The Japanese Corpse ac-5

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  The commissaris had been listening carefully. He was quite taken by the speech. The formal words were, he thought, sincere. He studied the Japanese ambassador's eyes and saw intelligence and compassion. His right hand raised itself a little, and the ambassador made a slight bow in response.

  "About the two suspects we are holding in jail at present," the chief constable said quietly. "I believe the prosecutor has something to say about them."

  "Yes," the prosecutor said. He looked immaculate, in spite of the heat, and his chin was set fiercely. "I am not impressed by the police reports. It seems we are holding the two gentlemen on a very flimsy pretext. A hostess employed in a local Japanese restaurant has accused them of murdering Kikuji Nagai, her boyfriend and allegedly a member of a Japanese gangster organization which employs, or employed-we are not sure if the skull fragment found in Mr. Nagai's car does indeed belong to Mr. Nagai-him as a salesman, and perhaps also a buyer, of valuable religious art. O.K. That's one statement by one person. We can't hold suspects on such an allegation; we can't even brand a man as a suspect because another person accuses him of this and that. We have further evidence that the two gentlemen had a meal with Mr. Nagai on the day that Mr. Nagai disappeared. The manager of the restaurant and his wife both say so, and Miss Andrews says so too. But sharing a meal is not a criminal act. The State Police has brought in three witnesses. One person saw an Eastern man-Chinese or Japanese, he doesn't know what race or nationality- buy a spade in a store in Abcoude, a town near the speedway between Amsterdam and Utrecht. We introduced the two suspects to this witness, one by one, and he stated that the first suspect had bought the spade. When the second suspect was brought into the room the witness seemed confused and said that the buyer of the spade could also have been the second suspect. We had the same experience with the other two witnesses who had seen a Japanese or Chinese man washing a new white BMW near a pond, again close to the speedway between Amsterdam and Utrecht. It seems that Japanese look alike to our citizens." He looked at the Japanese ambassador as if to apologize, but the ambassador was bowing and smiling.

  "Yes, indeed," the ambassador said, and giggled. "You will find that the reverse is also true. Foreigners are called 'gaijin' in our country and they look alike to us. It is strange, for some foreigners are tall and have red hair; others are small and have black or brown or blond hair. But they still look the same in our eyes. I began to see differences after a short while, but then-I am often in the presence of foreigners and have been ever since I started my career."

  "Right," the prosecutor said, "but this means that the witnesses are useless. Officially we have little to go on and I would be happy in a way if the suspects could be released forthwith. On the other hand, I have my doubts too. I met Mr. Takemoto and Mr. Nakamura, and they do not look like salesmen of chemicals to me. They might very well be gangsters and professional killers, not innocent tourists. They are, to my mind, too calm about their predicament. The Japanese consul in Amsterdam was good enough to act as an interpreter and I fired a lot of questions at them. So did the judge whom I was accompanying at the time. None of the questions seemed to touch them. They just smiled and sat back and smoked and drank tea."

  "Japanese people are reputed to react differently to a difficult situation," the chief constable said softly.

  "What did my consul say after the questioning was over?" Everybody turned to the Japanese ambassador who had lost his smile and was looking intently at the prosecutor.

  "He said they could be very dangerous men."

  "Yes," the ambassador said. "He said something like that to me on the phone. My consul is an experienced man. He was a naval officer during the war and our naval officers used to be the elite of our fighting forces. I would be inclined to let his words weigh heavily."

  "So I would suggest that we hold them," the chief constable said, "even on the flimsy evidence we have collected so far. But we will have them transferred to a comfortable jail and see to it that they have meals sent in from the restaurant they were frequenting. Meanwhile Adjutant Grijpstra can continue the investigation. He is the best man I can think of, do you agree?"

  The commissaris and the prosecutor nodded.

  "Beautiful," the Dutch ambassador said, and began to rub his hands. "Very nice. So the commissaris will be leaving for Hong Kong in a few days and should be in Japan soon. Now what about the man he will take with him? I believe there is a detective-sergeant around who meets our specifications. Speaks English reasonably well, is a good shot, has a black belt in judo and has been with the murder brigade for quite a number of years. Sergeant de Gier, I believe. Is he ready too?"

