Kamakura Inn

by Marshall Browne

  The driver had stopped the taxi at the door and now opened the trunk by pulling a lever. A middle-aged woman appeared, bowed to Aoki, and lifted out first his suitcase, then the cardboard box into which he’d jabbed airholes. She waited while he paid the driver.

  The Tokyo policeman pinched out the cigarette and entered the ryokan, ducking through a doorway decorated with welcoming maple branches. In the entranceway, he removed his shoes and slid his feet into the waiting slippers. Then he entered the hall that served as the inn’s lobby.

  The inspector had stepped into a gloomy space smelling of floor wax and enclosed by dark-stained timber—into claustrophobia. A ceiling strutted with chunky beams seemed a head hazard; involuntarily, he lowered his. The maid was following with his baggage.

  Another woman was waiting for him behind a counter. A younger one, thirty, Aoki judged. A coiffure as black and shiny as lacquer was presented to him as she bowed a greeting. Responding, Aoki looked at her curiously as she lifted her head. Her face had the healthy flush of the mountains; beneath her eyes were large freckles, and the eyes were assessing him in a polite and practiced way. As she presented the register for signing, Aoki stared at the thin white wrists revealed by the kimono sleeves.

  “You’re with us four nights, sir, I believe. We’re offering you the Camellia Room.” She smiled faintly. Her voice was husky and pleasant, the accent new to Aoki. He nodded and lowered his eyes.

  She said, “The radio is forecasting a snowstorm, I’m afraid.” In a slight change the smile had become rueful.

  Aoki thought, Doubtless it’ll cut short the ryokan‘s fall season. “Are there other guests?” he asked. Automatically, he wanted to know.

  “A gentleman from Osaka will arrive shortly. Two other gentlemen came this afternoon from Tokyo.” Her eyes seemed to be studying him afresh. Watanabe had said he hadn’t revealed Aoki’s occupation when he made the reservation, but if she read the newspapers she might remember him from his photograph.

  Politely, the woman regarded her guest. Her name was Kazu Hatano; she was thirty-five and one of the ryokan’s two proprietors. What she was seeing was a man not yet forty, of medium height, with a broad, brown face. Very tense. She thought, That affair! A good resemblance to the photo in the paper. Does that mole worry him, the way he touches it? She dropped her eyes. Thousands of ryokans in Japan; why pick this remote one? The day was turning out to be one of surprises, and the two men from Tokyo had been a big one.

  Aoki thought, She knows. He nodded and followed the maid. They went down a staircase, then along dim corridors whose dark wooden boards glowed with a dull shine, and came to a door that had a timeworn painting of a flower on it. The Camellia Room, she’d said. The fusuma door slid open as quietly as a sigh, and he stepped into the room.

  The maid brought in his suitcase and the cardboard box. There was a dining room, but did he want his evening meal served in his room? No, Aoki said, he would go to the dining room. He asked for directions to the bath; she told him and withdrew. Faintly, he heard the taxi departing. He had to duck his head to see out the window. The mountain peaks were glowing red now with the last of the sunset, and there was a deeper chill to the landscape.

  Six forty-five this morning. . . Superintendent Watanabe. Did his boss really think a week’s rest cure at the other end of Japan, in such a forlorn establishment, was going to make a difference and get a subordinate useful to him back on track? In the circumstances, that would be stupid thinking, and Watanabe was as smart, as calculating, as anyone Aoki had come up against. So what had happened at headquarters to make him take this trouble? Did Aoki’s being dispatched here connect with the old case? Was the health cure just a pretext?

  The volume of new questions shooting through his head must mean he wasn’t brain-dead!

  Aoki sighed and turned to the box. One by one, he took out Tokie’s five bonsai plants, then laid the plastic sheet from the bottom of the box atop a chest and set the mini plants in their ceramic containers on it. The orphans. They needed daily watering, and there was no one to do that at the apartment.

