by Mo Hayder
Eventually he gave up, and spent the rest of the walk in silence, an amused, thoughtful expression on his face. When we all got into the crystal lift he turned his back to us, hands in his pockets, staring out at Tokyo, pushing up on to his toes then dropping down to his heels. I stared at the back of his head thinking: Do you mean it? You’re not teasing me. Please don’t let this be you teasing me. It would be too much…
The club was busy – a party from Hitachi had taken over four tables and Mama was in a good mood. In my velvet dress everyone was aware of me, as if I was incandescent, like a geisha’s lantern glowing in a Kyoto alley. It’s amazing how seductive flattery and sex can be – it was only when the Fuyuki gang came into the club that I realized I hadn’t thought about Shi Chongming’s medicine all evening. When I saw them in the doorway I sat straight in my chair, preternaturally alive.
The table was set. Strawberry sent the waiters off round the club, pinching dead blooms from the flower arrangements, putting out hand-towels in the gents’, making sure that Fuyuki’s personalized Scotch bottles were polished and catching the light, and I was summoned, along with six other hostesses. The group had been gambling at the Gamagori speedboat stadium in Aichi and they were in a good mood. The Nurse had hung back, not coming into the alcove but waiting instead in the lobby, sitting on the chaise-longue, her legs crossed. I’d get glimpses of her foot in its stiletto every time the aluminium doors opened, and each time I would forget what I was saying and trail off, thinking of the crime photograph. The Beast of Saitama. I remembered the pinched look on Shi Chongming’s face when he pronounced the word embellishments. How strong would you have to be to murder a man? How much would you have to know about anatomy to remove what was inside him, and not leave a mark on the outside? Or had Shi Chongming made up that bit to scare me?
Fuyuki was talkative. He’d had a big win and later that night he’d be hosting a party at his apartment. The message soon got round the table that he’d stopped here to trawl for hostesses to take home. Just as Shi Chongming said he might. His house, I thought, running my fingers across my hair, up my calves to smooth out my stockings, maybe the place his secret was kept. I adjusted my dress so that it ran in an exact straight line across my shoulders. Are they all so pretty in England?
Amazingly, Bison was there. Still confident, blue-chinned like a henchman, his elbows resting on the table, jacket sleeves rolled up to show his massive forearms and still entertaining the group with stories – the club circuit in Akasaka, a scam he’d become embroiled in, shares that had been sold in a non-existent golf club. On and on went the stories, but something in his face was missing. He was subdued, the ready entertainer’s smile had gone, and I got the impression that he was there under duress – the court dwarf. I pretended to listen politely, smoking and nodding thoughtfully, but actually I was staring at Fuyuki, trying to work out how to pin my existence into his head.
‘They’d sold nearly all the shares when they were rumbled,’ Bison said, shaking his head. ‘Imagine that. When Bob Hope heard a Japanese golf club had been set up in his name, he nearly killed someone.’
‘Excuse me,’ I said, stubbing out my cigarette and pushing back my chair. ‘Excuse me for a few moments.’
The toilets were in the corner block abutting the entrance hall. I’d have to pass Fuyuki’s wheelchair to get to them. I smoothed my dress, straightened my shoulders, let my arms drop loosely at my sides and began to walk. I was trembling, but I willed myself to keep going, slowly, in a fake sexy way that made my face burn and my legs feel weak. Even above the music and conversation I could hear the shoosh-shoosh of nylon as my thighs brushed against each other. Fuyuki’s small head was only a few feet from me, and as I drew nearer I dipped my hip, just enough to catch the back of his wheelchair and startle him.
‘I beg your pardon.’ I placed my hands on the chair to steady it. ‘I’m sorry.’ He raised his arms slightly, trying to twist his stiff old neck round to look at me. I calmed him, pressing my fingers reassuringly on his shoulders, deliberately moving my right leg against him again, letting the beguiling crackle of nylon static and warm flesh rise up to him. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I repeated, and pushed the chair back to where it had belonged. ‘It won’t happen again.’
