by T. M. Parris
Chapter 20
Rose sat in the tiny office, which barely had space for a desk and chair, and stared at the phone. She wasn’t sure why she’d agreed to come here with Fairchild, or whether it would turn out to be a good idea. But it beat sitting on her own in her hotel room, and if any of them found something, they could take action more quickly.
Was she being emotional? If she was, she didn’t want to make a habit of it. But she needed help with this. Misgivings aside, Fairchild would do what he could, she was sure. And Takao might be useful. She’d already called Tim, who’d promised to escalate it with the Embassy and report James missing, which would alert the Japanese police. He did warn that they may not prioritise tracking down a missing foreigner if no evidence could be presented that a crime had taken place. But it was something, and he had a few sources to try.
Now for the tricky one. She picked up the office phone and dialled.
Fiona answered after five rings. She sounded groggy. It was only then that Rose thought about what time it was in the UK. Japan was eight hours ahead, so it was four in the morning. Maybe she could have waited a couple of hours. It said something that Fiona picked up, though.
“Hello?”
“It’s Rose.”
“Oh, hello.”
“There’s been a development.”
“Right?”
“I saw James the day before yesterday.”
“Oh. He’s all right, is he?” Nice of her to ask.
“Well, he was. He thinks some hackers have got onto him. They planted those emails you saw.”
“Is that right?”
“Well, actually, Fiona, I think it is. And the same people have been tracking him in some way. He didn’t return your calls because he deliberately left his phone behind to try and get them off the scent.”
“Well, that all sounds thrilling. And here I was thinking it was a mid-life crisis.”
“Fiona, there’s no mid-life crisis. He was being set up. Some group put a woman onto him to try and compromise him but it didn’t work, because it’s James and he wasn’t interested. So they fabricated some emails with the intention of blackmailing him, not realising that you’re in the habit of reading his emails.”
“I see.” Talk about the ice queen. “So now what? Is he intending to talk directly to me at some point, or is that too dangerous?”
“I advised him not to until we could find out more.”
“Oh. Right. Well, that explains it.”
“But he can’t now anyway, because he’s gone missing.”
“What do you mean, missing?”
“We went to the place he was staying, one of these capsule hotels. He wasn’t there last night. I can’t get in touch with him. He’s vanished.”
Silence. “I see. And what exactly can be done about it?”
“Well, I’m going to try and find him, Fiona. Because he’s my brother and all. I don’t know what you’re going to do. Sit about and feel abandoned, by the sound of it. I mean, if you cared at all that your husband’s disappeared off the face of the earth, there are certain things you could do, like report it to the Foreign Office in the UK, for example. But I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”
“Okay, okay.” Fiona sounded testy, which was the idea. “Look, I really don’t know what this is about. It’s not like James at all.”
“That’s exactly my point! James, have a fling with some Japanese girl? But you had no trouble believing it. It’s something to do with his work, Fiona. He deals with encryption, crypto currency transactions, security. The Bitcoin world is full of criminals.” She still felt James’ defence of crypto was a bit of a whitewash. “They tried something on him and it didn’t work, so they’ve taken him. Fiona, are you there?”
“Yes, I’m here.” She was sounding vague now. “How sure are you about this?”
“I’m sure. Absolutely. When I saw James on Saturday he was his normal self. He isn’t having a mid-life crisis. He just wants to get back to how things were.”
“Then why didn’t he come home?”
“Because you told him not to, Fiona! He wanted to. But you told him to stay here. So he did, like the dutiful obedient James we know. Look, this is serious. There may be some pretty unpleasant people involved in this.”
“What do you mean, unpleasant?”
“I mean, this isn’t some game. I’ve got help here. We’re working this from all angles to try and figure out who’s behind it. If you want to do something, contact the Foreign Office and follow their advice. Call Viziontecc and sound the alarm there. If that goes nowhere, jump up and down, speak to your MP, journalists, whatever. I’ve reported it here and I’m doing what I can. Okay?”
A pause. “Okay. If you say it’s serious…”
“It’s serious, Fiona. Now, do you want your husband back or not?”
“Well, of course I do.” She sounded tearful now. It had to be done.
“Okay, then. Let’s stay in touch.”
Rose hung up. Poor old James. Fiona didn’t exactly have his back. Took him for granted all these years. Maybe Rose did, too. Fiona needed waking up and Rose had done that, hopefully. But even so she hadn’t told Fiona the worst of it. She hoped she sounded capable and on top of things to her sister-in-law, because she certainly didn’t feel that way.
Chapter 21
You’d have thought that extreme stress caused by a singularly unusual circumstance, like being kidnapped, for example, might result in one not being able to sleep too well, but James didn’t appear to be having that problem. He’d slept in the car on the way here and he had a pretty good sleep overnight as well. These futons they provided didn’t look like much but seemed to do the trick, somehow. Still, the moment he did wake the next day, the enormity of it all did somewhat rush back into his head all of a sudden.
