by Ashton, Hugh
Sugita, Kurokawa and Sharpe exchanged glances. “Oh, shit,” said the youth in English. He laughed, showing a terrible set of teeth. “Now you know I speak English.”
“If it’s not too much trouble for you,” said Sugita to Sharpe, “I think it would be a good idea if you came down to the station tomorrow. I’ll call you when we want you to come round. We’ll put you on the other side of the table this time.” He smiled. Sharpe didn’t think the joke was funny, and didn’t bother smiling back.
And then the house was full of policemen. Mori and his prisoner went off with a couple of the new arrivals, Kurokawa set off for Vishal’s, and the rest stayed, dusting, counting, asking questions, taking photos, making endless notes on clipboards. Sugita kept his distance from the mass, occasionally being consulted by the others.
After about thirty minutes, Sharpe felt like the proverbial pork chop at the bar mitzvah – useless. Sugita came over and put his hand on his shoulder.
“You look tired,” he said in English. “Don’t worry, they’ll be gone in a little while. Where are you going to sleep?”
“Thanks, I’ll be all right. I can drag out a futon and sleep somewhere on the floor.”
And that’s what he did when the last of the boots departed some forty minutes later. Contrary to his expectations, he didn’t dream at all, not even of poor mutilated Kitty-chan.
-oOo-
Chapter 3: Tokyo
Sharpe woke up to a nightmare vision of overturned furniture and general chaos. He went into the kitchen to see if it might be possible to make a cup of coffee, and retired hastily. Someone was going to have to clean up the kitchen some time, but it wasn’t going to be him just then, he reckoned.
He remembered that somewhere in the place was the stash of samosas Meema had given him for Mieko the previous night, and was just starting to hunt for them when his mobile went off. It was Vishal. “Listen, man, I’ve got to be getting to work now, but I’ll give you a hand this evening getting the heavy stuff sorted out, right? Get over to our place now. Meema’s expecting you for breakfast.”
“Bless the pair of you. I really appreciate it.” He put the phone back in his pocket and the doorbell rang.
It was Mrs Miyata from the neighbourhood association.
“Last night … I heard … Is there anything …” Sharpe knew what she wanted, and decided to let her off easily. He had always found her to be charming, a bit butterfly-minded, and always dressed a little too young for her age, but a good soul, and the leader of the association, so he calculated that this was the best thing to do. At least the truth would circulate around the neighbourhood, and any lurid rumours would be stopped in their tracks.
“Please come in, Mrs Miyata. Mieko’s not here. No, we didn’t have a fight. Yes, they were policemen last night. Come this way, and you’ll see—”
She turned white at the sight of the living room, and Sharpe almost expected her to faint. She collapsed against the back of an overturned chair and gasped for breath. To a typically obsessively clean and tidy housewife like her, this must have seemed like blasphemy or sacrilege.
She asked the first question that everyone always asks.
“No, they don’t know who did it. They arrested one person last night, and I may have to go to the police station today to talk about it more.”
She asked the next question that everyone always asks.
“Nothing much. No money or valuables, anyway.”
“Oh you poor things. Where is Mieko now?”
Sharpe explained that she’d gone to Vishal and Meema’s. “It was too late to bother you,” he lied. “You and your husband would have been asleep and we couldn’t have woken you.” That, and the fact that Mrs Miyata would have gone off like a siren if all this had been explained to her at the time.
She nodded. “Thank you. Meema’s a nice person. So is Vishal, of course, but I can’t always understand him,” she added. Mrs Miyata had met them socially several times now, and the common Japanese prejudice against non-white foreigners seemed to have disappeared in Mrs Miyata’s case. Sharpe was pleased to see that the tolerance had spread to the whole of the neighbourhood association. Vishal and Meema were always welcome now at community New Year parties and the like. In fact, the plates containing Meema’s home-made Indian snacks were always the first ones to empty at the traditional Japanese festivals.
“Anyway, Mrs Miyata, that’s what happened. I’m just going to Vishal and Meema’s now to collect Mieko.”
