by Gavin Black
“Yes. Quite a long session. She didn’t know anything, of course. She left the office early to catch the train here.”
“Why did she go to Tokyo all of a sudden?”
“I think the police wanted it. In case they had any more questions. Anyway, Harry took her up. And I’m glad of that.”
“Why?”
Susie looked at me.
“I’m glad of anything that throws them together again. I suppose Reggie will have told you about that marriage? Everyone seems to accept the break but me. I don’t. I think the only future for both of them is to get together again. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Some marriages don’t,” I said.
Susie shook her head.
“Not to me. Oh, I know Harry’s a problem. But Marla knew that when she married him. And in a way that woman is her fault.”
“Another woman for Harry?”
Susie glanced at her husband, who was looking impatient.
“Yes, I suppose you’d call it that. A Russian. She’s a sort of actress and she’s got Harry on a string.”
Al stirred in his chair, impatient. The gun was on a little table beside his chair, but the atmosphere was now almost resolutely social, as a result of Susie’s efforts. I might almost have been one of the family.
“She works in a strip-tease place in Tokyo,” Susie went on. “And her name is Zuroff.”
“Stripoff Zuroff!” Al said loudly. “The place is called the ‘Happy Days,’ in case Mr. Harris wants that kind of an evening later when the police acquit him. Look, Susie, is the spare-room bed made up? Why don’t you let me put in a hot-water bottle for our guest? We want him to be comfortable, don’t we? I mean, after all this cosy talk about our friends we can’t just turn him over to the police, can we?”
“No,” said Susie quietly. “I don’t think we can.”
We both stared at her. Al heaved himself out of his chair.
“Hell!” he said loudly. Then he went over to a cocktail cabinet which was illuminated by orange light when you opened the doors. He poured himself a sizable whisky and squirted in soda. This wasn’t a social move at all, he didn’t offer anyone else a drink, but stood with his back to us, taking his tonic with a gulping noise.
“More coffee, Mr. Harris?” Susie was gracious.
I didn’t think she noticed anything when I took Al’s chair with my re-filled cup. She smiled at me, then looked towards her husband’s back.
“Al, you don’t really think Mr. Harris did it, do you?”
“It’s none of my business!” he shouted. “I brought him here to keep Ohashi clear of the police. The idea was we turn him in from this house. Now we don’t turn him in. We have a cosy evening talking about the private lives of our friends.”
He swung around. His face was red.
“It’s not good for a business man in Japan to get mixed up with the police. You know that as well as I do, Susie. And we are getting mixed up with them, treating him like this.”
“He’s British. In a country like this we’ve got to help each other.”
“Oh, don’t give me that!”
“Mr. Harris, if we let you go what will you do?” Susie asked.
“Make for Tokyo.”
“But you’d never get there, unless …”
“Go on!” Al shouted. “Tell him we’ll run him up. No trouble at all. I thoroughly enjoy a fifty mile trip at this time of the evening. And it’s started to rain, too. Let’s book a table at the ‘Happy Days’.”
“Al, stop being silly. We could run him up to Tokyo.”
“Of course we could, right through the police check point just outside this town. And if you don’t think there is one, think again, Susie. The police aren’t fools. They’ve a pretty good idea that a foreigner in trouble tries to find another foreigner to help him. Because he hasn’t a chance in hell of getting a Jap to do it.”
“This is one of your nights for squash at the Embassy,” Susie said.
“I’d put that off, dear. I was staying home with you, remember?”
“I think you ought to change your mind.”
“Well, I don’t! Why should we help this man? Just answer me that. All right, we don’t think he’s guilty. So what? We’ve only met him once. He’s not an old friend.”
“He’s British and he’s in serious trouble. We’ve got to do something. Mr. Harris, if we got you to Tokyo, what then?”
“That’s all I’d want, to be dropped somewhere central.”
“But you must have some kind of plan?”
