‘We’ll do anything we can to help, Ted,’ said Elly. ‘If there’s any way we can help you find the baby we’ll do it.’ But then she remembered Hong Kong. Should she tell Ted that they might soon have to leave Japan themselves?
‘Who could have done this, Elly?’ Ted was saying. ‘Who could have hated Vida enough to kill her? I’ve been racking my brains ever since I heard what happened. She’d been through so many dangers in the past and survived. She should have been safe now, in Tokyo, in peacetime. I guess it has to be something from the past that had followed her, unless it was just some random maniac. She helped the Chinese during the war — sided with the enemy, a lot of people in Japan would say. But then again, she had some pretty dangerous connections on the other side as well. Her old communist friends. They expected her to be loyal, wanted her to go on fighting for the revolution, but she had too many doubts. We talked quite a bit about it before I left. She said she’d seen too much violence. She didn’t want to have any more to do with it. I just don’t know. Poor Vida. I don’t know how I’ll live without her, Elly.’
‘Oh, Ted. We’re heartbroken too. I wish you were here and we could comfort you in person. It’s so hard to do it from the other side of the world.’
‘Is Fergus there?’ asked Ted, and now, for the first time, Elly felt a wave of anger towards Fergus. How could he have betrayed his best friend? For that matter, how could Vida have betrayed the man whose child she was carrying? But then again, as Ted had said, Vida had her own way of doing things. She’d always lived by her own rules. Elly just prayed that Ted would never find out. She was certainly not going to tell him.
‘No, I’m so sorry, Ted,’ she replied, as calmly as she could. ‘He’s still out. He should be back in a couple of hours’ time, if you’d like to try again then — but I guess it must be the middle of the night where you are.’
‘Never mind. I can’t sleep anyway. I’d get back on a plane to Japan tomorrow if I could, to try and sort out this nightmare, but I can’t even do that.’
‘Why not?’ said Elly. ‘You could come here. You could stay with us. We’ll do anything you ask of us, Ted.’
But the line was crackling again, and Ted’s next words were hard to catch.
‘I can’t,’ Elly heard him say. And then something about ‘not allowed to leave the country’, and what sounded like ‘I’ve been summoned by whack’.
‘What? Sorry, I didn’t catch that,’ said Elly.
‘I’ve been summoned by HUAC,’ Ted repeated. ‘The House Un-American Activities Committee.’
‘Oh no!’ said Elly. ‘The thing that Fergus calls Joe McCarthy’s lynch mob? What do they want from you?’
‘Well,’ said Ted, ‘actually McCarthy isn’t directly involved in this one, but it’s all part of the same ‘Reds under the bed’ thing. They want to ask me about my time in Cambridge, I think. Because I was friends there with a few fellows with airy-fairy left-wing ideas, they think I’m a communist. Maybe because of my relationship with Vida too . . . I don’t really know what they’re after, and I don’t think I care. I’ve got nothing to hide. But it means I can’t leave the country right now.’
‘Oh, poor Ted. That’s terrible. Is it serious? Could they arrest you? Is it that bad?’
She remembered hearing Fergus and Ted talking about the Committee, but had very little idea how it worked.
‘It means I—’
‘What? Ted. Hello? Are you still there?’ She listened to sudden silence on the line, and tried a few more tentative ‘hellos’. But he was gone. And it was only then that she realized she had forgotten to ask him for his telephone number.
* * *
Dinner that evening was a miserable meal. Fergus came home from work carrying a huge bouquet of pink roses tied up with gold ribbon as a peace offering, and Elly muttered her thanks and shoved them into a vase, which she dumped gracelessly in the middle of the table. Sometimes his obviousness made her cringe.
She knew that Fergus was riven by remorse and longing for instant forgiveness. He wanted her to lose her temper and swear at him for a few minutes and then fling her arms around him and burst into tears, and for everything to go back to being the way it was before. But she wasn’t going to give him that satisfaction. Her feelings were too complicated for that, and for now, she couldn’t deal with complex emotions. After everything that had happened in the past week, she felt drained. There was nothing left. She was just too tired to think or talk about it, so they talked about Ted’s phone call instead.
