‘That’s news to me.’
‘He wouldn’t tell you unless you asked. It’s all cash in hand, no tax. I only found out accidentally when the hotel in Paris sent one of his customers to my room by mistake. This French guy didn’t have much English, but he had a stack of Euros with him. He was waving them at me and talking about les échecs. I thought he was telling me cash is better than a cheque. Finally he produced a card with Ivan’s name on it and I sent him to the right room. In my cash-strapped situation, I was more than a little curious what all this was about, I can tell you. I asked the concierge the meaning of échecs. When I put it to Ivan he was tight-lipped, as you’d expect, but I wormed out the truth. He has an arrangement with some craftsman in Archangel, that Russian port right up near the Arctic Circle.’
‘Making chess sets?’
‘Ivory chess sets.’
‘Isn’t that illegal?’
‘Mammoth ivory isn’t. They’re digging it out of the permafrost in Northern Russia when the snow melts. It’s a huge resource. They believe millions – literally millions – of woolly mammoth skeleton remains are waiting to be uncovered. It’s cheap and legal and every bit as good as elephant ivory.’
‘Is Ivan selling it as elephant ivory?’
Harry shook his head. ‘He wouldn’t take the risk. He’s straight with his customers. He still has a sizeable mark-up on the chess-sets, hawking them everywhere the quartet goes on tour.’
‘And did you ask for a stake in it?’
‘Ask Ivan? No chance. You couldn’t blackmail him. What he’s doing is legal. Well, he’s paying no tax, but I wouldn’t shop him to the revenue. No, I thought a lot about it, how I might turn a few honest pennies. There are all sorts of ivory products in short supply because of the ban on killing elephants. The trading still goes on, obviously, and thousands of elephants are shot each year. The main market is the Far East. Decorative combs, chopsticks, fans, all that stuff. And netsuke. You know what they are?’
Mel nodded.
‘I decided to branch out on my own as a mammoth-ivory netsuke dealer. The idea wasn’t totally new. Netsuke were already being created and supplied. I just had to find my own carver and eventually I did. We gave a concert in Vladivostok and had two days to ourselves. I don’t know how good your geography is. Vladivostok is the last station on the Orient Express run, only a boat trip from Japan. It has a thriving Japanese quarter. I found a whole street of shops selling ornaments, mostly antique. There were a few new netsuke for sale there, quite highly priced. By this time I’d read up about ivory and how you identify it, which is quite a study in itself. Basically, in a cross-section you look at the graining, called Schreger lines, and how narrow they are. I wasn’t an expert by any means, but I managed to convince the shopkeeper I was. With the help of a magnifying glass and some bluffing I let him think I was some kind of inspector from the Environmental Enforcement Agency. He was bricking it. He assured me his netsuke were legitimate mammoth ivory and produced the paperwork with the name and address of his carver. Just what I needed.’
‘Was the carver local?’
‘Three or four blocks away. I looked up my guy the same afternoon and did a deal. He was Japanese born, a sensational carver, and of course apart from the quality of the workmanship the beauty for me was that the product was small, light in weight and just about unbreakable – ideal for travel. Much more cost-effective than Ivan’s chess sets, which take up a lot of space in his luggage.’
‘Did you tell Ivan what you were up to?’
‘No. He’s a prickly character, as you must know by now.’
‘Then why are you telling me?’
‘I’ll come to that. My netsuke business really took off in Europe. I’d seek out the upmarket shops and sell at profit of more than a hundred percent. Even better, it was becoming a hobby, weaning me off the poker. I got a real kick out of having a product everyone admired and coveted. I was paying off my casino debts. I thought nothing could go wrong – which, as anyone knows, is exactly when you’re due for a kick where it hurts most.’
‘What happened?’ Mel asked.
‘I was green as owl-shit. Should have realised if there was money to be made this way, then someone else would already be doing it.’
‘Who was it?’