  Then he undressed, took the lightweight cotton yukata from the cupboard and put it on, and went to look for the bath. Following the maid’s directions, he descended another staircase, walked the length of a corridor, and found it. He noted that the toilet was next door. He washed himself with soap and a cloth under an ancient shower and then stepped into the stone bath. He lowered himself into the steaming water and lay there, soaking away this day of travel and doubt. He got out twice to throw containers of cold water over his head and body.

  Aoki’s body was glowing and relaxed when he returned to his room. He hadn’t had such a bath for years. He didn’t see anyone. His bed had been made up on the floor, a kimono laid out on top. He moved it aside, lay down, and slept.

  He awoke in darkness. Groggy with sleep, he switched on the bedside lamp. Shards of a dream, shards of the past, hovered in his mind. He was gazing at the blurry-white painting in the alcove, another camellia. In his stomach, the nerves were back.

  Rest cure! He threw back the quilt and stood up, his arms rigid at his sides. Ex-governor Tamaki in all his grossness had come looping out of the darkness, into his head. A chill ran through his body. Today, various aspects of the past were on the march in his mind. With a conscious effort, he snapped out of it and began to pace the small room. He lit a cigarette. “It’s set in concrete. It’s over, Inspector.” He heard Watanabe’s voice, as clearly as if he’d just spoken. His heart began to thump in his chest as he relived the shock that had hit him that unforgettable morning they’d killed the investigation. He’d been as shocked as a schoolkid who’d failed an exam! After all, anything had been possible given that politicians were involved, though what had followed had been the real nightmare.

  It was 7:20 P.M., and the ryokan’s atmosphere seemed to be shrilling in Aoki’s ears—mysteriously significant, different from the hollow echoes of his apartment, which now were like deep boomings in a dry, abandoned well. He stubbed out his cigarette and, ignoring the kimono, dressed again in his suit. He took a couple of deep breaths, then left the room.

  ~ * ~

  A man in a gray suit sat on a bench in the hall. A man with plainly nowhere to go and on duty—Aoki had that instantly. The guy was built like a miniature sumo wrestler; his torso seemed about to burst from his coat with muscle power. Stubble covered a conical skull upon which was a bright red birthmark. His eyes flicked to Aoki as he rose to his feet and bowed.

  Bodyguard, the policeman identified him. For whom, in this end-of-the-line place? Frowning, he turned away and went looking for the dining room. In its anteroom, a fire burned in a stone-flagged hearth, and its light flickered on the dusky ceiling beams—and over a Go board and its opposing ranks of white and black stones.

  Strangely, Aoki saw that an instant before he saw the man sitting behind the board: a man in his fifties, whose eyes had lifted to regard the newcomer; a big man with luxuriant hair, glossy in the light, and a formidable, overhanging brow.

  Aoki bowed. Here, he supposed, was the man from Osaka.

  From his seated position, the man responded. Then he stood up, and they exchanged name cards, studied them, and bowed a second time. The man wore a dark kimono. His demeanor, the hairstyle, and the long, patrician face gave him an ascetic air, but what Aoki most absorbed was an undercurrent of power. It was likely that this man was bodyguard material. Printed on the card was OGATA SAITO and an Osaka address. No company name, no professional identification, but Aoki’s card gave no such information, either. The man’s dark-colored kimono made him an indistinct figure in the room’s half-light; it was the reason Aoki hadn’t seen him immediately.

  “Are you a Go-player, Mr. Aoki?” The voice was deep.

  Aoki was not, and said so. His father had played Go all his life, and when Aoki was much younger had tried to get him interested. The game was ancient, invented thousands of years ago; its origins were lost in obscurity, though tradit
ionally its invention was ascribed to one of the earliest Chinese emperors. That information rose in Aoki’s mind. He frowned. It was startling how bits and pieces of knowledge his father had imparted to him kept emerging from his brain. Planted there, like sleepers?

  With the trace of a smile the man said, “I hoped to view the autumn leaves, but I’ve misjudged the season, and I fear I’m too late. “

  Aoki nodded. A maid slid open the door to the dining room, speaking in the lilting dialect to someone behind her. The two other guests were already at dinner, seated at a low table in a corner. The men from Tokyo. Aoki glanced through the open door.

