Chairman Ito’s reaction when he’d heard the news had verged on the surreal. The man was an experienced operator in the brutal business world; he must’ve cut more tension-charged deals, more financial throats, than Aoki had had plates of yakitori. His being thrown into an immobilizing trance was a reaction about as believable as Superintendent Watanabe’s sudden concern for Aoki’s health.
Burning with annoyance, Aoki stood immobile and silent. He was conscious of Kazu Hatano watching him, but the thoughts were ricocheting around in his brain. Starkest was Yamazaki’s sick simulation of a woman reaching her climax; almost as vivid, the bank chairman’s face as he’d stormed into the hall.
And this woman’s!
And her father’s, as he’d hurried through the ryokan.
Devoid of electric light, cut off from the outside, the atmosphere in the ryokan on the seventh anniversary had been deeply bizarre, with all the major players in the missing woman’s life present. Aoki had screwed his eyes almost shut, concentrating. He jerked his head up. “Someone other than myself and the perpetrator has seen the corpse. Details of its condition are known. What do you know about that?”
She flicked him a surprised glance and shook her head. Aoki studied her. Then he bowed, turned, and went to see Ito again.
Tea had been served to the bank chairman, and he was on his feet, cup in hand, eyes now alert, but otherwise unreadable. He gestured to the detective to enter. Aoki frowned. The banker had snapped out of that stupor fast.
“A shocking affair,” Ito murmured hoarsely. “A great tragedy. Who?” He put down the cup and examined his small hands. Aoki stared at the downturned face; it resembled a piece of discolored marble. What he had here was the chairman of a bank that had imploded and pancaked down on itself like a skyscraper being demolished, the cuckolded yet reportedly complaisant husband of a woman who’d been missing for seven years, the holiday companion of the man who cuckolded him—the man who was now a stiffened corpse in a room of this snow-entombed ryokan—and in the background, like a shadow, the woman’s ex-husband. That was all, or all that he could see at present!
The heavy-lidded eyes met the detective’s. “Well? We’re totally locked in. No one can get in or get out. So?”
Aoki weighed the inference. “Yes, the murderer’s still under this roof. Unless there’s a factor I can’t see.”
Ito gave him a hard, puzzled look. Abruptly, he put his hands into the kotatsu. “Stabbed through the heart, his genitals cut off and placed in the alcove.”
“How do you know that?”
Ito quickly withdrew his hands. They’d turned red, looked almost bloody, and were shaking slightly. “I went to the room after you were here.”
Aoki’s face muscles tightened. “You should not have done that. The room’s a sealed crime scene.” He shook his head in disgust. “Who did you tell those details to?”
“No one.” Ito shrugged his soft, padded shoulders. “Insane!” he muttered. He was having difficulty breathing.
Aoki controlled his anger and gazed into the alcove. Ito was showing definite signs of pressure. Maybe he’d misread the man; perhaps his reaction when he first heard the news had been genuine. For sure, the fellow was sending out mixed signals, and the position was awkward. He should have a colleague with him before asking questions that might have incriminating answers. It was irregular, but everything about his situation was. Aoki stared down at the glowing coals, gathering energy.
He turned on the banker. “Who’s the murderer? Why was he murdered?”
Ito’s face froze. The round head shot back on the thick neck. He sneered, “How do I know that? How in hell do I know any of that?” He flung out his hands.
Aoki stepped back and said forcefully, “Did Mr. Yamazaki fear himself in danger? Did he speak of such?”
“No,” the banker snarled. Sharply, his hands dropped to his sides.
“Or show it?”
Ito gulped in air. “Yamazaki feared nothing. He could accept danger or reversal of fortune with equanimity.” He stopped. “If he apprehended danger, he didn’t tell me.”
A rare type, if it were true, but it might be. Aoki recalled the man’s arrogant progress through the corridors, his condescension in the bath. This man, though, despite his anger and contempt, was badly shaken. He’d got that now and wondered how the fellow had stomached viewing the corpse. If he was an innocent party. If he’d actually gone there as he claimed—and what about his bodyguard?
