Friday morning, Sergeant Huang parked his car in the shade near the center’s entrance, rolled down the window, and waited. According to the plan Chen had discussed with him, the first interviewee of the day would be Mi, Liu’s secretary at the chemical company.
It wasn’t exactly a surprising move to Huang, who’d already talked to Mi before Chen involved himself in the case. Huang lit a cigarette, trying to guess which approach the chief inspector would use.
At the appointed time, Chen showed up at the gate, where an elderly security guard hastened to salute him obsequiously. Huang stepped out of his Shanghai Dazhong, which, as Chen specified, didn’t look anything like a police car.
“Thank you, Huang,” Chen said, sliding in to the front passenger seat. “Before we go to see Mi, I want to take a look at Liu’s home office.”
Huang jumped at the suggestion. His team had hardly finished working at the crime scene, with several reports still waiting to be processed by the lab, when Internal Security intervened and pushed them straight to a conclusion that left little for them to do. Being the youngest member of the team, Huang knew better than to protest when the other team members, older and far more experienced, chose to keep their mouths shut.
But it wouldn’t be difficult for him to show Chen Liu’s apartment, which wasn’t being watched at the moment. They had talked about the photos of the crime scene, but Chen’s going over the scene in person could make a difference. In Sherlock Holmes stories, the detective never failed to find something important yet previously unnoticed by others who examined the crime scene.
“No problem,” Huang said. “We’ve gone over it closely, but you should definitely take a look.”
Less than ten minutes later, they arrived at the apartment complex, which was located near the back of the chemical company plant. Sure enough, there wasn’t any sign of police stationed near the complex, and no residents were out walking in the area.
“It’s a relatively new complex and it’s not fully occupied yet,” Huang remarked. He showed his badge to the security guard standing as stiff as a bamboo pole under the white arch of the entrance.
“There has been a lot of new residential construction in the last few years, but with the soaring housing prices, few can afford one of the new apartments.”
“But Liu had his for free, and that was in addition to his large house,” Chen noted.
The apartment building in question was six stories tall with a pink-painted exterior that looked new and impressive in the daylight. They went up to the third floor without seeing anyone else.
Liu’s was a three-bedroom apartment. Huang opened the door with a master key. They stepped into a hallway with hardwood floors that led into a living room and an open dining room, which in turn was connected to a kitchenette. On the other end of the living room were the three bedrooms, one of which was a guest room, and another the office where Liu had been murdered.
Chen looked at each of the rooms before he came back to the office. The office was practically furnished. On the L-shaped oak desk facing the door sat a computer with a large monitor, a printer, and a combination telephone and fax machine. A couple of chairs stood against one wall near the corner and beside a custom-made bookshelf, which had books and magazines on it. A flat-screen TV hung on the opposite wall.
“The people who live in these new apartment buildings don’t talk to one another much. That was particularly true in Liu’s case. He was only here once or twice a week, and usually in the evening. On that particular night, no one in the building saw him or heard anything from his apartment. But when their doors are shut, people can hardly hear anything from the outside. According to a neighbor on the fourth floor, a young woman was walking down the stairs around nine, but the staircase was dimly lit, so he didn’t get a clear look. She could have been visiting anyone in the building.”
“Yes, she could have come from the fifth or sixth floor,” Chen said while picking up a framed picture from the bookshelf. It was a photo of Liu and a young man standing in front of that same bookshelf in the office. Liu was a robust man of medium height with wide-set, penetrating eyes, deep-lined brows, and a powerful jaw, and the young man was a lanky one with a pensive look on his fine-featured face.
“The young man is his son, Wenliang,” Huang said. “He interned here at the company last summer.”
Placing the picture back on the bookshelf, Chen started examining the books themselves. It was a curious mixture, including a number of fashion magazines.
“He read fashion magazines?”
“Well, Mi came here from time to time,” Huang said.
Chen nodded in acknowledgment, then said, “Tell me again what you see as unusual about the crime scene.”
“There is no sign of forced entry, and no sign of struggle, either. The murderer was likely somebody Liu knew well, and it was probably a surprise attack. The security guard didn’t register any visitors for Liu that night. So it was possibly someone who lived in the complex, or even in the same building.”
“But as you said, he didn’t mix with his neighbors,” Chen said. “Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible for the murderer to be one of them. But what would be the motive?”
“That suggests another possible scenario. Someone familiar with the complex could have come in without stopping at the entrance. The security guard might make things difficult for a diffident visitor, but wouldn’t try to stop a Big Buck who was striding in with an air of confidence.”
“Or driving in a luxurious car,” Chen said, as if he had done the same himself before. “Do you have the pictures of the crime scene with you?”
“Yes,” Huang said, producing a folder of pictures. “You’ve already seen all of them.”
Chen placed a few on the desk, examined them, and then looked around the room a couple of times.
He immersed himself in the comparative study for ten minutes or so. He walked out into the living room, but didn’t stay there long before heading back into the office. Huang followed, without interrupting, notebook in hand.
“Has anything been moved here?”
“No, of course not. Nobody-not even Mrs. Liu-has been in here, not since she was brought to check over the things in the apartment. That is, of course, except for those items bagged and taken to the lab for testing.”
“Do you have that list with you?”
“Yes, here it is.”
Chen checked it carefully, then placed it on the desk and rubbed his chin with a finger.
“Now, let me ask you a question. Where do you think the host would usually receive a guest?”
“The living room, naturally. But we thought about that too. Liu might have simply stepped into the office to get a document or something.”
“In that case, he would have entered the room first, and the murderer would have followed behind him-”
Chen didn’t go on, apparently having a difficult time visualizing the murderer striking Liu from behind.
“What do you think of the position of the other chairs in the office?” Chen resumed, sitting down on the swivel chair at the desk. “They haven’t been moved, right?”
“No. But what do you mean?”
“It doesn’t make sense. If Liu were sitting here, like I am, then the murderer would have been sitting opposite him. So why are the other chairs in the corner of the room?”
“That’s a good point,” Huang said, writing it down in his notebook.
“If he’d been talking to someone who was standing in front of him and who then swooped down on him ferociously-”
“Then,” Huang said, nodding, “how come there is no sign of a struggle?”
“Exactly.”
“But what about the possibility that Liu was showing his visitor a file on the computer-something like a document about the antipollution efforts-when the visitor struck him from behind? That’s a scenario that I discussed with my colleagues.”
“In the pictures, the computer isn’t on.” Chen picked up one of the photographs. “So, in your scenario, Liu had to have been struck at the very moment his hand was just touching the computer button.”
Huang could see the chief inspector wasn’t convinced. As a matter of fact, neither was Huang.
“That’s a good point. I’ll write it down,” Huang said, opening his notebook again.
