Missing in Tokyo

by Graham Marks

  Somewhere round here, probably not far from where he was, there had to be a street or an alleyway where he’d find the Bar Belle. Charlie had only ever mentioned the place a couple of times, but she had said it was in Roppongi and he was going to find it or wear out his shoes trying.

  As he began his search, Adam became more and more aware of how different this part of Tokyo was to the few other bits he’d seen. He was used to the way the Japanese raided English for words that looked cool, felt right but did not make any kind of sense – like what the hell did the word Walkman actually mean, right? But here in Roppongi there were many more words in English, there were ‘Irish’ pubs (‘Roast beef lunch on Sundays!’) and even a Jazz Café London, and far more Westerners on the street – gaijin, as the guidebook’s glossary said foreigners were called, like him. Some were obviously tourists, but the groups of tall, skinny, bleach-blonde girls, all crop-tops, pierced navels, high heels and speaking what sounded like some ex-Soviet bloc language as they traipsed past him, they were different. These people weren’t hanging out, they were waiting, biding time.

  Adam was fairly sure they were bar girls and hostesses who might well know where the Bar Belle was, but they didn’t look very approachable and exuded an aura of you-lookin-at-me? that was way more fuck off than friendly. He decided to do what he could on his own before asking for help, and carried on his way.

  It was still only ten thirty and a lot of the shops at street level hadn’t yet opened – shutters locked down tight, lights out – but Adam’s problem was that none of the bars were actually at street level, they were either in basements or somewhere up dark, narrow stairways on one of the upper floors, where a lot of business seemed to be done off ground level.

  In London it was rare for a shop not to have a street-level frontage, and you’d only ever go upstairs once you’d checked a place out first. Dodgy travel agencies and ‘Schools of English’ were the only places he’d seen with signs in doorways, on the look-out to attract punters to go up dingy staircases. After an hour he’d done the first of his ‘sections’, the north-east one on his map, and had found nothing. There were plenty of bars, restaurants and clubs, but none of them were the Bar Belle.

  With one down and three more ‘sections’ to go, Adam crossed the busy street at a set of lights, going under the expressway to the other side. To his right he could see the massive curved high-rise tower at the centre of what the book told him was called Roppongi Hills, a kind of up-market shopping mall with gardens and restaurants, cinemas and museums. Not hostess bars. He turned left and was about to take the first side street when he saw a bank of vending machines with a huge selection of cold drinks on sale, none of which looked at all familiar. But he was hot and he was thirsty, and, while the thought of drinking something called Pocari Sweat didn’t light up his life, it was obviously extremely popular as he’d seen quite a few Japanese youth knocking it back.

  In for a penny, in for ¥110, he thought, dropping a couple of coins in the slot. As the can dropped into the collection bay it occurred to Adam that they’d probably got the word wrong and had meant to call it Pocari Sweet.

  19

  The spirited luxury for nice couples

  ‘Scuse me?’

  Adam poked his head round the half-open door at the bottom of a stairwell that led into somewhere called, appropriately enough, The Pit. It was the first bar he’d come across that appeared to be open. The place’s sound system was up and running, and over a loud, wailing saxophone someone was singing, ‘Old England is dying, his clothes a dirty shade of blue and ancient shoes worn through …’ Adam thought that young England could well be in the same state after today, the shoe bit anyway.

  The girl behind the small bar looked up and then over her blue-lensed sunglasses at him. ‘Not open, mate.’ Australian, maybe a Kiwi. She glanced at her watch. ‘Come back at five o’clock.’

  Adam stayed where he was. ‘I don’t want a drink, just want to ask a question – can I come in for a minute?’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ The girl picked up a lit cigarette from a nearby ashtray, took a drag and went on wiping the bar down with a grey cloth. ‘What d’you want to know?’

  ‘You heard of a place called the Bar Belle?’

  ‘Yeah, why?’

  ‘I’m trying to find it.’

  ‘It’s no great shakes, mate, there’s better places to go looking for.’ The girl eyed him up and down. ‘I mean, you don’t look like the typical hostess bar clientele.’

