by Boris Akunin
‘But what can we do with the prince? It’s stupid to hope that he will testify voluntarily.’
‘Yes, he will,’ the inspector declared confidently. ‘Voluntarily and frankly.’ A bloom had appeared on Asagawa’s cheeks, his voice had become brisk and energetic. It was hard to believe that only ten minutes earlier this man had looked like a living corpse. ‘Onokoji is pampered and weak. And even more importantly, he is addicted to every possible kind of vice, including the forbidden kind. I have not touched him before, assuming that he was a good-for-nothing idler, basically harmless. And in addition, he has numerous protectors in high places. But now I shall arrest him.’
‘For what?’
Asagawa thought for no more than two seconds.
‘He goes down to the “Number Nine” almost every day. It’s the most famous brothel in Yokohama. Do you know it?’
Fandorin shook his head.
‘Ah yes, you haven’t been here for long … They have merchandise to suit all tastes there. For instance, the owner has a so-called “boarding school”, for lovers of little girls. You can find thirteen-year-olds, twelve-year-olds, sometimes even eleven-year-olds. It’s illegal, but since only foreign girls work at the “Number Nine”, we do not interfere, it is outside our jurisdiction. Onokoji is a great lover of “little ones”. I shall order the owner (he is in my debt) to tell me as soon as the prince secludes himself with a young girl. That is when he has to be arrested. I cannot do it myself, unfortunately – the arrest must be carried out by the municipal police.’
‘So we’ll be working with Sergeant Lockston again,’ Erast Petrovich said with a nod. ‘And tell me, are there any Russian subjects among the young prostitutes? That would justify my involvement in the matter.’
‘I think there is one Polish girl,’ Asagawa recalled. ‘I do not know what passport she has, though. Probably none at all, since she is a minor.’
‘The Kingdom of Poland is part of the Russian Empire, so the unfortunate victim of depravity could be a compatriot of mine. In any case, it is the vice-consul’s duty to check. Well now, Inspector, have you changed you mind about slicing open your stomach?’
The titular counsellor smiled, but Asagawa was serious.
‘You are right,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Seppuku is a throwback to the Middle Ages.’
Something round and hard struck Fandorin in the back. He looked round – it was a cricket ball. One of the sportsmen had thrown very wide of the target.
Erast Petrovich picked up the small, taut leather sphere and flung it to the far end of the pitch. When he turned back again, the inspector was gone – there were only white sprays of acacia swaying on the bushes.
Intoxicating,
Astounding the mind, a white
Spray of acacia
A LITTLE PIECE OF HAPPINESS
‘Well now, it’s worth a try,’ said Vsevolod Vitalievich, narrowing his reddish eyes. ‘If you can expose the intendant, that will be a powerful blow struck against the party of war. And your involvement in the investigation will not only free you of all suspicion of Okubo’s murder, it will significantly improve the value of Russia’s stock in Japan.’
Fandorin had found the consul in his dressing room, taking his morning tea. Doronin’s sparse hair was covered with a fine net, and his thin neck with the protruding Adam’s apple was visible in the open collar of his shirt.
Obayasi-san bowed and offered the visitor tea, but Erast Petrovich declined, with the lie that he had already had tea. For some reason he had no desire either to eat or drink. But his apathy had disappeared and the beat of his heart was strong and regular. The hunting instinct is every bit as ancient and powerful as the instinct to make love, thought the titular counsellor, glad that he was recovering the habit of rationalising his own feelings.
‘We shall not inform the ambassador of your new initiative,’ said Doronin, holding out his little finger as he raised his cup to his mouth, but he didn’t drink. ‘If we do, he will instruct Lieutenant Captain Bukhartsev to deal with it, and he will turn the whole business into a grand fiasco.’
Erast Petrovich shrugged.
‘Why bother His Excellency with unimportant trifles? This is very small beer: the vice-consul defending the interests of an underage victim of corruption. That’s all we’re talking about so far.’
And then Vsevolod Vitalievich uttered a most injudicious sentiment.
