The Borrowed

by Chan Ho-Kei

  ‘Missy lived here all her life, I was afraid she’d find it hard getting used to a different house...’ Nanny Wu’s eyes grew red.

  Ah Sing recalled the sweet scent of burning joss paper that permeated the house during their investigations. He’d thought at the time they must be devout Buddhists or Taoists, praying to their ancestors every weekend.

  ‘This old dude isn’t saying Mom came back from the grave to kill my dad, is he?’ blurted out Wing-lim. Before Old Tong could scold the boy for making a joke in such poor taste, everyone’s attention was drawn to the screen, where the pointer was once more hovering to mean ‘maybe’.

  ‘What nonsense is this?’ chuckled Wing-lim, though they could all tell his smile was forced.

  ‘Sir, are you saying the murderer... is Yue Chin-yau?’

  The pointer remained still in the middle of the screen, neither YES nor NO.

  ‘Then... Sir, your intuition hasn’t told you the answer as it did before, and you need to hear more evidence?’

  Ping. A definite YES.

  ‘In that case, I’ll go on with my report, and you can give us more instructions later?’

  Ping.

  Wing-yee tried frantically to conceal his uneasiness at this exchange. Each time the computer let out one of those tones, he felt it pierce through him, as if the old detective’s spirit were burrowing into his skull, digging for the buried secret.

  He felt close to collapse.

  5

  ‘LET’S MOVE ON to the day of the crime.’ The inspector’s voice remained steady. ‘According to various testimonies, nothing out of the ordinary happened on Saturday night – it was just like any other weekend. All six members of the household ate dinner together. The only difference was they were preparing to burn offerings to Yue Chin-yau afterwards, which made the food turn to ashes in their mouths, so to speak.’

  This was a direct quote from Old Tong.

  ‘After dinner and the offerings, everyone returned to their own room, around eleven. Wong Kwan-tong and Wu Kam Mui have rooms on the ground floor. The deceased’s study and bedroom are on the floor above, while Wing-lim’s room and that of Wing-yee and his wife are on the top floor. Frustratingly, no one can prove where they were – everyone claims to have been in his or her room, alone – except for Yue Wing-yee and Choi Ting, who were together, but each has testified they wouldn’t necessarily have noticed the other slipping out, because both were in the habit of going to the bathroom during the night.’

  Inspector Lok paused. ‘In other words, none of our suspects has an alibi.’

  Even a rookie like Ah Sing could tell how upset the household was at these words.

  ‘The deceased’s bed was undisturbed, suggesting he hadn’t slept at all, but remained in the study until his death. Of course, we can’t rule out the possibility that he was in the bedroom or bathroom, and happened to walk into the study just as a burglary was taking place.’ The inspector stroked his chin. ‘As to whether the murderer or victim entered the room first, and what happened between them, we haven’t been able to work out a logical hypothesis, because the ransacking prevents us reconstructing a sequence of events. But we can confirm that nothing is missing from the safe, which held diamond jewellery and antiques worth eight million US dollars, bearer bonds to the value of twelve million US dollars, stock certificates for four enterprises, an original copy of the deceased’s will, and an old Fung Hoi Consortium accounts book, dating back forty years and signed by the deceased. Mr Wong Kwan-tong suggested the latter might have been kept as a memento, as it was the first set of accounts dealt with by Mr Yuen upon becoming Mr Yue Fung’s personal assistant.’

  From their expressions, it was clear the others were already familiar with the contents of the safe. When the police locksmith had got it open, Ah Sing and the inspector had been thoroughly startled by the bonds and diamonds. Why would this tycoon keep such valuable items in his own home, far less secure than a bank vault or the Fung Hoi Building?

  ‘Speaking purely hypothetically,’ continued the inspector, ‘the murderer’s target might have been the will. Perhaps he crept into the study and was trying to get the safe open when Mr Yuen entered. After a struggle, the murderer knocked the victim out with the vase, tied him up, then threatened him with the speargun to force him to reveal the combination, hitting him on the head a second time. When Mr Yuen resisted, the killer shot him dead – or perhaps that was an accident. To create the impression of a burglary, he smashed the window and ransacked the place. He’d have worn gloves and shoes that wouldn’t leave prints, to prevent the police suspecting it was an inside job. Perhaps he had hoped to slip in and out quietly, but instead encountered the victim, with tragic consequences.’