“I’d rather not tell you, Mrs. Clynder. Just in case the police do pick me up. The less you know the better.”
“Let me endorse that,” Al said heavily.
Susie smiled at me.
“I’ll drive you to Tokyo, if my husband won’t.”
Al glared.
“That’s going to look pretty,” he said. “My wife picked up smuggling a man wanted for murder out of Kamakura. Do you mind letting your husband know what you’d say under those circumstances? Just to keep me in the picture.”
“We could make it quite plausible,” I said, producing Al’s gun and pointing it at him. “This way.”
He moved and then checked himself, his big hands opening and closing.
“Why you …!”
“If you don’t mind, Mr. Clynder, I prefer this to charity. I came in out of the night and held you up with your own gun. Another act from the desperado. Is this gun licensed, by the way?”
“What’s it to you?” Al shouted.
“Nothing. But to you it could be important.”
Susie was sitting very still, watching me. There was a kind of glint in her eyes, and I didn’t feel she was hostile at all, even at this abuse of what had been such charming hospitality. Al was exhaling anger rather in the traditional manner of a ham stage villain.
“If you think you can get away with this, Harris, you’re crazy.”
“I can, you know. But don’t let’s look at it like that. I’m providing you with the perfect out to police questioning. This way you don’t have a shaky story at all, and you can help me like your wife says we British always ought to help each other. And I do agree with her. Down there in Singapore I always have a helping hand ready for my fellow countrymen.”
Susie laughed then, a short, sharp, slightly explosive sound that seemed to pop out and then get cut off.
“What’s so damn’ funny?” Al wondered. “I believe you want this man to get away with it, Susie.”
“You know, I think I do. And he’s so right, Al. It’s considerate of him, really. This way we’ll be in the clear. You didn’t beat Mr. Harris to pulp with your bare fists because you were considering me, your ailing wife. Everyone will understand, including your business associates. It may be good for trade.”
“Shut up, will you?”
“That gun is licensed,” Susie said to me. “There was a wave of burglaries down here about a year ago and we got permission to have it. Mr. Harris, you promise not to give the Ohashis away?”
“I do.”
She smiled.
“Of course, your lawyers aren’t going to like this development when you fly them in.”
I returned her smile.
“I’m facing that,” I said.
Then the sitting-room door opened and Marla’s boy Joe stood there, looking straight at me.
CHAPTER IX
JOE KOMATSU took his time, sizing things up. He had only seen me once without my clothes and in my present fancy dress I knew I wasn’t a reassuring sight. There was also that gun in my hand. It was too late to conceal it and I didn’t try.
Joe came across the room slowly, to me.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Playing a kind of game, Joe.”
“With a pistol?”
“That’s right. What got you out of bed?”
“I wasn’t asleep. I just came down. Mom’s gone.”
“She’s only gone to Tokyo f
or the night,” Susie said easily as though the boy had just butted in on a normal soiree.
I could see Joe was worried. Maybe he didn’t like this business of his parents travelling up to Tokyo together any better than I did. The boy might have had the kind of experience of them separately and together which made that sort of thing seem more than a little unnatural. He was a smart boy who had come up against a lot of experience that isn’t usual with kids of his age. And right now he was frightened, it was in his eyes, something that struck at me, and stirred up an answering fear, too.
“Joe’s come to stay with us,” Susie prattled in a special voice for tiny tots. “Daddy didn’t want to leave him alone in that Japanese hotel, did he? So Joe’s come here. And he’ll be here when Mummy gets back. Now, bedsy-byes for you, young man.”
There was good will in Susie, but a massive amount of basic incompetence with kids. Joe ignored her, as she deserved. He stood looking at me, in a kind of appeal, accepting my clothes and the gun because he had to. Maybe the morning meeting on the beach had sparked something between us, something unusual enough for Joe to go on having hopes that it might serve him.
“I’m going back to Kyushu,” the boy said. “I know it!”
