He immersed himself in the comparative study for ten minutes or so. He walked out into the living room, but didn’t stay there long before heading back into the office. Huang followed, without interrupting, notebook in hand.
“Has anything been moved here?”
“No, of course not. Nobody-not even Mrs. Liu-has been in here, not since she was brought to check over the things in the apartment. That is, of course, except for those items bagged and taken to the lab for testing.”
“Do you have that list with you?”
“Yes, here it is.”
Chen checked it carefully, then placed it on the desk and rubbed his chin with a finger.
“Now, let me ask you a question. Where do you think the host would usually receive a guest?”
“The living room, naturally. But we thought about that too. Liu might have simply stepped into the office to get a document or something.”
“In that case, he would have entered the room first, and the murderer would have followed behind him-”
Chen didn’t go on, apparently having a difficult time visualizing the murderer striking Liu from behind.
“What do you think of the position of the other chairs in the office?” Chen resumed, sitting down on the swivel chair at the desk. “They haven’t been moved, right?”
“No. But what do you mean?”
“It doesn’t make sense. If Liu were sitting here, like I am, then the murderer would have been sitting opposite him. So why are the other chairs in the corner of the room?”
“That’s a good point,” Huang said, writing it down in his notebook.
“If he’d been talking to someone who was standing in front of him and who then swooped down on him ferociously-”
“Then,” Huang said, nodding, “how come there is no sign of a struggle?”
“Exactly.”
“But what about the possibility that Liu was showing his visitor a file on the computer-something like a document about the antipollution efforts-when the visitor struck him from behind? That’s a scenario that I discussed with my colleagues.”
“In the pictures, the computer isn’t on.” Chen picked up one of the photographs. “So, in your scenario, Liu had to have been struck at the very moment his hand was just touching the computer button.”
Huang could see the chief inspector wasn’t convinced. As a matter of fact, neither was Huang.
“That’s a good point. I’ll write it down,” Huang said, opening his notebook again.
“In the pictures, there wasn’t a glass or a cup on the desk in the office. Or in the living room. Or in the list of the items bagged for testing. For a man who was working late at night, a cup of coffee or tea on the desk would seem logical.”
“That’s true.”
“And another thing. The estimated time of death is between 9:30 and 10:30. That’s very late for a visitor such as the one theorized by Internal Security to arrive. Maybe Liu and the visitor had already been talking and arguing for an hour or more. But then where? Surely not in the office. That brings us back to your hypothesis-that they moved from the living room to the office. But then why wasn’t there a cup of tea in the living room for the guest?”
“Or at least a cup of water,” Huang said, scratching his head.
“Now look on the shelf. An impressive array of Puer tea cans, a very expensive tea from Yunnan-”
But Chen left his sentence unfinished, as he started to examine a row of gilded statuettes that were lined resplendently along the top shelf. He picked one statuette up. It was a tall, muscular worker holding aloft a shining globe and standing on a solid marble base. It bore an inscription: “In recognition of the outstanding increase in production and profit achieved by the Wuxi Number One Chemical Company for the year of 1995. Issued by the Wuxi People’s Congress.” The statuettes were all identical in design, size, and caption, except for the year.
“The chemical company under Liu’s leadership won that prestigious award nine years in a row,” Chen said
“Wow, they are gold-plated too, ” Huang said, picking one up. It was quite heavy. “Such a statuette could be quite expensive.”
“Let’s take some more pictures,” Chen said. “I’ll study them some more back at the center.”
Chen took out a camera he had brought with him. He took photos for no less than fifteen minutes before he placed the framed picture of Liu and his son flat on the desk and photographed it as well. He then glanced at his watch.
“By the way, I’ve contacted Liu’s attorney through some people I know in Shanghai,” Chen said. “While the Lius hadn’t made any specific moves regarding their marriage, Mrs. Liu made a joke over dinner about getting half of the IPO shares from Liu if he ever tried to divorce her.”
A wronged wife out for revenge: that might throw a new light on a lot of things in the case. It gave Mrs. Liu a more plausible motive than Jiang’s. There was the possibility that Liu was going to divorce her before the IPO, with the little secretary pushing in the background. In that case, Mrs. Liu could have lost everything. She had the access to his home office, along with knowledge of his whereabouts that night. Furthermore, it would explain the points raised by Chen about the crime scene-Liu’s body being found in the office rather than in the living room, there being no sign of struggle, and the position of the chairs in the office. All of that would then make more sense.
“That was a brilliant stroke, Chen. Contacting the attorney, I mean. What she said about getting half of the shares from the IPO probably wasn’t a joke,” Huang said. “Liu was good at cover-ups, and so was she. The couple must have been trying to sound out possible divorce arrangements with the attorney. Liu was going to do it, and she knew it.”
There was a glitch with that scenario, however. Mrs. Liu had an alibi. Then again, the people who supported her alibi were close friends, and unlike witnesses in those mystery novels Chen translated, some Chinese didn’t worry too much about perjury. For one thing, there was no Bible for them to swear upon. For her friends, doing Mrs. Liu a favor might have outweighed other considerations. Besides, even if she were in Shanghai that night, she could have dispatched someone in Wuxi to achieve her ends.
“Time for the next item on our agenda, Huang,” Chen said, breaking out of his reverie. “Let’s go to the company office.”
“Fine,” Huang said, closing his notebook.
Huang had been there several times, so he suggested they walk from the apartment complex to the back door of the chemical company plant. “It’s only about five minutes away. We can leave the car here.”
Huang didn’t want to leave his name at the front gate of the chemical company while he was in the company of Chief Inspector Chen. His colleagues would be upset if they learned about this excursion, but he didn’t have to explain that to Chen.
“As when we spoke to Mrs. Liu, you’re the one in charge of the investigation,” Chen said as they made their way to the company’s back door.
At the door of the chemical company they saw an elderly security guard, who nodded at Huang’s badge and let them in without further ado.
“The back door is locked after eight P.M.,” Huang explained to Chen, “but people can still open it from the inside. On one occasion, when Liu had to come back to the company for some important documents, he had to call the guard at the front gate to come around and open the back door for him.”
“I see,” Chen said. “So it’s really a shortcut.”
The general manager’s office was in a two-story building in the middle of the chemical company complex. They had arranged to meet Mi in the outer office, and she was already there waiting for them.
“What can we do for you today, Officer Huang? Oh, this is-” she said, rising from her desk.
A tall, willowy girl in her early twenties, Mi had almond-shaped eyes, a sensual mouth, and a fashionably thin body like a runway model. She was wearing a short, white, neckless halter top, which revealed her belly button; jeans; and high-heeled sandals, which showed her toes painted bright red.