Parry caught the bartender’s eye and ordered Hosokawa’s lager along with another pint of bitter for himself and another Bellini for Johansen.
“The lieutenant and I have been flogging our tired old brains over the shinjus,” he told Hosokawa. “We’d welcome the input of a younger and sharper mind.”
Hosokawa gave a flattered bow and clenched his hands in GRATITUDE. “As a matter of fact, it was about those that I wanted to talk to you.”
“I thought so. By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask. The other morning. When all that business was going on at the Debussy. You were on the front desk, right?”
“I took your call.”
“Yes. But then you weren’t on the desk when the commissioner arrived a few minutes later. What happened there?”
“I’m afraid...” Hosokawa looked uncomfortable. There was even a hint of a blush. “I had to relieve myself. The necessity came on me rather abruptly, so I called up and asked Kadosa to come down and sit in for me.”
“That was unfortunate timing. Maybe if you’d been there when... Well, never mind. Can’t be helped.”
“If I’d been there when what, sir?”
“Doesn’t matter. Spilled milk and all that. What is it you want to say? About the shinjus.”
“Sir, the word going around HQ is that they might be murders. Is that really true? Is that possible?”
“I think the fact there’s been two of them now would seem to make it a little more likely.”
“Then could we be looking at something Triple-X have done?”
“The boss and I were just discussing that,” said Johansen. “And we’d just come up with the idea that they’re... How did you put it, boss?”
“Propaganda slayings.”
“Yeah. Propaganda slayings.”
“Well, now, that’s what I thought, too,” said Hosokawa. “There’s something of a theatrical element to them, isn’t there?”
“But then suicides can be theatrical also,” said Parry. “Let’s not forget that. You see, I’m not rejecting the possibility that these are still shinjus. Equally, it never hurts to explore another avenue of investigation. It may turn out to be a cul-de-sac, but you’ll never know that unless you try.”
“A ‘cul-de-sac’?” said Hosokawa, with a frown.
“Don’t ask,” said Johansen, shaking his head wearily. “The boss doesn’t speak proper English, not like you and me.”
Their drinks arrived, and Parry handed the bartender an IC card for the cost of the round to be subtracted.
“Well, cheers,” said Parry.
“Skål,” said Johansen, raising his cocktail.
“Kampai,” said Hosokawa, doing the same with his lager.
The three of them clinked glasses.
“Now then,” Parry said, “following this idea through. Let’s try and put ourselves into the mind of a Triple-Xer, if we can. We hate Foreigners. We look down on Sirens as the lowest of the low. We decide we’re going to kill a Siren and cause a Foreign loss and make it appear as if they took their own lives. Make it appear, as Yoshi here was helpfully on hand to observe, like a shinju. Simple question: why?”
“In order to discredit Foreigners,” said Johansen.
“Indeed. But how, precisely, does it do that?”
“Because,” said Hosokawa, “it’s drawing attention to an issue which a lot of people would prefer to ignore.”
“Yes, Yoshi, go on.”
If Hosokawa was flattered that the two most senior officers in his district were interested in his opinion, he gave no sign of it. “I mean, most people love Foreigners, don’t they? They love them because they’re strange, they’re beautiful. Because they brought humanity to its senses. Because they’ve chosen this planet to visit and everyone likes to feel chosen. People love them without knowing all the reasons quite why they love them. And yet there’s this thing they use humans for that just doesn’t sit right in many people’s minds.”
“Singing.”
“That’s it. Singing. It makes some of us a bit uncomfortable, doesn’t it? Because of what it resembles. What it is similar to.”
The word did not need to be said but Johansen said it anyway: “Prostitution.”
“We don’t know, of course, that the golden giants’ appreciation of singing is anything other than aesthetic,” Parry said, feeling that this point should be made, and indeed could not be made often enough.
“Of course, sir,” said Hosokawa. “I wasn’t suggesting for a moment that it is prostitution.”
“Yeah, boss. We’re trying to think like Triple-Xers, remember.”
“Sorry. Yes.” Parry knocked back a deep draught of his bitter. “Right, so Triple-X want to tap into the public’s unease, such as it is, about singing.”
