Chinese Whispers tct-6

by Peter May

  ‘Yes,’ Jiang said.

  ‘Are you now in Beijing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I have the questions about why we’re here today.’ Another brief pause. ‘Have you ever put your penis in Shimei’s vagina?’

  Li was startled by the bluntness of the question.

  ‘No,’ Jiang said.

  ‘He damn well did!’ the female interrogator hissed. ‘He might have been drunk at the time, but he did it alright. And he remembers he did it.’

  Hart continued in the same hypnotic tone, ‘Do you remember if you did put your penis into Shimei’s vagina?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you telling the truth about not putting your penis in Shimei’s vagina?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He shuffled his papers. ‘Then I have those questions we discussed about the past. Do you ever remember doing anything about which you were ashamed?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you ever remember performing an unusual sex act?’

  Jiang seemed embarrassed by this question. ‘No,’ he said. Then added, ‘Only with my wife.’ And a sad smile flitted briefly across his face.

  Lyang whispered, ‘She ran off with his sister’s husband and left him to bring up the kid on his own.’

  Hart pressed on. ‘Do you remember ever committing a crime for which you were not caught?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I have a question which just kind of covers the entire test. Do you intend to answer truthfully each question on this test?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then the last question, just for me. Are you afraid I will ask you a question we have not reviewed?’

  ‘No.’

  Hart stood up. ‘Okay, that’s all there is.’ And he began wiring Jiang up for the test itself — two bands of sensors strapped around the chest and midriff to monitor heart rate, a cuff on the left arm to measure blood pressure, and sensors on the tips of two fingers on the right hand to detect perspiration. He talked as he worked. ‘Now, for each chart, Jiang, I need you to keep both feet on the ground. No moving. No unnecessary talking. Look straight ahead and close your eyes. Think about the questions, think about the answers and try to answer truthfully.’

  When he had finished wiring Jiang to the polygraph, he rounded his desk so that he was looking at the subject in profile. ‘Now sometimes,’ he said, ‘I have people come in who just naturally think, I have to beat this sucker. When they do that, generally they have heard that when they get asked a question they should squeeze their toes or bite their tongue or press down on a tack they’ve hidden in their shoe. They make a big mistake when they do that, Jiang. The reason for that is that the equipment is so sensitive that if you have a heart murmur I’ll see that right there on your chart. And when people try doing these things, all they do is cause those pens to go crazy.’ He waved his hand at the needles poised above the chart, ready to go. ‘And when I see that, I have to ask why, when I already told them how best for me to see the truth, why are they trying to change what I’m looking at.’ He looked at Jiang. ‘And what’s the only logical reason you can think of?’

  Jiang seemed taken aback that Hart was asking him. He shrugged and said awkwardly, ‘They’re trying to cover something up.’

  ‘They’re a liar,’ Hart said. ‘And that’s just the way I call it.’ He folded his hands in front of him on the desk and gave Jiang a moment or two to think about it. Then he said, ‘Now what I’m going to do, Jiang, is I want to see what your body looks like normally on the chart. So I want you to choose a number between one and seven.’

  Jiang gave a strained chuckle. ‘Not between one and ten.’

  ‘No. Between one and seven.’ Pause. ‘What’s your number?’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘Okay. Now what I’ll do is I’ll go through all the numbers between one and seven. Each time I ask did you choose that number, the only answer I want is, no. Even when I ask you the number five. That way I have a number of truthful responses, and I have one deceptive response. It gives me a chance to adjust the instruments for your body.’

  Lyang was smiling. ‘Believe that, you’ll believe anything,’ she whispered. But everyone else in the room was mesmerised by the proceedings on the other side of the mirror.

  Hart set the polygraph going, needles scraping back and forth across the paper that scrolled by beneath them, and took Jiang through all the numbers in a random sequence. When he had finished, he switched off the polygraph and tore off the chart. ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘It always amazes me. It does.’ He pushed the chart across the desk towards Jiang. ‘It don’t take no expert. See this green line?’ Jiang followed Hart’s finger and nodded. ‘See how it changes? See the highest point on the chart? See what’s below it?’ Li had to admit, Hart was a real showman. Like a magician on a stage.