  ‘It’s actually someone who works there I’m after.’ Adam walked over to the bar and took out the photo of Charlie and Alice he’d brought with him. He showed it to the girl. ‘D’you know either of them?’

  The girl reached over, took the print and gave it a cursory glance. ‘Can’t say I do.’ She handed it back.

  ‘The one with the blonde hair? That’s my sister.’ Adam tucked the picture back in the Rough Guide.

  ‘That right …’

  ‘She was working at the Bar Belle, but she’s missing, and I’m trying to find her. Alice, the other one, was working there too and I need to talk to her.’

  ‘Yeah? Well the Belle’s off behind the Higashi-dori, past Gaspanic? It’s up towards Ark Hills, in the point of the triangle the two expressways make.’ The girl ran a tap and began rinsing her cloth. ‘Know where I mean?’

  ‘Not really, would you mind showing me on the map?’

  The girl stubbed out her cigarette, took the map Adam handed her and opened it up. ‘We’re here,’ she jabbed the map with a fingernail in dire need of repainting, ‘that’s the Higashi-dori and there’s the two expressways. The Belle’s in there, or it was the last time I was over that way … these places open and close like a fish’s mouth.’

  Adam took the map back. ‘Thanks … I’ll um, I’ll let you get on.’

  ‘No problem, I hope you find her, your sister and her friend.’

  ‘Me too …’

  The girl stopped and looked at him, frowning slightly. ‘When you said missing did you mean just not around, or like really missing?’

  ‘Alice said she saw her walking out of the place with some Japanese guy about ten days ago, and that’s the last she’s seen of her. That kind of missing.’

  ‘Jeez.’ The girl shook her head. ‘Sorry to hear that … hope you find her, mate.’

  ‘Thanks …’

  It was well after midday when Adam stopped on the edge of the pavement and looked across the Higashi-dori. To his right, way down the road, he could see this big, red and white, more modern version of the Eiffel Tower dominating the skyline, and wondered if you could go up it and what the view of Tokyo would be like from there. Maybe, once he’d found Charlie, they could see a couple of the sights before they went home.

  Maybe … but maybe he’d never find Charlie. Alive, anyway.

  She could be dead. He knew that was a possibility, although it was one he could choose to ignore, even though he knew that wouldn’t make it go away, wouldn’t make it an impossibility. Just thinking these things made him feel physically sick, like throwing up right there. Except there was nothing in his stomach and, along with this awful nausea, there was a completely contradictory gnawing hunger.

  Shaking off the depressing sense of helplessness, Adam waited for a gap in the traffic and crossed the road. If this part of Roppongi was anything like the other bits he’d trawled through this morning, he’d find some small, cheap restaurant off the main drag with a window display of plastic food and get himself some lunch. Then, after he’d eaten, he’d search out and find the Bar Belle – and the later he left it the more likely it was the place would be open. He walked down the street, towards where the girl in The Pit had said this place called Gaspanic was located, and a few minutes later he saw it, off to his left down a small side street.

  It was amazing. Back home the pictures stuck in the window of any fast food outlet you cared to choose – the massive, metre-wide food porno, glossy, pumped-up burgers with artistically a
rranged strips of bacon and slices of pickle and tomato in pillowy sesame buns – looked totally nothing like the sad thing some no-star server handed over in a polystyrene box. So not what you got here in Japan. OK, so his lunch hadn’t cost him 99p, but what you saw in the window was exactly like what you got on your plate. And it also tasted great.

  He felt more like vegging out after his meal than going back to pounding the pavements, but he was on a mission and he couldn’t allow himself to relax until later. He could do that after he’d found the Bar Belle. Alice could be there right now. She might know something more about where Charlie was. You never knew, something good could happen.

  It occurred to Adam that he should contact Suzy and see if anything good had happened already and he didn’t know about it. Then again, should he contact the police here in Tokyo, try and find out what they knew? As he threaded his way through the maze of narrow streets Adam found it difficult to concentrate on looking for some sign of the Bar Belle at the same time as trying to work out what he should do. What would happen if he went to the police? How would they react to the younger brother of a missing English girl turning up unannounced? Might be a very bad idea … best try to do what he could on his own.

