The Death Ceremony

by James Melville

  Sakamoto strode on towards his destination, now oblivious to the bite of frost in the air. It was a cloudless, almost sparkling night. The moon was up, and the stars glittered in a jewelled velvet backdrop to the silhouette of the majestic main gate to the temple precincts. Take Otani, for instance. A man of undoubted ability, and with a devious, probing mind. Yet Sakamoto knew him to be at heart an undisciplined sentimentalist. He proceeded not on principle, but in a pragmatic way. He was disgustingly uxorious, deferring to the wife Sakamoto had never met but had heard so much about; a woman it seemed who presumed to hold opinions, and even worse, to give expression to them. He permitted his impertinent familiars Komura and Noguchi to speak their minds, even encouraging them to do so, and condoned their appalling breaches of discipline.

  It all came down to discipline. Sakamoto despised the "soft" postwar image of the police, the idea that they were to protect and befriend the people, and to reproach and reason with obvious criminals, regarding the invocation of the legal process as a last resort, even a kind of failure. In the old days the police had been guardians and mentors of the social order, whose sacred task was to uncover and root out those elements which constituted a potential canker and above all to track down those who harboured "dangerous thoughts" and even dared to question the policies laid down by His Majesty's generals.

  It was no wonder that Otani was decadent. His own father had been notorious, a professor of chemistry who had not only openly sided with the criminal Professor Minobe in his vile pre-war allegations that the Imperial Throne of Japan was a mere "organ of the state", but had even attempted with some success to corrupt his jailers during his weeks of confinement, so Sakamoto had heard. There had been many times over the years when Sakamoto had become deeply depressed at the thought that the son of such a man could be placed in a position of authority and influence.

  Sakamoto was cheerful that evening, though. Things were going well, and he would soon be able to enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that he had faithfully served the interests of the man to whom he owed his true allegiance. The fact that Otani would have been outwitted and discomfited in the process was a special, personal bonus. In the very few days since his arrival to join the headquarters staff of the Kyoto Prefectural Police Force, Sakamoto had already made it his business to visit each of the divisional headquarters in the city proper, and fully intended to do the same elsewhere in the prefecture during the next week or so. All the divisional inspectors in the city had therefore met the new Head of the Criminal Investigation section, and they and their staff had read Superintendent Fujiwara's circular minute advising them of Sakamoto's appointment and instructing them to co-operate with him in every way.

  The staff of the Northern Divisional Headquarters in particular already knew him quite well, since he had made several visits there to continue the interrogation of Patrick Casey; and the senior patrolman on duty at the desk jumped up at once as Sakamoto entered through the swing doors. Sakamoto nodded with an approach to affability as the man stiffened and saluted him. He at least seemed to have gathered that the new headquarters inspector was not a man to be treated off-handedly.

  "I shall not disturb the senior duty officer. I intend merely to put a few more questions to the foreigner. He has had his evening meal?"

  "At the authorised time, sir. Six-thirty."

  "And when did the duty officer make his check?" Sakamoto already knew what the answer would be. He had timed his arrival accordingly.

  "About ten minutes ago, sir. He should be back before long." The man's face was red and strained, and it gratified Sakamoto to see how thoroughly intimidated he appeared to be.

  "You may stand at ease," he said with a small, acid smile. Better and better. He had quite expected to have to receive the key to the lock-up from the duty officer and to have to brush off with a show of comradely good humour the inevitable offer to escort him to Casey's cell.

  Sakamoto made for the counter flap, which the senior patrolman hastily raised to enable him to pass through. "I know where the key is kept," he said. "If you will just unlock the cabinet for me I will make my own way." The man at the desk was curiously clumsy in his movements, it seemed to Sakamoto. He blundered into a chair on the way to the duty officer's room, and fumbled awkwardly with the bunch of keys chained to his belt before he managed to unlock the simple wooden wall cabinet which contained rows of other keys, each with a numbered plastic tab, hanging on similarly numbered hooks.

