by David Peace
‘Do you believe these deaths are connected?’ asks Chief Kita.
‘Until the results of the autopsy are known, the location and sex of the two bodies remain the only connecting factors,’ I reply. ‘Despite their proximity, the nature of the vegetation meant that the site of one body was not visible from the other. As you are all aware, there was what would seem to be a piece of material tied round the neck of the first body, leading us to assume that death was a result of murder. On preliminary examination of the second body, no such material was found, nor were there any other obvious signs of a murder having occurred. As we know, in the last year a number of bodies have been found in the environs of Shiba Park. However, before today’s discovery, only one of these has proved to be murder. The other deaths were as a result of either suicide or disease.’
Chief Kita nods. Chief Kita says, ‘Chief Inspector?’
Adachi nods, reluctantly. ‘I agree with Inspector Minami.’
‘Then we’ll handle the two cases separately,’ says the chief. ‘Until we have the results from the autopsies which will be…?’
‘The day after tomorrow,’ says Adachi.
‘From Keiō or Tokyo?’
‘From Keiō…’
‘By?’
‘Dr. Nakadate.’
Kanehara and Kai pretend not to look up from their notes. Kanehara and Kai pretend not to look from me to Adachi to Chief Kita. Kanehara and Kai pretend not to see our exchange of glances –
I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember …
‘It can’t be helped,’ says the chief. ‘Let’s proceed…’
Now comes the structure of the investigation. The delegation of responsibility. The division of labour …
‘Inspector Kai and Room #1 will open the investigation into the first body. Inspector Kai and Room #1 will set up their Investigation Headquarters at the Atago police station. Inspector Kai will report to Chief Inspector Kanehara.’
Inspector Kai bows. Inspector Kai shouts, ‘I understand! Thank you! I will not let you down!’
Chief Inspector Kanehara bows. Kanehara shouts, ‘Thank you! I will not let you down!’
‘Inspector Minami and Room #2 will investigate the second body found at Shiba Park…’
I bow too hastily; there must be a hint of relief, a glimpse of respite in my action, because Chief Kita’s tone is harsh now –
‘Inspector Minami and Room #2 will conduct the investigation as a murder inquiry. Inspector Minami and Room #2 will also set up their Investigation Headquarters at Atago police station until further instructions are received. Inspector Minami and his team will report to Chief Inspector Adachi.’
I curse him. I curse him. I curse him …
I bow again to the chief. I tell him I understand. I thank him. I promise I will not let him down –
So tomorrow morning Room #2 will take their trunk to Atago. Tomorrow morning our banner will be unfurled and raised on its poles. Tomorrow the investigation will begin. Day and night, night and day. From tomorrow morning there will be no rest, no time off for twenty days or until the case is closed …
‘Has anyone anything else they wish to say?’ asks Chief Inspector Kanehara. ‘Anything they wish to clarify?’
There is nothing to say. Nothing to clarify –
There is silence now, almost –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
‘Then tidy up all your affairs tonight,’ Chief Kita tells us. ‘Leave nothing unfinished. No loose ends, please.’
The chief looks away now –
I glance at my watch –
Chiku-taku …
It is 8:30 p.m.
*
I run down the corridor of Police Arcade to the back stairs. I leave through a back door. I cut through Hibiya Park. The temperature not falling with the night, the flies and mosquitoes hungrier than ever –
Pan-pan girls calling through the shadows and the trees –
‘Asobu …? Asobu …? Asobu …? Asobu…?’
I run across Hibiya-dōri. I reach the elevated tracks –
Pan-pan girls in the shadows and the arches –
‘Asobu …? Asobu …? Asobu…?’
I follow the Yamate train tracks –
To the Shimbashi Market –
‘Asobu …? Asobu…?’
To Senju Akira.
*
Kettles and pans. Crockery and utensils. Clothes and shoes. Cooking oil and soy sauce. Rice and tea. Fruit and vegetables. The kakigōri stalls and over and over, again and again, the ‘Apple Song’ –
‘Red apple to my lips, blue sky silently watching …’
All laid out on the ground, on stall after stall –
Half of it Japanese. Half of it foreign. All of it illegal. But there are no police here. No Victors. No Occupiers –
‘Apple doesn’t say a thing, but Apple’s feeling is clear…’
Here there is only one law; buy or be bought. Sell or be sold. Eat or be eaten; this is where the cannibals come –
‘Apple’s loveable, loveable is apple…’
To the Shimbashi New Life Market –
‘Shall we all sing the Apple Song?’
