by Chan Ho-Kei
Nga-Yee had no answer to this—another thing she’d missed because her earlier life had been such a scramble. Now that she considered it, N’s theory about the Countess made sense. Kwok-Tai had mentioned seeing her alone, without her handmaidens. That’s when we are most ourselves, when there is no one around and we let down our defenses.
“But—but the Countess must have known someone might recognize her writing—”
“It’s a loose-leaf book. Everyone wrote on a separate sheet of paper and handed it to the teacher, so none of her classmates would have seen it. Besides, most people don’t go around analyzing whether some words in a condolence book are sincere.”
Nga-Yee was stumped. “I … I didn’t think of using this script to prove the Countess’s feelings …” she stammered.
“I didn’t think of it either.” N shrugged. “It was just supposed to be a prop for what we did next, but then Violet To revealed her guilt, and the backup plans became unnecessary.”
Nga-Yee felt a flicker of unease; something still didn’t make sense to her.
“Only Violet To could have fallen into the trap you set today. She was the only one who could have changed the borrowing record, for example. When did you start suspecting her?”
“When I met her at the library last week, I thought there was an eighty or ninety percent chance she was the person you were looking for.”
“What? But that’s before we heard from Kwok-Tai about Siu-Man and Lily’s feud or the karaoke lounge incident!”
“Yes. I wanted to get more information from Kwok-Tai so we could definitively eliminate Lily as a suspect.”
“But why Violet? This was before Kwok-Tai told us about that girl she forced into quitting school—what was her name, Laura?”
“You were with me the whole time, but you didn’t notice that Violet was the only person to say something strange.”
“What?”
“I asked all the kids and Miss Yuen roughly the same question that day. Do you remember?”
“You mean who Siu-Man had offended to make them smear her like that?”
“Correct. And do you remember how they answered?”
“Miss Yuen said there was no bullying in the class, Lily said it was the Countess, the Countess said she had no idea, Violet said it was Lily, and Kwok-Tai told us about the incident with Violet. You suspected Violet because she pointed the finger at Lily? But we didn’t know about Detective Mok’s recording yet.”
“You’re missing the point. It doesn’t matter whose name they mentioned, just how they understood my question.”
Nga-Yee stared at him.
“Lily said the Countess was a blabbermouth and probably gossiped about it; the Countess said the school had told them not to discuss it, so she didn’t know who’d been talking to outsiders about it; Kwok-Tai said Violet was prejudiced against Siu-Man and might have spread rumors about her; and Miss Yuen just went straight to talking about bullying.” N paused for a moment. “Violet was the only one who talked about friends turning on each other, and how these days anyone can just go online and post what they like.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“When we went around the school asking who smeared Siu-Man, who were we looking for?”
“Kidkit727, of course!”
“But as far as your sister’s schoolmates were concerned, the person smearing Siu-Man was someone else.”
“Someone else?”
“According to Shiu Tak-Ping’s nephew, all the information about your sister’s boyfriend-stealing habits and unsavory friends came from one of her classmates.”
“But Shiu Tak-Ping doesn’t have a nephew … Oh!”
Now she understood. From where the kids were standing, the person Nga-Yee was searching for was the classmate mentioned in the post—“according to a classmate.” None of them should have known that the actual author of the post was in their midst.
“All of them mentioned talking to strangers, reporters, and so on. Only Violet spoke about posting online, as if she knew there was no nephew. That moved her to the top of my suspect list.” N tapped at Violet’s image on the screen. “And her unwitting confession just now proved I was right.”
N’s explanation was like peeling an onion, revealing additional layers of purpose to their two visits to the school. Finally Nga-Yee was ready to accept that Violet To was kidkit727. Her heart filled with hatred for Violet and sorrow for Siu-Man, but even more with a sense of powerlessness. They’d found the culprit, but so what? How would it change anything?
“I’ve found the person you hired me to find, Miss Au. If you don’t have any further questions, the case is closed,” said N.
“But … what should I do? Can I question her? Should I expose her to the world or scream at her in public?”
“That’s entirely up to you.”
Nga-Yee stared dejectedly at the screen, where Violet was sitting woodenly at the counter, as if staring at her face long enough would make something happen.
Unexpectedly, that worked.
A short-haired girl walked into the library and nodded in greeting at Violet. She said something as she walked over to the counter and took over the chair that Violet now vacated. Violet emerged from behind the counter and left unhurriedly.
“I guess she’s taking over the shift after her lunch break—oh!” N gasped.
“What?”
“She turned right.” N strode over to the window. “Both the cafeteria and the school gates are to the left.”
Nga-Yee kept her eyes fixed on the screen, but Violet was soon out of frame. N grabbed the video camera fitted with a long lens and opened the viewfinder. Glancing at it, he shifted the camera, using his arm to keep it level. The image on the screen tracked to the right too. N’s hands were very steady, she noticed. Soon Violet appeared again. She glanced up and down the corridor, then pulled open a door next to the library: the science lab. She stuck her head in first, making sure the room was empty, then went in. Although the angle was awkward, N’s camera could still pick up Violet clearly, standing at the first bench by the blackboard.
