He swung around and rechecked the room, his nerves brittle as fuse wire. Why not the knife or cleaver again? Why all this trouble? Why not a bullet? Had the yakuza gone mad? This wasn’t their way, more like the working out of a Kabuki plot. The thoughts tumbled in his mind, but this time no acrobat somersaulted and landed neatly on his feet.
Fuck! The flashlight made him a target. He flicked it off. The murdering bastards might still be nearby. Had to be two to string him up like that. Sensing something, cautiously he moved out into the room.
Ten paces away a shape rose up from the deep dark at the dining-room door and, as Aoki gasped in shock, came at him fast and fluid, steel glinting. Aoki sprang into a fighting stance—not thinking, doing. Dropping the flashlight, he vaulted sideways over a chest. The onrushing silhouette filled his vision, and a swishing sound went past his head simultaneous with a ferocious grunt. Knees bent to absorb the shock: Aoki had landed beside the table with the Go board. Doing and thinking now, his hand found the bowl of stones, plunged in, and came out with a handful as hard as steel ball bearings. The figure had veered to the center of the room, something above it—a sword!—held high and two-handed, its point describing small circles. For one wild instant, his eyes searing their sockets, Aoki thought of a force from the devil’s gate, but the grunt had been as human as the sweat running off him. “Come on, you bastard,“ he hissed across the space.
With all his strength Aoki hurled the handful of stones, and a pandemonium of clashes on steel, ricochets, and ripping of paper followed. The figure had paused but was coming again, relentless. Aoki seized another handful and, slamming his shoulders against the mantelpiece, balanced himself for a second throw. The figure checked, then whipped the sword down for a lunge just as the second volley went across the space between them. The shadow shrieked, reeled back, and in a flash seemed to be dematerializing before Aoki’s eyes as the stones blasted through paper panels. Chest heaving, sweat streaming from his armpits, eyes aching, Aoki watched his front. In the corridor to the main hall, the sound of fast-retreating steps. He lurched forward and fell to his knees, fumbling for the flashlight, and his hand closed on razor-sharp steel. He cried out as it sliced into his fingers and palm.
A handkerchief wadded in his left hand, which also held the flashlight, the sword projected in his right, he moved along the corridor, fast, swollen with anger and bloodlust. He’d injured the bastard! In the main hall, he pulled up and listened. Downstairs—going deep into the ryokan. The wadded handkerchief was sodden, and blood pattered on the floor. He went down the stairs two at a time. At the bottom, he stopped again to listen: faint sounds from the heart of the building—from the direction of the courtyard and the shrine. He rushed on, the flashlight beam jumping along the corridors.
Ahead! In the darkness, the sound of slippered feet skimming over boards. He pressed forward, eyes and ears in overdrive. In the gallery beside the courtyard, he flicked the beam high, nearly caught something, sensed it plunge into space beyond the flashlight’s range. He was breathing hard, still dripping blood; the shrine was to his right. Silence. Where to now? Should he descend to the next level, where Saito’s room was? Or head for Hatano’s?
The whining, twittering sound of startled birds.
Along the connecting passage, Aoki ran toward the sound. The floor was squealing now as though in agony. He reached the opposite corner and shot the flashlight down this gallery. The floor fell abruptly silent as the door at the end slid shut, then was screaming again as Aoki raced over it. Clumsy with the makeshift bandage, he grabbed the door handle, the sword at the ready, and wrenched it open.
A woman in kimono and obi stood transfixed by the light beam, her face extraordinarily white, the full dark hair piled high, an arm moving, and with it a small ruby-like light. Then she was slipping to her left. “Wait!” Aoki hissed out of his shock. In a reflex, the flashlight jumped in his hand and fell. It crashed on the floor, and its light went out.
Aoki grabbed for the rolling tube, hearing to his right the soft fleeing movement. He had the flashlight, flicked the switch. Not working. He cursed, dropped it, and sprang through the doorway and went right, his left hand outstretched. His vision was changing; he could dimly make out things—in the angle of two timbers, a large triangular panel. He dropped the sword and pressed against it with both hands, and it swung inward. His fingers traced around the aperture. Crouching down, he squeezed through it, hastily drawing the sword after him.
Still crouching, his shoulders free, he felt himself in a large space. Staring hard, he straightened up. The thundering blow struck him on the top of the head. The discs of his spine were disconnected, rattling. Lights flashed before his eyes, became falling white stars. Then he fell and never felt the concussion, only the floorboards suddenly against his face, smooth as glass and icy. In his jarred brain, jittering disco lights showed white-stockinged feet, a small white hand reaching down, slender wrists floating like lilies in a breeze. Then it was black.
~ * ~
Chapter Twenty-One
CONSCIOUSNESS CAME BACK TO INSPECTOR Aoki in small stutters of sensation. He was slumped in a chair. Behind his forehead there was an immense throbbing. He gritted his teeth and fought to open his eyelids, which were squeezed shut against cold daylight. He turned his head and blurrily identified the main hall, then the kimonoed maids who were fluttering around him. In the back of his head a phone was ringing; outside, crows were cawing urgently—or were they inside his head, too? He blinked at his blood-smeared left hand, then shut his eyes again.
