by Gavin Black
“You mean you tracked me to the party?”
“Yes. I am hiding in hotel trees. I have bike and when you go in car I follow.”
“But why this sudden interest, Ohashi?”
He brought his hand out of the water and wiped it across his face.
“I wish you for a friend. I think you do not want it. But I try, you see. I think if we meet again and I make it seem accident we can perhaps have interesting talk.”
“About English literature?” I asked gently.
“Many things, perhaps. You think I am fool?”
“No, Ohashi, I don’t think that. I’m very glad you want me for a friend. But there’s just one other question. Why didn’t you come right to the Daibutsu? I could have used you then.”
“I know, Mr. Harris but … to see God in moonlight is perhaps private matter.”
After a moment I said:
“I don’t think you’ll regret it if you decide to come to Singapore, Ohashi. What will your mother say to your living down there?”
“If it good opportunity for me she is happy.”
“You could always bring her, you know.”
“Japanese woman not happy away from Japan. Visit only, perhaps.”
“That means you’ll have to marry a Malay.”
He smiled.
“Beautiful girl, I hear.”
The nice thing about a Japanese bath is that there is no time limit on the performance, you can stay all evening if you want to, and many do, especially in the winter, when the bath houses are the only really warm place. I was used to water temperatures now, and it was our safest hide, though something ticked away in my mind that it was dangerous for us to go on hiding a moment longer than we had to.
Marla Haines hadn’t answered that call to her room in the Asubira Hotel, but this didn’t prove she wasn’t there, or that something wasn’t there. I wouldn’t let myself think beyond that, but I could see Harry Komatsu lying dead. This second killing had been done carefully so as to brand me. The killer must have known that I was in the “Happy Days” when he tipped off the police, seen me at my table perhaps, stabbed Harry, and walked out to a phone box.
What had he done then? The possibilities weren’t pleasant to look at.
“We must go,” I said.
We were alone in the changing-rooms, our departure from the bath unnoticed. Ohashi dressed quickly.
“I go first into street and look, Mr. Harris. You wait here. If men come keep in corner.”
I waited for him, not able to sit down, the changing room rather a dank hole, clammy from the hot mists that blew into it and sometimes past it out into the night. There was one naked electric light bulb hanging down from the roof and a cracked mirror suspended from a rusty nail. I looked at myself, wondering if I was years older, but only saw the familiar, slightly battered face that had got that way from other living, not just two days on the run.
The drunks came in then, still swaggering a bit, lobster coloured, but with Taro almost totally revived and quite prepared to go on making a night of it. I could guess where from the fairly elementary dialogue which went on between the four as they flipped skimpy cotton towels about their inflamed torsos. I kept combing my hair in the mirror, carefully, not pleased with the parting.
“Mobo ka?”
Mobo is a slightly archaic contraction from “modern boy” and was clearly provoked by my haircut, which wasn’t a short one. Taro was addressing me, cheerfully enough, but I didn’t turn.
“Oi, you! Can’t you speak?”
He was suddenly looking at me in the mirror, a round face no longer in its first youth, but fighting age with the joyous life. He stared in the mirror. I could smell the fumes of rice spirit still hanging on in spite of that emptied stomach. His eyes changed.
“This is a foreigner,” Taro said.
I turned then. There wasn’t much else I could do. They were none of them intellectual types and cerebration took a while. I stood there rather like a man waiting for the results from a computer. The results came into their eyes first. The police had been looking for a foreigner!
“Oi! This is a foreigner!”
The bellow was from the man who had assured us that Taro wouldn’t be sick. I made a dive for the door and through it into the lobby, my shoes in my hand. Just outside the main door was Ohashi.
“It’s all right,” he said in Japanese.
“It’s not. Let’s get moving.”
He didn’t ask questions, he merely took one of my shoes. We didn’t run but walked very fast indeed, down through the crowds, weaving our way, and I wore my hat low over my eyes.
“Where the hell’s your scooterbike?”
“Outside this street. Up side street.”
I didn’t even put on my shoes when we got to it. Ohashi started the thing with a couple of kicks, and we went on down that side street into a darkness that was very welcome. I put my shoes into the crash helmet and tucked that between my thighs. Then I held on to Ohashi.
He managed a scooter with a great verve that nonetheless didn’t give me any great confidence in his experience. Once or twice I was tempted to remind him that we couldn’t afford an accident.
“Where?” Ohashi shouted.
“Surugadai. Asubira Hotel. Do you know it?”
“We find.”
We did, by a miracle. Surugadai is removed from the bright lights, rather high ground with a lot of it residential in the Japanese way, which means acre upon acre of grey clapboard houses with their grey wooden fences about them. We saw several policemen and under other circumstances the obvious thing would have been to ask for directions, but Ohashi just went zooming on, twisting in and out of a maze of streets in a kind of searching frenzy. I was the one who saw the sign.
“There it is, Ohashi! There’s the hotel.”
But he didn’t stop. The scooter gathered speed on an upgrade.
“Keep head down,” Ohashi said over his shoulder. “Police!”
