サリン
Sarin. In Japanese katakana.
For a moment, Wada couldn’t seem to breathe. She stepped back and stared at the characters. She’d seen them often enough, in newspaper reports following the Tokyo subway attack and later coverage of the trials of Shoko Asahara and other members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult. サリン. Sarin. The cause of her husband’s death and the deaths of many other husbands like him. But that was far away. That was in Japan. What did that have to do with Martin Caldwell? Why did this Englishman have a box with the word written on it – in Japanese?
She pulled the box out and crouched down beside it. Originally it had evidently contained twelve bottles of Cossack vodka. There were remnants of Sellotape on the folded-together flaps and, in faded red lettering, the rubber-stamped demand Ban the Bomb. Plus those three Japanese katakana that could only have one meaning. Written by hand. Written by someone who knew the language. Caldwell? Or Peter Evans, Shitaro Masafumi’s translator? Was that how Caldwell knew Evans? Because they’d been friends?
Wada prised the flaps apart and looked in. The box was full of papers and documents. She began leafing through them. There were lots of photocopied newspaper cuttings dating from the 1970s, mostly from a paper called the Western Morning News, written by a reporter called Barry Holgate. There was too much material to take in at a glance, but various words sprang out at her: nerve gas; chemical warfare; sarin. Several of the headlines referred to somewhere called Nancekuke. Some of the articles included grainy photographs of industrial buildings in an isolated, coastal location and, in one case, a photograph of a sign attached to a chain-link fence: MINISTRY OF DEFENCE CDE NANCEKUKE RESTRICTED ENTRY PERMITS MUST BE SHOWN CAMERAS NOT PERMITTED. There was a map as well, folded over to show a stretch of coastline with the runways of an airfield marked out near a village called Porthtowan.
As Wada continued to delve, she came upon a Kodak-yellow wallet of photographs, slipped in between the documents about halfway down the box. She lifted out the wallet and opened it. There was a sheaf of snapshots, their colour slightly faded. Judging by the age of the people in the pictures and the seventies style of their clothes and hair, Wada reckoned they were snaps of Caldwell and his friends from university days – members of the commune, perhaps, that Joan had said lived in the house when he was a student at the university. On that basis, one of them could be Peter Evans. But which one it was impossible to say.
Some of the pictures had obviously been taken in the garden of 18 Barnfield Hill. Wada recognized the house in the background. In one a group of eight was standing outside the front door: four young men, four young women. One of the women was spectacularly beautiful, with flowing blonde hair and a direct, luminous gaze. The others were attractive in their youthful way, but she stood out as someone apart. She appeared in several of the pictures, including the half-dozen or so taken at a beach party, where the light was softer and thinner with each shot, as evening advanced, somewhere long ago on a broad sandy shore.
Wada suddenly noticed an object that had been slipped into the wallet along with the photographs. To her surprise, she found it was a computer stick. There was a tiny label stuck to it, on which was written, in a minute hand, facetrail.
Wada was squinting at the word in bemusement when the telephone started ringing, so loud in the silence of the flat that it made her jump. She turned and looked across at it. What to do? Let the caller leave a message? She waited for the answerphone to kick in.
But she changed her mind before it did. Slipping the computer stick into her trouser pocket, she moved across the room to the desk and picked up the phone.
She didn’t speak. At first, neither did the caller. Then there came a male voice at the other end of the line. ‘Martin?’
She didn’t reply.
‘Martin, are you there? This is Nick Miller. What the hell happened yesterday afternoon? Where were you?’
Wada said nothing.
‘Are you going to talk to me, Martin? You said you wanted to. So, what’s the big silence all about?’
Still Wada said nothing.
‘I’m going to hang up, OK?’
‘Don’t,’ Wada said instinctively. She couldn’t let slip the chance of learning something of value from the caller.
‘Who’s that?’
‘Tell me—’ A noise somewhere else in the flat distracted her in that instant, but she decided to press on with the call. ‘Tell me who you are first.’