“Well, if we can help …”
“Thank you. I’ll tell Mieko.” Sharpe wasn’t sure if Mieko would welcome a gang of helpers who might be more interested in examining the inner secrets of a foreigner’s household than doing any actual work. It would just be curiosity and there would be no malice intended, but it would be more than a bit nerve-racking for Mieko.
Sharpe escorted Mrs Miyata to the door. “Please tell everyone what’s happened, Mrs Miyata.” Sharpe guessed she would do so anyway, but this gave her formal permission to gossip. “And please don’t worry. We’ll be fine.”
-o-
He picked up his briefcase, and locked the door (more out of habit than anything else) and then set off for Vishal’s house. It was a typical Tokyo summer day, warm and sticky, although the sky was relatively clear. The cicadas were shrilling from the trees as he walked past – a sound of summer that always reminded Sharpe that he wasn’t living in England any more.
It had taken Sharpe some time to appreciate the sprawling Tokyo metropolis. Sharpe had discovered he’d somehow fallen in love with the city without ever having intended to do so. The random piles of concrete didn’t look any more beautiful to him now than when he’d first arrived – in fact, he hadn’t even reached the stage where he could ignore its ugliness. But the imperfections had acquired their own peculiar charm. Somewhat like a plain girl, he thought, who makes no effort to be anything other than what she is, Tokyo had actually become attractive as a result of its honesty, and the imperfections had started to become points of attraction.
He reached Vishal’s house, and Meema opened the door. “She’s still sleeping,” she said. “Those policemen last night were very nice, but they did stay for quite a long time. And I think the emotional shock must have been terrible. Come in and have some coffee while I wake her up.”
Sharpe gratefully sipped coffee and listened to the feminine noises coming from the bedroom. Eventually Mieko appeared, without her makeup, and with her long hair unbrushed, looking slightly the worse for wear.
“All right, darling?” he asked.
“Fine,” she replied, yawning. “Still tired, though. I didn’t get off to sleep until about 3 o’clock.”
“Breakfast, you two,” called Meema. More coffee and toast seemed like a really good idea to Sharpe.
“Mrs Miyata called round just before I set off,” he said to Mieko. “I had to explain to her that we hadn’t had the mother of all battles last night. She wanted to know what was going on, so I told her.”
“I bet she said she’d be round to help,” said Mieko. “With an army.”
“She offered,” Sharpe replied guardedly.
“Well, I’m not going to have them all round. Mrs Watanabe’s one of the worst. She’d be making rude comments on the state of your underwear as soon as she stepped into the bedroom.”
“Vishal will be round in the evening,” Meema reminded Sharpe. “He said the place really looked terrible and you’d be needing some help.” She looked closely at him. “Any idea why this has happened to you? Is it anything to do with the stuff you and Vishal were working on last night?”
“What makes you say that?”
“Oh my God, it is. Are we next?” Meema’s perceptions were disturbingly acute, even at this time of the morning. From Sharpe’s left, Mieko joined in. It was like being at Wimbledon – as the ball.
“Kenneth, what is all this? Is this something to do with that box you brought back the other day and the man who died?”
“What man i
s this?” shrieked Meema. Sharpe had forgotten how shrill her voice could be when she was excited. “And he died? What are you mixed up in, Kenneth? It sounds to me as though Mieko shouldn’t be going home. You, you can please yourself where you go. And you keep Vishal out of this, you hear?”
“Wait a moment, Meema,” he tried to explain. “I met a man the other day who gave me the box you saw last night. I didn’t know what was in it until just before I came round to you, and I had no idea how or what it really was until Vishal explained it. And you, of course,” Sharpe added quickly.
“And now this man’s dead?”
“He fell under a train at Shinjuku station. I talked to the police about our conversation and I told them what I knew.”
“Who else did you tell? The people who wrecked our home?” asked Mieko.
Sharpe was grateful that she referred to it as “our” home – usually she referred to it as “your”, implying she was going to flit out of his life as casually as she had flitted in, but that was beside the point here. He thought back to Ben’s casual mention of how they’d searched Katsuyama’s home. “Maybe I did,” he admitted grudgingly, thinking of Ben in the police station. Both women sighed together.