I wouldn’t have noticed them at all. The boy’s slit eyes were sharper. The police car was parked beyond the hotel gates, drawn discreetly into the side of the road, but there was a man in a white uniform standing beside it. As we sailed past I kept my head down against Ohashi’s shoulder.
At the top of the hill he turned into a lane and stopped the scooter. I got off and bent down to put on my shoes. Then I straightened up and looked at him.
“Thanks,” I said. “This is as far as you go. Back to Kamakura with you now.”
“So? When I am in Singapore and we are on business you tell me to go home?”
“In Singapore I sincerely hope I won’t be on the run from a murder charge. At the moment the police haven’t a thing on you. I’d like to keep things that way.”
“I stay, Mr. Harris.”
“Now, look here …”
“I stay!”
He had that earlier lapse to redeem, at any cost. And suddenly I couldn’t argue with him. The sensible thing had no appeal for the boy at the moment. He locked his scooter and put the ignition key in his pocket.
We went out into the main street, which was a typical suburban shopping area, with two-story buildings, most of them still lit and in business. A bar with a flashing sign invited us to pause and a crowd in front of it were looking down towards the police car. The Japanese see a lot of police activity and you’d think they would get used to it, but a crowd is always ready to spring up anywhere. We stopped to look into the illuminated windows of a chemist who was blatantly displaying all the advantages of civilisation under a poster saying: “Keep Family Small and Happy.” From the number of kids still active in the streets even at this hour no one was taking much notice of that advice.
Then the police began to come out of the Asubira Hotel gate, four of them, walking in order of seniority with the chief out in front looking extremely important. He got into the car first, too, after accepting a salute from the waiting driver. Ohashi and I strolled on as the car drove off. We saw that every seat w
as full which looked as though they hadn’t left anyone on guard behind them, an interesting point, for authority rarely leaves a corpse unattended when death has been violent.
I was sure that Marla was in the hotel now. It seemed logical to believe that the police had visited her here after finding her husband’s body. You find the wife and ask her questions first, and the fact that they were all driving away again like this could mean that she had answered the questions satisfactorily from the police point of view. That might also mean that she could prove she had been in the hotel at the time of Harry Komatsu’s death. If that was so why hadn’t she answered a phone call to her room?
We went through the gates. The Asubira was one of those post-war examples of jerry-building which abound in Tokyo, very like the place I lived in myself. It looked all right on the outside, five stories of reinforced concrete planked down in what seemed a very much older garden. Perhaps the garden had survived the bombing of the city in the middle forties. It was my bet, though, that inside the builders had either run out of money or gone for economy, and there would be the usual shaved wood partitions and general air of cheap glossiness.
Once again there were neon signs, over the door and in a marker indicating the bar. Ohashi and I walked up the drive slowly, very alert, counting on being able to see anything that was happening before we were seen. I had the curious tight sensation in my stomach which is a warning of trouble with me, and not often wrong. There was, too, what I can only call the spoor of Reggie Spratt about, a feeling that he had only seemed to be out of the general picture for a time, but that he wasn’t really.
I looked for that distinctive car in the parking place, but there was no sign of it at all.
“Ohashi, I want you to stay here and wait for me. We can’t both go in.”
“But what do I do, Mr. Harris?”
“Just wait. You’ll have to get used to doing that sometimes. I don’t need you now. I may soon.”
I went around to the bar entrance. This was very modern indeed, smoky, blaring with noise from a loudspeaker, moderately populated by young men about town. The Japanese version of the hotel bar-fly has his own pretensions of cosmopolitan elegance, and most of these youths were in suits with an Edwardian tone, but with Oriental accessories. I was particularly charmed by a wide tie of Yokohama brocade with a view on it of Mount Fuji.
The music from the box on the wall was jive and the young men were responding with a St. Vitus dance jerking which suggested that this was a warming up place before a session in one of the down-town dance halls. I had come in on the guess that whenever Reggie had any waiting to do he did it in a bar, but one look around this one convinced me that it wouldn’t hold Reggie for long. I didn’t loiter, for though I could have done with a drink, the whisky on the pink glowing glass shelves was almost certainly manufactured in Osaka.
The only way to find which was Marla’s room was to ask. I couldn’t waste time being subtle. I went through a door into the lounge, which was bright and practically empty. Whatever commotion the recent police visit had caused had been wiped away with the smooth efficiency of good management. A European couple, obviously residents, sat near the windows in a detached silence which somehow proclaimed publicly their private boredom with a long-established marriage. The woman looked at me, her face expensively groomed to cover up her deep spiritual fatigue. It was easy to guess where they came from. Only the British go about the world in as dismal-looking pairs as this.
The clerk behind the desk had jet black hair greased on to his scalp and the kind of smile which should have gone limp after a long day but hadn’t. I leaned on the slab and whispered:
“I’m Miss Haines’s lawyer. She wants me in a hurry.”
I don’t think there are any European lawyers practising in Japan, but the clerk wasn’t to know that. His expression changed from happiness about life to a deep concern. There was in his eyes a professional uneasiness about the possibility of scandal.