  Sakamoto tossed Key No. 4 up and down in his hand as he passed to the back of the big general office. There were only a handful of men in it, all patrolmen by the look of them, even two in plain clothes, and they all jumped to their feet as Sakamoto went by. The only person of rank in view was a raw-looking young assistant inspector, a college graduate no doubt and very probably a Communist, Sakamoto thought. Nevertheless, he nodded distantly at the boy, who opened his mouth as though to greet him but then closed it again as Sakamoto proceeded without pause.

  It had not been easy to arrange to keep Casey there even as long as they had, and he was due to be moved to Kyoto Prison to the south of the city the next day, where he was to be visited by a member of the staff of the Irish Embassy from Tokyo. Otani had insisted that the very basic facilities at the divisional headquarters lock-up were unsuitable for more than a very few days. Otani again. It was typical of his flabby attitude.

  There were only two cells off the corridor at the back of the building, and the corridor itself was dimly lit. Sakamoto had not wished to ask the question openly, so he first went to check whether or not the second cell was occupied. It might very well contain a drunk, even though it was a little early for that. Not that the proximity of a drunk would be anything to worry about. Anyone drunk enough to find himself in the "pig-box" of a Japanese police station would be much too far gone to know what day of the week it was, let alone have the slightest idea what if anything might be happening in the next cell.

  In any case, all was well. The low-powered ceiling light glowed in Casey's cell and Sakamoto could see through the Judas hole the young man sitting hunched on his bed, peering in the dim light at a book. The next cell was dark and silent, though; manifestly unoccupied. As he fitted Key No. 4 into the lock and saw Casey start and look towards the door, Sakamoto resolved to find out who had provided him with the book, and why. It seemed to be a wholly unjustified extravagance.

  "Oh. It's you," Casey said as he recognised Sakamoto. "You haven't come to try to get me to sign something again, have you? I won't, you know. Not till I've seen somebody from my Embassy." How fortunate it was that the young man spoke Japanese so competently. It would have made Sakamoto's task very much more complicated had that not been the case.

  "No," Sakamoto said. "No, nothing like that. Something much simpler.'' First he drew the new pair of white cotton gloves from his pocket and put them on carefully. They were of the kind frequently worn by taxi-drivers. Then he took from another pocket a four-page leaflet which had struck him as being the most suitable piece of literature for his purpose out of the selection in the rack near the entrance to the Roman Catholic cathedral in the busy Kawaramachi shopping street. It appeared to be concerned with repentance and contrition, and was of course in Japanese, but no matter.

  "I realised that you must be in a very precarious frame of mind when you asked me to bring you some Catholic literature, Casey. I understand that your church is opposed to suicide. The foreign priests will not be pleased with you when they discover that your guilty conscience led you to take this step. On the other hand, your Japanese acquaintances will not condemn you for it. Quite the reverse. You will be thought to have done the right thing."

  Casey had backed himself against the wall while Sakamoto was speaking, and looked truly terrified. "Your belt will do very nicely, Casey. The marks will obliterate any made by me." Sakamoto moved swiftly, spun the young man round and seized him from behind, his fingers probing. It was the Zen moment, a total clenching of his body and spirit, and it
was as though his hands contained in them all the power of his whole body.

  He did not see the bunk bed, slung from the wall by its leather straps, rise up as though it had a life of its own. It was not until huge hands even more powerful than his own seized his wrists and dragged them apart that he first smelt, and then saw, the hated Ninja Noguchi. At the same moment the cell door seemed to cave in.

  "Inspector Sakamoto, you are under arrest," said Inspector Mihara.

  "You left it a bit late, Ninja," Otani commented, stepping round the door, which was off the hinges that had been temporarily secured with a pair of trimmed-down chopsticks.

  Chapter 23

  ■ heres no need to turn the place upside down," Otani said, shaking his head in mock despair as Hanae scurried about with a look of almost comical anxiety on her face. She was wearing one of her oldest kimonos, on top of which she had a voluminous old-fashioned apron. Her sleeves were taped back to bare her arms and her hair was protected by a white cloth. "You look like a maid at an inn as it is. It's not the Emperor who's coming, you know."

