Missing in Tokyo

by Graham Marks

  It wasn’t long afterwards that Adam discovered two things: that he was now getting hungry, and that restaurants in Tokyo made life very easy for you if you spoke no Japanese. Their complete menu was often featured as actual-sized, full-colour plastic models in the window and all you had to do was point. He chose a place that wasn’t packed out, pointed at a dish that looked like chicken and rice (and turned out to be exactly that) and sat at a table with his guidebook and new map.

  Finally it was three o’clock and he was standing at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the hotel. He took a deep breath, shouldered his backpack and trudged up to the reception on the fourth floor. Walking in he found himself somewhere that was more like the foyer of an old-fashioned gym or swimming pool than a hotel, all polished wood floors and shiny pastel-coloured plastic surfaces, with 50s-style chintzy furniture, a TV and rows of vending machines selling everything – food, fags, soft drinks and beer.

  An old man wearing some kind of traditional clothing, like a silk dressing-gown, came out of an office and bowed. ‘Konnichi wa.’

  ‘Hello.’ Adam bowed back. The man stood at the reception desk, waiting. ‘Oh, right – a room? Please?’

  The man nodded and beckoned Adam over to the desk, where he picked up a notice in Japanese and English with the rules of the hotel printed on it. He pointed to the prices, holding out his other hand. Adam handed over a ¥10,000 note, pocketed the change he was given and looked around for the way to get to the rooms.

  ‘Room?’ he said, putting his hands together and laying his head on them. The man wrote something on a slip of paper and gave it to him. ‘8013?’

  ‘Hai.’ The man pointed upwards, nodding again, holding up eight fingers.

  ‘Eighth floor?’

  ‘Hai.’

  His shoes were in a small locker downstairs, taken off and stored before he could go up to his floor, his backpack was safely tucked away in a larger locker near the showers, and he’d washed his face and brushed his teeth. Adam looked down the corridor with two tiers of surgical green capsules on either side – basically single-bed width, moulded plastic boxes with disturbingly flesh-coloured interiors. Inside each one was a mattress, pillow, blanket and small television sticking out of the ceiling. No door, just a fabric blind that you pulled down. Home sweet home.

  There were no windows anywhere, but at the end of the corridor light spilled in through an open door, and Adam walked down, past his capsule, to have a look outside. Stepping on to the balcony he found beyond the open door, Adam stared first at the massive Asahi beer poster right in front of him, and then down at the wide, calm river. Feeling like he was in some weird alternate reality and this was another Thames, Adam looked at his watch: 3:30 p.m., or 7:30 in the morning back home in London. Right, as his dad still said, ‘Time for bed, said Zebedee …’

  ‘Tony?’

  Silence. Muffled breathing.

  ‘Tony!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He didn’t come home last night.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Adam, who’d you think?’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Seven thirty-ish.’

  Tony rolled over on to his back, rubbed some sleep out of his eyes and looked up at his wife. ‘He’s stayed out before. He’s probably with the girlfriend. Have you tried ringing him?’

  ‘Message service.’

  ‘How long’ve you been up?’ Tony swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood up, stretching his arms and cracking the knotted muscles in his shoulders.

  ‘Since six. I hate it, Tony.’

  ‘Hate what?’

  ‘Their empty bedrooms. I feel like someone’s hit the pause button, Tony.’

  The alarm clock started beeping and Tony bent down to turn it off. ‘Nothing’s on hold …’

  ‘It’s like they’ve gone and I never had the chance to say goodbye … Charlie, anyway … I know Adam’s just not here right now, but, you know what I mean.’

  Tony wasn’t at all sure he did, but nodded anyway, waiting for his brain to get up to speed so he could think of some way of changing the subject.

  Sarah went over and drew the curtains. ‘What time are you seeing that Detective Sergeant Venner?’

  ‘Nine o’clock. Better get a move on.’

  ‘D’you think we should’ve gone to Tokyo straight away, as soon as Alice called? And why hasn’t she called again? She hasn’t even phoned her mother you know. I rang her again yesterday and she told me she still hasn’t heard anything from her.’

