“How can they sweep them all up like that?” There would be no one left to care for her sick husband if they brought her in as well.
“Try not to worry too much. I’ll do my best to get them released soon.” To calm her, he told her that he’d visit the High Police chief the next day. After she brought in the items that would freeze, Deok-gi accompanied her to the hospital on his way to Hwagae-dong. He wanted to see his father, now that he was up and about, and was curious to know whether the rapacious hands of the police had reached his father’s house.
As Deok-gi entered the house, a game of mahjong was in full swing in the outer quarters, with the doors tightly locked. “I’m glad you’re here,” said Deok-gi’s father. “I heard that the Police Division took Won-sam.”
Deok-gi nodded.
“What’s going on? They came for Clerk Choe while he was visiting.”
“Clerk Choe, too? I had no idea.”
“I hear they inquired about Chang-hun as well. Isn’t that odd?” Deok-gi’s father, in the middle of heavy gambling, sounded extremely nervous.
“I think I may be able to find out what’s going on tomorrow,” Deok-gi answered vaguely, before he left. Without knowing precisely what was going on in the inner quarters, his heart sank. He couldn’t stand watching his father fritter away good money.
As soon as he got home, Deok-gi heard that Secretary Ji was the latest to be arrested. It troubled him deeply that old Ji would have to stay in jail in this cold. Knowing that the authorities were approaching, a wave of anxiety swept over him, though in his heart he knew nothing would come of it.
Sleeping in fits and starts, Deok-gi managed to get through the night and went to the Police Division early the next morning. Aware that he would be taken away eventually, he wanted to see the High Police chief as soon as possible. But the chief wouldn’t see him. Instead, Geumcheon called him in. The detective was delighted that Deok-gi had come in of his own accord. Preventing Deok-gi from seeing the chief had been Geumcheon’s doing.
The case was being investigated by two different police branches. Pil-sun, Gyeong-ae, and her mother, along with Byeong-hwa and Jang Hun, were to answer to the High Police, while Secretary Ji, the Chinese doctor, and Clerk Choe were being questioned by the Judiciary Police. Won-sam and his wife, and now Deok-gi, were in the spotlight of both branches.
They were trying to discover why the majority of the Jo family assets were left to Deok-gi. Why did he oppose the performance of a postmortem on his grandfather, and why did he pay the doctors excessive gratuities? Why did he help Byeong-hwa? How many left-wing books did he read? Deok-gi answered these questions as clearly as possible.
His grandfather had disliked his own son and hadn’t trusted him, having clung to the conviction, verging on superstition, that his son would squander the family’s wealth during his own lifetime. It was not for Deok-gi himself, but for the sake of the Jo descendants, that the grandfather had entrusted Deok-gi with roughly five times that which he had left to his son. As for the postmortem, he opposed it for two reasons: he shared the reluctance many people have about cremating their parents’ bodies, and he didn’t want to sully his family name by doing something dishonorable. Deok-gi simply could not accept the notion that his grandfather had been poisoned. He did not consider the gifts he offered the doctors to be excessive in light of his name and social position. They were tokens of gratitude. Perhaps the strongest evidence of Deok-gi’s innocence was the fact that his grandfather had entrusted him with the key to the family safe while he was still alive. Even the Suwon woman, who was summoned the next day, had to attest that she had seen the old man give Deok-gi a ring of keys after his arrival from Kyoto.
As for his relationship with Byeong-hwa, Deok-gi reiterated what he had stated from the start. He said frankly that his actions were based on friendship; he wanted to help his longtime friend, who’d been hungry and roaming around town after leaving his parents’ house. Deok-gi also had hoped to draw Byeong-hwa away from his radicalism. But the detectives weren’t ready to accept his explanation, given the plethora of leftist literature found in his Kyoto boardinghouse. They wouldn’t swallow his explanation that he had read them as part of his economics studies. That day, they didn’t pay much attention to Deok-gi, who lay down in the duty room and fell asleep.
Geumcheon believed that the way to get to the bottom of the poisoning case was to hand over the Suwon woman and her cohorts to the Judiciary Police for further questioning. As for the matter of Byeong-hwa and Gyeong-ae, he was sure that something was bound to come out if he pressed Gyeong-ae’s mother.
“My daughter must have met Byeong-hwa at the bar. I’m disgusted that he dragged me into all this. Do you think my daughter is stupid enough to get involved with someone of his ilk? He’s so full of himself! Please release my daughter and lock him up for ten years.” As Geumcheon proceeded, he grew more skeptical when he learned that her husband had been a notorious independence movement leader. Besides, she was Christian, not an old-fashioned woman who couldn’t comprehend his questions. Geumcheon braced himself for more denials.
When the conversation shifted to her family, she mentioned that her brother had fled to Shanghai and hadn’t been heard from since, which increased the detective’s doubts. He was circling, waiting for his chance to pounce.
“What’s your brother’s name?”
“K___. He deserves to be killed.”
Geumcheon’s eyes bulged out of their sockets. He hadn’t given Gyeong-ae a thorough going-over yet. He had been so busy asking about her relationship with Byeong-hwa that he had no idea what her family background was. He felt sure that it had influenced her actions.
“What about the individual who visited a while ago? Is this person still staying with you?” asked Geumcheon, assuming a sweet expression, as if he were inquiring about a friend of his.
“Who? My sister-in-law? She’s still with us.” It was true that one of the cousins on her husband’s side had been staying with her for some time.
“No, the fellow your brother sent.”
“Do you expect a thief to suddenly change his mind and send someone? He earned money and used it just for himself. He hasn’t sent a penny in ten years, even while his family was starving. He’s a good-for-nothing who ran away with my money, the money I got from selling my house.” She feigned absolute ignorance.
He, of course, had phrased his questions to see how she would react, but his suspicions grew when she sounded too collected, though her reply was plausible enough.
“Where’s your brother’s family?”
“They live in Hyeonjeo-dong, but I’ve never been there.”
“I don’t know how much of your money he took, but a brother and sister shouldn’t cut ties because of that, should they?” Geumcheon surmised in his impeccable Korean, grinning.
“So you must have nephews.”
“Two.”
“Are they old enough to make a living?” One might think he was genuinely concerned.
“Yes. The older one is already nineteen, and the younger one is sixteen or seventeen.”
Detective Geumcheon would bring them in for questioning.
A man, clad in Korean clothes and a winter hat, interrupted them. “Are you busy? It’s rather urgent.”
“I took them to three different places for appraisals, and they all had exactly the same response.”
“Yes?”
“That they’re foreign made, but are neither from Shanghai nor from the United States.”
“Then where are they from?”
“From Russia, of course.”
“Where did you put them?”