A Perfect Crime
Page 10
Ma came back two days later with a squat, bald lawyer.
‘I don’t understand, but you can explain it to my son.’
‘Here’s the thing, boy. We want to appeal on your behalf to the Supreme Court. But we need your consent.’
‘I’m not appealing.’
‘But it’s your right. Why wouldn’t you?’
‘I know.’
‘My name is Li, everyone knows me. Mr Li has got three men off death row.’
‘I know, but there’s no need.’
Ma beat at the glass, first with her hands and then with her head. I watched her eyes, nose and teeth contort as they came at me, before pulling back again.
‘Just some cooperation,’ she howled.
‘OK,’ I said, nodding.
But I started regretting it as soon as I got back to my cell. I was like a character in a novel who has gone to drown themselves in the sea but who meets an old friend on the beach and is kidnapped by the conversation.
I couldn’t tell my mother I wanted to die.
From then on, Ma and the lawyer came and left on a cloud of dust, too busy for niceties. I was the emperor and they were the loyal ministers. One day the lawyer arrived with an official document from the A—Province People’s Hospital, dated five years previously, which described the after-effects of a wound I had sustained to the head. Symptoms included headaches, hysteria and signs of neurosis. I told them it never happened.
‘We have the word of a doctor,’ the lawyer said, pulling out a transcript, on which was written:
Q: Did you write this medical record?
A: Yes.
Q: The proof?
A: That’s my signature.
‘I’ve never been to the People’s Hospital,’ I said.
He rapped on the counter, exasperated. I understood.
‘You listen to me from now on. Your answers are limited to yes or no. That’s it.’
I would say yes to everything. He was there to remind me of my story.
He looked satisfied, but before leaving he asked one more time, ‘Can you tell me why you were admitted to hospital?’
I didn’t know what to say. He looked disappointed.
‘Someone hit you on the head with a brick as you were walking through the night market during your New Year holidays.’
‘Right.’
‘You must remember your injuries.’
We were dicing with death here. I was under no illusions that there’d be a miracle, but my lawyer went on to outline the five potential lines of ‘escape’. He made it sound as if the death penalty was the least likely of outcomes.
1. Judicial appraisal.
2. Apportion some of the responsibility to society.
3. Change of date of birth.
4. That there was in fact no intent to commit rape.
5. A leniency plea based on having given myself up.
‘But I didn’t give myself up,’ I said.
‘Yes, you did,’ he replied firmly. ‘Upon your arrest you voluntarily made contact with the police. Before your arrest you wrote three options on three separate hundred-yuan notes. One of those was to give yourself up. Which means the intent was there. You also called your assistant class monitor Li Yong to tell him where you were. For a kid your age, the class monitor and assistant class monitors are the highest possible levels of authority. This shows your desire to repent to those in charge.’
‘I was fed up with the game.’
‘Which amounts to turning yourself in.’
My mother came back a few days later with a spring in her step. She was waving wildly with excitement. Anyone would think she had in her possession a paper granting my release.
‘You must thank your mother,’ the lawyer said. ‘I’ve never seen such persistence.’
‘What’s happened?’ I said.
‘Kong Jie’s mother has agreed to file a petition for clemency,’ he said.
‘How come?’ I said.
‘Your mother offered her seven hundred thousand,’ he said.
‘Where did she get that from?’ he said.
‘I have savings. I sold the shop and the house. It was enough,’ Ma said.
‘Your mother also borrowed twenty thousand,’ he said.
‘You’ve already given it?’ I said.
‘Not all of it. The first instalment is sitting safely with Kong Jie’s uncle. She still hasn’t promised personally,’ he said.
‘How could she? I killed her daughter. Why would she grant me mercy?’ I said.
‘She didn’t agree at first,’ Ma said. ‘But I said to her, “I’m a single mother, so are you.We both only have one child. Will my son’s death bring your daughter back? I’d have swapped him for your daughter if I could, but that’s not how it works. Can’t you let him live, seeing as we are both alone in this world?”’
‘I said to her, “It’s not easy raising a daughter’,”’ the lawyer said. ‘“She was on the cusp of becoming a woman. It’s our fault, no doubt about it. But it’s done now. We have to look on the positives. This is a chance to display a moral magnanimity rarely seen these days. Beg for mercy on his behalf and you will have saved two lives. This woman’s and her son’s. They will do their utmost to repay you – compensate you, I mean. They will for ever be indebted to your grace.”’
‘And she agreed?’
‘No, she got someone to beat your mother up at first,’ he said. ‘Your mother kowtowed and begged them to name a price. Mrs Kong ignored her, until one of her relatives could stand it no longer and offered to help your mother to her feet. But your mother refused and Mrs Kong spat on her.’
Ma looked down. The lawyer continued.
‘Your mother suggested money. Three hundred thousand wasn’t enough, so she said five hundred.When they refused that, it became seven hundred. Ten thousand, twenty thousand at a time. But no reaction. Your mother fainted. Mrs Kong said, “How do you expect me to react now?”’
‘We’re not sure if it’s a definite yes,’ Ma said.