“We don’t want any publicity,” I said. “Don’t ring her room, I’ll just go up. What’s the number?”
The clerk swallowed.
“Sixty-three, sir. Fifth floor.”
I wondered as I walked towards the lift whether I looked like a lawyer in Al Clynder’s suit, but I hoped the clerk’s uncertainty would last long enough to let me get up to the fifth floor unannounced, and it did. Outside sixty-three I stood listening, my ear practically against a plywood door.
Someone was weeping in there, a woman.
The door wasn’t locked, but inside was dark, only the window showing the glow of Tokyo. I groped for the switch and pulled it down.
Marla Haines was lying on her stomach along the bed. She turned, pushing herself up on one arm. I scarcely recognised her.
One side of her face was so swollen as to be almost grotesque. There was a great, livid weal down it, and her left eye was nearly shut. There was blood on the pillow. It might have been from her cracked lips.
CHAPTER XI
THE FIRST sickening thought I had was that the police had done this, those white - uniformed men going in solemn procession to their car.
“Put out the light!” Marla said, her voice slurred. “Put it out.”
There was one over the wash-basin, a tubular strip. I switched that on and cut off the main glare. Then I closed the door. Marla was lying now with her head away from me, her hair a screen. I remembered her swollen mouth and had the horrible feeling she might have lost some teeth.
“Did the police do this?” I asked.
“Go away. Leave me alone. I don’t want to …”
Then she sat up again, risking swinging around, letting me see her face again.
“You? How can you be here? You’re …”
“I know where you think I ought to be. Marla, how did this happen?”
“Harry,” she said, and put her hands to her face.
Right then I wished that Harry hadn’t just died feeling surprised. I wished there had been time for fear, plenty of time for it.
“When?”
She moved back against the bedhead. I could see that it hurt her as she did this.
“Here. Tonight. He brought me here.”
“Did the police see you like this?”
“Yes,” she said with a kind of helplessness, as though she had given up and wasn’t fighting any more.
“Did they tell you about … Harry?”
She moved her head, just slightly.
“Yes. Do you expect me to show sorrow? I hated him, do you hear? I hated him.”
“Marla, I rang up earlier tonight. There was no answer. Were you here?”
“Yes. Harry had just gone. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything until the police came. The Japanese police aren’t so bad. When they saw me they … they were almost kind. I suppose they knew I couldn’t have done it.”
“How did you and Harry get into the hotel without being seen?”
“Easy. There’s a back way. A staircase the servants use and a door. Harry had a key for the door, some kind of skeleton. He had a key for my room, too. He liked to be able to drop in on his wife whenever he felt like it. Often it was after he had spent the evening with his girl friend … Nadia Zuroff. He liked to tell me about that.”
I didn’t want to hear any more. I wished that Marla would cry, but she looked as though she had exhausted all tears, sitting against a bedhead coming back slowly, and with no great willingness, to a life that had been nearly beaten out of her.
“How could he have done that here? I mean without anyone hearing?”
She patted at her lips with a handkerchief.
“There isn’t anyone staying on this floor. Up here isn’t popular, it’s hot in summer and in winter the heat doesn’t rise. I got my room cheap. They like having foreigners staying. It gives them tone. Even a secretary.”
“I think I’ll get a doctor,” I said.
“No! I’m not having anyone else tonight. I don’t want anyone else to see
me. I’m all right. There are no bones broken or anything. And I’ve … kept my teeth. I … checked on that. When he’d gone. I knew then I’d be all right, if I was able to worry about my teeth.”
I wanted to touch her, to hold her. I felt if I did she might cry again, but I couldn’t go near the bed. She looked at me.
“The police asked questions about you mostly, Paul. I … I didn’t tell them about you coming to the office. I haven’t told anyone.”
“Marla, don’t let’s lie.”
“What?”
“Someone knew. It could only have come from you.”
“But I didn’t …” She stopped. “Give me a cigarette if you’ve got one.”
Her fingers trembled as she held it. I bent over her with the match.
“I must be horrible to look at.”
There was an appeal in that, the rather pathetic one of a woman who knows that the effectiveness of her looks are something she can normally rely on. Marla needed reassurance of a sort from me then, and perhaps because of that I was more attracted to her than I had been, which is saying a good deal. I still didn’t trust her, but that didn’t come into it.
I doubt if most men really care very deeply about being able to trust the women in their lives; they may pretend to put a high value on a catalogue of the routine virtues, but in fact what they really want is to be entertained. And so few of them achieve this delight, particularly in the West. It may, of course, be the Orient in my background, but I can’t help contrasting the felicity of the middle-aged Easterner—who has never been so silly as to expect his women to be worthy—with the average misery of the European husband firmly allied to an honest woman from whom he has finally had to abandon all hope of escape. Like that man in the lounge downstairs. The steady export trade in slant-eyed brides may be a first symptom of a rising Western male revolt.
I soaked a towel at the wash-basin and made Marla a compress. She let me lay it on the bruise.
“Why are you being so kind to me if you think I’m not telling the truth?”
“There isn’t time to answer that. Why did Harry beat you?”
