"About what, Mrs Lee? You still haven't told me what it is the Bangs family knew about you. What was it they've been blackmailing you about all these years?"

She sank back down into the chair and shook her head. 

"Don't you think it might be best to tell him? Get it off your chest? Surely it can't be that bad, can it? After such a long time?"

"He may leave me anyway. You said that yourself. Once he has the insurance money, and with no business to tie him down. I don't know how much this other woman means to him. I've always hoped she was just a passing fancy, not enough to break a marriage over. But he'd go for sure if he knew the truth."

"Which is? Tell me. Mrs Lee. I won't judge to tell all in court anyway. I'm not sure a judge or jury are going to believe the tale of a totally motiveless crime you're advocating. Perhaps it's time to tell, for your own peace of mind. Closure, as they say."

"It's Jihoon," she said at last.

"Your son?"

"Yes. He's not Joon's, you see" she was gazing at her feet, in their blue velvet slippers. Size four, I guessed, not that I had to it any more, now we had our culprit in custody "he's Jung Byung Hee's"

"And they don't know? Your husband and son don't obviously hence the blackmail. But Byung Hee?"

"Oh, no. I never told him. Byung Hee and I were never a big romance. Although I think he may have wished we were. It was just one of those things. A mistake, really. We were at a dance a staff do at my father's factory. We'd had too much to drink. It meant nothing. But the damn Mir had to see us, didn't he? Boss's daughter caught in the bushes with the office boy. Oh, he had a field day with that, I can tell you. Taunting me at every opportunity, asking for little favours. Days off, the easiest shifts, a few extra pounds in his pay packet..." She paused to draw a shuddering breath...

"It wouldn't have mattered," she continued, "but it was soon after that that I met Joon. He came in as our new sales rep. I fell in love with him as soon as I saw him. I was already pregnant, of course, just a couple of weeks. It seemed such a tiny deception then. So foolish of me, but I couldn't risk telling him. It was easier to let him believe the bay was his. We married quickly, and I couldn't have been happier, I loved Joon so much. Still do. He believed me totally when I said Jihoon was born prematurely, He believed me totally when I said Jihoon was born prematurely. He was a small baby, so it was easy enough. And what was when Mir put two and two together. If I were to tell Joon now, it would be the end for us. Marriages even bad ones hold together when there are children, don't they? They give people a reason to stay together and make things work, if it wasn't for Jihoon…”

“Your husband loves him?”

“Of course he does. He’s our only child. It doesn’t matter who fathered him. Not to me. To me, he’s Joon’s always will be. But I don’t know if he’ll see it that way. He’ll be devastated. I can’t do that for him. Or to Joon. They’re all I have. I don’t care about the factory, or the money, or even the mistress. So long as he stays with me. Oh, please, Sergeant, can’t we find a way of not telling him? Of making all this go away? I’ll get Joon to drop the arson charges somehow. We’ll say it was a ghostly accident. No insurance company, no court case…”

I was starting to feel sorry for her, but she was deluding herself, showing all the signs of being a powerful but desperate woman much too used to getting her own way. But not this time. 

"I'm sorry, but I don't think that's a possibilty. We can't let people go around setting fire to property. Mir is going to have to pay for what he's done".

As for the blackmail, well of course. Mrs Lee was under no obligation to press charges, but it seemed pretty unlikely she'd be able to stop Mir from blabbing the whole story once the lawyers got to work on him. 

"I could pay the nasty little man. Yes, that's what I'll do. I already know his silence can be bought. It'll cost a fair bit this time, I imagine, but the man's probably heading for a prison sentence anyway, and  I'm sure some cash waiting for when he gets out could help make it all more bearable."

"Mrs Lee, I don't think you should be saying these things. Not in front of a police officer. The blackmailed turns blackmailer! You realise that I'm going to have to give a full report to the Chief Inspector."

It was as if a light went on in her head then, and a sudden smile spread across her face. 

"Jeong-su.."

I had to think hard for a moment to follow her line of thought. Who was Cheondong? Of course! If I had to be called Kim instead of Nara, then Chief Inspector Park would certainly never have allowed himself to called Jeong-su not at work anyway! But that was who she was talking about. 

"Oh, yes, Jeong-su and I go back a long way," she went on dreamily. "From before I met Bill or Byung Hee, in fact. I'm super dear Jeong-su, in fact. I'm sure dear Jeong-su will understand.."

Understand, maybe, but collude in her wild schemes? Never! Not the Chief I know. You couldn't find a more straight and honest policeman, however hard you tried. Old friends or not, that wasn't going to cut any ice with him. I think Mrs Lee had just clutched at the very last straw and missed.

She stood there silently for a minute or two, trying to convince herself there was a way out, but we both knew, deep down ,that there wasn't. The truth would have to come out. It was just a shame that poor Lee Jihoon, whose world had already been rocked by the loss of the factory job he had pinned his future upon, was now almost certainly about to have it toppled. 

And, at that moment, the door opened and Lee Joon came back in, carrying a tray. I took a sideways glance at his wife. She stood tall and proud, her cool exterior back in place as she quietly slipped my crumpled tissue under a cushion, took the tray from her husband's hands and, very carefully, in the last moments of calm before the inevitable storm, began to pour the tea.