“You might be wrong there,” I said, but it wasn’t very clever of me either.
“I am so! I know!”
And suddenly he began to cry, but as though against his will, something that happened suddenly beyond his control. They were long bottled up, compulsive sobs of the kind I hate to see because I have always been helpless against them, particularly with women.
“Mom didn’t want to go to Tokyo. I know that, I know!”
Susie rose, ignoring me then.
“Oh, Joe, dear, that’s just being silly! Your mummy’s only away for the night. She’ll be back tomorrow. And you’ll be on the beach again and it’ll just be lovely. Now come on. Away we go.”
Joe swallowed. For a moment or two he’d had some kind of hopes from me, but he suddenly gave these up again, without any fuss, as though it was a forlorn hope anyway, and he knew it. Susie led him to the door and I rose to follow.
“Don’t twitch in your chair,” I said to Al quietly.
Susie paused on the stairs when she saw me out in the hall, standing with her hand on the boy’s shoulder. She was gentle with him, that was something.
“Have you got a telephone extension upstairs?” I said.
She nodded. Then she asked:
“You want to cut it? There’s a pair of string scissors in that drawer. And the lead goes up under the stair railing.”
I cut it.
“What’s that man doing?” Joe asked.
“Oh, he’s fixing things around the place.”
I went back into the sitting-room. Al was still in his chair. He was one of those big ox-like men who seem to react dully to some kind of emergencies and right now he was playing very safe. I went over and picked up the phone in the sitting-room.
“Give me the Kamakura Hotel,” I said.
In a moment I got it. I asked to speak to Mr. Reggie Spratt and was told he had left for Tokyo that evening. I yanked the phone cord out of its connection on the skirting and a bit of wood came splintering up as it snapped.
“Sorry about that, Clynder. But I’ll give you a cheque later to cover all damage done and expenses. It’s rather lucky, isn’t it, Joe coming in like that. It’ll make a nice story for the police. He’s the kind of boy who remembers detail. You needn’t have a moment’s uneasiness for your reputation.”
“When they hang you,” Al said, “I’m not going to feel sorry. And I had begun to believe you didn’t kill Mikos. Do you expect me to go on believing that still?”
“I’m not greatly interested.”
I went over to the bar, Al’s eyes following me, noting where I put the gun, his mind clearly moving out of second gear now, which made him worth watching. I looked at his bottles, but still keeping him within range. The whisky I rejected. I wanted something that would last for a little while and make me feel just slightly more intelligent than I am, a host’s drink, in fact, mixed and consumed before the first doorbell. So I made myself a Martini, not that peculiar soup of vermouth and gin which the English call a Martini, but the American kind, so dry that it scraped my throat. It involved a considerable amount of Al’s gin and he sat in his chair resenting that. I decided that he was basically a mean man, like most flash Harrys, and pitied his wife.
Susie came in as I was standing sipping, with a suit over her arm, a shirt, a pair of shoes balanced on the shirt, socks, and a selection of four of Al’s ties. Her eyes went round.
“Oh, I’ll have one of those,” Susie said.
It was the very least I could do for her. I poured Al a whisky first and took it to him.
“Remember the drinks go on my bill, too,” I said. “Only this is the last one you’re getting before you drive me.”
“How wise,” Susie said, holding up the shirt to see if it had all its buttons.
I was sure Susie would like my Martini, and she did.
“Mm. Nice. I don’t think this suit is going to begin to fit you, Mr. Harris, particularly the trousers. But Al had them made with those pull-in things at the side just in case he ever went on a reducing diet, but of course he never has. Why don’t you just change here, while I hold the gun? Or do you still think I’m on my husband’s side?”
“We won’t chance it.”
“It’s easily seen it’s a long time since you’ve been married.”