He was in an upstairs bedroom of a small terraced house, quite newly built by the look of it, though that didn’t stop it being positively cold inside. A lesson in insulation wouldn’t have gone amiss with whoever threw these up. Anyway, he was surrounded on the tatami floor by three sleeping bodies, his sushi bar accosters, who arrived at the same time as he did last night in a similar-looking retro car. At the time, all he could see in the dark was that the row of houses stood on its own with nothing nearby except open space and darkness. Only one of the houses had any lights on, and it was the one they were all prodded into.
It was, he had to say, rather minimal in here with little in the way of creature comforts. Soft furnishings might have helped, some carpet maybe. But it was clear this wasn’t anyone’s home as such, and he certainly hoped it wasn’t going to become his. Anyway, they were all shepherded upstairs, and given the size of the gentleman who settled by the door, with the same kind of theme downstairs as well, they weren’t going anywhere. Mirai and her pals huddled in the dark and talked. They occasionally looked over at James but in general terms he was not invited into their worried little cluster, and given it was some ridiculous hour of the morning, he thought he could most usefully spend his time catching up on some sleep.
It was the sun that woke him up. The room didn’t have any curtains so it got to a certain angle and shone straight into his face as he lay. There could even have been a little warmth in its rays, but thinking about it, James decided that was just his optimistic imagination. He wriggled about in the smelly sleeping bag they’d given him, and sat up. The three other futons each held a non-moving body. The others didn’t seem bothered by the excess of light. It was cold enough to see one’s own breath. Was there a radiator or heater of any sort? He could see some contraption, right up at the top of the wall. What good was it there? How were you supposed to even reach it? He was decidedly reluctant to exit his sleeping bag until the room temperature could be improved.
He got to his knees and leaned a shoulder on the wall. Trouble was, he didn’t want to get his arms out, as for the sake of hygiene he’d felt it wise last night to undress before going to bed, apart from the essentia
ls on the bottom half, of course. Inside the bag he slid his knee along and got one foot on the ground, but when he tried the other he did a rather undignified roll and ended up back where he started from, only the other way round. He tried again, this time with more success, and ended up standing. It took a fair while to shuffle over to the heater, if that was what it was, and when he got there he established that it was indeed too high to reach. To do this he had to stick his arm out of the sleeping bag, an action which made him even firmer in his resolve to stay inside the bag until the room could somehow be made habitable. Replacing his arm and hugging himself to salvage some of the lost heat, he looked out of the window. Rather beautiful it was out there, he had to admit, a range of rocky snow-covered mountains right across the horizon, looking pristine and golden-white in the morning sun. A layer of snow several inches thick covered the ground right up to the back of the house. Tokyo this was not.
Another shuffle or two and he noticed a white remote control sitting on the windowsill. What was the betting that was for the wall unit? Only one way to find out. He moved forward but in his enthusiasm got a bit carried away and his feet couldn’t keep pace with the rest of his body. His lower half remained in the middle of the room while his top half swung forward then down to the floor, far too quickly for him to remove his arms from the sleeping bag and break his fall. He made an involuntary yelping sound on his way down, and that, coupled with the sound of various parts of his body colliding heavily with unyielding tatami, made quite a racket.
The bodies around him sprang up like they’d been electrocuted. Six wide eyes stared at him from dark tousled heads. The door opened. A big guy stood in the doorway and glared. Slicked-back hair, moustache, dark jacket, hairy chest, tattoos. James was glad he didn’t get a better look at them last night. He’d never have got any sleep if he had.
“Sorry!” he called out from his prone position. “Fell over! I was trying to put the heater on, you see, up there?”
He tried to nod in the appropriate direction but found it tricky. The man was not impressed. He said something curt in Japanese that made an impression on the others, and left.
Watched by the youngsters, James tried to worm himself into a sitting position back on his futon. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I was just trying to get a bit of heat going. Is no one else cold?”
The two boys stared. Mirai eased herself out of her bag and padded over to the window. She picked up the remote control and pressed a few buttons, aiming at the heater. It whirred into life, its ridges opening to emit a warm breeze.
“Oh, well done, Mirai. That’ll make a difference.”
She replaced the remote and crawled back into her sleeping bag. James couldn’t help noticing she had nothing but knickers on her bottom half, and they were a deep burgundy colour. Did she have a burgundy outfit at home to match? She didn’t go back to sleep, though. She sat and gathered the bag around her shoulders. So did the others, and James, so they all sat in a circle with only their heads sticking out of sleeping-bag pyramids.
“So, given we all seem to be in the same boat now,” said James, “would this be a good time to tell me what on earth is going on?”
She gave him that desperate look again. “So sorry, James-san.”
“Yes, yes, but sorry about what? I rather feel like I’ve earned the right to an explanation. It was you who got into my mailbox and sent those emails. Wasn’t it?”
She exchanged looks with the other two and they muttered a few words to each other. The boys shrugged.
“My friends are Tomo and Haruma,” said Mirai. James wasn’t sure which was which, but didn’t think it mattered at that stage. “We like computers.”
“You’re hackers?”
She looked shocked. “Not hackers. Not. But we know how. We like cosplay and fantasy characters. Manga. Computer games. We go to events. Like Yoyogi Park, but with role play. Many others go also, our friends, other students, but people all ages.”
