Across the street from a small villa in Kowloon Tong, Xie Jia Hua parked his car. It was morning rush hour, yet the little street was sparsely traveled and remarkably quiet. The owner of the villa had left for work early, and only a maid in her forties was in the courtyard hanging laundry out to dry.
“Auntie Liang?” Xie Jia Hua called through the iron fence.
The maid looked up and rubbed her eyes with the back of one damp hand. “Young Master? Oh! It’s the Young Master! Old Liang! Old Liang, hurry out here! Come see who’s back!”
She rushed over and happily opened the gate, wiping her hands vigorously on her apron before clasping the hand Xie Jia Hua held out to her. Holding his palm between both of hers, she rubbed it hard. “Young Master’s hands are still so warm. Healthy! Good, good!”
Another servant, a man also in his forties or fifties, hurried out of the villa and stood before Xie Jia Hua, both delighted and flustered. Xie Jia Hua was the one who stepped forward and gave him a tight hug.
“Young Master! You haven’t been home in five years! You’re thinner. So much thinner, ah…”
“Don’t block the way. Let the Young Master go inside and sit!” Auntie Liang shoved him aside.
“No, I have something I want to ask the two of you. We can talk here,” Xie Jia Hua said.
“What are you saying, Young Master? Who comes all the way home and refuses to go inside?” Auntie Liang said warmly. Uncle Liang also urged him, “Come in. Ahem, your father isn’t home. If you stand out here talking and the neighbors see, it won’t look good.”
Xie Jia Hua glanced around, then followed them inside. The two old servants, who had worked for his family for more than twenty years, bustled about happily, pouring tea and bringing out fruit and pastries. Auntie Liang had watched him grow up and practically regarded him as half her own son. Holding his hand, she fussed over him endlessly. “Are you still with the Major Crimes Unit? Are you busy at work? No matter how busy you are, you have to eat properly. Look how thin you’ve gotten… The Master never talks about you. When I miss you, I take out your childhood photographs and look at them…”
Uncle Liang secretly nudged her, signaling that she should not mention the Master.
“It’s all right,” Xie Jia Hua reassured them. “I’m not a child anymore. Back then, when I fell out with Daddy, I was partly at fault too.”
“Ah, Young Master…” Auntie Liang asked tentatively. “Is there really no way for you and the Master to make up? You… you still… still…”
“I still like men,” Xie Jia Hua said.
Uncle Liang and Auntie Liang fell silent at once, awkwardness appearing on both their faces. Xie Jia Hua had never expected them to understand. If they had stood on his side back then, he would not have stayed away for five years without once coming home. Five years earlier, a colleague from the Forensic Division had pursued him. Although Xie Jia Hua ultimately did not return his feelings, his father discovered what was going on between them as well as Xie Jia Hua’s sexuality and flew into a rage. He had the colleague internally investigated, uncovering that the man had secretly swapped evidence in one case in order to solve it, and the colleague was ultimately held accountable and dismissed. Then, despite the fact that Xie Jia Hua still had unresolved cases on his hands, his father forcibly sent him overseas for further study. When Xie Jia Hua graduated and returned two years later, he emptied his savings to buy himself a small apartment and never went home again.
Uncle Liang and Auntie Liang had little education. They were simple people, but ignorant. At his father’s orders, they had kept Xie Jia Hua locked up for half a month back then, refusing to release him no matter how he begged. They had even believed he was possessed or had something wrong with his mind. With the best of intentions, they went to a temple to ask for a soul-calming talisman, listened to folk remedies that sent them onto an island to dig up soil from graves, and brewed all sorts of bizarre concoctions for him to drink.
Xie Jia Hua could not forgive them, but neither could he bring himself to hate them, just as he could not hate his father. They would never understand one another. Having lost his mother as a child, he had received little paternal affection either from a father who spent day and night away at work. Yet he still retained respect for the man. In Xie Jia Hua’s heart, his father had never been a competent parent, but he had been an excellent public servant.
Lu Guang Ming’s appearance, however, had gradually begun to shake that conviction.
Xie Jia Hua broke the awkward silence and came straight to the point. “Uncle Liang, Auntie Liang, I want to ask about something from ten years ago. Please think carefully. Back then, I had a friend called Jia Qi. We often went out together. I remember asking Uncle Liang to help me choose a set of fishing gear because I said I was going fishing with him.”
Uncle Liang and Auntie Liang thought for a moment, then both nodded. “We remember. We remember,” Auntie Liang said. “That fishing gear is still in the storeroom. I couldn’t bear to throw it away.”
