Fishing for Stars

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Are you sure he was responsible for your honourable mother’s disappearance?’ the sergeant asked. ‘Old ladies sometimes go wandering. They can be senile and confused. It is not uncommon.’

  ‘But there is the nurse to mind her,’ Konoe Akira insisted. Then glancing malevolently at me he spat, ‘Of course he did it!’

  ‘With their help . . . the yakuza, it is possible,’ the policeman replied.

  ‘As you can see there are no yakuza. I am on my own,’ I said unnecessarily.

  The sergeant shook his head slowly and then, with the beginnings of a smile, asked me, ‘Do you expect me to believe that two unrelated incidents, the one a kidnapping and the other an attempt to kidnap, took place coincidentally in the same home almost simultaneously?’

  I held his gaze knowing he was right and that there was no other way to explain things. ‘I can only answer for myself. Perhaps you should ask Konoe-san why I entered his home and attempted to abduct him. It obviously wasn’t in order to rob him – I could have done that easily enough.’ I pointed to the green vase. ‘It belongs in the Goryeo Dynasty and is near priceless. Why would I not take that and leave well satisfied?’

  ‘Because you are a professional and knew the vase was alarmed and you want a ransom for my esteemed mother!’ Konoe Akira shouted. Which explained why he’d offered the vase in exchange for his life. I had to hand it to him, he was resourceful.

  ‘If I had kidnapped your honourable mother, which I haven’t, why then would I kidnap you if I wanted to hold her to ransom?’ I turned to the sergeant. ‘Perhaps you should ask Konoe-san why he thinks I have attempted to kidnap him. My partner and I are gaijin and strangers in a foreign country.’ I pointed to Konoe Akira. ‘He has kidnapped her for reasons that will soon become apparent. It is he who is the kidnapper and who forced me to enter his home to discover where she is!’

  It was the first time I had admitted knowing more of Konoe Akira’s background than he might have supposed and he blanched, crying, ‘He lies!’

  ‘Enough!’ the sergeant said, finally running out of patience. ‘Why did you not report this alleged kidnapping to the police? Kidnapping is a serious offence.’

  I sighed. ‘It seemed at the time to be a matter I could clear up on my own.’ I pointed at Konoe Akira. ‘My partner and this man have a long association. They are not strangers. This man has a personal agenda.’

  ‘I am taking you into custody, Nick Duncan. Anything further you say may be used in evidence.’ He turned and dipped his head in a cursory bow to Konoe Akira. ‘You may be required to give evidence, sir. I would request that you inform the police if you intend to leave Tokyo.’ The sergeant handed Konoe Akira his card in the two-handed manner of the Japanese, bowing slightly.

  The two policemen sent to find Staff Sergeant Goto now appeared with him in tow. He was rubbing his wrists, his expression totally distraught. He broke away from the two officers and went to stand in front of Konoe Akira, bowing deeply. ‘I have let you down, Colonel. I must be punished,’ he said.

  ‘Hai! I will deal with you later. Fetch my belt!’ Konoe Akira snapped.

  The thoroughly dejected Goto turned to obey and, suddenly observing me, let out a sharp cry, then pivoted on one foot and karate-kicked me high in the chest, obviously aiming at my throat. With my hands handcuffed behind my back I had nowhere to go but backwards, knocking into the green vase and sending it crashing to the floor, where I joined it moments later, coming down on my arse, then my back, my head finally knocking hard against the wooden floor. I lay dazed among the shards of porcelain with the ear-piercing racket of the alarm filling the room. It took only a few seconds for me to realise that I was bleeding, but how badly I couldn’t say. I attempted to rise, but with my hands secured behind my back I had no way of getting to my feet. I looked up to see Konoe Akira standing over me, weeping like a small child.