  Adam looked at the time. Nearly two o’clock. Two o’clock! His useless damn memory – he hadn’t rung the hotel to check whether they had a room for him tonight! Finding a payphone was going to have to take temporary priority over finding the bar. He remembered seeing a bank of phones in Roppongi station near the ticket machines and cursed himself, as he turned to go back there, for not remembering when he was nearer.

  Pushing in the phone card he’d bought from a vending machine, wondering if there was anything you couldn’t buy out of a slot machine in this city, Adam punched in the number of the New Economy Hotel and listened to the alien ring tone, waiting for the call to be picked up.

  Click. ‘New Economy?’ A girl’s voice.

  ‘Oh, hi … d’you speak English?’

  ‘Yes, littre.’

  ‘I came this morning, to book a room?’

  ‘Room, yes.’

  ‘But there wasn’t one ready.’

  ‘Room not ready?’

  ‘Not ready this morning. The man said to call back after midday, after 12 o’clock.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘The man? I dunno … he didn’t say …’

  ‘You name, prease.’

  ‘Sorry – Adam, Adam Grey … I wrote it down, and I left my backpack as well.’

  ‘Sure, sure, I got it, Mister Grey – you want room?’

  ‘There’s a room?’

  ‘Sure, sure, you want?’

  ‘Yes!’ Adam pulled a punch, grinning like a mad man. ‘Result!’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Yes please, I’d like the room – from tonight, OK?’

  ‘How long for, Mister Grey?’

  That stopped Adam in his tracks. How long should he book for? A week? Just a couple of days, and see how it goes? He hadn’t thought this bit through at all.

  ‘You there, Mister Grey?’

  ‘Yeah, right, sorry … um …’ think, think, ‘… seven days? Can I have the room for a week?’

  ‘Sure, sure, no probrem, Mister Grey, see you tonight.’

  ‘Thanks … yeah, see you tonight.’

  As Adam put the phone down he felt a weight lift off his shoulders. One less thing to worry about. Taking his phone card he went back up to street level and set off on his search again.

  It was hot, the sun beating down from a cloudless, pale blue sky, and he got his sunglasses out of his backpack. Walking down the Higashi-dori, back towards where he’d had his lunch, he spotted what looked like a Japanese version of a Poundstretcher, a cheap-and-cheerful, pile ’em high place that was bound to have throwaway cameras. He waited for a gap in the traffic and crossed over.

  There was a big ¥100 sign hanging above the open frontage and signs all over the place in Japanese that Adam figured must mean things like BARGAIN! and GIVE-AWAY PRICES! Inside the shop was jammed, literally floor to ceiling, with deodorants, torches, crockery, shampoos, plastic kitchen equipment, gaudy knick-knacks, underwear, socks, gadgets, and everything in no specific order or obvious logic that he could work out. He finally found a dumpbin of disposable cameras. Sorted.

  Having paid, he was back across the street and walking past the Gaspanic when he saw a sign saying every Thursday, all drinks, all night, were ¥400 and admission was free. Two quid. Not bad, maybe he’d swing by later. As he was about to plunge back into the web of side streets a couple of girls walked by handing out leaflets, and a colour A5 flyer was shoved into his hand, printed on just one side. He found himself staring at the weirdest illustration of a pair of feet with red toes, eyes staring back at him from underneath the second and third toes and the rest of each foot covered in strange drawings. On closer inspection the drawings were of things like a heart, kidneys, a liver and intestines, and tiny English type under Japanese characters told him that other coloured areas denoted things like the nose, knee and buttock. Adam thought it might be for an acupuncture or acupressure clinic. His mum had had acupressure on her feet once, for a bad back, and he remembered his dad taking the piss out of the whole thing. He couldn’t remember if it had worked or not.