His face severe, Aoki said, “Last night after you retired, did you leave your room again?”
“No!”
Aoki raised his eyebrows.
“Do you think I’m lying?” A menacing undertone, but Aoki’d heard an infinity of them.
“What happened to your man after you left the hall?”
“He went to bed.”
“Why did you beckon him to follow you?”
“To give him instructions for today.”
“Yes?”
“I was hopeful the road might be cleared.”
“Where is he now?”
Ito blinked angrily. “Probably having breakfast in the kitchen.”
Aoki retasted his own breakfast. He was dying for a cigarette; his fingers tingled for one. What had Ito been shouting about last night in the Azalea Room, and what had been said in those conversations over the banquets? Had they been an overture to the murder, or the murder a result of that talk fest—or was it totally different territory? A new caution held him back from asking these questions. Delicate territory, not to be contaminated by a wrong move.
Aoki paused. Instinctively, he had a strong feeling that this man knew why Yamazaki had been murdered. His reticence, his whole demeanor, had the stench of concealment and insincerity. Lies had come out of the fellow’s mouth, Aoki was sure. For one, Yamazaki was the kind of man who’d know who his enemies were, where threats lay.
Aoki bowed to the banker. “I will speak to you again later.”
Shoba was outside Ito’s door, motionless and solid against the corridor wall. Aoki pulled up and swept his eyes over the bodyguard, examining the gray suit: creased but unmarked. “I’m a detective in the TMP. I’ve got some questions to ask you.” The man bowed his conical head, and the red birthmark blazed in the dusk. The muscles of his arms and torso rippled beneath the gray serge. This close, he appeared almost as wide as he was tall. Aoki spat out, “Concerning the murder of Mr. Yamazaki.”
The small eyes examined Aoki. “Your badge, sir?” The voice was thick and labored but deferential.
Aoki nodded slowly. His badge and gun were locked in Watanabe’s desk in Toyko.
The man looked almost apologetic, but Aoki knew that these were the mini sumo’s little tricks.
The door to Ito’s room slid open, and the banker stood there. He’d overheard. “Answer his questions,” he snapped.
Shoba had nothing to tell—the way he told it. He’d followed his boss to his room, received his instructions, then gone to his own room on a lower level. He’d heard nothing and seen no one until he’d gone to the kitchen for his breakfast at 7:00 A.M. and been told the news.
When the short, strangulated report finished, Ito grunted and went back into the room. The door with its pale painting of a lily slid shut behind him. Aoki stared at Shoba. At some point, the minder’s voice box had received forceful attention, but that didn’t make him a liar, or a killer—though he had apparent credentials for both roles. Aoki sighed inwardly and turned away.
He headed back to the main hall. Motive? A crime of revenge and retribution—after the amazing scene played out at the end of the banquet? The obscene simulation by Yamazaki, the sinuous cries, sounded afresh in Aoki’s mind. It was the deduction crying out to be made, yet maybe the emasculation was merely dressing on the salad, a premeditated or spontaneous act to muddy the waters. And that other big incision—what in fuck’s name was that about? According to Superintendent Watanabe’s old investigation, ex-husband Hatano slotted into the pict
ure, with jealousy and retribution figuring. But that had been against his ex-wife . . .
It wasn’t unpleasant to see a man like Ito sweat. Bitterly, Aoki thought how ex-governor Tamaki had gone smiling into his future, one as golden as his past, unaffected by any retribution, leaving Hideo Aoki with a suicided wife, a heart-failed father, and a ruined career. Even in the face of this horrific crime, hatred turned over in Aoki’s stomach.
He paused on a landing of the wooden staircase to get a cigarette going, drawing the smoke and aroma into his lungs. The perpetrator was still in the ryokan. Aoki had a sudden compulsion to run through the place tearing open the door to every room, every cupboard . . . Not that simple.
However, he did begin to roam farther afield, exploring areas he hadn’t entered before. He descended several short stairways to lower levels, progressed along corridors, went through small empty rooms that seemed to him like forest clearings, passed doors whose paper paneling was browned with age. A rambling structure, obviously added on to over the centuries; a labyrinth. He wished he’d studied the layout from the overlooking road when he arrived. He was staying on the move, trying to keep warm.