What’s she doing in there? Nga-Yee wondered. There was no one else around—presumably the lab assistant was at lunch too.
What Violet did next filled Nga-Yee with rage.
The girl picked up a box from the bench and pulled from her pocket the folded, pale yellow fake suicide note. She hesitated for a second, then seemed to steel herself and open the box: matches. Violet lit one, then held a corner of the note up to it until the paper was swallowed by the flame. When most of it was ash, she dropped the remnant onto the table—which was just below the frame—presumably into a fireproof dish.
“Pretty good. That’s how you dispose of the evidence.” N sounded half mocking, half admiring.
Nga-Yee didn’t hear what he said. Her insides were being pulled through a wringer, her heart sliced thinly. She’d caught sight of Violet’s face.
The girl had a faint smile on her lips.
That smile was all it took to snap Nga-Yee’s rationality clean in two.
She jumped to her feet, grabbed the knife from the fruit bowl, and headed for the door.
N turned and saw her, vaulted across the bed, and grabbed her by the arm.
“Let go of me! I’m going over there to slaughter that bitch!” Nga-Yee struggled. “She’s smiling! Not a speck of regret! Didn’t even bother reading the note, just burned it! If Siu-Man really did write that, it would be gone. No one would ever know her last words. That harpy doesn’t deserve to be in this world! As if it’s not enough that she killed Siu-Man, now she wants to scrape away every last trace of her, like she never existed.”
Nga-Yee’s hysterical rant broke down into sobs, and she kept trying to break free of N’s grip.
“Drop the knife! Go ahead and kill her if you want, but not with a weapon from this room,” N roared ferociously. “The police will trace it here. Murder anyone you like, but don’t get me involved.”
Nga-
Yee froze for a second. She tossed the blade onto the bed and tried to rush from the room, but N didn’t release her.
“I dropped the knife! Why are you still holding me? I’m going to get revenge for Siu-Man.”
N’s expression had gone back to its usual placidity. “Do you really want revenge?”
“Let go of me!”
“I asked you a question. Do you really want revenge?”
“Yes! I want that monster ripped limb from limb.”
“Calm down, let’s talk about this.”
“Talk about what? Are you going to say I should go to the police? Let her face the law or whatever—”
“No. The law won’t be able to deal with Violet To,” said N coldly. “Although incitement to suicide is a crime in Hong Kong, it won’t apply in a case like this. We’d need evidence of means to get a conviction—if she’d supplied or suggested the method, for example. Violet tormented your sister with those messages, but never actually threatened her or suggested suicide.”
“That’s why killing her is the only way to get justice!”
“You’ve never asked why I’m called N.”
This unexpected change of subject threw Nga-Yee, and she actually calmed down a little.
“Why should I care what you’re called? You could be N or M or Q …”
“It’s short for my web handle, which is Nemesis. Detective work is just something I do to pass the time. My true vocation is helping other people get revenge.” He let go of her arm. “It’s not cheap, but I guarantee satisfaction.”
“Are you serious?”
“Remember the first time you came to see me, and we got abducted?”
“How could I forget?”
“Want to know what I did to provoke them?”
Nga-Yee looked suspiciously into his eyes, wondering what he was up to, then nodded anyway.
“One of my clients was cheated out of ten million dollars, and hired me to get revenge. I was to extort over twenty million dollars from the swindler—the original sum, plus interest. My client came to me because there was no legal way to get the money back. And you know what happened next.”
“Twenty million?” Nga-Yee gaped at the number.
“Twenty million is nothing—I’ve dealt with much bigger sums.” N grinned. “It may be hard for the average law-abiding citizen to understand, but these revenge cases are more common than you’d expect. An eye for an eye. Especially in this society, where there might be a thin veneer of civilization on the surface, but the law of the jungle is in our blood. Survival of the fittest. I normally deal with businessmen working in, um, gray areas, but I can take on a smaller case like yours.”
“I’m not after money.”
“I know. I’ve done this sort of dirty work too.”
N’s expression pinged something in Nga-Yee’s memory. She’d seen him looking like this once before, at the moment he’d turned the tables on those gangsters in the van. She’d thought he was bluffing, but for all she knew, he really had been prepared to hurt the driver’s child or put brain-eating parasites in that other guy’s drinking water. Having seen the lengths he’d gone to investigating Violet To, he didn’t seem like someone who’d use empty threats.
“How much are your fees?” she asked.
“For you, five hundred thousand dollars.”
“I don’t have that kind of money, as you well know,” she said icily.
“Revenge cases work differently from investigations. I won’t take a cent from you up front. When it’s done, I’ll come up with a payment plan that suits you.”
