by Graham Marks
He jogged along the narrow corridor running the length of the arcade, checking down each of the rows of back-to-back machines. Almost all of them had someone playing, usually smoking as they fed in coins and watched the steel balls dance around the flashing screen. Mesmerised. No one paid him the slightest attention as he scanned the aisles for a sign of the girl he’d seen. About two thirds of the way down he was sure he’d just missed her as a flash of red disappeared at the end of the row he was passing.
Adam hesitated – go down this row, or jump to the next and run down that one? A second later he was pelting down the next aisle. Getting to the end of it, and skidding round the corner on the shiny lino floor, he almost collided with a middle-aged man carrying a basket packed full of ball bearings. The man staggered backwards out of his way, spilling some of the shiny steel spheres, which skittered away like small globules of mercury. Stop and help him pick them up? Adam glanced the way he presumed the girl had gone and saw that flash of red again. Not today. He ran, ignoring the angry voice behind him.
The girl had turned a corner and as Adam got to it he saw her exiting the arcade on to another street. As she went out she turned and looked back, straight through him. Not Alice. Nothing like her. Adam, deflated, went from running full pelt to a stumbling halt, and watched whoever it was walk away; then he heard, through the racket, raised voices behind him and jogged quickly out of the place before any of the trouble he’d caused could catch up with him.
Back out on the street, the sky visibly darkening, electric lights, fluorescents and strobes were now vying for attention, casting mysterious shadows and changing the world around him. No Alice, no sign so far of anyone remotely fitting the description of a yakuza, no real point in being here much longer. Up ahead, looking totally surreal, Adam saw a girl dressed as a bride – veil, off-the-shoulder satin and lace dress, white, elbow-length gloves, the lot – standing outside a building handing out flyers; something told him they weren’t advertising a sale at a nearby wedding shop.
As he walked past her he couldn’t help smiling as he waved ‘no’ when the girl offered him a flyer. She looked pretty and ridiculous at the same time. Adam glanced at his watch: coming up to seven o’clock. He should be making tracks back to where he’d parked the scooter so he could try and get in touch with Keiko. OK, problem No. 1 – where was he? He got out his guidebook, turned back and walked up to the bride.
‘Scuse me?’
‘Hai?’
Adam pointed to the map in his hand. ‘Yasukuni-dori?’
‘Sou desu …’ The girl nodded, speaking some more as she pointed up the road, holding up two fingers and then indicating a right turn. ‘Oké?’
‘OK, thanks,’ Adam bowed, grinning.
‘No probrem!’
‘Bye …’
‘Dewa mata.’
Adam walked up the road, thinking that actually the ‘bride’ was really quite cute. He went past the first turning, and as he was about to take the next one he saw a big black 4x4 with darkened windows parked a few metres away on the opposite side of the street. He only noticed it because of the lights glinting off its shiny, chromed custom ‘spinning rim’ wheel trim. The car must just recently have been parked as they were still swinging round and round, producing that strange illusion of forward motion. It was a Lexus.
‘Shit, shit, shit!’
‘What’s up, Si?’
Palmer looked up to see Chris Taylor, the other junior aide with whom he shared the tiny office, standing at the door. ‘What’re you doing here, Chris – thought you were off today?’
‘Left my phone charger behind. What’s the problem?’
‘They found that kid who’d been reported missing, and I had to go and pick him up.’
‘The brother of the girl …’ Taylor snapped his fingers, ‘… Charlotte Grey?’
‘The same.’
‘Oh … so why the meltdown?’
‘I left him at the police station, couldn’t see much point in my wasting my entire day hanging round there. Told him I’d come back and pick him up after he’d “assisted the police with their enquires”.’
‘Seems reasonable.’
‘Except he wasn’t there when I went back. Pissed off somewhere, again.’
‘He’ll turn up.’
‘I’ve already called the parents and told them he’ll be phoning them from the hotel.’
‘Ah … shit, shit, shit.’
‘Exactly.’
