The woman says, ‘I’m so sorry. She was a beautiful child.’
Chiyo is turning red-faced with vexation, and he’s intrigued as to why she should be so allergic to this woman. The woman looks puzzled. She turns and sees him.
‘This is Chris, Patrick’s brother,’ says Chiyo.
The woman disguises her surprise well. ‘Good morning. I’ve heard so much about you. I’m very sorry for your loss.’ She waits for Chiyo to introduce her but Chiyo seems paralysed. ‘I’m Mrs Kondo,’ she says.
A child of about three yells excitedly from a swing. ‘Where’s Sarah?’
He realises Mrs Kondo is the friend Chiyo had claimed to be with when the murder happened, and this is her little girl, who supposedly saw the murderer, the black man. He stares at Chiyo, who stands rigidly.
‘Where’s Miss Sarah?’ shouts the little girl.
Mrs Kondo is mortified. ‘I don’t know what to tell Hana,’ she says softly in response to the dismay etched on Chiyo’s face. ‘I’m not sure she’ll understand. I’m very sorry. Please forgive me.’ She scuttles back to the swing, calling, ‘Come on Hana, I’ll buy you some lemonade.’
‘Yay!’
‘What have you done?’ he hisses at her.
She stares at the ground. ‘We can’t talk here.’
Chapter 5:
Johnny Lennon in jail
He follows the white Toyota Star to the main road. When Chiyo pulls out into the traffic he has to wait. She’s a hundred metres away with half a dozen cars between them when she turns left through an orange light rather than straight ahead for home. ‘Bitch!’ he yells. He beats the steering wheel as he pulls out and follows her. ‘You fucking Jap bitch!’ He goes to make the turn and is stopped by a red light. He yells for as loud and long as he can, unexpectedly combusting in blind rage. ‘Aaaaaaahhhhhh!’ He bludgeons the air in the small car with his voice. ‘They’re all fucking spies!’
Almost as soon as his fury seizes him, it’s over. He becomes aware of beeping. The traffic is moving. A cry of ‘Fuckwit!’ stretches from a passing Toyota pick-up. Chris raises his finger. ‘Fuck you,’ he yells. The pick-up, a high-sprung four-wheel drive, stops at the next set of lights, another red, and Chris pulls up behind it. The man has a mullet and a black jersey. He stares hard at Chris in his rearview mirror and raises his middle finger. Already Chris is over it. I’m going to the police station to see my brother, he thinks, not fighting a stranger in the street over a traffic light. The bogan misreads Chris’s lack of interest for fear. His door flies open and he lands heavily on the ground in steel-capped boots. Skinny-legged in tight black jeans, broad shouldered and hard-faced, he struts towards Chris with a curious bendy gait.
Chris picks him as an unfit second-five-eighth who has a tendency to run sideways. He locks his door and stares straight ahead as the bogan raps on his window.
‘Wind that down, faggot, or I’ll fuckin’ break it.’
The light goes green and a horn sounds. For half a second Chris considers opening his door hard on the man, then picking him up and carrying him across the road to dump him over a low garden wall; instead he swerves up onto the pavement and around the pick-up.
More horns and yells. He catches a glimpse of the bogan jumping behind the wheel and setting off in pursuit. ‘Good,’ he says to himself. He will lead the bogan to the police station and Patrick. In his rearview mirror he sees the pick-up swerving out from the line of traffic to pass, aborting, swerving out again, desperate to catch up. The bogan’s about fifty metres behind when Chris sees the large Rising Sun and a lesser New Hokkaido flag above the imposing stone structure of the police station. There’s a car park directly out front. He gets out and watches the bogan drive past slowly with his window down.
‘Chicken-shit fucking faggot,’ the man says.
Chris blows him a kiss. The tail lights flare as the man stops dead in the middle of the road. As Chris turns up the wide flight of steps in front of the station he hears another angry voice.
‘What the fuck are you doing? You can’t just stop in the middle of the fucking road, mate?’
As he enters the building, a policeman comes in behind him. Having seen what happened in the street, he says, ‘Keep your petty disputes out of here.’
‘Is murder petty?’ Chris asks him.
‘Usually,’ the policeman says angrily.
