Twilight of Gutenberg

by Hitoshi Goto

  “Where do you live, Mr. Hoshino?” he asked me, his expression still stony.

  “Paris. I am an artist by profession, but for certain reasons I am investigating this case in secret.”

  “Is that so…” Cleary glanced at Schmidt, his eyes full of suspicion. “We have received express orders from the German army to cooperate with you in full. So, what would you like to know?” he asked unenthusiastically, indicating we should take a seat the other side of the table.

  “I would like you to tell me everything you know about the Japanese army officer who was found dead—the estimated time of death, cause of death, and so on.”

  Cleary looked at Schmidt again. Schmidt nodded and said, “Right.”

  Cleary took a notebook out of his pocket and started flipping through the pages.

  “At 6 a.m. on the seventeenth of this month, a local man found something floating at the water’s edge at Petit Bôt on the south coast of the island. It was reported to me that it appeared to be a body, and I arrived at the crime scene at 9 am. By that time the constable first on the scene had already pulled the body out of the water. It was pouring with rain, so this was to prevent it being washed away. The body was still dressed in military uniform, but the shoes had fallen off. At this point in time, they still haven’t been found. All personal effects were returned to your country. I don’t think there was anything particularly suspicious. As for the cause of death…” he said, then paused.

  “A bullet from a British-made handgun had pierced the heart around the left ventricle, as a result of which the heart stopped functioning, bleeding occurred, and ended in death. If we assume that it was not an accident, it must be the work of a pro.”

  “Where did the murder take place?”

  “I can’t say for sure, but since his uniform wasn’t damaged, it is thought he was killed on the spot. But there are almost vertical cliffs in the vicinity and the sea is quite deep, so there is also the possibility that he was killed on top of the cliff and then pushed into the sea. I should also say that, as I believe you know, his body was found together with that of an Englishwoman, a local resident. It has been established that she was pushed off the cliff. She sustained abrasions from hitting the cliff on the way down, but the direct cause of death is believed to have been by drowning. Also, a floral hairpin was found on top of the cliff. Its design was rather unusual, so fortunately we were able to confirm right away that it was an English maid. In other words, that it belonged to the woman who was found.

  “Is that far from here?”

  “No, it’s about a ten minute drive. I don’t believe a Japanese army officer would be able to kill a civilian without resistance, especially being the enemy—oh! I’m sorry,” Cleary apologised pointedly. “And I can’t think an officer would have a private relationship with a civilian while on official business, so I believe it is highly possible that they both happened to be in more or less the same place at more or less the same time and got caught up in what happened. From the state of digestion of the contents of the stomach, both died after having had dinner, some time between 22:00 and 02:00 hours the next morning.”

  “Where did he have dinner?”

  “Not at the hotel restaurant. He left the hotel at around half past six without saying where he was going. However, about two hours before he died, he had a small snack, maybe a sandwich.”

  “But being Japanese, wouldn’t he have been conspicuous eating out?”

  “That’s what’s so strange. I don’t know about his German connections, but at least on the British side there is nobody who supplied him with dinner. Therefore I conjecture that he had received a sandwich at lunchtime and took it with him that evening.”

  “A picnic?”

  “No, I wouldn’t go that far…”

  “What about the Englishwoman—have you identified her?”

  “Yes. She is the daughter of a respectable family here in Guernsey. She was working as a maid for a German couple who happen to be living here.”

  “A German couple?”

  “Not military. From the foreign ministry,” Lieutenant Schmidt put in, making it clear he didn’t want to go into too much detail on this topic. “In fact, you probably know, but…”

  Reading his thoughts, I nodded.

  Suddenly Cleary looked confused. “So you already know?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And the third one?”

  “Third one?”

  Cleary looked uncomfortable, but Schmidt nodded so he went on slowly, “In fact there are three very troubling mysteries left with regards to these two suspicious deaths. The first—”

  “The photograph, I suppose?”

  “That’s right. The photo we took when investigating the crime scene, which shows a mystery man standing beneath a tree. Ah yes, it was a Japanese man… I suppose that’s why you’re here to investigate?”

  “Well, you could say that.”

  “It’s all very odd. I’d never even seen a Japanese person before, then we get a Japanese body turn up. Then another Japanese man is behind a tree watching as we investigate that death, and on top of that I end up talking with another Japanese man here like this. What the hell is happening here?”

  “That’s what I want to know. Didn’t you notice that man under the tree at the time?”

  “Not at all. You are the first Japanese person I’ve ever actually met. Assuming that he wasn’t a ghost, how did that man manage to get away from this island? Even the local residents here are under strict surveillance by the Germans. He couldn’t have taken a boat out.” Glancing at Schmidt to see his reaction, he went on, “But it’s impossible that an Oriental could still be hiding on the island. I don’t think he’s here any more.”

  “The second?”

