I felt a distinct pleasure in passing on my own discomfiture. -- Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Ji-hun lit another cigarette. He watched Seo walk away from the bus stop. He knew Seo knew he was watching. The question now was, would he try to fool Ji-hun by going to a random house? Or would he boldly go into his own house and think he could defend it?

Seo went to the house at the far end of the road. The bus had long since left. The other passengers who had got off had gone to their own homes. Anyone watching would think Ji-hun was waiting for another bus.

He finished his cigarette and lit another. He checked his watch.

Seo had five minutes to prepare. That was as sporting as Ji-hun felt like being. Now that his prey was practically caught, he found the whole business tiresome. He wanted Seo dead quickly.

He didn't go up the street. He crossed it, followed one of the alleys between houses, and made his way towards Seo's house by way of the adjoining street.

No one was around to see him at this hour. Seo couldn't have picked a better time if he'd asked Ji-hun's opinion.

He circled round and approached the house from behind. At the back there was a small lawn, a low hedge enclosing part of it, and a few trees separating it from the road beyond. Ji-hun crouched behind the hedge and peered through the leaves. He would much rather have had either a house completely in the countryside, or one surrounded by other houses. The former would have had more places to hide, and the latter would have had more directions to approach from.

He watched the kitchen windows. Nothing stirred inside.

It was the work of a moment to dart round the hedge and take up position at the house's wall. Ji-hun stayed bent almost double so no one looking out of a window would see him. He made his way around the house and to the kitchen door. One of the windows he passed was ajar. An obvious trap if ever Ji-hun had seen one.

His main object wasn't so much to get in through the kitchen — that was what Seo would expect — as to make Seo think he was trying to get in through the kitchen. Then, when Seo came to investigate, Ji-hun would run round to the open window and come in behind him.

He knelt on the doorstep and took his lockpick out of his pocket. He made as much noise as possible at trying to force the lock.

Exactly as he predicted. He heard footsteps inside the house. They started from somewhere near the other side and came swiftly closer.

Ji-hun left the door. Still ducking below the windows, he went round the other side of the house.

~~~~

"Come on," Leo hissed.

"He's still here," Phil said.

"Not now. He's gone to the front door. I left windows open on both sides so we could get in."

Phil could see the obvious problem there. "You've given him an easy way in too."

Leo grinned. "Not if he thinks like me. He'll assume it's a trap and he'll avoid the windows. Quick, before he comes back!"

~~~~

If I was an assassin, what would I do? Yo-han asked himself repeatedly as he waited for An to arrive.

It was an interesting exercise, but not a useful one. How could he predict what someone as plainly insane as An would do?

Those open windows worried him. Leopold said no assassin would fall for such a blatant trap. But was he right? And speaking of Leopold, where was he? Where was Phil? They should have been back before Yo-han.

Until he had more evidence to deduce from, all he could do was take up a defensible position. In this house, that meant standing with his back against the wall in the gap between the grandfather clock and the front door. He could hear anything happening in the house and see anyone approaching from the road. He also had a gun in his hand.

For an eternity all he could hear was the clock ticking beside him. No one came along the road. Once he saw a distant figure cross it. An?

Yo-han waited. Finally he heard what he expected: distant scratching. An was trying to break in through the kitchen.

It was a ruse. He wouldn't make so much noise if he was really trying to get in there. Yo-han pretended to fall for it. He started towards the kitchen. The centre of the hallway was carpeted, leaving bare floorboards on the edges. Yo-han deliberately avoided the carpet and trod heavily on the wood.

Even though every rule of politeness he'd ever been taught screamed against it, he kept his shoes on indoors. His main motive was so he could flee without having to stop to put them on. They came in handy in another way now. The shoes clattering on the wood made enough noise to wake the dead.

Instead of going into the kitchen, Yo-han ducked into the spare room which was now his bedroom. It was fully carpeted. He knelt down so An wouldn't see him if he looked through the window. Leo hadn't opened this one. He had opened the dining room and sitting room windows. Maybe even the bathroom, but the tiled floor made that one useless as a stealthy entrance.

Silence. Yo-han pictured An's movements. He would have retreated when he heard Yo-han coming. He had to be creeping round the house, headed for the front door. It would take him two minutes at the most. Another minute to unlock the door silently. A few seconds to get his bearings.

He wouldn't go upstairs first. Too easy to get trapped. The sitting room was the first one he'd come to. Then the first door into the dining room. Then Yo-han's room.