“And a good way of going about that is to kill a Siren and a Foreigner in a hotel room together,” said Johansen. “That way, there’s no doubt as to what the pair of them were up to before they died.”
“And the suicide aspect?”
“Serves to heighten the ‘unnaturalness’ of the act,” Hosokawa suggested.
“Not to mention makes the whole event much more headline-grabbing,” Johansen said.
“That’s for sure,” said Parry, with a grimace. “And at the same time as these shinjus are alarming humans, they’re also alarming Foreigners.” Two birds with one stone. Just as Quesnel had said, albeit in a somewhat different manner. “There’s a definite logic there, yes. If you’re a Triple-Xer, that is. You get to cause a Foreign loss, you get to kill a Siren, and you get to rub the public’s noses in a practice about which a proportion of the population feel, to say the least, ambivalent. That’s the why, then. That would be what Triple-X is trying to achieve. Now for the how.”
“I imagine it would be difficult, but not impossible, to get hold of a master key-unit and let yourself into a Foreigner’s room,” said Hosokawa. “You’ve seen that the room’s occupant has gone out to Sirensong, and you know it’ll be back in a few hours’ time. You lie in wait, maybe in the bathroom. Eventually the Foreigner returns with a Siren. The singing starts, and then...”
“And then, catching them at a vulnerable moment, you do the deed,” said Parry, nodding. “That’s good, Yoshi.” He was impressed. Hosokawa might be green, but he had a sharp intuition. A couple of years, a few of the edges knocked off him, and he could definitely become an asset to the FPP. “OK, down to the specifics. Daryl Henderson first. He and his Foreigner come into the room. He starts singing. You, Mr Triple-Xer – or, let’s not be sexist here, Ms Triple-Xer – rush out of the bathroom, shoot Henderson once in the chest at close range, then, while he’s dying or even already dead, wrap his hand around the gun, put the barrel in his mouth and make him blow his brains out. Possible, agreed?”
Johansen and Hosokawa nodded.
“Then Dagmar Pfitzner. Say she goes out on the balcony at the Debussy to get some fresh air. Perhaps she’s getting ready to sing, perhaps she’s just finished. Either way, she’s out there taking a breather. The Foreigner’s with her. You sneak up from behind and manhandle her over the balustrade. You’ve caught her unawares. She’s no time to put up a resistance. She falls and hits the canal and cracks her neck. Both feasible scenarios, particularly if you have the element of surprise on your side. There’s still one big glaring problem.”
“The Foreigner,” said Johansen.
“Indeed. In each case, how do you kill the Foreigner?”
“What if you don’t?” said Hosokawa. “What if, when they saw their Sirens being attacked, the Foreigners simply panicked and made an emergency escape?”
“Ah yes. Trouble is, how could you, as this hypothetical Triple-X killer, guarantee that that’s what they’re going to do? If your plan is to leave a human body and a set of Foreign remains in the room, you can’t just hope that the Foreigner’s going to oblige by pulling the ripcord. In order to be sure of its loss, you’ve got to kill it. Or at any rate have some surefire method of making it shed i
ts clothing.”
“Turn off the air-conditioning?” said Johansen. “That always gets me down to my underwear in no time.”
“Ho ho, Pål. Very droll.”
Hosokawa said, eyes narrowing in thought, “Is there, sir, to your knowledge, a weapon capable of causing a Foreign loss? I mean, other than a bomb or an incendiary device or beating them with a club. Something that disposes of Foreigners without damaging their clothing?”
“None that I’m aware of.”
“But someone could have developed such a weapon.”
“Who? Who in their right mind would?”
“Triple-X,” said Johansen matter-of-factly.
This Parry acknowledged with the slowest, most reluctant of nods. “I’m sure they’d want to create a weapon like that, but technologically it’s beyond their capabilities. They’re basement terrorists. Their bombs are always homemade, and if they use anything sophisticated, then it’s something they’ve purchased off an arms dealer.”
“Then maybe somebody else has developed an anti-Foreign weapon and sold it to Triple-X,” said Hosokawa.