  “I said that the woman’s hairpin had been dropped on top of the cliff, but to be precise it was actually found a little way inland. And it was near the body of another unidentified man who had been shot with a single bullet. He was of middling height and build, aged around forty, with chestnut hair, and blue eyes. He wasn’t carrying anything that could identify him, although to all appearances he was German…” he said, checking Schmidt’s face again. “But I checked with the German army, and there wasn’t anyone who might fit the description. Nor on the British side, of course.”

  “The gun?”

  “He wasn’t carrying any kind of weapon.”

  “Did he have any distinguishing features?”

  “As I said before, this man too was shot with a single bullet from a British-made handgun to the chest. This was the fatal wound.”

  “Was there anything else suspicious?”

  “He had a wound on the fingers of his right hand. Part of his skin had split, as if he had been gripping something tightly.”

  “Gripping something?”

  “But there weren’t any traces of oil or paint or anything.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes, well, in terms of a distinguishing feature, he had a tattoo in one armpit…”

  Lieutenant Schmidt mouthed a single word silently to me, his lip movements exaggerated to make sure I would understand: GE – STA – PO, then said aloud “Probably a German.”

  Cleary appeared not to have noticed our silent exchange, and went on, “The time of death was pretty much the same as the other two. And there is one more strange point. The bullet removed from this unidentified man was the same as the one from the Japanese victim. You probably know this, but when a bullet is fired from a gun, a unique groove is left on it, and these two were extremely similar. In other words, both bullets were fired from the same gun.”

  “So the killer was the same for both of them.”

  I tilted my head enquiringly, and the detective went on, “There were other strange things. These men hadn’t fired a gun. There was no gunpowder residue on their h
ands. We also checked the Englishwoman’s hands. None of these three had used a gun.”

  “So, who killed them?”

  “Well, that’s what I want to know too,” the detective said, his expression that of giving up.

  “The third mystery?”

  “This unidentified German… the place he was found…” Schmidt said, looking at me again.

  He couldn’t hide his unease, and was just holding up his hand to silence the detective, when the latter spread his hands wide and said, “He was found in the most extraordinary place.”

  †

  Lieutenant Schmidt and I groaned as we examined Detective Cleary’s hand-drawn sketch of the crime scene,

  “So what you’re saying is that a Gestapo or whoever died on top of this watchtower?”

  “Yes,” Schmidt answered, before Cleary could say anything. “I did wonder whether I should tell you this much, but I suppose it isn’t anything I should hide from you. We don’t know whether he had any connection with the Japanese officer who died. Having come this far, it’s all the same. I might as well tell you everything.”

  “What is this watchtower?”

  “Officially it’s part of the Führer’s directive for the creation of an Atlantic Wall. It’s being built as part of the fortification plan to prepare Guernsey to repel the Anglo Saxons when they come. As you can see, its purpose is as an observation tower, not a gun battery. Concrete has only just been poured and hasn’t hardened yet, so entry is prohibited.”

  “Where is the entrance?”

  “You go down some steps to an underground door, which is locked. You have to open that door to get to the staircase that leads up into the tower.”

  “And this man was lying on top of this tower?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How on earth did you find him?”

  “By chance.” This time it was Cleary who answered. “We’d clearly established that the Englishwoman had been pushed off the top of the cliff, so we were searching the vicinity for evidence. And we found another hairpin on the ground around the tower, which had been fortified with freshly poured concrete, the bit where entry was prohibited while the concrete dried.”

  “Were there any footprints?”

  “None. We subsequently got permission from the Germans to investigate the state of the concrete and it was still wet, so if anyone had crossed it they would definitely have left footprints. The hairpin had fallen onto the concrete around five feet from the edge. Either someone had thrown it there, or there had been a struggle at the edge of the concrete and it had somehow been catapulted there by the impact.”

  “Were there any footprints outside the concrete?”

  “The tower is surrounded by low grasses. That evening at first the moon was peeping out through the clouds, but later the weather rapidly worsened and from midnight until morning there was heavy wind and rain so the ground was muddy, but there was no sign that a struggle had taken place there. We are short staffed so it wasn’t possible to conduct a really thorough search of the area.”

  “No sign of a struggle?”

  “That’s right. May I go on?”

  “Please.”

  “I used a long stick to retrieve the hairpin, and at one point lost my balance and nearly fell onto the wet concrete. At that moment, in a corner of my vision I caught sight of something odd.”

  “A body.”

  “Yes. Or to be more precise, a right foot poking over the edge of the top of the tower. That caused quite a stir. After all, there weren’t any footprints in the concrete around the tower. We argued over whether or not to use a ladder or something to get up there, but in the end we got permission from the Germans to go in, and together with Lieutenant Schmidt here we walked over the concrete.”

  “Did you leave footprints?”

  “Of course. Later I’ll take you there so you can see for yourself. Anyhow, after leaving footprints in the wet concrete, we entered the tower.”

  “What about the door?”