A faint clink. The snick of the door opening. The soft thump of a shoe on carpet. An was in the house.

Yo-han saw his next move as clearly as if it was being acted on a stage.

More soft thumps at irregular intervals. Yo-han would never have heard them if he hadn't been listening so intently. He saw with his mind's eye An creeping towards the sitting room. He pushed the door open. Of course he expected an ambush. But would he expect it from downstairs?

The stairs began just opposite the sitting room door. An would be looking up at the landing. Where else would someone hide?

Yo-han heard the gentle whish of the sitting room door opening.

Now.

He turned.

One long stride and he was in the hall, avoiding the bare floor.

An had to lean far into the room to make sure no one was behind the door. He was straightening up as Yo-han stepped out.

Yo-han raised his gun.

An started back and raised his own gun in the same instant.

For a minute the two men stared at each other. An grinned like a child in a toy store.

Yo-han spoke in Korean. "You've lost. Lower your gun."

An's grinned widened. In the same language he said, "Lost? How?"

He had a strong and very strange accent. It was like listening to someone who was from Gwangju but had spent years in Pyongyang.

"No one is paying you any more. I sent details of the plot to both the British and Korean governments. Avington is dead. Jeong is disgraced and bankrupt, if not dead too. And I expect a Japanese ambassador will commit suicide very soon. So you see, no matter who hired you, you won't get any money from them. Give up and you will live. Otherwise I will kill you."

An laughed. He laughed as if Yo-han had just told the funniest joke he'd ever heard. When he was able to speak, he said, "You're wrong. No one hired me to kill you. I won't get paid anyway."

Something made a faint thud in the bathroom. In that minute Yo-han made two very important deductions. First, An was the sort of criminal who couldn't resist boasting about his crimes to show how clever he was. Second, either Phil or Leo was in the house and would be an important witness — if they could understand what was being said.

He switched to English. "Then why have you chased me across the world?"

"Why are you speaking English?" An asked, still in Korean. It was hard to tell because of his ever-present grin, but he sounded more puzzled than suspicious.

"I can barely understand your Korean," Yo-han said, which was an exaggeration — but not by much.

An's smile turned into a scowl. For a second Yo-han feared he'd angered him into attacking. But no, his arrogance won out. He continued in English.

"I was hired to kill that family. I found out they were related to you, so I thought it would be fun to hunt you down too."

Yo-han tried to wrap his mind around this. "So you chased me for months... for fun?"

An's smile returned. It was almost like talking to someone with a comedy mask tied to their face. "This was the most fun I've had in years. I'm almost sorry to kill you."

His finger moved. Yo-han ducked. An shifted his aim to follow.

The problem with actors was that they had an irritating tendency towards the melodramatic. Even worse, it was contagious. If Yo-han had been consulted, he would have asked for reinforcements before the nick of time.

Unfortunately he hadn't been consulted. Fortunately the nick of time did just as well.

Phil flung the dining room door open. She aimed her gun at An. "Drop it!"

An started. He pulled the trigger.

The bullet buried itself in the floorboard at his feet.

Yo-han had thrown himself flat on the floor. Phil had dived back into the dining room. The gun's report was still ringing in Yo-han's ears. The bathroom door flew open.

Leopold roared, "If you've hurt my wife I'll vivisect you, you filthy bastard!"

Phil stuck her head out of the dining room again. In the background Yo-han heard her reassuring Leopold.

He stood up and looked An in the eye.

"You made two mistakes," he informed him calmly. "First, you framed Mr. Colman for your murders. Second, you assumed I was alone."

An no longer looked remotely frightening. He stood hunched over, resembling nothing so much as a student being reprimanded by the headmaster.

"Now, you will give me your gun. Then we will head to the Korean embassy. I don't quite know who will arrest you, but I'm sure the ambassador can sort it out. But most importantly, you will publicly admit your guilt and clear Mr. Colman's name."

An still held onto his gun. Yo-han kept a worried eye on it as he spoke. It was a small handheld pistol. He was sure it could hold more than one bullet, but did it right now?

He looked over his shoulder. Phil and Leopold both had their weapons trained on An.

An, who was still not giving up the gun.

His head was down. His long fringe obscured his eyes. Yo-han felt sure he was studying the gun. A growing conviction that it was still loaded crept up on him.

When An raised his head, Yo-han acted. He dived for the bedroom door.

At first he wasn't sure if an earthquake or a volcano eruption had struck the house. When he recovered his senses he found he was lying on the floor. His lower right leg felt like it was on fire. Phil was tying a handkerchief around it.

