Don't Cry Tai Lake (31 page)

“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.”

TWENTY-TWO

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?”

“But for the sake of argument, what about Jiang sneaking in after Liu happened to leave the door open—” Huang didn't finish the sentence, as it sounded like too many coincidences even to himself.

“Even in that scenario, the killing would have happened after the argument—after they confronted each other, not before.”

“No, not before.”

“Then another related detail came to my attention. Mi mentioned that Liu had trouble falling asleep, so he took sleeping pills. This was confirmed by the autopsy report. I checked with Mrs. Liu, who said he took them occasionally. Then I looked more closely into it, and I found something else that was incomprehensible. According to the autopsy and the estimated time of Liu's death, which was nine thirty to ten thirty in the evening, he had to have taken the pills before then. But I couldn't imagine that he would have taken sleeping pills prior to Jiang's arrival or while he was there.”

“That's a brilliant deduction, Chief.”

“Now let's leave these questions aside and go back and follow the scenario maintained by Internal Security a bit further. Liu didn't have any evidence to prove that Jiang had tried to blackmail him—there was nothing in the folder provided by Internal Security. So it would have been his word against Jiang's. On the other hand, Jiang had all the research to back up his claims, as well as his media connections. Was Liu going to take a risk by letting Jiang go public with his information? It was a critical moment for Liu and his IPO plan. Once word about the company's disastrous pollution problem had spread, the local authorities would have been under pressure to investigate the accusations. And that would have totally ruined their business prospects.”

“That's true. Liu was too shrewd a businessman.”

“But back to the initial questions concerning Mi—or, I should say, some passing thoughts about a possibility that occurred to me at the crime scene,” Chen said, fingering the pointed tip of a bamboo shoot at his foot. “With Internal Security's theory practically crossed out, I began to think in a totally different direction. What if Liu was already asleep or unconscious when the murderer struck? That could explain lots of things, but at the same time it led to another question. Who could have gotten into the room when Liu was sleeping? Or a variation of that question, who could have made Liu fall asleep and then delivered the fatal blow? Or instead, who could have then left the scene, with the door unlocked, for another to come along later?

“Given the force of the blow and the amount of sedative in Liu's system as estimated in the autopsy report, I was more inclined to this second scenario. But whatever the actual circumstances, these all pointed to one person. Someone very close to him, even intimate with him, and familiar with his whereabouts that evening.”

“Mi, the little secretary,” Huang said. “The only one who could have had access to that place at night and wouldn't have aroused suspicion. She could have given Liu a handful of sleeping pills in a drink, I would imagine.”

“And here's the blind spot. Everybody knew Mi was his little secretary. She was nothing without him, only a massage girl originally from a so-called hair salon. Why would she murder him? As a materialistic girl, she knew better. She would be the last one to be suspected of his murder.

“Another stumbling block to those other possible scenarios is her alibi. Mi has a solid alibi for her whereabouts that evening, one provided by Fu. Of course, in turn she provided an alibi for Fu, as well.”

“Chief, apparently I'm the dumbest of the dumb sidekicks, like the ones in the mysteries you translate. All along, I thought you were targeting Mrs. Liu.”

“I was, and for quite a while too. In fact, Mrs. Liu also satisfied the necessary criteria of the scenarios I was working with. For that reason alone, she had to be included as a suspect with the means and a possible motive, considering Liu's infidelity. Furthermore, her frequent trips to Shanghai—two trips over one weekend—were naturally a bit suspicious. The question for me then was: Why now? She must have known about Liu's affairs for quite some time. Why kill him now? So I contacted Liu's attorney, from whom I learned that Liu had had no plans to divorce his wife. Other sources said the same thing. On the contrary, with their son coming back to Wuxi, the family seemed to be far from falling apart. Still, there were things I found puzzling about her, like her frequent trips back to Shanghai. So I decided to look deeper into it, and it was in the course of it that something else occurred to me. ”

“What?”

“Mrs. Liu used to be the ‘queen' back in school. Could someone be after her even today? You might say that she's no longer young, but I once had a case where a successful Big Buck was chasing after a ‘loyal character dancer' twenty years later, despite the fact that she'd been crushed by life—a haggard, sallow, middle-aged peasant with her beauty utterly ravaged. It's not impossible that there was an old suitor after Mrs. Liu, however implausible it might seem after all these years. It would explain why she endured Liu's affairs and why she went back to Shanghai so frequently. Thanks to the great efforts made by Detective Yu and his wife Peiqin, I was able to see that I was on the wrong track.”

“So Detective Yu has been working along with you?” Huang asked, cutting in.

“No. I asked him to check into Mrs. Liu's Shanghai background. That's about it. Indeed, people are complicated. They are capable of doing things that seem totally inexplicable to others, hence suspicious, but once you manage to see it from their perspective, it all makes perfect sense. That's another story, of course,” Chen said, glancing up toward the closed window of the villa. “But excluding a possible change in Liu's family life meant there was another probability: Mi would remain a little secretary indefinitely.”