  This nonchalant mention of the will seemed to hint that the Yue brothers and Choi Ting were the likely suspects, but none of the three was stupid enough to speak now. They knew the inspector would be watching for a reaction.

  Dub-dub. NO.

  ‘What is it? Did I say something wrong?’

  Ping, ping, ping. The pointer repeatedly jabbed at YES, as if the old detective were frowningly rebuking his junior for getting things so wrong.

  Inspector Lok looked quizzical, trying to find the right question.

  ‘Is something about the room leading our investigation in the wrong direction?’

  Ping.

  ‘What should we pay more attention to? The victim? The suspects’ whereabouts? The method? The murder weapon—’

  Ping.

  ‘The weapon? The speargun?’

  Ping.

  Inspector Lok hesitated. ‘The speargun... That’s right, I forgot. Of our five suspects, only Wong Kwan-tong and Yue Wing-yee have any experience of diving and spear-fishing – they’d been out to sea with the deceased.’

  ‘Hang on! This is a child’s game, and you’re going to use it as evidence to say one of us two is the killer?’ protested Old Tong. Wing-yee was silent, his eyes uncertain as he watched the exchange.

  ‘But this is a key point,’ said the inspector, his face glowing with realization. ‘The killer murdered Mr Yuen with the speargun, which means he knew how to operate it. Otherwise, wouldn’t it have been simpler to use the diving knife from the same cabinet?’

  ‘But... But...’ Old Tong was growing agitated.

  Dub-dub.

  ‘Sir, do you have something to add?’

  Ping.

  ‘Are you going to say who did it?’

  Dub-dub.

  The suspects were intrigued – surely with this development, the old detective could name the murderer?

  The inspector looked pained. Old Tong guessed that he must be finding this hard, knowing his mentor wanted to say something but having to guess what.

  ‘Sir, is this about my earlier hypothesis?’

  Dub-dub.

  ‘About the deceased?’

  Dub-dub.

  ‘About the five suspects?’

  Dub-dub.

  ‘Then... about the Yue family?’

  Ping.

  ‘About the scene of the crime?’

  Dub-dub.

  ‘About Fung Hoi Consortium?’

  Dub-dub.

  A question mark seemed to form above the group. What else could there be?

  Ah Sing broke in. ‘Is it about Yue Chin-yau?’

  Ping, ping.

  The suspects looked at each other. Why bring up the late wife again?

  ‘You answered YES twice,’ said Inspector Lok. ‘Apart from Yue Chin-yau, do you also want to talk about Yue Wing-lai?’

  Ping. The swift YES was like a leap of joy at the inspector having hit on the answer.

  ‘You old fool! Why keep yammering on about dead people?’ yelled Yue Wing-lim.

  Inspector Lok looked up to see the befuddlement in their faces. A while ago, when Ah Sing had mentioned Yue Wing-lai, they’d been unhappy, as if he’d offended them. Now anyone could see what lay behind that – they didn’t want Wing-lai mentioned, the same way they wou
ldn’t want to touch something dirty.

  One expression in particular grabbed Inspector Lok’s attention. Nanny Wu’s eyes were wet, her face full of torment.

  ‘Ms Wu, if you have anything to share with us, please do. I can guarantee it won’t go any further than this room,’ Inspector Lok reassured her, guessing this was a family secret.

  Nanny Wu glanced at the other four, and as no one seemed to object, took a deep breath and said slowly, ‘Inspector, I’m sure Superintendent Kwan has already guessed this, but I’ll say it anyway... Master Wing-lai wasn’t Boss-man’s biological son.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Only the family knows the ugly truth.’ She clenched her teeth. ‘When she was very young, Missy had an unfortunate encounter, and someone put her in the family way.’

  ‘Why don’t you just say it – she was raped!’ Old Tong’s face was full of anger.