  “It’s a heavy metal door and was locked. It’s made to military specifications, so I don’t think it’s easy to make a duplicate key. Anyway, we opened it and went up the indoor staircase. After climbing some fifteen metres we came to an observation space. There are plans to install a high-power telescope there, but it hadn’t been set up yet. It will also be fitted with a telephone line. People are banned from going onto the roof, but there is a 50 cm2 metal trapdoor that you push open from below for access.”

  “Did you go out onto the roof?”

  “Yes. The roof is oval-shaped, some 5 m long. It’s not completely flat, and it rises from back to front in a gentle slope. This is where the man was lying face down, with one foot hanging over the edge as I mentioned before.”

  I looked down at the map again.

  “Was he lying in the position indicated here?”

  “Spread-eagled, yes.”

  “Did anything else catch your attention?”

  “As I said before, the cause of death was a bullet in the chest.”

  “There weren’t any footprints?”

  “None.”

  “Were any bones broken?”

  “Like, if he’d been dropped from the sky? Impossible. No way could you use a parachute in that stormy weather. No bones were broken, and the impression the body left in the wet concrete was not much different to the impressions my feet left. So he cannot have fallen through the air at speed and landed there.”

  “Any blood?”

  “Washed away by the rain. Only a little left on the part of the clothes that were touching the concrete. The roof then slopes down towards the coastline, so it probably washed down onto the ground that side, but we can’t be sure of that because of the rain.”

  I tried a different tack.

  “Is there a lock on the trapdoor?”

  Cleary hesitated, but Schmidt quickly stepped in as though he had anticipated my question. “It is bolted from inside. It cannot be opened from the outside.”

  “So how did he get there?”

  “If we knew that, we wouldn’t have to go to so much trouble,” Schmidt said with a shrug. “We checked at the airfield, but according to the Luftwaffe’s records, no planes were flying that night on account of the storm, much less any balloons or airships.”

  “There was also a theory that a British bomber dropped a human bomb, but flying over the tower and dropping a person without missing the mark is nigh-on impossible. And apart from anything, if you drop someone on concrete the body will not retain its original shape. And that body didn’t even have any broken bones.”

  We sat in silence for a while, then I asked Cleary, “What’s the area around that observation tower like?”

  “What do you mean by the area around it?”

  “The surroundings. Are there any tall trees or buildings?”

  “I see. As I said before, the tower is surrounded by a concrete base, and beyond that is grass. But…” His face grew pensive and he started drawing on the map. “There are a few tall trees around here, but other than that there aren’t any buildings or anything else obstructing the view. After all, it’s a watchtower.”

  “Have you looked into those tall trees?”

  “No, we didn’t go that far… But I don’t quite understand what you’re getting at. Surely you’re not suggesting that the body was propelled from there?”

  “I’m not saying that, but the body got onto the roof somehow or other.”

  “I’ve never seen a ladder or anything long enough to reach the top of that observation tower on this island,” the detective said with a bewildered expression.

  “Maybe it’s more realistic to say that the body was shot from a human cannon,” Schmidt said, laughing.

  “But if we don’t consider various possibilities, we’ll never be able to explain h
ow the man got up there, will we?” I said, and the pair immediately lapsed into silence.

  Detective Cleary took over the driving and we headed to the next location.

  It was just ten minutes to the beach at Petit Bôt—already the south coast of the island. He stopped the car just before the waterfront, and the three of us headed for a small cottage at the side of the road. It was a half-timbered house, rarely seen in France. The bottom part of the white wall was mud spattered and dirty.

  “Mr. Hoshino, the beach where the bodies were found is right next to here, but there’s really nothing much there so first I’d like you to meet the person who found them. His name is Simon Asbury, and this is his house. Normally he would be at work on the German fortifications on the north coast of the island, but since you were coming today I had him stay home to meet you,” Schmidt said, then rang the bell.

  I checked the time on my wristwatch. It was five in the afternoon.

  The door opened and a rather short, weatherbeaten man stuck his head out. Registering Schmidt’s uniform, he hastily opened the door wide and stood to attention. “Oh, I’ve been expecting you, lieutenant, sir,” he said excessively politely, as if unused to speaking that way. “I waited at home as per your orders.”

  Schmidt grinned and said in English, “Good man. This is Mr. Hoshino, who I told you I would be bringing. He is an artist.”

  Asbury looked at me with a startled expression on his face. “I never expected an artist. Anyway, please come inside.”

  With an insincere, almost obsequious smile, Asbury showed us into the house. The opened straight onto a small living room.

  Inside was a woman in thick-rimmed spectacles, waist as round as a barrel of Bordeaux wine.

  “This is my wife, Marianne,” he said.

  We exchanged greetings, and then at Asbury’s urging sat down on the sofa, the springs squeaking as though worn out.

  While Asbury asked Marianne to go make us some tea, I quickly looked around the room. It was a modest space with hardly any furniture or decoration other than a dining table and chairs, and the sofa we were now sitting on. Some fishing rods hung on one wall, and a small side table with a radio on it stood in one corner of the room