The Japanese Corpse ac-5

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  "Do you take medication?"

  "Yes, but it doesn't cure. It dulls pain, but that's all. Hot baths are the best remedy."

  "Hot baths!" the ambassador exclaimed, and clapped his hands. "But Japan is the country of hot baths! You'll find them all over the place. Natural hot springs. With a bit of luck we'll find you an inn with its own spring, although I wouldn't know of any offhand in Kyoto itself, just outside maybe. But even the ordinary Japanese bath should cure your rheumatism. You can sit and soak all day in a wooden tub with clean clear water, as hot as you can stand it. Their baths have copper tubes going through them twisted under a little wooden seat so that you can't burn yourself, and outside there will be a fellow keeping the fire under the bath burning. Or, if they are more modern, the bath will be electrically heated. My dear fellow, this is just what you are looking for. The baths alone will be worth your trip."

  "Good," the commissaris said. The ambassador's enthusiasm was warming his bones and the brandy was seeping into his veins, taking the edge off the trials of the day.

  "Splendid, splendid," the ambassador said. "Maybe you can give me the name and address of your cousin in Hong Kong, and the CIA can approach him and whisk him away for a while. Your sergeant won't have a cover, I presume, but I don't think the yakusa will worry about him. He'll be your bodyguard and can present himself as a tough young man from Amsterdam. The yakusa haven't met him here yet, have they?"

  "Only the two men the sergeant arrested today."

  "Well, they are tucked away in jail, and we'll arrange for them to be incommunicado."

  "And Miss Andrews knows him."

  "Yes yes. And Miss Andrews is staying with your niece, right?"

  "She is. The police are keeping an eye on her movements."

  The ambassador called for the bill and signed it with a flourish. "I am so glad we came to an agreement, I am sure you won't regret it. Japan is perhaps the most interesting country in the world. Exotic, mysterious and efficient, an unbelievable combination. You don't have to worry about seeing the Japanese ambassador, I'll take care of all details. You should be given your ticket within a week, I think, maybe earlier. We'll fly you out to Hong Kong first, so that you can familiarize yourself with your cover, and the sergeant can meanwhile fly out to Tokyo and meet whatever men the Japanese Secret Service will select to help you over there."

  The commissaris mumbled his thanks for the dinner, and the ambassador reached out across the table and patted his guest's thin shoulder with a large hand on which thick blond hairs stood out individually in the light of four tall candles burning quietly on their silver chandelier.

  "It was a rare pleasure having you here tonight. Leave it all to me now. I can work quickly when I am pushed, and a lot of different forces are pushing me right now."

  They helped each other into their overcoats and strolled into the street. The ambassador didn't have a car with him and strode off into the drizzling rain, his hands clamped behind his back and his head and back bent slightly. The commissaris looked at the disappearing figure, snaking his head and scowling.

  "How did I get into this?" he muttered fiercely, as he got into the Citroen. "Another year and I'll be retired. Why me?"

  But there was no answer in the cold long streets of The Hague where nameless pedestrians shuffled about in the night, on their way home from a late movie.

  \\ 6 /////

  Sergeant De Gier wasn't quite sure what he wanted to do. The day was over and done with, and he felt a numb form of tiredness, as if his limbs didn't belong to him and were likely to drop off his body. Behind him Police Headquarters was almost asleep. There were still a few lights in the lobby and corridors but the many black windows were staring at his back like dead eyes, sockets of a gigantic skull, and the water in the canal opposite the tram stop gleamed darkly. Even the few cars which cruised down narrow Marnix Street seemed hardly alive, lit-up shadows going nowhere.