  The chief constable coughed. "The sergeant has been forced to put up with a severe loss, a personal loss. Two nights ago his girlfriend was killed in a traffic accident and his cat was seriously wounded at the same moment. The cat had to be shot, by the sergeant himself. He had had the cat for a long time." The chief constable was staring at the table in front of him; he seemed embarrassed.

  "Cat?" the Dutch ambassador asked. "I would think that the loss of his girlfriend would be more of a shock, but you seem to be stressing the death of the cat." The ambassador had dropped his voice, the others had gotten used to his booming way of speech, but they now discovered a different quality in the big blustering man with the large round gleaming face. There was no sarcasm in his question; he seemed genuinely puzzled and also touched.

  "Yes," the chief constable said, and cleared his throat. "The sergeant is a handsome man and he used to attract a lot of women. His adventures amused the staff of our force, especially because they never lasted long and always seemed to end well. The sergeant has charm, real charm. He wasn't out for conquests, and though he was conquered now and then, the ladies allowed him to twist free again. His only real attachment seemed to be to his cat, a Siamese, rather a neurotic animal, I am afraid, for the cat lived in the sergeant's small apartment. It was only a year ago that the sergeant acquired a girlfriend whom he seemed to love. I am informed that the relationship was close. The lady's brother was killed last year, and de Gier helped to solve the crime. The attachment started at that time. He wanted to marry her but she didn't want to marry him. I don't know all the details, but I am mentioning the details I know, because they may influence our choice. The commissaris has the sergeant staying with him now; the man is in a state of shock, of course. Personally I think that he should be allowed to go to Japan. I spoke to him yesterday, and although his reflexes and way of behavior were rather disconnected, I think the change of scene will do him good. And he is close to his chief." The chief constable's eyes strayed and came to rest on the small precise body of the commissaris. "I think he is the best protection we could wish for my colleague here."

  "Quite," the Dutch ambassador said.

  "You agree?"

  "Yes."

  There seemed to be a question in the eyes of the chief constable.

  "Sometimes we function best when we are under stress," the ambassador explained. "I wouldn't wish anyone to lose his girlfriend and favorite cat all at the same time, and there is the gruesome detail in this particular case that the sergeant had to shoot his cat himself, but the fact remains that a cruel shock like that will wake a man up. It may break a man at the same time, but that hasn't happened. Both you and the commissaris have observed the sergeant and you think he is capable of going to a foreign country to undertake some possibly very dangerous actions. A CID noncommissioned officer should have a higher breaking point that an ordinary citizen. The sergeant is also proficient in judo, a lighting technique I personally admire highly. Judo is a form of mysticism, or will be in its higher stages. The sergeant has a black belt, so he knows all the throws and grips and so on. After that the real training starts, the breaking of attachments that will, in the end, lead to complete liberation. My colleague may have something to say on the subject too. He knows far more about it and practices the art himself."

  He half gestured, half waved, closing his speech and p
assing the word.

  "Yes, yes," the Japanese ambassador said nervously, staring at his notes. The others waited. "Yes," he said again and inhaled deeply. "Indeed my colleague is right. You all know that judo belts come in various colors. The beginner's belt is white, for instance. Then there are bright colors. Orange and so forth. The black belt means great skillfulness, many tests have been passed and the teacher is satisfied. But in reality the owner of a black belt is still nowhere. In my country few have gone beyond the black belt. But mere proficiency can be surpassed, and I hear that here in Holland one man has taken the training to the end. He had been trained for many many years by a great master, a Korean who lives in London. As the training continues and the pupil learns he begins to forget. He forgets everything, his desires fall away and the moment will come when he has difficulty remembering his own name. He is no longer interested in wearing colored belts to attract the admiration of others. And eventually, when he has stopped caring altogether, he will be granted the greatest honor, he will wear the white belt again, the beginner's belt; but by that time he will no longer fight in public and he will be forgotten."