I changed with Al watching me. I was quite decent, still in the swimming shorts and it only took a short time. I tied the least exuberant of Al’s ties and put on the jacket, finding it roomy, although it wasn’t too bad on the shoulders. Al suddenly burst out:
“I don’t see why the hell you had to give him that suit. It’s my second best.”
“A criminal would take something on the better side, dear. He wouldn’t oblige us by wearing any of those cast-offs you usually force me to look at. And I must say Mr. Harris looks better in your clothes than you do.”
“Well, you take him to Tokyo!”
“Like a shot!”
“This is a business trip,” I said. “Are you ready, Mr. Clynder?”
“No! And don’t think you’ll get away with this.”
“I intend to get away with it. Keep that in mind, for your wife’s sake.”
“Oh, don’t worry about me,” Susie said, and I could see that it was the Martini working. When she walked ahead of us into the kitchen her step was light, positively bouncy.
“Mrs. Clynder, you could, of course, run screaming into the night the moment we’ve driven off.”
“The neighbours on the right are away, Mr. Harris. And the ones on the left don’t like us. They wouldn’t let me in. Besides, I don’t believe you killed Mikos. And I want you to find who has. It’ll be so interesting to know the truth, not that I ever met poor Mr. Mikos.”
“You can save your sympathy, he wasn’t British. How are you going to explain to the police that you stayed in your house without raising the alarm?”
“My dear Mr. Harris, in the first place I couldn’t leave Joe, in the second I was terrified, cowering in horror, with the night outside full of black monsters, and in the third you said if I budged past this door you’d pay me out later by cutting Al’s throat. Incidentally, how do you mix that Martini?”
“It’s gin with a blush of vermouth, and one drop of Angostura.”
Al swore. He had a good vocabulary here and Susie and I listened. When it was over she said:
“Al means it’s time to go. Allow me to pack you into the boot.”
But I told her I was sitting beside her husband.
“The police’ll search the car,” Al bellowed.
“I’ve got a plan for the check point.”
It was a Martini plan, and I knew it, but somehow it felt all right. I got in the back and Susie stood smiling through the window at me. Al switched on the engine.
“Open the doors, Susie! Or we’ll all die of carbon monoxide.”
The car spurted out into the rainy night.
Kamakura seemed very dead, the festivals and alarms of the day buried under a deep blackness, its streets deserted, and except for a Japanese youth in a crash helmet, playing American hot rod on a scooter, there was very little sign of activity at all. We soon lost the scooter, too, it wasn’t going our way.
The Japanese have a wonderful railway network, but their road system has never grown very extensive. When you’ve left one town on the way to another you’re on the one highway there is, with practically no chance at all of turning off into a side road, because they don’t exist. We were going towards that check point which couldn’t be bypassed, Al taking it slowly, like a man with things on his mind, probably planning a moment just ahead when he would erupt all over me and I’d be vanquished. I guessed that, not liking Japanese television, he went to the pictures a lot and his eyes were most likely drooping now like Robert Mitchum’s just before the moment of truth. It still didn’t worry me terribly, not with that triple Martini sustaining my ego.
“It’ll soon be the check point,” Al said. “It could be round the next bend. What do I do?”
“You brake down hard and then slide forward again. What are you running on, your half lights?”
“Yes. Don’t use the full heads much. They practically blast everyone off the road.”
“Including policemen. Brake, switch on full heads, leave them on for a bit, then switch them down. I’m getting out the car. I’ll walk past the check point and pick you up a hundred yards beyond it. And I’ll have you covered a lot of the time so don’t get any ideas. I’ve got a feeling Susie would survive all right as your widow.”
Al made a sound in his throat.
“It’s going to be a real pleasure to hear they’ve got you, Harris. I’m told the Jap police can still do funny things in a cell to get the kind of confession they want.”
“Stop trying to scare me and watch your driving instead.”
We went round a corner and there was the check point, four figures and a lamp, and some electric torches which I didn’t like so much. But they already had an incoming car held up, with Japanese thoroughness checking traffic both ways.
