Second Sister

by Chan Ho-Kei

  He clicked to bring up the next slide. Mr. Lee and Hao stared—this wasn’t what they’d seen the day before. This ought to have read “We trade more than just gossip,” and Chung-Nam was supposed to be talking about the mechanisms by which G-dollars could be traded to create wealth. Instead, the screen proclaimed “The Revolution of News.”

  “When you were here last month, Mr. Szeto,” said Sze Chung-Nam, “we spoke to you about GT Net’s basic business model. Now I’d like to say a bit about the company’s future, and how we’re going to carry out this revolution.”

  Mr. Lee whispered urgently into Hao’s ear, and Hao shook his head to say he knew nothing about this. Chung-Nam knew that his boss must be panicking, but he was also certain he wouldn’t say anything. The presentation had to be flawless, and interrupting at this moment would leave a bad impression on the potential investor.

  The next slide was about GT Net’s potential when it came to the news industry, mostly ideas that Chung-Nam had cribbed from his conversation with Mr. Szeto a week earlier. He’d added in his own research, and it sounded convincing. In order to show that he was more than just a parrot and to bolster his points, he’d spent a lot of time reading the international literature on the subject, analyzing the state of local online media. As a result, he’d been sleeping four hours a night, neglecting his actual work.

  Nga-Yee listened to him talk, still unsure what N was up to. She understood that this G-whatever was a Hong Kong web provider, and that they thought N was someone important from an investment firm, which is why they were shilling their company to him, saying it would replace traditional media. But what was N hoping to achieve? This seemed like a normal business meeting.

  But the next time Sze Chung-Nam clicked his remote control, the meeting suddenly became anything but normal.

  “GT Net already has the characteristics of a news website. For example, we—huh?”

  The next slide ought to have been a screenshot from GT Net, but instead the entire PowerPoint system shut down, replaced by a browser displaying GT’s website. This seemed like part of the presentation until everyone saw what was actually on the page: a piece of news worth zero G-Dollars, with the heading “[images, video] Preying on Underage Schoolgirls” and a video using Ma-Chai’s streaming platform that was still undergoing beta testing.

  “Is—is that you, Chung-Nam?” stuttered Ma-Chai.

  On the screen, Sze Chung-Nam stood in the middle of an MTR car, his hand fondling a young girl’s bum—the first of the videos Nga-Yee had seen earlier, but now the victim’s face was pixelated.

  It took several seconds for Chung-Nam to come to his senses and frantically hit the remote control, but the video kept playing. After about ten seconds another segment started: Chung-Nam and his next victim.

  “There—there must be some kind of mistake—” uttered Chung-Nam. He wheeled around to a keyboard on the rack by the screen and frantically typed in commands—but the video didn’t even pause. He tried turning off the computer, but the button seemed to have no effect. He cursed the touch pads, which, unlike old-fashioned switches, wouldn’t simply cut off the current. In his frenzy, he thought of unplugging the entire apparatus, but the shelving had been built in front of the sockets, and he would have had to rip them out of the wall.

  “I—I can explain, that’s not me—”

  Nga-Yee glanced at N, who was pretending to be as startled as everyone else, but she could detect the enjoyment in his face. Naturally, even if his expression hadn’t given him away, she’d have known this was his handiwork. When Nga-Yee saw these videos in the car, each segment was almost a minute long, but these had been edited to the most crucial thirty seconds. Even after they stopped, Chung-Nam was still pressing the remote control button, using far too much force, so the click-click-click echoed through the room.

  “Charles, is this some kind of joke?” Mr. Lee would rather have stayed silent, but as CEO, he needed to explain this away.

  Before he could go on, Chung-Nam pressed the button again, and this time page 2 appeared.

  “Oh!”

  That was Nga-Yee, exclaiming in shock. She’d been telling herself to keep quiet, but this next page was more than she could bear. Luckily, she hadn’t given anything away—everyone simply assuming that she too was startled by the contents of the page.

