by Ashton, Hugh
“Connect camera to computer,” it said, in English.
“See, Meema was right. It is about video,” Sharpe couldn’t resist saying.
“Yes, but could she have decrypted the source code and built the program as I’ve just done?” Vishal asked in return. “I have to say that there’s a lot of code there, and I don’t really have much understanding of what the half of it’s about.”
Sharpe didn’t even bother trying to answer that question, but thought to himself that if Vishal really could immediately understand the work of a top Stanford researcher, either Katsuyama had been lying about his work, or Vishal was even brighter than Sharpe thought he was.
“But what sort of camera are we talking about?” Vishal asked the computer, which of course didn’t reply. Receiving no response from the machine, Vishal tried second best. “Any input ports on the back of that card you brought along?” he asked, turning to Sharpe.
Sharpe looked. “No. All looks self-contained to me.”
“Well, let’s be trying this,” continued Vishal, reaching for a digital camcorder and connecting it to the computer through a FireWire port. The message didn’t go away.
“Maybe if you tried quitting the program and restarting with the camera connected?” suggested Sharpe.
“I was just going to try that,” replied Vishal a little testily.
This time, there was no message of complaint from the computer.
“Don’t you say ‘told you so’, ” warned Vishal. “But now what are we to be doing?” The computer screen showed one blank window with some menu titles over the top.
He selected the ‘Faces’ menu, and picked the ‘Match’ option. Immediately the message came back, “No Katsuyama card fitted”.
“I am supposing that is a Katsuyama card that you have brought with you?” asked Vishal.
“I suppose so,” Sharpe answered. It doesn’t have any markings on it, but I have good reason to believe that it is a genuine Katsuyama card.”
“I am not going to ask you how you know these things, but I will make the assumption you are correct here,” replied Vishal, shutting down the computer.
They fitted the card into the computer. For all Vishal’s genius on the keyboard, Sharpe knew from past experience he was surprisingly clumsy with a screwdriver, so Sharpe did the work while Vishal sat back and munched on a couple of samosas. When the case was finally screwed back together again, Vishal was more than halfway through his can of beer.
“Thank you very much. Just don’t let Meema know you did that, or she’ll have you putting up shelves in the bathroom in no time at all,” warned Vishal. “She’s been after me for months to do it.”
This time there was no answering message of complaint from the computer, but on the other hand, nothing seemed to be happening.
“Kenneth, do you have any ideas of what this is for?” asked Vishal.
“I have a few, but I am not going to tell you just now,” Sharpe replied guardedly.
“I have no idea why you are saying that. So if it is games that you want to be playing, please face the camera and say ‘cheese’ ”. Sharpe complied, and Vishal fooled around with the mouse and keyboard.
“Now look here,” he requested. Sharpe’s face was on the screen. “I’m going to add this to the database, I think.” Click, click. “Good. Now, let’s compare. Smile for the camera again.” Sharpe did so. Click, click. “Oh, look.”
“It says ‘Not enough records in target database for match’ ,” read out Sharpe.
“So what it is saying is that we must have some more faces.”
“Vishal,” Sharpe said slowly. “How do you know that this program is for face recognition? You’ve only been using this a few minutes and I didn’t tell you anything about it, did I?”
“It’s because I’m a bloody genius, that’s why, man,” he answered, finishing the last of his can of beer.
Sharpe shook his head. “And I had a little help,” confessed Vishal, opening a window that announced “Welcome to the Katsuyama Face Recognition Program. Version 0.94 Build 0.71c”.
Sharpe laughed. “You’re still a bloody genius.” Vishal popped the tops on a second can of beer for each of them and they clinked cans together. “So, bloody genius, what do you think this does?”
“I’ll need a little more time to work this out absolutely. Can you leave this with me?”
“Sure, why not? You have a copy of the disc, and the card’s not going out of your PC, is it?” I’ll leave it all with you. How long do you want with this?”
“I will be needing about a week, I am thinking. Come back this time next week, and there will be some answers ready for you. It would be quicker, but you understand that we are having an audit at work and this is taking much time. Damn nuisance, but that’s life. Let’s go and talk to Meema.”