Chris’s temper flares again. ‘Even if it’s Japanese blood that’s spilled?’
The policeman raps his fist on Chris’s forehead. Spots of coloured light appear. It’s the first time he’s been struck that way since high school. The spots quickly fade. ‘I have information about—’
‘Silence!’ barks the policeman.
‘—a murder—’
Bang. More spots.
‘Throw this dog in the pen!’
His arms are pinned as he’s marched quickly across the lobby, past the desk, into the corridor leading to the cells. The policeman yells into his ear: ‘Who gave you the right to speak? Who gave you the right to speak of Japanese dead?’ A blow from a club on the back of his calf fells him. Blazing pain. Three or four men are kicking him. He curls into a ball. The attack is brief. Hauled to his feet, he is dragged a few steps to a cell and dropped inside. The door slams and a key turns. He springs up on his good leg and yells through the bars, ‘I have information about the murder of a Japanese citizen!’ But the police have already gone. ‘Patrick? Can you hear me? It’s Chris!’
‘Hi, Chris,’ comes a jeering voice from a nearby cell. ‘Thanks for dropping by.’
The concrete cell features a bucket. He sits on the cold floor and assesses his injuries. Thankfully, they won’t prevent him from returning to work—if he can get on tomorrow night’s ferry. A clatter of boots and shouting brings him gingerly to his feet. A young man in a red-and-black jersey is thrown into a cell a few doors down. He must be a spectator from the Canterbury–Otago match at Lancaster Park. Chris anticipates he’ll be the first of many to be brought in the back entrance after separation and softening up. He’s right. A steady stream of fans are brought in. Many go quietly but still there is yelling, scuffling and shouts of protest in the corridor and occasionally the flurry of blows and cries that herald a beating. Some arrive unconscious. As night falls they keep coming. One man begins to shout from his cell into the corridor that New Zealand is for New Zealanders. A stampede of boots and a cell door crashes open. Dull thuds ensue, and within seconds he’s screaming, ‘Please sir! Please sir!’ in English, unwillingly spurring the beating to greater heights. ‘Speak Japanese!’ they yell. ‘Yes! Yes!’ he cries in English and falls silent. The beating goes on for a while longer, a terrible sound, and Chris grimaces as he imagines the damage inflicted to soft tissue and brittle bones. It makes the large, swollen bruise on the back of his calf feel minor.
As the cells continue to fill he sits in the corner and faces the door, expecting it to burst open any second. He thinks of Chiyo as cold radiates through his coat from the floor. A daughter of one of the neighbouring gentleman farmers who was an exporter by trade, she had taken a little job helping in Patrick’s stable because she loved horses and her father wouldn’t get her one. Her father, a huge sumo fan, enjoyed the arrangement. She ended up moving in to take care of the horses full-time. A very unusual thing indeed for a Japanese woman to live under a Kiwi roof, particularly if it had happened all at once, but over time, the odd night here and there becoming two nights, three nights, made the arrangement possible. The fact that she’s plain would have helped, Chris thinks. A plain girl who loved her job with the horses, she was just one of several staff and helpers in a big and prosperous house. And Patrick was away fighting in Japan for most of the year. Chris remembers seeing Chiyo kiss her brother goodnight on one of his summer visits when he was about sixteen. He was shocked and yet, upon reflection, it seemed natural given their affectionate relationship. To see a Japanese woman in such a personal role was very surprising, but he made sense of it as another example o
f his brother’s power. He wasn’t allowed to tell anyone at school about her though, and their relationship was never publicly announced. Rumours that Patrick, the Pan-Asian Champion and a source of great pride for many New Zealanders, was ‘fucking a Jap’, or even better, ‘fucking Japs’— plural—was another manifestation of his power. The Kiwi was on top and giving it to the Empire on all fronts. But the persistent rumours of a baby that came later changed everything. That was different. That meant a loving relationship with the enemy and the reaction to that was disgust. It was a betrayal so great that Patrick’s entire career was retrospectively condemned. He’d been out for himself all along, not for New Zealand. All he was good for was pushing other big men out of a ring. That had shocked Chris.