‘Do you know what true patriotism is?’ he asked, then raised one finger and declared: ‘To act for the good of the Homeland, even if it means going against the will of one’s superiors.’
The titular counsellor considered this adventurous maxim. He nodded in agreement.
‘Thank you for the aphorism, I f-feel it will prove useful to me in life on more than one occasion. And that being the case, I think I shall not tell you anything more. I shall act like a true patriot, that is, without the sanction of my superiors, at my own discretion. If anything goes wrong, I shall answer for everything. For the time being, let us consider that this conversation of ours never took place.’
Doronin flushed, jumped up off his chair and tore the net off his hair.
‘Just what sort of minor role do you think you are assigning to me, my dear sir! Equal shares in the profit, but if the venture makes a loss, please don’t be concerned about that? I’m a Russian diplomat, not a stock market speculator!’
Poor Obayasi, frightened by the sudden shouting, froze on the spot and put her hand over her mouth.
Erast Petrovich also got up off his chair.
‘Precisely,’ he said drily, piqued by that ‘my dear sir’. ‘You are a diplomat, the consul of the Russian Empire, and you must not think of your own role, but the good of the Fatherland.’
The conversation with Lockston was much simpler, with no highbrow introspection.
‘So if His Yellow-Bellied Excellency’s protectors grab us by the ass, I blame you for everything,’ the American summed up. ‘My job’s a cinch: there was a request from the Russian consulate, and I was obliged to comply. All the notes and protests are your department, Rusty.’
‘Precisely so.’
‘Then I’m in.’ The sergeant chuckled. ‘Stick a genuine daimyo in the slammer – I like the idea. That’ll teach them to go defiling our little girls! And if you can take that skunk Suga down a peg or two, I owe you a crate of genuine bourbon, one dollar ninety-nine a bottle. Why that ape, thinking he could give white men the run around! There I was with my men, guarding that swamp, while he was pulling his dirty little tricks. Walter Lockston won’t let anyone get away with that, especially some lousy, slanty-eyed aboriginal!’
The titular counsellor winced at the American manner of scorning other races and repeated the essential points.
‘You wait for the signal. The next time Onokoji shows up at “Number Nine”, the owner will plant the young Polish girl on him. Asagawa lets us know immediately. You hurry to the brothel and make an arrest at the scene of the c-crime. Then you summon the Russian vice-consul and the head of the Japanese police.’
They didn’t have to wait long for ‘the next time’.
That evening a courier arrived at the consulate, bearing an official note from Sergeant Lockston: an underage female, very probably a Russian subject, had been subjected to abuse.
Erast Petrovich responded to the summons immediately, taking the secretary Shirota with him to add greater formality to the proceedings.
The scene that greeted the representatives of Russia in the office of the head of the municipal police was perfectly scandalous. Two people were sitting facing the sergeant, whose visage was set in a predatory smile; Prince Onokoji and a skinny little girl – gaudily made up, but with her hair in plaits, tied with bows. Both arrestees were in a state of complete undress. Lockston had evidently escorted the fornicators to the station in the same condition in which they were caught.
The infuriated daimyo’s apparel consisted of two sheets (one round his loins, the other thrown across his
shoulders) and a pair of silk socks with elastic suspenders.
The presumptive Russian subject was wrapped in a sheet, but by no means tightly, and unlike her accomplice, she gave no sign of being particularly agitated – she kept turning her bright little face this way and that, sniffing all the time, and at the sight of the vice-consul she crossed one leg over the other and toyed coquettishly with her sandal. The knee of this victim of molestation was as skinny as a frog’s paw.
‘Who is this?’ Onokoji squealed in English. ‘I demanded the presence of the Japanese authorities! You will answer for this! My cousin is a minister of court!’
‘These are representatives of the injured party’s state,’ Lockston declared solemnly. ‘Here you are, Mr Vice-Consul, I relinquish this unfortunate child into your custody.’
Fandorin cast a glance of disgust at the child molester and spoke compassionately to the young girl in Russian.
‘What is your name?’
She flirted with her heavily painted eyes, stuck the end of one plait into her mouth and drawled:
‘Baska. Baska Zaionchek.’