The next half-hour passed quickly enough in conversation, mainly about Vishal’s cousin, who wanted to come to Japan, but was having problems with his visa application.
“Thanks, you two. I really must be going. I’ll be round next week to see what you’ve discovered, Vishal, and then the two of you must come over soon for a meal.”
“Looking forward to it,” replied Meema.
Sharpe trotted off happily into the night, bearing a bag containing some samosas to take back for Mieko that Meema had thoughtfully hidden where they wouldn’t get eaten.
-o-
When he arrived back at the flat, Mieko was in hysterical tears, standing in the hallway. Sharpe dropped the bag of samosas and rushed to embrace her.
“What’s the matter, darling?” She said nothing, but led him by the hand into the living room. Sharpe had heard the expression “it looks as though a bomb’s hit it”, but never experienced it in its full glory before. The furniture was upside down, every book was out of the bookcase, the cupboards were open and their contents littered the floor.
“… And … it all happened while we were both out,” she sobbed, taking his hand and leading him to the bedroom. The story was the same.
“What about your jewellery?” he asked. He knew Mieko loved jewellery. Not expensive things, but all good taste, and she collected it quite seriously. All with some kind of sentimental value, marking birthdays, friends’ weddings, trips abroad, and the like. None of it was really valuable, but was all good quality, no trash, and it was loved, as much as anyone can love inanimate things, and was a real part of her life.
Mieko’s face crumpled. She dropped to her hands and knees and started sifting through the wreckage of cosmetics and lingerie by her dressing-table. There was no way Sharpe could see that he was going to be of any use, so he stood and watched, feeling slightly sick at the invasion of their privacy. After a few minutes she looked up, smiling through her tears. “I think it’s all here. One thing missing. That sapphire brooch that we bought together in Thailand in April, remember … Oh, here it is!” She held it up triumphantly. “That’s everything!”
“I am glad,” Sharpe said, and really meant it, hugging her. He realised that her jewellery did mean a lot to her, silly as it might sound. Maybe it was to do with her terrible first marriage where her husband walked out, taking her two children, whom she’d never seen again (losing one’s children completely in this way is not that uncommon in Japan, though it is usually the mother who gets custody). Then the Big One hit Sharpe. What about his office? He rushed into the next room to view chaos once again. He’d taken the laptop to Vishal and Meema’s, so that was OK. But the main desktop computer was trashed. When he looked at it, he could see the cover had been removed, and the hard disk had been taken out. Ouch, he thought. Better not look at the desk. He did. Ouch again.
Mieko was behind him. “Who was it?” she asked.
“How the hell would I know?” he snapped, instantly aware that he wasn’t being fair. “Sorry,” calming down immediately. “Look, get ready to go out again. I’m going to call Meema and ask if you can spend the night there. I’m going to be talking to the police,
and maybe they’ll want to talk to you. When you get to Meema’s, start writing down everything you can remember about how you came in, what you saw, what lights were on, and everything like that. It’ll help the police, I hope.” He pulled out his mobile.
“Meema? It’s Kenneth. Can Mieko spend the night with you?” He quickly explained the situation. “You’ll send Vishal round in the car to collect her? Bless you, Meema.”
He explained to Mieko that Vishal would be round in a few moments. “I’ll just get a toothbrush and things,” she said.
Sharpe reached in his pocket, opened his wallet, and looked at the card Inspector Sugita had given him earlier the previous day. He dialled the number on the card. There were a few clicks and beeps, and a phone started ringing.
“Yes?” came the answer in Japanese.
“Inspector Sugita? My name is Kenneth Sharpe. We met this morning.”
“Of course.” The voice sounded affable.
“My house has just been burgled.”
“What?” He sounded shocked. “Of course, I am sure you will realise that this is not my usual work as a policeman—”
“Yes, I’m sorry about that, Inspector Sugita, but I felt that you would be interested.”
