Chinese Whispers

III

They drove in silence through the canyon of light that was Changan Avenue, floodlit buildings rising like cliffs on either side. Past the Forbidden City where the ancient rulers of China once held court. Past the closed world of Zhongnanhai, where the present rulers of China lived in private villas around a glittering lake. Past the telegraph office, the Ministry of Commerce, the Minzu Palace. To the intersection at Muxidi where they turned off on to Sanlihi Road and into the shady side street where they parked in front of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. There were still lights on in most of the windows, night classes in progress, staff and students working late on research projects and theses.

Hart led them up the steps two at a time, and waved his ID card at the security man in the lobby, although it was hardly necessary. They took the elevator to the fourth floor and followed him down a long corridor to his office. He blinked in the harsh glare of the fluorescent strip lights as they flickered and hummed and spilled their ugly light into every dark corner. He rounded his cluttered desk and sat in front of his computer and switched it on. It whirred and creaked and hissed and started to load its operating system.

He sat back. ‘It’ll take a minute or two.’

They had barely spoken a word in the twenty minutes it had taken them to drive to the academy. Li felt almost brittle with tension. He had no idea what would be in Lynn Pan’s private internet folder, but he knew it would be key. He felt Margaret at his shoulder, and she gave his arm a gentle squeeze.

She said, ‘So what do people normally keep in their private web space?’

‘Mostly stuff you want to save for your eyes only,’ Hart said. ‘A lot of people are involved in confidential research. Most of the computers here are on a network. So much computing space is shared, it’s difficult to keep things private.’

His desktop screen had loaded now. He pulled down a menu and selected Connect, then went into a folder labelled Applications and double-clicked on something called Fetch. More screens unfolded and Hart opened up a Dialogue Box which prompted him to enter an FTP address, a user name and a password. He entered the FTP address for the academy’s website, then tapped in lynn.pan and scribble. Almost immediately they were looking at a screenful of icons representing folders that Pan had stored in her private space. ‘Jesus,’ Hart said. ‘What are we looking for here?’

‘There,’ Li pointed. It was a folder labelled MPS Demo, Mon. 10th. ‘Those must be the files from the MERMER demo she gave us yesterday afternoon.’

Hart clicked his mouse on the icon and held it down. The image turned into a silhouette, and he dragged it across the screen, out of the website window, and on to his desktop where he released it. The file immediately began copying from the Academy’s computer on to Hart’s desktop PC. It took less than a minute, after which he disconnected from the website and double-clicked on the folder he had downloaded. It opened up a window filled with more folders. Twelve in total. Six were labelled Graphs A, Graphs B, Graphs C, through to Graphs F. The remainder were classified Pics A through to Pics F.

‘What are they?’ Margaret asked.

‘At a guess,’ Hart said, ‘I’d say that the Graphs folders contain the graphs showing the brainwave activity of each of the Ministry people during their demo test yesterday. And the Pics folders probably contain the pictures each of them was shown to stimulate that activity.’

‘Who’s who?’ Li said.

‘No idea.’ Hart turned to look up at Li. ‘She must just have labelled you A through F instead of using names.’

‘But we could each be identified by the pictures we were shown,’ Li said. ‘There was personal stuff among them. I was shown photographs of my apartment building, my home town. I guess everyone else was shown theirs, too.’

‘Then you would know which graph belonged to which person,’ Margaret said.

‘Might take a while,’ Hart said. ‘You know, getting hold of that kind of information. The students who did the research might remember, but I’m guessing their notes were probably among the casualties of that burglary last night.’

‘Let’s have a look at some of the pics,’ Li said, and he leaned in as Hart double-clicked on one of the Pics folders

Its window opened up and Hart cursed. ‘Shit!’ The folder was empty. He went systematically through the other five. Empty. ‘What the hell …’

Lyang said, ‘Why would she upload six empty folders?’

‘Christ knows,’ Hart said. ‘She was probably in a hurry. Maybe the MERMER software puts the pics somewhere else when it’s running a demo and she never retrieved them. I just don’t know.’

‘Maybe you’d better check the Graphs folders,’ Margaret suggested.

Hart opened up Graphs A. Its window contained three files, small icons representing single sheets of paper with folded corners. There was a design within each icon which seemed to be made up from the letters MRM, and each file was labelled with a title in a coloured strip beneath it. Graph 1, Graph 2, Graph 3. ‘She must have done three run-throughs,’ Hart said.

‘She did,’ Li confirmed. ‘Can you open those up?’

Hart shook his head. ‘I don’t have the MERMER software.’ And to prove his point he double-clicked on a file icon and a message in a box appeared mid-screen. File cannot be opened because the application software that created it cannot be found.

‘So what use is any of this stuff?’ Lyang said. ‘We don’t have any of the pics. We don’t know which graph relates to who …’

And Margaret added. ‘We don’t know how any of it relates to her murder, or even if it does.’

Li was staring grimly at the screen. His disappointment was nearly choking him. ‘Open up each of the folders,’ he said.

Hart shrugged. ‘What’s the point? We can’t open up any of the files.’

‘Humour me.’

Hart started going through each of the folders as Li had asked. They were all the same. Until he got to Graphs D, and his hand froze on the mouse. For instead of the files being labelled, Graph 1, Graph 2, Graph 3. They were labelled, LIAR, LIAR, LIAR.