“Other evidence?”
“Music, especially chanting, plays an integral part in Buddhism, more so than it does in any other religion, I think. Our sung mantras enable us to control various hidden energies within ourselves, and each of the eight main musical instruments we employ in our ceremonies has a counterpart sound within the body, so that the one can be used to arouse the other for devotional purposes, through sympathy between the outer and the inner. Music and the body, in other words, are intimately interrelated. You see? Then there are the mudras, the conventional gestures employed by artists in visual representations of the Buddha. These involve the positioning of the hands, each position having a specific significance. The parallels are intriguing, are they not? Although they could of course be nothing more than coincidence.”
“They could,” Parry said, thinking, The Foreigners as Buddhist deities? Well, he had heard stranger theories before. “Listen, this is all very interesting, but –”
“But what is the point I am making? The point I am making, captain, is this. I do not hate anyone or anything, and therefore I do not hate Foreigners. What I object to about them is the effect they have had and continue to have upon the world. If they are gods, which I doubt, but if they are, that is still not a reason to let them take over our lives and divert our individual and communal destinies in the way they have. Some say they have brought us to paradise. I say that is false. Escaping samsara, extracting oneself from the continual flow of transitory existence, moving beyond the ego and the miseries of living – in short, following the dictates of the Eightfold Noble Path and achieving nirvana – is a matter for each of us alone. Ethical behaviour can originate only from within the individual. It cannot be imposed from without, by gods or by anyone, and if we believe we have become better people thanks to the Foreigners, then we are mistaken, for all we have really done is found a means of convincing ourselves that we do not need to examine our lives any more or make the effort to improve. Saying we have achieved a paradise does not make it so. On the contrary, it makes it less likely than ever that we will achieve the perfection we are looking for.”
“Because someone’s taken that responsibility away from us. Because we’ve become complacent.”
“Precisely so,” said the monk, sitting back, satisfied that he had got his point across. “So now you understand how I feel about Foreigners, and why. I feel strongly that they have taken away an element of self-determination from us and caused us to become, as you say, complacent, self-deluded. But for all that, I remain a Buddhist first and foremost. I cannot under any circumstances condone violence or killing. I have, therefore, been experiencing a conflict of interests this past day or so, ever since I learned what Toroa was up to. A conflict of interests which I was unable to resolve until just now, half an hour ago, when I heard the disturbance downstairs and came down and found Toroa viciously assaulting you. I saw him attempting to kill you, and I realised I had to make a choice one way or the other, politics or religion. I chose religion.”
“For which, again, I’m grateful. So is MacLeod a Triple-Xer?” This was what Parry had been hoping he would be able to ascertain, beyond doubt, from the monk.
“He and Greg both are, in as much as anyone can be described as a member of that group. There is no formal initiation into Triple-X, no official roster of membership, no set of rules or conventions. One becomes a Triple-Xer simply by choosing to behave like a Triple-Xer. One’s deeds define one’s allegiance. You are aware of this, of course.”
“The definition has always been a little vague to me. You’ve made it clearer.”
“Good. But what you must also be clear about, Captain Parry, is that Toroa and Greg only became Triple-Xers on Saturday.”
“You mean Saturday a week ago. Before the first shinju.”
“No, I mean last Saturday. The day before yesterday. That was when they finally decided to commit murder in the name of their cause.”
“The day before yesterday?” Even if Parry’s throat had been in full working order, there was every chance the words would still have emerged as a whisper, constricted by incredulity.
“Captain, neither Toroa nor Greg had anything to do with the first three shinjus. This is what I wish to explain to you most of all. I can vouch for their innocence. I live in this house with them, and I can attest to the fact that both of them were here on the nights the first three shinjus took place. Only on Saturday did Toroa begin to openly entertain the notion of committing one himself. The Triple-X slogan at the scene of the third shinju gave him the incentive. He thought that, since Xenophobe extremists were responsible for the crimes, there was no harm in joining in and contributing a similar crime of his own. And, of course, another shinju would only add to the atmosphere of fear and mistrust in New Venice, and further alarm the Foreigners, perhaps even provide the final push necessary to get them to leave here for good.”