  ‘You know we couldn’t go out there, Sarah.’ Tony walked round the bed and put his arms around his wife. ‘I feel as out of touch, not connected to all of this as you. I have no idea what we should be doing – there’s no helpful guide called “What to Do When Your Daughter Goes Missing in Tokyo” to refer to. Why don’t we ask Venner what he thinks?’

  ‘We?’ Puzzled, Sarah pulled away and looked up at her husband.

  ‘Come with me. Hear what he’s got to say first-hand.’

  ‘But I’m supposed to go over and talk to the people at the hospice …’

  ‘They can wait … phone them. This is a Charlie day.’

  15

  It’s a labour of human

  It was after nine thirty by the time Tony and Sarah found themselves being ushered into an interview room by DC Thomson, the other plain-clothes officer who’d been with Venner when he’d come round to the house.

  ‘DS Venner will be with you in a moment – would either of you like a tea or a coffee? I can’t recommend the coffee, but the tea’s not bad.’

  Tony looked over at Sarah, who shook her head. ‘No, nothing thanks.’

  Left alone in the room they both sat in silence, looking at the scarred paintwork, at the faded posters taped to the wall and the random collection of flyers and leaflets pinned to the cork noticeboard on the wall.

  Sarah got up and stood, her back to the door, looking round the room. ‘Know what’s weird?

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘I’m forty-five and I’ve never been inside a police station before. Does that make me some kind of boring goody-goody or what?’

  ‘Some people would say it made you very lucky, Mrs Grey.’ Tony and Sarah turned to see DS Venner at the door. ‘Apologies for being late, has anyone offered you a drink or anything?’

  ‘We’re fine.’ Sarah sat back down at the table next to Tony.

  Venner pulled out a chair and sat opposite them, put a cardboard file on the table and opened it. ‘Right.’ He looked up at the pair of expectant faces in front of him. ‘To bring you up to speed, I’ve just checked and there’s nothing new in, either via Interpol or direct from the embassy in Tokyo.’ Venner saw Sarah’s shoulders slump. ‘On the positive side, Mrs Grey, we’ve heard nothing bad.’

  Tony reached over for his wife’s hand. ‘Have you heard anything at all?’

  ‘It’s mostly negatives, Mr Grey – Charlotte’s not left the country via any major port or airport; there’s been no ransom demand, so we can safely assume this is not a kidnap scenario, and no body has been found.’ Venner turned a sheet of paper over and read a few lines, looking back up. ‘The odd thing is, the Japanese police have been unable to locate either of your daughter’s travelling companions to verify the story that Alice Reardon told you over the phone. No sign of her or the male, Steve, whose details we don’t have. Do you think there’s anything your son might not be telling us?’

  Tony frowned. ‘Why would you say that?’

  ‘Can’t afford to leave a stone unturned, Mr Grey. He knew Charlotte was in Tokyo and never told you, remember? I’m not saying he’s definitely withholding information, but I have to address the possibility. With your permission I wouldn’t mind having another word with him – what time does he get back from college?’

  ‘He’s, ah, not actually at college at the moment.’ Sarah squeezed Tony’s hand.

  ‘He’s been suspended, Mr Venner. He got into trouble, a fight, protecting
his sister’s reputation.’

  ‘And we don’t know where he is because he didn’t come home last night.’

  ‘We know where he was, Sarah, he was with his girlfriend, Suzy … wasn’t that what you said her name was?’ Tony looked at DS Venner. ‘We just don’t know where she lives. They get to an age and you suddenly find you don’t know who any of their friends are any more.’

  DS Venner closed the file. ‘When he does come home, Mr Grey, could you let me know so I can come over and have a word with him?’

  ‘Of course, but I’m sure he’s told you everything he knows.’

  ‘It’s just my job to make sure he has …’

  ‘Do you like him?’ Sarah put a sandwich down in front of Tony.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Detective Sergeant Venner.’

  ‘Like him? I don’t know, I hadn’t really thought about him like that.’

