You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

Hae-jin looked back as the men stood up and approached. ‘So what’s this about?’

The middle-aged detective took out his badge and flashed it at us. I didn’t catch the details other than that his name was Choi I-han and he was a lieutenant. He addressed Hae-jin. ‘Is your mother Kim Ji-won?’

‘Yes,’ Hae-jin replied.

Why was he talking about Mother, not me? What was going on? And why had Hae-jin asked what this was about? That wasn’t something a person would say after inviting someone to their home. It was what you would say to someone who burst in without notice. So were these cops not here to arrest me?

‘What’s your name?’ Lieutenant Choi asked Hae-jin.

Hae-jin answered. This time Choi looked at me. Neither he nor his partner seemed to recognise me. Then again, I was bruised and bloodied. I opened my swollen mouth and slurred, ‘Han Yu-jin.’

‘Then you must be the one who was home when we came by about the theft report made by Kim Ji-won.’

Hae-jin stared at me, puzzled.

I said yes. So they hadn’t been summoned by Hae-jin. That made more sense. That wasn’t the sort of thing he would have done, no matter how shocking the situation. I was relieved, but only for a moment. It didn’t matter in the end. It just delayed the inevitable. My life was still hanging in Hae-jin’s hands.

‘Where’s Kim Hye-won?’

I flinched. That I hadn’t anticipated. I nearly said, Auntie?

‘Auntie?’ Hae-jin asked.

‘She said she was coming here yesterday? Where is she now?’

Hae-jin turned to look at me.

‘She came around two and left around five,’ I answered.

‘Five? Who was here then? Both of you?’

‘Just me,’ I said.

‘Does your aunt come by often?’

‘No.’

‘Then she must have come for a reason. Can I ask why she came?’

I glanced at Hae-jin, who still had his arms still crossed and was looking down at his feet. I took that to mean that I was to answer. I tried to be as concise as possible; I explained why she’d come and how we’d celebrated.

‘Did she say anything out of the ordinary when she left?’

‘No.’

‘Do you remember what she was wearing?’

I thought for a moment. Grey padded coat, jeans, black sweater, long necklace. ‘I think she was wearing jeans and a sweater, but I don’t know for sure. I didn’t really pay attention.’

Choi looked at Hae-jin. ‘Where were you?’

‘I was in Muan for work.’ Hae-jin looked up. ‘What’s this about, anyway?’

Choi continued. ‘Business trip?’

‘Something like that.’

‘When did you get back?’

‘A little after ten. What’s this about?’ Hae-jin was growing impatient.

‘What kind of work do you do? Do you work in an office?’

Hae-jin stopped answering, as if to indicate that the detectives needed to explain themselves first.

The other officer had wandered over to the key cabinet in the hall. ‘What’s this smell?’ he said loudly. ‘It’s like bleach and something metallic…’ He had his back to us as he looked at the family portrait on the wall, the one we’d had taken when we became brothers.

I glanced at him before looking back at Choi. There wouldn’t be any blood there. I’d wiped everything I’d spotted. If I hadn’t caught something, I wanted to believe the detective wouldn’t either.

‘We’re here because we can’t reach Kim Hye-won.’ Choi finally relented. ‘We called her with some questions about a report she filed, but her mobile was turned off. We tried her at home and the housekeeper said she’d gone to her sister’s house. That’s why we came here, to talk to her in person. It’s not that common for a robbery call and a missing persons report to come in from the same family around the same time, is it?’

‘A missing persons report?’ Hae-jin straightened up, looking surprised.

‘Kim Hye-won filed it around noon yesterday. And now you’re saying she came here after calling it in. Did she say anything to you?’

Hae-jin looked at me and I looked back at him. Now I understood what had happened. Auntie must have figured that filing a missing persons report was the only way to find out where Mother was. The only issue was that the police didn’t do anything when an adult was unreachable for a few days. She would need something else in order for them to move quickly. The false robbery report was therefore an effort to create more suspicion. She must have figured that the police would be interested in the fact that a woman living in a neighbourhood that had recently experienced a murder had called in a report about a burglar, then the very next day was found to be missing. Maybe she’d thought they would investigate immediately. She must have imagined that when she came in here bravely by herself, they wouldn’t be far behind. But the police had started their work a day later than Auntie had anticipated.

‘So your business in Muan? What kind of work do you do?’ Choi asked Hae-jin again.

Hae-jin said he worked in film, and then they made small talk. What do you do in film, what films have you worked on, are they in the cinema, did you go to Muan for another film? Hae-jin answered each question politely, explaining when he had gone to Muan, which train he had caught home, what time he had arrived.

‘So you were done at two, then you were by the Yeongsan River harbour,’ Choi concluded. ‘Were you with anyone?’

‘No, I was alone.’

‘And you took the train back by yourself too.’

‘Yes.’

Choi nodded. ‘Then let’s talk about your mother.’

Now? When was this going to end? I glanced at the clock. Where was the other guy? Had he gone into Mother’s room? Even though I knew that couldn’t logically be possible, I called loudly, ‘Where are you going?’

The other detective poked his head out from the staircase. ‘Oh, I’ve never been into a two-storey flat, so I was looking around.’ He came back into the living room. ‘What is this awful smell in here anyway?’ He walked past Hae-jin and paused at the entrance to the kitchen, muttering to himself, ‘It’s like a corpse is rotting in here or something.’

I looked at Choi with annoyance. He needed to control his partner. Choi ignored me. ‘Exactly when did your mother leave the house?’

‘The morning of December the ninth,’ I said. ‘I don’t know exactly when. She wasn’t here when I woke up.’

I could feel Hae-jin’s eyes on me. I repeated the story I’d told him initially. I couldn’t tell the truth, so there was no reason to be ashamed about telling this story; feeling ashamed wasn’t going to change the situation. Choi listened, nodding. Did you notice anything strange about her behaviour, does she often go on retreats, does she always go alone, did you get in touch with her, didn’t you think it was strange when you couldn’t reach her?

‘Not really, because she usually keeps her phone turned off when she’s at a retreat,’ I explained.

‘It’s strange,’ he commented. ‘Why would a woman who doesn’t even live with her sister call in a missing persons report when her son, who does live with her, thinks nothing is wrong? Why wouldn’t she at least discuss it with you?’

I didn’t answer.

‘Where do you think your mother is? Is there somewhere she’s always wanted to go?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Does she have close friends?’

‘She’s close with some people from church, but I don’t know if she went with them.’

‘Do you have their contact details? Did you look in your mother’s address book or anything?’

‘No, it would all be saved in her phone.’

‘And you don’t know any of their numbers?’

‘No.’

He stared at me in disbelief. I wanted to ask him if he knew his mother’s friends and their contact details.