  Nanny Wu’s brow furrowed and she looked in anguish at Old Tong before going on. ‘This was in the winter of 1970... No, January 1971, close to Chinese New Year. Missy was just seventeen, doing well at school, but she fell into bad company. The old master asked me to keep a tight watch on her, but one evening she slipped out. The whole family was out looking everywhere, and the old master even went to the police station to ask his friends for help. The next morning, I got a phone call from Missy, crying her eyes out. She was at a phone booth on Kowloon Peak, wanted me to come alone to get her, not tell the old master. I couldn’t get there on my own, I had to ask Man-bun, I mean Boss-man, to drive me. He’d just come back from hunting for Missy all night, not a wink of sleep. Ah, we were all exhausted that day. Tong hadn’t slept either – he must have gone over the whole of Kowloon.’

  Even before she was done, the inspector and Ah Sing, and even Apple, could guess how this would end.

  ‘When we found Missy, she was squatting by the roadside with her arms around her knees, her dress all ripped – it broke my heart. She hugged me and cried some more, and all we could do was help her into the car to rest. She said her so-called friends had taken her out for a spin, and there they were listening to music and boozing, when someone produced a rolled-up cigarette and got her to try some, but after a few drags she felt light-headed, and someone was tugging at her clothes. When she woke up, she was alone at a shelter near the Kowloon Peak car park, her dress all open – oh, it was awful...’ Nanny Wu was weeping now. ‘And that’s how Missy got raped by a stranger. She begged me not to tell the old master, and at that moment my heart was so weak for her, I agreed. Even went back home to get her clothes to change into. The old master thought she’d just stayed out all night partying, gave her a good scolding, and that should have been it, only two months later trouble showed itself... Missy told me her time hadn’t come, and I realized how serious the situation was.’

  Sex education in schools had been much more limited back then; Ah Sing thought how much damage this policy had caused.

  ‘There was no keeping this from the old master. Surprisingly, he didn’t lose his temper, he and the old mistress just hugged Missy and cried. He got a doctor he knew to examine her, and she was going to get rid of it, but the doctor said if she did that she might never be able to get pregnant again. She was the old master’s only child, and if she couldn’t have kids, that’d be the end of the Yue family. All along, the old master had felt uneasy about only producing a single girl, thinking he’d let down all his ancestors, but at least any child she had would still have Yue blood in its veins, and he’d just need to make sure it got the name as well. Now it seemed the heavens were taking even that away—’

  ‘So Yue Fung made Chin-yau have the baby?’ asked Inspector Lok.

  ‘He didn’t insist, but she wanted that too, if only to protect the family name.’ Nanny Wu slowly dabbed away her tears. ‘If a scandal like this got out, it would hurt the old master’s reputation. Things weren’t as liberal back then. People would have said he couldn’t even control his own daughter, how could he run a company? The only choice was to get Missy married off as quickly as possible.’

  ‘So Mr Wong and the deceased really were brought in as potential sons-in-law?’

  ‘No,’ said Old Tong. ‘Old-boss had only been looking for young assistants when he hired us, but because we were around her so much, we’d grown close to the mistre— to Chin-yau, and so he ordered one of us to marry her.’

  ‘Which means you had the chance to become head of the Yue family?’ Inspector Lok asked, his eyes bright as lightning.

  ‘You could put it that way,’ Old Tong smiled bitterly. ‘But I gave it up. All right, I’ll admit I was fond of Chin-yau, but I couldn’t bring up a child that wasn’t my own. But Brother Man-bun – Boss-man – he was more open, willing to step forward right away and say the little life in her belly was innocent. Maybe he was attracted to the status of being the Yue successor. But back then, it wouldn’t have been easy to accept another man’s kid and a wife who’d been ruined. So you see, he must truly have loved Chin-yau. That’s something I could never have done.’

  ‘The boss-man was very good to the child,’ said Nanny Wu. ‘Even if he wasn’t his, he always loved him.’

  ‘Because of what happened, Old-boss felt local medicine was inadequate, and many years later he set up Wo Yan Hospital,’ said Old Tong. ‘If there’d been safer abortion techniques available at the time, ones that didn’t endanger future pregnancies, Chin-yau wouldn’t have suffered so much, especially getting depression after Master Wing-lai’s birth.’

  ‘Does that mean Wing-lai’s rotten character came from the rape?’ Ah Sing’s nonsensical exclamation seemed to pour salt in the wound, but no one tried to deny it. Only Old Tong smiled bitterly.

