-conspirator being the real culprits, since they had already reached their own conclusion and were ready to convict Jiang.

The silence weighed on all of them like a huge rock.

So what was Chief Inspector Chen going to do?

“Fu wasn’t in Wuxi over the weekend, was he?” Chen said unexpectedly, changing the topic.

This was another thrust that left Huang perplexed. Why was Chen bringing Fu in at this critical juncture?

“Yes, he was in Shanghai for a business meeting.”

“He was in Shanghai, that much is true, but I’m not at all sure about the business meeting part. I happen to have some pictures taken there last Saturday, the day before yesterday.”

Chen produced a large envelope containing a bunch of enlarged pictures. The first two or three pictures showed Fu and a young woman emerging from a hotel onto a street thronged with people. Then photos of the two walking, hand in hand, with the hotel visible in the background, and one of them showing the two kissing passionately, regardless of the passers-by. The pictures weren’t of high quality, but Fu was recognizable and the girl was someone Huang had never seen before. The last photo Chen brought out was of a large sign standing in front of the hotel.

“Look at this sign. This so-called hotel rents rooms by the hour,” Chen said with emphasis on “by the hour,” handing the picture to her. “On Nanjing Road. Who would go to such a hotel with him?”

“A prostitute?” Huang said.

The picture began trembling in Mi’s hand.

“No, she’s not one of those girls soliciting customers on Nanjing Road. That much I can tell you, Mi. She’s his fiancee. The cop in his old neighborhood in Shanghai has confirmed that. Fu has kept his relationship with her a secret here at the company. Why would he do that, Mi? You know better than anybody else, I would think. Anyway, that Saturday afternoon in Shanghai, Fu and his fiancee sneaked into that sleazy hotel, where they stayed for more than two hours. What were they doing there? You can easily imagine that. Here’s a picture of them leaving the hotel. Look at the happy, radiant smile on her face. There’s a young attendant-you can see here-who stands at the hotel door, shouting, ‘Clean, convenient, we change the sheets after every customer. Hot showers twenty-four hours. Mandarin Duck Bath … Worth every penny. Fifteen minutes in the spring valance is worth tons of gold.’”

It was astounding that Chen chose to launch into this vivid narrative at this juncture, almost like a Suzhou opera singer who got carried away by the details of the story he was narrating.

“That’s so dramatic,” Huang improvised.

“For everything under the sun, Sergeant Huang, there must be a reason. A reason may be inexplicable to others, but so transparent to the man or the woman involved in it.”

Again, Chen didn’t push further. Instead he spread those pictures on the table like a mosaic.

“Take a good look at them. And think really hard about it, Mi. No one else knows about our conversation. Not yet, anyway. Officer Huang is my loyal assistant, so you don’t have to worry about him.”

“What do you want exactly, Chief Inspector Chen?”

“All of this must have come as an overwhelming surprise to you,” Chen said, looking at his wristwatch. “Sergeant Huang and I are going to have lunch at the center canteen. So you may take your time thinking things through. It wouldn’t be a good idea for you to leave, but if you want anything for lunch, I can bring it back for you.”

“Our chief inspector is a very considerate man,” Huang said.

“When I come back, I think we’ll have a good talk. I may be able to do something for you. I hate to see a beauty like you punished for what you haven’t done.”

Chen picked up his business card and added a number on it. “It’s my cell number. Call me any time you think of something.”

Pushing the card over to her, Chen stood up quickly and Huang followed suit. The sudden exit for lunch was just the latest in surprises for the young cop.

Mi was already visibly shaken, and she might have collapsed if Chen had continued to build up the pressure.

“But why, Chief Inspector Chen?” she repeated, unable to control an involuntary twitch at the corner of her mouth.

“You are a clever woman, Mi,” Chen said, looking over his shoulder before he stepped out the door with Huang. “Use your brains. And you can find out for yourself whether what I’ve told you is true.”

Chen walked out of the villa with Huang.

Instead of to the center canteen as he had told Mi, however, he led Huang around to a small bamboo grove close to the foot of the wooded hill, where they had a partial view of the white villa through the green bamboo. They seated themselves on rocks, around which patches of new tender bamboo shoots appeared golden in the sunlight.

“The center is a nice place, isn’t it?” Chen said, reading the question in Huang’s eyes. “Don’t worry, Huang. I don’t think she’ll attempt to sneak out. Nor will the guard let her.”

“How did you come to suspect her, Chief Inspector Chen?”

“Remember our discussion at the crime scene? That was the first time I started to have questions about her.”

“Yes, you made several good points about the crime scene, but you didn’t mention her at all.”

“I wasn’t sure about those questions. Internal Security then came up with their scenario, so I tried to fit Jiang into it, but without success. I was confounded by the lack of any sign of struggle at the crime scene. It appeared as though Liu had been killed, peacefully, in his sleep. Of course, there’s no ruling out the possibility that Liu was asleep, given the time of night. But according to the scenario put forward by Internal Security, Liu was supposed to have had a serious showdown with a blackmailer. How could Liu have fallen asleep? And if so, how could Jiang have gotten in?”