30
Modal shift
Adam gawped at the black 4x4, confused, and looked up and then down the street, back the way he’d come. The bride saw him, caught his eye and waved. And that broke the spell. He couldn’t stand around like a total dummy, staring at some car. He stuck out here enough, being European, without making a thing of it. He turned down the street the girl had told him to take and stopped, staring back at the car.
Could it be the same one he’d seen outside the New Economy Hotel? Yoshi’s Lexus? What were the chances of there being another one exactly like it, black windows, fancy wheel trim and all? For all he knew they were standard-issue yakuza vehicles, but this was the first one he’d noticed and it was parked in the right kind of area.
He’d been hoping, if he was lucky, to catch sight of a person, someone he could maybe follow or confront. What should he do now that he might, possibly, have found a person’s car instead? It didn’t take a genius to work out that the only thing he could do was stake it out and hope he saw where the person who drove it away had come from. And hope Aiko was there, right? Crap plan. Especially as there wasn’t really anywhere that he could hang around and watch without being seen.
But why the hell was he trying to hide? Why, exactly?
When you were on your own, with no one else to run ideas by, no one to talk things over with and see stuff from another point of view, it was so easy to lead yourself up the garden path. Surely what he wanted was for Yoshi to see him hanging round his car, to make the connection that this gaijin eyeing up his wheels was the same one he’d been trying to find? Adam felt like nutting the wall he was standing next to, could hear the fat bespectacled old geezer in army uniform, from some sitcom his parents liked to watch on vid, saying ‘Stupid boy!’.
Before he could do anything about making himself ultra visible, Adam saw a door open in the building behind the Lexus and two men – longish, slicked-back hair, dark suits, white shirts – come out, get straight into the car and drive away, leaving him staring at nothing but an empty parking space. This could not have happened! He felt like a small child who’d just been offered a gift, only to have it rudely snatched away before he could even touch it. He wanted to scream, ‘It’s not FAIR!’, but what good would that do?
He walked over to look at the door the men had come out of; nondescript, scuffed, grey-painted, lacking a handle and with greasy finger marks where people pushed to get in, it held no clues as to what or who was behind it. Adam shoved, just in case, though if it’d been open he had no idea what he’d have done next. Stepping back he looked at the entryphone: no label – even in Japanese – and a single button. Just the one business being run from behind it, then. He could push the buzzer and see what happened, but if someone answered it was going to be in a language he couldn’t understand or speak, so there wasn’t much point. Was there?
Adam, poised, ready to run, like when he and Andy had used to play Knock Down Ginger when they were kids, reached out and pressed the buzzer. I mean, he thought, why the hell not?
Nothing happened.
Having gone this far he pressed it again, harder and longer this time, in case the connection was bad. And waited. Then stood back to look up and see if there were any lights on in the floors above … none he could see. And waited.
Click … hum … zzz
‘Hai?’
Japanese for ‘yes’ – he’d picked up that much since he’d arrived – but not spoken by someone from Japan … a voice he recognised … a woman, girl …
‘Donata des ka?’
Jeezus! ‘Alice?’
‘Oh shit …’
‘Alice, let me in, it’s Adam!’
‘I know …’ Alice’s voice, fuzzed-up by the cheap loudspeaker, sounded tired and tense at the same time. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Are you alone? Let me in, I’ve gotta talk to you!’
‘Go away.’
Adam kicked the door, which achieved nothing except to send a jarring pain up his leg. ‘BLOODY LET ME IN, ALICE!’
‘Go away, Adam, just piss off … there’ll just be more trouble if you don’t.’
Adam, tensed and getting a small hit of adrenaline, glanced around. A couple of people were looking his way but no one seemed like they were about to get involved. ‘I’m staying right here until you open the door, Alice … honest.’
Empty noise, the sound of nothing.
‘Alice?’
Electric hush, but one that was finally broken by the clunk-buzz of the lock being opened. Adam pushed the door – it was heavier that it looked – and walked into a short, narrow corridor that led to a flight of stairs. Behind him the door swung shut with a metallic thud and he looked over his shoulder to see that the back of it was reinforced with steel bars and big, locking bolts. Some serious security here.