“I've never thought about that, Chief. But a girl like Mi might not necessarily see herself as the potential second Mrs. Liu. As long as Liu provided well for her, she might be content. She's still young and capable of saving a considerable sum over the next few years. Then she could start a new life for herself somewhere else and with somebody else too.”

“That might be true. But there are some others factors to take into consideration. To begin with, she might not be able to take her position for granted, what with Liu's son joining the company—”

“His son was starting at the company? I'd heard he'd had an internship there last summer.”

“It was all in Liu's plan. Eventually, the company would go to his son, so you can imagine what that could have meant to Mi. And then there was another indirect factor—the IPO, which affected Mi through a long complicated chain of links, particularly through one hidden link with Fu. Incidentally, your efforts to identify those who might suffer as a result of the IPO are what inspired me.”

“I'm utterly confounded,” Huang said. “How did you bring Fu into the picture?”

“Well, you focused on business rivals who might gain from Liu's death. I moved along a similar line, only keeping my focus on the people inside, not outside, the company. With the IPO, the company's general manager would get the largest number of shares. The high-level executives, too, would gain tremendously. What made the situation complicated was the restructuring plan to be put in place prior to the IPO. Liu was able to do anything, including fire anyone, in the name of restructuring. Those that were fired under the restructuring plan would suffer a huge loss—they would get no shares whatsoever.

“I should have seen it much sooner, but I wasn't paying attention to it until I stumbled upon the date issue in Mi's statement, which I then realized was confirmed by none other than Fu. Now, it's possible for one person to make a mistake, but not for two to make the same mistake. What's more, according to my source, Jiang didn't ever come to the company offices in the month of March.”

“So both Mi and Fu lied about Jiang in their statements!”

“Exactly. And they also supported each other's alibi for the night of Liu's murder. That was when the various pieces began to come together: the alibi, the statement, and then, of course, Fu's effort to keep secret his fiancée in Shanghai. He had reason to do so.”

“Yes, again it's like those stories you translate. The clues are all there, but it takes a master to connect them,” Huang said, rubbing his hands in undisguised excitement. “Why wait any longer, Chief? Let's arrest her. It will be easy to crack a woman like her.”

“Let's wait a little longer. There's no hurry, Huang. As the old proverb says, we'll flush out the snake by striking at the weeds around—”

Chen's cell phone rang. Flipping it open, he listened intently, saying only a few words now and then in response.

Huang waited beside him, watching the dazzling white villa that stood on the hill like a castle in a fairy tale, wondering whether he himself was also in a story. The windows shimmered in the light.

“That was about the phone call Mi has just made to Fu from the villa,” Chen said, closing the phone. “It's all recorded.”

“You had her cell phone bugged?”

“Yes. I didn't have time to discuss it with you. Sorry about that, Huang. It wasn't until yesterday afternoon that I pieced it all together, and I had to act at once. I had her cell phone tapped through a connection of mine—or a connection of a connection, you might say. Also, I had to have those pictures developed in a rush.”

“You've moved fast, Chief.”

It was true that Chen didn't have the time. But more importantly, Chen didn't say, he knew how Internal Security would have reacted if they had learned about his secret maneuvering.

“Well, to briefly summarize her hysterical phone conversation, she accused Fu of deceiving her, of using her to get rid of Liu, and of landing her in trouble. She was shouting, cursing, and weeping at the same time. It was pretty much as I had guessed.”

“What did he say?”

“Not much. First he said she's crazy, then he wanted her to calm down and not blabber anymore.”

“But we should be able to tie things up now. That phone call, along with the perjury, is undeniable evidence.” Huang added, “I have just one question—how did the two of them get together?”

“The phone call only proves their relationship; it doesn't establish that they collaborated in murder. As for the two getting together, here's what I've gathered from various sources, with some guesswork here and there to fill in the blank spots.”

Chen lit a cigarette before going on.

“They joined forces for a variety of reasons, each out of their own self-interest.

“For her, it came out of her disappointment with Liu. She'd hoped to get more out of the affair than just the position of a little secretary. Another girl in her shoes might have been content, as you said, but she dreamed of becoming Mrs. Liu and living happily ever after. At one point, Liu might have made her some promises, which she later found he had no intention of carrying out. When she learned that his son Wenliang would be joining the company as his eventual successor, it was the last straw for her.

“For Fu, it was another story. To begin with, he had always been an outsider in the company. Assigned to the job as a Youth League cadre, he failed to develop enough connections to become a rival to Liu. With the reform in the state-ownership system, Liu began to contemplate the prospect of turning the state-run company into a privately held one for himself and for his family. His son, rather than an outsider like Fu, would succeed him as general manager. It didn't take long for Fu to find out, and the pressure was mounting.