by Graham Marks
‘Jeezus!’ Adam could feel panic and frustration rising up inside him, feeding on each other. ‘What’s happened to her … did he do anything to her, Alice? Where the hell is she?’
‘Yoshi do nuffin you gáru-frendo.’
Adam swung round to find a man standing behind him on the landing; a slight figure, shorter than him by a couple of inches, the light picking out the craters on his badly pockmarked face and reflecting dully off what looked like a very expensive black silk suit. The man sniffed and nodded at him, staring through the blank, solid lenses of a pair of Oakleys. Adam’s mouth went dry.
31
Have a nice day penguin duck
Yoshi walked into the room, making for his desk. As he went past Adam his left arm snaked upwards like a whip and the back of his hand whacked Adam’s face with a noise like a Christmas cracker being pulled. It all happened so quickly, so stunningly, painfully fast, that Yoshi was picking the phone up off the floor and sitting down in his chair before Adam – dazed, his cheek burning, tiny coloured lights flashing in front of his eyes – could work out what had happened.
Rubbing his chin and pushing with his tongue to test if any teeth had come loose, he realised he’d been so zeroed in on Alice he hadn’t heard anyone coming up the stairs; and if Yoshi was here it more than likely meant there were others as well.
Adam shook his head; Alice had gone behind the desk and was standing close by Yoshi, who was leaning forward, elbows in front of him, his hands steepled, a fair sized diamond ring on his left hand sparkling with a subdued white fire. No wonder his face hurt. Adam could see that the little finger of Yoshi’s left hand had the first joint missing and found himself wondering why, at the same time knowing now wasn’t the time to ask.
‘I think that was Yoshi’s way of saying goodbye, Adam.’
Adam ignored her and looked directly at Yoshi’s sunglasses. ‘Where’s Aiko?’
‘He threw her out. She’s gone, OK? Not here.’
‘I wasn’t talking to you.’ The shock of having been slapped, like a naughty child, had turned to anger and Adam could feel himself about to lose it. But as his fists bunched he saw Yoshi reach into his jacket, slowly. And equally slowly put a black pistol down on the desk in front of him, where it lay like a silent, terminal threat.
Adam watched him, this small, neat, violent man, his nails shining, his expensive jewellery and elegant suit, cut so that his gun wouldn’t show … watched him like you’d watch some feral creature who was probably about to attack you. Mindful that it was built to kill, and you weren’t.
He was so out of his depth.
‘We work together.’ Alice put a hand on the back of the leather chair. ‘I’m part of the team now …’ She leant down and said something in heavily accented Japanese to Yoshi, who nodded and lit a cigarette. ‘Yoshi’s going places, taking me with him.’
‘What happened to you, Alice? When did you completely lose the plot?’
‘Screw you.’
‘Scaru-yu!’ Yoshi laughed a slightly high-pitched giggle, spun the pistol round with his finger, picked it up and pointed it at Adam. Rock steady, no shaking. He could see the graceful spiral of the barrel’s rifling disappearing down towards the bullet he knew must be waiting in the chamber. Behind the gun Adam was aware of Yoshi’s amused smile, gold glinting in his mouth.
The yakuza got up from his chair and came out in front of the desk, gun still pointing directly at Adam. He walked up to him and jabbed the barrel, like a punch, into his stomach. Adam, already tensed up, took the blow and just managed not to be winded by it, staggering a couple of steps backwards and clutching his stomach. ‘Gooda-bi. Oké?’
Alice looked almost proud. ‘I’m teaching him English.’
‘Right … yeah … course you are.’ Adam stood his ground, his stomach muscles really hurting. ‘He’s, um, he’s very good.’
Alice ran her tongue backwards and forwards over her top gum and said something in Japanese to Yoshi, who nodded, grinned, then blanked his face as he whipped the gun up at Adam’s face and pulled back the hammer. This time the barrel was shaking slightly. ‘He thinks you’re taking the piss, Adam.’
‘I can tell.’
‘He doesn’t like that.’
‘Tell him I’m not.’