The old Outside Free Market is gone. The old Black Market is finished. This is the new market for the new Japanese yen –
‘If two people sing along, it’s a merry song …’
This is the two-storey Shimbashi New Life Market with its modern arcades for over five hundred stalls –
‘If everyone sings the Apple Song …’
The dream of Matsuda Giichi –
‘It’s an even merrier song…’
But Matsuda Giichi never lived to see his New Life Market open because two months ago, on the night of the tenth of June, Matsuda Giichi was attacked and shot in his office by Nodera Tomiji, one of his own former gang members, one who had been expelled during Matsuda’s reorganization of his own gang, the Kantō Matsuda-gumi, in their amalgamation with the Matsuzakaya gang –
But nobody really knows if Nodera killed Matsuda –
Nobody saw Nodera pull the trigger and fire –
Nobody really knows because Nodera Tomiji was drunk when persons unknown found him in a bar on the Ginza –
And he was dead when they left him –
‘So let’s all sing the Apple Song and…’
Now Senju Akira is the new boss –
‘And pass the feeling along…’
This is the man I’ve come to see. This is the man whose men are waiting for me. The man whose men are watching for me –
They know I’m here. They know I’m back …
In their pale suits and patterned shirts, with their American sunglasses and Lucky Strikes, they are whispering about me –
They know why I’m here, why I’m back …
Among the kettles and the pans, they come up behind me now, one on either side, and they take an arm each –
‘You’re more brave than you look,’ whispers one of them –
‘And more stupid,’ says the other as they whisk me past the mats and the stalls, the crockery and the utensils, out into the alleys and the lanes, through the shadows and the arches, until we come to the wooden stairs and the open door at the top with its sign –
Tokyo Stall Vendors Processing Union.
Now they let me go. Now they let me wipe my face and wipe my neck, straighten up my shirt and put on my jacket –
The calls of odd, even and play …
There is a foreigner coming down the stairs, an American in sunglasses. At the foot of the stairs, the American turns his face to look at me and then looks away again. He nods to Senju’s men as he disappears into the alleys and the shadows –
No one is who they say they are …
There is no ‘Apple Song’ playing here as I walk up the stairs towards the open door, just the dice and his voice –
‘You got good news for me, have you, detective?’ calls out Senju before I even reach the top of the sta
irs –
I stop on the stairs. I look down at his two goons. They are laughing now. I turn back to the door –
The sound of dice being thrown. The calls of odd, even and play, odd, even and play …
‘Don’t be a coward now,’ he shouts. ‘Answer me, detective.’
I start walking again. I reach the top. I am a policeman. I turn into the doorway. Into the light –
‘Well?’ asks Senju –
I kneel down on the tatami mat. I bow. I say, ‘I’m sorry.’
Senju spits his toothpick onto the long low polished table. He turns his new electric fan my way and shakes his head –
‘Just look at you, officer,’ he laughs. ‘Dressed like a tramp and stinking of corpses. Investigating murders when you could be getting rich, arresting Koreans and Formosans and bringing home two salaries for the pleasure. Taking care of your family and your mistress, fucking the living and not the dead…’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say again. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘How old are you now, detective?’
‘I am forty-one years old.’
‘So tell me,’ he asks. ‘What do they pay a forty-one-year-old detective these days, officer?’
‘One hundred yen a month.’
‘I pity you,’ he laughs. ‘And your wife, and your children, and your mistress, I really do.’
I lean forward so my face touches the tatami mat and I say, ‘Then please help me…’
And I curse him; I curse him because he has what I need. And I curse Fujita; I curse him because he introduced us. But most of all I curse myself; I curse myself because of my dependence; my dependence on him …
‘You chase corpses and ghosts,’ he says. ‘What help are you to me? And if you can’t help me, I can’t help you.’
‘Please,’ I say again. ‘Please help me.’
Senju Akira throws down five hundred yen onto the mat in front of my face. Senju says, ‘Then get a transfer to a different room; a room where you can find things out, things that help me…
‘Like who paid Nodera Tomiji to kill my boss Matsuda; like who then killed Nodera; like why this case is now closed …’
‘I will,’ I say, then over and over. ‘Thank you.’
‘And don’t come back here until you have.’
‘Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.’
‘Now get out!’ he shouts –
I shuffle backwards across the mats then down the stairs, past the goons and through the alleys, back into the market –
‘Shall we all sing the Apple Song?’
The Shimbashi New Life Market –
This is the New Japan … This is how we live –
‘Let’s all sing the Apple Song and pass the feeling along.’
*
I haggle. To eat. I barter. To work. I threaten. To eat. I bully. To work. I buy three eggs and some vegetables. There was no fish and there was no meat. Now there is another problem on the Yamate Line and the trains have stopped running in the direction of Shinagawa, so I take the streetcar. It is crowded and I am crushed and the eggs were a mistake. I get off at Tamachi and then I walk or run the rest of the way. The vegetables in my pockets. The eggs in my hands –
To eat. To work. To eat. To work …
There is only this now.