At the end of a long corridor hung with ancient scrolls, he found a small courtyard submerged by snow as high as the lintels of the two windows that looked upon it. His wife said, Some corridors lead to places of silence that bring true rest and induce insight. Then: We are very close to you.
Very close indeed, his father added.
Their voices were inside his head, but absolutely clear. “Am I losing my way even more, or starting to find it?” he asked. But they’d gone, or had no comment. He’d been asking about the poetic impressions and images that were emerging in his mind, as if a door had sprung open between a pragmatic cop’s world and the cultured world of old Japan. A floating world. Their world. “Find out for yourself,” he told himself.
To his left, abutting the courtyard, was a gallery about thirty feet long, its flooring formed by wider planks. At its end was a door. Aoki stepped into the gallery. The floor leaped into life—into an urgent birdlike twittering. He froze. The twittering ceased. Aoki knew what it was. He was amazed. A nightingale floor! His father had introduced him as a young boy to the famous one at the castle in Kyoto—an ingenious floor, clamped and nailed into place; walking on it caused friction between the nails and their clamps, emitting the giveaway sounds. There was no way to move silently on it and it had been the shoguns’ warning against spies and assassins—another bit of their paranoia.
“A nightingale floor,” he breathed.
You remember that, do you? his father said. They were still here!
This special floor could be protection for a hidden space. He went on, the agitated sound scraping his nerves. The door at the end was unlocked. He opened it and looked into two more corridors, one going ahead, one to his right. He closed the door and retraced his steps. Brooding on this discovery, he lit another cigarette.
At 2:00 P.M. Aoki entered the service area. He did this by sliding open a door Kazu Hatano indicated and stepping into a dim corridor lit by a few oil lamps. She followed him and then took the lead. They walked for a minute and came upon the kitchen, a room with smoke-blackened rafters from which hung burnished pots and pans and bunches of dried mountain herbs. Along one wall a massive woodstove with banked-down fires glowed. A stone-flagged floor was spread with old tatami mats, insulation against the chill spearing up from it.
Fifteen people waited in the room: four men, eleven women, absolutely silent. They must’ve been listening for the approaching steps. “Is everyone here?” Aoki asked Kazu Hatano. Already his eyes had found the face with the white scar over the eyebrow.
“Yes.” She stared straight ahead. Obviously, that wasn’t true. Where, for instance, was her geisha sister? Aoki tightened his lips. The staff watched him. His glance fell on Mori, and she looked down. The light gleamed on steel: His eyes shot to a side table where a dozen kitchen knives were ranked, shining, deadly.
All this at the service of Ito and Yamazaki’s banquets, his own simple meals, and Saito’s sour plums! Faces tense, they were waiting for him to speak. He might’ve been studying the cast of a Kabuki play before they got into makeup and costume. He cleared his throat. “I’m a police officer. You know what happened last night. I, or other police, will require to speak to each one of you. No one is to leave the ryokan, even if it should become possible.”
He’d made his voice hard and official. Again his eyes came to rest on Hatano’s face: fifties, dressed as a chef, probably the head guy. A lean fellow, with an intense, tough look about him. Aoki modified the observation: more a brooding anger. It was a singular face that matched neither the artistry of the delicacies borne to the corner table on the last two nights nor the worried curiosity of the others in the room.
Aoki’s glance moved on. He was putting them on notice that he was here, in charge, and that more was to follow. In his hand he held a list, in Kazu Hatano’s neat characters, of their names and where they’d slept last night. His eyes paused at one name, then continued down the list. What he needed now was a plan of the place. He looked up.
“The murderer’s in the ryokan. Where else can he—or she—be?” He gave them a hard look. “Anyone who has any information, no matter if it seems unimportant, must come forward now.” He slapped the palm of his hand against his thigh; like a muscle jumping in a face, they gave a collective start. “Don’t wait for the interview if you heard or saw or even felt something. I want to know about it. It’ll go hard with anyone who holds back. You can ask for me at the office.” He spun on his heel and strode out, with Kazu Hatano hurrying behind. Nervous tension seemed to flow after them.