  Jiang craned to see what was written there. ‘It’s the number five,’ he said.

  Hart smiled at him. ‘So now we know what you know. And you know why the pens reacted so strong. So if I see that when I ask the real questions, we’ll be able to get right to the bottom of it.’

  Jiang slumped back in his seat, his face a mask of misery. He was beaten, even before he took the test. And he was beaten, because he believed he would be.

  Hart reset the polygraph. ‘Okay, we’ll go straight to the questions one time.’

  He got Jiang to sit facing forward, eyes closed, feet flat on the floor, and pumped up the air in his cuff, and then he ran through the questions, just as he had during the pre-test. ‘Did you put your penis in Shimei’s vagina?’

  They did it another two times, the order of the questions changing on each run-through.

  When they’d finished the third set, ‘That’s us,’ Hart said. Jiang glanced at him apprehensively, but Hart was giving nothing away. He stepped out from behind the desk to unhook Jiang from the polygraph, then he collected the charts and said, ‘I‘ll be back in a couple of minutes.’ He went out and left Jiang alone. Jiang sat staring into space for a long time, before dropping his face into his hands to stifle his sobs.

  The door opened in the observation room and Hart came in. He seemed surprised to see Li. ‘Li Yan? What are you doing here?’

  Li stood to shake Hart’s hand. ‘I stopped by to talk to you about Lynn Pan.’

  Hart’s face clouded. ‘I feel like it’s all my fault. If I hadn’t recommended her for the post … Jesus!’ He raised his eyes to the ceiling and took a deep breath, trying to control his emotions. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just so hard to believe she’s gone.’ He looked at Li. ‘Did you …? Were you called to the crime scene?’ Li nodded. ‘Shit. That must have been tough.’

  It was what Margaret had said. And Li wondered if it was really any harder dealing with a murder when it was someone you knew. Of course, you brought a lot of emotional baggage to that circumstance. But he had always found it hard to see the living person in the dead one. It wasn’t dealing with the dead that was difficult, it was the loss of the living. In this case, he had hardly known Lynn Pan. And yet the sense of her loss had been powerful. Perhaps because she had been so brim full of life.

  Li shrugged. ‘Sure. It was hard.’ He paused. ‘I don’t suppose you would have the first idea why anyone would want to kill her?’

  Hart shook his head. ‘It’s inconceivable to me,’ he said.

  ‘Or why anyone would want to steal her computers, all her files?’

  Hart said, ‘I heard there’d been a break-in up there. It’s all gone?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Jees …’ He held up his hands. ‘I can’t help you. I wish to God I could.’

  Li said, ‘I might as well tell you, because you’ll probably hear it anyway …’ He glanced at Lyang. ‘Apparently she thought she was going to meet me last night at the Millennium Monument.’

  Hart’s consternation was plain on his face. ‘Why would she think that?’

  ‘Because someone phoned up after we’d left yesterday afternoon, s
aying they were me, and arranging a clandestine meeting?’

  ‘Why? What for?’ It was Lyang this time.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Hart said, ‘Man, that’s spooky.’

  ‘What about her private life?’ Li said. ‘What do you know about that?’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  ‘She came round for dinner a couple of times,’ Lyang said.

  ‘Yeah, but all we ever talked about were people we knew back in the States. Work. You know, stuff we had in common.’

  ‘And we never got an invite back to her place.’

  ‘The thing is,’ Hart said, ‘her private life was just that. Private, wasn’t it, Lyang? You know, for such an outgoing girl, she really was a very private person. You got so far with her, and then zap. Down came some kind of shutter. So far and no further. I don’t know anything about her relationships, what she did in her spare time. Hell, I don’t even know if she lived on her own. It’s hard to know if there was anything much at all outside of her work.’ He sighed and then glanced through the two-way mirror. ‘How’s our boy doing?’

