by Susan Barker
I stay quiet. Imprisoned in my own private hell, I have no wish to partake in this battle of good versus evil. I have no interest in bringing down the Yamagawa faction. All I want is to get my powers back and find Mary. As the car moves through the streets I have a nasty epiphany: that Mary’s freedom has come about at the expense of my own powers. What if this is true? What then?
After a short distance the car stops outside the police station. I climb out, despondent and leaden. ‘How long will this take?’ I hear myself ask Detective Honda.
‘This is a criminal investigation,’ he says sharply. ‘It will take as long as necessary.’
I follow him into the empty lobby of an office block. We progress through the beige landscape, down a corridor reeking of filing cabinets and sick-building syndrome.
‘In here,’ Detective Honda says.
He pushes open a door to a room containing a conference table so long it looks like it is attached to the wrong end of a telescope. At the head of the table sits Yamagawa-san and a circle of men in dark suits. Two men, the Kaku twins mark II, seize me by the arms. Not that restraint is necessary: I am near-paralysed with terror. I look to Detective Honda. He is lighting a cigarette from a Zippo flame, a look of boredom in his eyes.
‘Watanabe!’ Yamagawa-san greets me warmly. ‘At last we meet. Firstly, let me tell you how much your antics of the last few weeks have entertained us. We will be sorely disappointed to see it all come to an end.’
A roomful of yakuza eyes bore into me.
Yamagawa-san rises from behind the table, an Armani-suited Titan. ‘But your vigilante efforts have crossed the line tonight, I am afraid, Watanabe,’ he says. ‘Now, what do you think we should do with you?’
21
MR SATO
I let myself into the Daiwa Trading offices five minutes ago. As you’d expect there is not a soul to be seen this Sunday morning. The building is still, the computers shut down and the waste-paper baskets empty. In the Public Accounts office is the lingering odour of spilt correction fluid and old coffee grounds. It serves to remind me what a good friend caffeine can be to the sleep-deficient, especially those with hard work ahead of them. My head is a jumble, so I shall set up the coffee-making machine and sit and take stock of all that has happened. Part of me, the cowardly part, would rather not tell you what I am about to tell you, for I am not proud of what I have done. But I will leave no detail untold. I cannot allow myself to keep secrets from you.
There was a dreadful commotion going on outside Osaka General’s Accident and Emergency when I got back. Paramedics leapt from still-braking ambulances to race their human cargo into the hospital. A Kansai network TV crew scuttled about, spinning out a web of electrical cables across the car park. When I tried to get by, a reporter with thick, wavy hair and a charismatic smile aimed a microphone at me and asked if I had been in Shinsaibashi around 3 a.m. that night. Cameras and lights swung round, dazzling me in the quest for news. I shook my head and shuffled away, even though Shinsaibashi was precisely where I had been at 3 a.m. I had seen nothing that would interest them, and, as you know, I am very camera-shy.
I took the side entrance, bypassing Accident and Emergency, and went up a flight to the head-injuries ward. On my way to Mrs Tanaka’s private room I passed the rows of sleeping patients, mummified in white starched sheets, a muted choral group of snorts and murmurs and nostril wheezes. Neck braces appear to be very much de rigueur on this particular ward. Dr Ono has granted Naoko and me twenty-four-hour access to Mrs Tanaka. He says she might respond to familiar voices and that we should talk to her. Though Naoko converses with ease, I am uncomfortable with the idea of talking to my comatose neighbour. To dominate the conversation for once would be to reverse the natural order of things. Mrs Tanaka would be very frustrated by her inability to interrupt with her two-yen worth.
Naoko had been chattering when I left for Shinsaibashi and when I returned she was still in full flow: ‘I made Uncle a hot toddy before I put him to bed. Uncle has been through a lot today, and I thought a drop of brandy would help him to sleep . . .’ As you know, Mrs Tanaka is vehemently opposed to her husband’s consumption of alcohol. I think Naoko was trying to infuriate her poor aunt into wakefulness. Naoko looked exhausted. Anguished hands had raked her chic career-girl hair into a bird’s nest, and her skin was blotchy and tear-worn. Earlier she ran her uncle back to the flat she shares with her lady friend and then rushed back to the hospital to be by her aunt’s bedside. I doubt that she has slept a wink all night.
