Don’t Cry, Tai Lake

memory.”
    “Now you have perjured yourself repeatedly in a murder investigation.”
    “No, I just forgot.”
    “You signed your earlier written statements, and we also have your new testimony recorded here and in the presence of Sergeant Huang and me. One small lapse in memory is possible, but not so many lapses in both of your statements. Definitely not. It’s up to the police to decide whether this amounts to perjury or not. Right, Sergeant Huang?”
    “If this isn’t perjury, I don’t know what it is,” Huang said.
    Instead of responding immediately, she kept staring at them like a melting snowwoman, her eyes like two black coal balls.
    She’d been caught lying, trapped in the very act of it. Huang tried to think of all the possible scenarios. Out of all of them, if she kept insisting that it was just memory lapse, she might still get away with it. After all, leaving through the back door didn’t have to mean going to Liu’s home office. Huang guessed there was no security camera there. There were no witnesses or evidence against her. No motive, either.
    What’s more, Internal Security could simply brush aside the scenario of her and a co-conspirator being the real culprits, since they had already reached their own conclusion and were ready to convict Jiang.
    The silence weighed on all of them like a huge rock.
    So what was Chief Inspector Chen going to do?
    “Fu wasn’t in Wuxi over the weekend, was he?” Chen said unexpectedly, changing the topic.
    This was another thrust that left Huang perplexed. Why was Chen bringing Fu in at this critical juncture?
    “Yes, he was in Shanghai for a business meeting.”
    “He was in Shanghai, that much is true, but I’m not at all sure about the business meeting part. I happen to have some pictures taken there last Saturday, the day before yesterday.”
    Chen produced a large envelope containing a bunch of enlarged pictures. The first two or three pictures showed Fu and a young woman emerging from a hotel onto a street thronged with people. Then photos of the two walking, hand in hand, with the hotel visible in the background, and one of them showing the two kissing passionately, regardless of the passers-by. The pictures weren’t of high quality, but Fu was recognizable and the girl was someone Huang had never seen before. The last photo Chen brought out was of a large sign standing in front of the hotel.
    “Look at this sign. This so-called hotel rents rooms by the hour,” Chen said with emphasis on “by the hour,” handing the picture to her. “On Nanjing Road. Who would go to such a hotel with him?”
    “A prostitute?” Huang said.
    The picture began trembling in Mi’s hand.
    “No, she’s not one of those girls soliciting customers on Nanjing Road. That much I can tell you, Mi. She’s his fiancée. The cop in his old neighborhood in Shanghai has confirmed that. Fu has kept his relationship with her a secret here at the company. Why would he do that, Mi? You know better than anybody else, I would think. Anyway, that Saturday afternoon in Shanghai, Fu and his fiancée sneaked into that sleazy hotel, where they stayed for more than two hours. What were they doing there? You can easily imagine that. Here’s a picture of them leaving the hotel. Look at the happy, radiant smile on her face. There’s a young attendant—you can see here—who stands at the hotel door, shouting, ‘Clean, convenient, we change the sheets after every customer. Hot showers twenty-four hours. Mandarin Duck Bath … Worth every penny. Fifteen minutes in the spring valance is worth tons of gold.’”
    It was astounding that Chen chose to launch into this vivid narrative at this juncture, almost like a Suzhou opera singer who got carried away by the details of the story he was narrating.
    “That’s so dramatic,” Huang improvised.
    “For everything under the sun, Sergeant Huang, there must be a reason. A reason may be inexplicable to others, but so transparent to the man or the woman involved in it.”
    Again, Chen didn’t push further. Instead he spread those pictures on the table like a mosaic.
    “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.