  ‘Feeling pretty sorry for himself,’ said the female interrogator.

  Hart glanced at his watch. ‘He’s had long enough to stew. Time to go get a confession.’ He looked at Li. ‘Unless there’s anything else you want to ask.’

  Li said, ‘I can’t think of anything right now.’

  ‘We’ll be seeing you tonight, anyway,’ Lyang said. ‘You and Margaret are still coming to dinner, aren’t you?’

  Li had forgotten all about it. ‘Sure,’ he said.

  Hart squeezed his arm. ‘Catch you later.’ And he went out still clutching his charts. He hadn’t looked at them once.

  Li was anxious to be away, but he also wanted to see how Hart’s interview with Jiang would turn out. ‘Will this take long?’ he asked Lyang.

  ‘I shouldn’t think so.’

  So he sat down again and watched as Hart entered the interview room on the other side of the two-way mirror. Jiang sat upright, almost startled, and you could see his tension in the rigid way he held himself. Hart sat down facing Jiang and put the charts on his knee. He still wasn’t consulting them. ‘On these tests, Jiang,’ he said, those hypnotic tones again, ‘I can make one of three decisions. I can say a person’s telling the truth. I can say a test’s inconclusive, that I just don’t know. Or I can say a person’s not telling the truth.’

  Jiang drew in a deep breath, very focused on Hart and what he was saying. He kept nodding, as if he could gain approval by agreeing.

  ‘Now here’s the thing,’ Hart said. ‘We’re not dealing with a criminal case here. You’re just an ordinary guy, working hard to raise his family, making his contribution to society. Now, some of the criminals I deal with, that they bring down here from the cells uptown, they don’t contribute to anything. They’re just kind of leeches on society.’ He leaned forward, creating a sense of confidentiality between them. ‘When I look at the charts, and from talking with you here today, I know you’re no criminal, that’s for darn sure. In fact, I’m inclined to think you’re kind of a nice guy. And life’s dealt you a pretty bum hand.’

  Jiang nodded vigorously.

  ‘The thing is, is that as far as what Shimei is saying, it happened. And you’re remembering it. But you’re having a problem bringing it forward to talk with somebody. To try and understand why. And I can understand the fear and embarrassment for you. That’s the biggest thing, isn’t it?’

  Jiang was nodding miserably now.

  ‘Because you can remember it happened, but if you come right out and tell somebody, how do you handle that picture you have of yourself, because you’re not like that normally.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Jiang whispered.

  ‘We all have a view of ourselves, Jiang. The way we believe that the rest of the world looks at us. We call that our ego. And when that is threatened, we have what we call an ego defence mechanism which, to protect that image we have of ourselves, will push things back into our subconscious and lead us to deny that they ever occurred — when, in fact, we ourselves know that, yes, it did happen. But because it is so out of character for us in normal situations, we really don’t know how to deal with it.’

  Jiang was still nodding his agreement. You could see in him, as clear as day, the desire to confess. To tell this soft-spoken sympathetic American the truth, because after all he had already seen it in the chart.

  Hart was still talking. ‘And so, we are left in a predicament where we feel so much pressure. It’s called anxiety. And our anxiety gets to be so great that our total thinking, our total being, is just taken up with trying to fight it.’ He leaned even closer, and put a comforting hand on Jiang’s knee. ‘The thing is that you know, and I know, that what happened was probably brought on by the booze.’

  ‘Yes …’ Jiang’s voice was a whisper.

  ‘And you were lonely. After all, your wife had left you. How long had it been? Two years? That’s a long time for a man to be on his own, Jiang.’

  Jiang had tipped his head into his left hand, his palm hiding his eyes, but you could see the tears running down his pockmarked cheeks.

  ‘And that’s why you did it, wasn’t it, Jiang?’

  ‘Yes.’ Almost inaudible.

  ‘I need you to tell me, Jiang, that you did put your penis into Shimei’s vagina. And all that anxiety is just going to lift right off your shoulders.’

