by A. J. Roe
Yuriko went to speak, then thought better of it. She bit her lip and nodded.
Just when Rick thought he’d managed to regain some level of credibility, it dawned on him that the black leather bag, containing his passport and wallet, was missing. It was either in a police station somewhere being stamped and registered as evidence or still in the Professor's office.
The thought of returning to Voss’s house was literally the last thing in the world he wanted to do. But trying to get anywhere, let alone out of the country without money or ID would make things infinitely more difficult. Rick had no choice but to go with his gut and that told him to trust Thyos. The voice had promised she would get him home one way or another, now it was time for her to put her money where her mouth was, if she even had one.
“We should get rid of our phones, right?” Yuriko said, interrupting his train of thought. “They could be tracked.”.
“Yeah. Obviously,” Rick said as though he’d been thinking the same. “If you have anyone you want to call and let know you’re okay before we do this, then this’ll be your last chance.”
“No one.”
“Really? What about your parents?”
“They’re both long gone.”
“Oh, sorry. Well then, you need to wipe it and throw it as far as you can from the window.”
“Right now? Bu-”
“-just do it.”
She swallowed her pride. “Fine.”
Rick hit the call button and waited, his shoulders hunched up so tight it hurt. He stared out the window at the foreign cityscape and watched a line of cars snake down the single long straight road that ran from the station. An unfamiliar trill signalled that Sarah's phone was ringing half a world away.
“It’s me,” he said the moment she answered. “Look I’m sorry but I don’t know If I’m going to be there on Sunday.” Rick glanced back towards Yuriko who was lying back on the bed with an arm covering her face, either trying to sleep or pretending she wasn’t listening in to his conversation. He lowered his voice, “In fact, I need you to take Ellie and go and stay with your parents for a few days. Please just trust me, it's important.”
Sarah erupted into the type of rant that could shake the earth itself. Rick had expected as much and bit his lip, knowing this was not the time to enter into battle with her.
Once her initial explosion simmered down, he decided to appeal to his ex-wife’s good side. “Look, I know I’ve messed up before and I’m sorry for that.” He meant it. “But for once, this is nothing I’ve do-”
Sarah cut him off with yet another torrent of rage.
“Fine. Look, ju-” he was interrupted again in mid-sentence and clenched his teeth in frustration. Despite her anger, surely she would take him seriously? The only thing that mattered was keeping them safe.
Rick agreed with everything Sarah said for the next few minutes and it was hard for her to keep fighting. Reluctantly, she consented to do as he asked and the conversation soon ended abruptly.
When he turned back, Yuriko was still on the bed. She was doing her best to give him some privacy, playing around with her phone, hopefully running the factory reset function.
It was humiliating, having his failings as a husband and father now put on display for this stranger to see. Screw it, we’ve got bigger problems.
Rick tapped in another number, hoping desperately that his calls weren’t already being traced. After eight or nine rings Sanjay’s answerphone cut in. He winced, fully aware that there was now going to be a recording of his seeming descent into insanity. Still, he had to let someone back home know what was really happening.
“Listen mate, it's me. I’m in Japan, sorry but I had no choice but to go right away. Our find was valuable, very valuable, now some people are after me. I know this is going to sound mental, but I need you to contact someone at our embassy or the police and let them know that someone is trying to kill me. A man named ‘Hazumi Sota’. That's why I ran. I’ll call you again as soon as I can but I have to get rid of my phone now, so I’ll be out of reach. Hope you’re getting better mate. Bye.”
As he was ending the call, Yuriko bolted upright from the waterbed, her eyes widened in panic. “You need to see this.” She marched over, pressed her phone into Rick’s hand and with a click at the top of the screen the Japanese text flicked to Roman characters. The website displayed a headshot of Professor Voss in the top right corner with the title ‘FOREIGN SCHOLAR MURDERED’.
Below the headline sat pictures of them both, named as suspects. Yuriko’s was an old family photo, while Rick’s must have been scanned from his passport when he entered the country. It was old but unmistakable. His hand shot to the handle of the relic, tucked into the back of his belt. For some unknown reason, Thyos was no longer there, or no longer speaking at least.
Perfectly on cue, the siren of a police car rang out. From the corner of his eye, Rick saw flashing red lights streaming down the main road. There was no doubt in his mind that they were coming for him.
18
It took Rick and Yuriko no more than ten seconds to agree they needed an alternative exit. If the police were coming for them, trying to leave via the front door would be as good as handing themselves over. A rusted metal fire escape dangling off the outside of the adjacent building gave Rick the inspiration he needed.
Both their phones were ejected from the window and landed in the back of a parked-up dump truck below, hopefully it would move at dawn and buy them a little time.
As they jogged down the long hallway towards the fire escape at the front of the building, the sickly scents of cheap perfume and grunts of patrons spilling out into the corridor was enough to make Rick’s stomach lurch.
To their rear, the wheezing hotel owner shouted at them to stop, but there wasn’t a chance in hell. The sirens were getting closer with each second and the old pervert had obviously tipped the police off when he’d seen their photos plastered all over the news.