“What have you matched yourself to?” Meema asked Mieko. “A man who opens his house to bad men, to goondas and badmaashes.”
“Look, I didn’t mean to do it,” Sharpe said helplessly.
“But you did,” said Mieko. He was outnumbered and outgunned. And they didn’t fight fair, recruiting feminine illogic to their cause. Sharpe was saved from outright abject defeat by his mobile phone.
“Yes?”
“Inspector Sugita here. Please come round to the police station as soon as possible.”
“I can be there in about fifteen minutes?”
“Excellent. I’ll be waiting for you.”
Sharpe turned the phone off and started to speak before the double barrage started up again. “That was Inspector Sugita. He wants me to go round to the police station to talk to the man they arrested last night. Did they tell you?”
Both of them nodded.
“All right, I’ll call you when I get out,” he said to Mieko. “Thanks for the breakfast, Meema.” She simply shrugged.
-o-
The cicadas’ noise now seemed more like an irritation than a sign of summer as Sharpe made his way to the police station. He wasn’t in the best of moods when he walked up the steps and presented himself at the reception desk.
“He’s with me.” Inspector Sugita’s voice came from behind Sharpe, addressed to the receptionist. “No need to sign him in.”
They walked along the same corridor that Sharpe had previously used. Sugita seemed anxious to put him at his ease, asking about Mieko and about insurance cover.
Sharpe tried to turn the subject to the arrested man. “What charge?” he asked.
“Oh, we’re just holding him right now,” explained Sugita. Japanese police have the right to hold arrested suspects without benefit of a lawyer for over twenty days. And then they can bring another charge which allows another twenty days of unsupervised questioning. Japanese jurisprudence has very little in common with Western legal procedure, despite similar terminology in many cases.
They reached the interrogation room. “This side, today,” explained Sugita, waving Sharpe to the chair that Ben had used. The room still smelled of his cigars. Sugita fiddled with the desk light, aiming it so that it would be shining in the eyes of whoever sat in the chair opposite.
The door opened, and the youth of last night came in, followed by Kurokawa.
“Sit,” ordered Sugita, pointing to the chair.
With an effort, the youth sat. Sharpe noticed he kept his hands behind his back, and guessed he was handcuffed. Without any warning, Kurokawa unleashed a backhand swing at his face, which knocked him sprawling on the floor.
“I told you to sit down,” snarled Sugita.
The youth struggled from the floor and sat on the chair once again. Blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth. Kurokawa hit him again in the face. Again, he went sprawling. This time, Sugita said nothing, but waited as he struggled to his feet and sat again.
Sugita held up his hand to Kurokawa. “Enough,” he said. To the youth, “We expect you to answer our questions willingly and honestly and openly. If you don’t …” He left the sentence dangling. “We know your name already, Osaki, and your address. Thank you for helping us with that last night, but we could have got that from the driving licence in your pocket. What your driving licence doesn’t tell us, and you didn’t tell us last night, is what the hell you were doing.”
The mouth moved, but only blood came out.
“Take the cuffs off,” ordered Sugita. “And bring a towel.” Kurokawa fished in his pocket for a key and fiddled around behind Osaki’s back. Osaki winced, and brought his hands in front of him, massaging his wrists. “Thank you,” he said.
Sugita nodded. “Get that towel,” he said to Kurokawa. “And some water.”
They waited in silence for Kurokawa’s return. Osaki kept massaging his wrists. Sharpe sat, embarrassed to be in the same room as the others. More than anything, he was embarrassed at his own almost sexual secret enjoyment of the scene – not something he wanted to admit to himself, or anyone else. And it was anyone’s guess what Sugita was thinking, just sitting there like a Buddha.
Kurokawa returned and tossed a white towel into Osaki’s lap. Picking it up, Osaki dabbed his face and spat discreetly. Sharpe thought he heard part of a tooth hit the floor. The towel turned red as he mopped his mouth.