He started up the stairs, the smell of cooking and stale sweat and cigarettes tainting the sour air. At the first landing there were two doors, both closed. Adam stopped and listened for some sound, some evidence of occupation, but there was nothing. He went round to the next staircase and looked up; he took a couple of involuntary steps backwards when he saw someone, a girl, on the next landing looking back down at him. The single low-wattage light bulb hanging from the ceiling partially silhouetted her against the off-white wall, but he realised it was Alice and that this time she didn’t have anywhere to run.
‘Howd’you find me, Adam?’
‘Luck … how did they know where to find me, though? No one knew I was supposed to be at that hotel.’
‘Dunno … must’ve told someone Yoshi knows.’ Alice looked away, pushing her hair back over her ears.
‘Don’t think so …’
‘You told Miki.’
‘Miki?’
‘At the Bar Belle?’ Alice’s mouth twitched in a fake smile.
Adam stopped, one foot on a stair; Miki’d known a hell of lot more than she’d let on, but no surprises there. ‘Shall I, um, come up?’
Alice sniffed and nodded, turning away. ‘You shouldn’t be here, Adam … you really shouldn’t.’
‘I came to find Charlie, Alice.’ Adam reached the second landing and saw Alice had gone into a room off it. ‘Where is she?’
Alice flinched, the question making her react as if she’d been threatened, turning away from Adam, hugging herself. He walked though the doorway into what was obviously an office – high-backed leather chair behind a mid-sized, glass-topped desk, the desk littered with papers, old food containers, a couple of glasses and a phone.
‘Where is she, Alice? I know she didn’t leave the Bar Belle with anyone, that she’d gone days before … you made all that up, right?’ Adam reached out to try and get Alice to look at him. ‘Why, Alice? Why d’you do that?’
Alice refused to budge. ‘None of your business.’
‘What the hell d’you mean? She’s my sister, fercrissake, why wouldn’t it be my business?’ Adam grabbed Alice by the shoulders and dragged her round to face him. ‘My parents think she’s dead, Alice!’
She looked up at him, eyes narrowed, lips pursed. ‘Good.’
Good? Adam jerked back like she’d spat at him, shocked by what she’d said, almost more than by the way she looked back at him. In the unforgiving tungsten light she was still pretty, but her expression was cold, almost hateful; she glanced at him, her heavily mascaraed eyes like dark, cynical smudges, pinhole pupils in her pale blue irises. ‘What’s happened to you?’
Alice moved away, back nearer the desk. ‘Nothing. I’m fine … totally.’ She glanced down, absentmindedly clearing empty food containers off the glass top and dropping them into a waste bin. ‘Why’re you here?’
‘I told you, I came to find Charlie.’
‘I mean why’re you here?’ Alice tapped the glass desktop with a long French-polished nail.
‘I came looking for you, Alice, and for Aiko. I know she was kidnapped by your friend Yoshi.’
‘Who’s a clever little detective!’ Alice’s smile morphed slowly into a sneer. ‘Why should I tell you anything?’
‘Why?’ Adam’s temper volcanoed. ‘I’ll tell you fucking why, you bitch!’ He lunged across the room, forcing Alice backwards against the table, which knocked the phone on to the floor. ‘Because if you don’t I’ll kick the living shit out of you, OK?’
In the silence Adam could hear his heart beating, and in the background the dialling tone of the phone that had been tipped off the desk. Would he really hit Alice? God, he hoped he’d never have to find out …
‘Don’t think I don’t mean it, Alice.’
‘You call me a bitch! Your slut sister took my boyfriend, screwed him behind my back and just took him – she knew I loved him, she knew, but what bloody Charlie wants, bloody Charlie gets, right? Spoilt brat …’
‘This is all about some bloke?’ Adam found himself in one of those this-does-not-compute situations. ‘You started all this because your boyfriend left you for Charlie? Are you deranged, or what?’