  But he still felt vaguely happy. Grijpstra's promise had been fulfilled. Together they had captured some of the subtleties of Bach's Weimar Prelude and he could hear Grijpstra's ruffling on the small drum supporting the trill of his own flute as they had flowed through the last chords of the sadly precise ending. He had taken Grijpstra to a cell in the back of Headquarters, where their two suspects had dumbly welcomed them, bowing from their bunks and awkwardly shaking hands when de Gier introduced them to the adjutant. Mr. Takemoto, Mr. Nakamura. Once again they had protested their innocence, in the few words of English at their command. Certainly they knew Mr. Nagai, and a very fine gentleman he was. They had enjoyed their meal with him and the nice Dutch beer. But they hadn't killed him. They were tourists and they had met Mr. Nagai in the Japanese restaurant and struck up a conversation. They had never met Mr. Nagai before. If he was dead now they were very sorry to hear it. Mr. Takemoto shook his round bald head in speechless consternation and sympathy and Mr. Nakamura blew his nose, several times and with great enthusiasm. And they would like to see their consul, and they would also like a cup of tea. De Gier went outside and came back with two bottles of lemonade. They bowed again and drank the lemonade. De Gier collected the empty bottles and nodded at Grijpstra. The suspects jumped up and bowed them out of the door where an elderly guard stood staring, rattling his keys nervously.

  "Well?" de Gier had asked when they were back in their own office.

  "Saaaaah," Grijpstra answered, and shook his head. He told de Gier about his investigation at the restaurant and picked up his drumsticks as he was talking. De Gier produced his flute from his inside pocket and assembled the small instrument.

  Then they played Bach. De Gier had had his doubts, but Grijpstra sang the music to him again, he also scribbled a few notes down and de Gier began to feel his way about. He had closed his eyes, trying to find the atmosphere of the evening when they had listened to the record. He nodded as some of the passages came back to him. Grijpstra helped, humming and tenderly touching the tight surface of his drums. They didn't capture the entire piece, but it seemed to de Gier now that they had managed to touch something of its essence. He was shaking his head in surprise. How could they have done that with their limited knowledge of music and by using such unlikely instruments as a snare drum and a flute? Or was he trying to talk himself into an experience he never really had? How did he know what Bach had in mind when he constructed the piece? He heard the music again and saw Grijpstra's face, transformed by rapture, and almost felt the vibration of the ruffling drumsticks underlining his own sustained trills. He would have to listen to the record once more when he got home, for they had missed an entire part of the prelude, being unable to remember it exactly enough. The main motif had come back to him but there had been far more to it.

  Perhaps they could try again later, although he doubted that they would ever find such a perfect setting again. Both he and Grijpstra had been sad and detached enough to get into the piece's mood. It had to do with Joanne Andrews' complaint, with the dead Mr. Nagai, his spectacled face peering at the lens of the cheap automatic camera, while his thin body was slumped in a cane chair on an Amsterdam terrace on a hot summer day. It was connected with the new BMW dangling from the police truck's hook, and to the blood spattered on its ceiling and the skull fragment hidden in a corner of the upholstery.

  The streetcar arrived and he staggered to the nearest seat. He was tired, but he had been tired all day. The ride in the streetcar was a daze; he slept some of the time and got back into the prelude that hovered around and in his mind. He changed to a bus that happened to be waiting at the stop as he got off the streetcar.

  When he left the bus he saw the commotion on Van Nijenrodeweg. He had lived on Van Nijenrodeweg for some years now and knew its ability to attract traffic accidents, most of them serious. It was about a week ago that he had seen a small French car standing forlornly, its nose crumpled into a young plane tree. The two old ladies in the front seats were both dead, both slumped forward at identical angles. Their mouths had fallen open and they s
eemed to be peering into the night, waiting for the end of whatever had interrupted their conversation. He had had trouble not smiling when he saw them, probably because of the clownish effect of their frumpy hats, tilted down and accentuating the surprised birdlike faces. But what was it now? A speeding car, seduced by the straight wide lines of the boulevard into hitting one of the badly illuminated pedestrians' islands? Or had someone crossed without paying attention? There were two patrol cars and a van of the Heavy Accident Department. Their blue lights sparkled silently and ominously as small black shadows darted around them. They were dragging a white figure over the tarmac, a life-size doll. He was getting close enough now to see details. An outline had been chalked on the tar surface close to the footway. They were lowering the doll, made out of strong sackcloth and stuffed to give it a horrible lifelike appearance, forcing its limbs to follow the chalked lines. A sergeant was busying himself with a camera on a tripod. Evidently the victim had been so badly hurt that they had allowed it to be taken away by an ambulance, satisfying themselves for the moment by drawing its position on the boulevard's surface.

