“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.”
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.
