by Boris Akunin
He’s dead, the titular counsellor guessed, and, regretting that he had made his beloved suffer, he hastened to make amends for his blunder by gently stroking the hollow at the base of her neck (he had been wanting to do that for a long time anyway).
Much later, lying in bed and staring up at the ceiling, O-Yumi said with a sigh:
‘Jojutsu is a wonderful science. It is the only thing capable of making a woman stronger than a man. But only until the woman loses her head. I’m afraid that is exactly what is happening to me. How shameful!’
Fandorin closed his eyes tight, feeling himself brimming over with an unbearable, insane happiness.
A stupid question,
This ‘to be or not to be’,
Once you’ve been happy
TICKLISH
It was by no means the first time Walter Lockston had spent the night in the office. Under the terms of his contract with the city of Yokohama, the head of the municipal police was provided with an official house, and even furniture, but the sergeant had never got used to those palatial halls. The sofas and chairs stood in their dust covers, the large glass chandelier was never lit up even once, the family bed gathered dust for lack of use – the former inhabitant of the prairies felt more at home on a canvas campbed. It was dreary and depressing to be all alone in a two-storey house, the walls and the ceiling oppressed him. The office was a better place. The familiar cramped space there was all his own, every inch of it: the desk, the safe, the gun shelf. It didn’t smell of the emptiness that filled the house. And he slept better here. Walter was always glad to spend the night in the office, and today’s excuse couldn’t possibly have been more legitimate.
He let the duty constable go home – he was a family man. It was so quiet and peaceful in the station. The lock-up was empty – no sailors on a spree, no drunk clients from ‘Number Nine’. Bliss!
He hummed a song about the glorious year of sixty-five as he washed out his shirt. He sniffed his socks and put them back on – he could wear them for one more day. He brewed some strong coffee and smoked a cigar, and then it was time to settle down for the night.
He made himself comfortable on the armchair, took his boots off and put his feet up on a chair. There was a blanket in the office, worn into holes here and there, but it was his favourite blanket, he always had splendid dreams under it.
The sergeant yawned and looked round the room, just to make sure everything was right. Of course, it was hard to imagine English spies or slanty-eyed Jappos trying to creep in and poke around in a police station, but it never hurt to be careful.
The door of the office was locked. So were the window frame and the bars on the window. Only the small windowpane was slightly open, otherwise you could suffocate in here. The distance between the bars was so narrow, a cat could barely get through it.
The rain that had been falling since midday stopped and the moon started shining in the sky, so bright that he had to pull the peak of his cap down over his eyes.
Walter squirmed about, settling down. The sheets of paper with the oaths written in blood crackled inside his shirt. All the weird freaks who live in this world, he thought with a shake of his head.
Lockston always fell asleep quickly, but first (and this was the part he always liked best), coloured pictures of the past flickered through his head, or maybe pictures of things that had never really happened at all. They swirled around, jostling each other for a place in the queue and gradually merged into his first dream, which was the sweetest.
All of this happened now. He saw a horse’s head with its pointed ears quivering, dashing hell-for-leather towards a stretch of land overgrown with brownish grass; then a great, high sky with white clouds, the kind you only get over huge open spaces; then a woman who had loved him (or maybe she was pretending) in Lucyville back in sixty-nine; then from somewhere or other a dwarf in a bright-coloured body stocking, whirling around and jumping through a hoop. And this, the final vision to surface out of the depths of his totally forgotten past, maybe even out of his childhood, merged imperceptibly into a dream.
The sergeant murmured wordlessly as he marvelled at the little circus artist, who turned out to be able to fly and blow tongues of flame out of his mouth.
Then a less pleasant dream began, about a house fire – that was because the sleeping man felt hot under the blanket. He started squirming about, the blanket slipped off on to the floor and once again all was well in the realm of dreams.
Walter woke up long after midnight. Not of his own volition, though – he heard a ringing sound somewhere in the distance. Still groggy with sleep, he didn’t realise straight away that it was the doorbell, the one that had been hung at the entrance to be used during the night.