‘It was a little boy, Ted said. He’d had a telegram from the midwife. If only he and Vida had told us about the baby earlier. We could have helped. We might have known where to look for the child now.’
‘Did he say what name they gave the baby?’ Fergus asked.
‘I don’t know. I forgot to ask. We got on to talking about the House Un-American Activities Committee, and then we got cut off. What does it mean, Fergus? This business about being summoned by HUAC. Is Ted in serious trouble?’
‘God knows,’ said Fergus. ‘I hope not. He belonged to one of those Cambridge literary societies that were full of communists or quasi-communists, but then half of Cambridge seemed to be communist in those days, and it was all ages ago anyway. And then there was his friendship with Vida . . .’
‘Do you think the Americans really care about what an Esperanto-speaking Japanese poet got up to in China during the war?’
‘No idea. Sometimes I think all this passion for tracking down spies and traitors has more to do with personal rivalries and vendettas than it has to do with politics. Not that I can imagine Ted having many enemies. I hope he’ll be OK. Poor Ted . . .’
Fergus fell quiet then, and Elly guessed that he was wondering whether she had said anything to Ted about his own relationship with Vida. She didn’t satisfy his curiosity.
She was halfway through the washing up, and Fergus had retreated to his study, when he reappeared unexpectedly at the bottom of the staircase.
‘Could you come here a minute, Elly?’ he said quietly.
Elly followed him up the steps to his chaotic den, where just the small lamp on his desk was lit. He led her across to the window, and pointed out into the street below.
‘What do you think he’s up to?’ Fergus murmured.
Looking down into the street below, Elly could see a gaunt young man in an unbuttoned student jacket standing outside their house, smoking a cigarette.
She felt her chest tighten as she stared intently, trying to get a proper look at the man’s face.
‘I think it’s him, Fergus,’ she whispered. She gripped Fergus’ arm. ‘I think that’s the young man I saw near Vida’s apartment building the night she was murdered, sitting there on a bench with a big bag. He looked really strange. And that’s not all. I’m almost sure I’d seen him before. When I bumped into Vida in Kanda, and we went to lunch together, he was there then. I’m almost sure it’s the same man. I think he’d been stalking her. He’s probably her killer.’
‘Oh Jesus,’ said Fergus under his breath. ‘He was right outside our front door a moment ago. I thought he was about to ring the bell, but instead he’s just been hanging around in the street.’
‘My God. We need to call the police,’ said Elly. She ran silently down to the living room to retrieve the card that the fat policeman — Senior Constable Mita — had given her, and then returned to the study to dial the number. The phone seemed to ring for a long time, but when it was answered she was relieved to recognize the voice of the fat senior constable — at least he would know what she was talking about, so she wouldn’t have to tell the whole story from the beginning.
‘There’s a man loitering in the street outside our house — a student,’ she said. ‘I think it’s the man I saw near Miss Toko’s house the night she was killed. He keeps looking up at our house, as though he’s planning to do something. Please can you send someone at once.’
‘OK. Understood, Mrs Ruskin,’ replied Mita laconicall
y. ‘We’re on our way.’
She rejoined Fergus at the window, and they stood staring out into the street as they waited for the police to come. It was a moonlit night, and they could see the young man outside the house walking up and down restlessly, as though trying to make up his mind about something. He glanced up once towards the window, and she saw his face again more clearly. Yes. It certainly looked like the young man who had sat next to her in the Lotus Bookshop, scribbling in a little green notebook. But his face was half in shadow, and in all honesty she couldn’t be sure.
‘Fergus,’ she said suddenly. ‘You remember what Vida wrote about the man in the photograph. “He’s everywhere”. That’s what she said, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, that was it.’