  Inspector Aoki froze. His glance had become a rigid stare. He knew them both. Hiroshi Ito, chairman of the Tokyo Citizens Bank, and Haruki Yamazaki, a senior official of the Ministry of Finance. These prominent figures of the Tokyo financial world—here! He rubbed his jaw. But more than that—both had been major players in the unsolved case he’d recalled on the bullet train: Ito, the husband of the missing woman, and Yamazaki, her lover. This was amazing—

  Aoki tore his gaze away. At a stroke, his surprise and mystification at Watanabe’s sending him here had soared to another level. These two men, deep in that case, were also strongly connected to this ryokan! Aoki lowered his eyes to the Go table. What in hell was going on?

  Aoki looked up. The bodyguard in the hall—it clicked into place. He’d be looking after the prominent banker, not this Go-player. Aoki’s eyes met the Go-player’s. A stone held between thumb and forefinger poised in midair, the big man was watching the policeman like a hawk.

  Aoki gave him a terse, preoccupied nod and turned toward the dining room. The maid showed him to a place distant from the others. They turned their heads, obviously recognizing him, and polite bows were exchanged across the room. He imagined they were as surprised as he was, though their familiarity with him would have nothing to do with the missing-woman case.

  The maid poured his beer as he gazed at the menu card. The old unsolved case had fairly leaped into his mind as he set eyes on the two men—stronger and sharper than his earlier recollection on the train of the ryokan’s link with it.

  He ordered the simplest meal on the menu. His head down, Aoki ate his fish, had his miso soup and rice, drank his beer. In contrast, the high-powered pair were having a banquet, talking quietly as a sucession of trays of lacquered and porcelain bowls came and went. Clearly they knew the specialities of the ryokan. That figured! Madam Ito had been a divorcee named Hatano and the owner of the ryokan when she met Ito. The banker had courted her, taken her off to Tokyo, and married her.

  The two men were drinking sake, and the scent of the warmed alcohol wafted faintly to him.

  Aoki’s daze had cleared, and his mind was following old tracks. A murder never solved. The body never discovered. Had there even been a murder? His superiors had made no progress; the investigation had floundered. The case had been supervised by the then-director general of the CIB. Top level. The sensation had fizzled out in the media, and the case had been retired from high-priority status. He’d been one of about fifty detectives who worked on it, though Ito and Yamazaki couldn’t know of his low-level involvement; their knowledge of him would relate to the Fatman’s case. Everyone was interested in the ex-governor, and Aoki’s face had been on the front pages after Kimura’s article and Tokie’s suicide.

  And Superintendent Watanabe headed the Ito investigation! Watanabe hadn’t been Aoki’s boss in those days. Aoki smoothed his hand over his cheekbone. Watanabe’s assessing look in the coffee shop this morning was stark in his mind. But could it be that the situation he’d walked in on was a strange coincidence? No. His jaw tightened. Watanabe was up to something. He glanced across to the table in the corner where the two men were toasting each other in sake, which seemed about as strange as anything else.

  Aoki’s mind was clicking over in the old way, as if he’d punched a panic button. He turned his eyes down, as though analyzing each morsel of food. In reality he was assessing each image from the past moving in his brain. He finished eating, rose from the cushions, and walked out. Behind him the quiet hum of talk ceased.

  ~ * ~

  In the anteroom, the man from Osaka might not’ve moved a muscle. Big hands joined under his chin, he meditated on the game. “Please join me,” he said, smiling up at the detective with an air that suggested he’d decided to get to know him better. He tinkled a small handbell, and a maid appeared at once. “A scotch and water, please. Cutty Sark. What will you have?” The dense eyebrows lifted slightly.

  “A scotch, too.” Aoki almost asked for a double, but he was settling down. He sighed to himself.

