Don't Cry Tai Lake (11 page)

She had been released, but Internal Security, while shifting their focus to Jiang, made a point of keeping her on their radar. And new information about the situation between her and Liu only rendered the situation even more murky. Was Chen aware of her connection to Jiang? Huang decided not to say anything about it until he learned more.

Chen had called about an hour ago, saying that he had some time and that he wanted to meet with Huang. It was already two in the afternoon, and Huang wished Chen would have called earlier. Huang had to come up with a last-minute excuse to get away from the special team.

He saw Chen striding out of the center. It was a rare opportunity, Huang hastened to reassure himself, to work with this legendary chief inspector.

“You're on time, Chief,” Huang said, stepping out to meet him. “What are we going to do today?”

“I'd like to interview Mrs. Liu. For that, I need your help. I don't have any official authority here, and I don't think she would talk to me unless you are with me.”

By doing this, Chen was stepping out of the background. It wasn't exactly a surprise move, that of targeting Mrs. Liu. The local police had also looked into it, but several factors had made it difficult for them to press. She had no motive, she had a solid abili, and Liu had had his little secretary for years. Then the scenario pushed by Internal Security regarding Jiang blocked any further efforts in that direction by Huang and his colleagues.

It was a step that Huang welcomed for another reason. No one would notice such a move by the two of them. Both Internal Security and his team were no longer paying any attention to Mrs. Liu.

“Let's go then,” Huang said. “Shall we take a taxi? It would be about half an hour's walk.”

“If you don't mind, let's walk. We can talk along the way.”

“Good idea.”

At Huang's suggestion, they took a shortcut through the park, moving along the bank outlined in weeping willow shoots and blooming peach blossoms, with a variety of boats sailing on the lake in the background.

It began drizzling. Several birds twittered in the shining wet foliage.

“It's a beautiful lake,” Huang said.

“Yes, it is, but alas, so terribly polluted.
The rain falling in the river, / weeds overspreading everywhere, / six dynasties gone like a dream—/ the birds keep twittering for nothing. / Uncaring, the willows lined / along the City of Tai cover / the ten-mile-long bank, as / before, in the green mist
. I would only have to change a couple of words in the last line—
against the green algae
.”

It was just like the idiosyncratic chief inspector that Huang had heard about to quote poetry in the middle of an investigation, but great detectives could afford to be eccentric—Sherlock Holmes, for example.

“Anything new, Huang? I mean, in your investigation.”

“Nothing new for our team, but inspired by our conversation last time, I made some inquiries on my own.”

“Yes?”

“Your discussion about the timing of the murder really made me think. So I started researching things in the company of late. One of them being, of course, the coming IPO. Once Wuxi Number One Chemical Company establishes itself as a publicly traded company, it'll enjoy huge amounts of capital pouring in from the stock market, which will further consolidate its domineering position in the industry. This could be a serious threat to its rivals.”

“So you think it could have been an attempt to derail Liu's IPO plan?”

“It's possible, isn't it?”

“It's possible, but there're other ways to do that, easier and perhaps more effective ways too,” Chen said. “It's a direction worth exploring, but let me say up front, that one problem with your theory is that it's difficult to pinpoint a particular rival. With fierce competition in the marketplace, a successful company could have a lot of competitors, and not necessarily just in Wuxi. Besides, a rival may or may not benefit from Liu's death. It's still a state-run company, and there will be a smooth transition after someone is appointed to succeed Liu. It will still go public, eventually. The murder may have put it off for a time, but won't kill it. ”

“That's true,” Huang said, nodding.

“Keep digging,” Chen said encouragingly as they walked out of the park. “But tell me about Mrs. Liu. How has your team covered her?”

“Zhou Liang, a senior member of our team, interviewed her. According to her, she was in Shanghai, playing mahjong with three others that night. Zhou checked it out and her alibi is solid.”

“She went all the way to Shanghai for a mahjong game?”

“For mahjong, you have to have longtime partners. And it's quite common for people to play all night long. She was originally from Shanghai. It takes only an hour to go back and forth by train and she goes almost every weekend.”

“Every weekend. Interesting,” Chen said. “So she knew Liu wouldn't be coming back home that night, and she left for Shanghai for a mahjong game. What a couple!”

“Well, about two or three years ago, there were some stories about family problems. But their relationship turned out to be okay. They purchased a mansion in both their names. And she apparently has a large bank account for her personal expenses.”

“What about the home office and Mi, the little secretary?”

“About the home office, the apartment was assigned to him through the state housing plan because of his position. No one would decline such an apartment that they didn't have to pay a penny for. Since they have already had the large house, it was called a home office more or less as a means of justification. As for the little secretary, I've heard rumors about her. But a young, pretty girl can easily be the target of gossip, and it's difficult to tell how much of it is real. Mrs. Liu must have known about her for a long time. There's a popular saying about the newly rich and successful: ‘The red flags stream all around outside the wall, but the red flag also stands tall, erect inside the wall.'”

“What does it mean, Huang?”

“A Big Buck may have mistresses, secretaries, concubines, and whatnot, but he doesn't necessarily divorce his wife, nor does it mean he has trouble at home. Home is a safe harbor for him. Besides, the Lius were said to really dote on their son. He's graduating from college soon. Last summer, he was an intern here at the company, and, an indulgent mother, Mrs. Liu came over frequently, bringing home-cooked dishes.”

Chen listened attentively without comment. They turned in to a noisy, shopper-thronged thoroughfare, which led to a small quiet street. There, a young recycler in rags rode a junk-laden tricycle with a disproportionately huge sign describing all the recycled items. He rode down the street, his tricycle crammed with indescribable stuff, moving at leisure, as if strolling through his own courtyard. Passing, he looked back at them and grinned.