‘Say sorry, Adam …’
‘Why’re you doing this?’
‘Cos I can. Say sorry.’
Adam could tell that for Alice this was payback time; he looked straight at Yoshi. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Bye, Adam.’
‘So I just go?’
‘Unless you want another slapping, yeah … yeah, I would.’
‘OK.’ Adam made to leave, then stopped. ‘What should I tell your parents?’
‘Sod off, Adam.’
As he moved – slowly, even though he wanted so much to run – Adam heard a loud, oiled, metallic click. The sound of a firing pin meeting air, not a waiting percussion cap. No bullet in the barrel. He turned and saw Yoshi was nodding and smiling, the pistol still pointed directly at him. ‘Beng-beng … ha-ha!’
‘Is that Simon Palmer?’
‘Jesus, where the hell have you been?’
‘Kabukicho.’ Adam, leaning against the phone booth, watched the early night-time traffic stop-start along the Yasukuni-dori; he was tired and wired, kind of wouldn’t mind getting to a bog as he really had nearly crapped himself back in that office.
‘What on earth did you go there for?’
‘I was looking for Aiko.’
‘Did you find her?’
‘No, but she’s free, they let her go.’
‘Where are you now?’
‘On the main drag, the Yasu-whatsit.’
‘Whereabouts?’
Adam glanced round for some kind of landmark. ‘Near a big cinema …’
‘Stay there, I’ll come and get you.’
‘But –’ The dialling tone buzzed in his ear. Adam replaced the handset.
All around him coloured lights rose and fell across the faces of the buildings on either side of the wide main road; they loved their neon in this city, he thought, loved those bright lights. The pavements were crowded with people and lined with stalls selling everything from rip-off watches to all kinds of junk to hang off your mobile phone. Or scooter key.
He’d been going to tell Palmer that he had Aiko’s scooter and would meet him at the hotel, if he’d tell him how to get there, but now he was glad someone was coming to get him. The thought of another nerve-shredding ride through Tokyo – only this time at night – did not appeal. He’d come back and get the scooter tomorrow.
Adam felt drained and completely tensed at the same time. Relief that it now looked like Charlie was OK, even if he still didn’t know where she was, countered by the desperation of not knowing how the hell he was going to find Aiko. He looked at the key in his hand. What would Palmer do if he took off now and went in search of Keiko’s apartment? What would his parents say if he didn’t call them?
This was tearing him up, so many bloody questions. Was Aiko safe now? Had Yoshi really let her go unharmed? Alice had no reason to lie, Yoshi had no reason to hurt her, but how could he trust a word either of them said? Until he actually saw her, or at least spoke to her, he wouldn’t know for sure either way. But one thing was for certain, he wasn’t going to find her tonight; he absolutely had to go back to the hotel with Palmer, he had to call his parents and take the shit storm that was going to descend on him when he did. That was not going to be pretty.
As he waited for Palmer to turn up – nervous about what was going to happen, agitated he wasn’t looking for Aiko – he thought about Alice, not really able to get his head round what she’d done and what she was now doing. How much of what she’d told him was the truth and how much just scrambled shit in her head, he’d no idea. What was totally obvious was that she’d got herself a pretty solid coke habit; could that mean Steve, and possibly even Charlie, had one too? He didn’t think so, he was pretty sure h
e’d guessed the correct scenario and that it was Alice who was entirely responsible for them taking off. She was clearly glued to Yoshi now, and what a lovely couple they made.
He felt bad – not guilty, but somehow responsible – about leaving her there in that room. Walking down the stairs, part of him, the headstrong dragon-slayer, had wanted to go right back up and insist she came with him, but the pragmatist ruled that you couldn’t argue with endless lines of coke and an automatic pistol. Plus the other two men he’d seen on the way out. Not if you wanted to celebrate another birthday, down the pub with your mates.