Yuriko skidded to a halt in front of a pair of smoke-stained fire doors at the end of the corridor. They were five stories above the entrance they had come through just a couple of hours before.
Yuriko threw her weight against the release bar and thankfully, with a loud clunk, the doors burst open.
Directly ahead, a rusted metal exoskeleton of steel clung to the neon-lit building. Rain was pouring from above and the walkway was slick beneath the soft rubber shoes Rick had been given on entering the Professor’s hall. He almost lost his footing as the wind whipped down the narrow alleyway and rattled the structure.
As Yuriko slid out beside him, the fire escape creaked and strained threatening to tear away from the side of the building. Climbing instinct kicked in and Rick dropped his weight down low in preparation for an impending disaster that never came.
The pair edged further out and despite all appearances the decrepit walkway held. Rick wrapped his hands around the railing and leaned forwards, trying to get a glimpse over the edge. The sirens had stopped but the screech of tyres down below confirmed his suspicions. Rick snatched Yuriko’s wrist and pulled her back out of sight at his side.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “When they go inside, we move.” Rick held back a moment, then in a low squat leaned forwards just enough to get a view over the edge. A small crowd of five or six pedestrians and motel guests, all under umbrellas, had gathered on the far side of the road. Most of them had their phones out filming the action as a pair of squad cars closed in tight around the entrance. A second later, four armed officers in bulletproof vests and full tactical assault gear slipped smoothly from the doors of their vehicles and up to the front of the building in a triangle formation, while the onlookers followed their every move.
Standing at the end of the corridor, the hotel owner was shouting down the stairwell to the officers. Rick tried to zone the old man out, if they didn’t focus, this perilous climb could easily end in disaster.
“I’ll go first,” Rick whispered, “Put your hands and feet e
xactly where I do.”
Yuriko recoiled, unsure whether it was an act of kindness or cowardice. He didn’t care what she thought, he was the one with climbing experience and would stand a better chance of catching her if she fell than if they went the other way round.
Dropping ten feet down the ladder with ease, Rick stepped back onto the narrow fourth floor platform and glanced up at his accomplice, widening his eyes as if telling her to ‘get on with it’.
Yuriko slid on her stomach, lowering her legs down onto the top rungs of the ladder. Then she froze. Rick had seen it before, even without a fear of heights, inexperienced climbers would often panic and just lock up. Below was a sheer drop, wind and rain beat against her from all sides, fear was understandable but they didn’t have time for this.
“Move. Now!” Rick yelled, hoping to shock Yuriko from her trance. After what seemed like age, she finally gritted her teeth and forced her legs to take a cautious step down. From then on, the descent was fast.
By the time they had made it to the second floor, two of the police officers were at the top of the fire escape. Over the howling wind, Rick could hear gruff shouts aimed in their direction, but there wasn’t the slightest chance he was going to let a bunch of crooked police pin the billionaire’s murder on them.
The bottom of the final ladder ended a good ten feet above the ground, they would have no choice but to hang and drop.
Water was rushing across the fire escape like a waterfall as Rick dangled over the pavement. Yuriko was just a couple of feet above and moving fast downwards when he let go.
Rick’s feet slammed onto the concrete and an explosion of pain shot up through his knees but he’d made it.
In preparation to follow, Yuriko squatted down and reached out for the bottom rung with her left hand. The second her fingers found metal, the boom of a gunshot exploded from above.
A blinding muzzle flash illuminated the darkness and the bullet ricocheted off the ladder inches from where Yuriko hung. The crowd of onlookers screamed and scattered in all directions.
Yuriko dropped like a stone, crashing into the pavement feet first and her legs buckled awkwardly on impact.
Rick got there half a second later and dragged her to temporary safety beneath the bones of the metal fire escape. He ran his hands over her torso, looking for the bullet wound but found nothing. “Are you hit?”
“No, but my ankle.” Yuriko pulled herself into a sitting position, her face twisted with pain.
It didn’t look broken, either way it was a damn sight better than being shot. The fire escape rattled as two of the officers landed on the third floor overhead.
“Hold on,” Rick said and Yuriko wrapped her arms around his neck, putting her weight on his left shoulder.
He glanced up, waiting for a moment when both officers were on the ladder and unable to shoot again. With her in a half-piggyback, they bolted across the street, towards a thin alleyway that cut between two of the buildings opposite.
The pair cleared fifteen feet into the alley before coming face to face with a brick wall that stood three stories high. A dead end.
Rick skidded to a stop, scanning every inch of the walls for a way out. Just six feet back towards the hotel, he found what he was looking for. A dark green fire door was tucked away, almost invisible between the surrounding black walls.
Footsteps slammed into the ground as one of the officers dropped from the ladder. Rick held Yuriko tight with an arm around her waist and charged at the door, praying it would give.
With an explosion of wood and metal, the pair burst across the threshold and landed sprawled out on a stained, red-carpeted floor. The carpet stuck to his face, stinking of old whiskey and fag ash.