The henchmen were staring at me. And then I saw Jason at the bar, frozen with a glass of champagne to his mouth, his eyes fixed on me. I didn’t wait. I straightened my dress and went on my way. I got to the bathroom and locked myself in, shaking uncontrollably, staring at my hectic face in the mirror. This was incredible. I was turning into a vampire. You would look at me now and not think me the same person who had arrived in Tokyo two months ago.
‘My advice is, don’t go,’ Strawberry said. ‘Fuyuki ask you to his apartment, but Strawberry think it bad idea.’ When the gang had first arrived she’d got the table arranged, then retreated moodily behind her desk where she’d stayed all night, drinking champagne as fast as possible and scrutinizing us all with her narrow, suspicious eyes. By the time the club was empty, all the chairs were on the tables and a man with an industrial polisher was moving silently between them, she was furiously drunk. Under the floury Marilyn makeup her skin showed a deep pink round her nostrils, her hairline, on her neck. ‘You don’t understand.’ She pointed her cigarette-holder at me, stabbing it in the air. ‘You not like Japanese girls. Japanese girls understand people like Mr Fuyuki.’
‘What about the Russians? They’re going.’
‘The Russians!’ She sniffed indignantly, pushing a tiny straggle of white-blonde hair off her forehead. ‘The Russians!’
‘They don’t understand any better than I do.’
‘Okay.’ She held up her hand to stop me. She drained her glass, sat up straight and patted her mouth, her hair, trying to regain her composure. ‘Okay,’ she said, sitting forward and pointing the cigarette-holder at me. Sometimes when she was drunk like this she’d show her teeth and gums. The funny thing was that with all the surgery she’d never had her teeth fixed – they remained discoloured, one or two were even black. ‘You go to Fuyuki apartment you be careful. Okay? If it me, I don’t going to eat nothing in his house.’
‘Don’t what?’
‘I don’t going to eat any meat.’
The hairs on the back of my neck rose. ‘What do you mean?’ I said faintly.
‘Too many stories.’
‘What stories?’
Strawberry shrugged. She let her eyes wander out to the club. Fuyuki’s cars were waiting fifty floors down and most of the girls were already in the cloakroom getting their bags and coats. Outside a sour wind had started to blow, and from the panorama windows we could see that it had taken down power lines. Parts of the city were in darkness.
‘What do you mean?’ I repeated. ‘What stories? What meat?’
‘Nothing!’ She shook her hand dismissively, still not meeting my eyes. ‘Just jokes.’ She laughed then, a high, artificial laugh, and noticed her cigarette had gone out. She plugged a new one into the holder and waved it at me. ‘Better we finish this. This discussion finish now. Finish.’
I stared at her, my mind cantering forward. Don’t eat the meat? I was thinking how to pursue it, how to stalk her, sure she was dropping a vital clue, when quite suddenly Jason appeared, sitting next to me, leaning forward and gripping my chair, turning it round to face him.
‘You’re going to Fuyuki’s?’ he whispered.
He had already changed out of his waiter’s tuxedo into a grey T-shirt with a faded Goa Trance slogan. His holdall was strapped across his chest, ready to walk home.
‘The twins told me,’ he said. ‘You’re going.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I’ll have to go too.’
‘What?’
‘Because we’re spending the night together. You and me. We’d already agreed that.’
I opened my mouth to speak, but I couldn’t make anything come out. I must have looked odd, my pupils wide, my mouth open, a light haze of sweat on my neck
.
‘The Nurse,’ Jason said, as if I’d asked a question. ‘That’s why I’ll be welcome.’ He licked his lips and glanced at Strawberry, who was smoking another cigarette, her eyebrows raised knowingly at this exchange. ‘Let me put it this way,’ he whispered. ‘She’s kind of itchy for me. If you know what I mean.’
28
Fuyuki and his entourage had gone ahead, leaving a string of black cars, with ‘Lincoln Continental’ written in curlicue script on their boots, in the street to pick up the guests. I was one of the last to leave the club, and by the time I got to street level almost all of the hostesses, and Jason, had followed him, leaving just one car. I slid into the back seat with three Japanese hostesses whose names I didn’t know. As we drove they chattered about their customers, but I was quiet, smoking a cigarette and staring out of the window at the moats of the Imperial Palace flashing past the car. As we came through Nishi Shinbashi we passed the garden where I had first met Jason. I didn’t recognize it at first: it was almost behind us when I realized that the odd rows gleaming in the moonlight were the silent stone children lined up under the trees. I swivelled in my seat to stare at them through the back window.