‘What if this man had been following her for weeks? Maybe she’d seen him watching her apartment. Maybe that was what she meant about the man in the photo, when she said, “He’s everywhere”.’
Fergus gazed at her for a moment, but then shook his head. ‘But he can’t possibly be the man in the photograph,’ he said. ‘Not if she was talking about those photos of China. He’s much too young, isn’t he? By the look of him, I’d say he was only a child during the war.’
As they spoke, Elly had been listening for the sound of a police siren, but the two cars that arrived at the end of the street came quietly round the corner without announcing their arrival, so that the young man only noticed their presence when they were almost upon him. He started to run, then, up the slope towards Atago-yama, but it was too late. Three burly policemen had leaped from the cars and seized him before he could reach the end of the street. When they grabbed him by the arms and handcuffed his wrists behind his back, the young man put up surprisingly little resistance. He didn’t seem to have a weapon on him.
One of the cars drove the young man away, and as soon as it was gone, Elly ran out into the street, where Senior Constable Mita was standing by the bonnet of the second car, discussing something with his younger partner.
‘Thank goodness you came so quickly!’ said Elly. ‘We’re really grateful.’
The policeman took out his notebook and began to go over the story with her again.
‘You didn’t tell us, when we interviewed you earlier, that you thought you had seen this young man somewhere before.’
The senior constable looked at Elly disapprovingly, and she felt herself blushing.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘It was just — I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t remember, at first, where I’d seen him. He did look vaguely familiar, but I thought maybe I was imagining it. But then when I saw him again tonight, it came back to me. I’m almost certain it’s the man I saw in Kanda when I met Vida — Miss Toko — there.’
The policeman nodded, made some notes and then said, ‘That’s all for now, but we may be back tomorrow if we have further questions to ask you.’
As the two men drove away, Fergus, who had come out of the house too, put his arm around Elly’s shoulder, and she made no effort to draw away from him. They walked silently back towards the house together, and were about to go in when Elly was startled by an unexpected sound.
Peering through the darkness in the direction of its source, she spotted the large blue holdall that had been left half concealed behind the cypress bush outside their front door.
CHAPTER 22
My name is Kamiya Jun. I was born in Kawakami, Toyosakae District, Karafuto, on 28 May, eighth year of Showa. I arrived in Aomori Prefecture on a smuggling vessel on or about 31 March this year. I made my way to Tokyo and have since lived in the city, moving from one place to another and earning some money by doing odd jobs. I first saw Miss Toko in a café in Kanda and found her very attractive. She smiled and said some kind words to me, so I started to stalk her. I kept watching her for several months but she did not speak to me again. On 8 August this year, finding the front door of her apartment building open, I entered it and forced my way into her apartment. I asked her to have sex with me but she refused, and when I tried to force myself on her she started to scream, so I killed her by strangling her with a black silk cord that I found in her bedroom. I then proceeded to smash and overturn items in her apartment, to make it look as though she had been the victim of a robbery. There was a baby in the bedroom of the apartment. I had not previously been aware that Miss Toko had recently given birth to a baby. After I killed its mother, the baby started crying, so I stifled it with a pillow and then removed its body in a blue bag that I found in the apartment. I weighted the bag down with stones and threw the baby into the Sumida River to drown.
I knew that Miss Toko was friendly with a half-foreign woman who lived near Atago-yama, because I had observed them meeting, and I had followed the half-foreign woman to her home. I saw her again when I was outside Miss Toko’s apartment on the night of the murder. I was afraid that this woman might have noticed me, and might report me to the police, so on 14 August I made my way to her house and started to watch her movements. I was thinking about silencing her too, but I was then arrested.
Reflecting on my behaviour, I feel deeply remorseful at having killed Miss Toko and her innocent newborn child in such a brutal manner. I shall regret my crime for the rest of my life.
Signed, Kamiya Jun. 15 August 1951.