Aoki went straight back to the murder scene, thinking about the questions he wanted to ask the proprietor, but Kazu Hatano realized where he was going and didn’t follow, turning instead for the office. He paused at the door to the Azalea Room; his improvised sign remained in place. He stood listening. Deep silence. He slid the door open. The room was faintly illuminated by a fragment of dull afternoon light from the window. He took the flashlight out of his pocket. The corpse was exactly as before; the severed parts in the alcove continued to make their grotesque, mysterious statement. The air was limpid, the odor unpleasant, and the cold seemed excluded from this room; his illusion.
Aoki noticed the scroll in the alcove, played the light on it, and read:
If you meet a Buddha, kill him.
If you meet a patriarch of the law, kill him.
He studied the characters again. It was difficult for him to render them into modern Japanese. The brutal message stood in stark contrast to the ryokan’s floating world. Maybe. For sure, the poem fitted this horrendous event, as much as the nightingale floor fitted that remote gallery. He brought out a pen and, holding the light under his arm, copied the characters onto a scrap of paper taken from his wallet.
He stepped out of the room and closed the door. There was a prickling on his back, a tightening in his genitals. A vision of the professional knife work was engraved on his brain.
Kazu Hatano was extremely tense, yet strength emanated from her as she gazed at Aoki: a police type, who’d stepped out from behind the guest. How had he come to be here? Aoki read that. He’d had enough dealings with businesswomen in Ginza bars to know, despite appearances, how tough they could be. He folded his arms and leaned against the doorjamb. “And the guests. Three of us remain. No one else out of sight, is there?”
“Of course not.” The freckles under her eyes were very clear. Aoki nodded. A sneeze overcame him, and he dug for a handkerchief. He’d been holding the scrap of paper in his hand. The poem seemed Zen-like to him. He gazed at it afresh; he wished to ask her about it, but it could wait.
“Where is your sister?”
He saw she’d been waiting for this.
“She has disappeared.”
Aoki regarded her. Her dark eyes held his. The silence endured, deliberate, on his part. “Do you me
an she’s left the ryokan?”
“That isn’t possible.”
“What are you saying, then?” With an effort, he held his voice down.
“There are hidden places.”
“Unknown to you?” he said, incredulous, but Saito’s words about this came back to him.
She nodded abruptly. “There’re chambers and spaces that were designed for hiding in times of trouble. Not all of them are known.”
Beyond the walls he heard the faint whining of the wind. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“We haven’t completed our search.”
“When was she last seen?”
“Last night at about eight-thirty by one of the maids.”
Aoki screwed up his brow. “Why would she disappear?” Her face was blank; her gaze had lifted and seemed to be passing him, communing with someone elsewhere. Her only answer was a slight movement of her hands. Aoki’s fingers rubbed his cheekbone. He said tersely, “A man’s been murdered, an honored guest who might’ve called on the services of a geisha. No doubt the room maid will know about that. Please ask her to come here.”
She hesitated. Her breasts beneath the kimono rose and fell noticeably. “That has nothing to do with my sister,” she said, her voice firm and low. Giving him a look, she went out.
“Maybe, maybe, Kazu Hatano,” he said to himself, and turned to inspect the room with more attention, especially the desk, with its many closed compartments. He gazed at these as if to X-ray them, then paced the room, his slippers whispering on the springy tatami.
She knew something about her mother’s disappearance, perhaps something about Yamazaki’s murder—and how in hell couldn’t she know where her sister was? The tiny fractures in her demeanor were telling him that she was being selective with the truth. He turned and gazed at the desk again. She must have been like this with Watanabe, which would have strengthened the superintendent’s suspicions. Her mother had been a famous beauty when Ito’d found her. If those bloodstained clothes stood for the facts, she’d finished up a bloodied corpse, but “if” was the operative word. The Go-playing Saito had gotten into his mind about that.
Rendezvous at Kamakura Inn Page 12
