‘I didn’t hate her.’
‘That doesn’t seem possible.’
‘Really.’
‘If that’s the case, why do something so brutal, so ruthless?’
‘No reason.’
He threw his tea cup to the floor, making his colleague jump. He leaned forward and banged on the table. ‘No reason?’ he roared.
I looked down and said nothing. The direction he was taking and his methods were all wrong. He was making a big mistake.
‘Speak,’ he said, thumping the table.
‘I have nothing to say.’
He walked over, grabbed my collar and raised a clenched fist. But I wasn’t scared. If he hit me on the left cheek, I’d give him my right as well. Winners don’t get so easily flustered. His colleague kept telling him to stop, but it took some time for him to calm down. Then he started telling me about his son who was about my age. His tone changed, as if talking to a friend. After having flunked his college entrance exams his son ran away. When the old man found him, he beat him. But beating his son was like beating himself.
‘After that I realised there was nothing I could not forgive. There is nothing in life too big that it cannot be forgiven.’
He was in a world of his own emotions and, with tears in his eyes, he looked at me.
‘We’ll get through this crisis together. Kid, was there really no other way to solve your problems with Kong Jie?’
‘We didn’t have any.’
‘And yet you stabbed her another thirty-seven times, after she was already dead?’
‘You don’t get it.’
‘You liked her but she didn’t feel the same way, is that it?’
‘No.’
‘Did she humiliate you?’
‘No.’
‘Then why?’
I looked straight at him. ‘I’d like to know the answer to that too.’
Blood pumped into his cheeks and he looked as sombre as a stick of dynamite. He walked over to the TV screen, trembling, and picked up a photo frame. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
‘Who is he?’ he said in a stutter.
‘My father.’
Pa looked exhausted, his skin barely stretched over his skeleton. He was in the last stages of his cancer, but still he managed to smile at the camera. I thought about his birth, his childhood, where he went to school, his work at the mine and finally marriage, a kid, sickness and death. To put it bluntly, he was born and then he died. Just like everyone else. Just like the old investigator who was getting nowhere. Just like the kid sitting in front of him.
‘Do you know who provided for you, brought you up?’ he said, waving the frame.
I didn’t answer.
‘Do you know what he went through?’ He answered himself: ‘Cancer.’ He then started on the poor-parents-and-all-they-go-through routine. ‘Don’t you feel sorry for what you’ve done to him?’
‘Immensely.’
He turned to the others.
‘Am I right? We all have parents who have sacrificed themselves?’
At first they were stunned, looked at each other and murmured their agreement. It was a vulgar game. He placed the picture of my father in front of me, hoping for remorse.
‘How about telling him, from your heart?’
‘Nope.’
The other policemen were at least amused with my reply.
I smiled and repeated, ‘I’m not going to do that.’ The inspector stood up, overturning his chair, and blew like a steam engine.
‘You animal! You animal! Get out of my sight!’ he roared with a wave of his hand.
And with that the interrogation was over.
The Game
The mystery of why I had killed Kong Jie attracted much attention among the general public. Speculation provided an opportunity for people to prove themselves more intelligent than their peers. Discussions were animated. Nothing was taken for granted: some read my letters and the notes scribbled in my textbooks; others interviewed my classmates, teachers and relatives. But I united them all in feelings of frustration when it came to the question of motive. I was holding the cards, after all, so why not play for a bit?
It also made the other inmates jealous.
Guys in prison are usually society’s weirdos and with that reputation comes their own private sense of dignity. They don’t talk about their crimes, like the stupid stuff you do when drunk. But different crimes demand different levels of respect. The murderers, for example, were consistently more arrogant than the petty thieves. They asked me what I was in for, but once I told them I’d killed a girl, stabbed her thirty-seven times leaving her innards spilling out and head down in a washing machine, they never spoke to me again.
Every time I was called out for questioning, they whistled in anger. ‘Off for another spanking!’ It was all to do with saving face. Their crimes had been explained away long ago.
One night I crept into a corner, a ghost, while the others snored under their blankets. But just as I was about to take a piss they surrounded me, putting me in a headlock. I’d heard of this before. I jumped and screamed.
They were suffocating me.
I don’t know how many times they punched and slapped me, like a farmer beating the ground with his threshing paddle. They then emptied the communal bucket of piss over my head. It didn’t feel like liquid, but more like solid fat. It knocked my head to one side. One of the prison officers grabbed me by the hair and nearly twisted my neck off.
‘Making a scene, huh?’ he said.
‘Why did you kill her?’ he continued.
I refused to give an answer. Just as his fist was about to smash into my cheek, I caught a whiff of its meaty smell. My body shook and I began howling.
‘My aunt! Because of my aunt!’
‘Your aunt?’
‘My aunt abused me.’
‘What’s that got to do with the girl?’
‘I wanted her to know I’m not a pushover.’
His voice was raspy, fierce and uncontrolled, as if his vocal cords had been scraped against an iron file. Everyone else started laughing, their voices like flowers in a country meadow. My answer may have been amusing, but at least it satisfied them.
‘You could’ve killed your aunt. Why the girl?’ the prison officer said.
‘My aunt’s strong. It was easier to kill the girl.’
The officer gestured to the others not to laugh.
‘And to think I thought you might have been someone.’
The others bent over, gasping, ‘strong’, ‘easier’, jumping around in their laughter. This lasted for some time. I decided to take a lesson from my favourite Hong Kong films. It was all a matter of patience. I could spend years grinding down my toothbrush, until it was sharp enough to murder them. Then I’d take them, one by one.
I looked at the overturned piss pot lying on the floor and tears of humiliation ran down my cheeks. The officer was yawning and flapped the blanket over his flabby belly. I tossed the wet towel on the floor, picked up the piss bucket and smashed it down on his head. He fell to the ground. Then I started smashing his face as if it was a stone. I nearly pulverised him.
Thinking he was dead, I turned to my fellow inmates, now trembling. But at that moment, the officer grabbed hold of my trouser leg. I heard him spit blood, then he spoke.
‘Go on, kill me.’
I picked up the bucket and hit him again. He gasped, his limbs twitched out and he fell unconscious.
‘He asked me to kill him,’ I said to the others, quietly. But it sounded too soft. ‘I’ve already murdered one person. Doesn’t make much difference now,’ I snarled.
The inmates seemed to realise that something was up and started beating at their washbasins. The officers came rushing and tried to bring order, but the cells were rowdy, like the boys’ changing room after PE.