‘Did you go to see them on purpose?’
‘It wasn’t exactly on purpose.’ The adolescent’s face suddenly glowed crimson and he twisted his head uneasily this way and that. His voice faltered as he said, ‘In any case they didn’t. they didn’t do much. of that stuff. Really, they were mostly just hiding there to talk.’
‘And you were eavesdropping.’
‘We couldn’t hear them, or at least it wasn’t really clear what they were saying. Once the girl started crying, and she cried for a while, and then the guy started to cry too. When he started crying we all laughed. We thought they would hear us and that they wouldn’t come back next time. We didn’t think they were such morons, but then they were back in the same place the next day. They were really dumb; they must have thought with all the trees and bushes and stuff that no one could see them. I bet they never imagined we were watching them from the wall.’
‘Oh, so you were watching them? Then why would you throw a stone at them?’
‘I dunno.’ The teenager hung his head again. He pulled on his fingers and cracked the joints. Suddenly he asked, ‘Are they dead? Did it hit the guy or the girl?’
‘Which were you trying to hit?’
‘I didn’t think it would hit them. I just wanted to scare them a bit.’
‘You’re still trying to wiggle your way out of it. If you just wanted to scare them, you could have thrown a pebble, couldn’t you? Why did you have to pick such a big rock?’
‘I just took the stone Cat Head gave me. He said I couldn’t take the real shit.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘He said I was chicken. He always says I’m chicken.’
‘He said you were chicken and so you have to kill people if he says so, is that it? Just to prove him wrong?’
‘They’re all right, aren’t they? They’re not dead, are they?’ The teenager was watching the expression on the inspector’s face, then he gave a light sigh of relief, unable to conceal a self-satisfied grin. ‘I can tell they’re fine from how you’re talking. You were just trying to scare me.’
‘I can’t believe you just smiled. If you smile one more time, there’ll be no more Mr Nice Guy, understand?’
‘I wasn’t smiling.’ The boy covered his face with his palm and mumbled under his breath, ‘It’s not like smiling proves anything, anyway.’
The inspector was silent for a moment and ran over the notes he had on his pad with the tip of his ballpoint pen. He hadn’t written much, so he added in the punctuation he’d omitted.
‘Where did you go after you did it?’
‘I took off. When I heard them screaming I took off right away. I thought maybe I’d killed them, you know. I ran home, but it was boiling there so I stood in front of the electric fan forever, but I was still hot, so I ran to the swimming pool to go for a swim, and I swam five hundred metres, no, actually more like a thousand, and then I saw you guys standing there. I knew I could run away if I wanted to, but I didn’t see the point. Like they say, you can run but you can’t hide.’
‘You were swimming the whole time? You didn’t go anywhere else?’
‘No, I didn’t go anywhere.’ The boy looked at the inspector in confusion. ‘I just couldn’t stand the heat, so I went swimming.’
‘That’s a lie. Why don’t you tell me the truth? Where did you go after you came down from the wall?’
‘It’s not a lie; I swear it isn’t, cross my heart and hope to die. I was scared stupid and I went home to cool down by the fan but it was no good, so I went to the swimming pool. You can see I’m still wearing my swimsuit, can’t you?’
‘Well then what happened to the couple?’
‘Can’t you find them?’ The boy’s eyes grew large, but then he quickly regained his composure. He scratched his head and said, ‘If they’re not in the park, that just proves they’re fine. I bet the rock just hit them on the foot. I guess it must have hit the girl’s foot, because she screamed louder than the guy.’
‘I would advise you to shut up now, because we already know all the details, and let me tell you, it’s shaping up to be pretty serious. There are bloodspots all over the path in the People’s Park, and the guard hasn’t seen either one of them.’
‘What does that prove?’ the boy asked, blinking.
‘That’s for you to say. Why don’t you tell me, now, honestly? Was it you who moved the bodies? Where to?’
‘That’s a load of crap!’ The teenager, alarmed, had forgotten where he was. Even before he had finished his sentence, he realized he had spoken impudently. He bit his finger, as if by doing so he could take the sentence back. Then his dark features began to twitch, and finally he began to cry. He said, ‘You just want to scare me. I know they’re fine, they’re not dead. If they were dead they couldn’t have gone anywhere. There can’t be bloodspots on the path.’
‘Go ahead, now that it’s too late you can cry. After you’ve already killed someone you start to get weepy. You little thugs are all the same, every one a coward. You’re all tears as soon as someone mentions a coffin.’
The teenager covered his head and cried, ‘I know they’re not dead. Why do you all keep talking about corpses and bodies? As long as they’re not dead, you have no right to talk about bodies.’
Apparently the teenager wasn’t a bad student. The inspector gave him an hour to write his account of the case, but he finished in thirty minutes. Furthermore, his handwriting was clear and the composition logically structured. When the inspector read up to the part where he threw the stone, he couldn’t help but smile. The teenager had included an elaborate, rather overdone half-page explanation of his conflicting emotions: to throw or not to throw, and whether to throw a big stone or a little one. It was very much in the style habitually used by middle-school students for essays assigned to record their good deeds. The inspector didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so ended up saying, not without irony, ‘Well, it’s quite a good composition.’
The teenager knew that the inspector was mocking him. Nevertheless he took advantage of the opportunity to expand on the topic of his writing talent. ‘I’m best at compositions. Wang Lianju often gives me full marks for them. I know he just wants to encourage me, but I do write pretty well all the same.’
‘Well I’d have to say I’d give you full marks for crime too; you’re even better at that. You kill someone and remember to dispose of the bodies.’
The teenager didn’t say anything, but turned his face to look out of the window. It was already pitch-dark. He gazed around the room a few times, finally resting on the inspector’s wristwatch, and asked timidly, ‘What time is it?’
‘What does it matter to you what time it is? You still think you’re going to go home tonight?’
‘Is it eight thirty yet? If I were at home I would be writing my diary.’
‘What do you write in it? How many crimes you commit every day?’
‘Wang Lianju assigned it as our homework for the holidays, one page a day. We have to hand it in when school starts. Actually, keeping a diary’s pretty fun, and it kills time.’
‘I don’t think you’ll be handing in your holiday homework. When other people start school isn’t going to matter too much to you any more.’
‘I only have three pages left to write, because in three days the holidays will be over.’ The teenager sat in front of the desk and stared at the ballpoint pen and paper in front of him. He hesitated a moment before making a peculiar request. ‘Let me write my diary. You’re not questioning me any more anyhow. Can’t I just write the entry for today?’