  A woman’s bare torso. Her face cut off. A man’s face by her left breast, tongue out. Nga-Yee had seen this before in the Popcorn adult zone, but this time it was the woman’s breast that was pixelated, while the man’s face was clear. And this naked man was none other than Sze Chung-Nam. Now Nga-Yee knew where she’d seen this short, plump person before. It was his disgusting mouth and rounded chin she’d recognized.

  There was a caption beneath:

  I am the Marquis de Sade and this is my third little slave. Aged fifteen—getting too old for me.

  Sze Chung-Nam’s face was white. He stared in terror around the conference room, his face in stark contrast with the filthy leer on the screen. Nga-Yee couldn’t help finding the situation ridiculous, even comical. The room was absolutely silent, and the temperature seemed to plummet. Hao and Thomas glanced uneasily at each other, Joanne was glaring sidelong at Chung-Nam in disgust, and Ma-Chai was looking imploringly at his boss. But Mr. Lee was too stunned to speak, so this hideous silence could only continue.

  “What’s going on, Kenneth?” asked N in Szeto Wai’s voice.

  “I—I don’t know. Charles, what is this?” said Mr. Lee helplessly. “This—this is—”

  “Adult sites may be profitable, but SIQ certainly has no intention of getting involved.” N said, sighing theatrically, then turning to Sze Chung-Nam. “I don’t know whether your fetish videos ended up in the presentation because you mixed up some files or because someone sabotaged you, but either way, you’re clearly unfit for the job. How am I supposed to ever trust you again, Chung-Nam? I’m not going to tell my colleagues that they should appoint a pervert as the new CEO.”

  “CEO?” Mr. Lee swung around to face N. “What are you talking about, appointing a new CEO?”

  “Never mind about that, Kenneth. It’s not happening anyway. But if you want to know, you should ask Chung-Nam.” N shook his head. “It seems like that’s the end of this report. It’s a shame I’m leaving for the States tomorrow, so I won’t be able to hear attempt number three in person. I’ll get someone to follow up, though.”

  N stood up, shook hands with the dumbstruck Mr. Lee, nodded at Nga-Yee, and left the conference room. At the doorway, he turned to say, “Take care of yourself, Chung-Nam.”

  Mr. Lee had been about to ask Mr. Szeto and Rachel to stay, in the hopes of rescuing the situation, but now he froze and turned to his employee.

  “How did Mr. Szeto know your Chinese name?” That was the last thing Nga-Yee heard Mr. Lee ask Chung-Nam, as she made her exit with N.

  Back on the street, they found Ducky waiting for them with the car. They got in and drove off.

  “Kenneth’s brain doesn’t work very fast,” said N, removing his tie and looking as if he couldn’t wait to be back in his ratty hoodie and cargo pants. “I had to say Chung-Nam three times before he understood that I’d been meeting his employee in secret.”

  “Was Sze Chung-Nam the one who posted those nude pictures on Popcorn?” asked Nga-Yee.

  N narrowed his eyes and peered at her for a couple of seconds as he worked out where she was going with this. “So you actually went through all the websites I gave you?”

  “I did. I thought you were making fun of me, making me visit adult websites—”

  “There you go again, making an ass of u and me.” N laughed. “How much free time do you think I have? I just compiled every website that was part of the case in a single document—it wasn’t meant for you, but that’s how you saw it.”

  “So what actually happened? Was this all a trap you laid to expose Sze Chung-Nam as a pervert in front of all his colleagues?”

  “Pretty much.”


  “And that’s why Ducky didn’t stop him molesting those girls on the MTR?” Nga-Yee was still angry about that—nothing about the plan so far seemed to warrant letting those girls suffer.

  “Let me ask you, Miss Au,” said N placidly. “What do you think would have happened if Ducky had tried to stop Sze Chung-Nam at the time?”

  “The police would have arrested him, of course!”

  “Okay, now imagine you’re the duty officer. What would you charge him with?”

  “Indecent assault.” This was what Shiu Tak-Ping had been found guilty of, so Sze Chung-Nam clearly deserved the same.