Alice picked up a glass from the desk and threw it in Adam’s direction; it sailed past his left shoulder and shattered against the wall. ‘Steve did not leave me, bastard – she bloody stole him! OK!’ Shouting, irate … and then a smaller voice, but still hard. ‘Steve wouldn’t leave me. He wouldn’t …’
Adam stood observing Alice, the ‘now’ Alice who was so different from the ‘then’ version he’d last seen the day before she and Charlie had left to go on their trip. Could this whole thing be about some bloke from Brighton? Surely …
‘You telling me this really is all down to Steve? Crissake, Alice!’
‘She took him, you little shit – what d’you know about anything, anyway?’
He stared at Alice’s eyes, now unable to meet his, and a penny dropped. ‘He found out you were fooling round on the side with Yoshi, didn’t he … you met Yoshi at the club and had a thing happening … I bet that was it, right? You were the one playing away from home, and that’s why Stevie-boy upped and left. Charlie’s your friend, Alice, I know she wouldn’t do anything behind your back.’ Adam looked round the room. ‘What’s so attractive about this side of the fence, Alice? What’s Yoshi got going for him … he’s got the drug-dealer motor and the sidekicks …’
‘Piss off!’ Another glass flew his way, this one making Adam duck. ‘You don’t know a bloody thing, so just piss off out of here and leave me alone!’
‘Tell me where she is!’
‘I don’t bloody know, do I – how should I know? They didn’t leave a note, I haven’t had a postcard …’ Alice picked up a random piece of paper off the desk and pretended to read it. ‘“Having a lovely time screwing your boyfriend, wish you were here, love Charlie ’n’ Steve” – and know what? I don’t fucking care where they are. I hope she is dead …’
‘Alice … Alice that’s such a crap thing to say!’
‘Yeah …’ Adam saw tears start to stream down Alice’s cheeks, dragging tiny, jagged rivulets of black mascara over her face, ‘… yeah, it is … but it was a shitty, shitty thing to do, OK?’
‘OK, if you say so …’
Alice looked like she was coming apart at the seams, like the story she’d made up about Charlie, and Adam wondered what would happen if he pushed too far. But there were things he had to know.
‘What happened, Alice?’
‘I went back to the flat a couple of weeks ago …’ Alice sniffed hard and stood up straighter. ‘I went back and they’d gone, packed up and moved out.’
‘When did they leave? When you called my parents?’
Alice shrugged. ‘Before.’
‘Why’d you do that … why make all that shit up?’
‘She screwed me over.’
‘So pretending she’d been kidnapped was your way of getting your own back, right?’ Adam saw Alice look smugly back at him. ‘What else are you lining up and snorting, Alice? Just how fried is your brain – have you any idea how much crap you’ve stirred up?’
‘Why should I care.’
A statement, not a question; Adam shook his head. ‘All this over some piss-stupid boyfriend … I can’t bloody believe it! What about Aiko – why’d they take her? Why was this guy Yoshi so interested in me anyway?’
‘He …’ Alice wiped her nose across the back of her hand, blinking the last of the tears out of her eyes. ‘He’s like protective, OK? He wanted to tell you to leave me alone! Yoshi likes to keep me happy.’
Adam looked away; yeah, right. ‘Why’d you freak like that when you saw me?’
‘Last person I expected to see … didn’t think anyone’d come looking for her.’
‘She was missing, Alice, what’d you think was going to happen?’
‘She not bloody missing, is she! She’s out there, with Steve … thought you’d get an email or something.’
‘Well we didn’t.’ Adam was finding it hard to take in that everything – every bloody thing – that had happened over the last two weeks was all down to this strung-out girl on the revenge mission from hell. ‘If this bloke of yours, this Yoshi, if he wanted me, why take her? Why take Aiko, she doesn’t know anything?’
‘She knew you … the boys Yoshi had sent over there aren’t the brightest bulbs in the box, OK? They were bored, you hadn’t shown, so they took the next best thing, someone who said they were your friend.’ Alice almost smiled. ‘Yoshi blew a major fuse when they got back here with her, went totally rabid on them.’