‘Mr Sato!’ Naoko said when she saw me hovering in the doorway. ‘You’ve only been gone a couple of hours. That’s hardly a good night’s sleep.’
‘And how about yourself, Miss Tanaka? The night nurse says you whisked your uncle home and came back in less than an hour.’
Naoko sighed, her fingers squeezing her aunt’s limp hand. ‘There hasn’t been any improvement.’
Naoko was overtired and emotional so I persuaded her to go and take some fresh air on the roof. When she left I took her place in the hard plastic chair by the bed.
‘I am sorry to have left you, Mrs Tanaka,’ I said awkwardly. ‘I had to dash off and take care of a work-related matter.’
Mrs Tanaka was in a bad way. She had a drip attached to her wrist and a tube taped to her face that snaked into her left nostril. The sunken yellow of her eyelids alarmed me, as did the white gown they had put her in, with openings gaping between the stud buttons along the sleeves. Her grey curls had been flattened by the white bandage they wrapped round her head. I think they had to shave some of her hair away for the emergency surgical procedure. This will make her very cross when she wakes up.
At five thirty the ward was showing signs of life. Two nurses chatted quietly as they scraped burnt toast over the hallway bin. A linen trolley squeaked by. Seeing that the sun had begun to establish itself in the sky, I opened the curtains so that it would shine some of its health-prompting vitamin D down on Mrs Tanaka.
‘What fine weather we have this Sunday morning,’ I remarked with spurious cheer.
Mrs Tanaka lay unresponsive in her starched white sheets. The only thing that moved was the liquid in her drip. My throat clenched and the room became cloudy with the cataract of tears. I sat back down in silence.
Naoko is under the impression that I went home to sleep last night, but this was a lie. While Naoko had been conducting her selfless bedside vigil, the comatose Mrs Tanaka couldn’t have been further from my thoughts. I was beset by new worries, you see, worries I had to address immediately. The truth, it seems, is a nebulous thing, shifting like an image in the clouds.
The telephone conversation with Mariko destabilized my centre of gravity. After replacing the handset I slumped against the wall. ‘That poor girl,’ I whispered aloud, ‘that poor, poor girl.’ I took out my pocket book, thumbed for the number I wanted, and dialled it with shaking hands.
Ten minutes later a taxi drove me through the streets.
‘This time of night most people are headed the other way. Back home,’ the driver said in his thick Kansai accent.
In the rear-view mirror an inquisitive eye angled back at me.
‘I have urgent business to attend to,’ I retorted.
‘You seem like a man in a hurry,’ said the driver, and wisely left it at that.
The taxi could not get by on Suomachi street because there was some kind of disturbance with police cars and ambulances.
‘Gangland shooting, has to be,’ the driver tutted.
I told him to let me off in Amerika-mura. I decided to walk the rest of the way to the hotel to let off some steam.
I fastened my light summer jacket up to my chin and set off at a fast clip. The streets were a neon-smudged blur, littered with empty cigarette cartons. Police sirens shrieked in the distance as I ran through my intended confrontation. I wanted to chasten and shame and make absolutely clear that I would not stand for such wickedness. Common sense told me that I should wait until I had calmed down
first, but I was too fired up to pay it any mind. Rather than letting off steam as I pounded the streets, I whipped myself up into a cyclone of anger.
Two night doormen stood sentry outside the Plaza Hotel. They bowed and each held open a glass door so I could enter the hotel lobby. It was a lobby that catered for the tastes of the obscenely rich; the floor a lake of marble, a grandiose staircase leading up to a mezzanine. But it was no match for me and my sour mood. I strode over to reception as though I had just stepped into a potting shed.
On the twenty-ninth floor the bellboy guided me to a large conservatory that led out onto the roof. As I stepped through the French windows onto the patio the wondrous view leapt at me like a boisterous dog. The whole city appeared to be strung with fairy lights, all that is concrete and grey considerately buried beneath a landslide of night. Cars crawled along the Hanshin expressway like wingless fireflies. The hazard lights on top of the Umeda Sky building blinked in warning to lazy pilots. The rooftop had been converted into a leafy garden (a policy Osaka city council has been encouraging to diminish carbon-dioxide emissions), but I did not stop to admire this horticultural feat. From beyond the jungle of palm leaves, flowering cacti and ornamental urns came the sound of disco music. I cut through the landscaped undergrowth to its source.