  Hanae ignored him, pointedly tidying once more every part of the downstairs sitting room except the actual corner where he was sitting leafing through his draft report to the Superintendent-General of the National Police Agency. He had brought it home with him to check and revise over the weekend and planned to discuss it with Atsugi of the Foreign Ministry in Osaka the following Monday before submitting it and waiting for the inevitable summons to Tokyo to discuss it.

  The Sakamoto aspect of the affair could not possibly be challenged. There as an appendix to the report was the photocopy of his personnel record showing that he had served as a small-arms instructor in the Imperial Army. There too, supplied with some reluctance by the Defence Agency through the good offices of Atsugi, was a copy of his military record extracted from their archives, maintained in respect of all former military men who had been recruited to the reconstructed postwar police force. Sakamoto Masao, sergeant instructor. Awarded a citation as Champion Marksman of his regiment. Even more interesting, assigned as personal driver to Major Ryo Fujiwara during service in Shonan-to, as the Japanese re-named Singapore during the occupation.

  Otani's brief career as a junior officer in Imperial Naval Intelligence had been spent wholly in Tokyo, but he knew well enough that Japanese officers in Singapore needed not only drivers but also bodyguards: convenient that Sakamoto could fulfil both functions in respect of his young superior. Fujiwara could only have been in his early twenties himself, but family connections and the appalling death-toll between them had elevated quite-a few aristocratic young men to senior rank in the latter stages of the war.

  Otani avoided Hanae's flicking feather duster as he glanced again at the duty rosters which showed that Sakamoto had been senior duty officer at Hyogo Prefectural Headquarters on the Saturday night before, and the Sunday night following the killing of the Grand Master, and the statement bearing the seal of the Chief Armourer that the security register indicated that Inspector Sakamoto had carried out personal checks of the weapons held in the basement strong-room on both those days. The Chief Armourer would not admit to a breach of regulations in writing but had readily enough informed Otani that Sakamoto had over the years been a frequent visitor to the training range and had practised not only with hand-guns but also with sharpshooter's rifles of the latest type. Otani had little doubt that it would emerge that Sakamoto had so familiarised himself with the set-up that he could without too much trouble have extracted a rifle on the Saturday and returned it the following night. However much care was exercised over the issue of ammunition, for one or two rounds to go missing was something which could, and no doubt would, be covered up by the Armourer to avoid a fuss. The rifle in question had already been identified by matching it with the shell found by Noguchi among the bamboos.

  Most conclusive of all was the tape-recording Noguchi had made of Sakamoto's final conversation with Patrick Casey and the photograph taken by Inspector Mihara as he and Otani broke into the cell while Sakamoto's white-gloved hands were still round Casey's neck. His wild-eyed glare into the camera was in itself almost enough to damn him. Sakamoto had yet to put his seal to a formal confession, but Otani had no doubt that he would before long. Getting him to implicate anyone else would be quite a different matter, though, and Otani sighed.

  Hanae misinterpreted the sigh, and whirled round defensively. "I'm sorry, but they are due to arrive in half an hour, and I still have to change."

  Otani smiled and hauled himself up. "I'm not upset with you, Ha-chan," he said. "I think you've made the place look very nice indeed. I specially like the flower arrangement upstairs. That branch of plum blossom must have cost a fortune. You've got all the food ready, have you?"

  Hanae nodded, still defensive. "Yes. I've prepared formal trays for after the tea ceremony. Look, you're not to make a fuss, but I'll be serving the brown rice Rosie-san sent us. You don't have to eat it."

  There was no reaction from her husband, and she was emboldened to go on. "It will be really rather nice to use the old tea ceremony things again. They haven't been out of their boxes since Father died, you know."