‘A Japanese syndicate. I didn’t know they were already trading in ivory objects in just about every capital city in Europe and Asia. But their trade was the illegal kind, ivory from slaughtered elephants. Ten tonnes a year. That represents around a thousand elephant deaths.’
‘That’s horrible,’ Mel said.
‘There’s still a huge demand for the stuff. People don’t seem to make the connection with a noble, giant creature that has a time-honoured right to exist. But you don’t need a lecture from me. You obviously feel the same disgust I do. Okay, I was profiteering, too, but from fossilised material. As it turned out, this was my undoing. Some alert member of the syndicate got to know about me and decided to act. But they believed I was in direct competition, trading in elephant ivory. They decided to take a close look at my carver’s work, so they set a honey-trap.’
‘A woman?’
‘In 2008, the Staccati gave a concert in Vienna, at the Konzerthaus. We were at the top of our form that night, playing the Debussy in G minor – all those restless harmonies – followed by Mendelssohn’s charming A minor with its quotations from Beethoven. I was elated when we finished, fair game, I suppose, for the young Japanese woman from the audience who came up afterwards and spoke to us, thanking us in turn for enchanting her with our playing. You’ll know yourself that some fans just gush and you wish they’d go away. It became obvious that this woman was a scholar of music. She talked about the closing bars echoing the ending of the Cavatina from Beethoven’s Opus 130 and how our interpretation of those final four quavers had brought the homage to a perfect conclusion. Do you know the piece?’
‘I do. We’ve played it and Ivan likes to give a special emphasis to each note.’
‘It works a treat, doesn’t it? Anyway, this lady was spot on with her comments. She charmed us all. While I was packing up she said – just to me – that she was staying at our hotel and would like to talk music if I wasn’t too exhausted. I knew from the look in her eyes that there was more on offer than conversation.’
As a self-confessed soft touch for the ladies, Mel sympathised.
‘I suggested we have a drink back in the hotel, but warned her I was tired and couldn’t stay long. As hotel bars go, this one was okay, with a fountain and some nice lighting. The others were in there with our manager Doug having a nightcap a few seats away. When you’re on tour it’s just about impossible to make a move without everyone knowing.’
‘You have to be thick-skinned.’
Harry grinned. ‘Speaking from experience? Anyway, believe it or not, when she came to my room we continued to talk music intelligently for a bit, about the Debussy, that fantastic passage near the end of the first movement when second violin and viola play together. She’d noticed how Anthony was leading because he had the upper voice and she appreciated how I was reacting to him. A musician’s observation. It brought us closer together and the sex, when it came, was all the more satisfying because of it. This wasn’t “Bang-bang, thank you, ma’am” as I’d rather expected. Afterwards I offered her a drink from the mini-bar and we talked about my touring. And since she was Japanese, it seemed natural to mention the netsuke and show her some samples from my suitcase.’
‘She appreciated them?’
‘God, yes. She almost had another orgasm. She said the carving was the best she’d ever seen, and she may have been telling the truth, because my guy in Vladivostok was a genius in his way. I could tell she would have loved to own one. I don’t know if it was the champagne or the nice things she’d said about my playing, but in a rush of generosity I offered her one as a memento of the evening. She was thrilled. Yes, it was a valuable gift, but I told myself I could have lost three times as much i
n one session at the poker table. So it was a happy evening. She left my room some time after midnight and I slept well.’
Mel had listened to all this with mounting concern. He knew the police were investigating the murder of a young Japanese woman in Vienna at the time the Staccati had been performing there four years ago. She’d been dumped in the canal. If Harry had slept with her, he had to be the prime suspect. Why was he admitting so much unless it was to shift the blame elsewhere?