Beyond the vegetation glistened a swimming pool, and to the side of the pool was a sunken hot tub, encircled by a mosaic of tiles. In the middle of this bubbling decadence sat Murakami-san, bare-chested and drinking from a champagne flute. Alongside him was his disciple, Taro the graduate trainee, wearing a diving mask with an air-tube attachment. A laughing girl kneeling on the mosaic tiles poured champagne from the bottle directly into the air tube, making him choke and splutter into the jacuzzi. Two more girls were dancing like wind-up dolls by the poolside tables and chairs. The girls were dressed for a beach party rather than a mild spring evening. The orgiastic sight froze me in my tracks.
‘Sato-san!’ Murakami-san bellowed when he saw me. Water splashed down his body as he rose from the fiercely chlorinated bubbles, his belly overhanging his navy trunks, which clung to him with a gaze-deflecting snugness. He lifted his champagne flute towards me buoyantly. ‘I was delighted to hear from you earlier. You have to join our celebrations.’
Murakami-san spoke with an undignified wobble. As I had feared, he was already intoxicated. But I decided to persevere. What I had to say would soon sober him up.
‘We’ve got a spare pair of trunks, Sato. Pop them on and join us. There’s a good boy. You won’t believe it when I tell you what we are celebrating tonight!’
I pushed my spectacles up the bridge of my nose and eyed him coolly. I was in no mood to hear of his silly celebrations.
‘Have a guess, Sato, go on – you won’t believe it.’
Jet streams roared at his knees as he staggered about, too drunk to wonder why I had gatecrashed his party in the early hours of a Sunday morning.
‘Murakami-san, I would like to speak to you privately,’ I said.
‘Eh?’ At my serious tone Murakami-san sank back down, reimmersing himself in the water. ‘What can’t be said in front of old Taro here?’ He patted the pigeon-chested creature in the diving mask. ‘Or Honey, Coco and Cynthia, our Hawaiian friends? Say hello to Mr Sato, girls!’
The girls smiled and waved at me and continued to dance. Murakami-san closed his eyes and smiled lazily. Strewn about the poolside were trousers, socks and ties. By the champagne bucket was a silver tray bearing a lobster torn limb from limb, though most of its flesh still clung to the shell, uneaten. The extravagance turned my stomach.
‘Very well, Murakami-san, I shall speak to you here, then. I have come to tell you I have discovered your little scheme with Mariko.’ I squeezed my fists tight as I said this, to stop my hands from shaking. How I despised that man in the jacuzzi.
Murakami-san raised his eyebrows in feigned surprise. ‘What? Mariko? Mariko from the staff canteen?’
‘No, Mariko the hostess.’
He took a leisurely sip of champagne. ‘I’m afraid my memory needs refreshing.’
‘Mariko from The Sayonara Bar.’
His charade of ignorance made me want to give him a good shake. Taro sunk deeper into the jacuzzi foam. All the things he had teased me about over the past week were beginning to fall into place. He had been in on it as well. My nails dug deeper into my palms.
‘Well, I want you to know your plan did not work. I know exactly what is going on and I intend to contact head office first thing on Monday to tell them what you and your accomplice Miss Yamamoto have been up to.’
Murakami-san blinked, as if he had just experienced a mild hallucination. ‘I’m sorry, Sato-san. I missed the end of what you just said. Could you repeat it, please?’
‘I said I know exactly what you and your accomplice Miss Yamamoto have been up to. And I am telling head office about it first thing on Monday. You will be sent to prison.’
Taro tore off his scuba mask; his mouth was open wide enough for a tonsil inspection. Of course, I had no idea whether Murakami-san would be sent to prison or not. I was simply furious about the way he had treated Mariko.
Murakami-san chuckled, his self-assurance unruffled. ‘Come off it, Sato! Miss Yamamoto is a lovely girl but far too serious for my liking. Besides, I am a married man.’
‘That is not what I meant, and you know it!’
