Second Sister Read online

  This sarcastic display of politeness was aggravating, but Nga-Yee didn’t say anything. She had more questions, such as which of the eighteen suspects was most likely to be the culprit, or whether he’d found signs that any of them were close to Siu-Man, or if he could find out whether Siu-Man had actually done the bad things she was accused of in that post. She knew, though, that she wasn’t likely to get more information out of him at this moment. Besides, he’d kept his word about getting her a list of suspects within a day, and she’d be seeing him again at the school. She decided to let it rest.

  Nga-Yee walked down the stairs, realizing that despite her exhaustion, her mind was a little more peaceful now.

  She stepped out onto the sidewalk just as a woman approached the building and seemed to recognize her. “Oh, hello—good morning.” It took Nga-Yee a moment to recall their first meeting: right there, two weeks ago.

  “Good morning.” Nga-Yee smiled and nodded.

  “You’re the young lady who came to see N half a month ago, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, my name’s Au. Do you live here?”

  “No, no. I’m a cleaner. I work for N every Wednesday and Saturday.” The woman held up her red plastic bucket, full of cleaning products. “You can call me Heung.”

  Nga-Yee thought that Heung couldn’t be doing a good job, given what a disaster zone N’s apartment was. But then N disliked anyone touching his trash, so perhaps she cleaned only his bathroom and kitchen.

  “I won’t keep you, Miss Au. Hope to see you another time.” Heung smiled. Nga-Yee thought she must be in a hurry to get to her job, and quickly said goodbye.

  There’d been something a little odd about Heung’s demeanor, but Nga-Yee didn’t give it much thought. When she got to the bottom of Water Street, it struck her.

  A young woman, her hair messy, looking like she hadn’t slept, leaving a bachelor’s apartment a little after nine in the morning. It must have looked like … At the thought, Nga-Yee couldn’t help burying her face in her hands.

  Forget it, let people think what they like, she told herself. She had to concentrate on Siu-Man’s case. Those faces—including Miss Yuen’s—flickered before her eyes. They all looked ordinary, but one of them had a dark side that had caused someone’s death. The thought made her shiver.

  There was another question that made her uneasy.

  Why had Siu-Man been targeted by such a person?

  Did Siu-Man have another side, one that even her sister hadn’t known about?

  Thursday, May 21, 2015

  don’t worry

  22:17

  account is to a prepaid card, can’t be traced

  22:19

  Okay.

  22:20 ✔

  what did you even write her anyway?

  22:24 ✔

  I wanted to scare her. I said I’d release the photo.

  22:24 ✔

  She was talking and laughing that day, like nothing happened. I was so angry.

  22:25 ✔

  I wrote those messages to teach her a lesson.

  22:25 ✔

  you’re fine, she’s the one in the wrong

  22:26

  snowflake like her kills herself, that’s her business

  22:27

  she got what she deserved

  22:27

  But isn’t it illegal? Abetting suicide or something?

  22:30 ✔

  if you’re guilty, then she’s even more guilty

  22:32

  don’t waste your sympathy on her

  22:33

  CHAPTER FIVE

  1.

  Sze Chung-Nam stood in the crowded foyer of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, taking in the scene around him.

  It was a quarter past ten in the evening, and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra concert with Yuja Wang had just ended. Hong Kongers were often thought of as uncultured, yet quite a few people turned up for these events. Of course, it was impossible to say how many of them were actually there for the sake of art and how many wanted to seem sophisticated, using money to mask their lack of taste.

  Chung-Nam was completely ignorant when it came to classical music. During the concert he’d sat through Brahms’s Piano Concerto Number 2 in B-flat major and Debussy’s La Mer without any sense of recognition. Only Ravel’s Boléro had sounded a tiny bit familiar. In any case, all he cared about at the moment was finding Szeto Wai in the crowd.

  The day before, when Szeto had mentioned that he’d be attending this concert, Chung-Nam immediately formed the plan of pretending to bump into him by chance. He also considered trying his luck near Szeto’s service apartment, but it would be much easier to start a conversation here than out on the street.