‘I’ve already given you my name.’
‘How do you know Martin Caldwell?’
‘He’s an old friend of my late mother. Hold on, though. Are you Japanese? You sound as if you might be.’
‘You’re right,’ she replied hesitantly. ‘I might be.’
‘Are you the Japanese woman Martin’s supposed to be meeting in London this week?’
‘Yesterday. He was supposed to meet me yesterday.’
‘Me too. What’s your name?’
The pretence had to be maintained if Wada was to make any progress. ‘Mimori Takenaga,’ she said softly.
‘So you’re the woman who’s trying to identify the English guy your late father employed in London back in 1977?’
‘Yes. Peter Evans.’
‘Or maybe Peter Ellery. What are you doing answering Martin’s—’
The line was suddenly dead. There was no dialling tone. There was nothing. It was as if—
A shadow fell across Wada as she turned towards the door. A tall man was standing there, remarkably tall given that he looked Japanese. He was thin to the point of gauntness, with skin stretched tight over his jaw and brow. His eyes were so dark they could have been black, like his crew-cut hair. He was dressed in black as well: jeans and sweatshirt. In his right hand he held the telephone cable. He tossed it on to the floor as he stared at Wada and stamped on the jackplug, shattering it.
‘Who are you?’ Wada asked. There was a slight tremor in her voice, which she could only hope the man wouldn’t notice. ‘How did you get in?’
‘Who are you?’
‘Mimori Take—’
‘No. You are Wada. Kodaka’s errand-runner.’
The game was up. He knew who she was. He probably knew why she was there. And he was blocking her only exit. As she watched him, his gaze slid past her to the box in the middle of the floor. With the word sarin written on it, in Japanese.
He looked back at her. ‘Tell me what you know about Martin Caldwell.’
‘I know nothing.’
‘That would be good for you. If it was true.’
‘It is true.’
He took a step towards her. She dodged round to the far side of the desk. He moved right. She moved left. Right. Left. Suddenly, he grasped the rim of the desk and heaved it bodily to one side.
The desk landed upside down on the floor with a crash, sending up a cloud of dust from the boards. There was nothing between them now. She stooped and grabbed the desk lamp, which had fallen at her feet. But as she rose, brandishing the lamp as a weapon, he was on her, closing his hand round her throat and shoving her back against the wall. With his other hand, he batted away the lamp.
‘Where is Kodaka’s Nishizaki file?’ the man rasped, glaring into Wada’s eyes as if he’d find the answer there.
‘I … don’t know … any … Nishizaki file.’
‘Where is it?’
She still had the lamp in her hand. In pushing it away the first time, the man had apparently dismissed it – and her – as a threat. But she wasn’t as weak as he seemed to think. She swung the lamp up fast and hard, striking him on the side of the head with the metal base.
He cried out. His eyes flared in pain and anger. His grip loosened just enough for her to squirm free. She made a dash for the door, but he grabbed her by one ankle, pulling her off her feet as she ran.
She fell. One of the upturned desk’s legs was directly in front of her. As she plunged towards it, she knew her head was going to hit it.
The blow w
as sharp and stunning. She went down into a pool of darkness.
Oblivion didn’t last long. Wada regained a woozy form of consciousness to find herself lying across the underside of the upturned desk, with her back against one of the legs, her shoulder bag pinned beneath her. The man was in front of her, but looking away, rummaging through the sarin box, searching for … whatever he was searching for.
At that moment there was a banging on the front door. She heard a male voice shouting on the other side of it. Wally Stapleton was her guess. ‘Open this door. I know you’re in there. You took the key. Open up right now.’
The man stopped rummaging and glanced towards the door. Perhaps he was regretting hurling the desk out of his way so noisily now. It had alerted the Stapletons to Wada’s presence in the flat – and inadvertently to his.
‘I’ll call the police if you don’t open up. I’ve got my phone in my hand and I’m going to dial 999 if you don’t open the door right now.’