The agreement with Asagawa and the Russian vice-consul was this: no matter what happened, the sergeant was not to leave the station. To hell with it if there was a fight, or a knifing, or a murder. It could wait until morning.
And so Lockston turned over on to his side and tried to carry on sleeping, but the jangling continued as loud as ever.
Should he go and take a look? Without going outside, of course – who knew what was out there? It could be a trap. Maybe the bad men had come to get their pieces of paper?
He picked up his revolver and walked silently out into the corridor.
There was a cunning little window made of dark glass in the front door. You could see out of it, but you couldn’t see in.
Lockston glanced out and saw a Japanese whore on the porch, wearing a striped kimono, the kind that the staff in the International Hotel had.
The native woman reached up to the bell pull and jerked it with all her might. And then at last she started screeching too.
‘Poriceman-san! Me Kumiko, Hoter Intanasyanaru! Troubur! Sairor kirred! Kirred entirery! Birriard room! Fight stick! Howr in head!’
Clear enough. Some sailors had had a fight with the cues in the billiard room and someone had got his skull stove in. The usual stuff.
‘Tomorrow morning!’ Lockston shouted. ‘Tell the boss I’ll send a constable in the morning!’
‘Impossibur morning! Need now! Sairor die!’
‘What am I supposed to do, glue his head back together? Get away, girl, get away. I told you, tomorrow.’
She started ringing again, but the sergeant, reassured, was already walking back along the corridor. No way was the head of police dashing out in the middle of the night for some stupid nonsense like that. Even without the important papers tucked under his shirt, he still wouldn’t have gone.
When the bell finally stopped sounding, it was really quiet. Walter couldn’t even hear his own footsteps – in the socks his feet moved across the wooden floor without making the slightest sound. If it wasn’t for that absolute silence, the sergeant would never have heard the faintest of faint rustling sounds behind the door of the office.
Someone was in there!
Lockston froze and his heart set off at a gallop. He put his ear to the crack of the door – sure thing! Someone was going through the desk, pulling out the drawers.
Why, the sons of bitches, coming up with something like that! Deliberately luring him out of the room, and then … But how had they got in? When he went out into the corridor, he locked the door behind him!
Now you’ll get yours, you low snakes!
Holding the revolver in his left hand, he slipped the key into the keyhole without making a sound, then turned it, jerked the handle towards him and burst into the room.
‘Don’t move! I’ll kill you!’
And the sergeant would have blasted away, too, but there was a surprise waiting for him, in the form of a tiny figure, about three feet tall, standing by the desk. Just for a moment Walter imagined he was still asleep and dreaming about the dwarf.
But when he clicked the lamp switch and the gas flared up, it wasn’t a dwarf at all, but a little Japanese boy, entirely naked.
‘Who are you?’ Lockston blurted out. ‘Where are you from? How did you
get in?’
The little imp darted nimbly towards the window, jumped up like a monkey, squeezed sideways through the bars, squirmed into the opening of the small windowpane and would surely have got clean away, but the sergeant was up to the challenge – he dashed across the room just in time to grab him by the foot and drag him back inside.
At least now he had the answer to his third question. The naked urchin had climbed in through the window. Even for him it was a tight fit, as the bruises on his thighs testified. And that was why he was naked – he couldn’t have squeezed through in clothes.
Well, how about that! He’d been expecting absolutely anyone – spies, assassins, wily ninja – but instead this little runt had shown up.
‘Right, now answer me.’ He took hold of the kid’s skinny little shoulders and shook him. ‘Kataru! Dareh da? Dareh okutta?’1 The little rat gazed unblinkingly at the huge red-faced American. The little upward-turned face – narrow, with a pointed nose – was impassive, inscrutable. A ferret, a genuine ferret, the sergeant thought.
‘So, going to keep mum, are you?’ he asked menacingly. ‘I’ll loosen your tongue for you. Mita ka?’2 He unbuckled his belt and pulled it out of his trousers.
