The Corpse Reader (62 page)

“But why kill the councilor? Killing some unknowns could have passed unnoticed, but he must have known he’d never get away with killing such a high-ranking official.”

Cí arched an eyebrow.

“I can only imagine Feng felt he had no choice. Kan was obsessed with the idea that Blue Iris was guilty of something, and Feng was worried this might lead him close to the truth. And he thought the staged suicide would fool everyone. So when I told Feng I’d worked it out, he went and told Gray Fox, calculating that I’d then be accused.”

“And what about the perfume?” asked Ming. “Earlier on, I remember you thought it must have been sprinkled on the victims to try and incriminate the
nüshi
. But why on earth would Feng have wanted to do that if the
nüshi
was his wife? Everyone says he was madly in love with her.”

“This part I’m not totally sure of, but Kan had something to do with it. Just because Kan was killed doesn’t mean he was entirely innocent. He really was obsessed with Blue Iris, to the point that he somehow began mixing up the results he wanted to find with the actual evidence. Apparently, Kan proposed to her once, and her rejection was more than his pride could bear. I think he tried to incriminate her. He had access to the Essence of Jade, and he, or his men, were among the first to have any contact with the corpses. False evidence.”

“Nonetheless, it must be said that Kan wasn’t very far wrong. Feng was guilty, after all.” Ming took a sip of the tea. “Strange business! Feng seemed like such a cultured man! I really can’t understand what could have driven him to all this.”

“Who can? Isn’t the problem that we try to apply sane logic to conduct that is far from being sane itself? Feng was disturbed,
so only from the point of view of a disturbed mind could we ever find the justification for his actions. Bo says that when he was interrogated, the Mongol put it down to greed; he confirmed he’d helped Feng and said it had all been motivated by sheer avarice in his master.”

“Greed? Avarice? Feng was already a very rich man. His wife’s salt dealings—”

“It seems the business had been going downhill for a long time. The frontier wars meant Ningzong was cutting off trade links with the Jin, and they were Feng’s main buyers. He’d lost almost everything already.”

“But what was he going to get from killing people?”

“Money. Power. Feng had taken over the business from Blue Iris, and it was his management that led them to ruin. Feng began seeing Blue Iris during the time my father was still working for him, and, although her being a
nüshi
meant they had to keep it a secret, Feng also started to have a hand in her business affairs that early on. Feng began creating a network with the Jin, planning to sell them the weapons; the promise of the hand cannon may even have had a part in the Jin’s decision to invade. This is speculation, but in his delirium, Feng might have thought a victory for the Jin would give him a monopoly over the salt trade. We can’t be sure. Bo is still looking into the matter.”

“Any idea how Feng got access to the secret, and such a terrible weapon?”

“I’ve asked myself the same question. I think Blue Iris’s family must have had something to do with it. After all, Fei Yue wasn’t only a sensational general, he pioneered the use of gunpowder, didn’t he? In fact, I found a copy of the
Ujingzongyao
in Feng’s office. Bo’s research also seems to support such an idea.”

“And all for the love of a beautiful woman…a woman who ended up betraying him.”

“And who saved me.” Cí’s heart began beating harder.

He got to his feet, suddenly unwilling to continue the conversation. He told Ming he was tired and said good-bye, promising to return the next day.

Cí had dreamed of Blue Iris constantly during his recovery and couldn’t wait to see her. Though his body was still battered, now that he was on his feet, he longed to be outside. And there was only one place he wanted to go. He headed to the Water Lily Pavilion.

He began picturing the meeting. He’d thank her for helping at the trial; he’d take her in his arms and show her how much he loved her; he’d tell her how sure he’d always felt about her. He couldn’t care less about her blindness or how old she was. But as he approached the building, a trembling erupted in his heart.

There were dozens of soldiers at the entrance to the Water Lily Pavilion, shouting and running about. Cí broke into a hobbling run, going as fast as his aching legs would carry him. The soldiers stopped him at the entrance and would not tell him what was happening. Suddenly Bo emerged from the pavilion’s main door.

“It’s Blue Iris,” said Bo, descending the stairs and leading Cí a little way off. “We were searching for documents we still need. She was ordered not to go anywhere while we conducted the search, but she’s vanished.”

“What do you mean, vanished?” Cí pushed Bo off and dashed past the soldiers into the pavilion.

Consumed by worry, he hurried along the hallways, Bo close on his heels. Cí passed one empty room after another. Could Blue Iris really have fled? He went into the main bedroom, and his stomach churned. Clothes and possessions were everywhere, as if Blue Iris had left in a panic. Next, Cí went to Feng’s office, where several of Bo’s assistants were taking down books from the shelves. Cí looked around distractedly before noticing a gap where Feng’s copy of the
Ujingzongyao
had been.

Looking closer at the gap, he caught a glimpse of something red hidden behind the books and files. He pushed some books aside and reached his hand through. He couldn’t believe it: it was his father’s red lacquer chest, the one that had disappeared in the fire. Cí pulled it out, and with a quivering hand, as though his father’s very spirit might be inside, he unclasped it and opened the top. He recognized his father’s handwriting on the documents inside. They were the copies of the accounts, the ones showing Feng’s embezzling activities.

