Second Sister

by Chan Ho-Kei

  “What?”

  “Can you see what’s going on here?”

  Nga-Yee looked at the screen. Through the library window, she could see rows of shelves, and beyond them the entrance. Miss Yuen, Kwok-Tai, Lily, the Countess, and her handmaidens were all still there, as were those busybodies around the laser printer and Violet behind the counter. Miss Yuen was talking to Lily and Kwok-Tai while the Countess and her lackeys were continuing their quarrel with Violet. It had been only four or five minutes since Nga-Yee and N left the library, and nothing seemed to have changed.

  “Do you know what the Zhiwen Press edition of Crime and Punishment looks like?” N asked.

  “Of course. It’s the one with a bronze statue of Dostoyevsky on the cover.”

  “There are two copies of Crime and Punishment in the Enoch library: a new translation brought out last year by Summer Publishing, and the 1985 Zhiwen edition.” N paused for a moment. “In a while, someone’s going to walk over to the bookshelf, ignore the new version, and pick up the old one. That person is kidkit727.”

  Nga-Yee still didn’t understand, but N had already put on the earphones, signaling that the conversation was over. All Nga-Yee could do was wait and see what the big mystery was. On the screen, Miss Yuen was walking out of the library. The Countess seemed to lose the argument with Violet; she dug a couple of banknotes out of her purse and flung them on the counter, then stomped off with her handmaidens. The older students left too, one of them clutching a stack of printed papers. Kwok-Tai and Lily sat at the table; Lily dabbing at her tears, Kwok-Tai comforting her. They left a minute later, she leaning against him. Violet To was now alone in the library.

  What Nga-Yee saw next astounded her.

  Violet left the counter and went over to a bookcase by the window, where she grabbed a book from the fourth shelf. Even though the resolution on the screen wasn’t very high, Nga-Yee recognized the man with the enormous beard on the cover: Russian literary titan Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

  That wasn’t all.

  Violet quickly flicked through the pages of Crime and Punishment and retrieved a folded, pale yellow sheet. She slipped this into her pocket, replaced the book, and hurried back behind the counter.

  “She’s the person you’re looking for, Miss Au,” said N, removing his earphones and looking at the dumbstruck Nga-Yee.

  “Then … that’s the missing page from Nga-Yee’s suicide note?” Nga-Yee asked, stepping back toward the door, as if she were about to run across the road to rip the pages from Violet’s hands.

  “You need to calm down.” N stood, grabbed another chair, and pressed Nga-Yee’s shoulders to force her down into it. “The letter is a fake.”

  “Fake? But that’s Siu-Man’s handwriting—”

  “I copied it.”

  Nga-Yee stared at him in disbelief. “Why would you do something so cruel?” she screamed, her face bright red. “Siu-Man departed without a word, and you let me believe she’d left something behind—”

  “That was the only way to find kidkit727,” said N, his face expressionless. “I’ve never lost sight of what you hired me to do, Miss Au: find the person who wrote that blog post. You were the one who forgot our goal as soon as you set eyes on that note. You have to understand that this was the only way I could find conclusive evidence.”

  “The only way?”

  “Everything you said before about eyewitnesses and proof was circumstantial,” N explained, unhurried. “None of that told us kidkit727’s real identity. This person posted on Popcorn without leaving any traces, then sent your sister those messages from the MTR, also untraceably. Even if I managed to get hold of kidkit727’s phone and hacked into her mailbox, I still might not find the post or those emails. And even if I could prove that the messages came from a particular smartphone, I’d have no way of showing that the person using it was kidkit727 herself. Look at it this way: if I hacked into someone’s phone, used it to send threatening messages, and managed to get out without leaving any evidence, then you’d wrongly accuse the owner of the phone. I always knew the data alone wouldn’t help us find our culprit.”

  “Then why did we gather all that evidence?”

  “To narrow the list of suspects. When we’d got it down to a few, it was time for the second step: making a trap for the culprit to fall into. She herself proved that she’s kidkit727. The reason we went to the school last week was to study the terrain and look for the best place to set a snare. Didn’t I tell you how reconnaissance works?”

  Nga-Yee remembered him using that word after the triad gangsters kidnapped them.

