The Mystery of Yamashita's Map

by James McKenzie

  The professor and Lisa walked in. ‘Fraser!’ the professor started excitedly. ‘How good of you to come. We have exciting news concerning our map.’

  ‘Really?’ Fraser said, trying not to sound too interested. ‘I just dropped by, I was on my way home.’

  ‘It’s a good day for just walking,’ the professor replied. ‘Come, sit by the window and I will tell you everything. Lisa, go and get a coffee for Fraser, would you?’

  Lisa looked offended. She was fine with being treated as her uncle’s unpaid servant but it was quite another thing to be asked to run around after others. She pursed her lips and stood still.

  After about a minute of being ignored she turned and headed out of the door, thinking to herself that she really needed to assert herself in these situations as she made her way to the coffee machine in the canteen.

  The professor told Fraser what they had learned that day, about Anderson and his knowledge of the map, about Amichi and Yamashita, about his talk with Lisa and about how they were considering finding the tunnels once and for all.

  ‘It’s odd, Fraser,’ the professor said. ‘But I feel I have a calling. For some weeks now I have been having these dreams – oh, they mean nothing, I know. I am an old man now. In my younger years I would have dismissed them as a glass of Saki or a piece of stuck salmon but now, now I’m older, I find I want to believe.’

  ‘In Yamashita’s gold?’

  ‘Yes, in that, but more than that, I think I want to believe in the spirits that draw me to it. Anderson called them the aswang and they are very powerful, so he says.’

  ‘But surely that’s just myth, professor. You can’t believe in it?’

  The professor tapped the side of his head with a finger. ‘The more I learn,’ he said, ‘the less I seem to know. I have known a frog to escape from rock strata thousands of years old, just like that . . .’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Out of the rock as they drilled, its skin almost translucent, its bones as dry as the dust. Who put it there? Who enabled it to survive? God? Nature? Who knows? These are merely different words for the same thing. I am a man of science, but who owns the science?’

  Fraser tipped back in his chair. ‘So what next?’ he asked.

  The professor shrugged. ‘Who knows? Hire a plane, perhaps, make a trip to the Philippines?’

  There was a knock at the door and the professor turned to look. However, as he did, it stopped. ‘Perhaps that’s something you could do, Fraser. Do you know anyone in the aviation business?’

  Fraser thought. ‘I once knew an old pilot from Guam but he would be dead by now. He flew into Vietnam, nearly fried him. Not sure he would make a good choice, anyway.’

  The knocking began again. ‘Lisa, come in!’ the professor said.

  ‘I know very little about planes, professor, I’m afraid. I flew over here and that’s about it. To tell you the truth it rather makes me feel sick just thinking about it. I was never a great flyer. I’ll tell you one day about my experience coming over here; it wasn’t a good start.’

  The knocking at the door continued. It was a slow, insistent sound that seemed to permeate the room and be of just the right pitch to cause the professor the most aggravation. He placed his hands to his ears in a show of frustration that shocked Fraser. ‘OK, Lisa, I am coming,’ he shouted. ‘I am coming. If you could only put the cups down I could . . .’

  He stopped in his tracks. The sight that greeted him as he opened the door would have stopped a lesser man’s heart. Suspended from the door jamb by his belt was Anderson, his face blue and his eyes open in a display of fearful death. As he swung, urine seeped out of his bladder, ran down his trouser leg and pooled on the floor below him and his corpse swung this way and that causing his foot to tap gently on the wooden panel of the door.

  The professor raised a hand to his mouth as Lisa came along the corridor. As soon as she saw the body she screamed, dropped the cups of hot coffee on the floor and then stood unable to move, the only sound the slight creak of the leather of the belt brushing up against the door frame. Fraser came out to see what was occurring.

  ‘Professor, I just thought . . .’ His words were taken from him as he saw the body.

  The professor looked at Fraser. ‘Anderson,’ he explained.

  Fraser grabbed the professor and Lisa and pulled them into the room. He reached for a letter opener that sat on the professor’s desk and cut Anderson down, letting him fall onto his shoulders. Struggling to cope under the weight of even this small man, Fraser dumped him down behind a pile of books and noticed that one of them, ironically, concerned the Book of the Dead.

  ‘We have to get out sooner rather than later,’ he explained. ‘This is more than a treasure map now. Whoever did this did it for a reason and they will probably do it again.’

  ‘But it’s no good going back to the flat, uncle, they know where you live,’ said Lisa.

  The professor thought. ‘And they know where I am here now.’

  She said: ‘We need to get to the Philippines, uncle.’

  Fraser interrupted, ‘We need to go to the police.’

  ‘The police?’ Lisa asked. ‘You saw what they were like, they would be twice as bad here. This is a big city. People get lost here easily. The police can make very little difference so they don’t try. We need to find the gold, because whoever is after my uncle is really after the gold.’