  The man turned his eyes back to the board. Frowning, Aoki stared at it, too. He was surprised that he hadn’t given the case more than a passing thought in the intervening years. His first criminal case. Watanabe never spoke of it.

  He looked up at his surroundings. It had come to him that today he’d entered a zone where time might be meaningless. It was an unusual thought for Aoki, but a notion his father and his wife would’ve understood.

  A log in the fireplace cracked, expelling sparks. His head drooped, and his eyes closed. He’d had a long day of travel and surprises, and he was convinced now that this journey had nothing to do with his rehabilitation—so what kind of hand had his boss dealt him this morning?

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Seven

  “IS THERE BLOOD ON THEIR hands?” the Go-player said.

  Aoki’s head jerked up. He’d drifted off only momentarily. The words spoken were clear in his head—said so casually, in that Osaka dialect, but the guy had put his finger on it. Yet another surprise! The Osaka man spoke as though he had a deep knowledge of the missing-woman case.

  Saito immediately lowered his eyes and was again concentrating on the board. He picked up a black stone. “Anyway, quite a scandal, wasn’t it?”

  Frowning, Aoki waited.

  “I wonder if they’re talking about it right now.” The big man placed the stone. “The woman’s body never found, just her bloodstained clothes turning up in that Tokyo Central station locker, and those two”—he inclined his head toward the dining room— “unable to assist the police much, though each had been with her at different times the night she vanished.”

  His tone sounded half-amused, at what appeared to have been a tragedy.

  Aoki’s brow remained creased. Yeah. Blood without a corpse. Suspects without an arrest. Stalemated, month after month, the investigator’s nightmare. This man had read the papers of the day and had a good memory. That must be it—it’d come back to him in a rush when the two public figures arrived, or maybe, like Aoki, he’d remembered it en route to the ryokan, which had been so publicly tied in with the case. Or maybe he’d come here knowing it, which was something to think about. However, it was his superintendent’s purposeful intensity this morning, as he’d sent Aoki on this last-chance health cure, that was stuck in his mind like a fishbone in the throat.

  Into a lengthening silence, Aoki said, “You know a lot about it.” The Go-player shrugged as if to say, Who doesn’t? In a new tone, he said, “This is the classic game of 1938, between Master Shusai and the challenger, Mr. Kitani Minoru of the seventh rank. The state of play at the end of the second Hakone session on July 16, a match financed by Osaka and Tokyo newspapers.”

  Aoki stared at him. This man appeared to have his father’s mind-set in matters of culture, but the similarity to the old professor finished there. This one was tough and sharp; that was as plain as the black and white stones placed on the board in their battle formations.

  Saito smiled. “I replay this same match every autumn. I find an old, remote ryokan to do it, such as this one. It’s a spiritual discipline I impose on myself. Last autumn, I went to a ryokan on the Noto Peninsula.”

  Aoki nodded tersely. He’d never heard of the famous match, and it was of no interest to him. Spiritual discipline? That sounded like some kind of bunk.

  The Osaka
man straightened his torso and studied the detective. “I’m also a student of famous criminal cases, those I find interesting. About this case, much was written, and I’ve read most of it. So! which one of them murdered her, or did they conspire in it? Or was neither responsible?”

  Aoki, increasingly wary, stared harder. Again that mordantly humorous tone. He’d come out of the bemused state he’d been in in the dining room; now he felt alert, intrigued by this Saito’s comments and by the man’s assumption that he’d also remember the case. He said, “What’s your theory? “

  The other showed yellowed teeth in a grimace. “Theory? Ito, her husband, a cuckold! Yamazaki, her lover, her seducer! For two years that’d been common knowledge in certain circles in Tokyo. Like the burst of a firework, it was revealed to the nation. My theory? Was there a murder at all? “

  Aoki’s eyes were held by the Go board. The confronting formations of black and white stones glittered alike. Yeah, for a while, the police had gone down that line. He ran his hand through his sparse hair. “The bloodstained clothing, which matched her rare blood type?” he queried concisely. How far could this stranger take it?