‘What’s that place?’ I asked the driver in Japanese. ‘The temple?’
‘That’s Zojoji temple.’
‘Zojoji? What are all the children for?’
The driver looked at me hard in the rear-view mirror, as if I was a surprise to him. ‘Those are the Jizo. The angels for the dead children. The children who are stillborn.’ When I didn’t answer he said, ‘Do you understand my Japanese?’
I turned back to gaze at the ghostly lines under the trees. A little shudder crossed my heart. You can never be sure what’s going on in your subconscious. Maybe I’d always known what the statues were. Maybe that was why I had chosen the park to sleep in.
‘Yes,’ I said distantly, my mouth dry. ‘Yes, I do. I understand.’
Fuyuki lived near the Tokyo Tower, in an imposing apartment building set in private gardens behind security gates. As the Continental swept down the driveway, the wind coming off the bay made the big palm trees rustle. The guard roused himself from behind a low-lit reception desk, crouched to unlock the bottom of the glass doors, and escorted our party through a quiet marble lobby to a private lift, which he opened with a key. We crammed in, the Japanese girls giggling and whispering behind their hands.
When the doors opened at the penthouse the man in the ponytail was waiting for us. He didn’t speak or meet anyone’s eye as we filed out into the small hallway, but turned smartly and led us into a long passage. The apartment was arranged round a square. A long walnut-panelled corridor linked all the rooms and seemed to go on for ever; concealed lighting dropped round pools of light in front of us, like a runway, inviting us into the distance. I walked cautiously, shooting looks around me, wondering if the Nurse lived here too, if she had a lair behind one of these doors.
We passed a ripped and stained Japanese flag hung in a lighted frame, a ceremonial ashes box carved from wisteria, painted white and displayed in a glass cabinet. No locks, I noticed. I allowed myself to drop to the back of the group. We passed a military uniform, battle-worn and mounted so that it appeared to have flesh and substance. I bent a little as I passed the glass cabinet, keeping my eyes on the group ahead, and trailed my hand up inside the open base of the case, brushing the hem of the uniform.
‘What’re you up to?’ asked one of the hostesses, as I caught up with the group.
‘Nothing,’ I murmured, but my heart was picking up speed. No alarms. I hadn’t dared hope that there would be no alarms.
We passed a flight of stairs that led down into darkness. I hesitated, staring down into the gloom, resisting the urge to break from the group and slip down the steps. The apartment was arranged over two floors. What sort of rooms would be down there? I wondered, suddenly and inexplicably picturing cages. It is not a plant that you’re looking for…
Just then the group stopped up ahead and were depositing their bags and jackets in a small cloakroom. I had to leave the staircase and catch up with them, pausing to leave my coat too. Soon we could hear low music, the gentle clink of ice in glasses, and presently came into a smoky, low-ceilinged room, full of carefully lit alcoves and display cabinets. I stood for a moment, my eyes getting used to the light. The hostesses from the earlier cars were already seated in large oxblood chesterfields, balancing glasses and talking in low murmurs. Jason was in an armchair, comfortably reclined, one bare ankle resting lightly on the other knee, a cigarette burning in his fingers – just as if he was relaxing at home after a long day’s work. Fuyuki was at the far end of the room in a wheelchair. He was dressed in a loose yukata, his legs bare, and he was backing and shunting the wheelchair along the edges of the room, leading Bison around. They were looking at erotic woodcut prints on the walls, long-bodied courtesans with skeletal white legs, embroidered kimonos swirling apart to reveal oversized genitals.
I couldn’t help it. I was immediately mesmerized by those prints. I could sense Jason a few feet away, watching my reaction with amusement, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away. This one showed a woman so aroused that something was dripping from between her legs. At last, when I couldn’t stop myself, I turned. Jason raised his eyebrows and smiled, that long, slow smile that showed just the corner of his chipped tooth, the smile he’d given me in the corridor in Takadanobaba. The blood rushed to my face. I put my fingers on my cheeks and turned away.