“Okay, yes, I get it.” Well, he didn’t entirely, but he understood what she was saying.
“A company took over a big event that happens every year. Our favourite. Very popular. But they increased ticket price to ten times amount! Students, young people, couldn’t afford to go. So…”
“So?” James encouraged.
“So we hacked their ticket system and made all tickets free. Put out on social media. Thousands got tickets! Only for an hour before they closed it down, but – lots of talk. We were famous!”
“Well, that’s impressive, but did you get into any trouble?”
“At start, no. Because online we have different names. Avatars. Nobody know who we are.”
“You were anonymous.”
“Yes. Everyone knows us online, but nobody offline. You see?”
“Of course. You can be world-famous on the web but no one can connect that to the real you.”
“Ah, but…” Mirai put her head on one side, a rather expressive trademark Japanese gesture, James had observed.
“It went wrong?”
“They emailed us. They sent photos of us. They knew our real names. What we did.”
“Who?”
“Eh – toooo…”
“You don’t know who?”
“A group. Not Japanese. In some other country. Many other countries. They have a leader, we don’t know who. But they said they tell police if…”
“If what?”
“We have to do what they say. We have to, James-san! Or they tell police. Everyone know. We bring shame on families, on ancestors.”
“Ancestors?” Every time James thought he was getting the hang of this place, it threw him a curveball. He got the general impression, though.
“So to keep your identities a secret you had to do whatever they wanted? And what did they want?”
Mirai’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. “You, James-san.”
It made sense. The awkwardness of it all. Mirai standing out like a sore thumb at the conference, her gaucheness in the hotel room. As he’d suspected, she didn’t want to be there in the first place. A young woman being coerced into throwing herself at someone like him! What an appalling predicament.
“Well, that does rather make sense now you’ve explained it,” he said. “But would it be so terrible if people found out? I mean, knowing something and being able to prove it are two different things. You could become famous! The toast of the cosplay community! The heroic trio!”
She exchanged glances with the others. Though they kept quiet he got the impression they were following the conversation. “Not trio. Hmmm….” It took her a while to grasp the word. “Quartet. We were quartet.”
“There were four of you? So where’s the other one?”
Mirai was looking in particular at one of the others now, the one dressed as a clown the day before.
“He was Kiyonori. Haruma’s brother.” Haruma was looking at Mirai intensely. “Kiyonori didn’t want to do what they said. He was angry. But also ashamed. So – he jumped.”
“Jumped? Jumped where?”
An awkward silence.
“Jumped off a building,” said Mirai. It came out as a whisper.
“He took his own life?” What a thick idiot he was. Finally, he’d got it.
There it was again, that morose expression, that sadness which had hung around Mirai like a cloud, despite her forced conviviality. The others had it, too; they were in mourning, these poor people. They’d lost their friend, and one of them had lost a brother. Suddenly James thought of Henry and Sophie, wondered what they were doing now and if he’d ever see them again.
In the silence, a door slammed downstairs. A car started up and drove away. Men talked. Whoever had gone, there were plenty of others left. No one moved.
“Look, I really am terribly sorry,” said James inadequately. “These people sound utterly dreadful. We really don’t know anything about them?”
Their blank looks confirmed it.
“And the people who brought
us here? The chap outside the door? I mean I’m far from an expert in these things, but they look a lot like—”
“Yakuza,” whispered Mirai, her eyes flicking to the door. “They work with the other people, the not Japanese people. They told them to bring us here.”
“And why here?”
“Here we wait.”
“Wait for what?”
Mirai’s voice trembled. “They are coming here. The others.”
“The ones who emailed you? They’re coming to Japan? To see us?”
“To see you.”
James sat back. “I see. Well, that’s a lot of trouble to go to. Do we know when?”
Mirai shrugged. “Soon.”
“Right, right.”
So, basically, as he read it, an international group of blackmailing hackers who worked with the mafia were holding him hostage and were on their way to the country specifically to have a word with him. He’d love to think he had no idea what they could possibly want. Unfortunately, he did have a bit of an inkling. And it wasn’t a nice thought. Not nice at all.
Chapter 22
Fairchild had spent all day talking on the phone and badgering Takao to call in all possible favours. As a result of the Hong Kong conversation, he’d also booked himself onto the earliest available flight to Hong Kong. Now he was sitting and waiting for something to bite. Rose was out combing the streets of Shinjuku, Yoyogi Park, the conference venue, any place she could think of. It was probably futile but it beat doing nothing. He’d probably do the same. Not that he knew what it was like to have a brother; for the last thirty years he’d had no living relatives at all.
The restaurant was open and doing a steady evening trade, so he drifted into the bar and sat talking to Carmel for a while, sinking a couple of long ones. Then Zack walked in.
“Hey, Fairchild! Surprise!”
Fairchild nearly choked on his gin. “Just a little. What on earth are you doing here? I thought they had you busy in Taipei.”
“They did. But something came up that was more important. Hey, Carmel!” He knew the Filipino from Manila. “Any chance of a whisky? Just whisky, not the theme park in a glass?”