  Yet Szeto Wai was nowhere to be seen. Chung-Nam had booked his ticket on his phone the previous afternoon, not realizing that there would be more than a thousand people in the audience. By the day before, only the cheapest tickets had remained, and he’d ended up sitting on the highest level, all the way to one side, which meant he hadn’t been able to see the stalls. He’d also tried spotting Szeto on his way in, but hadn’t managed to find him in the sea of well-dressed socialites.

  As soon as the concert was over, Chung-Nam rushed down to the ground floor, hoping to waylay Szeto by the exit. A rich man like Szeto would have bought expensive tickets, and Chung-Nam hadn’t seen him in the balcony, so he must be in the stalls. Unfortunately, Chung-Nam wasn’t familiar with the layout of the Cultural Centre, and by the time he found his way to the stalls exit, quite a few people had already come out into the foyer. His plan thwarted, he could only wander through the crowd, hoping to find his target in the chaos.

  After fifteen minutes, he was still empty-handed.

  About half the audience had departed, and Chung-Nam was ready to give up when he noticed a black-suited figure standing by a display board near the box office. Szeto Wai was happily chatting with a tall white man while an attractive woman in a low-cut red gown stood nearby.

  Chung-Nam’s eyes gleamed, and he perked up. Mentally rehearsing his talking points, he slowly walked over, pretending to be engrossed in the ballet performances advertised on the display board. He shot a few quick glances at Szeto’s two companions. The fifty-something gweilo wasn’t wearing a tie and looked like a business associate. As for the woman, Chung-Nam thought at first that she was Doris, but a closer look revealed someone else equally pretty. As he drew closer, he heard Szeto and the white man saying goodbye in English, the white man adding, “Be sure to look me up for a drink next time you’re in Hong Kong.”

  “Hey, aren’t you one of Kenneth’s guys?” Szeto called out when Chung-Nam allowed their eyes to meet. Chung-Nam silently cheered—much better that Szeto spoke first. This made it look less deliberately engineered.

  “Oh! It’s Mr. Szeto—good evening.” Chung-Nam put on a startled expression. “So this was the concert you mentioned yesterday. I was too embarrassed to ask.”

  Szeto Wai smiled. “You came looking for me?”

  “No. A friend of mine loves classical music, so he made me come along. I’m afraid I don’t know much about the orchestra,” Chung-Nam lied smoothly. “I would have mentioned it yesterday, but what if this had been a bad concert? That would have been awkward.”

  “Ha, I see. And your friend?”

  “He had a date with his girlfriend.”

  “It’s a holiday, and your friend abandoned his girlfriend to come listen to classical music with you, a person who isn’t interested in classical music?”

  “I’m not uninterested, I just don’t know much about it. My friend’s girlfriend only listens to Eason Chan. Making her sit through two hours of classical music would probably kill her,” Chung-Nam joked. This fictitious girlfriend was based on Joanne, who’d once said she felt that “concerts without pop stars” were a waste of money.

  “Eason Chan the Cantopop singer? Didn’t he once perform with some European orchestra? If he did it again, your friend could bring his girlfriend,�
�� said Szeto Wai, smiling.

  “What did you think of the performance?” Chung-Nam asked.

  “Yuja Wang’s talent as a pianist is unquestionable, but for me the main point is how well she worked with the orchestra. Van Zweden conducted perfectly—he didn’t let the piano steal the limelight, nor did the Philharmonic smother her. The Brahms is a difficult piece to get right, but this rendition could hold its own against any number of European orchestras. What did you think?”

  “Oh, I’m just a beginner. I can’t tell good from bad. But even someone like me can tell how well the orchestra and the soloist blended.”

  “Van Zweden is one of Holland’s most famous violinists and conductors. Putting him in charge of the Hong Kong Phil pretty much guarantees good performances,” Szeto went on volubly. “The Phil has a distinguished history of its own. Many Hong Kongers might not be aware, but it’s been around for more than a century, even longer than the London Symphony Orchestra or the Philadelphia Orchestra. It was initially called the Sino-British Orchestra, then changed its name in 1957. It’s had some famous international conductors. Maxim Shostakovich, the son of the famous Russian composer, was one.”