  “Correct. He’d be found guilty, express remorse in court, get a third off his sentence because the offense wasn’t serious, and serve one or two months at most. If he’s lucky, he might even get away with a suspended sentence,” N said, frowning. “That’s not what he deserves.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Sze Chung-Nam’s real crime is sexual coercion. Given that his victims are underage girls, we’re talking four or five years in jail.”

  “Coercion?”

  “Like I told you, I found Sze Chung-Nam by comparing station security footage against his Octopus card.” N removed his glasses. “At the time, I was just thinking of him as the real culprit who’d framed Shiu Tak-Ping. When I saw how calm and practiced he was, I started to wonder how often he’d done this. All the while you were staking out my apartment and trying to pressure me into taking your case, I was investigating this guy. His browser history told me he’d been posting explicit pictures in Popcorn’s adult zone, and though the man’s face was blurred out in these images, I could tell it was him from his body.”

  “He paid escorts to be photographed with him?” Nga-Yee remembered a number of the Popcorn threads referred to local call girls.

  N tapped on the tablet and brought up the page they’d just seen in the GT conference room. It turned out that there were five or six more of these. A different girl each time, but the man was always Sze Chung-Nam. All the pictures were extensively labeled; the caption Nga-Yee had seen earlier was only a partial one:

  I am the Marquis de Sade and this is my third little slave. Aged fifteen—getting too old for me. I’ve used her for six months, and although she’s still a little rebellious, I’ve mostly got her under control. Sharing with you all because I know you’ll enjoy this.

  “I didn’t come up with this,” said N, looking disgusted. “Every word of that is Sze Chung-Nam’s. He actually posted that on the dark web, but I copied it over.”

  “The dark web?” Nga-Yee struggled to remember. “Oh right—that thing you can only see with an Onion browser?”

  “Correct. Sze Chung-Nam is a member of a pedophile chatboard on the dark web, where he calls himself the Marquis de Sade and posts about how he traps and threatens escorts until they submit to being ‘corrected’ as his slaves. To prove he’s telling the truth, he’ll also post photos—with his face blacked out. The other perverts love that, as you can imagine. What he did on Popcorn was just the tip of the iceberg. The text and images on the dark web are a hundred times worse.”

  “But you said it’s impossible to identify someone with Onion. How did you—”

  “I didn’t track him down from his dark web posts, I went straight to his computer, recording every keystroke and downloading every image he saw. I knew what software he used and which websites he’d visited.” N grinned, seemingly amused that Nga-Yee was taking an interest in technology. “That’s how I discovered this bastard was doing more than touching up girls on the train. He was also adept at choosing young girls who got into escort work to earn a bit of extra money, and he found ways to manipulate them into submitting completely to him so they’d be in his service. They were the main course; the girls on the train were dessert.”

  “So … everything he wrote—”

  “All true.” N pointed at the first picture. “She actually is fifteen, and that photo was taken without her consent.”

  Nga-Yee took a deep breath. When she saw that picture on Popcorn, her first thought had been disgust at the girl and how she’d let herself be used like that for the sake of a little money. She’d never imagined how much more there was to the story.

  “Sze Chung-Nam is an ambitious, controlling man, and even worse, he’s clever,” N went on. “He’s perceptive and knows how to connect with people—the ingredients of a successful individual. If he’d stayed on the straight and narrow, he’d have become an outstanding figure—but he succumbed to his dark urges. I’m guessing that because he’s short, fat, and not particularly attractive, he was ashamed of his looks growing up. Perhaps he was bullied, perhaps he was humiliatingly rejected by women. And unfortunately, the way he chose to get over that was to pick on even weaker targets.”

  The first time N met Sze Chung-Nam in his office, he’d been surprised at how eager he was to answer questions. If N hadn’t already known what he’d done, chances are he’d have been impressed by this enthusiastic, upwardly mobile junior employee.

  “According to the Hunting Manual he disseminated on the dark web, he used instant messaging services such as Line and WeChat to choose his prey. He would identify individuals with vulnerable personalities, perhaps because they’d been threatened before, and secretly take screenshots while he was chatting with them, which would be the basis for blackmail material later. He was ruthless. Most people would say, “Do what I tell you, or I’ll put your naked photos online.” He uploaded them directly to the adult zone, then told the victims, “Do as I say, or next time your face will be visible.” Most lethally, he knew how to use the carrot as well as the stick. He’d buy cheap gifts for his victims and take them shopping, to give the illusion that he cared about them. That’s a form of Stockholm syndrome, I guess. Teenage girls don’t know much about the world, so it’s easier to manipulate them.”