  “So you thought up the fake suicide note last week?”

  “I thought of it the day I accepted your case, but I only decided to deploy it last week. Your sister didn’t leave a note, so that was an excellent way to psychologically interfere with the culprit.”

  “But how did you manage to copy Siu-Man’s—”

  Before she could finish her sentence, N reached into his bag and produced a sheaf of papers: Siu-Man’s homework.

  “With all these samples, I just had to spend a few days practicing to produce something roughly like it. The handwriting only had to be similar enough to convince you. I needed you to say this was real in front of all of our suspects. If Siu-Man’s own sister verified it, none of them would question it.”

  Nga-Yee understood: she’d been N’s pawn. Although she understood his motives, it was hard not to be upset at being tricked yet again.

  “Anna Karenina and Crime and Punishment?”

  “That was me, too, of course.”

  “You broke into the school beforehand to plant the notes?”

  “No. All this happened right in front of you,” N said nonchalantly. “Last week, I didn’t just steal the Countess’s script—I also took one other book away with me.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’d been thinking about which book to pick when Kwok-Tai phoned. I had to make a snap decision, so I stuffed Anna Karenina Volume One into my jacket as I ran out. That’s quite a common shoplifting tactic.”

  “Siu-Man never borrowed it?”

  “No.”

  “I did think it was odd. She never read novels, let alone Tolstoy.”

  “After I’d forged the suicide note, I phoned you and said we were going back to the school,” N went on. “I told you the book was among the stack Miss Yuen gave us; then I told her we’d found it at your home. That way, both of you were fooled. Volume One was the line, Volume Two was the bait, and as for Crime and Punishment, it was the fishhook—”

  “Ah! So you planted the second and third sheets of paper just now!”

  “Exactly. You couldn’t see what I was doing, because the bookcase was in the way—a few seconds was all it took.

  “When I deduced that the killer had to be someone your sister knew, I decided the fake suicide note would be the best way to make the culprit reveal herself. If she thought the note revealed kidkit727’s actual name, she’d do whatever it took to get rid of that evidence.

  “Of course, kidkit727 had no way of knowing whether the letter had her name or someone else’s, but she wasn’t going to take the risk, not after having gone to such lengths to keep her identity secret.” N’s eyes were still fixed to the screen, watching Violet.

  “So whoever went to the translated literature shelf must be the culprit?” said Nga-Yee. “But what if Violet was just curious or she was helping us search?”

  “How do you think I knew kidkit727 would go to the right book?” N glanced at Nga-Yee. “Violet gave herself away even before we left the library.”

  “How?”

  “Didn’t you wonder how there could be a borrowing record for Anna Karenina, when I stole it?”

  Nga-Yee gaped. “You—you hacked into the school system!”

  “Right.” N smiled. “Enoch’s borrowing record is online only; they’ve got rid of stamped cards, which made my life a lot easier. All I had to do was press a few keys to change the status of each book. L
ook, this is your sister’s page now.”

  He tapped on the keyboard and shoved a laptop closer to Nga-Yee. The table on the screen was titled “Name: Au Siu-Man/ Class: 3B/ Student ID: A120527.” Then three lines:

  889.0143/ Anna Karenina, Volume One/ Summer Press/ 4.30.15/ OVERDUE

  889.0144/ Anna Karenina, Volume Two/ Summer Press/ 4.30.15~ 5.4.15/ Returned

  889.0257/Crime and Punishment/ Zhiwen Press/ 4.30.15~5.4.15/ Returned

  “That’s what Violet To saw on the screen, but she told us that Siu-Man only borrowed Anna Karenina. In that moment, she proved she was kidkit727.” N jabbed at the screen.

  Nga-Yee couldn’t breathe. Violet had seemed so unflustered and helpful, but she’d been lying through her teeth the whole time, treating them like idiots. Nga-Yee didn’t understand how a human being could be so wicked, let alone a fifteen-year-old girl capable of deceiving two strangers without turning a hair.

  Ping. A new notification popped up on the screen showing Siu-Man’s borrowing record.

  “Oh, interesting!” N exclaimed.