My forceful delivery took us all aback. Murakami-san’s chuckle lost its suave conviction. The three girls silenced their pop music and looked over at me. Had you been there you would have marched me straight home. You would have placed me under house arrest until I was fit for civil society again.
‘Well, you had better enlighten me, Sato-san. What is it that you mean?’ Murakami-san said.
‘Under your instruction Miss Yamamoto has been stealing money from our clients’ accounts. You planted her in the Finance Department for this specific purpose.’
Murakami-san ran his fingers through his silver hair, deprived of its usual volume by the humidity of the hot tub. ‘What nonsense!’ he scoffed. ‘Miss Yamamoto is a fine young lady who graduated first in her class from Kobe University. I put her in your department because my secretary selected her from a list of people qualified for the position. And this is the first I have heard of any money being stolen.’
‘Mariko told me everything.’
‘Mariko the hostess?’
‘The hostess you paid to seduce me, to distract me from the affairs of the office.’
Murakami-san and Taro exchanged a glance. Taro whirled his index finger at his temple, and mouthed the word ‘Crazy’. Really! The insolent cheek of that boy! Had we been in the office I would have given him a good dressing-down.
Murakami-san placed his champagne on the side and rose once more, his hands held out in the open-palm, you-can-trust-me gesture they teach at management seminars. ‘Mr Sato, why don’t you come and sit with us. Have some champagne. Things have been very stressful lately in the Finance Department, haven’t they? I assure you I haven’t been paying any hostesses to seduce you. You’re a handsome man: you don’t need my help to find yourself a woman. Let us sit at a table together. It would be criminal to let this good champagne go to waste.’
Murakami-san turned to Taro and made a quick, inscrutable gesture. Taro nodded and belly-flopped over the side of the hot tub – a somewhat inelegant manoeuvre owing to the large rubber flippers on his feet. He uprighted himself and waddled into the landscaped jungle, his flippers slapping the tiled floor. The trio of dancing girls pattered along after him. I did not budge from the spot.
‘Do not patronize me, Murakami-san. It is not work-related stress that has prompted me to make this accusation. Mariko has told me everything. You have been paying her a handsome sum to preoccupy me so that your illegal activities would go unnoticed.’
Seeing I was unswayed by his offer of champagne, Murakami-san snatched up a cotton robe from the side and threaded his damp arms through the sleeves. Th
e robe was a tropical riot of parrots and palm leaves. Murakami-san frowned in a thoughtful way. ‘Sato-san, I have been nowhere near the accounts. And I assure you I would not hire a hostess just to distract you from that.’
‘You have been caught red-handed,’ I said.
‘Really? Caught red-handed? What evidence do you have of any of this?’
The enormity of what I had done suddenly hit me. I had just attacked my superior when the only evidence I had was what Mariko had gleaned from her private dealings with him.
‘Evidence will be found,’ I said confidently. ‘And there will also be a proper inquiry into the disappearance of Takahara-san. His absence is a little too convenient for my liking.’
Murakami-san squinted at me as though I were an inscrutable magic-eye poster. It then occurred to me that by confronting Murakami-san I had effectively given him an advance warning; he could go to the office and erase whatever evidence there was before Monday. I panicked, then remembered that Kyoto bank have records of all our transactions.
‘So you think that I am responsible for Takahara-san’s disappearance, do you?’ Murakami-san laughed. ‘That I hired yakuza hitmen to kill him so my embezzlement would go undiscovered? You really have no idea what you are talking about, do you, Sato? You are very lucky tonight. Firstly because I am very drunk, and secondly because I am sympathetic to all that you have been through in the past few years. Otherwise I might take offence to all these things you accuse me of.’
‘Take offence? What right have you, the guilty one, to take offence when accused of your own crime?’ I said. ‘You did a very wicked thing. You took an orphaned child, and exploited the fact she is all alone in the world and riddled with her late father’s debts. You tried to corrupt an innocent.’ Hypertension made me short of breath and quickened my blood.
Murakami-san waded through the jacuzzi to the metal steps. With the aid of the railings he hoisted himself out onto the tiles. ‘I really don’t know what you have got yourself involved in here, Sato,’ he said, ‘but hostessing is a deceitful profession. Many of these girls will stop at nothing to manipulate a client. Has this girl, this so-called orphan, asked you for any money?’