The little lad (he was only about eight, he couldn’t possibly have been any older) carried on looking at Lockston with the same indifferent, even weary air, like a little old man.
‘Well?’ the sergeant roared at him in a terrible voice.
But the strange child wasn’t frightened, in fact he seemed to brighten up a bit. In any case, his lips crept out to the sides, as if he was unable to restrain a smile. A little black tube stuck out of his mouth. There was a whistling sound, and the sergeant thought he had been stung on the chest by a wasp.
He looked down in surprise. There was something that glittered sticking out of his shirt, where his heart was. Was that really a needle? But where had it come from?
He wanted to pull it out, but somehow he couldn’t raise his hands.
Then suddenly his ears were filled with a low droning and rumbling, and Walter discovered that he was lying on the floor. And now the little boy he had just been looking down on was towering over him – a huge figure, blocking out the entire ceiling.
A massive hand of unbelievable size reached downwards, getting closer and closer. Then everything went dark and all the sounds disappeared. Light fingers ferreted about on his chest, and it felt ticklish.
Vision is the first.
The last sense of all to die
Is the sense of touch.
1 ‘Speak! Who are you? Who sent you?’ (distorted Japanese)
2 ‘See this?’ (Japanese)
OFF WITH HIS HEAD
In the twilight at the end of a long day Asagawa paid a visit to Pier 37, a special police mooring for arrested boats. The Kappa-maru, a large fishing schooner arrested on suspicion of smuggling, had been standing there for more than two weeks already – in recent times, junks from Hong Kong and Aomin had taken to roaming the bay. They cruised in neutral waters, waiting for a moonless night, when fast boats could put out from the shore to collect crates of wine, sacks of coffee, bundles of tobacco and woven baskets of opium. The Sakai brothers, who owned the schooner, had been caught and were now in jail, but the inspector had thought of a good use for their little ship.
He examined the hold. Dry and roomy. It was immediately obvious that no fish had been carried in it for a long time. A bit cramped as living space, of course, but never mind, it wasn’t for royalty. Ah, but in fact it was – it was for a prince, thought Asagawa, and couldn’t help smiling.
The idea he had come up with was this. Take the important witness from the vice-consul, put him in the hold of the Kappa-maru, move the boat a long way offshore and drop anchor. Take the rubber and the sail away with him and lock the capstan – so that the prince wouldn’t take it into his head to weigh anchor in a morphine haze. Let him bob about on the waves for a day or two: he wouldn’t escape, and no one could touch him. But the inspector would have to post a sentry at the mooring – to keep an eye on all the confiscated craft, of course.
It was not late yet, and there were still people about near the mooring, but just before dawn there would be no one here. Everything should go quite smoothly. Once he had made sure that the fishing schooner was in good condition, the inspector went home.
The previous night and the day that followed it had been very eventful. In every man’s life there is one moment that is the highest point of his existence. Very often we do not realise this and only understand it retrospectively, when we look back: There, that’s it, the reason why I was born. But it’s already too late, we can’t go back to it and we can’t put anything right.
Asagawa, however, was aware that he was living through the supreme moment of his life right now, and he was firmly determined not to disappoint his karma. Who could ever have thought that the son and grandson of ordinary yoriki would find himself at the centre of high political drama? Surely it now depended on him which way Japan would turn, which force would rule the country?
It was not in the inspector’s character to brag, but today really was a special day, the kind of day that a man could be proud of. And so he allowed himself to feel just a little pride, although he didn’t say anything out loud, of course.
The head of the seaboard precinct of the Yokohama police lived on Nogeh Hill, where he rented a room in the Momoya Hotel, a modest establishment, but very neat and clean. The rent was an insignificant sum and the food was beyond all praise (there was an excellent noodle soup shop on the ground floor), and there was also one other circumstance of some importance for a bachelor.
This circumstance (which was female and went by the name of Emiko) was the owner of the Momoya, who immediately brought his supper to his room in person.