‘It was a definite yes,’ the lawyer said. ‘All we need is for you to repent in court.’
The Verdict
Five months later the Supreme Court of Appeal held the second trial back in the same courtroom. The fact that there wouldn’t be a third trial gave me some comfort. I was fed up with being chased through the labyrinth. I was me, not some fictional character. Time once again felt inexhaustible, a cataract growing across my eyes. I’d started gnawing at my wrist, which the prosecutor argued was an attempt to escape proper punishment through suicide.
I recognised him, the prosecutor, but he, of course, didn’t know me. His shoulders were narrow and he was stretched tall like a shoulder pole. He sat in the court with one leg over the other, flicking through his papers every now and again, reminding himself of the most salient points. As soon as the trial began, I knew at once he wasn’t taking it particularly seriously. But he nevertheless possessed a foolish self-confidence. He thought he could make a last-minute lunge to clutch at the Buddha’s feet. But still he let slip three gaping yawns. He must have spent the night drinking and playing dice, perhaps with his arms around a woman. His ears were filled with the sounds of karaoke.
After my lawyer had laid out our case, he asked the court to produce the medical examiner’s report. Dr Tears was brought out again and through my lawyer’s questioning was forced to admit that no traces of semen were found in the girl’s vagina.
‘That doesn’t mean he didn’t intend to rape her,’ the medical examiner contended.
Clearly this was an unsatisfactory assumption. ‘Considering the circumstances,’ my lawyer replied, ‘had my client wished to rape the victim, he would have. And traces of such an act would have remained. Was the victim’s hymen intact?’
‘Yes,’ the medical examiner replied.
‘But during the first trial the defendant admitted to attempted rape. And the conclusion of the court was the attempt had been aborted,’ the prosecutor said.
‘The law does not allow for conjecture. That is a question for the defendant.’ The prosecutor was suddenly aware of his mistake.
I stood up. ‘I never wanted to rape her, and neither did I try.’
The courtroom erupted; I had withdrawn a confession. My lawyer sat down in silence. He must have been feeling pleased with himself.
‘Then why did you confess to rape during police questioning?’ the presiding judge cut in.
I didn’t answer.
The prosecutor stood up. ‘I would like to ask the defendant what evidence he has to prove he did not intend to rape the victim.’
He was obviously feeling flustered to ask such a dumb question.
‘Objection,’ my lawyer interrupted.
But I raised my handcuffed hand. ‘I masturbated not long before Kong Jie came to my place. Sexual relations with her therefore didn’t cross my mind.’
‘And do you have proof?’ the prosecutor declared. ‘No. Apart from what it says in the medical examiner’s report.’
‘It doesn’t prove you weren’t thinking about it.’
‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking about it. Had I been, there was nothing to stop me going through with it.’ ‘You didn’t think of it?’ The prosecutor was losing his sense of propriety.
‘I thought about it, but I never intended to actually do it.’
‘Why not?’
‘For the sake of purity.’
‘Purity?’
‘I killed her for the sake of killing her. I didn’t want to sully that with anything impure.’
My lawyer finally cut in. ‘This proves that despite the depraved nature of his crime, he did not act completely without principle.’
He then read out a statement that had been signed by over four hundred neighbours, classmates and acquaintances. They swore upon their good names that I cherished the old and weak – that I was fundamentally honest. They collectively appealed to the court to show leniency.
My lawyer began to read each name in turn, but the judge broke him off. He was trembling, as if to say that these few lowly sheets of paper were unworthy of the mighty will of the people displayed thereon. Ma and the lawyer must have used a lot of sweets and red envelopes of money to obtain those signatures. My lawyer probably started it off with a couple of dozen signatures of his own before soliciting friends and relatives.
Then came a statement from my aunt. She had reflected on her own behaviour, her inflated sense of superiority, her rough and arbitrary manner. She had failed to recognise that I was still only a young boy, she said, and in doing so had subconsciously contributed to my destruction. Her statement went on to outline twenty or so instances of discriminatory and unjust treatment, including purposefully leaving fifty cents out on the table to see if I would steal it, only giving me leftovers to eat, etc.
After my lawyer finished reading, he came over to me, his brow wrinkled, his eyes shining fiercely like torches, as if he didn’t know me.
‘I want you to answer my following questions honestly.’
‘OK.’
‘Do you swear?’
‘I swear.’
‘Was it not the case that you really wanted to kill your aunt?’
‘You could say that.’
‘Yes or no?’
‘Yes,’ I said, raising my voice.
‘Objection. These are leading questions,’ the prosecutor began.
The judge told my lawyer to be careful. But he was already in the throes of an intensely passionate performance. He thrust his hands his pockets and began pacing.
Suddenly: ‘Why did you kill her?’
‘Bigotry.’
‘What do you mean, bigotry?’
‘I was an outsider. They looked down on me. It was an all-encompassing, overwhelming bigotry.’
‘And how did it make you feel?’
‘That I was already a criminal. Every day, they stripped me naked.’
‘Did it make you want to cry?’
I looked up at him in bafflement. He kept signalling with his eyes for me to speak.