Sitting on the cold floor of the cell, he thinks about betrayal, about the family Chiyo betrayed by having a child out of wedlock with a native. He doesn’t know much about the consequences other than that her father disowned her. He doesn’t know much, he realises.
As the night drags on and the beatings continue he worries that he’s been singled out for special treatment, that they don’t want him talking to a cellmate before he is disappeared. He feels powerless. If the Imperial Japanese Army wants his silence, he knows he will be silenced. The occupation will continue without him. Many people disappear every year. People he once knew, people he admires, like Johnny Lennon, who died in police custody in 1972 directly after the bootleg gig released as Live in Levin. Some of the soldiers who can be heard yelling in the final track, as the band is arrested amid howling feedback, would have been among those who beat him to death that night. Of all things to cry about, Chris thinks bitterly as tears well up, I should cry about that. He can’t help himself. They put out a bright light, he thinks. A light that big, and they snuffed it out like a candle. What hope do I have?
Time passes. Something moves in the corner. A rat, he thinks. But it’s the prone figure of a man. He hasn’t been alone after all. He’s had company all along, companionship. The dark figure stirs, as if tender. His head, pooled in darkness, is like a black-and-blue pumpkin. One eye, hanging from a tendril of nerve, retracts—zip—like spaghetti into pursed lips, and the eye returns neatly to its socket. ‘Where’s me fuckin’ glasses?’ says the man, in a resonant voice. ‘Ah, there you are.’ He sits up. Granny glasses gleam. His terrible head injuries and swelling are gone. His face is smooth and neatly moustached. The pattern on his psychedelic shirt slowly rotates. ‘What’s eating you, brother?’
Chris knows he can trust Johnny. It’s a relief to have someone to talk to. ‘I want to help my brother but things are spiralling out of control. I’m losing it. I fear I’ll lose everything.’
‘You can help your brother, brother, by keeping a lid on things for a start. You’re normally very good at that, Chris.’
‘I know, Johnny. Maybe it’s because I don’t usually engage with this fucked-up country. I keep my head down and work hard. Try to get ahead like Patrick did, you know.’
‘You don’t get where Patrick did by keeping your head down. He was the Pan-Asian sumo champion for five years, made Grand Champion, and is the only white man to even get in the top division. Look, forget that for now. He needs your help, for once, so help him. He wants to know the truth about his daughter’s death. Rightly or wrongly, that’s what he wants.’
‘Did Chiyo kill Sarah?’
‘It’s unlikely.’
‘Should I revisit the crime scene and look for clues?’
‘And find a cigarette butt, a rare brand of cigarillo, a stiletto shoe print, sunflower seeds. A pair of bagpipes with a label saying—’ Johnny adopts a high feeble-minded voice—‘These belong to Tumble Starkers, 23 Haggis Heights, Christchurch, the South Island, New Zealand, the Southern Hemisphere …’ Chris feels mocked and uncomfortable, but Johnny smiles and puts him at ease. He holds up his packet to show he’s down to his last cigarette, and lights it. Chris has three left. Johnny leans over and lights his for him with a cold blue flame from the end of a fingertip. ‘It wouldn’t hurt to have a look at the crime scene. You might get a hunch. Or a hump.’ Johnny arches his back and leers, brandishes claw-like hands, and Chris can’t help laughing. Johnny straightens up, instantly calm and serene. ‘The thing to remember is that no one’s going to do this for you. You’ll have to go out and talk to people who don’t want to be talked to. You’ll have to ask questions that people don’t want to answer. It’ll be tough, the toughest thing you’ve ever done, Chris, but you can do it. I believe in you.’ He starts to shimmer. ‘And keep your head down, for Chrissakes.’ His parting smile warms the cell long after he’s faded.
Chris is woken by the sound of a heavy key turning in the lock. ‘You’ll be late for work,’ says the policeman. He doesn’t smile but has a humorous face.
‘Thank you. My alarm didn’t go off.’ Chris cautiously stands and puts weight on his sore leg. To his relief, it’s okay, and he’s touched to feel the soldier’s hand on his back in a friendly gesture. It reminds him of his dream of Johnny Lennon. Never has he had such an intense dream. It felt more like a vision, and he feels blessed somehow.