There was more. ‘Our next concert was in Budapest and we moved on the next day. I gave no more thought to Emi, my Japanese fan. We were flat out rehearsing a new programme. I barely found time to do my rounds of the shops that sold ivory objects. A pity I did, because when I got to one of the last I was invited into the back room. This was normal for doing business. But the way I was treated certainly was not. I was grabbed from behind, thrown to the ground and held there. I thought I was being mugged by at least two strong men. I had quite an amount of cash in my wallet and there were still a few unsold netsuke in the case I carried. You’re outnumbered, I thought. Best not to fight. So I lay still. Next I felt my jacket being grabbed off my shoulder and my shirt ripped open to expose my arm. Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of a syringe poised to inject me with something and that’s all I remember until I regained consciousness in total darkness doubled in a foetal position with my hands cuffed behind me. From the bumping I was getting and the engine noise I guessed I was imprisoned in a car-boot.’
‘Incredible,’ Mel said.
‘Well, it happened to me, I promise you. I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious or what this was about. I thought of the concert we were supposed to be giving and my precious Maggini back in the hotel. It was a nightmare. Hours went by, or so it seemed, before we stopped. The boot opened and two young Japanese guys were looking down at me. One had a bottle of water and a straw and I was allowed to sit up and take some liquid. I tried asking questions, but there was no communication. He shoved me down again, slammed the lid and I was left for a while, I suppose while they were eating. More hours of driving followed. I had no way of telling where we were headed.’
If this is an invented alibi, it’s an elaborate one, Mel was thinking. ‘So where did you end up?’
‘No idea,’ Harry said. ‘When I was finally allowed out of that bloody car-boot, I was blindfolded, taken into a building and thrown into a cellar. It could have been anywhere. I was given the basics, bucket, water and some kind of bread.’
‘What did they want from you?’
‘I didn’t find out for days. Finally a little guy in a suit arrived to interrogate me.’
‘Japanese?’
‘Definitely. He knew all about Emi coming to my room in the hotel and he knew I traded in netsuke. But he didn’t seem to know they were mammoth ivory or where they were made. Gradually it got home to me that my selling around Europe had got up their nose. They had a good thing going trading in ivory objects, illegal elephant ivory, and they viewed me as unfair competition. My netsuke were getting a reputation as superior work and they weren’t happy. They wanted a closer look at some of my merchandise and Emi had been instructed to sleep with me and beg, borrow or steal a piece.’
‘Which she’d done successfully.’
‘Right. But she hadn’t reported back. She’d disappeared. And he wanted to know what I’d done with her. I couldn’t tell him where she was. I had no idea she was dead. In this situation I had no reason to hold back, so I told him what happened that night. He didn’t believe me. He talked about codes of behaviour and certain penalties prescribed by the organisation he belonged to.’
‘Which organisation?’
‘Have you heard of the yakuza?’
‘No.’
‘You’d better know. They’re the Japanese mob. A network of huge syndicates making money out of crime. Their roots go back to the 1800s and they had a peculiar privileged status in Japanese society, allowed to bear weapons in return for helping the police to keep order. They still command some respect, even though they’re the biggest managers of organised crime. Like the mafia, they have their tentacles into just about every institution, banking, the stock exchange, the media. You name it. Like you, I knew nothing about them. I picked this up gradually.’
‘You were down in the cellar some time, then?’
‘Weeks. They were in no hurry. I lost weight and went into a deep depression. Then one morning the guards came in and made it clear I was being moved again. I allowed myself to hope they might be returning me to Budapest. Some hope. I won’t bore you with all the discomforts of the journey. We ended up in Vladivostok.’
‘That’s a huge distance.’
‘Tell me about it. I was taken there to be questioned by someone else from the organisation. And this guy didn’t mess about. He told me I was a murderer, that Emi’s body had been found in the Danube canal in Vienna and she had one of my netsuke tucked inside her clothes. I denied knowing anything about it, of course, but I wasn’t believed. He talked about honour and punishments. He was definitely out to scare me. It was only at the end of this grilling that I realised what they really wanted was the name and address of my carver.’
‘Hadn’t you told them?’