Adam rubbed his cheek, still tender from Yoshi’s vicious, diamond-tipped backhander. He couldn’t believe how easily the whole situation had got so incredibly out of hand: one stupid phone call, a few flame-fanning lines in a tabloid newspaper and his whole family had gone into a lethal tail-spin, believing that, because it had happened to a girl before, the same awful fate had also befallen Charlie. The worst of all options must have occurred, until proven otherwise. The things human beings did to themselves.
Which brought him right back to Alice.
Could you abandon someone to their fate if they’d chosen it for themselves? She was an adult: what she did or didn’t do was up to her, except he wanted to believe that an Alice who wasn’t quite so strung out wouldn’t have done what she did. Though he realised that was a bit like saying blame the gun not the person who pulls the trigger. This was all about choices. Nobody ever got harangued to take drugs, have a fag or a drink. They were always offered, very nicely. It was always your choice. Alice had made hers, and right now the thought of lighting up a long, pristine white, Virginia king-size was extremely tempting …
* * *
‘So your sister was never kidnapped, then?’
‘Doesn’t look like it.’ Adam, slumped in the passenger seat of a nondescript Toyota hatchback, felt like someone had taken his batteries out.
‘And did her friend say where she was?’
‘Says she doesn’t know.’
‘What’s she doing hanging round that part of town?’
Adam looked over at Simon Palmer. Either he was naive to the point of being dense or he was fishing for information, and Adam wasn’t at all sure how much he should say about Alice, or if he should really be saying anything. He felt an odd sense of loyalty – because he had kind of grown up believing that just talking to authority about your mates was almost the same as grassing them up – even though Alice was hardly a friend any more. He really wanted to download what had happened to him, though, and maybe Palmer, a complete stranger, was actually the right person. Detached, no baggage, what did he care?
‘Are you like the law here?’
‘In Tokyo?’
‘Yeah.’
‘No.’
‘If I tell you stuff, d’you have to tell the Japanese cops?’
‘All depends what it is, Adam.’
Oh, sod it. ‘Alice is hanging out with a real GTA villain and –’
‘GTA?’
‘Grand Theft Auto, the PlayStation game?’
‘Yeah, yeah … GTA, I’m with you.’
Adam looked at him; he didn’t look like a gamer, but it was hard to tell. ‘Anyway, she’s turned into this total revenge demon and he’s like probably a dealer and stuff and he pulled a stinking gun on me! Cocked the hammer back and everything … pulled the trigger, man. Really.’ He opened his window a couple of centimetres. ‘She told me she called my parents to get her own back for Charlie stealing her boyfriend, can you believe that? All this because her sodding boyfriend got fed up with her fooling around with some cheap hood. She says she went back to their apartment one day and they’d just gone, but who knows, she could’ve made the whole thing up, everything … except I don’t think she knows where they are.’
‘Well, they must still be in the country, somewhere.’
‘Why?’
‘If Charlie had left Japan, her name would have come up when they checked Customs and Immigration records.’
‘You think?’
‘I know.’ Palmer indicated he was turning left as he slowed down and came to a stop at a set of lights. ‘And what about your friend, the one they took from that hotel – Aiko?’
‘Alice said that they let her go – Yoshi didn’t want her, he wanted me.’
‘D’you know why?’
‘Why me?’ Palmer nodded as the lights changed and he accelerated away. ‘Yoshi wanted to tell me to bugger off and leave Alice alone.’ Palmer glanced at Adam, frowning. ‘Honest, that’s what she said, I kid you not. She said she freaked when she saw me in Roppongi cos she didn’t think anyone’d come looking for Charlie. She just wanted me to go away.’
‘And they just let your friend go?’
‘That’s what she said.’
‘While you’re calling your parents, I’ll get in touch with the police and see if they’ve heard anything.’
Adam felt as if he’d hit the ground with a jarring thud. Reality check. He’d be talking to his parents in a matter of minutes. And while ‘sorry’ might have worked on Yoshi, there was no way on this earth it was going to be good enough for his mum and dad; he was going to fry.
Sitting on the chair next to the desk in the room he’d been checked into, Adam listened to the familiar English ringing tone, imagining Badger barking as the phone rang in his house. It was something he’d done ever since Badger was a puppy, same when the doorbell went or the post arrived, and no amount of telling had ever made him stop. He was so lost in thinking about Badger that when the phone was answered – some man’s voice saying the number – he’d momentarily forgotten who he was calling.