“MacLeod didn’t commit the first three?”
Parry longed for it not to be true. He longed to believe that the monk was lying.
The facts, though, when considered in the light of what he had just heard, did seem to bear out the monk’s claim. The modus operandi for the first three shinjus differed from that of this evening’s in certain crucial aspects. The first three were in hotel rooms; this evening’s took place outdoors. The first three were mocked up to look like suicides; this evening’s was inarguably murder. The first three had been carefully planned and staged; this evening’s was opportunistic and comparatively crude in its execution. He had thought the reason for the change in tactics was simply that the perpetrators had become lazy, made arrogant by the FPP’s inability to catch them. In fact, it was the perpetrator who was different. MacLeod had merely jumped on the shinju bandwagon, that was all. Added a further storey to an edifice that had been erected by someone else.
So whoever was responsible for the first three shinjus was still out there, roaming free. Parry had believed that the whole nightmare was over. He had thought the battle at Free World House just now marked the climax of the investigation. He had allowed himself the possibility of the hope that New Venice’s sufferings, and his own, were at an end.
Wrong.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
41. Dissonance
AN HOUR LATER, Parry finally felt able to leave Free World House. Everything seemed to be in hand. Greg had been taken to HQ and would be held under close guard in the basement until the mainland police came to fetch him sometime tomorrow morning. As for the two other New Venice Xenophobes, the Native American and the Mexican Indian, the monk had assured Parry that they were innocent of any involvement in MacLeod’s schemes, and Parry had asked him, as a favour, to contact them and tell them to visit HQ as soon as they could in order to provide statements. He had then phoned Quesnel at her home and, without apologising for waking her, brought her up to speed on recent events. She had told him that she would see him and van Wyk in her office in the morning at nine sharp, and offered him tentative congratulations on a job well done. When informed that MacLeod had been responsible only for the latest shinju, she had said, “Well, it’s still good news anyway, eh?” After that, he had made a call to St Cecilia’s, but had been able to ascertain only that MacLeod and Johansen had arrived there and that the latter was presently undergoing surgery.
By the time all this was done, he was left feeling drained and exhausted, hollow as a shucked husk. The lateness of the hour and his fight with MacLeod had taken their toll. His reserves of energy were low, his thoughts were sluggish, and when Van Wyk advised him to go home, saying that he could handle things here by himself, Parry, who had never thought he would have cause to be grateful to Raymond van Wyk, thanked him and did as suggested.
One of van Wyk’s officers chauffeured him to his apartment in a launch. In his kitchen, he made himself tea, and carried the cup through to his bedroom. There, he removed his clothes, which were sticky with Johansen’s blood, and, leaving them in a heap on the floor, crawled
sighingly into bed. Sleep stole over him before he could even think about drinking the tea. It was absolute sleep, like anaesthesia, deep and dreamless. He awoke from it shortly after seven in the morning, all stiffness and ache. He shuffled to the bathroom like an arthritic old man. The Jack Parry who blinked back at him from the mirror above the basin was a battered parody of himself – empurpled neck, swollen temple, red-raw bruises everywhere. Blood encrusted his hands; there were dried-dark crescents of it beneath his fingernails. Ruptured capillaries pinkened the whites of his eyes.
“You look a right sight,” he told his reflection.
His voice, at least, was no longer so hoarse.
He washed, stuck on a fresh analgesic patch, made and drank some tea, and then went through the torture of getting dressed, forcing his uniform item by item onto his suffering body. His right arm gave him the most trouble. Any action that involved raising it, whether inserting it into a sleeve or doing up buttons above the level of his navel, was met with a painful, clenching protest from his latissimus. Putting on his tie was the stiffest, sorest procedure of all, but it was inconceivable that he go around tie-less. While in uniform? Never.