‘It hadn’t come up before, but now I was in Vladivostok I sensed that the guy interrogating me was the local yakuza don. He was miffed because he’d lost face from not knowing who had been carrying out this beautiful work in his own backyard. He expected me to volunteer the name and address of my carver, but he was too proud to ask in front of his henchmen. You have to understand that dignity is paramount to these people. The thing was, it gave me something to bargain with, or so I told myself. So I kept shtum. There were two more sessions and I let him know my terms. If I supplied the name, I expected to get my freedom. They would have no reason to keep me.’
‘What was his reaction?’
‘Inscrutable, to say the least. He wasn’t going to grovel for sure. No promises were made. But one afternoon I was blindfolded and taken out of my cell by two of his thugs and driven a short distance. They removed the blindfold and I knew exactly where they’d brought me. It was the Japanese quarter in Vladivostok. At first I thought they were about to release me. Ever the optimist.’
‘They wanted you to take them to your carver.’
‘You’ve got it. And of course there was a slight ethical dilemma. Did I want to lead the mob to my obliging little helpmate? You wouldn’t wish that lot on your worst enemy. But I’d gone past the point of behaving honourably. I figured they wouldn’t kill him. The worst they would do was pressure him to work for them, using elephant ivory instead of mammoth. He was my ticket to freedom. So, driven by desperation, I led them to his address.’
‘And was he there?’
‘Gone. No sign. Another family had moved in. It was a different business altogether, run by women selling silk fabrics. I was shocked. I definitely had the right building. I knew the houses on either side. Yet the women there claimed to know nothing about my guy or where he’d gone. Of course the heavies who were with me took a poor view of this. They talked to the women in Japanese and still got no help. Then they turned on me, accusing me of taking them on a wild goose chase.’
‘Did you make a run for it?’
‘No chance. It may have crossed my mind, but they each had a hold of one of my arms. I was marched back to the car and blindfolded again and taken back to my prison. That was a low point, believe me. I’d played my ace and lost. I’d had my first glimpse of freedom in weeks and now I was back in captivity having angered my captors.’
‘Do you think your carver had got wind that he was about to be visited?’
‘He must have. He would surely have let me know if he was changing his address. I was his best customer. Maybe the women with the silks were his own family, covering for him. Whatever it was, I was shafted.’
‘What happened then?’
‘It gets worse. The guy I called the don came back next
day with his helpers. He said I was a murderer and a liar and his organisation had a time-honoured way of dealing with such people, to warn others what to expect. It was known as yubitsume. Do you know about it?’
‘No.’
‘It’s a form of penance or apology and generally the offender is expected to carry out the punishment himself. In my case, the don said, I couldn’t be trusted, so they would do it for me. They placed a square of white cloth on a table and grabbed me by the wrist and held my hand over it. Then the don himself took a knife from his pocket and cut off the end of my left little finger just below the top joint.’
Mel felt a crawling sensation along the length of his spine. ‘God – that’s cruel.’
‘Painful, anyway,’ Harry said. ‘The original idea of yubitsume was that it weakened your ability to use a sword. In Japanese martial arts the bottom three fingers are used to grip the hilt. So you become more dependent on your yakuza brothers defending you. And of course everyone who saw your maimed hand knew you had disgraced the family in some way. If you transgressed a second time they cut it to the next joint, leaving you with a stump … like this.’
He removed his left hand from his pocket and held it up. He had a thumb and three fingers. The mangled end testified to the truth of his story.
‘They took the second joint?’ Mel said in horror.
‘A few days later. I was considered a serious offender.’
‘But it means …’ Mel’s voice trailed away.
‘I can’t do the fingering on the viola. I won’t be asking for my job back.’
The cruelty of the punishment would have been savage enough for anyone. On a professional musician it was the loss of his life’s work. Mel understood why Harry had said earlier that he might as well be dead. There was no way he could ever play again. A few times in the last few minutes Mel had wondered if he was being strung along. This ugly stump was proof of Harry’s integrity.
The Tooth Tattoo Page 29