‘Uh, anyone there?’
‘Dad?’
‘Adam? Thank God you’re safe! Why did you take so long to call? The man from the embassy said it would be hours ago …’
‘Right …’ Palmer had told Adam about the promise he’d made his parents before he knew about the disappearing act; the least Adam could do was help him out. ‘I, um, had to stay at the police station longer than they thought, sorry. We just got to the hotel a few minutes ago, been checking in and stuff.’
Silence. Adam imagined this was how a condemned man must feel, waiting for the trap door to open.
Finally his father cleared his throat. ‘Well?’
‘Oh, yeah … right … ah, I’m sorry, OK? For everything.’
‘I should bloody well think so, but what I was waiting for was any news about Charlie … you actually being there in Tokyo. You know, if that’s all right with you?’
Ah, sarcasm. How he’d missed the old man’s favourite weapon in his verbal armoury. ‘Yeah, well I haven’t seen her, but it looks like she was never kidnapped and she’s still somewhere here in Japan, travelling round. The man from the embassy, Palmer, he said that’s what she’s probably doing. She’s not phoned or anything, then?’
‘No, she hasn’t. Neither of you appear to be very good at keeping in touch when you’re away. No definite news, then?’
‘She hasn’t been kidnapped, Dad, really.’
‘OK – hang on a sec, your mum wants a word …’
Oh, I bet she does – Adam changed ears – and that word would be toxic, he thought, and probably unrepeatable in polite company, knowing his mum.
‘You …’ a deep breath, exhale, ‘are in so much trouble …’
Oh yes, pure venom. ‘Look, Mum, I’m –’
‘That’s all she wants to say, for the moment, Adam.’
‘Dad?’
‘Yes. Your mother says she wants you here when she does this; wants to see your face.’
‘Jeez …’
‘He will not be of much help, I’m afraid. Now, when I get off the phone from you I’m going to cancel our flights – and you’d better hope I can reclaim some of the money back, or you’ll have an even bigger bill – and I want you to get yourself on the next available plane home. OK?’
‘Right …’
‘See you so
on, then.’
Adam put the phone down. Still on Death Row. Execution postponed.
32
And I got to know the permanence of all things
Just like at Keiko’s apartment, breakfast at the hotel Simon Palmer had booked him into was an alien encounter, and not only that, he’d have to pay extra for it as well. Adam was sure he’d be able to get something more recognisable somewhere between the hotel and where he’d left the scooter the night before, even on a Sunday.
When he’d checked his key in at the front desk the receptionist had handed over an envelope with his name typewritten on it in capital letters. Inside, a note from Simon informed him that he’d be flying back to London the next day on the 9:38 a.m. Virgin flight from Narita and that he had to be at the airport at around 7:30. Which meant catching a train from Ueno Station at 6:15; a ticket for the journey was included. ‘Apologies for the early start,’ the note ended, ‘only flight time available.’ Yeah, right. More like getting even for his going AWOL from the police station.
Adam looked at his watch: 10:15. This time tomorrow he’d be thousands of feet up, flying west. Home. He swallowed as he felt his gut tense, stomach muscles bruised and tender … he just had to find Aiko. He felt bad that he hadn’t gone out again the previous night, after talking to his parents, but he’d just slowed to a crawl, eaten something at the hotel’s restaurant, gone to his room and crashed, sleeping right through till nine o’clock.
He felt a whole lot better now, and a few minutes spent with the trusty Rough Guide and the crude, over-photocopied map the receptionist had given him and Adam was on his way to the subway – one change and four stops away from Shinjuku, the nearest station to where he’d left the scooter.
There were, he remembered, sixty exits from Shinjuku, and when Adam got off the train he found himself in this huge, bustling, complicated and totally confusing underground city with shops and wide, sprawling boulevards filled with people. What the place must be like during rush hour he could only imagine.