“Can you promise that Violet To will get what’s coming to her?”
“Violet To and her accomplice will get their retribution.”
Nga-Yee sucked in a breath. She’d been so focused on getting revenge on kidkit727, she’d forgotten all about the Rat. She wondered what N’s personally tailored payment plan would consist of—probably something like selling her organs. Yet the demon of vengeance had its claws so deep in her, she would happily have sacrificed anything.
“All right, it’s a deal.”
N smiled. Something in his face stirred another memory in Nga-Yee, this time from a book. She couldn’t remember the exact words, but it was something about flames dancing in someone’s eyes so you felt your very soul being sucked into them. This was from a description of Rasputin, as he’d wreaked havoc with the tsar’s family who both loved and hated him.
Maybe I’ve sold my soul to a devil like Rasputin, she thought.
Even so, she didn’t regret her decision.
Monday, June 29, 2015
Siu-Man’s family came again. Today they found her suicide note.
15:32 ✔
I was scared to death.
15:32 ✔
suicide note?
15:54
Yes, but I got rid of the most important page.
15:55 ✔
what did it say?
15:56
I don’t know, I burned it.
15:57 ✔
I didn’t dare read it.
15:57 ✔
all right, well done
15:58
Can you come out tonight?
16:12 ✔
Dad’s in Beijing for the next ten days, so I don’t need to sneak out.
16:14 ✔
Never mind if you’re doing overtime again.
16:16 ✔
should be okay
16:25
seven at the usual place
16:26
CHAPTER SEVEN
1.
“Nam, what’s this ‘repeat bonus’?” said Hao, pointing at a line on the laptop screen.
Sze Chung-Nam and Hao were in GT Technology’s tiny conference room, coming up with the report for Szeto Wai. Mr. Lee had gotten in touch with Mr. Szeto’s assistant to arrange another visit the following week, and now they had to hustle to get this done.
“When customers sign up for a regular purchase of G-dollars, the system gives them a little extra each month, but the additional dollars are available only after three months,” Chung-Nam answered without looking up. He was bent over a calculator, checking the figures in his model.
“What’s the point? I thought only insurance companies did stuff like that.”
“Never you mind. We need to add in a few more points to make the report look better.”
“This is a bit of a stretch,” said Hao drily. “Szeto Wai isn’t some rube. He’s going to see through this right away. If he asks for details, don’t you dare push the question on to me.”
“All right, all right.”
For more than a week now, Chung-Nam and Hao had been preparing the materials for this second visit and having constant strategy meetings. Hao wasn’t familiar with the finance world, and Chung-Nam didn’t know much about it either, so they had no choice but to blunder through, trying to make “gossip commodities” and “G-dollar futures” sound real. Chung-Nam hit on the idea of dividing news items into tiers and allowing their users to sign up for a preview of related articles for a small amount of G-dollars. They could then sell this right to other users for a price they would negotiate between themselves. At a glance, it did start to look like trading shares, though Chung-Nam had to wonder if this would work in practice. Hao pushed for the simpler idea of allowing users to choose between different subscriptions, to be paid for with G-dollars. For a small amount, they could purchase information from a particular source. Chung-Nam thought this sounded like following a YouTube account, but for a fee. Mr. Lee barely participated in the discussion. In their meetings every couple of days, he approved whatever Chung-Nam suggested, and always finished with the same words: “Just do whatever it takes to make SIQ invest in us.”
Chung-Nam also considered restricting the quantity of G-dollars to increase the value of the futures and options, but G-dollars were an artificial commodity intended to make users part with actual cash in exchange for gossip, and keeping circulation down would only make users l
ose interest, so that wasn’t worth it. Whatever schemes they came up with were incompatible with GT’s core business model, and had to be abandoned.
Since his private dinner with Szeto Wai, his ideas had gone through a 180-degree turn.
Even if SIQ did end up investing in GT, this report would only be a fig leaf. All Chung-Nam had to do was drag this out sufficiently—he knew he had nothing to worry about. At this point, the real purpose of the report was to fool Mr. Lee, who appeared to believe that nonsense phrases like “repeat bonus” were enough to persuade Szeto Wai. Chung-Nam knew just how shallow Mr. Lee’s knowledge was, and how much confidence he had despite that. If he and Hao could make this ridiculous proposal sound convincing enough, Mr. Lee wouldn’t say anything, even if he did have his doubts, for fear of exposing his ignorance.
Everything was within Chung-Nam’s grasp. In the last few days he’d grown sloppy working on this report with Hao, trying only to cram as much stuff into it as possible. Another voice was telling him that he had to push his advantage and make use of this opportunity to fulfill his ambition.
He’d taken advantage of the previous day’s public holiday—the anniversary of Hong Kong becoming a Special Administrative Region of China—to phone Szeto Wai and ask for another meeting.