  The browser window had turned red, and in a corner were the words “Editor Mode.” As Nga-Yee watched, one line of text was highlighted, then vanished from the screen.

  ”889.0257/Crime and Puni …” has been deleted.

  Nga-Yee quickly turned back to the surveillance screen, where Violet was still at the counter, working on her computer.

  “This screen mirrors the library computer. Whatever you see here is happening in real time.”

  “She’s destroying the records.” Nga-Yee had been hoping this was all some kind of misunderstanding—if nothing else, as a fellow librarian, she’d felt close to Violet. But everything she’d just seen made it clear that this apparently quiet, bookish girl was her sister’s killer.

  “Ha, that’s clever of her. Now there’s no way anyone could know,” said N drily.

  “But … but the culprit was supposed to be Lily …” Nga-Yee was having trouble accepting the truth, having spent the last few days convinced that Lily had tormented her sister out of jealousy.

  “You still don’t believe me? Your brain really is more stubborn than a donkey,” N grumbled. “I went to the trouble of arranging for all the suspects to be present. Isn’t that enough for you? If Lily were kidkit727, her reaction would be first shock and then pretending to be calm while working out her next step—not sitting in a corner and bursting into tears.”

  “You arranged for all the suspects to what?”

  “Why do you think I asked to meet Lily and Kwok-Tai at the library when Violet was on shift? And how do you think the Countess showed up at that precise moment?”

  “Hang on. I understand that you made up some excuse to lure Lily and Kwok-Tai there, but it was just a coincidence that the Countess—”

  “I don’t rely on luck or coincidence in my work,” N snapped. “The Countess didn’t owe the library a cent. I hacked into the system and sent her that alert.”

  “Wait—So that means you were late on purpose?” Of course he was, she realized—arriving with the book when everyone was present would create maximum impact.

  “Correct. I got here first thing this morning and started the surveillance with Ducky, to make sure every step went according to plan. If a student had happened to borrow Anna Karenina Volume Two or Crime and Punishment, I’d have altered your sister’s record again. Though the summer vacation starts in a couple of days and all books need to be returned tomorrow, I didn’t think anyone was going to check out a thick Russian classic right now.” N smirked. “Oh, and to make sure we could get to the library, I did something bad—the teachers are still suffering from it.”

  Nga-Yee stared at him. “You hacked into the school server and deleted the exam results?”

  “Naturally. If I hadn’t, Miss Yuen would have been waiting at the gates to take the book from us. What excuse could we have used to get up to the library? I had to do something to make sure she’d be otherwise occupied. And you didn’t disappoint me—your acting was a little stiff, but you managed to bluff your way past that attendant. I didn’t have to use my backup plan.”

  “Wait, you knew that I was—oh!”

  N had pressed another key. Siu-Man’s borrowing record vanished from the screen, replaced by another image: the school gates.

  “There’s a camera in the car parked across the road, and a listening device in one of the planters by the gate. I heard everything the two of you said.” N tapped his earphones. “When you made it into the school, I went downstairs to wait. Ducky continued watching the screen, and when everyone was assembled, he gave me the signal and I charged up five flights of stairs to act out the next scene.”

  Nga-Yee still had some doubts.

  “If Violet is kidkit727, how did she get hold of the Christmas Eve photo? How did she know what happened to Siu-Man that night?”

  “Kidkit727 doesn’t actually know what happened in the karaoke lounge. The post only vaguely mentions drinking and ‘unsavory characters,’ and the email to your sister only had the photo, with no text. I think the picture is all she had, and she made up a story to fit it. As long as she sounded like she knew what was going on, and other people believed her, that would be enough.”

  “But the photo—”

  “I would guess Jason sent it to her.”

  Jason was the cousin of the red-haired guy—the one Detective Mok said was at Enoch too.

  “Violet knows Jason?”

  “Unclear, but that doesn’t matter.” N tapped the screen. “If she wanted, she could easily steal data from any number of her schoolmates. Remember the phone charging station at the library?”

  “You mean she waited for Jason to plug in his phone, then quietly downloaded the photo?”

  “Something like that.” N pulled out Siu-Man’s phone and turned it to show Nga-Yee the charging port. “This can also be used to download data. Once it’s plugged into a USB port, some basic tech knowledge is all you need to retrieve whatever you need. That’s known as juice jacking.”

