The Perfect Alibi
After I arrived in Korea, I parted from Choi Jeong-ah and headed for Nowon District alone.
I went into the family home and spent a few days resting, letting the weariness of the journey drain away. I had been living in first-class hotels and a mansion vast as a whale's back, and still the sleep that found me in one small room of that house was the sweetest of all.
I had come back because my year of sick leave was nearly spent. I had even considered quitting for good, but for the time being I decided to return to the office, live quietly, and take the measure of the air around me. Go Yumi and Manager Park Dongseon were still missing, after all. I had no wish to look like a man scrambling to put his affairs in order. Better to behave myself and slip away once I had read how things stood.
I was enjoying the quiet on my own, waiting for the day I would go back to work, when unexpected visitors came to the house.
"Hello. We meet again."
"Uh. Ah—yes. And what brings you to my house?"
"Mr. Kang Chung-sik."
"Yes."
"You'll need to come with us."
"Come with you? Why me? I thought I already gave my full witness statement last time."
"Yes. Last time we brought you in as a witness. This time you are a suspect in a series of disappearances and in the Suwon nightclub fire. Will you come along, or should I put these on and take you that way?"
The man at the door was the same policeman I had seen before. Detective Choi, wasn't it? He drew out a pair of handcuffs and smiled, loose and shameless.
Two days earlier.
Detective Choi sat at his desk, laboring over an investigation report with a typing touch he had never quite mastered. Han Sohee came up and set a file folder down in front of him.
Thwack!
"Christ!"
He had been locked onto the keyboard, and he jerked his head up, startled.
"What!"
"Don't jump out of your skin over a thing like that. Do you have to lead with the irritation every time?"
"I was concentrating, that's why!"
"Right. Open that first."
"What? What is this?"
Detective Choi Changsik flipped the folder open and ran his eyes down the page.
"A list of recent arrivals. I was looking into something else and something jumped out at me, so I brought it specially to show you, sunbae."
"Arrivals?"
"Yes. About tenth from the bottom."
"The bottom?"
As Choi Changsik scanned the lower half of the list, one name stabbed into his eye.
Kang Chung-sik.
"Ha! That bastard."
"Yes. He entered the country two days ago. From Cairo."
"Son of a bitch!"
Choi Changsik shot to his feet, snatched up his jacket, and bolted from the office. Han Sohee shouted after the back of his head as he went scrambling off.
"Dinner's on you later! I'm not doing this for free!"
The place Choi Changsik made for, once he was out of the office, was the investigation team leader's room. Through the closed door, Detective Choi's voice leaked out.
"I'm telling you, we have to grab him this time! No telling when that bastard flies overseas again!"
"Hey! You want to arrest him, you need evidence! Evidence!"
"The evidence is right here! This photo! This is the car that bastard rented. And the plate number! And here—the vehicle caught on CCTV near the Suwon nightclub that burned! What reason does a man sitting in Nowon have to go all the way to Suwon at that hour? On top of that, we've already got statements that the Suwon gangsters were planning a job on land he bought. This is plenty. What more do you need?"
"More than ten gangsters died that night. You really think some worthless-looking little shit could pull that off? Huh!"
"Well, of course he had accomplices. There were foreigners who entered the country with him at the time. We find them. Look at this. That isn't all. Here. His ex-wife, his superior at work, the owner of the house he's living in now, and the broker tied to that owner. Six people connected to him have already gone missing. Who knows how many more we don't even know about. Leave this bastard alone and I guarantee more disappearances. We have to stop him!"
"This is all circumstantial! Do you have real evidence!"
"I'll find it one way or another. Please approve an emergency arrest. This bastard was overseas for half a year before he came back. If he leaves again, there's no telling when he'll return. Ah! Hyung-nim!"
"Where do you get off, you—!"
Still weighing it, the team leader ran his eyes once more down the evidence spread before him. Circumstantially, it wasn't as if there were no connection at all.
"You. You're really sure? That you can prove the charge."
"Of course. Within forty-eight hours I'll get a statement, secure the evidence, and hand it over for indictment."
"Damn it. You hang me out to dry and I won't let it slide. Fine!"
"Then I'll take that as permission."
Instead of answering, the team leader turned and sat. Knowing that for the yes it was, Detective Choi spun around at once and got out of the office. He drove straight to Kang Chung-sik's house in Nowon District and went to find him.
The place I arrived at, following Detective Choi, was an interrogation room at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency. Seated across from me, he opened his case notebook and began. The first thing he brought out was a photograph. Shot in the dark, it showed a road, and on that road a single car running with its headlights on.
"Mr. Kang Chung-sik. You remember this car, don't you?"
Looking closely, it was the same car I had rented the last time I came to Korea. I had hunted for a stretch without cameras and tucked it into a corner. They found it anyway.