Cí left the pavilion. Nothing made sense. He couldn’t even believe his own incredulity; the truth was astonishing, but he knew he’d been a fool not to see it. He walked slowly using Blue Iris’s stick and eventually found himself back at the academy. The porter came out and told Cí someone was waiting to see him; Cí’s heart skipped at the thought that maybe Blue Iris had come, but instead two little beggar boys popped out from where they’d been crouching. He couldn’t remember having ever seen them in his life, but the younger of the two reminded him.

“The day of the workshop fire,” the boy said, “you told me I could come and claim my money when I found my friend, the cripple who saw what happened.”

“You’ve come late, boy. The case has already been solved.”

“But you promised, sir! If I brought the other boy you said you’d pay me the rest of the reward.”

Cí considered the child; he looked genuinely hard up. Cí took out his purse, but he didn’t take out any money yet.

“Fine. What did your friend see?”

“Come on, then,” the younger boy said to the cripple, “tell him!”

“There were three people,” said the cripple. “One was telling the other two what to do. They never saw me because I was hidden behind some crates, but I could see and hear everything. The one
in charge waited outside while the others searched for something inside the building. Then they poured oil everywhere and set the place on fire.”

“Right,” said Cí, not entirely convinced. “And do you think you’d be able to recognize them if you saw them again?”

“I think so, sir. One of the men was called Feng. The other one looked like a Mongol.”

Cí was startled. He came closer to the cripple and knelt down.

“And the third man?”

“It wasn’t a man! The person telling them what to do was a woman.”

“What do you mean, a woman? What woman?” Cí shook the cripple.

“I don’t know! All I saw was that she looked sort of clumsy, and she was leaning on a strange stick. The stick was like…” Suddenly the cripple fell quiet.

“Like what? Damn it, speak!”

“The stick was exactly like yours,” said the cripple.

Cí locked himself in his room for three days and wouldn’t eat or allow the doctors in to look at his wounds. Time seemed to fall away as he agonized over whether Blue Iris could truly be as culpable as the facts suggested, if Feng really had been nothing but a puppet in her quest for revenge, or if she might have had wholly different motives. Cí also tried to come up with a reason why she would have betrayed Feng to save him.

In the evening of the third day, Bo came to see him. There was no news of Blue Iris, but Bo said Cí should consider himself fortunate. In fact, when the emperor offered immunity and a comfortable
exile, he’d already decided to have Cí executed, false confession or no. Feng’s suicide had saved him. Bo also reported that the Being of Wisdom from Jianningfu Prefecture had been arrested on charges of embezzlement and corruption. Cí thanked Bo, but none of this information alleviated the bitterness he was feeling.

On the fourth day he decided to put his lamenting behind him and get up. He’d come to Lin’an with a plan, after all, and what he needed to do was start working again to achieve it. His mind was still sharp and ready to be applied to his studies. He headed to the library, where his peers would be.

That afternoon he bumped into Ming, who had improved considerably. Cí was gratified to see him walking again, just as Ming appeared pleased to see Cí once more surrounded by books.

“Studying again?” he said.

“Yes. I have a lot of work ahead.” He held up the bright red treatise on forensics he’d begun compiling.

Ming smiled. “Bo came by,” he said, taking a seat next to Cí. “He brought me up to date on the investigation. It seems that the fortune-teller will be executed, and he told me about Blue Iris’s disappearance, and about what happened with you and Feng in the dungeon. He also mentioned that the emperor has reneged on his offer of a place for you in the judiciary.”

Cí nodded.

“But at least he hasn’t said anything to stop me from taking the exams, and that’s still all that matters to me.”

“Mmm…” said Ming, not seeming convinced. “But it won’t be easy. There are still two years until the next round of exams. I’m not even sure you need to carry on as a student. Your forensic knowledge is exceptional. If you want, I could get you a professorship. You wouldn’t have to struggle so hard.”

The look Cí gave Ming was full of determination.

“I appreciate it, sir, but I just want to study. All I want is to pass those exams. I owe it to myself, I owe it to my family, and I owe it to you.”

Ming smiled, nodding. He got up to leave, but hesitated.

“One last thing that’s been troubling me, Cí. Why did you reject the emperor’s offer when it was still on the table? Bo told me that Ningzong said he’d give you everything you could possibly desire: a generous stipend, your reputation to be restored in the future, maybe a place in the judiciary. Why didn’t you accept?”

Cí looked warmly at his old master.

“Blue Iris once said to me that Feng knew of countless ways to kill a man. And maybe that was true. And maybe there are infinite ways to die. But the one thing I know for certain is that there is only one way to live.”

I can still remember the day when, coffee in one hand, bundle of papers in the other, I sat down in my office to begin work on my new novel. At that point only two things were clear to me: first, that the plot had to move readers as much as it moved me; second, that until I found my theme, I could not begin.

I have to confess that I spent more than two months marking up dozens of pages. I was in search of a vibrant, captivating story, but in all my scribbling I only managed to come up with ideas that felt unoriginal. This was precisely what I didn’t want. I wanted something more intense, more impassioned.

By chance—which tends to be the way with these things—luck came to me by way of an invitation, in January of 2007, to attend the eighth annual meeting of the Indian Congress of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology in New Delhi. Although not a forensics expert, I have nevertheless always followed such matters out of literary interest. For a number of years, I had been attending similar meetings and formed friendships with some of the members. Dr. Devaraj Mandal invited me to the conference in New Delhi.