  Again, the bluntness of it seemed shocking, but Li knew that the form of words was important for legal purposes.

  ‘I did it,’ Jiang said.

  ‘You put your penis in Shimei’s vagina?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All the way?’

  ‘Yes.’ And he wept openly now.

  Hart patted his knee gently. And he still hadn’t looked at the charts.

  V

  Lynn Pan’s apartment was in a new housing development at the south end of Haidian district, not far from Beijing University. The blocks were only four storeys, and had pitched, red-tiled roofs and white painted walls peppered with tiny balconies at every other window. The compound was gated, and guarded by a grey-uniformed Beijing Security officer. Inside there was parking for vehicles, and covered sheds for bicycles. But there were no bicycles parked there. Li flashed his Public Security ID for the guard to raise the gate and the guard said, ‘Your people are already here.’

  Li nodded and drove through to park up in front of Pan’s block. He was puzzled by the black and white parked outside it. Forensics travelled in unmarked vans.

  In the lobby, an elderly woman grinned at him toothlessly from behind a grilled window. ‘Second floor,’ she said, pointing upwards when he showed her his ID.

  On the second-floor landing, the door to Pan’s apartment was standing wide open and he could hear voices from inside. As he went in, he saw that the lock on the door had been forced. The apartment was a shambles. The polished wooden floor in the square hall was strewn with colourful Xinjiang rugs. There were four doors off it. One to a bathroom. Beside it, one to a tiny kitchen. The door to the right led to a living-dining room, its window giving on to one of the small balconies and overlooking the car park below. The fourth door led to the back of the apartment and a double bedroom. The contents of drawers and cupboards had been tipped out on to floors. The doors to the wardrobe stood open. There were two uniformed officers in the bedroom. They turned, startled, as Li appeared in the doorway.

  ‘What the hell are you guys doing here?’ Li asked.

  There was no need to show his ID. They knew immediately who he was. One of them said, ‘The caretaker called the station about the break-in half an hour ago. They radioed the car. It only took us about fifteen minutes to get here.’

  ‘A break-in,’ Li repeated stupidly.

  They looked at him as if he had horns. ‘Sure, isn’t that why you’re here?’

  Li said, ‘Haven’t you seen the morning papers? The lady who lives here was murdered last night?’


  ‘Shit.’ The one who had spoken first suddenly viewed the apartment in a new light.

  ‘It was in the papers?’ the other one said, incredulously.

  ‘I hope you haven’t disturbed anything.’

  ‘No, Chief.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to the caretaker?’ They nodded. ‘How come the break-in wasn’t reported until this morning?’

  ‘They didn’t know about it until this morning,’ the first one said. ‘It was a neighbour coming down the stairs who noticed the door lying slightly ajar. Then she saw that it had been forced and told the caretaker. She called us.’

  ‘And how did burglars get in and out past the security guard?’

  ‘Beats me, Chief. The guy out there wasn’t on duty last night. We’ll need to pull in the guy who was on the night shift.’

  ‘You guys won’t be doing anything. This crime scene is now part of a murder investigation and under the jurisdiction of Section One. You make out your reports and have them sent to my office.’

  ‘Yes, Chief.’ They stood looking at him.

  ‘You can go now,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, Chief.’ And reluctantly the two officers donned their hats and ducked out past him on to the landing. He heard their footsteps retreating down the stairs and the imprecations muttered under their breath.

  When they had gone, Li stood and looked around him in the stillness of the apartment. It was full of her smell and her presence. Her personality was everywhere, in the choice of pictures she had hung on almost every available wall space — Chinese originals bought at the antiques market; signed prints of narrative pictures by an artist called Vetriano; framed photographs of some picturesque market town in southern France. Li wondered what their significance was. She was there, too, in the brightly coloured curtains on every window, in the dazzling Xinjiang rugs she had bought to cover nearly every square inch of floor, in the black bedcovers printed with white and red Chinese characters that had been ripped from the bed and lay crumpled now on the floor.