  I left the Emergency Department of the University of Tokyo Todai Hospital in a police car just after dawn. Whilst I wasn’t severely injured I had multiple cuts to my backside and the back of my arms, most fairly deep, and one just below the right shoulderblade, in all requiring fifty-seven stitches. I was told once the painkillers wore off to expect a bit of a headache from the bump on the back of my head, but I wasn’t concussed and while my sternum felt bruised where Goto had kicked me, an X-ray showed nothing was broken. I was probably carrying the most expensively acquired sutures the hospital would have performed in a long time. Years later in New York I saw a similar vase for sale in a Fifth Avenue antique dealer’s for two million American dollars. I recall how Anna wanted to buy it for me. Laughing, I’d quickly refused. ‘It gives me a pain in the bum just to look at it,’ I’d remarked, kissing her for the generous gesture it undoubtedly was.

  I was taken to the huge Metropolitan Police Department Complex located in the Kasumigaseki district of Central Tokyo, the biggest in Japan with five hundred police officers operating from it. Here I was brought to the charge desk where a sleepy sergeant, no doubt looking forward to the completion of the night shift, started the paperwork, charging me with attempted kidnapping, assault, breaking and entering, and possession of an unlicensed and prohibited firearm. He explained in a bored voice that later in the morning I might have to undergo an interview by the public prosecutor who would decide whether I was to be indicted, but that the police could hold me for forty-eight hours without charge.

  After my belt and shoelaces were removed, I was escorted to the holding cells. Prison cells in foreign lands are usually depicted as filthy holes with blood, gore, urine and vomit on the floor, the toilet in one corner overflowing with faecal matter. These were clean and smelled of strong disinfectant, and were arranged in a semicircle with the bars facing the guard station so that the occupants were under twenty-four-hour surveillance. The nocturnal sounds issuing from the cells reminded me of the islands where passengers sleeping on deck emitted the same snores, grunts, snuffles and cries in their sleep. The only sound missing was the cry of an infant. I suddenly felt very far from home and very alone.

  My cell, better described as a dog box, had tatami flooring, slightly less than half of which was occupied by a narrow futon on which lay two blankets, two small towels roughly the size of dishcloths and a toothbrush and miniature tube of toothpaste. There was no washbasin, but at the far end was an open semi-squat toilet. It seemed that even the process of defecating was under observation. The entire cell was about three metres long and one and a half metres wide. I was to learn that the lights were perpetually on, though dimmed at night.

  For a bloke my size it was a tight fit, my head either up against the open bars of the cell door or resting against the toilet. I was dog tired. Over the last two days I’d managed to snatch only a handful of hours in the hotel after the meeting with Fuchida-san and the other oyabun at his penthouse apartment. It felt like several days ago but was in fact only yesterday afternoon. Forced by my various wounds to lie on my stomach I chose to sleep with my head against the toilet, burying my nose in the blankets, rather than look through the bars at the guards.

  However, try as I might, I couldn’t sleep; my mind was racing wildly. I’d screwed up big time: Anna was no nearer to being rescued and I now found myself incarcerated, wounded, exhausted and beyond desperation. I tried to look at each of the problems separately, to see if I could find a way out of our predicaments, otherwise I might end up rotting in a Japanese jail, and Anna could possibly be physically harmed or perhaps even killed. By ordering her kidnapping, Konoe Akira had potentially implicated himself with the Shield Society. This could soon become public knowledge and the honour of his noble family and his personal and professional reputation would be deeply compromised. So, I reasoned, he might be prepared to organise Anna’s release as soon as possible in return for keeping his association with these extreme rightwing fanatics from the public and his business associates. This seemed initially a positive thought. At least Anna would be free.

  But, almost immediately, it occurr
ed to me that there wasn’t anyone to plausibly implicate him or link him to the organisation. My own evidence was hearsay and would probably be regarded as entirely specious. The only confirmation that Anna’s kidnapping had been the work of the Shield Society under orders from Konoe Akira came from the Jade Mistress. Furthermore, the likelihood of her confirming this fact, or even that she knew Konoe Akira, was negligible. That is, unless she was forced to do so by Fuchida-san, the yakuza boss who had her written and signed confirmation. Without that document, Konoe could refute the accusation and, for that matter, deny knowing Anna. The only tangible proof that he’d known her in the past was the inscribed silver cigarette case he’d given her all those years ago as a parting gift, and it was now back in his possession, since Anna had used it as her calling card. My mind was going round in circles, but I couldn’t stop. This meant that Fuchida-san, with the cooperation of the Jade Mistress, was the only possible link between him and the extreme rightwing society, and with Anna.