A cold compress smacked onto his forehead. He realized Kazu Hatano’s face was close to his own. A glass was held to his lips, and warm liquor plunged down in him. Pills were put into his mouth; he swallowed them, and like a trolley car’s displaced pole being set back on the line, Aoki became reconnected to the world.
“Mr. Ito?” he croaked.
“Yes,” she said, holding the compress in place.
“Where’s Saito?”
“He has gone.”
“Your father?”
“Gone.”
He edged his torso more erect on the chair, and dizziness spun in him. He gripped his head with both hands. How much could he trust these answers? He swallowed. “Gone! The phone?”
“It was reconnected at 5:30 A.M. We couldn’t find you.”
“I must make a call. Who found me?”
“A room maid coming on duty.”
“Where?”
“Where you fell, in a room on the lower level. “
“A secret room,” Aoki growled. The vertebrae at the base of his neck were burning, and his neck muscles were locked rigid. He touched his scalp—stinging pain. His fingers traced a long cut, finding what must be coagulated blood. What had he been hit with?
Watching him, she shook her head sadly. He wanted to see that secret place in the light, but first he must make the long-delayed phone call. The women helped him to his feet and supported him into the office. It was 8:15 A.M. It took several minutes to track down the prefecture’s chief of police. As he waited, one hand pressed to the compress, he thought, The red scars on those white wrists—did I dream that? Fragments of last night were coming back, though what part of it had actually happened, what had been hallucination? He remembered the tea and shuddered. Lucky for him he’d only taken one mouthful.
The electric lights flickered and came on; someone cried out and applauded. Unbelievable, Aoki thought.
The police would arrive within the hour. The local chief’s voice had been deep and quivering, more so when he heard the identities of the deceased. From what they had been told by the taxi company, the police believed the two prominent men were at the ryokan, and they had been going to check it out as soon as the road was plowed. But dead! Aoki gave the chief Saito’s and Hatano’s descriptions.
Unsupported, Aoki went out to the hall. The orgiastic activity in his head was diminishing to briefer seizures. Beyond the glass doors, two housemen were at work widening
the trench. The phone was ringing again. He winced. He’d been away from the streets too long. This smack on the head was a real drama—he’d heard the crack of his spinal column.
He was leaning on the counter when Kazu Hatano returned from whatever task she’d hurried away to attend to. He said, “How and when did Saito and your father leave?”
“Mr. Saito phoned for a taxi at about five fifty. It came within twenty minutes. Apparently the road was clear at about four thirty.” “They departed before you found Ito’s body—and me?”
She hesitated. “Yes.”
Aoki blinked, still clearing his vision. She looked tired and very frail, but with an effort he put his personal feelings aside. “How did he pay his bill? “
“With banknotes.”
How else. “Call the taxi company and have the same driver come back, please.”
Holding the compress in place, he walked slowly to the anteroom and stared out the window at Ito’s corpse. A breeze lifted the banker’s hair, giving an illusion of life. His white stockings were less than eighteen inches above the snow. Aoki opened the small door and stood close to the suspended body. The kimono was soaked with moisture from the dripping eaves. How had he been restrained? The hands weren’t tied. Aoki deliberated on the puzzle. Of course, there’d been two of them. Then he saw the small stool upset in the snow and recognized what it was meant to mean. Behind him a maid, eyes averted, hurried through the room with a swish-swishing of fabric.
Kazu Hatano came in. Her left hand was spread against her throat, but she did not avert her eyes. Steadfastly she stared at the body. Aoki took this in. Soon she was going to be put in the position of answering hard questions from the CIB. He noticed something, and a moment later held the damp folded sheet of paper that had been tucked into the corpse’s sash.
Well then, let’s go—
to the place where we tumble down
looking at snow!
Aoki looked up into her curious gaze. Just the kind of suicide note one would expect from a murderer who had regrets, or who knew the game was up—or who was tired of life and its problems. Putting it in his pocket, he shook his head, and grimaced from the stab of pain. Don’t move your head.
The mind behind the note, and so much else that had happened, was as weird as you could encounter. No one would believe suicide. A joker was in action, and the plot of a Kabuki play continued to unfold. His father might have identified one that matched it.
Kazu Hatano’s face was flushed now. Aoki’s eyes kept going back to her. A glow of triumph? The women of this family were something, and especially this one. She continued to gaze unflinchingly at Ito’s face, as though memorizing a life, until a maid came in.
“Excuse me,” the proprietor said with a bow.
Aoki slowly crossed the room and sat where he’d faced Saito over that ill-starred Go match. Ill-starred in 1938 and during the past days. The bastard had been playing a chancy game, but how he’d reveled in it, with his graphic account of the defeat of the old Master of Go, his versions of Madam Ito’s disappearance and of Ito’s and Yamazaki’s bank troubles, his speculations about Ito’s belated rush of shame at being cuckolded, and his act of revenge. Entangling the old missing-woman case in Aoki’s mind to mask his murderous intentions! Much of it from that hoard of news clippings in his room . . . Playing a parallel match against the Tokyo detective, even massacring him at chess! Before he killed him!