At the front desk he is processed formally and efficiently. He is advised that his ID has been downgraded from green to orange. He asks the officer if his brother was at the station. The man consults a list and shakes his head. ‘I suppose my car’s been towed. It was out the front.’
‘Possibly.’
Chris is strangely hopeful as he walks across the lobby, but the Mazda hatchback has gone.
Chapter 6:
The kindness of strangers
No one answers the phone at Patrick’s house so Chris decides to retrieve the car by public transport. He rides a tram out to the last stop in Shirley and walks for ten minutes as per the directions on the tow company’s business card. The tired, single-storey small businesses he passes—auto and farming gear specialists, the occasional kitchen and mirror showroom—are all customer-free, and unexpectedly comforting. Their sober interiors remind him of the safe and satisfying routine of the classroom.
One solitary button remains on his coat. He must return on tonight’s ferry to be back in time for work or he’ll lose his job.
A dog begins barking on the other side of a long corrugated-iron fence crowned with barbed wire. The invisible dog follows him down the fence until he comes to the entrance, where its barking takes on a whining, imploring note. The alarm has worked. A large man of about fifty with a walrus moustache and a shaved and notched head stands at the ready behind the counter. Built like an ex-Number Eight, he radiates a hard man’s hostility. Although it’s cold he wears a T-shirt. His powerful arms are clotted with filled-in and transformed old blue tattoos that hint at shifting allegiances. Chris senses that he fights often and usually wins, and that these victories are a source of pride and enjoyment for him. Not a team player.
‘Yep,’ the man says.
‘Morning. I’ve come to get my car.’
‘Which one’s yours, mate?’
‘The orange Mazda hatchback.’
‘Rego?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Where was it, mate?’
‘Outside the police station.’
‘Right. Want a cup of tea, mate? Some toast?’
‘That would be great.’
‘Come through.’
The man, wearing shorts as well despite the weather, leads him into a small dirty kitchen decorated with pictures of naked Kiwi women. He directs Chris to a Formica table with three chairs. The jug boils quickly.
‘What do you want on your toast?’
‘Vegemite, please.’
He puts a teacup on the table in front of Chris. ‘There you go. Black tea only I’m afraid.’
‘Cheers.’
The man puts four slices of white bread in the toaster, sits down across from Chris, leans against the wall and lights a cigarette. ‘Want one?’
‘Thanks.’
‘No charge for the tow, mate.’
<
br /> ‘That’s very kind of you.’
‘Free New Zealand, mate.’
‘Cheers.’ Chris raises his chipped and stained tea cup in salute.
‘What they keep you for?’ The toast pops and the man gets up.
‘I went to … my niece was murdered and I had some information to give them. They didn’t want to know and I said the wrong thing.’
‘There you go, mate.’
‘Thanks.’ The pile of toast on top of everything else releases a flush of gratitude. Touched, he nearly raises his trousers to show the man the injustice of his bruised calf.
‘The police are fucking useless. Who killed your niece?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe … maybe the authorities.’
‘Authorities? You from around here, mate?’
‘No, Wellington. My brother’s here.’
‘Why would the Japs want your niece dead? What’s your brother done?’
‘He’s the sumo wrestler the Night Train.’
The man jumps up and refills the jug. ‘With respect,’ he says as he sits down again, ‘your brother fucked off a lot of people.’
‘Yeah.’
‘More tea?’
‘Thanks. Do you think Free New Zealand might have done it?’
‘Not Free New Zealand. I’m a member, as you might have guessed. I was more militant in my younger days, but I think Free New Zealand’s on the right track now. The way out of this is political. Appeal to the Yanks and the Aussies. That’s the conclusion I’ve come to. But there are still radical groups out there. You need to talk to them. There’ll always be someone dumb enough to let something slip.’
‘How can I contact them?’
‘Stay right there.’
The man returns a minute later. A skinhead of Chris’s age is with him. His blue overalls are unzipped to the waist and the empty sleeves hang behind him. Tautly muscled, a weightlifter, he wears a black singlet around which can be seen many religious tattoos: crosses, a depiction of the Sermon on the Mount, the miracle of loaves and fishes.
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