*
I have waited hours to lie again here upon the old tatami mats of her dim and lamp-lit room. I think about her all the time. I have waited hours to stare again at her peeling screens with their ivy-leaf designs. I think about her all the time. I have waited hours to watch her draw her figures with their fox-faces upon these screens –
I think about her all the time …
Yuki is the one splash of colour among the dust, her hair held up by a comb. Now Yuki puts down her pencils and stares into the three-panelled vanity mirror and says, ‘Oh, I wish it would rain…
‘Rain but not thunder,’ she says. ‘I hate the thunder…
‘The thunder and the bombs…’
She haunts me …
‘Rain like it used to rain,’ she whispers. ‘Rain like before. Rain hard like the rain when it fell on the oiled hood of the rickshaw, drumming louder and faster on the hood, the total darkness within the hood heavy with the smell of the oil and of my mother’s hair, of my mother’s make-up and of her clothes, the faces and the voices of the actors we had seen on the stage that day, in those forbidden plays of loyalty and of duty, those plays of chastity and of fidelity, of murder and of suicide, those faces and those voices that would swim up through the darkness of the hood towards me…’
She has haunted me from the day I first met her, in the thunder and the rain, from that day to this day, through the bombs and the fires, from that day to this …
Yuki is lying naked on the futon. Air raid! Air raid! Here comes an air raid! Her head slightly to the right. Red! Red! Incendiary bomb! Her right arm outstretched. Run! Run! Get a mattress and sand! Her left arm at her side. Air raid! Air raid! Here comes an air raid! Her legs parted, raised and bent at the knee. Black! Black! Here come the bombs! My come drying on her stomach and on her ribs. Cover your ears! Close your eyes!
‘Make it rain again,’ she says –
And then she brings her left hand up to her stomach. I think about her all the time. She dips her fingers in my come. I think about her all the time. She puts her fingers to her lips. I think about her all the time. She licks my come from her fingers and says again, ‘Please make it rain, rain like it rained on the night we first met…’
She haunts me here. She haunts me now …
I place an egg and two hundred yen on her vanity box and I say, ‘I might not be able to visit you tomorrow.’
Here and now, she haunts me …
‘I am a woman,’ she whispers. ‘I am made of tears.’
*
The Shinagawa station is in chaos. Every station. There are queues but no tickets. Every train. I push my way to the front and I show my police notebook at the gate. Every station. I shove my way onto a train. Every train. I stand, crushed among people and their goods –
Every station. Every train. Every station. Every train …
This train doesn’t move. It stands and it sweats –
Finally, after thirty minutes, the train starts to move slowly down the track towards Shinjuku station –
Every station. Every train …
I force my way off the train at Shinjuku. I fight my way along the platform and down one set of stairs and then up another. I have the two eggs in one hand, my notebook out in my other –
‘Police. Police,’ I shout. ‘Police. Police.’
People hide their eyes and people clutch their backpacks. People stand aside as I heave my way onto the Mitaka train. I stand crushed again among more people and more goods –
This is how we live, with our houses lost …
I jostle my way off the train. I go through the ticket gate at Mitaka. I put the eggs in my jacket pocket. I take off my hat. I wipe my face. I wipe my neck. I am parched –
Itching and scratching again –
Gari-gari. Gari-gari …
I follow crooked, impotent telegraph poles down the road to my usual restaurant, half-way between the station and my home –
The one lantern amidst the darkness where once there had been ten, twenty or thirty others, illuminating the street, advertising their pleasures and their wares. But there is no illumination –
No wares or pleasures to be had here now.
I step inside. I sit down at the counter.
‘A man was here looking for you last night,’ says the master. ‘Asking questions about you. After your new address…’
No one who they say they are. In the half-light …
I shrug my shoulders. I order some sake –
‘No sake left,’ says the master. ‘Whisky?’
I shrug my shoulders again. ‘Please.’
The master puts the glass of whisky on the counter before me; it is cloudy. I hold it up to
the light bulb –
I swirl the mixture around –
‘If you don’t want to drink it,’ says the master. ‘Then go.’
I shake my head. I put the glass to my lips. I knock it back –
It burns my throat. I cough. I tell him, ‘And another!’
I drain glass after glass as the old men at the counter joke with the master, horrible jokes, terrible jokes, but everyone smiles, everyone laughs. Ha, ha, ha, ha! He, he, he, he!
Then one old man begins to sing, softly at first, then louder and louder, over and over –
‘Red apple to my lips, blue sky silently watching …’
*
In the half-light, my wife sits sewing at the low table, my children asleep under the mosquito net, and suddenly I feel too drunk, too drunk to stand, to stand and face her with tears in my eyes –
The two eggs broken in my pocket –
But she says, ‘Welcome home.’
Home to where the mats are rotting. Home to where the doors are in shreds. Home to where the walls are falling in –
Home. Home. Home. Home. Home. Home …
I sit down in the genkan with my back to her. I struggle with my boots and then ask, ‘How are the children?’
‘Masaki’s eyes are much better.’
‘How about Sonoko?’
‘They are still inflamed and swollen.’
‘Haven’t you taken her back to the doctor?’
‘They washed them out at the school yesterday but the nurse told her to stay at home until they have cleared up. They are worried it will spread to the rest of the class…’
Now I turn to face her and ask, ‘So what did you do today?’
‘We queued at the post office most of the morning…’
‘And did you get the money? Did they give it to you?’