  He stopped to talk to the sergeant, an old friend out of the days when de Gier was still on regular patrol duty as a uniformed constable first class, more than ten years ago now, but still fresh in his memory.

  "Evening, sergeant, are they making you work late at night again?"

  "De Gier," the sergeant said, clicking his camera. "You live around here, don't you?"

  "I do. Bad accident? We are getting too many of them here. Your officers should start an investigation of the causes sometime. There is really no reason why people should keep on losing their lives on Van Nijenrodeweg. Maybe it's bad streetlights, spaced too far apart, or they could create some device to slow the traffic, especially at night."

  The sergeant grunted as he shifted his tripod into a new position. De Gier watched a constable adjusting the position of the doll. The fact that the doll's face showed no features made it look even more sinister.

  "That cat must still be in the bushes somewhere, sergeant, shall I hunt for it?" the constable asked.

  "Cat?" de Gier asked, as he felt his body grow cold. "What cat?"

  "A Siamese cat," the sergeant said. "A witness told us. The cat lives in one of those apartments up there. Somebody left the door open and it got away. The lady who lives in the apartment went after it, but it got as far as here before she caught it and got hit. She was concentrating on grabbing the cat, of course. Bloody great truck hit her, truck was speeding, we can prove it from the brake tracks, see, they are over there. I have photographed them already. I think he was going at eighty kilometers. Can't blame him too much though, the lady must have practically run into his front bumper. She was holding the cat as he hit her, he says. Poor bloke is sitting in his cab now, crying his eyes out."

  He pointed at a stationary truck, parked half on the footwalk, some two hundred yards ahead.

  De Gier's mouth felt very dry. "How old was the lady?"

  "Thirty, I would say. Quite nice-looking, I think, although it is always hard to say when they are dead."

  "Color hair?"

  "Dark." The sergeant suddenly looked up, almost upsetting his tripod. "Shit, she isn't yours, is she? You have a cat, I remember now. A Siamese. They were telling me at the station. One of the constables had seen you playing with it on your balcony. You were holding it in your arms and he thought it was a baby at first."

  De Gier wasn't listening, he was walking to the bushes, dreamily, his mind only partly functioning. She is dead, he thought. Esther is dead. She let Oliver escape. I warned her. I even told her never to go after him if he gets away. He got me almost killed too, once. He always runs to the park and he can be caught in the park, it is too dangerous to catch him on the road. Too much traffic. But she went after him all the same. She is dead.

  His mind was giving him all sorts of disconnected information. How long had he known her now? About a year. Whether he loved her. He did. She had never really surrendered completely. She held on to bits of her freedom here and there. She would spend her nights with him, but not always. She hadn't given up her own house. She hadn't allowed him to marry her. But he had accepted her conditions and had enjoyed the pleasant side effects. They had never quarreled. Their love life had been fairly passionate. They hadn't bored or irritated each other. He was wiping his face as he stumbled about the bushes. He had thought the woman very beautiful. A slender neck, long black hair, long legs and very slim ankles. He had never understood how such thin bones could support her, but she walked graciously. He saw her sensuous wide lips and the nose with the delicate bridge.

  The cat was stretched out on the edge of the lawn. De Gier knelt down and caressed its wet skin. A bleeding paw came up and touched his cheek. Oliver was aiming for his nose but it seemed he couldn't focus, the eyes were glazed and the cat was breathing with short painful gasps. The cat always liked to pat him on the nose.

  "Oliver," de Gier said. The cat lifted its head but had to let it drop back. De Gier felt the skin again, Oliver's fur was wet with blood and sweat, the sweat of fear and pain. The eyes had closed, but the gasping continued. De Gier felt for his pistol, withdrew and loaded it mechanically and pressed the muzzle against the Siamese's ear. The shot was loud in the breathlessly still park. He got up and replaced the pistol under his armpit and walked away. He hadn't seen what the bullet had done to the cat's head.