Jun had been gazing at this piece of paper for a very long time. They had removed his wristwatch when they strip-searched him, and there was no clock in the room where they were questioning him, so he was unsure just how long he had been there. There was a black fountain pen lying near his right hand, where they had placed it so that he could add his signature to the confession, but he hadn’t touched the pen yet. It was a battered old pen that looked as though someone had chewed one end of its celluloid case.
The people who questioned him came and went, and their faces began to merge into one another. There had been a sad-looking older man with glasses, who spoke quietly and calmly, as though he was exhausted by the whole proceeding; a young guy with pimples, who looked about the same age as Jun himself; and a fat policeman who leaned across the table and yelled at Jun when he didn’t like his answers. Then the older police officer, who had left the room for a while, returned accompanied by a rather handsome man with neatly slicked back hair and a gold front tooth. The bright light in the room was always on, and the questions never stopped. Jun had become desperately tired, longing to lie down, longing to sleep. But sleep was impossible on a hard wooden chair under a bright light with endless questions coming at him from the mouths of an endless succession of faces. Now he no longer wanted to sleep. He just felt strange, as though his body and mind had separated from each other, and as though the faces of the policemen on the other side of the table were reflections floating on water.
Some of the things that were written on the paper were facts that Jun had told the police — his place and date of birth, for example, and the details of his arrival in Japan. But others were parts of the story that they had helped him add, because obviously the version of events that he had told them was utterly beyond belief. They had typed out two earlier drafts of the confession on the battered typewriter that sat on the table between them, only to scrumple these up and hurl them into the wastebasket.
Jun had told them about his arrival on the smuggling ship, and had readily confessed that he had spent the past three months following Miss Toko. But when he tried to explain to them that she was a suspected communist spy, and that he had been engaged in an undercover surveillance mission run by a secret Allied occupation outfit called Z Unit, the policemen’s manner changed. They looked at each other and whispered something that he couldn’t hear.
Then the older policeman leaned over towards him and asked, quite gently, ‘Do you read a lot of fiction, Kamiya?’
‘Yes,’ said Jun, the word slipping out almost involuntarily before he realized what the question meant.
‘Just look at it from our point of view,’ the policeman continued patiently. ‘If you were in our place, would you really believe
that the Allied occupation forces would hire an uneducated punk who had just entered Japan illegally on a smuggling ship to undertake a secret surveillance mission? Even as a piece of fantasy, it’s not very credible, is it?’
No, thought Jun. None of it seems real. Not even to me.
He tried saying, ‘It’s not a regular part of the occupation forces, Z Unit. It’s different. Unofficial. I can tell you where the headquarters are. I could show you on a map.’
To his surprise, the policeman with the gold tooth actually left the room and returned with a large map of the city, which he unfolded on the table. Jun had never been very good at reading maps, and now, as he looked at the whole of Tokyo spread out in front of him, he found that it seemed to be moving and blurring before his eyes. For a long time couldn’t see what was what. His finger shook as it hovered over the surface of the map. The map was coloured brownish pink, the colour of decaying flesh, with little red and white lines like veins running all over it. Finally, his eyes focused on the heart — the Imperial Palace — and then worked their way northward until he found Ueno Park and the blank space to one side of it.
‘Here it is!’ he said.
The policeman bent forward, stared at the spot where Jun’s finger had come to rest, and read the words on the map out loud: ‘Former Iwasaki Mansion. Tokyo Anglican Theological College’. He looked up at Jun with an expression of mock disappointment on his face. ‘Sorry, wrong answer. Want to have another go?’
The thing that Jun could remember most vividly now was running through the trees, fleeing from a man with a knife, and then the sensation of soft snow slipping away beneath his feet. The sensation of falling and falling . . . He had hit his head on something. Was everything that had seemed to happen since then, he wondered, some kind of delirium? Am I mad?
THE LANTERN BOATS an utterly gripping and heart-breaking historical novel set in post-war Japan (Historical Fiction Standalones) Page 21