The man grunted in irritation. This was evidently a complication he hadn’t anticipated. He pulled a black plastic bag out of the pocket of his jeans and flapped it open. He emptied the box into the bag, then grasped the computer that was lying screen down on the floor and stuffed that into the bag as well. Wada lay quite still, hoping he’d assume she was still unconscious. The banging on the door continued.
‘All right. That’s it. I’m hitting the buttons now. Nine, nine, nine.’
The bag split as soon as the man picked it up. Some of the documents, including the wallet of photographs, spilt out on to the floor. He gave another grunt of irritation. Cradling the split bag under one arm, he stooped and retrieved the photographs, but ignored the rest and hurried out of the room without even glancing at Wada. She saw him take a turn into the kitchen and guessed he must have broken in via the fire escape.
Wally Stapleton was still talking on the other side of the door, but more quietly. Wada pushed herself upright and felt a lancing pain in her head. When she touched the spot, it was tender and there was blood on her fingers. Her head swam as she staggered to her feet and started moving.
She stumbled several times and had to steady herself against the wall as she headed along the hall. But Wally was still talking when she reached the front door and pulled it open.
At the sight of her, however, he suddenly fell silent.
‘I came as fast as I could,’ she said hoarsely.
‘Hold on,’ said Wally into his phone. He was a burly, balding, grey-haired man with a pugnacious set to him. He frowned at Wada. ‘What the hell’s going on? How’d you get that cut on your head?’
‘I was attacked.’
Wally peered past her. ‘Is someone else in there?’
‘No. He left. Fire escape.’
‘Bloody hell.’ Wally put the phone back to his ear. ‘There’s been a break-in and an assault. I think. It’s all a bit— Can you just get over here?’
Wada’s wooziness suddenly worsened. She felt herself falling.
Then Wally’s arm was round her. She was leaning heavily against him, aware that he was the only reason she was still on her feet. ‘I think we might need an ambulance as well,’ she heard him say into his phone.
EIGHT
CONCUSSION DIDN’T MAKE it easy for wada to double-think her way out of trouble with the Devon and Cornwall Police. But the young officer who took a note of her account looked as if he believed her, and whatever technical offence she’d committed by taking the key from the Stapletons’ flat and letting herself into Caldwell’s seemed to take a back seat to questions about the intruder who’d injured her. Fortunately for Wada, Joan had seen the man making off with a large black bag under his arm, so clearly she hadn’t dreamt him up, and signs of a forced entry from the fire escape into Caldwell’s kitchen along with the mayhem in the rest of the flat told their own story.
Wada claimed, truthfully enough, that she had no idea who he was, but she didn’t add she had little doubt who he was working for. She stuck with the name she’d given the Stapletons and luckily the policeman never asked to see her passport. Luckily also, she remembered the name of the hotel in South Kensington where she and Hiko had stayed during their honeymoon holiday back in 1994 and claimed that was where she was staying now. She calculated the police were unlikely to check. They were much more interested in circulating her description of the intruder and leaving Wada to rest in hospital.
She improvised a story about contacting Caldwell on the internet as a result of their shared interest in the history of sarin production, hers based on the death of her husband in the 1995 Tokyo subway attack, his on personal knowledge which he’d promised to impart when they met. As far as she could tell, the policeman swallowed this story whole. But, then, why wouldn’t he? Wada could play the winsome innocent when she had to and the gash on her forehead only made that easier. He ended up apologizing to her for being attacked in such a normally peaceful neighbourhood, which she thought was, ironically, very Japanese of him.
The doctor who examined her at the hospital diagnosed concussion, which explained her dizziness and the strange sensation whenever she moved that her brain was lagging a fraction of a second behind her body. She was given an MRI scan, her wound was dressed, painkillers were prescribed and she was told she’d be kept in overnight for observation. By the morning, the police might have more questions for her, but the doctor saw no reason, barring a sudden deterioration in her condition, why she shouldn’t be discharged at that point.