  Still reading the annotations on the flyer, Adam turned off the sunlit street he was on and went into a shaded, narrow side road, looking up for a moment to see if this was somewhere he recognised and had already checked out before he went to call the hotel. The change from bright sunlight to deep shadow, combined with the sunglasses, meant his eyes momentarily turned everything he looked at into not much more than dark shapes. Adam pushed the plastic frames up on to his forehead to see better. And there she was.

  Alice.

  He stopped walking. It was her, he was sure of it. Up ahead, some twenty, thirty metres away, the girl who looked exactly like Alice also stopped, and for the longest couple of seconds they stared at each other. She was at the back of a small crowd of Japanese people, standing half a head taller than them, and she looked shocked, eyes wide, mouth slightly open, then a frown. Before Adam had a chance to call or wave or anything, the girl – it was Alice, absolutely, completely no doubt about it – turned and ran away.

  20

  Bitter and stupid

  ‘ALICE!’

  Rooted to the spot, Adam yelled at the top of his voice at the retreating back of his sister’s best friend … what the hell was happening? Why was she running away when surely she should be pleased to see him? Surely …

  He saw the faces of the people walking towards him – staring, like, what was this gaijin doing? – and then Alice had disappeared round a corner. The statue spell was broken. Adam pulled his sunglasses back down and started to run, pushing his way through the knot of pedestrians, not even bothering to apologise, too focused to care about being polite.

  Alice had a good head start on him, and by the time he’d got past all the people and reached the turn she’d taken, she was nowhere to be seen. There were people about, but he knew he’d waste too much time trying to pantomime, ‘Have you seen an English girl with straight black hair running this way?’, so he didn’t and carried on running himself.

  First turning, nothing, no sign; next a crossroads – left, nothing – right … yes! There she was, he could see her down the end of the narrow road, running and glancing over her shoulder, with black hair swinging. It had to be Alice. Adam took off like a rocket and went as if he was going for gold, his mind on one thing only: catching Alice and finding out why she’d run. His feet pounded on the asphalt, his arms pumped and he streaked past piles of beer crates filled with empties, past lighted vending machines and darkened entrances to tiny restaurants and bars and clubs, past metal poles with intense nests of electrical wiring and under what looked like junction boxes hung across the street only a couple of metres above his head. All the time all his concentration centred on keeping Alice in sight and shortening the dist
ance between them.

  He was catching her up fast, closing the gap and feeling more certain with every blurring pace that he was seconds away from winning this race. Ahead he saw that the road they were on led directly into what looked like a main street and then Alice had reached the junction, turned a sharp right and was gone again. Adam pushed himself forward, skidding to a halt and grabbing on to a post to stop himself from blundering into the passing foot traffic. He stared down the street. Alice was nowhere.

  Standing, panting for breath, Adam took off his sunglasses and stared the way Alice had run. The pavement was crowded with hundreds, make that thousands of people, all with straight black hair, walking towards him and away from him. It was like one of those truly frustrating dreams where every move you make is thwarted and the thing you want more than anything else in the world is always tantalisingly out of reach, never in your grasp. But this was real; he could smell the traffic fumes, hear the cawing of the crows, feel the heat of the city. He was not going to wake from this and find everything was just fine with his world.

  Alice had been there, only metres away, and now she’d disappeared, along with any chances he might have had of finding out who had taken Charlie and where she might be. If Alice had run away the moment she’d seen him, Adam had a fair idea it wasn’t likely she would be hanging round the Bar Belle, waiting for him, when he eventually found it.

  He swore; a loud, primal, vicious, nasty stream of verbal bile. An old woman, dressed in a traditional kimono, grey hair pulled back into a neat bun, looked at him, a shocked expression on her face. This time, before he went off down the street in the vain hope of seeing Alice again, he apologised.

  Before he’d gone more than a hundred metres Adam knew it was hopeless. He was never going to find her now; if she didn’t want to see him there were any number of side streets she could have taken to get away, even crossing the road and going off who knew where. Chasing Alice was going to be a complete waste of time, but she’d been so close it was hard to give up and walk away.