“But again, who would do such a thing?”
“I agree, sir, it’s not a pleasant thought, but you must be prepared to consider it. There may be somebody out there, some maverick scientist, engineer, whatever, who’s seen that the market exists for a portable, no-mess anti-Foreign weapon and built one.”
Parry sighed. “Well, I admit it’s a possibility. But I don’t like it. Why can’t the explanation be a little more straightforward? I mean, the perpetrators at Koh Farang used planks and baseball bats. Perfectly effective.”
“The least complicated answer is usually the right one,” Johansen added. “If you ask me, this anti-Foreign weapon sounds like something out of Resort-City Beat.”
Hosokawa, though evidently thinking his proposition still had some validity, acceded to his superior officers’ opinion with a bow. “It was just an idea.”
Parry gave a kindly smile. “Never be afraid to suggest an idea, Yoshi.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “Ah. I should be on my way.”
“A busy night, sir?” said Hosokawa.
“The boss is off to a party at the Fuentes house,” said Johansen, waggling his eyebrows. “He moves in important social circles, you know.”
“I didn’t know you were a friend of Mrs Fuentes, sir.”
“An acquaintance. We met on the Civic Committee.” Parry quickly drained his glass. “Listen, thanks, both of you. This has been very useful.”
Hosokawa manufolded INDULGENCE. “Not at all.”
“Yeah, boss. No problem. Have a good evening.”
“You too. Hope you find those nice tourist girls.”
“Even if I don’t, it’ll be fun looking.”
24. Fandango
BENEATH A SKY the colour of a dusty aubergine, taxi-gondolas and private launches, many of the latter piloted by uniformed chauffeurs, converged on the main gate of the Fuentes compound. People in evening-wear stepped out of the boats, men alighting first so that they could assist their female companions, who were hampered by long dresses and high heels. A doorman stationed at the gate demanded to see hardcopies of invitations and checked names, running his stubby finger down an alphabetised list.
Once inside the compound, each guest was handed a flute of kir royale. Clutching the ruby drinks, they filed up the brick pathway to the house, laughing and chattering. Resident tax-exiles, NACA officials, jet-setters who owned holiday homes in the city, proprietors of the swankier hotels, restaurateurs who ran the trendier eating establishments, owners of the more upmarket boutiques, plus a smattering of screen stars, TV personalities, and cigarette-thin supermodels – these were the élite of New Venice, and knew it. Even those unfamiliar to each other exchanged grins of dazzling complicity.
Parry, having taken a canal-bus part of the way here and walked the rest, only realised as he was approaching the gate that he needed a hardcopy invitation to get in. Cecilia had not sent him one, or, if she had, had sent it to his home board, and he hadn’t been back to his apartment since breakfast. He thought he might have to resort to flashing the badge about a bit – nobody would refuse entry to an FPP officer – but it turned out that his name was on the guest list, and the doorman waved him through without a quibble. He joined the influx into the compound and, drink in hand and speaking to no one, took his place in the straggling procession up to the house. These were the same grounds he once used to pad across as furtively as a cat-burglar. Now, he strolled through them at a leisurely pace, breathing in the warm garden-scents of pine and jasmine and the spicier artificial aromas of the perfumes and colognes that drifted back from the people preceding him. Up to the house he went, and through an archway into the inner courtyard.
The courtyard enclosed a knot garden, entwined geometric patterns of shin-high hedges interspersed here and there with outcrops of shrub. Dwarf bay trees, topiaried into perfect globes or cones, arose at corners and intersections. In the middle, a goblet-shaped fountain played, its sides inlaid with an abstract mosaic of glass tesserae. Crackling garden flares sent up thin plumes of oily smoke and threw overlapping dapples of illumination onto the walls. Overhead, chains of fairy-lights were strung in a zigzag pattern between the columns of the cloister that ran around the upper storey.
Some of the guests stopped in the courtyard, but the general trend was onward, the current of people flowing towards the pair of studded oak doors that stood at the far end, opening onto to the living room. Waiters flanked the doorway, holding silver salvers laden with canapés.