“No, no, Mr Sharpe, you misunderstand me. What I was going to say was that although it is not my usual line of work, I will make sure that the patrol cars come round immediately. Please allow me to help. I also will be coming to see you personally as soon as possible.” He didn’t leave any room for argument. The line clicked dead.
The doorbell rang. Sharpe opened it and let in Vishal.
“Oh my God!” he exclaimed as he saw the chaos. “Who in the world would be doing such a terrible thing?” He seemed as upset as Sharpe and Mieko. “Oh, Mieko, I am so sorry to be seeing all this terrible terrible thing,” he said, as she emerged from the bathroom.
“Now, you take care of yourself and have a good night’s sleep if you can,” Sharpe said, hugging Mieko goodnight.
It’s good to have friends you can trust like this, thought Sharpe, as Vishal gallantly escorted Mieko to the car. Of course he had made many other friends in his time in Japan, but Vishal and Meema really turned up trumps when you needed them. He hoped they felt the same about him.
“Vishal!” Sharpe called out to him. “I won’t be coming round to visit you tonight, but I may call you.”
“Any time. I really mean that. Any bloody time you like.” They drove off, and as Sharpe finished waving, he thought he saw some movement behind the camellia bushes at the side of the parking area. He certainly wasn’t going to go out there and investigate, though, and he went back to the flat to wait for the police.
He didn’t have long to wait. The doorbell rang, and he answered it. His uniformed friend from the previous night was there, grinning nervously from behind two colleagues in plain clothes.
“Mr Sharpe,” the taller and older of the two plainclothesmen asked. “I am Detective-Sergeant Kurokawa, and this is my colleague, Detective-Sergeant Yatabe.” He spoke excellent American English, with hardly a trace of a Japanese accent. Sharpe’s pistol-forgetting friend, who continued grinning in the background, was not introduced.
“Come in, please.” They removed their shoes and stepped into the hallway.
“This is bad,” said Kurokawa, peering into the wrecked living room. “Very bad. This is not just an ordinary burglary.” He translated this into Japanese for the benefit of his colleagues. “Would you mind if we spoke Japanese, Mr Sharpe? My English is not so good.” Which hardly seemed to be true, of course, but it saved the face of the other two.
“That’s fine, but there may be some words where I will need your help,” Sharpe answered in Japanese. Smiles all round.
The police went into their routine and took Sharpe methodically through checklists of what he had seen, what he had touched, what was missing, and so on. They walked through the flat together, looking at the damage and taking notes. Sharpe started to feel sick as the full scale of the vandalism and invasion of privacy started to sink in. They asked about Mieko, and when he explained that she had gone to a friend’s house, they took the details as he gave them.
“Will she be asleep, do you think?” asked Yatabe. He was slightly shorter than Kurokawa, with a friendly round face and a bushy moustache.
“Probably not.”
“Then I will make a phone call. What number?” he asked. He dialled on his mobile and got through to Mieko quickly.
“You’re writing it down?” he asked the phone. “Excellent idea. Thank you. It was his idea?” he looked over at Sharpe and gave a thumbs-up sign and a grin. “You’re nearly done? Can I come over and collect it in about fifteen minutes? Maybe ask a few more questions? Just me and the policeman who visited you last evening. Thank you.” He hung up.
“One thing,” Sharpe added. He described the shape he had half-seen in the shadows of the parking area. “But then, I might have been imagining things,” he finished.
“Or you might not,” said Yatabe. “Let’s find out, shall we? Which side of the parking area? The left? If we go out of these windows and take the fire escape, can we get round there without passing in front of the lighted building entrance? Good, then that’s what we’ll do. Come on,” he said to Sharpe’s uniformed friend.
They went to the hallway and collected their shoes before sliding aside the broken French window which had obviously been the point of entry and exit for the burglars, and moving almost soundlessly towards the fire escape along the balcony.
“Kenji-san enjoys that sort of thing,” commented Kurokawa in English, chuckling. “Me, I feel too old.”
“Your English is really very good,” Sharpe replied.
