Weeds in the Jungle

by Stuart Parker

hand started to return and he knocked it away again. It was becoming too weak to resist.

  Taro realised there was someone standing where Koki had been. The person squatted down beside him. It was Rie.

  ‘You should thank him,’ she said in a low, flat voice, ‘for saving your life.’ She held up the large pocket knife’s bloody blade. ‘You were a second away from getting this yourself.’

  The grotesque gargling had ceased at last. Rie knelt down and wiped the knife clean on Koki’s body like it were some kind of primeval ritual. Taro kicked Koki away from him and picked himself up. The spilt blood was still warm on his face. He dubbed at it with a handkerchief.

  Rie was staring at him.

  ‘Did he give you those bruises?’ Taro asked sombrely.

  ‘You sent me to him,’ said Rie. ‘He turned me into a prostitute. He gave me drugs to keep me awake and then he gave me drugs to put me to sleep. He was supposed to also give me drugs to make me dependent, but he took those ones himself. He was a fool.’ She kicked the lifeless body. ‘I want to have more feeling when I cut someone’s throat. But a prostitute doesn’t have feelings. Maybe that’s one area where he succeeded quite nicely.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Taro gently reached over and took the knife out of her hand - he was somewhat surprised that she let him. He squeezed the handle tightly so that his prints were upon it and tossed it away into the grass. I’ll tell the police I did it.’

  He felt around the grass until he found Koki’s gun. It was a large silver automatic pistol. It probably had its origins in the military. It hung heavy as Taro placed it in his jacket pocket.

  Taro stepped onto the quiet road, eyeing a low lying black sports car parked thirty metres further along. ‘That’s his car,’ he said. ‘If you want to be alone, I’ll take that one.’

  Rie came over to him, hugging herself for warmth. ‘Do you want to return to Tokyo?’

  ‘I can’t. Because I don’t know why they wanted to kill us.’

  ‘Well, you can take me home then. I have this in case you fall asleep again.’ She dangled the pocket knife before him. ‘It wasn’t yours to throw away.’

  40

  Taro had kept the slip of paper bearing Inspector Hakate’s phone number. The public telephone he was using was in an out of the way corner of Umeda Station in central Osaka. The morning rush hour was passed and the department store clerks were bowing in courtesy at the entrances to the first shoppers of the day.

  As the Inspector’s mobile phone rang, Taro tried to stretch out his sore knees and elbows. He had ditched the Mercedes Benz one maddening traffic jam too late. As nice a car as it was, he would be happy never to see it again.

  ‘Inspector Hakate here.’ The voice was abrupt and brimming with an intimidating intelligence.

  ‘This is Taro Takeda. I need to talk with you.’ The voice smacked of desperation.

  ‘I know it was you. I can feel it in my bones.’

  ‘I heard about it on the radio news. Was he the one you mentioned? The cop who shot Tokin’s son?’

  ‘Are you going to plead innocent? You don’t shoot a policeman and plead innocent. You get the death penalty.’

  ‘I want to talk with you face to face.’

  ‘Are you in Tokyo?’

  ‘Osaka.’

  ‘I’ll go there. Do you have a number?’

  ‘Call me again in the afternoon.’

  The line went dead. Taro retrieved his phone card from the slot and rejoined the flow of people in the station’s myriad of passageways. He bought a Daily Yomiuri newspaper at a kiosk by the ticket gates and rode an escalator down into the basement shopping level.

  Rie was where he had left her in the quiet Doutor coffee house. She was pecking at the corners of an omelette on toast.

  ‘You were gone a long time,’ Rie said.

  ‘The newspaper kiosk was a long way away,’ replied Taro as he sat down.

  Rie looked around to check for any potential eaves droppers. ‘If they’ve only found him recently, it would be on the internet, not in the newspaper.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right.’ Taro didn’t mention that what he really wanted to read was occupying most of the front page. He ordered a coffee and a bagel from the softly spoken waitress and his eyes scanned over it again. “Policeman Shot in Tokyo” was the headline. It told of a policeman gunned down while conducting a raid on a Tokyo address. The policeman was named as the decorated officer Koichi Okada. Married with a young child. Residents heard shots at approximately 10pm. No arrests had yet been made. The police currently did not have a suspect. It had been over twenty years since a policeman had been murdered in Tokyo either on-duty or off-duty. The exact location of the murder was not mentioned. The article concluded with an assurance from the Chief of Police that a quick arrest would be of the highest priority. No resource would be spared.