The Stapletons’ outrage at her abuse of their hospitality had given way to sympathy. She was a stranger in a strange land; she’d lost her husband in awful circumstances; she’d meant no harm by taking the key: what had happened wasn’t her fault. They assured her they’d encourage the police to go gently on her. And if there was anything they could do to help when she left hospital …
‘That’s too kind of you,’ she told them. And, really, she knew it was too kind. She’d lied to them. And she was still lying. Sadly, she didn’t see any way she could tell them – far less the police – the truth. That, after all, would require her to mention the facetrail memory stick which could so easily have ended up in her attacker’s hands. Maybe it was that he’d principally been looking for. As it was, she had it. And she was keeping it. If there were clues to follow, she meant to be the one following them. She couldn’t trust anyone except herself to get the job done.
Lying in bed in a sparsely populated ward late that afternoon, she did her best between unpredictable bouts of sleep to plan her next move. To read what was on the stick, she needed her laptop, which she’d left in London. The phone number on Caldwell’s jotter pad was a different matter, however. Fishing her phone out of the bedside locker, she tried the number.
‘Hotel Arnarson.’ It was a man’s voice, speaking English with a non-English accent.
‘You are … a hotel?’ Wada asked in an undertone.
‘Pardon me?’
She raised her voice slightly. ‘You are … a hotel?’
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘Where … are you?’
‘Reykjavík.’
‘Reykjavík … Iceland?’
‘Of course.’ He was beginning to sound tetchy now.
Wada thought as quickly as she could, which she sensed wasn’t as quickly as usual. ‘Ah, I think a friend of mine is staying there. Martin Caldwell.’
‘Mr Caldwell? From the UK?’
‘Yes.’
‘He was staying here. But he left … two days ago.’ What? Why was Caldwell in Iceland the day before he was due to meet her – and Nick Miller, apparently – in London? Wada couldn’t imagine what that signified.
‘Did he say … where he was travelling on to?’
‘I wasn’t on duty when he left. Back to the UK, maybe?’
Maybe. Yes. Maybe. ‘Did he—’ Wada broke off. A man had appeared at the foot of her bed. He wasn’t a doctor. There was no white coat. It was hard to tell exactly what he was. A plain clothes police o
fficer? Too old, surely. He was a thin, rumpled, slightly stooping man of seventy or more, bald, bespectacled, but keen-eyed and alert. His tweed jacket and corduroy trousers hung off him as if he’d lost quite a bit of weight since buying them, although that didn’t look to be recently. ‘I will phone again,’ she said, ending the call.
‘Didn’t mean to interrupt,’ the man said. ‘Mind if I come in? The nurse seemed to think it’d be all right. They know me here, you see. I’m what you might call a regular.’
‘A regular what?’ Wada asked suspiciously.
‘Visitor. Patients who don’t have family or friends dropping in like a chat with someone from time to time. I do my best to oblige. Glad to see you’re well enough to, er … be making calls.’
‘I don’t want a “chat”, thank you, Mr …’
He smiled ambiguously. ‘Holgate. Barry Holgate.’ He studied her reaction for a moment, then added, ‘I think you might recognize the name.’
She did. He was the reporter who’d written most of the newspaper articles kept by Caldwell. ‘You are a journalist, Mr Holgate.’
‘Retired journalist, actually, though I still do a bit of freelancing, when I’m not hospital visiting. I’ll clear off if you say the word. Or you can get me frogmarched out of here by pulling that red cord behind your bed. But you don’t want to do that, do you? Mind if I sit down?’ Without waiting for an answer, he perched himself on a chair beside her. ‘I’ve still got contacts on the Force. They told me about the to-do at eighteen Barnfield Hill. So I thought I’d come and see you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Caldwell’s collection of cuttings dated from the late seventies, according to your statement, and that means my name was on most of them. Correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘That whole episode is unfinished business as far as I’m concerned. So, Mrs Takenaga … I was rather hoping you could fill me in on what Caldwell’s been up to.’
‘I do not know what he has been … “up to”.’
The Fine Art of Invisible Detection Page 7