“The other factor we have to take into consideration,” Huang resumed, “is how the coming IPO would affect her. The way things were going, it would probably be only a matter of months before it was complete. Liu stood to rake in tons of money and, as his wife, she did too. She had no compelling reason to do anything at this particular moment.”

“That's a good point,” Chen said.

The street changed again, this time into a promenade paved in colored stones, where they saw a road sign pointing to another park.

“Oh, Li Park,” Chen said, pointing to a colorful billboard with a representation on it of a beauty in ancient costume sitting in a boat. “The Li Lake is a tributary of the Tai Lake, right?”

“Yes, but some locals consider it a different lake.”

“It's also the lake where, after a decisive battle between the Wu and Yue in the Spring and Autumn Warring Period, Fan Li and Xi Shi spent their idyllic days in a boat, living happily ever after. I read about it in a brochure at the center. However, it's nothing but a story meant to attract nostalgic tourists.”

The idiosyncratic chief inspector could be impossible, Huang thought, talking about a legendary beauty from more than two thousand years ago while on the way to interview a possible suspect. Huang had been to Li Park many times, looking at a number of paintings and poems about Xisi, but he never cared whether the ancient story was true or not.

“We're close,” Huang said. “Their home is just behind Li Park.”

Sure enough, they soon came to a villa complex. It was a high-end area, where the new construction bordered the lake, yet boasted of convenient access to downtown. That morning, to Huang, it didn't seem that far from Liu's office, particularly not with a company car at his disposal.

Liu's house was a three-story building located in a cul-de-sac of the complex, with a large yard in the back and a three-car garage at the side. There was a car parked in the driveway. It wasn't a company car, Huang noted.

“It's larger than the villa at the center,” Chen commented, walking up the stone steps.

“The center was built in the early fifties,” Huang said, as he pressed the doorbell, not sure about Chen's point.

The woman who answered the door appeared to be in her early fifties. She was slender and quite nice-looking for her age, her hair slightly streaked with silver. She was wearing an elegant silk house robe and soft-heeled slippers, and beside her were several pairs of slippers spread out on a wool mat inside the door.

“Mrs. Liu, I'm Sergeant Huang of the Wuxi Police Bureau,” he said, showing his badge, “and this is a colleague of mine.”

“My name is Chen,” Chen introduced himself. “Shall we remove our shoes, Mrs. Liu?”

“I don't think the police have to do that,” she said indifferently.

“Of course we want to do that,” Chen said, bending to untie his shoelace. “It's such a magnificent house.”

She led them to an immense living room with tall windows overlooking a well-maintained meadow and flowerbeds in the back. There appeared to be something of a small pond in the distance, but Huang couldn't see clearly. She motioned them to a beige sectional sofa and offered them tea, before she perched herself on a leather chair opposite them.

“Your people have come here before, officers. So what else do you want with me?”

“First, I want to express my sincere condolences,” Chen said. “General Manager Liu did a great job for the Party, for the people, and for the company. We will do our best to bring him justice, Mrs. Liu. At the present, however, our investigation has made little progress, so I would like to talk with you. Anything you can tell may be valuable to us—about him, about his work, or about the people close to him.”

“Liu was busy, working like crazy all the time. When he made it home at night, more often than not, he was beat. He had no energy left to talk to me about things that were happening at the company, or about the people working for him.”

“Well, what about that evening? Did he tell you that he was going to meet someone at his home office?”

“No, he didn't. He didn't discuss his work with me, as I've told you.”

“Did you notice anything unusual about him before that evening?”

“He was getting busier all the time. Other than that, no, nothing.”

“A different question: was he sleeping badly of late?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did he have trouble falling asleep and, as a result, was he taking sleeping pills?”

Chen must have read through the autopsy report closely, Huang observed without making a comment, but that's something confirmed by Liu's colleagues.

“Occasionally, I think, but he was a healthy man for his age.”

“So you knew that he wouldn't be coming back that evening, didn't you?”

“Yes, I did. He mentioned that he had to work on something important in the office that evening.”

“So he always told you his schedule, Mrs. Liu?”

“It really depended on his work. If it wasn't too late, he'd try to come back home and he wouldn't call. But I never knew.” She added wistfully, “When he first got his home office, he would always call with his plans for the evening. But then he got so busy, he didn't—not every time.”

“You go back to Shanghai frequently—practically every weekend, I've heard.”

“Not every weekend.”

“But when you heard that Liu wouldn't be coming home for the night, you left for Shanghai that afternoon. Was that Saturday or Sunday?”

“Sunday—” She looked a bit uneasy. “I got back to Wuxi Sunday afternoon, but I was disappointed with his ever-busy work arrangement, so I went back to Shanghai again the same day.”

“In other words, you made two trips to Shanghai that last weekend.”

“I didn't like the idea of being all alone in this big house.”

“So you weren't worried?” Huang cut in. “Leaving such a successful Big Buck all alone, if you know what I mean.”

“He was a family man. Our son is graduating from Beijing University this year where he is a literature major, but Liu arranged an internship for him at the company last year, and talked to me about his plan to get him a good position there.”

“He was a really good father,” Chen said, echoing her implied meaning.

The conversation seemed to be leading nowhere. She spoke cautiously, defending her late husband's image. As a result, she gave up very little. Huang thought that Chen exchanged a glance with him.

“So, the evening of last Saturday, you were with some friends in Shanghai, weren't you?”

“Yes, I was there with several friends.”

“Where were you the next morning?”

“I was at a church in Shanghai, also with a friend.”

“Which one?”

“Moore Memorial Church. Why are you asking?”

“Oh, the one at the intersection of Xizang and Hankou Road. I know it. I've been reading a book about the Protestant influence on the development of capitalism.”