  The coffee and bagel arrived and Taro put the paper down.

  Rie had discovered her appetite and was making large inroads into her omelette. She was prettily made up with the high-end cosmetics she had purchased back in Tokyo. Her appearance did not reflect the time she had had.

  ‘What will you do now?’ she asked.

  ‘There’s someone I have to meet in the afternoon,’ replied Taro guardedly. ‘How about you?’

  Rie shrugged. ‘The life I had before seems better to me now than it did. Maybe because I might not be able to get it back again.’

  ‘You’ll have it,’ said Taro. He slurped at his coffee. ‘I’m sorry about dragging you to Tokyo.’

  ‘It’s made me a stronger person,’ said Rie coldly.

  ‘Yes, I can see that.’

  ‘Takarazuka was my dream. Everything else that remains is just the stinking world I have to contend with.’

  ‘You could try again.’

  ‘Maybe I will. I’m never going back to Tokyo.’ Rie used her mobile phone to snap his picture. ‘If I ever have a bad dream about what I did, I’ll look at your picture. I saved your life and that will hopefully make me feel better.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Taro half-heartedly.

  ‘I heard what Koki said about your girlfriend. Did he steal her from you?’

  Taro’s eyes shied away. ‘I wasn’t much of a boyfriend.’

  ‘I’ve seen worse. I think your girlfriend will say that now, too. I feel sorry for her. The life of a single mother is not easy. Maybe she will decide to terminate her pregnancy. Or maybe she will name her daughter Koki and try to take care of her.’

  ‘Koki is a boy’s name.’

  ‘Yes, Koko would have to do. And she would see Koki every time she looked at her. The way I see my dream when I look at Takarazuka. Maybe you could help her by pretending to be the father.’

  Taro stood up bitterly. ‘That would be unwise. Not many girls have lost two fathers before they were even born.’

  Hurt came into Rie’s eyes as he walked away.

  41

  Inspector Hakate was waiting at Osaka’s Dotonburi Bridge. He was wearing a dark brown suit, a white shirt and had a steel-capped briefcase tucked under his arm. He was perusing the colourful Glico sign, just like most of the tourists taking in and wandering about the famous bridge.

  Taro had been watching him from a distance, building up courage. He was wearing a grey suit he had bought in the shopping arcade on the way there – the peril of fronting himself to a policeman with a murder victim’s blood stains on his clothing came to him almost as an afterthought. As he approached Hakate, he wondered if there was backup lurking in the backdrop and if he would even have a chance to speak with him before a battalion of police descended upon him. It might well have depended whether or not Hakate really believed he was a cop killer. This meeting would be a definitive way to find out.

  Hakate did not turn with Taro’s proximity. It seemed unlikely that the sixth sense of a decorated detective could be so dull. A more likely explanation in Taro’s mind was that a clutch of snipers on the rooftops was watching Hakate’s back for him. S
urely, it couldn’t have been because he considered him harmless.

  ‘Thank you for coming so far to see me,’ said Taro, officially announcing his presence.

  Hakate turned gradually to face him, revealing an expression of dour detachment. ‘Not many criminals are this inviting or glad to see me,’ he murmured.

  ‘Shall we go somewhere to talk?’ said Taro. ‘A café?’

  ‘Sip tea in a café?’ Hakate was incredulous. He shook his head. ‘Don’t underestimate my anger.’

  Taro shied away from the eyes boring into him. He looked out across the narrow Dotonburi River passing under the bridge beneath him. The river was banked by concrete walls alongside which pathways ran on a course marked by takoyaki and ramen restaurants. The river water was a polluted brown and sat heavy with a meandering current to carry it along.

  ‘So tell me,’ said Taro. ‘The shot policeman, Okada, was he the one that shot Tokin’s son?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think I was tricked into shooting him.’

  ‘So you admit it?’

  ‘And I think he was tricked into trying to shoot me.’

  ‘Do you think he was lured into loving a Takarazuka dropout? Did you even know that you were in her residence when you shot him?’

  Taro’s eyes widened.

  ‘The Police Chief may also have been introduced to her pleasures,’ continued Hakate. ‘This is shaping as a very ugly case. But the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. You deceived the girl into going to Tokyo and then forced her to provide sexual services – services taken up by certain senior members of the police force. You had a run in with