  I was forced to ask myself why the yakuza boss would want to help me. I was not a part of his organisation. In fact I was a relative stranger to whom he owed no loyalty. While we had swapped butterflies for twenty-five years we had only known each other in a personal sense for a few days, during which time I had caused him and his people nothing but trouble. Putting myself in his shoes I could see that there was yet another compelling reason why he should distance himself from Anna’s kidnapping. He held Konoe Akira’s ageing mother captive, and rather than merely using her as a bargaining tool to gain Anna’s freedom, he could use her to turn a handsome profit. A nice little ransom payment would see her restored to the comfort of her home with additional assurances that the yakuza boss would not reveal Konoe Akira’s patronage of the Jade House; if any inquiry were instituted, the Jade Mistress would deny ever knowing him. To make it even more attractive for him to pay up and shut up, the Jade House mama-san could quash all speculation about Anna by declaring that she had come to her establishment late at night looking for a job as a gaijin bondage mistress. Apart from proving incompetent, she had been discovered to be a heroin addict and so had been escorted off the premises and put back onto the streets where she belonged. The authorities of course would be well aware of what might happen to an attractive and desperate junkie in the sleazy nightclub area of a strange city at night. This little conspiracy between the yakuza boss and Konoe Akira would effectively discredit as well as dispose of Anna, who in the minds of the police and the authorities would be human trash, not worth bothering about. They’d duly notify the Australian Embassy and post a missing-persons bulletin and get on with the more important work of providing protection for honest law-abiding, tax-paying citizens.

  As for my personal predicament, as the saying goes, I was done like a dog’s dinner! With his undoubted connections in high places, Konoe Akira could make it impossible for me to prove that he had a case to answer for crimes committed in the dim and distant past, and without that, how could I link him to Anna, or to her kidnapping? All my evidence was purely hearsay. It would be a lot easier for him to suggest that I was an opportunist and a con man with a junkie partner. And then there was my war record. To the Japanese authorities, I was a highly decorated killer of the sons of Japan’s grieving mothers. Like my own country’s hatred for the Japanese, here too I was sure there would be no love lost for an old enemy.

  By the morning shift change, I finally concluded my own trial. I hadn’t slept a wink, the hospital painkillers had long worn off, I had a splitting headache and my lacerations were stiff and sore. As self-appointed judge and jury I found overwhelmingly for the prosecution and duly sentenced myself to a minimum of twenty-five years hard labour in a Japanese prison, a just sentence, given that I could well be responsible for Anna losing her life. All this because I’d allowed a scrawny old man time to put on his underpants!

  Breakfast consisted of a tin mug of weak green tea and a bento box, a small cardboard container of fried fish and boiled rice. I was to learn that the fare never changed. After breakfast I was escorted to a washroom and allowed to wash my face and clean my teeth – a hugely gratifying experience.

  At ten o’clock I was escorted into an interview room where two uniformed policemen and a plainclothes guy who may or may not have been a cop sat on one side of a large desk alongside a vacant chair. Each had pads and pencils (not pens) in front of them and a large tape recorder rested on the table. All three men were smoking and the plainclothes bloke reached over and offered me a cigarette. When I declined he seemed surprised; virtually every male smoked in Japan at that time.

  I was motioned towards a chair on the opposite side of the desk. ‘Sit please, Duncan-san,’ the plainclothes bloke said in a friendly voice. I was to discover that he played the good guy in the good-guy bad-guy routine that was shortly to begin.

  ‘Thank you, but I prefer to stand. I have a problem with some cuts on my bum,’ I said, which caused them all to laugh.

  ‘Very expensive cuts I hear,’ the plainclothes bloke said, grinning, which indicated he had been briefed on the events of the previous night.

  Moments later a second plainclothes guy entered the room, scowling at me. ‘Why is this man standing?’ he asked one of the policemen. The bad guy had arrived. The policeman explained and he grunted and took the vacant seat.