  Neither of them had felt much like doing anything after leaving the police station. No news wasn’t always good news, the fact vacuum allowing the frantic side of the imagination to conjure up all the bad things that might have happened. They’d gone home, but Tony was beginning to wonder whether they should maybe just have got in the car and gone for a drive. The house wasn’t a particularly relaxing place to be, especially as Adam still hadn’t come back.

  Tony picked up a sandwich. ‘Don’t you like him, then, Venner?’

  ‘He was so suspicious … I mean what else could Adam possibly know?’

  ‘It’s his job to be suspicious, it’s what he gets paid for, Sarah. What kind of detective would he be if he took everything people told him at face value? I don’t think Adam’s up to anything, but I can see that, under the circumstances, Venner’d want another word.’

  ‘Maybe … he wasn’t much help about whether it’d do any good, us going to Tokyo, was he?’

  ‘Like he said, it’s not his job to give us advice …’

  ‘What exactly is his job, then?’ Sarah got up, looked at her watch and started pacing the room. ‘It’s almost one thirty! When is that boy going to come home, Tony? Or even have the courtesy to ring? Does he ever pick up his messages? What’s the bloody point in having a mobile bloody phone if you don’t use the damn thing!’

  ‘Look, you’ve been up since the crack of dawn, why don’t you go and take a nap and I’ll –’

  ‘Sleep? Now?’

  ‘Well, just lie down, then, OK? Relax a bit.’

  Sarah sat down at the table and began clearing up crumbs. ‘What’re you going to do?’

  ‘Go to the college and try to find out who this Suzy is.’

  Adam woke up with a start, lying still in the semi-darkness, trying to work out where the hell he was. Something, a noise, must’ve dragged him out of a deep, deep sleep because nothing in his head seemed to be working very efficiently. He rolled over on to his back and his elbow banged on to something hard; he touched it: plastic. Plastic? His eyes finally adjusted to the light level and he remembered where he was. Tokyo. In a box. He pressed the ‘light’ button on his watch and saw it was 9:30, but whether that was a.m. or p.m. he hadn’t the slightest idea.

  Toky-oh-my-God … it was all Adam could think as he stood in the street, looking at the night-time version of Asakusa going on around him. Then he gazed up at the sky, expecting stars, but in a different pattern to the one he’d see at home.

  Nothing. Just black. No stars. Neon all the way.

  A whole world of neon. Every colour of the rainbow, except the subtle ones. Flashing on and off, rising and falling like electronic, coloured rain … pictures, symbols, graphics, all glowing in the night. And there, among the random, alien light-sprawl, the occasional English words, just to add to the confusion.

  PARODY MARKET … MY WAY … FREE … GENIUS AMUSEMENT …

  Meaningless words trying to make themselves heard amongst the indecipherable visual noise and the cars and the people and the piped music and the conversations. Was everyone here talking to someone else on a mobile phone? It certainly looked that way, with those not talking deeply involved in texting. Adam wondered what a Japanese text message looked like. Very different. Like now. Nothing looked the same as it had during the day and Adam suddenly felt completely disoriented.

  ‘Jeez …’ What had he done, coming here? How was he ever going to have a chance of finding Charlie in this madhouse – what had he been thinking? He couldn’t work out how come it had ever seemed like a good idea, how come Suzy hadn’t told him to get real. But she hadn’t, he was here and he knew he had to deal with it. Completely his responsibility. As the world flowed around him, it occurred to Adam that he had two choices: go home, the first chance he had, or have a go at doing what he’d come here for.

  If he didn’t actually make a move, do something, he felt like he’d still be standing on this bit of pavement, dithering, when the sun came up. He’d already figured out that the tube map in the guidebook was much harder to make sense of than the one included in the fold-out city map he’d bought; standing in a pool of streetlight he took another look, seeing that he was actually just eleven stops from Roppongi. It could not be that difficult a journey to do, and he’d at least be able to start his search for the Bar Belle and feel he hadn’t wasted the whole of his first day in Tokyo.