  ‘That’s right. Wing-lai’s rotten character... might actually have come from his father.’ He shook his head as he spoke.

  ‘Tong, never mind if Master Wing-lai was stubborn and badly behaved, he’s dead now. Don’t say bad things about him,’ said Nanny Wu, but without much resolve.

  ‘How did Superintendent Kwan know all this?’ asked Choi Ting suddenly. ‘Did he work out what went on with Uncle and Granny, just from what we said?’

  Ping. The pointer moved to YES, then hovered around the middle of the screen.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Probably that he saw most of it, but needed to guess the details.’ Inspector Lok seemed preoccupied, falling silent for a moment. ‘That’s right, didn’t Ah Sing mention that Yue Wing-lai was born at Mid-Autumn? Yuen Man-bun and Yue Chin-yau were married in April 1971, and had their oldest son that same year. Mid-Autumn is September or October, less than seven months after the wedding. Even if the baby were premature, that’d still be implausible, unless it was a shotgun wedding... If the father had been one of these “imperial sons-in-law”, then Wong Kwan-tong would have been the more likely candidate, because we’ve heard that Chin-yau got on better with him. Even if it was Yuen Man-bun who’d raped Yue Chin-yau to get her pregnant so Yue Fung would force them into marriage, that wouldn’t necessarily have meant he’d gain control of the consortium – Yue Fung might have instead instructed Wong Kwan-tong to groom the young Wing-lai as his successor. So we have to consider that the father of the child was someone else altogether.’

  Ping. Like praise from the old man.

  ‘Then Yue Wing-lai...’

  Before the inspector could finish his sentence, Wing-yee abruptly stood up. Only now did everyone notice how pale he had grown, his face clenched tight, his brow covered in sweat. His nerves were a rubber band about to snap.

  ‘Wing-yee, what’s wrong? Are you sick?’ Choi Ting urgently asked her husband.

  ‘I... I want to turn myself in. I’m the killer.’

  The company was taken aback by the unexpected confession.

  Yue Wing-yee’s hands were trembling. He plucked off his glasses and kept turning his head to glance behind him, as if someone he couldn’t see was staring at him.

  ‘Mr Yue, what are you saying?’ Inspector Lok gl
ared at him.

  ‘I said, I’m the killer. Please, please don’t let Superintendent Kwan say anything further, I’ll admit everything.’ Wing-yee hid his face.

  ‘Why would you kill your own father?’ Nanny Wu’s tears started flowing again. ‘You always got on so well with him! Were there problems at work? Was it because of debt? Or––’

  ‘No, no, I didn’t kill Father. I meant my brother.’

  6

  ‘YUE WING-LAI? But didn’t he die in a car accident? And at the time you’d have been... just nine years old!’ The sudden revelation made even Inspector Lok lose his imperturbability.

  ‘Yes, I killed my older brother when I was nine, and kept the secret for more than two decades.’ Wing-yee sat down again and covered his face with his hands.

  ‘How did you kill Wing-lai at the age of nine?’

  ‘That day was April Fool’s.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I wanted to pull a prank, so I asked Old Tong to help me find... scary toys.’ Wing-yee’s voice trembled. ‘They were fake soda cans, and when someone pulled the tab, the bottom of the can would open and dump rubber insects all over you.’

  ‘Argh! Those things!’ Nanny Wu’s exclamation suggested she’d been one of his victims.

  ‘I thought it would be fun to plant one of them in my brother’s car...’ Wing-yee clenched his jaw, his fingers digging into his scalp. ‘After the accident, I heard people saying they didn’t understand how he could have gone off the bridge – the road was wide there, not dangerous at all, it was as if he’d been startled by something and turned the steering wheel...’

  Inspector Lok winced, not having expected this old matter to suddenly rear its head.

  ‘Ah... Mr Yue, we’re currently investigating your father’s death. Wing-lai’s accident isn’t within the scope of this case, and we won’t look into it right now. I’m not a judge, and can’t pronounce you not guilty, but in my experience, something like this would almost certainly be called an accident, and I don’t think anyone’s going to press charges. After we’ve dealt with your father’s killer, let’s look into how to resolve this other matter – okay?’