“Did Jia Qi ever come to the house back then? Did either of you ever meet him?”
Auntie Liang shook her head. “No. Young Master, you never brought friends home. Don’t you remember? So many of your friends painted… did, did some kind of art. The Master didn’t let you associate with them.”
“Uncle Liang, do you remember anything?”
Uncle Liang patted his head. “Strange. I think I do remember something. That friend of yours… was he a little shorter than you? Very fair, and said he did clerical work?”
“You met him?!”
“Let me think… You weren’t the one who brought him home. One night, he brought you back…”
Xie Jia Hua grabbed his arm. “Uncle Liang! This is important. Think carefully and tell me everything from beginning to end.”
Uncle Liang struggled to remember for a long while. “I remember… I remember it was your birthday. You argued with the Master over dinner and went out. It must have been after one in the morning. It was pouring outside, and he brought you home. Everyone had already gone to bed, so I was the one who opened the door. I helped him bring you inside. You were drunk.”
Xie Jia Hua’s expression turned grave. He suddenly remembered as well! His birthday according to the Gregorian calendar was January 20, which was also the anniversary of his mother’s death. That evening, he had argued with his father over dinner and stormed out in anger. He went to the ICAC to find Tang Jia Qi, only to be told that Tang Jia Qi had gone out on business, so Xie Jia Hua went alone to a bar to drink. Everything after that was a blur. Tang Jia Qi must later have gone to the bar looking for him and brought him home.
“How long did he stay?” Xie Jia Hua continued.
“Not long, I think,” Uncle Liang said, searching his memory. “The rain was very heavy that night, and both of you were soaked. I asked him to sleep in the guest room, and at first he agreed. But after I settled you in, changed your clothes, wiped you down and so on, he said he still had paperwork to finish at home and couldn’t stay after all. I found him an umbrella, and he left. Early the next morning, your Auntie Liang and I went back to the countryside to visit relatives, so we forgot to tell you about it.”
Xie Jia Hua stood and looked toward the guest room on the first floor. The villa had three stories. The servants’ rooms and guest rooms were on the first floor, his father’s bedroom and study were on the second, and his own room back then had been on the third. If Tang Jia Qi had helped Uncle Liang support him all the way up to the third floor that night, he would inevitably have passed the study near the second-floor landing. If, while Uncle Liang was tending to Xie Jia Hua, Tang Jia Qi had secretly slipped into the study…
Thinking as he moved, Xie Jia Hua hurried to the second floor and pushed at the study door, but it would not open.
“Ah, well…” Auntie Liang followed him. “The Master has kept that room locked these past few years. Nobody is allowed inside except him.”
Xie Jia Hua let go of the door. After thinking for a moment, he hurried toward the third floor. “Are my old things still here?”
“They’re all here, all here,” Auntie Liang quickly said. “The Master never comes upstairs. I covered everything with cloth. Whenever I have time, I come up and clean.”
Xie Jia Hua quickly pushed open the door to his old room and searched the bookshelf in the corner before dragging several trunks out from beneath the bed. When he suddenly noticed Uncle Liang and Auntie Liang standing anxiously and curiously at the doorway, he waved them off. “I’m looking for something. Let me be alone for a while. Go take care of your work.”
“All right, all right.”
Xie Jia Hua knelt on the floor and searched through the dust, coughing for a long time before finally finding the diary he had kept ten years ago, not long after he first joined the force. Back then, he had been rebellious, careless, and inattentive at work. His superiors treated him like a spoiled rich kid and refused to let him participate in major cases, assigning him only to organize records. The diary contained page after page of complaints. It was not until he met Tang Jia Qi that the entries gradually became brighter and livelier. The diary ended on February 18, 1983, two weeks after Tang Jia Qi disappeared, when his body was discovered inside a freezer at a cold-storage plant. That day’s entry contained only four words: “Jia Qi is gone.”
Suppressing the sudden turmoil in his chest, Xie Jia Hua painfully flipped backward through the diary. When he reached January, he suddenly found an entry: “Today discovered a case from four years ago. Cause of death of a society boss suspicious, but many pages of the file are missing. Told Jia Qi. Jia Qi said it was suspicious and that we should analyze changes in society power.”
He snapped the diary shut, swiftly restored the disordered room to its original state, then rushed downstairs. “Uncle Liang, Auntie Liang, thank you! I’m leaving. Don’t tell Daddy I came back!”