Asagawa, having swapped his tight European clothes for a thin yukata, sat on a cushion, watching blissfully as Emiko fussed over the meal, sprinkling dried seaweed powder on the hot noodles and pouring the warmed sake from the little jug. The calico-bound file holding the documents had been concealed under the mattress laid out on the floor.
She did not leave even after the inspector had thanked her and started noisily sucking in the scalding hot soba, occasionally picking pieces of his favourite pickled radish out of a separate little bowl with his chopsticks. It was clear from the bloom on Emiko’s cheeks and her lowered eyes that she was yearning for his amorous attentions. And even though Asagawa was deadly tired and ought to get at least a little sleep before dawn, to offend a woman was impolite. So, having rounded off his meal with a cup of excellent barley tea, he spoke the words that had a special meaning for the two of them:
‘How beautiful you are today.’
Emiko blushed and put her broad hands over her face. She murmured:
‘Ah, why do you say such things …’
But even as she spoke, she was unfastening the cord with which the belt of her kimono was tied.
‘Come here,’ said the inspector, reaching out his arms.
‘I shouldn’t. There are customers waiting,’ she babbled in a voice hoarse with passion, and pulled the pins out of her hair one after another.
In her impatience, she didn’t even unwind her belt completely. She freed one shoulder and pulled the kimono abruptly over her head in a most ungraceful fashion. He liked her best of all like this. It was a shame that today he was in no state to relax and enjoy love.
‘I waited all last night …’ she whispered, crawling on to the bed on hands and knees.
Asagawa glanced to make sure that the file was not sticking out from under the rather thin futon, and lay down first.
When Emiko lowered herself on to him with a moan, the sharp corner dug into his back quite uncomfortably, but there was nothing to be done, he had to bear it.
After his debt of politeness had been paid and Emiko had flitted on her way, Asagawa grunted as he rubbed the bruise on his back and blew out the lamp. Following a habit unchanged since his chi
ldhood, he lay on his side, put his hand under his cheek and fell asleep immediately.
All sorts of different sounds came through the paper partitions: the clamour of customers in the noodle shop, the servant girls slipping up and down the stairs, his neighbour – a rice trader – snoring in the next room. All this noise was quite usual and it did not prevent the inspector from falling asleep, even though he was a light sleeper. When a cockroach fell off the ceiling on to the straw mats, Asagawa opened his eyes immediately, and his hand automatically slid in under the wooden pillow, where he kept his revolver. The inspector was woken a second time by the tinkling lid of the china teapot that he always put beside the head of the bed. An earthquake, but only a very small one, Asagawa realised, and went back to sleep.
But after he was woken for the third time, he was not allowed to go to sleep again.
Something extraordinary was happening in the noodle shop. He heard someone yelling in a blood-curdling voice, furniture smashing and then the owner shrieking:
‘Asagawa-san!’
That meant he had to go down – Emiko wouldn’t disturb him over anything trivial. It must be the foreign sailors getting rowdy again, like the last time. Just recently they had taken to wandering around the native districts – the drink was cheaper there.
The inspector sighed, got up and pulled on his yukata. He didn’t take his revolver, there was no need. Instead of a firearm, he grabbed his jitte – an iron spike with two curved hooks on its sides. In the old days a jitte was used to ward off a blow from a sword, but it was also useful for parrying a knife-thrust, or simply hitting someone over the head. Asagawa was a past master in the use of this weapon.
He didn’t leave the file in the room, but stuck it in the back of his belt.
To the inspector’s relief, it was not foreigners who were getting unruly, but two Japanese. They looked like ordinary chimpira – petty thugs of the lowest kind. Not Yakuza, just loudmouths, but very drunk and aggressively boisterous. The table had been turned over and a few bowls had been broken. The old basket weaver Yoichi, who often stayed until late, had a bloody nose. There weren’t any other customers, they must all have run off – all except for a fisherman with a face tanned copper-brown by the wind, sitting in the corner. He wasn’t bothered at all, just kept picking up noodles with his little sticks without even looking around.