‘How old are you?’
After a moment’s thought, the unfortunate child replied:
‘Twenty.’
And in an entirely superfluous gesture, she showed him ten outstretched digits twice.
‘She says she is twenty years old?’ asked the prince, brightening up. ‘That is what she told you, right?’
Taking no notice of him, Erast Petrovich said slowly:
‘That is a great pity. If you were a juvenile, that is, underage, the Russian Empire, in my person, would have defended you. And then you could count on substantial c-compensation. Do you know what compensation is?’
Baska clearly did know what compensation was. She wrinkled up her forehead and examined the titular counsellor curiously. She jerked her leg, throwing off the sandal, scratched her foot and replied, swallowing her hard Polish ‘l’:
‘I wied to the gentewman. I’m fourteen.’ She thought for a little longer. ‘I wiw be soon. I’m stiw thirteen.’
This time she put up ten fingers first, then three.
‘She is thirteen,’ the vice-consul translated for Lockston.
The prince groaned.
‘My child, I can only protect your interests if you have Russian citizenship. So tell me, are you a subject of the empire?’
‘Tak,’ Baska said with a nod, crossing herself with three fingers, Orthodox-style, to prove the point – although she did it from left to right, as Catholics did. ‘Pan, the compensation – how much is it?
‘She is a Russian subject, we’ll take care of her,’ Erast Petrovich told the sergeant, and he reassured the girl: ‘You’ll b-be quite satisfied.’
Her presence was no longer required.
‘Why didn’t you let the poor creature get dressed?’ the vice-consul asked Lockston reproachfully. ‘The little child is frozen through. Mr Shirota will take her to her apartment.’
Baska didn’t really look chilly at all. On the contrary, keeping her eyes on the interesting man with the dark hair, she opened the sheet as if by accident and Fandorin blinked: the juvenile Zaionchek’s breasts were developed well beyond her age. Although the devil only knew how old she really was.
So Shirota led the injured party away and Erast Petrovich stayed to attend to the drawing up of the minutes. And soon after that the representative of the Japanese side turned up – Inspector Asagawa, the head of the indigenous police.
The prince threw himself at the inspector, waving his arms in the air and jabbering something in Japanese.
‘Quiet!’ Lockston roared. ‘I demand that all conversations be conducted in a language comprehensible to the injured party.’
The injured party – in this case Erast Petrovich – nodded sombrely.
‘The individual styling himself Prince Onokoji has said he can obtain a promotion for me if I hush this case up,’ Asagawa announced imperturbably.
The arrested man gazed round at all three of them with a hunted look and his eyes glinted, as if the realisation was dawning that he had not ended up in the police station by chance. But even so, he drew the wrong conclusion.
‘All right, all right.’ He chuckled, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender. ‘I can see I’ve been caught. You arranged it all very neatly. But you are in for a disappointment, gentlemen. Did you think that because I am a prince I have pockets full of money? I am afraid not. I am as poor as a shrine turtle. You won’t make much out of me. I’ll tell you how all this will end. I’ll spend the night in your lock-up and tomorrow someone from the ministry will come and collect me. You’ll wind up with nothing.’
‘What about the disgrace?’ said Asagawa. ‘You, a scion of an ancient and glorious line, are involved in a dirty little scandal. Your patrons may perhaps get you released, but then they will break off all relations with you. Society will shun you, as if you had the plague. No more protection, no more charity from relatives.’
Onokoji narrowed his eyes. This man was clearly far from stupid.
‘What do you want from me? I can see that you’re leading up to something. Tell me straight out. If the price is fair, we’ll strike a deal.’
Asagawa and Fandorin exchanged glances.
‘Suga,’ the inspector said in a quiet voice. ‘We want Suga. Tell us everything you know about his part in the assassination of Minister Okubo, and we will let you go.’
The prince’s face blenched as rapidly as if he had daubed a paintbrush dunked in lead white across his forehead and cheeks.
‘I know nothing about that …’ he babbled.