“Police academy in Sacramento. Part of the foreigner liaison course. So we’d know how to deal with ignorant barbarian foreigners who don’t know how to behave in civilised Japan.” His smile was clearly genuine, and there seemed to be no insult intended.
Sharpe felt the least he could do was to smile back. “Glad to see you, anyway.”
“Well, I can get the fingerprint boys round, but it would be a waste of time, I’m sure. This isn’t a burglary, really, is it? No jewellery taken and no cash missing.”
The doorbell rang.
“Excuse me,” Sharpe said, and opened it to let in Inspector Sugita, who was in plain clothes.
“Sorry to meet you like this,” he said. His reaction on seeing the wrecked room was the same as everyone else’s. “Oh dear, dear, dear,” he exclaimed in Japanese.
“Please relax, Sergeant,” he said to Kurokawa, who’d leaped to attention when Sugita walked in. “You’re working, this isn’t a—” The last word defeated Sharpe’s Japanese skills, and he sent a non-verbal signal for assistance.
“Parade-ground,” Kurokawa translated for Sharpe.
“Excellent, Sergeant. It was a good move to send you to Washington, wasn’t it?”
“I was in Sacramento, sir.” Kurokawa coughed, and Sharpe thought he saw the suspicion of a wink pass between the two men.
“Of course, Sergeant. Sacramento, wasn’t it?”
“So what’s missing?” Sugita asked Sharpe in Japanese.
“As far as I can tell so far, only the hard disk out of my desktop computer.”
“What does that contain?”
“Client data, research materials, database software, reports. My whole business.”
“You don’t seem very upset about it.”
“I’m not very upset, as a matter of fact,” said Sharpe. “I make backups every night to another disk which I disconnect and keep in the back of the drawer where I keep my printer paper. I’ve checked and it’s still there. No-one seems to have noticed it. I’ve lost maybe half a day’s work, I suppose. Whoever’s got the disk knows a little of what I do, but most of it is— ‘Encrypted’?” Sharpe asked Kurokawa the last word in English.
“Angouka sareta,” Kurokawa explained to Sugita, who nodded.
“What on earth is thi
s?” Sugita was now looking at the remains of the contents of Kumi-chan’s toy cupboard. “Are your children all right?” He sounded genuinely concerned.
Sharpe explained about Kumi-chan and how he and Mieko kept her toys here for when she came to visit.
“Someone hates Kitty-chan,” Sugita remarked, poking through the remains of a child’s painting set, decorated with pictures of the popular mascot, and a boxed jigsaw puzzle of the mouthless feline, which both seemed to have been singled out for particular violence. A chill went down Sharpe’s spine. Why had Kitty-chan been specially trashed in this way?
The doorbell rang again. It was Sharpe’s uniformed friend, with a leather-clad Japanese youth in tow. Sharpe noticed the prisoner holding his hands oddly, and then realised he was handcuffed. “Thank you, Mr Sharpe,” said the policeman. “We found this one just where you said he would be. Permission to call the station to send someone for him now, sir?” he asked Sugita, saluting.
“Of course. Well done, Mori. Where’s Yatabe?”
“He’s gone round to the friend’s house, to talk to Mrs Sharpe, sir.”
“Get the station to send someone to be with him, will you? No, on second thoughts, you go over there, Kurokawa, when the others arrive. Mori, call in to the station to get this garbage picked up and let’s get a full incident team over here.”
Mori made the call. No-one said anything for a few minutes.
Sharpe examined the youth, slouching beside Mori. An ordinary sort of face. Pinched-looking. About 20 years old, permed hair dyed brown, black leather jacket and jeans. Expensive-looking cowboy-style boots which the police hadn’t made him take off before bringing him into the flat. Odd, he thought. Or maybe it was just impossible to take them off while he was wearing handcuffs. He wondered why they’d brought him into the flat in the first place.
“Nice boots,” Sharpe said in English, on impulse.
The youth looked up and smiled. “Thanks, mate. Cost me two hundred dollars. Real crocodile,” he replied in an Australian accent.