  The ambassador was still staring at the sheet of paper in front of him. Now he looked up and seemed surprised at finding himself in a room full of people, people who had heard every word he had said. Mr. Johnson's eyes were glinting, the Dutch ambassador looked serious, the public prosecutor had sucked his cigar with such force that the end had become a ball of fire and the chief constable and the commissaris both smiled gently. The silence lasted for a few more seconds and then everybody, as if alerted by some secret signal, got up and began to shake hands. The two ambassadors fell back into their formal roles and wished the policemen luck, once again assuring them of their support. Mr. Johnson promised to come back a little later to discuss plans and was invited to dinner by the commissaris. The prosecutor excused himself and left, carefully carrying his sizzling cigar. The chief constable saw the ambassadors out, walking as far as the courtyard where gleaming oversize cars were waiting with uniformed drivers.

  "Like old times," Mr. Johnson was saying to the commissaris. "I'll be flying out to Hong Kong too, but not in the same plane as yours. It's about time. I don't mind seeing a little action. I have been in Holland for two years now and I haven't been in a scrape yet. I wonder why they sent me here; maybe they thought I was getting old."

  "Never," the commissaris said, in a soothing voice, patting his guest's shoulder. "You are still a young man. But you are right, this is a quiet country. I can use some excitement myself."

  "It will be provided," Mr. Johnson said briskly. "Take my word for it. I have had dealings with the yakusa before. If I were a Japanese and I couldn't land a job in their secret service I would most definitely join the yakusa." He was nodding vigorously, both to himself and to the commissaris.

  \\ 8 /////

  "My real name is hard to remember," the man was saying, "but my foreign friends in Tokyo call me Dorin, why, I don't know. I have been sent to assist you in any possible way."

  The commissaris smiled and almost offered his hand, but remembered just in time that he was supposed to bow. He bowed, rather self-consciously. The man had already bowed several times, short quick bows that accompanied his staccato way of speaking. He had a pleasant open face with sharp features and regular white teeth. Most Japanese the commissaris had seen so far, in the plane and at the airport, had irregular teeth, although most were in excellent repair, patched with either gold or silver or some tinny metal.

  The commissaris had had a short and pleasant flight from Hong Kong and had spent his few days in the Crown Colony well. He had walked about and done nothing in particular. He had also slept a lot and the new surroundings had made him forget most of the things that annoyed him in Amsterdam, such as the clanging of the streetcar which changed direction just in front of his house, the conversation of his wife's lady friends and police gossip. His rheumatism was still bothering him, but not to the degree he had been forced to get used to in the damp Dutch climate, and he had been able to take long baths, sipping occasionally from a plastic gallon jug of cooled orange juice and smoking his small cigars, of which he had remembered to bring several hundred. The few Chinese he had been in contact with, hotel staff, shopkeepers and waiters, had served him well, and not only in return for the tips he had distributed or the purchases he had made. They had seemed to like the little old man in his shantung suit and some had had time to notice the calmness of his eyes and the strange mixture of rigidity and subtlety that controlled his approach and reaction to whatever surrounded him.

  He felt at ease now, sitting back on a plastic chair in a vast air-conditioned coffee shop at Tokyo airport, his small suitcase touching his right foot, sipping iced coffee while he listened to the Japanese with the unlikely nickname, who had appeared from thin air, in the appointed place, exactly as predicted by the precise Mr. Johnson. Dorin, the commissaris thought, a Viking name perhaps. Perhaps the foreign friends this young man mentioned are Scandinavians and perhaps he reminded them of the warriors of those days. There was something of the warrior in the way Dorin carried himself. His body was straight and supple and he was taller than most of the people thronging about their table in the coffee shop. The commissaris noted that Dorin's trousers were tight but the jacket seemed a size too large. A movement of the left arm showed a hard line under the cotton of the jacket. A pistol, most probably, a fairly large pistol, with a long barrel, a weapon that could kill at a distance of say one hundred and fifty feet, under ideal circumstances of course. The commissaris wasn't armed. He wouldn't have been able to carry a gun in an airplane, but he might have been able to obtain a permit to have one in his suitcase. He hadn't bothered.