"The gun was loaded?" he asked.

She nodded. "Leo shot him right as he tried to shoot you. He only grazed you."

"My aim was better," Leopold said from the doorway. His voice was full of grim satisfaction. "What do we do about the body?"

~~~~

"This is the strangest case I've ever heard of," said the Commissioner of Scotland Yard. "Do you mean to tell me that in spite of all the evidence we collected against Colman, we got the wrong man?"

If anyone had asked Yo-han how he expected to spend his Saturday, the answer would not have been in the Korean Embassy, explaining to an incredulous ambassador how it was that he had discovered an international conspiracy and why there was a dead body in Blackpool that might cause headaches for the police. And then, because his life hadn't been stressful enough lately, the ambassador summoned the highest-ranking police officer in London and Yo-han had to explain it all again.

And, of course, glossing over Colman's part of this story meant he had to lie through his teeth.

"It's all very simple," Yo-han said, which was a lie of staggering magnitude. "Colman witnessed An commit the murders, so An framed him. Colman fled because he realised he had both a murderer and the police after him."

The commissioner nodded slowly. "And it was just a coincidence that of all the detectives in the world, he went to you for help without knowing you were the victim's cousin?"

Yo-han was painfully aware of both the Korean ambassador and the British minister of justice hovering in the background. "We met in passing... some years ago."

His lies wouldn't stand up to any scrutiny if some unusually intelligent policeman thought to check with his colleagues in Australia. Yo-han tried not to think about it, but his mind conjured up the image anyway: headlines screaming DETECTIVE COVERS UP FOR ASSASSIN!

The commissioner looked at the minister of justice. The minister of justice shrugged helplessly.

"All right, we can officially clear Colman's name. I suppose we'll have to offer compensation. The real question is, what about Mr. An?"

Everyone looked at the ambassador. That hapless dignitary could only shake his head.

"You shot him, Mr. Seo?"

"Yes," Yo-han said. That made approximately fifty lies in the last half hour.

"After he shot you?"

"I think it was as he shot me. We both fired at the same time."

"But he had already shot at you once?"

"Yes." Honesty, something that was in very short supply right now, prompted Yo-han to add, "I don't think he meant to shoot then. He was pointing the gun at the floor."

The ambassador waved that aside. "He confronted you with a gun, which he fired once. He fired it again and injured you, so you shot him. It's a clear case of self-defence. I don't think there needs to be a trial."

He looked very hard at the minister of justice, who nodded emphatically.

The commissioner said, "Several owners of Chinese restaurants have come forward with reports of a man answering to Mr. An's description. All of them agree that he was looking for you, Mr. Seo. And we've reopened the investigation into the Hastings murders and have found a chemist who reports what he describes as 'a Chinese man' trying to buy formaldehyde. I think both cases can be closed."

"But what will we tell the papers?" the minister asked. "They're already going mad over Avington's conspiracy."

"We will publish a full apology for ever accusing Mr. Colman and will reveal that the real murderer was shot dead while trying to kill someone else. Obviously they'll attack the police for incompetence." The commissioner sighed. "If we're lucky, they might stop talking about it by Christmas."

~~~~

Yo-han finished, "So there we are. An's guilt is revealed and Leopold becomes an innocent by-stander."

"That's better than I expected," Phil said. "I thought we'd have to emigrate under false names."

Yo-han had moved to a London hotel while the police tied up the case. Phil and Leopold were obviously unable to continue living in a crime scene, so they had come up with him.

"What will you do now?" Yo-han asked.

Leopold had been very subdued ever since An's death. He had confided in Yo-han on the train that he was afraid Phil might object to him killing someone after promising he'd turned over a new leaf. Yo-han reassured him; if a woman was willing to marry the man who shot her aunt, she probably wouldn't mind him killing a serial killer too.

"Wait about a month for the worst of the fuss to die down, then start auditioning again," Leopold said. Thoughtfully he added, "That's the best of being an actor. It's just about the only profession where a scandal helps your career."

"Most actors aren't accused of murder," Phil said.

"Cleared of murder," Leopold reminded her. "That'll make it even better. A divorce or bigamy case brings the customers in their hundreds. It'll be standing room only when they get the chance to see a real live accused murderer play Macbeth."

Phil and Yo-han looked at each other.

Yo-han said in an undertone, "It's not to late to emigrate under a false name if you want to."

Phil sighed. "Oh, I'm sure I'll think about it. Often." But she was smiling as she spoke.