"Ah. Hard to say. It's blurry. I can't really tell."
"Oh, please. You can see the plate right here. 5885. This is the same vehicle you rented in Seoul six months ago. Start denying things and we'll both get tired, so let's do this the easy way."
"Oh. Is that so? My memory's a little foggy."
"This photo was taken six months ago near Nammun Market in Suwon. Where the vehicle you rented turned up. Follow the road up from there and you hit Homerun Dome Night. The place where fourteen people died in the fire."
"Is that right? I think I've heard of it. Why are you telling me?"
"Keep this up and don't expect any leniency. You hear me? You think we don't know the dead men were tied to land you bought!"
So they know about the land, too. It didn't matter. I had a card up my sleeve.
"We confirmed your vehicle passed through here, and the gangsters who came after your land died together in a fire! And that's just coincidence! You messing with me!"
"I don't know why my car would show up in a photograph. What I do remember is seeing that accident on television. And that I was home all evening the night before. I remember watching the news when I woke up in the morning, so I'm quite sure."
"Home? And who's supposed to believe you were home?"
"Well. There's a security camera at the house. Why don't you check it? Wouldn't that settle the question?"
The interrogation went on for hours. Detective Choi pressed me with the hour the fire broke out, the image of the vehicle caught nearby, and statements that the dead gangsters had been after my land. Then he brought up the chain of disappearances around me as well. Even inside the pressure he had stitched together so logically, I stayed unruffled and gave him nothing but what I meant to give.
"I don't really remember."
"Hard to say."
"Ah! I think I had that wrong earlier. Yes, that must be it."
"Is that so? Anyway, my memory..."
An ordinary man might not have held up. I was certain that once the secret weapon stored at the house came to light, I could slip free as often as I liked, and so I went on playing dumb without a crack.
Detective Choi, his shirt undone, was winding up for another push when someone opened the interrogation-room door and stepped in. A delicately pretty woman. I was just thinking the police had people who looked like that when the woman who had come in called to him.
"Sunbae. A moment."
Detective Choi looked from her to me and back, then left his seat and stepped outside.
The moment the interrogation-room door shut, Detective Choi asked.
"How'd it go?"
"I went and checked the footage."
The instant he had heard about the CCTV, Detective Choi had sent his junior, Han Sohee, to confirm the security-camera footage from the walk-up he claimed was his home, and she had come back.
"Whether that's fortunate or unfortunate, the footage was still there."
"What? Footage from six months ago is still there?"
"Yes. Anyway, the video does show Kang Chung-sik going into the building. And there's no footage of him leaving that night."
"If he didn't leave? You're saying he stayed inside the whole time? Another way out?"
"I looked for another way out of the building. Nothing at all. There's only one entrance. No other way to get outside from the owner's unit on the top floor. The gas pipes on the exterior don't run up toward the roof, so that route's no good. Even if he'd lowered a rope, the security cameras covering the outer wall didn't catch a thing, so it's impossible. That day, Kang Chung-sik really was inside the house all night. Unless he flew off into the sky."
Hearing Han Sohee's answer, Detective Choi's face crumpled. He had gone so far as to swear to the team leader that he would prove the charges within twenty-four hours, and he had come back with approval for an emergency arrest. As if it weren't enough that the thing had gone wrong, now it looked as though he would have to turn loose a man he had all but in his hands. His temper blew.
"Fuck."
"Just as Kang Chung-sik said, the alibi that he was inside the house is nearly certain."
"Damn it! So? You're saying it wasn't him?"
"No. That's not all of it."
"What else is there?"
"The storage on that security camera. Originally the retention period was one month. But partway through, the capacity was extended to a year. Exactly six months ago."
Detective Choi's eyes went wide.
"Six months ago? Then?"
"If you're right, then just before that incident he built himself a perfect alibi. As if he'd prepared for a moment exactly like this."
"I told you. That bastard's the one. I'm sure of it."
"Now that it's turned out this way, I'm suspicious too. The problem is he prepared far too well. Charge in like this and we're the ones who get our heads cracked. Every single time."
"So what do you want to do? Just let him walk? Huh!"
"This time, letting him go is the only move we have. Whether he arranged it or luck was simply on his side, there's no putting that man in a cell."
"Goddamn it!"
Six hours later, I walked out of the police station. The woman officer who had come in earlier offered a careful explanation, all polite words, and I closed it out by answering as if to say these things happened. Even then, of course, Detective Choi was glaring at me as if he meant to swallow me whole.
Only when I had stepped outside and put the station grounds fully behind me did a deep, satisfied sense of victory finally settle in. I had read the shape of things well enough. They wanted to take me. They also knew they couldn't. The alibi I had prepared would be perfect.