  Otani nodded. He had found himself unexpectedly moved when retrieving the beautifully crafted wooden boxes from the recesses of one of the cupboards and gently untying the flat silk braids which secured their lids. The lacquer container for the powdered tea and even the tea bowls themselves were of no very great value, but they had been in his family for generations, and it had been something of a disappointment to him when his daughter Akiko had flatly refused to take lessons in the tea ceremony and even Hanae herself had not attempted to maintain after the old man's death the pretence of interest she had kept up during his lifetime. Strange that they were to be used again for the first time after such a long interval by a foreigner of all people, even if he was now an authorised master of the Southern School.

  Otani had insisted on that, even before seriously attempting to untangle the extent of the complicity of members of the family in the killing of the late Grand Master. Sitting there quietly, himself already dressed up to please Hanae in his dark-blue kimono of fine wool, the broad silk band of the obi snug about his waist and tied at the back by Hanae in a flat asymmetrical bow, Otani laid his papers down and reflected on the tense formality of the scene he had witnessed the previous day in the venerable "main house" in Kyoto. Still pale and drawn from his ordeal, Casey had been the picture of austere dignity in his own formal Japanese dress as he bowed low before the new Iemoto and received from his hands the stiff paper scroll which bore in exquisite brushwork the statement of confirmation that, having been initiated into and diligently studied the Way of Tea in accordance with the precepts of the Southern School, "Patoriku Keishii" was duly authorised to teach the art.

  Soon they would be at the house, the young tea master and Rosie Winchmore, taking what Otani suspected would be an unauthorised break from her intensive studies at Nan-zan University in Nagoya. Well, there was still a tremendous amount to be done, but the clouds had been lifted from the heads of the young people. A monstrous injustice had been done to Casey, but a worse one averted, and Rosie now had an explanation of Otani's previously incomprehensible behaviour towards her. How better to mark ' their reconciliation than with a tea ceremony at home, followed by some relaxed conversation, plenty of sake and some instant photographs as mementos taken with the camera kindly lent by Inspector Kimura? Otani did not know, but could guess, what the philandering Kimura normally used it for.

  Otani looked at his watch, then tidied his papers and put them away in a plain folder at the side of the small table on which stood the television set. Then he made his way upstairs to find Hanae in her silk under-kimono looking indecisively at three different outer ones spread out on the tatami mats around her. "That one," he said promptly, pointing to the one she had worn on the day of the fatal tea ceremony. "It's a festive sort of occasion, after all."

  Hanae shook her head. "I don'
t like to, somehow. Not after what's happened." Then came the thought that clinched the matter. "I can't anyway. Rosie-san has already seen me in it."

  "What has that got to do with it?" Otani was honestly baffled, but Hanae wasted no breath in replying to him. Instead she chose a kimono he could not remember having seen before, which depicted the four seasons painted subtly around the hem and on the sleeves on a pale blue background. After all, she must look fully her age in the presence of a woman ten years younger than her own daughter. Then came the choice of obi. She pondered and then her instinct led her to one of her favourites: a fine textured cream brocade with touches of pink.

  Otani watched her as she dressed, wondering as always how she managed the complicated process without the aid of a maid or daughter. But then, he supposed, most women had to cope by themselves nowadays. "You must be very pleased/' she suggested.

  "In a way, yes of course. But Sakamoto was just the instrument. I'm sure of that, even though I'm equally sure that he won't say anything to implicate Fujiwara."

  Hanae's eyes widened. "But surely it's obvious to everyone that Superintendent Fujiwara must have been behind it? He's the new Grand Master's real father, after all." Otani had been much more forthcoming with Hanae after the arrest of Sakamoto, and had told her most of what he had found out about the Minamikuni family connections, and of Fujiwara's alleged link with them.

  Otani stood near the tokonoma alcove, unconsciously stroking the surface of the polished trunk of a young cryptomeria tree which formed its upright frame. "There's a lot of circumstantial evidence against him, but he hasn't resigned as I would have expected him to. The National Police Agency ought to force his retirement. They could probably do it on health grounds if they want to avoid a public fuss: I'm told he hasn't been well lately. All the same, if Sakamoto simply comes up with some story to the effect that he had a personal grudge against the Grand Master of some kind or another, Fujiwara could still wriggle out. Under a cloud, certainly, but no more."