  As Ducky tailed Sze Chung-Nam, he frequently saw him out with the very women he’d threatened. They’d go to fairly good restaurants, and Chung-Nam always got the bill. Of course, these dates always ended in a hotel room—Sze Chung-Nam wasn’t after fake affection, but actual submission to satisfy his need for control.

  “Wait—I still don’t understand,” said Nga-Yee. “You tricked Sze Chung-Nam’s boss into believing you were an investor so you could insert those fake pages in his presentation to expose his crimes—and that’s his punishment?”

  “Fake pages? What fake pages?”

  “The same thing you did to Violet! Taking over their Wi-Fi and inserting fake web pages—” She waved vaguely at the tablet.

  “These were real.” N chuckled. “Everything you’re seeing now, all the pictures and videos actually are on the GT Net home page. And what’s more”—N tapped a corner of the screen to bring up Popcorn—“I posted them here too. A thousand views already, so far.”

  Nga-Yee glanced down to see the following post:

  POSTED BY edgarpoe777 ON 07-07-2015, 11:01

  FWD: GT Net Pervert Exposes Himself (videos, pics)

  Pixelated, still hot! http://www.gtnet.com.hk/gossip.cfm?q =44172&sort=1

  “I’m sure there’s an even bigger busybody than I am who’s reported it to the police by now, and Sze Chung-Nam will probably be picked up soon. Shame we won’t be there to see him getting taken away in handcuffs with a bag over his head,” said N gleefully. “The police will check the IP address those photos and videos were posted from and find that it’s the GT office. That’s my doing, but they won’t find any sign of that. They’ll probably look for explanations that fit the circumstances, such as that Sze Chung-Nam is a pervert—though he actually is one, of course—and got off on testing the system with his own dirty pictures. They’ll say he got careless and accidentally made his crimes public. It’s not illegal to post pixelated photos, but in order to investigate this properly, they’ll have to check whether the pictures and videos were real or fake, and that’s what’s going to bring him down.”

  “So you set up this whole elabor
ate con for your own entertainment? Why did he have to be exposed during a meeting? You could have put that stuff online and contacted the police yourself.”

  “Sure, I like a good show. Who doesn’t? But that wasn’t the main point.” N waggled a finger at her. “As Mr. Szeto, I met in private with Sze Chung-Nam. He proposed that after I’d put money into the firm, I’d use my power as an investor to promote him to CEO.”

  “So what?”

  “After Sze Chung-Nam gets charged and convicted, the judge will ask for a background report on the defendant and allow the defense to submit character references to be considered in sentencing. Now that his boss knows he was secretly planning to team up with an investor to launch a takeover, Sze can forget about that. His coworkers will be leery of him. Even better, Sze is probably going to guess that the person who swapped the videos and ruined his big presentation has to be someone from the office, so if any of them offers to put in a good word, he’s going to assume they’re the culprit pretending to take pity. I don’t just want him to go to jail, I want him to be abandoned by his friends and unable to trust anyone, and I want him to be locked up for more than a decade.”

  “I thought you said the maximum sentence was four or five years?”

  “Per offense. He trapped six underage girls into sexual slavery. Even if only three of them are willing to testify, that’s still at least twelve years.”

  Only now did Nga-Yee fully understand that every single girl in those photographs was one of Sze’s blackmail victims. She ought to have realized—when he mentioned his “third little slave,” that implied the existence of at least another two.

  “You could never tell by looking at him,” she murmured. “Just now, when he was doing the presentation, he looked like an ordinary person.”

  “You think hard-core perverts don’t look like ordinary people?” N laughed coldly. “Don’t be naive. Criminals don’t have any special markings. They’re very likely to have regular jobs and normal families. We only see one side of them. Mistaking that side for the whole is what lures you into their traps.”