Pulling himself to his feet, Rick yanked Yuriko back up and slammed the door behind them. The metal around the latch had warped and bent from the impact, but by pure luck the mechanism still engaged. He twisted the lock until it clunked, then grabbed a fire extinguisher from the corner of the corridor and threw it down against the metal handle, causing it to shear off and bounce along the sticky carpet. The manoeuvre might buy them a few seconds but wouldn’t hold a squad of armed riot police off for long.
Only then did Rick have a moment to take stock. They were in some kind of sleazy Karaoke parlour. The hallway was accentuated by the distant terrible singing of drunk businessmen and the scents of plum liquor, sickly cheap perfume and cigar smoke.
Upon hearing the commotion, a group of ten or so middle-aged men, in black suits, with ties pulled loose and young hostesses in heavy makeup and French maid outfits, spilled out into the corridor.
One of the officers outside had caught up and was banging against the door to the rear but it didn’t budge.
A voice from the depths of the crowd yelled something Rick couldn’t understand and the corridor exploded in a rabble of slurred shouts. He raised his hand, stepping in front of Yuriko to try and calm the situation. From the approach of the swarming mass of drunkards, he could tell polite placation wasn’t going to cut it.
Rick whipped the relic from the sheath in the back of his trousers and brandished the blade trying his best to look aggressive. He prayed no one would notice his hands were shaking like a junkie going cold turkey.
Most of the customers then had a change of heart and decided to retreat back into their rooms for more singing and drinking, rather than confront the knife-wielding crack addict. One did not, an older man with piercing eyes stood his ground in the corridor and stared Rick down, refusing to be intimidated.
When the stony-faced bastard didn’t move, Rick had no choice but to try and inch past the old man with his weapon raised blade-first, waiting for him to make a move.
19
The last twelve hours had been without a doubt the worst of Rick’s life. Somehow even worse than the day Sarah walked out on him with his crying toddler in her arms (although that came close). At least when they left on that cold winter morning, he knew he would still see Ellie again.
Between the exhaustion, thirst, watching the Professor die and barely escaping a similar fate himself, Rick’s grip on reality was fast waning. He now felt as though he was living the plot of some low-budget gangster movie.
Somehow, the pair had made it out of the Karaoke parlour without further incident. For most of the night Rick and Yuriko had worked north through a maze of narrow alleyways towards the docks.
They’d spent the remaining couple of hours of darkness in the cellar of a small fishing hut that was pushed right up against the water’s edge.
In wet clothes and with icy sea winds pounding the slatted wooden walls, there was no escape from the bitter cold. At one point, Rick had been roused from his almost sleep-like state and watched, trying to control his panic while the police combed across the floorboards above them with weapons drawn. He was in no doubt that the armed officers were ready to shoot on sight, should he so much as accidentally cough. It was, by a country mile, the most stressful experience of Rick’s life.
Now every single inch of Rick’s body was aching, his fingers were trembling and his head was pounding from dehydration. He’d just about started to recover the feeling in his fingers—which had been clasped around the relic all night—when Thyos spoke once again. He didn’t know if he was furious or relieved. Honestly, he just wanted it to be over, to go home and forget the whole damn ordeal.
“Where have you been? I thought you were meant to be helping me? I nearly died about twenty times last night.”
“But you are still alive, as I knew you would be. Now,” she snapped back to business, “It is time to go.” Rick swore under his breath before relaying her message to Yuriko, whose expression matched his own look of grim self-pity.
“Are we seriously going to try and sneak onto a boat in broad daylight?”
“No.” Rick answered, not wanting to waste his breath repeating Thyos’s plan, especially if it meant having to listen to a second more of her complaining.
“Don’t worry. J
ust follow my lead.”
“Seriously? You can’t blame me if that doesn’t automatically fill me with confidence after last night.”
Rick chose not to hear, the energy to fight was utterly absent.
Up in the boathouse overhead, there was a row of steel lockers that they’d missed in the darkness. Rick pulled the door of the first one forwards by the handle, jamming his fingers in the gap and prising it, until the cheap metal lock popped open.
Apart from a thick layer of dust, he found nothing. They must be locked for a reason, he figured and set about moving down the row.
In the third locker Rick came across a roll of grey duct tape that had looked like it had been sitting there for the best part of a decade, and a couple of sealed bottles of some sugary Japanese green tea drink. He cracked one open. The bizarre concoction had a chemical, perfume-like smell but he needed the fluids. Downing one bottle fast, Rick chucked the other to Yuriko, then continued the search for anything that could be used to their advantage.
Inside the fifth and sixth lockers they found several pairs of thick, navy-blue dock worker overalls and white hard hats; a plan started to form in Rick’s head.
To conceal the relic, he lifted up his shirt and held the sheath against his body while Yuriko ran the tape around his abdomen three times until it was firmly secured against his left side, reaching from the bottom of his hip up to his ribs.
Yuriko tried her best not to make any physical contact with him as she worked, she was obviously uncomfortable just laying eyes on Rick’s shirtless chest, let alone touching it. Still, he found himself thinking that in a different situation, when he wasn’t half dead on his feet, he might have actually enjoyed a young woman being so close to his half-naked body. Although, maybe in that case, it could be someone he disliked a little less.