  Fraser sat on the chair. ‘Lisa, a man is dead, a girl is dead. How many more have to die before you go to the police and get this sorted out?’

  The professor spoke. ‘He is right, Lisa. We cannot take matters into our own hands. I am too old for adventure. Besides, we need to arrange things for Anderson.’

  ‘Anderson’s dead, uncle, and you could be too.’

  Fraser turned round to look at the corpse that was nestled in the corner of the room. ‘Talking of Anderson,’ he said. ‘What do we do with him? We have to go to the police.’

  The professor thought. ‘No one saw us go into Anderson’s, right?’

  ‘Right,’ Lisa said. ‘So technically we weren’t there.’

  ‘If we go to the police,’ the professor offered. ‘They’ll ask how he came to be in this state. We were the last ones to see him alive – all except the murderer. At best they would find out about the map.’

  ‘At worst we would be charged with murder,’ Lisa offered. ‘I think you might be right, Lisa, but no one saw us enter Anderson’s room. All we need do is get rid of the body.’ ‘Is that all?’ Fraser asked sarcastically. ‘Push him in the harbour?’ Lisa said. ‘Cut him up and flush him down the toilet?’

  Fraser stared at Lisa, hardly believing what he was hearing. She smiled at him sweetly and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

  The professor walked over to the body of Anderson and looked at it. He saw now the fear in the face, blue and contorted in death, his eyes open to the world, his fingers still stiff from trying to claw at whatever or whoever killed him. The professor put a hand on his friend’s head and bowed his own in silent prayer. The sun came in through the window and lit the two figures up in a curious golden glow; the air had a sacred skin to it.

  Lisa walked up behind her uncle and placed a hand on his shoulder, causing a chain of concern, from the dead man to the young woman. Suddenly the professor opened his eyes.

  ‘To the basement,’ he said, and left the room, leaving Lisa and Fraser staring at each other. When he realised they were not following him, the professor’s head reappeared from behind the door jamb.

  ‘Well, come on, to the basement,’ he said again. ‘Oh, and bring him.’ He nodded at Anderson.

  Fraser looked around. ‘How do we get him down to the basement without anyone seeing him?’ he asked Lisa, who shrugged and looked blank for a moment.

  Then, as if connecting a circuit in her head, an idea appeared and she snapped her fingers triumphantly. ‘Wait here,’ she said and disappeared out of the door.

  A few moments later she appeared pushing
a trolley with a large television on it. ‘The film theory department,’ she explained. ‘Help me get him on the shelf at the bottom.’

  Lisa and Fraser picked up Anderson and placed him unceremoniously on the lower shelf of the video trolley. Lisa looked round for something to cover him with. She saw an old Japanese flag that was covered in mould lying in the corner and draped it over the trolley so that the body could not be seen.

  ‘You want me to push?’ she asked, but did so herself anyway.

  Fraser stood back and watched her from behind. There was something in the way she walked that sent him crazy, just the small, insignificant things she did with her body, unknowing but full of an easy sensuality and imbued with a confidence that he had never experienced in a woman before. She sometimes seemed a tiny girl and sometimes a fully grown woman and it both maddened him and excited him. He loved to watch her move, to listen to her speak, to be near her elegant but easy grace.

  As he followed her down the hall he noticed how her hair swayed when she walked, how black it was, how shiny. He saw the whiteness of her neck and how smooth her skin was. He noticed that she walked with her feet slightly splayed and how it made her buttocks sway with a gentle rhythm that was almost hypnotic. He noticed a lot of things as he walked behind her, making sure that the arm of the dead man did not fall out of its covering in an inopportune moment.

  When they got to the lift Fraser pressed the button to open the door and stood directly behind Lisa. He could smell her now; he breathed in slightly, trying to grasp as much of her as he could. There was nothing extraordinary about her, nothing spectacular, she was just an ordinary girl from an ordinary suburb of Tokyo who had come to study at a rather ordinary university but that ordinariness, that everyday quality, made her all the more appealing.

  He had known many women in this area and each one of them was either beautiful or rich; eventually he had got used to the wide variety of partners on offer to an ex pat with a future. Lisa was different because she had not been spoilt by the big city; she still had that sense of the town about her; the willingness to believe in things that the hard-hearted would not.

  As they exited the lift in the basement, they heard a noise like a huge bull elephant sighing, or a train coming to rest. Lisa looked at Fraser, who gazed dreamily into her face.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘You look as though you are catching flies with your mouth.’

  Yes, it was her ordinariness that he liked most of all.

  When they found the professor, he was hopping around on one leg clutching the other.

  ‘Are you hurt, professor?’ Fraser ventured.

  ‘It’s the light down here,’ the professor explained. ‘I can barely see where I am treading and every now and then I walk into something hard.’

  ‘Why don’t you put the light on?’ Fraser asked.