  The good guy (I was never given any of their names) then explained that the interview must by law take place in Japanese regardless of how proficient I was in the language. ‘We cannot speak your language and no interpreter is permitted.’ I nodded and he continued. ‘No public prosecutor is present today and so you will not be formally charged. We simply wish to get all the facts down and we hope you will cooperate.’

  I nodded again, determined to say as little as possible. I was unaware at the time that in a Japanese court only a judge presides and all evidence is written. Then, and even today, ninety-nine per cent of cases that go before a judge lead to a guilty verdict. Therefore, if the public prosecutor decides that a case may be heard, it is tantamount to a conviction. The interrogation I was about to undergo was clearly designed to make me admit my guilt. I was also to learn that there were no rules of engagement and no right of appeal against foul play.

  ‘Let us begin,’ the good guy said quietly. ‘Please state your name and nationality.’

  ‘Nicholas Duncan, Australian.’

  ‘Do you have any formal identification?’

  ‘My driving licence is in my wallet, which you have already taken from me.’

  ‘It has no photograph,’ one of the police officers said accusingly.

  ‘No, it is not required in my country.’

  ‘What country is that?’ the bad guy asked.

  ‘I told you, Australia.’

  ‘But you don’t live in Australia?’

  ‘No, I live in the New Hebrides.’

  ‘A tax haven?’ again from the bad guy.

  ‘Yes, I run an inter-island shipping company.’

  ‘Why did you come to Japan?’

  ‘To purchase two trawlers from the Mitsubishi Shipping Company.’

  Good guy, smiling: ‘See, it is not all bad. We honour you for contributing to the prosperity of the Japanese people.’

  Bad guy: ‘Where is your passport? When you were arrested you had no passport. It is an offence for a foreigner not to carry his passport.’

  ‘I was not told that.’

  Bad guy: ‘Where is it?’

  ‘In the safe in my hotel suite.’

  Bad guy: ‘What hotel?’

  ‘The Imperial.’

  Bad guy: ‘You must give us the combination!’

  ‘No,’ I said quietly. ‘If you will contact the Australian Embassy I will give an embassy official the combination and he will fetch my passport and give it to you.’ Also in the safe was nearly six thousand American dollars in Thomas Cook traveller’s cheques and possibly Konoe Akira’s calling card, the gold fob watch, as well as the receipt for the two trawlers. I wasn�
�t going to let these buggers indulge in a lucky dip and then later find myself unable to prove that anything was missing.

  Bad guy: ‘What are you suggesting? We are not the criminals here! It is required that you hand in your passport.’

  ‘Yes, an embassy official will do that.’

  Bad guy: ‘I see, you do not wish to cooperate?’

  There isn’t any real answer to a question like that. ‘I am trying to answer your questions, sir.’

  ‘Did you fight in the recent war?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In what capacity?’

  ‘I was a radio operator.’

  ‘Did you carry a rifle?’

  ‘No.’ Strictly speaking this was true as I used an Owen submachine-gun.

  ‘You lie, you are a killer!’

  I guess you get the idea. I was asked about my childhood in Japan and New Britain, how I came to speak Japanese and a host of other seemingly irrelevant questions, the bad guy always suggesting something fishy, the good guy smiling and asking me to cooperate as they were only trying to build a profile of me. It was all pretty ingenuous from the good guy and pointed and direct from the bad guy and I guess it was meant to get a pattern of questions and answers going so that I would become accustomed to the rhythms of speech and become less cautious with my answers.

  When we got to the subject of the yakuza and Fuchida-san and I explained that we swapped butterflies and had done so for twenty-five years they clearly didn’t believe me. It only started to get really rough when they began to question me about Anna and her past. This was a story I was prepared to tell as it implicated Konoe Akira directly and gave us a further reason for coming to Japan.

  But from this point there was no more good-guy bad-guy routine. ‘Thank you for coming to Japan,’ the original good guy suddenly shouted. ‘You give us an opportunity to pay you back for killing our fathers and uncles. You were not a radio operator! You are a murderer! You are going to die. Do you hear me! We are going to kill you!’