  As Szeto Wai chattered on, excitedly sharing his knowledge of classical music, Chung-Nam thought gleefully, He’s taken the bait.

  “Mr. Szeto, why don’t we get a cup of coffee? I’d love to learn more from you.” Chung-Nam nodded toward the Starbucks in a corner of the lobby.

  Szeto looked a little startled, then smiled meaningfully. “I’m so sorry. I’m not going to have much free time tonight.” He placed his hand on his female companion’s back, slid it down toward her slender waist, and winked at Chung-Nam. The woman giggled awkwardly, but nestled obligingly against Szeto. Her bosom looked ready to spring free of her dress. Chung-Nam couldn’t help glancing briefly at her cleavage, but, anxious not to leave a bad impression, he fixed his eyes firmly on Szeto’s face, hoping he hadn’t noticed.

  Chung-Nam had been prepared for a refusal, and he had several excuses ready to persuade Mr. Szeto, but he hadn’t anticipated this scenario. As he searched for a way to drag the conversation on a little longer, Szeto spoke first.

  “Why don’t we have dinner another time? I don’t have much to do while I’m in Hong Kong.”

  Chung-Nam exulted—he hadn’t even had to ask.

  “Sounds good.” Chung-Nam took a business card from his suit pocket and handed it over respectfully. “My cell phone number is on there.”

  Szeto pulled out a BlackBerry (hadn’t Americans given up on BlackBerrys? Chung-Nam wondered—but perhaps that was just the tech bloggers exaggerating as usual) and quickly entered the digits. Right away, Chung-Nam’s phone started ringing in his trouser pocket. “Now you have my number too. Let’s meet next week.”

  Chung-Nam hadn’t expected this to be so easy. He’d had all sorts of excuses ready to prize Szeto’s number out of him, and in the end they hadn’t been needed.

  Szeto studied the card. “I remember you said your name was Charles, but that’s not on here.”

  Chung-Nam rubbed his brow in embarrassment. “To be honest, I seldom use my English name. Even my boss just calls me Chung-Nam.”

  “Ha, then I’ll call you Chung-Nam too.” Szeto chuckled. “By the way, I have some questions about GT I’d like to ask you. Let’s talk about it more when we meet again.”

  This was surprising. So Szeto had an angle too. What could he want to know? And why would he go to a regular employee rather than the boss, Mr. Lee?

  “I—I can’t give up any company secrets,” he muttered. He didn’t know if this was the right decision, but he could tell that a bold move was needed here.

  “You seem like a smart person,” said Szeto, shooting him an approving look. He’d chosen correctly.

  Szeto and his female friend said goodbye. Alone in a corner of the Cultural Centre foyer, Chung-Nam finally broke into a smile.

  The encounter had gone incredibly smoothly. Chung-Nam saved Szeto’s phone number in his address book. This was the best-case scenario he’d imagined. It wasn’t so far-fetched that Szeto would want to meet him privately. North Americans were friendly like that. Besides, as a “director of technology,” he sounded worth talking to.

  Everything’s going according to plan. Now I just need to decide how to sell myself, he thought as he strode toward the main doors.

  “Excuse me.”

  Just as Chung-Nam pushed open the glass door, a teenage girl happened to be coming in. Realizing that she was in his way, she murmured an apology and turned to use the other door. Chung-Nam glanced at her and abruptly thought of that schoolgirl, Au something.

  Survival of the fittest, he thought.

  His brain was still buzzing with dopamine from the successful meeting with Szeto Wai, and he was euphoric. He had no idea that the whole time he’d been talking to Szeto, a pair of eyes had been watching him from another corner of the lobby.

  2.

  Monday, 11:20 a.m. Nga-Yee stood at the gate of Enoch Secondary School in Yau Ma Tei, waiting for N.