  Running footsteps on the path brought the sergeant and two constables. The sergeant's arm caught de Gier's body as it began to crumple up.

  "No," a constable said. "He has shot the cat, not himself."

  De Gier's brain hadn't stopped completely. He mumbled a name and a telephone number. The sergeant called the number on the radio in his van. The commissaris answered.

  "Yes," the commissaris said. "I see, sergeant. Put him on a stretcher or something, it won't take me long to get there. Til take him to my house. Do you have some strong drug you can inject into him?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Do that then; keep him warm and quiet. I'll be there in ten minutes."

  The sergeant wanted to ring off.

  "Sergeant?"

  "Sir?"

  "Remove the cat's body. He shouldn't see it again."

  "I have a spade, sir. I can bury it in the park."

  "Yes. Bury it properly and mark the grave."

  \\ 7 /////

  Six men had gathered en the Chief Constable's sitting room. They all suffered from the clammy late afternoon heat and had been glad to take off their jackets. The Japanese ambassador, uncomfortable in his unwieldy plus fours-he was planning to play a little golf afterwards-sighed and wished for air conditioning. There was no air conditioning in Amsterdam Police Headquarters, and there probably never would be. Dutch summers usually don't last long, but this particular summer had lasted for some time and showed no signs of abating. Mr. Johnson, the CIA chief, shared the Japanese ambassador's desire, but he managed to look cheerful, in his unobtrusive way. There was nothing striking about Mr. Johnson, a property which had saved his life on numerous occasions and in several countries. Everything about him was gray, even his skin, maybe even his teeth, but Mr. Johnson never showed his teeth. His cheerfulness was strictly limited to movements of the muscles that controlled his eyes and lips and didn't include laughter or even smiling. When he spoke he mumbled. He was mumbling now.

  "Your cousin is being taken care of, commissaris," Mr. Johnson said. "He is staying in a very nice hotel in Hawaii. He was flown out of Hong Kong last night, in a military plane. Nobody saw him leave. All you have to do now is fly to Hong Kong and take his place for a day or so, to familiarize yourself with the cover. After that you can board any passenger plane for Japan. A passport will be given to you in Hong Kong at your arrival."

  "My cousin liked the idea?" the commissaris asked, looking concerned.

  More wrinkles appeared around Mr. Johnson's eyes. "Sure," he said. "We made it worth his while. He will have a mo
st enjoyable stay in one of the lesser known islands."

  "No risk when he comes back?"

  Mr. Johnson made a smoothing gesture. "There is always a risk, but maybe we can be of help."

  The commissaris continued looking worried. The chief constable, an elegant gray-haired man of some fifty years old, smiled. He didn't think the commissaris was worried, but the chief of his murder brigade often looked as he was supposed to look, and he was supposed to look concerned at this particular moment. The public prosecutor also smiled, and the smile set off a grin on the bland gleaming face of the Dutch ambassador, who felt that something was going on and tried to analyze what it was. He succeeded in a few seconds. The old bird doesn't care a hoot, the ambassador thought. He put his hands on the table and looked around. The chief constable nodded in response.

  "Right," the ambassador said briskly, "so we can go ahead. My Japanese colleague, whom we are honored to have with us, has expressed agreement with our plans, our somewhat half-baked plans, so far I should say." He turned toward the Japanese ambassador and bowed ponderously.

  The small oriental gentleman took his cue immediately. "Not at all, not at all," he assured his audience. "My government is very appreciative of your efforts and will do all it can to be of assistance. We are most grateful that you will go to so much trouble to break this pernicious traffic." He looked down at a sheet of paper lying next to his coffee cup. "Yes, pernicious. Drugs and stolen art. We are very sorry that a Japanese organization, even if it is an unlawful organization, seems to be implicated in this traffic and are most anxious to smash same. Yes. Smash it completely. But we need proof. If you can supply us with such proof we will be most thankful, and if, by chance, proof will be unavailable we will still be eager to realize the worth of your endeavor. In any case we will do everything possible to be of assistance." He had come to the end of his notes and his golden canines flashed.