The living room had marble floors and textured-plaster walls with a dado of hand-painted tiles. There was a fireplace at one end, and the voluptuous armchairs and sofas that normally occupied its centre had been rolled to the sides. A crystech chandelier, looking like a firework in mid-explosion, flooded the place with light. A rumble of voices echoed up to the high, raftered ceiling. Gathered in knots, the great and the good of New Venice laughed and glittered and talked about whatever it is such people talk about at these occasions – themselves and one another, mostly.
Parry saw no sign of Anna. However, the living room’s four sets of sliding french windows were wide open and there were more guests out on the south terrace. She was probably out there. He took a sip of his kir, wrinkling his nose at the sweetness of it. An overrated drink, if you ask him. Fizzy pop for the posh. He set off across the room.
He had not gone more than three paces when a hand clamped around his upper arm, arresting his progress. He felt a squeak of irrational fear. He had been found out. Someone had spotted that he did not really belong here, that he was entirely the wrong class, the wrong background, a stranger, an interloper.
“Captain.”
The hand belonged to Muhammad al-Shadhuli. Unlatching it from Parry’s arm, al-Shadhuli linked it with his other hand to form a SALUTATION. Parry tucked his champagne flute against his ribs in the crook of his elbow and awkwardly returned the greeting.
“I was hoping I might bump into you here,” said New Venice’s NACA Liaison. He was a round-bodied and genial Tunisian afflicted, alas, with the worst teeth and breath Parry had ever had the misfortune to see and smell. Blissfully oblivious to his shortcoming, al-Shadhuli had a habit of thrusting his face up close to whomever he was talking to. He must have come to assume that it was common for those you were addressing to flinch and rear back.
“Now, sir, what is all this business with these Sirens, sir?” he said, his nose mere centimetres away from Parry’s. “Céleste assures me you have it all under control.”
“The commissioner takes a slightly more optimistic view than I do, Mr al-Shadhuli. All I can say is, I don’t believe the situation is about to get any worse, at least not immediately.”
Before al-Shadhuli could reply, Parry raised his glass to his lips so as to block out the next gaseous gush from the NACA Liaison’s gullet.
“I don’t have to tell you,” al-Shadhuli said, “the heads of t
he NACA nations are very concerned.”
Parry gulped down a swig of kir. “I don’t blame them. I’m concerned. Everyone is. I even had a Foreigner corner me last night and demand to know what’s going on.”
“A Foreign representative approached you?” Al-Shadhuli looked clownishly distressed, his eyebrows raised, his mouth downturned. “And what did you tell it?”
“That the FPP was working on the case, doing the best it can.”
“And was it, this Foreigner, able to offer any insight into the deaths?”
“It said nothing...” Parry hesitated, thinking of the golden giant’s final manufolded remark, the indecipherability of which still bothered him: SUPERNAL, NEGATIVE. “Nothing that was of any appreciable use.”
A society-column photographer respectfully butted in and asked the gentlemen’s permission for a picture. Straight away al-Shadhuli threw back his shoulders, laid a hand lightly on the small of Parry’s back and fixed his mouth into a broad smile that revealed his teeth in all their tumbledown, carious disarray. Parry, for his part, did his best to appear composed and at ease, but he could feel his expression tightening while the photographer fussed with his camera’s exposure and focus controls. Eventually the photographer fired off three shots, thanked the gentlemen and moved on.
“You appear, if I may say so, captain, uncomfortable having your picture taken,” al-Shadhuli observed.
“I’ve hated being photographed, ever since I was a boy. There I was, I’d be quite happily doing something, playing in the garden or on a beach or whatever, and out would come my dad’s camera and he’d point it at me, and I’d just freeze and grimace. I can’t act naturally when I know someone’s filming me. I never know what the camera wants and always end up giving it what it doesn’t want.”
“The ability to appear relaxed in front of the camera is a useful skill to possess. One that can seriously advance career prospects.”
“Well, that’s undoubtedly true, but in my case I don’t think it’d make a lot of difference even if I did acquire it. I think my career’s advanced as far as it’s going to.”
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