"Why do we have to take this case? It's a foreigner, and we only deal with foreigners if there is a crime."
Pak raised an eyebrow. "Murder is usually defined as a crime. Criminal Code, Chapter 8, Section 1, Article 141, unless there are extenuating circumstances; also Article 142, fit of rage, or 143, self-defense."
"But we don't know where it happened, much less who's responsible and under what circumstances."
"That's what the investigation is for, Inspector."
"That assumes we can investigate. If another foreigner did it, and if it happened outside the capital, then we have no jurisdiction. We touch a case with dead outsiders, we'll get nothing but interference from the Foreign Ministry. On top of that, we'll get blamed for not solving it, and at this point, believe me, no one can solve it."
"You just stuck your nose in the door and you know all that?" As soon as Pak frowned, I knew where we were heading. I tried to put my mind somewhere else, somewhere peaceful, before he started the lecture.
"Let me make something clear, Inspector: This is the capital city.
It may not be a fine and fancy place, like Geneva or Prague, but it is the capital of our country, and it is the responsibility of our unit to keep it safe. At this moment, it is not safe. This isn't the border, Inspector, this is the capital, and I'm damned if I'll have dead bodies turning up, not anywhere, not on highways, not in hotel rooms. So, like it or not, we are going to find out what happened here. And we will do so quickly. And when I say 'we,' Inspector, I mean 'you' very specifically. I need a report by 2:45, something I can stuff down Kim's gullet."
As he pressed the elevator button, Pak turned and waved toward the room in a gesture of frustration. "Find me something, anything. That will give us a couple of days." The elevator door opened, and he said to no one in particular as he stepped in, "Too bad. Nice room, actually has a view."
4
I couldn't tell much about the view because the heavy curtains were shut, but as far as I could see, there was nothing special about the room.
It had the normal dark entry hall, a small, slightly raised sitting parlor, and a bedroom. The carpet in the bedroom was worn in spots. There were two narrow beds, each covered by a shiny red silk quilt with a circle of flowers embroidered in the center. The short, square lamp on the table between the beds was new, as was the white phone that shared the space. A TV sat against the wall, facing a chair near the window.
The bathroom had been renovated recently; it was one of those modular bathrooms with a low ceiling that makes you think you're in a fiberglass space ship. I never liked fiberglass. It doesn't grow anywhere.
When they were first installed, the bathrooms must have been considered modern and efficient, but they didn't wear very well, especially since hotel guests aren't all that careful. The shine rubbed off, and then the color went flat. They couldn't be painted, so the only thing to do was to replace the whole module. Usually the fixtures got broken in the process, so that meant replacing them as well. This one had a new sink-nothing fancy, but gleaming, like new sinks do. It didn't look like it had been used more than once or twice. The thin towels weren't new and didn't match, but they were clean, folded precisely, and hanging neatly from the towel bar. There was a phone over the toilet. Why anyone needed a phone in the bathroom, I never understood.
The sitting room had a couch that could hold two people if they A
CORPSE IN THE KORYO
were friendly, a couple of chairs, a standing lamp with an old silk shade, and a wooden table, badly stained pine, standing slightly askew. On the table was a glass vase with a bunch of wilted flowers. The shelves next to the closet in the entry hall were empty. So was the small brown refrigerator that sat in a nook between the armoire and a built-in chest of drawers. I opened every drawer. Each one squeaked as I pulled it out.
Nothing a little soap on the runner couldn't fix.
"The foreigner was on the floor, in the sitting room. It looked like he had tripped on the light cord, but no one could hit his head so hard on such a small table and leave that vase standing."
I turned around to find the floor lady standing in the hall, a short, compact woman of about forty, in a plain brown dress with a white apron. I hadn't heard her footsteps because she had on socks but no shoes. "I found him. I went in to see if there was a bottle of water in the refrigerator, and there he was. I never seen a skull bashed in like that."
She paused and then added, with a note of disapproval over what she seemed to think was a breakdown in procedure, "I didn't know anyone had checked into this room."
"My name is O." I bowed slightly to her and smiled. Most inspectors like to begin conversations with a witness on a menacing note-standard procedure, the way they teach it at training class-but I needed this woman on my side. She acknowledged my gesture with the slightest softening around her eyes, not yet a smile but something to build on.
"You a police inspector?" Without waiting for an answer, she continued, "Chief Inspector Pak scolded me, but what does he expect? If I had called him, I'd lose my job."
"Pak will be alright. Why don't you come in and sit down?"
"I can't sit in the rooms." She leaned against the open door. "I'm not even sure you can if you don't register."
I sat down on the couch in the sitting room, pulled the heavy curtain to one side, and looked out the window to make the point that the hotel's normal regulations didn't concern me. "Comfortable, tidy, nothing out of place. Tell me, why would you put flowers in a room you thought was empty?"
"They aren't our flowers. I don't bunch them up, and I don't have any vases like that one. We grow our own flowers out back, in the garden.
Nothing purple, and if we did, I would never cut it so short. Anyway, that vase is all wrong. Too narrow a neck. Why put a bunch of flowers in something like that? Makes it look like they're in prison. The whole idea of flowers in the rooms is to make it seem like outdoors."
"Like a mountain meadow, or at least a cabin."
"Yes," she studied me to see if I was mocking her, which I wasn't.
"At least like the hills after the rain."
"I'm not asking about the arrangement. I'm asking, if they aren't your flowers, who put them in the vase?"
"How do I know?"
I didn't like it when a witness answered my question with a question.
It usually meant I had lost control. "Were they here when you found the body?"
"I couldn't say. I mean, it's awful dark in these rooms with the curtains closed."
"So, they weren't your flowers, you didn't put them in the vase, and you're not sure if they were here when you discovered the body or not.
If they weren't already here, who would have put wilted flowers into a vase in a room with a murdered man?"
"Not me."
"Very good, not you. We've more or less established that. Then who?"
She was edging into the room as we talked, and I could see she was looking for something, hoping I wouldn't notice. "Anything missing?"
"There isn't. No." She shook her head slightly, but her eyes were darting around.
I took out my notebook. "I'll need your name, for the record. And when I leave, I will have to instruct you to lock the door and let no one in here without my permission." Her eyes stopped darting and searched mine. "I mean that literally, no one. I'll get an MSS guard here as soon as I can, but for now, it's your responsibility."
"My name is Li, Li Yong Hui. I can't make any promises. The locks on these doors barely keep out the breeze, Inspector. And as we can see from your sitting on that couch, not too many people take orders from me."
I closed my notebook, then opened it again. It was meant to be a gesture of authority, tinged with annoyance. Pak could carry something like that off, but it usually only made me look indecisive. From the expression on the floor lady's face, I needed to practice it more. "I'm going to look around the room, make some notes. You can stand there in the doorway and watch or go about your business, Mrs. Li. In any case, this room is now the scene of a crime against the people, officially. That means the normal rules don't pertain. This room belongs to me until the crime is solved, and when you tell people they cannot enter, you are speaking for me, is that clear?" This was not even remotely true, but it might get me some extra cooperation from her, and it wouldn't bring her any harm.