At HQ, there were congratulations to be fielded. Word had got around. Every officer he encountered on the way to his office greeted him with a grin and EXCELLENCE. Some, noting his injuries, tendered SYMPATHY as well.
In his office, he called St Cecilia’s and eventually was put through to one of the interns who had attended to Johansen last night. The lieutenant, he was told, was doing fine. Sedated but in a stable condition. The injury to his leg, particularly his Achilles tendon, was of some concern, but chances were good that the damage was remediable and Johansen would soon be walking again. Parry enquired after MacLeod, strictly out of professional interest, and was told that the Xenophobe was still unconscious and that a couple of FPP officers, along with a mainland policeman, were stationed by his bedside, keeping an eye on him. As Parry hung up, he made a mental note to visit Johansen that afternoon. He would purchase a Get Well Soon card and the obligatory gift for hospitalised convalescents, a bag of grapes.
He had expected that Quesnel would tear a strip off him and van Wyk, if for nothing else than for failing to seek her authorisation before making their visit to Free World House. But the commissioner, when the two of them presented themselves in her office at nine as scheduled, mentioned this lapse only in passing, dismissing it as an error born of necessity. Other than that, she had nothing but praise for them. They and Johansen had acted with great initiative and, when required, great courage. They should be proud of themselves.
And one of them, van Wyk, most decidedly was. He preened as Quesnel spoke, smug to the very tips of his ears, and Parry could just imagine the thoughts that were parading through his brain: visions of grandeur, Raymond van Wyk as saviour of the city, mighty catcher of villains, the man who had helped unearth (no, in van Wyk’s head it would be played a pivotal role in unearthing) a Triple-X cell. But then van Wyk wasn’t the one who had been beaten up by a club-wielding terrorist, nor the one who had watched a friend of his be savaged by guard dogs. Van Wyk could afford to exult. Parry had lost too much, not merely last night but over the past week, to feel that apprehending a pair of Triple-Xers was a success worth celebrating.
“Ma’am,” he said, while Quesnel was still in full commendatory flow, “much as I hate to be a spoilsport, I feel obliged to remind you that we still have murderers, possibly another Triple-X cell, loose in this city.”
“I am aware of that, Jack.” Quesnel was, as he had hoped, in too good a mood to take umbrage at the interruption. “You can allow an old girl one small moment of triumph, can’t you?”
“With the greatest respect, until whoever’s responsible for the first three shinjus is in the hands of the mainland police, I don’t feel I can allow anyone anything.”
“Parry, isn’t it just conceivable that you’re being over-cautious here?” said van Wyk. “If you ask me, MacLeod is behind all of the shinjus. I know what that Tibetan told you, but who’s to say he’s telling the truth?”
“Why would he lie?”
“To protect MacLeod. Or to protect himself. After all, if he knew what was going on and didn’t tell us, that makes him an accessory. If he claims he sincerely didn’t know what MacLeod was up to until a couple of days ago, then he’s still an accessory, but it doesn’t look nearly so bad.”
“I believe him.”
“You’d take him at his word? A Xenophobe?”
“I don’t think he’s capable of lying.”
“Listen, guys,” Quesnel interjected. “I appreciate there’s more work to be done on this. Right now, though, the main thing is that we have two felons in custody, which means we have good news to give the city. Speaking of which... I’ve scheduled a press conference downstairs in about an hour’s time, and I want both of you there with me. I want you to get the credit you deserve.”
“Can I ask, ma’am, what you intend to say?”
“At the press conference, Jack? What do you think? I’m going to let everyone know that the FPP has scored a great success.”
“You’ll say that the problem’s only been partly resolved?”
“I’ll say that we have shinju perpetrators under arrest.”
“But you’ll make it clear the investigation is still ongoing.”
“Well, sure.”