As his father had warned, the killer instinct had been in Saito, as fluid as his commentary on the events in play.
Again Aoki put his head in his hands. In this room volleys of Go stones had whistled through the predawn air, and one, at least, had hit a target. He looked up at the ragged holes in the paper-screened wall.
Another maid had appeared, and a man stood behind her. The taxi driver had been coming up the hill again when his base radioed. He was the one who’d brought Aoki here four days ago. “Sir,” he said, “I told you it was too late in the season. “ He was grinning nervously.
“Never mind that,” Aoki said gruffly. “I’m a police officer. Where did you take the men this morning? The big man called Saito, and the chef, Hatano.”
“To the station. They caught the seven fifteen to Sapporo.”
“What did they say to you?”
“They never spoke.”
“Describe the big man to me.”
He did. It was Saito, all right. The taxi driver licked his lips. “The chef, I know him. His eye was bandaged. The women said nothing, either. “
Aoki’s eyes narrowed. “What women?”
The driver blinked. “One older, one younger, but they were so wrapped up, their faces covered with scarves, I couldn’t make out much.”
Aoki swung around and walked a few paces, wheeled, and came back. What in hell was going on? His head was throbbing again, fit to burst. “They took the train, too?”
“Yes, the chef and the women together, a different carriage from the big man.”
Aoki glared at him. Two women. Kazu Hatano had come back, and he realized that she’d heard the last exchange. He nodded sharply to the man. “You can go, but don’t leave the ryokan. Other police will want to talk to you.” He turned and stared at her with fresh and despairing suspicion. “Two women. Why didn’t you tell me that? Who were they?”
She lowered her eyes. She didn’t appear rattled, merely deeply thoughtful. Despite his anger Aoki was struck by her calm beauty. He cleared his throat, impatient with himself. “What is going on?” She started to speak, then stopped. He licked his damaged lips and tasted brandy. He had to break into this, tip the scales his way. “What is your connection to the Sendai Sanatorium?”
Her eyes leaped to his. Then her hands moved slowly from her sides in a gesture of resignation. She said softly, “The women were my mother and my sister. “
So! Seven years of mystery and silence, swept aside with a gesture. Their eyes were locked together. Aoki felt he might fall into hers. He swallowed and, in a quieter voice, said, “Madam Ito and your sister—the geisha. “
With a jolt, Aoki knew that he had another answer. Kazu Hatano hadn’t come to the Camellia Room that night. His intimacy had been with the woman who’d fled. Her twin sister.
She nodded emphatically, and tears flicked onto the pale skin beneath her eyes—onto the dark freckles. Dazed with pain, dizziness, and weariness, Aoki couldn’t work out where he was with this woman. With an effort, he said, “This is very serious. I very much regret it, but you’ll have a lot of explaining to do to the police.”
~ * ~
Aoki recalled with special clarity his wife’s voice, and her message, when he’d first followed the corridor to this space at the ryokan’s heart. Some corridors lead to places of silence that bring true rest and induce insight.
Going down the antique stairs, he felt the closeness of his wife and father. They were at his side. Kazu Hatano. Would his ghost-wife talk to him about her?
The daylight in the courtyard hurt his eyes. Several large rocks now protruded through the melting snow like black tongues.
His head lowered protectively, he stood in the room that he’d entered in darkness through the hinged panel. He stared at the ancient beam that he’d driven his skull up against; there was a splash of blood and some of his hair on the blackened wood.
She’d touched a button, and a ladder-stair was lowering itself from the wooden ceiling. Its join had fitted into the planked pattern above. Motioning to him, she ascended the ladder.
Aoki gazed at the space they entered. It was large, and the roof was roughly insulated. Two beds were spread on the floor and appeared to have been hastily left. Food and oil lamps were on a table. An old-fashioned Western-style bathroom was visible through a doorway.
A wisp of hair had escaped her coiffure. She turned to Aoki, her face businesslike, the tears brushed away to the past, her lips compressed. “For the last six years she has been in the sanatorium under a new identity. Those men had driven her mad, driven
her to that desperate action at Tokyo Central station. But she still had enough of her old fire to plan and do that. To fight back against their cruelty and damage them—and she did!” She gave a bitter shrug. “But not enough damage. She was proud and strong, but also weak. She hadn’t resisted Yamazaki’s seduction. She’d been lured into her debasement, and accepted it for so long.”
Aoki concentrated on each phrase. Thus far, to him, this woman had been a mystery, self-possessed and economical with the truth, if not a liar. Now she was opening up like a flower touched by sunlight.
“Her action at Tokyo Central station was a final effort before her total collapse, which she must’ve felt coming. Then she fled here, and we hid her. After twelve months, we were able to arrange for the sanatorium under the false identity. “
Kamakura Inn Page 19