  The CIA had made contact with him in Hong Kong, and he had spoken to Mr. Johnson, once by telephone and once in a museum where they had been admiring the same painting. Mr. Johnson liked working according to the book and his secretive colorless ways had amused the commissaris. In order to please the CIA chief he had visited the company where his cousin worked and he had been briefed on his cousin's routine so that he would be able to use his cover. He hadn't been too diligent about it. The whole scheme was haywire anyway. He knew very well that he was acting as a decoy to lure the yakusa out into the open. All he had to do in Japan was to go about openly soliciting business. He was supposed to be a buyer of stolen art and heroin and a competitor of the yakusa. Would they care about his background? If he could really buy both drugs and art and set the merchandise up for shipment to Holland he would immediately prove that his existence was detrimental to the yakusa and they would try either to kill him or to intimidate him in such a way that he would give up and run. He shook his head. Well, perhaps Johnson was right. If he used the identity of his cousin, a chief clerk of a shipping company in Hong Kong, he might convince the yakusa. A chief clerk can be a member of an illegal organization, especially a chief clerk of a shipping company with connections all over the world.

  "Yes," Dorin said, "I trust that you will have a pleasant time in Tokyo. I have been told that there is no particular hurry and Tokyo is an excellent place to get acquainted with Japanese ways. Kobe is a different place, more quiet in a way. Kobe has about one tenth of Tokyo's population. If you can get used to this city you will have no trouble at all in Kobe. Would you like to stay in a Western-style hotel or do you prefer a Japanese inn? Your assistant is now lodged in an inn, but he said he would go to wherever you decide."

  "De Gier?" the commissaris asked. "How is he? He must have been here for a few days now, hasn't he?"

  "Yes," Dorin said. Dorin's English was fluent but marked by a heavy American accent; the young man had obviously spent many years in the States. His command of the language couldn't just be due to study. "A few days. There's been a little trouble, but everything is all right again. Your assistant is a very able man. He will be an ideal bodyguard and will give you better protection than I could hope to do."

  "Trouble?" the commissaris
asked and his hands came up in surprise. "What trouble? Surely our friends haven't caught up with us yet, have they? We haven't even started working."

  Dorin's head and chest came forward in an embarrassed bow and he almost spilled some of his iced coffee. He rubbed out his cigarette while he tried to think of the right words.

  "Trouble," he said hesitatingly. "Hmm, yes. I know most of the details; perhaps you would like to hear them?"

  "Please," the commissaris said. "The more I know the better, although he will tell me himself no doubt. I have worked with him for many years. Still, it would be better if I heard the story from another angle as well."

  "De Gier-san," Dorin started and the commissaris nodded. He already knew that "san" is a polite addition to everybody's name in Japan.

  "De Gier-san was met by me at the airport here five days ago," Dorin said, "and I took him to a Japanese inn on the outskirts of the city. He is a very quiet man, although his English is fluent and we had no trouble understanding each other. I knew he liked judo, so I met him the next morning and took him to my club. We practiced for a few hours. He is very good, you know."

  "I know," the commissaris said, "but he could be better. I have often watched him, in play and in earnest. I always thought that he lacks complete control. He is clever and quick, of course, but he overdoes it sometimes."

  "I didn't notice that at the time," Dorin said. "My instructors were impressed. 'He is tricky,' they said, but then they weren't used to him of course."

  "Tricky," the commissaris repeated. "So what happened?"

  "Nothing happened for a few days. I showed him around Tokyo. We spent two evenings on the Ginza; that's a shopping center by day and a pleasure quarter by night. We had some good meals which he enjoyed and he took me to a Chinese restaurant which he had discovered on his own. The people at the inn like him very much. It's only a small inn and it is owned by my uncle. The cat had kittens, and de Gier-san sat up all night, comforting the animal. She is young and it was her first litter. He also played his flute. My aunt plays the piano and they found some pieces they could play together. He is a very industrious and disciplined man, your assistant.