‘This one,’ Bison said in Japanese, tilting his cigar at a print. ‘The one with the red kimono?’
‘By Shuncho,’ Fuyuki said, in his cracked whisper. He planted the cane on the floor and rested his chin on it, looking ruminatively up at the print. ‘Eighteenth century. Insured for four million yen. Beautiful, isn’t it? Had a little chimpira from Saitama liberate it for me from a house in Waikiki.’
The ponytailed man coughed discreetly and Bison turned. Fuyuki rotated the motorized wheelchair to look at us.
‘Come with me,’ he whispered, to the assembled girls. ‘This way.’
We went through an archway to a room where, under two samurai swords suspended from the ceiling on invisible wires, a group of men in Aloha shirts sat drinking Scotch from crystal tumblers. They half stood, bowing as Fuyuki glided past them in his chair. Sliding glass doors stood open to reveal a central courtyard lined entirely with gleaming black marble, the night sky reflected in it like a mirror. In the centre, black as jet, as if hollowed from the same block, was a spotlighted swimming-pool, a faint chlorine steam hanging above its surface. Several gas-powered heaters, tall, like lamp-posts, were dotted around, and six large dining-tables were arranged beside the pool, each set with black enamel place mats, silver chopsticks and heavy glass goblets, napkins stirring in the breeze.
Several of the places had already been taken. Large men with cropped hair sat smoking cigars and talking to young women in backless evening dresses. There were so many girls. Fuyuki must know a lot of hostess clubs, I thought.
‘Mr Fuyuki,’ I said, coming up behind him as we crossed to the tables. He brought the wheelchair to a stop and turned to look at me in surprise. None of the girls had dared to speak to him yet. My legs were wobbly and the heat from the burners made the side of my face red. ‘I – I want to sit next to you.’
He narrowed his eyes at me. Maybe he was intrigued by my rudeness. I stepped closer, standing in front of him, near enough for him to be aware of my breasts and my hips, taut inside the dress. On an impulse, the vampire in me stirring, I took his hands and placed them on my hips. ‘I want to sit next to you.’
Fuyuki looked at his hands, pressed into the folds of my dress. Maybe he could feel the French knickers beneath it, the slither of silk on silk, the elastic stretch under his fingers. Maybe he just thought I was crazy and clumsy, because after a moment or two he laughed hoarsely. ‘Come, then,’ he whispered. ‘Sit next to me, if you want.’
He propelled his wheelchair into a place
under the table and I sat down shakily, pulling my chair up next to him. Bison was already settled a few seats away, picking up a napkin, flicking it out and tucking it into his collar. A waiter in black jeans and T-shirt hovered around us with chilled vodka cocktails in cloudy white glasses, vaporous trails coming from them like dry ice. I sipped, surreptitiously surveying the courtyard. Somewhere, I thought, looking at the windows, some lit, others in darkness, somewhere in this apartment is the thing that keeps Shi Chongming awake at night. Not a plant. If not a plant, then what? There was a red light set high up on the wall. I wondered if it was an alarm.
Food arrived at the table: slabs of tuna piled like dominoes on beds of nettle; bowls of walnut tofu sprinkled with seaweed; grated radish, crunchy as salt. Bison sat immobilized, staring down at a plate of yakitori chicken, as if it posed a huge problem, his face pale and sweaty, as if he might be sick. I watched him in silence, thinking of how he’d been last time at the club, his expression of amazement, the way he’d been transfixed by the residue on the sides of Fuyuki’s glass. Just like Strawberry, I thought. He doesn’t want to eat the meat. He’s heard the same stories she has…
I licked my dry lips and leaned over to Fuyuki. ‘We’ve met before tonight,’ I murmured in Japanese. ‘Do you remember?’
‘Have we?’ He didn’t look at me.
‘Yes. In the summer. I was hoping to see you again.’
He paused for a moment, then said, ‘Is that so? Is that so?’ When he spoke, his eyes and his odd little nose didn’t move, but the skin on his upper lip adhered to his teeth and lifted to reveal strange pointed canines in the top corners of his mouth, just like a cat’s. I stared at those teeth. ‘I’d like to see your apartment,’ I said quietly.