  ‘Would you put the light on to kill a man?’ the professor said.

  ‘Erm . . . no . . . probably not. Who are you killing?’

  ‘He’s already killed; should I have said disposing of?’

  ‘Uncle! You’re leaving him down here?’

  The professor looked sheepish. ‘In a manner of speaking,’ he said and suddenly behind him a jet of steam shot out and filled the basement. ‘This is the boiler,’ he said. ‘Where they strip bones for display. Those animal skeletons you see in classes are not bought like that – they are samples brought in that are stripped and then mounted.’

  Lisa’s face looked horrified. The whole scenario seemed surreal to her. ‘You’re going to strip Anderson?’

  ‘Can you think of anything better?’

  Lisa looked at Anderson, then at Fraser, who just shrugged.

  ‘I’ll have him in my study for always,’ the professor said and smiled. ‘Help me get him in there.’

  Lisa began to see her uncle in a different light.

  Carefully, the three of them opened the giant brass lid of the boiler and placed it to one side while they picked up Anderson and gently lowered him into the bubbling water. The professor put the lid back on the large brass drum and tightened the four screwed locks that were placed around its edge.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Lisa asked.

  ‘Now, we wait,’ the professor said.

  It was about three hours later that they returned to the huge boiler that had by now stopped bubbling away like a slow cooker. Cautiously, they undid the locks, opened the lid, shone a light and peered in.

  Lisa gasped and placed a hand over her mouth. In the water of the tank, floating like a bleached white buoy was Anderson’s skull, its blank eyes staring up at her. She stepped down on to the floor of the basement and started taking deep breaths. Part of her could not believe she was in this position; death had sometimes been close to her but never like this, never in such a way that she felt complicit in it. She felt guilty because she hadn’t known about the danger Anderson had been in. She felt guilty because she should have gone to the police. She felt guilty because she should have talked her uncle out of this. Closing her eyes, she felt her head swoon but she composed herself and helped lift parts of the skeleton out of the tank feeling all the while glad that it was dark enough not to be able to see the whole scene. Carefully, bit by bit, they laid Anderson’s bones on the floor, then wrapped him in the flag again and carried him upstairs to the office. The professor sat in his swivel chair and stared out of the window. The sun was just going down over the buildings opposite, which looked almost magical in the early evening dusk. He glanced over at the bundle on a pile of books and silently saluted; Anderson would have wanted it that way.

  Chapter Seven

  Lisa was tidying up the books in the professor’s apartment. She tried to place them in alphabetical order on the shelves but quickly gave up. She had bought some carnations at the supermarket on the way home and was arranging them on the desk, making it seem a little less like a waiting room for the death chamber. Her uncle was with Fraser in the kitchen discussing plans for hiring a plane. She picked up a jacket from the floor and a card fell out of the pocket. She reached for it and noticed it was a cheap business card. There was a plane etched in blue ink on one side and ‘Joe Hutchins – Pilot’ written on the other with a phone number underneath it.

  She took it in to her uncle. ‘Uncle? Who’s this Joe Hutchins? Is he a pilot?’

  The professor looked at her blankly. ‘Joe Hutchins? Never heard that name before. Is he a friend of yours?’

  ‘No, I found this in one of your jackets. It fell out as I was picking it up. All it says is Joe Hutchins – Pilot. Then there’s a number.’

  She handed the card to the professor, who studied it closely. After a while, his furrowed brown turned into smooth recognition.

  ‘The taxi driver gave it to me on the night I met you at the bar. My, it seems like weeks ago now. He told me if ever I was in trouble I was to call his cousin. Then he gave me this.’

  ‘We’re in trouble now, aren’t we?’ asked Fraser.

  Lisa swiped the card from her uncle and ran over to the telephone. She dialled, waited, then spoke. ‘Joe? Joe Hutchins?’

  There was silence in the room as Lisa listened. She twirled the phone cord in her fingers and nervously fidgeted with the things on the desk.

  ‘Well,’ she said after a while. ‘Do you know where he might have gone? What about a forwarding address, a telephone number? Anything?’

  The professor and Fraser’s hearts sank. They knew that card had not delivered on its own meagre promises. Lisa put the phone down and joined them, looking despondent.

  ‘Well, it was worth a try,’ she said.

  Fraser patted her shoulders. ‘Yeah, it’s always worth a try,’ he said, but the professor was silent. He had his finger up to his forehead and his eyes half closed. Without opening his eyes fully he crossed the room to the desk, opened the drawer and pulled out a stack of dollar bills of small denominations.

  ‘If ever I split a twenty o
r a fifty and I am given the change, if there are ones in there I put them in this drawer. Every now and then I take it to the market and buy a huge tub of ice cream, which I bring home and eat, all to myself.’

  Lisa and Fraser were perplexed.

  ‘It’s a bit late for ice cream, professor,’ Fraser offered.