“Water,” Sugita ordered Kurokawa. A paper cup found its way into Osaki’s hands.
“Thank you,” he said again. He drank, rinsed, and spat into the towel.
“Now I’ve done something for you, you do something for me,” said Sugita.
“Of course, Inspector,” said Osaki. His voice was quiet as he sat very straight in his chair.
“Tell me and this gentleman here what were you doing outside his apartment building last night.”
“Waiting to see who was coming in and out of his apartment. My job was to let the people inside know when someone was coming and call them by phone.”
“Who hired you?” asked Sugita.
“I don’t know his name,” replied Osaki. “He was a foreigner.”
“Korean or Chinese, maybe?” asked Sugita, somewhat hopefully, it seemed to Sharpe.
Osaki shook his head violently. “No, not at all. He was an American, or maybe a Canadian, but I would guess that he was American.”
“Where did you meet him?”
Osaki shuffled his feet and looked a little embarrassed. Kurokawa tensed beside him, but relaxed in response to Sugita’s raised finger.
“Well?” asked Sugita. “Where and when did you meet him?” he repeated.
“Special bar in Roppongi the night before last,” replied Osaki. He squirmed a little in his seat as Sugita continued to stare at him, and Kurokawa moved a little closer. “Gay bar, if you really want to know.”
“If you answer the rest of my questions the way I like, I won’t bother asking you too many questions about what you were doing there. We might manage to forget about it, even. Name of the bar?”
“Mama Turkey’s. It’s just round the back of the Roppongi Hills building. In the alley just to the left of the Chinese restaurant at the bottom of the street. Pink sign outside the door.”
“Thanks for the directions, but I don’t think I’m going to want to go there very soon,” replied Sugita dryly. “How did you meet him? Did he approach you or the other way round?”
“He approached me.”
“And he said?”
“ ‘Can you do something for me?’ He was speaking English – he must have heard me showing off my English to my friends. Of course, I just thought he meant the usual. But then he made it clear that this was going to be something different when he explained.”
“How much was he paying you?”
“Fifty thousand. Half in advance. Half after the job. Of course, I haven’t got the second half yet.”
Sugita laughed without any humour. “I don’t think you’re going to get it any time soon, anyway. So, did this mysterious American have a name?”
“He said his name was Eric, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t his real name.”
“What did he look like?”
“Tall, thin. Very short grey hair. Wore a suit and tie – not sharp – a bit old-fashioned. Really lame shoes. Marks on his face – scars, sort of. Kept smoking these stinking little cigars. Smelled a bit like this room.”
Sharpe said nothing. Sugita said nothing. They carefully didn’t look at each other.
“Was it him who went into the apartment?”
“Yes, it was. He had a couple of friends with him. They went round the back to go through the window there. You saw that. He came out of there just as your wife,” nodding to Sharpe, “was going up the stairs to the apartment. I saw her coming in and I phoned him.”
“How did you know it was his wife?” Sugita asked. Sharpe decided not to correct the repeated mistake, though he was sure that someone would have remarked the lack of a wedding ring, and the fact would be on file.
“He’d shown me pictures. And I’d seen her going out earlier.”
Sharpe asked himself where the pictures of Mieko had come from. This was starting to get very scary.
“And you had photographs of Mr Sharpe here?” asked Sugita.
Osaki nodded. “One photo of him, one of her, one of both of them together, and a picture of where the flat was in the building.” The shivers were really starting to chase each other up and down Sharpe’s spine by now. Someone had cased the joint with a vengeance.
“Where are the photos now?”
“I don’t have them. He never gave them to me. Just showed them to me and made sure I could remember the faces.”
Sugita changed tack. “What do you know about Hello Kitty?” he asked. “In connection with this incident? And don’t get cute with me.”
“Nothing, I swear,” replied Osaki. He seemed puzzled.
What would Hello Kitty have to do with any of this? Sharpe wondered himself why Sugita had fastened onto that one point. As far as Sharpe knew, all Sugita knew of Hello Kitty was that he’d seen some badly vandalised toy the previous night.