‘A week ago you told Algernon Bullcox about the reward in store for Suga for doing the job so neatly,’ said Fandorin, joining the game. ‘Don’t deny it, there’s no point.’
The prince gaped at the vice-consul in horror – he evidently had not been expecting an attack from this quarter.
‘How do you …? We were alone in the room, just the two of us!’ Onokoji batted his eyelids in confusion.
Erast Petrovich was certain that this puny playboy would flinch and falter now. But instead it was the titular counsellor who flinched.
‘Ah!’ the prisoner exclaimed. ‘It’s his concubine, isn’t it? She’s spying for the Russians? But of course! There weren’t any servants in the house, only her!’
‘What concubine? Who are you talking about?’ Fandorin asked hastily (perhaps rather too hastily). His heart shrank in horror. The very last thing he wanted was to get O-Yumi into trouble! ‘You shouldn’t chat b-beside open windows where anybody at all might overhear you.’
It was hard to tell whether he had succeeded in diverting Onokoji from his dangerous suspicion with this retort. But the prince refused to speak openly.
‘I won’t say a thing,’ he blurted out sullenly. ‘Disgrace may be unpleasant, but my life means more to me … Your agent got things confused. I don’t know anything of the sort about Intendant Suga.’
And after that he stuck to his guns. Threats of scandal had no effect on him. Onokoji simply kept repeating his demand for the Tokyo police to be informed of the arrest of a member of the higher nobility, a first cousin of four generals and two ministers, a schoolfellow of two Imperial Highnesses, and so on, and so forth.
‘Japan will not allow the Prince Onokoji to be held in a foreign lock-up,’ he declared in conclusion.
Is he right? was the question in Fandorin’s glance at the inspector. Asagawa nodded.
Then what can we do?
‘Tell me, Sergeant, I expect you are probably very busy with correspondence, reports and all sorts of documents?’ Asagawa asked.
‘No, not really,’ answered Lockston, surprised.
‘Oh, come now,’ the inspector insisted. ‘You are responsible for the entire Settlement. Citizens of fifteen different states live here, there are so many ships in the port, and you have only one pair of hands.’
‘That’s true,’ the sergeant admitted, trying to unders
tand what the Japanese was driving at.
‘I know that under the law you are obliged to inform us of the arrest of a Japanese subject within twenty-four hours, but you might not be able to meet that deadline.’
‘Probably not. I’ll need two or three days. Maybe even four,’ said the American, starting to play along.
‘So, I’ll receive official notification from you in about four days. I’m very busy as well. Not enough staff, I’m barely keeping up. It could be another three days before I can report to the department.’
Onokoji listened to this conversation with increasing alarm.
‘But listen, Inspector!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re already here! You know that I have been arrested by foreigners.’
‘It’s not a matter of what I know. I have to be informed about this officially, according to the prescribed procedure,’ said Asagawa, raising one finger in admonishment.
The titular counsellor had absolutely no idea what this strange manoeuvre signified, but he did notice the prisoner’s face twitch in a strange way.
‘Hey, Orderly!’ the sergeant shouted. ‘Put this one in a cell. And send to the brothel for his clothes.’
‘Where will dragging things out like this get us?’ Fandorin asked in a low voice when the prince had been led away.
Asagawa didn’t answer, he just smiled.
Once again it was night. And once again Erast Petrovich was not sleeping. He wasn’t tormented by insomnia, it was as if sleep had ceased to exist, as if the need for it had fallen away. Or perhaps it was all because the titular counsellor was not simply lying in bed – he was listening. He had left the door into the corridor open, and several times he thought he heard the porch creak gently under light footsteps, as if someone was standing there in the darkness, unable to make up their mind to knock. Once, unable to bear it any longer, Fandorin got up, walked through quickly into the hallway and jerked the door open. Naturally, there was nobody on the porch.
When the knock finally did come, it was loud and abrupt. O-Yumi could not possibly knock like that, so Erast Petrovich’s heart did not skip a beat. He lowered his feet off the bed and started pulling on his boots. Masa was already leading his nocturnal visitor along the corridor.