  She’d been scheduled to work that day, but had asked her supervisor to change her shift. He wasn’t thrilled with her recent unreliability, but her record was good and her work usually impeccable, and he knew about her succession of family tragedies. He looked the other way and said to get herself sorted out as quickly as possible. Nga-Yee knew she couldn’t keep pushing her tasks onto her coworkers, but right now all she could focus on was finding Siu-Man’s killer.

  She’d spent quite a bit of time over the weekend going through the web pages N had given her, but apart from the two students she’d seen at the funeral, Lily Shu and Violet To, the eighteen suspects were all strangers to her. Like a stalker, she even went through their oldest Facebook and Instagram posts, but as N had hinted, these didn’t turn up a single clue.

  Determined not to give up, she’d gone through all the other names on the spreadsheet. There was Chiu Kwok-Tai, who’d been at the funeral with Lily. Maybe N was wrong, and kidkit727 wasn’t an iPhone user. Many of the web addresses were made up of random strings of letters and numbers, and several times she got confused between the small letter l and capital I, or zero and O, and had to laboriously enter the whole thing two or three times before she got it right. Even so, that didn’t lessen her determination.

  Unfortunately, determination alone was no help at this moment.

  She’d spent all of Saturday glued to the computer screen. She had to work on Sunday morning, but as soon as her shift ended, she was back at it. Yet, after visiting more than a hundred websites, she was none the wiser, and she hadn’t seen her sister anywhere on her classmates’ social media pages. At most, there were some cryptic messages that might be condolences. On Chiu Kwok-Tai’s Facebook page, she read:

  Kenny Chiu, May 21, 2015, 22:31

  See you again. I’d never believed in an afterlife, but now I pray that there is one. I hope you’ll live well there.

  Goodbye.

  Maybe it was just as N had said, and the school had ordered the students to delete anything connected to Siu-Man. Nga-Yee found it hard to believe that these fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds would have obeyed their teachers so unquestioningly, and besides, they were of the generation that lives online—surely one or two of them would have slipped up and missed a post? It seemed more likely that Siu-Man had never been present at all. Kidkit727’s words, that’s why she has no friends, echoed in her ears like a demonic spell.

  Of the hundred-plus addresses N had given her, some were chat groups rather than social media sites. Whenever Popcorn appeared on her screen, her heart sank. These were all responses to that initial accusation, and she’d read most of them two months earlier. Having to go through these nasty messages again caused her more pain.

  Then she typed in what looked like an ordinary Popcorn link, but what came up took her breath away.

  A picture of a young woman, half nude.

  Unlike the previous comments, this was in Popco
rn’s adult section—where people came to discuss racier topics and could make adult friends (or “friends”). The rules stipulated that photos couldn’t show genitals or feature anyone under eighteen, but while the former was easier to enforce, only the person posting the image could know for sure whether its subject was underage or not.

  The subject of this thread was “Young and Tender: Local Schoolgirl with Sugar Daddy.” There were five photos attached, showing a woman wearing nothing but white panties, kneeling by a bed. Her breasts were completely exposed, but her face was cut off above the chin. The first three images showed her striking various awkward poses to showcase her bosom; the fourth was taken from the back, with her panties lowered to mid-thigh, revealing her smooth buttocks; and the fifth, which Nga-Yee found most disgusting, featured a heavyset man whose head was near the girl’s left breast, his tongue out as if about to lick her nipple. His face had been pixelated, apart from his mouth and tongue. From the angle of the photograph it seemed as if he’d had one arm around her while taking this selfie with the other hand. He was shirtless, and though he was shown only above the waist, it seemed likely that he was naked.

  Everything went black before Nga-Yee’s eyes—she couldn’t bear the thought that her sister had done this. Sadness, anger, and revulsion jostled within her. Finally she calmed down and managed to look at the images again, only to realize she’d made a big mistake: Siu-Man was shorter than the girl in the pictures, her breasts weren’t this large, and the hair was wrong too. Most important, having bathed her little sister every day when she was a child, she knew every mole and freckle on her body, and the markings on this woman’s torso were different.