‘Could you explain this feeling of pain to us more clearly?’ he continued.
I didn’t know how to answer, so I lowered my gaze and said nothing. Maybe I shook my head.
‘Look,’ he said, pointing at me like a piece of evidence, ‘he struggles to put the humiliation into words.
‘So why didn’t you kill your aunt?’ he continued just as suddenly.
She wasn’t worth it, I thought.
‘Because you couldn’t kill someone as strong as her,’ my lawyer began answering for me. ‘So you chose to kill a classmate, to frighten your aunt. To tell her you weren’t such a pushover. It was your childish way of getting back at her.’
The prosecutor thumped the table and decried this as mere sophistry. The judge replied with his gavel. But my lawyer was in mid-performance. The hands went back in the pockets and he strode over to the public gallery. He looked at each of them in turn, with purpose. When they were all suitably stunned, he lifted his pen and began pointing at them individually.
‘You are all guilty.’ He paused before continuing. ‘You give him pressure to do well in his exams. You look down on him because of where he’s from.You roll your eyes, you ignore him, you treat him like an outsider, call him a peasant. To you, he is a slave. You make him part of an underclass. You don’t give two hoots about him. In fact, you think he is an imposition on your safe little world. You think he deserves this life. And you feel no guilt about it, am I right? Now you can’t forgive him. But let me ask you something. What gave you the right to sit there all stately, like emperors? Does it make you feel good?’
Almost shaking with fright at his own words, he sat back down.
But the prosecutor would not be outdone. He stood up.
‘I agree with you. So perhaps we should be sentencing the aunt to death instead? Or how about all of us? Execute all of us. And set him free. Does that sound right?’
‘Yes,’ my lawyer replied, his voice husky. ‘I agree completely.’
‘Well, I don’t. Because I don’t think the situation is as you describe it. Not in the slightest. If the defendant merely wanted to scare his aunt, he could have killed her cat or dog or something. There was no need to involve anyone else. If he felt he needed to kill a classmate to prove his point, he didn’t need to stab her thirty-seven times. And why put her in the washing machine? Why do you think he did that?’
He paused to give everyone time to think this through. He then pointed his long, bony finger at me, like a gun. I cocked my head. The trembling finger took its aim at me again. I couldn’t escape.
‘Hatred!’ he cried. ‘Bitter hatred. He committed such a cruel act out of hate for Kong Jie. That is the only explanation.’
He asked me if I had asked her out. No, I said. He asked again if she had rejected me. I said no. He was happy with my answers, as if this somehow made me more of a criminal than if I had said yes. He then began his own speech, drawing on the theories of Freud, Jung, inferiority complexes, princesses and plain, ugly desire. He had memorised sayings and quotations, while trying to convey the gushing fluidity of a waterfall. When he hit a verbal blockage, he glanced down at his notes. But each blockage brought about a new cascade of bluster. He finished by collapsing back into his chair, as if coming down with some grave malady.
Upon the prosecutor’s insistence, my aunt was finally brought into the court. She took a few steps and stopped. It was as if she was the one on trial. Eventually, she tottered up into the witness stand. She didn’t look up. Her brow glistened with sweat.
The prosecutor asked her to repeat what she had seen at the scene of the crime and her voice quivered through the description. The courtroom frightened her, I could tell, but everyon
e mistook it for the horror of the memory.
‘The defence counsel has argued that it was your unjust treatment of the defendant that caused him to commit the crime. What is your response?’
My aunt’s huge frame convulsed (like a skyscraper about to fall). ‘That is incorrect.’
With that one sentence she made her betrayal, abandoning all that Ma and the lawyer had persuaded her to say.
‘So that wasn’t the reason for his crime?’
‘It has nothing to do with me.’
‘Did you mistreat your nephew?’
‘I wouldn’t call it mistreatment.’
‘Then what would you call it?’
‘They should be more generous. His mother asked me to look after him, said he was my responsibility. I even moved out of my own home so as not to disrupt his studies. He put on at least five kilos while he was living with me. Ask him.’
My lawyer stood up to speak but I raised my hand. The judge motioned for me to speak.
‘Aunt, where’s your jade Buddha?’
‘What jade Buddha?’
‘The one taped to the bottom of your safe.’
‘I don’t own a jade Buddha.’
‘Yes, you do. How many gifts have you and uncle received over the years?’
The woman looked dumbstruck and then flopped to the ground, as if in a bad soap opera. A few people rushed to help her up. No one felt more sorry for themselves in that moment than she did. But now she wouldn’t dare talk about compensation. Ma paid her back a long ago. Whatever. She got what she deserved.
Next came our old neighbour Mr He. It must have been a while since he’d been let out into such a large space and he was clearly itching to say his piece. He spiced his descriptions liberally, filling them with invented misdemeanours on my part: ‘You could say, he’s done it all.’ His lips furled, unleashing scorn as if he was the government. But to me he was just a putrid, decaying old man.
‘You hit me,’ I said.
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Yes, you did.You dug your nails into my neck, cursed me, slapped me across the face. You humiliated me to the core.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘You hit me whenever you felt like it.’