  Underground there was a new world, a bright, clean environment which, considering the neon mayhem going on above it, was astonishingly free of excessive advertising. Working out how to buy a ticket, though, had proved to be no easy job – even after he’d found the button which changed the Japanese characters on the text screen into English. Luckily someone who turned out to understand more English than they actually spoke spotted him standing, dazed and confused, in front of a bank of ticket machines, and between them they’d managed to buy a ticket that Adam hoped would get him to Roppongi and back again.

  After the frustrating ticket-buying experience, the journey turned out to be a breeze, just a question of paying attention and following instructions and numbers, of going from A18 to E23, through colour-coded tunnels and on southbound trains. Simple.

  Exiting Roppongi station Adam found himself back in Neon City and at what appeared to be a major crossroads. There was an elevated expressway running above one of the streets which had a sign on it in English letting him know he was now in ‘High Touch Town’, whatever that actually meant. From what the guidebook said, it probably meant what it sounded like. And somewhere here there was a place called the Bar Belle, where Alice and Charlie had been working, and where Alice had last seen Charlie walking out with a customer.

  As he had no idea where the girls’ apartment was he’d got to find the bar. It was the only place to start, the only place he’d be able to hook up with Alice and find out for himself exactly what was going on. Get to talk to Alice’s boyfriend, Steve, see what he had to say.

  The only problem was he had absolutely no idea where in Roppongi – no small area – to find the Bar Belle. Before leaving England he’d looked it up on the Net, having discovered that a lot of the bars had their own websites, but found nothing. Was it too small? Too scuzzy? Just not bothered? He’d have to find it first to know, but how? Then, above the roar of the traffic, he heard a badly amplified voice calling out, something about beer and girls and music. Now he looked he could see that there were quite a few people, types he recognised from Soho and Brixton, touting various clubs and bars; one of them was using a cardboard megaphone. Most of them were black and one of them might know something. Whether they’d tell him was another matter entirely.

  Adam chose the least threatening-looking of the guys and hoped you could judge this particular book by its cover. He approached, friendly, smiling. ‘Speak English, man?’

  ‘Chor, wa’choo wan? Nice girl? Cheap booze? We got de bes in town!’ All teeth and big smiles, the man thrust a coloured flyer at Adam. ‘Jus roun da corner, man, two minutes – you go?’

  Adam looked at the piece of paper in his hand: Club Exit. ‘No, I’m looking for this
place called the Bar Belle, you heard of it?’

  ‘Chor I hear … shit place, man, you wan class? You go Exit, man. Lemme take you roun …’

  ‘I need to find the Bar Belle, I’m meeting a friend there and I lost the address.’

  ‘Piece a shit place, man.’

  Adam dug into his jeans pocket and brought out one of the ¥1,000 notes he’d stuffed in there after buying his subway ticket. ‘I really don’t care …’

  The man reached out to take it and Adam moved his hand back. ‘OK, right … OK, man, see, you go cross da street, you take secon right, you fine it up a few floor, five or six, I don ’member zackly. Look for da sign, man.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Adam handed over the note.

  It wasn’t there. Across the street, second on the right, was a narrow alleyway which restaurants backed on to. It was full of industrial-sized wheelie bins, it smelt of cooking and food and the remains of cleared plates that had sat out in the heat for too long. There was no Bar Belle, not at ground level or five or six floors up, no matter how far down he went. Shit.

  Adam turned to go back up the way he’d come, and stopped. Silhouetted against the bright lights of the main drag he saw a figure that seemed to be looking his way, waiting. Double shit. Had he been set up here? More than likely. He looked behind him, back down into the gloom of what looked like a dead end; no point in running down there, then. He cast around in the shadows on the ground for anything he might be able to use to defend himself, and saw nothing.

  Walking slowly back up the alley Adam thought about trying to fit some coins between his fingers, make iron knuckles, like he’d seen done in a movie, but he knew he was clutching at straws now. Best just to go for this head on, wait until the last minute and make a rush for the street and hope he got past the guy. He’d be safe out in the crowds. Safer, anyway.