There. Her eyes had cut slightly to the left, before returning quickly to look at him. The merest flicker of a movement, but it told Parry everything he needed to know.
“You’re going to make out as if it’s all over,” he said, levelly, “aren’t you, ma’am.”
“I’m not going to lie, if that’s what you’re insinuating.” Quesnel was still sounding cheery, but the subtext was unmistakable: Don’t you dare presume to question me.
“No, not lie. But you’re going to – how shall I put this? – neglect to mention that MacLeod is responsible for one of the shinjus only. You’re going to phrase things in such a way that everyone will assume he committed them all.”
“I’m going to say that we have, thanks to the efforts of three of my best officers, uncovered and arrested a Triple-X cell in our midst. I’ll let everyone know that the investigation isn’t complete, that there are still a few loose ends to be tied up –”
“But you won’t explicitly state that there are other Triple-Xers still out there,” Parry insisted. “That’s what it comes down to, doesn’t it? You’re going to let everyone believe everything’s all right again.”
Quesnel fixed him with a hard, glittering stare. Van Wyk was also staring at him, quite unable to fathom where this insolence had sprung from, this insubordination. How on earth could Parry talk to the commissioner in this way? What had got into him? Had he gone mad?
But it wasn’t madness. If Parry had been sufficiently self-aware at that moment, able to step back from himself and examine objectively what he was doing and why, he would have perceived that what was motivating him was nothing other than a frayed, soul-deep weariness. He was weary of all the games, weary of all the etiquette and double-speak his job forced him to employ, weary of being polite and saying what he thought others should hear and of other people saying what they thought others should hear. What did all these circumlocutions and circumventions achieve? Nothing. They wasted time and got no one anywhere. All this talk mired and muddied and muddled, and he was sick of it. Sick and tired. It was time for some honesty for a change. Time for some plain speaking.
“Captain,” said Quesnel (and Parry could not remember the last time she had addressed him using his title of rank), “I can’t believe you don’t realise what a precarious state this city is in right now. New Venice is this close” – she held up a thumb and forefinger, squeezing half a centimetre of air between them – “this close to the abyss. I don’t know if you caught the news this morning, but Foreign population density’s down by nearly a quarter. The drop in numbers is accelerating, people are anxious, ver
y anxious, and anything I can say – anything – to put minds at ease, I will say. Anything I can do to lower the level of concern in this city, I will do. And if that means finessing the facts, then goddamn it I’ll finesse them, and I’m sorry if that doesn’t sit right with you, but there’s a lot more at stake here than just Jack Parry’s peace of mind.”
Parry came right back at her, with a fearlessness that would have been inconceivable a week ago. “And what happens when we find a fifth shinju, right after you lead everyone to believe there won’t be another one? What then? Wasn’t it bad enough last week, you on TV saying the Amadeus deaths were a one-off while I was sitting in a room at the Debussy with a set of Foreign remains on the balcony and a dead woman floating in the canal below? Didn’t that little episode teach you something?”
“New Venice needs to hear it’s safe again,” Quesnel retorted, with steely, incisive calm. “Foreigners need to feel they can continue coming here. Sirens, too.”
“Even if New Venice isn’t safe?”
“If the atmosphere in the city improves, Foreigners will pick up on that.”
“You mean you hope they will.”
“Yeah, OK. I hope they will. What else can I say? I can’t be sure their numbers will go up again, but if people here relax, if Sirens feel it’s OK to stay, then maybe it’ll happen.”
“But what if –”
“And in the meantime,” Quesnel said, overriding him, “the investigation goes on. We question MacLeod and his buddy, find out everything we can from them, and we continue looking for the other bunch of Triple-Xers. Quietly. Keeping it nice and low-key. Not making a song-and-dance about it. And if the other Triple-Xers assume that the heat’s off them, then who knows? Maybe they’ll decide now’s a good time to stop the attacks, lie low, maybe even leave.”
The Foreigners Page 41