  “Violet knows how to do that?”

  “No idea, but the Rat certainly does,” said N, reminding Nga-Yee of his theory that kidkit727 was actually two people. “Actually, I don’t think she was looking for this picture in particular. I bet she collected quite a few of her schoolmates’ secrets through the charging station, whether for her own amusement or some other reason, and it was only later that she realized this photo was of your sister. Kwok-Tai told us that quite a few of the older students gossiped about what happened, and I’m sure Jason shared this with his buddies. All it took was for one of them to charge his phone, and Violet would have the picture too. You should be grateful there wasn’t anything more salacious in the image, or it might have gone viral. There’ve been quite a few cases in America—photos of a sexual assault spreading through a school.”

  “But this is just guesswork?”

  “Sure. I can’t prove that’s how Violet got hold of the photo, but I’m a hundred percent certain that someone used the library’s charging station to steal data.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m a hacker.” N pulled a black device from his pocket and placed it on the table. “The library didn’t just have a gray power bank, there was also this charger that siphons data. Most people can’t tell the difference between the two, but there’s only a few models in Hong Kong that do this, so it’s not difficult to spot them.”

  Nga-Yee vaguely remembered that the first time they were in the library, she’d noticed a single charger standing separate from the rest of the power bank and thought it odd at the time.

  “But how can you explain Detective Mok’s recording? Martin Tong’s assistant identified Lily as the one who tried to find out more about the case.”

  “It was someone calling herself Lily Shu—that doesn’t mean it actually was Lily,” said N, sounding impatient. “Kidkit727 has shown that she’ll go to great lengths to cover her tracks. Do you think she’d use her
real name? It’s not important whether it was Violet or someone else impersonating Lily. Like I said, the only thing that mattered was getting kidkit727 to reveal herself. Everything else is at most evidence to confirm our hypothesis.”

  Nga-Yee still wasn’t convinced. “What about the Countess? Kwok-Tai and Lily said she was snooping around on the day of the funeral. That means she felt guilty. Or do you think Kwok-Tai was lying too?”

  “Some people have sharp tongues, but their hearts are as soft as tofu. The Countess may seem haughty, but she’s actually a compassionate person.” N pulled out the condolence book and flipped it open. “Have a look at this.”

  Nga-Yee looked at the page. It was one she’d seen before: “Siu-Man, I’m sorry. Please forgive my cowardice. Since you left, I can’t stop wondering if it’s our fault. I’m so, so sorry. May you rest in peace. I hope your family can recover from their grief.”

  It wasn’t signed, but Nga-Yee guessed what N was getting at.

  “This was written by the Countess?” she said dubiously.

  “See for yourself.” He handed over the stolen Merchant of Venice script. Nga-Yee was confused for a moment, until she realized that the acting notes and amendments were in the same handwriting as the condolence page.

  “Well—” It was still hard to believe that the arrogant Miranda Lai could have come up with these humble words, but even an amateur could see at once that the writing matched.

  “Are you going to say she was faking it?” N asked. “I can’t prove it, of course, but I actually think it’s the other way around: what she wrote in the book is much closer to her true self than her everyday behavior. The entry wasn’t signed, so there was no need to pretend. That makes her appearance outside the funeral parlor easy to explain: she really did want to say goodbye to your sister. But maybe she was afraid of spoiling her image, or maybe she saw Kwok-Tai and Lily and in the end didn’t go in.”

  “Why is she normally so rude, then?”

  “Weren’t you ever in high school, Miss Au? Don’t you remember how important it was that your peers thought of you a certain way? Very few kids these days are able to ignore the way others look at them. If everyone agreed that two plus two equals five, would you go against the crowd? Disagreeing too loudly could mean being ostracized. If the Countess’s friends sensed any weakness in her, she’d be back to being a commoner in no time at all. Every one of them is wearing a mask of one kind or another, forcing herself into the shape of her ideal person. Grown-ups ought to tell them to have more confidence and be themselves, but in our sick society, education is about creating batch after batch of robots who’ll defer to authority and conform to the mainstream.”