by Boris Akunin
‘This is Asagawa-san, a big police boss! Now you’ll answer for all this!’ shouted Emiko, who seemed to have suffered too – her hairstyle had slipped over to one side and her sleeve was torn.
It worked.
One chimpira, wearing a red headband, backed away towards the door.
‘Don’t come near us! We’re not from round here! We’ll go and you’ll never see us again.’
And he pulled out a knife, to stop the policeman from interfering.
‘What do you mean, you’ll go?’ Emiko squealed. ‘Who’s going to pay? Look at all the crockery you’ve broken! And the table’s cracked right across!’
She threw herself at the bullies with her fists up, absolutely fearless.
But the second brawler, with deep pockmarks on his face, swung his fist wildly and struck her on the ear, and the poor woman collapsed on the floor, unconscious. Old Yoichi pulled his head down and went dashing headlong out of the eatery.
Asagawa would not have let the scoundrels get away in any case but, for Emiko’s sake, he decided to teach them a serious lesson.
First of all he ran to the door and blocked the way out, so that they couldn’t get away.
The two men glanced at each other. The one with the red headband raised his knife to shoulder level and the pockmarked one pulled out a more serious weapon – a short wakizashi sword.
‘Right, together!’ he shouted, and they both threw themselves at Asagawa at once.
But how could they compete with a master of the jitte! He easily knocked the knife-thrust aside with his elbow, grabbed the blade of the sword with his hook, tugged, and the wakizashi went flying off into the far corner.
Without wasting so much as an instant, Asagawa smacked the man with the red headband across the wrist, so that he dropped the knife. The pockmarked man retreated to the counter and stood with his back to it. The other chimpira cowered against him. They weren’t kicking up a racket now, or waving their arms about; both their faces were ashen with fear.
Asagawa walked unhurriedly towards them, brandishing his weapon.
‘Before you go off to the station, I’ll teach you a lesson in how to behave in decent establishments,’ he said, furious at the thought that he had been denied his sleep.
Meanwhile the copper-faced fisherman drank the remains of the broth from his bowl and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He leaned down, picked up the wakizashi, weighed it on his palm and suddenly flung it, without any swing at all.
The blade entered the inspector’s back slightly above the calico-bound file.
Asagawa looked round with an angry and bewildered look on his face. He swayed, barely able to stay on his feet.
Then, with the speed of lightning, the chimpira in the read headband pulled a short, straight sword out from under his clothes and jerked it from right to left, as easily as if he were batting away a fly: the inspector’s head leapt off his shoulders and went rolling merrily across the floor.
For a few seconds,
Already off the shoulders,
The head still lives on
THE PHOTOGRAPH OF HIS WIFE
If you wrote the word ‘Bullcox’ in the syllabic alphabet, you got five letters: bu-ru-ko-ku-su. But in the circle at the centre of the mysterious diagram, there were only two. That, however, did not mean a thing: the Japanese loved to shorten foreign words and names that were too long, leaving just the first two letters. So the letters in the circle should be ‘bu-ru’.
The doctor put the notebook that he had taken out the day before on the desk. It contained his five-year-old notes on the history of the Japanese ninja, including the secret alphabet of this clan of professional assassins, carefully copied out from a certain ancient treatise.
The green lamp shone with a peaceful light and the cosy shadows lay thick in the corners of the study. The house was sleeping. Both his daughters, Beth and Kate, had already said their prayers and gone to bed. Following a long-established custom very dear to Twigs’ heart, their father had gone to kiss them before they fell asleep – Beth on the right cheek and Kate on the left.
His elder daughter had turned out a genuine beauty, the very image of his dear departed Jenny, thought Twigs (this same thought visited him every evening when he wished his daughters good night). Kate was still an ugly duckling, and if her big, wide mouth and long nose were anything to go by, she was never going to be a good-looker, but he was less worried about her than her elder sister. Beth was the silent type, all she ever wanted to do was read novels, but Kate was bright and lively, the kind of girl that young men liked. The same thing had happened several times already: Beth acquired some new beau and then, before you could blink, he switched his attentions to the younger sister – she was jollier and easier to be with.
In order to keep their correspondence secret, the medieval ninja did not use the standard hieroglyphs, but a special alphabet, the so-called ‘shindai letters’, a very ancient form of writing reminiscent of the marks left by a snake crawling across wet sand.
Right, then, let’s take a look at how the symbol for ‘bu’ is written in these squiggles. There it is.
And now ‘ru’. It looks like this.
But what do we have in the circle? Quite different symbols. The first one looks like three snakes.
And the second one is like a whole knot of snakes.
But wait a moment, good sir! Both of these squiggles are also in the alphabet. The first is the syllable ‘to’, the second is the syllable ‘nu’, or simply ‘n’.
Hmm. Twigs scratched the bridge of his nose, bemused. What on earth is tonu? What has tonu got to do with anything? It doesn’t add up.
Evidently the writing in the diagram was not simply in the secret alphabet of the ninja, it had been additionally enciphered – each letter signified another one. Well now, that was even more interesting.
The doctor drummed his fingers on the table in keen anticipation of a long and fascinating job.
Forward, sir!
Of all the pleasures granted to man, the very greatest is to exercise his brains.
All right, all right.
We know that Suga uses the letter ‘to’ to represent ‘bu’, and the letter ‘nu’ to represent ‘ru’. These letters also occur in other circles: the former three times and the latter once.
So, let us proceed.
He picked up a magnifying glass and inspected the circle more closely. What are these tiny little lines above the three snakes? Dirt? No, they’re written in ink. They look like a nigori, the sign for voicing, which changes the syllable ‘ka’ to ‘ga’, ‘ta’ to ‘da’, ‘sa’ to ‘za’. That fits: ‘bu’ is a voiced syllable, there ought to be a nigori.
Twigs thoughtfully copied out the circle and the two symbols inside it.
Without any encipherment, it would read as a voiced ‘to’ (in other words ‘do’), plus ‘nu’ or ‘n’.
Hang on now, hang on …
The doctor rubbed his bald patch in agitation and half-rose out of his chair. But then, just at the crucial moment, the night bell attached to the wall above his desk started growling quietly. It was Lancelot Twigs’ own personal invention – he had had electric wires run from the doorbell to his study and bedroom, so that any late-night patients wouldn’t wake the girls.
Feeling highly annoyed, he set off towards the door, but stopped in the corridor before he got there. He mustn’t! Mr Asagawa had warned him very strictly: no night visitors, no opening the door for anyone.
‘Doctor! Is that you?’ a voice said outside. ‘Dr Twigs? I saw the plate on your door. Help me, for God’s sake!’
It was an agitated, almost tearful male voice with a Japanese accent.
‘I’m Jonathan Yamada, senior sales clerk at Simon, Evers and Company. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, open up!’
‘Why, what’s happened?’ asked Twigs, without the slightest intention of opening up.
‘My wife’s gone into labour!’
‘But I’m not an obstetrician.
You need Dr Buckle, he lives on …’
‘I know, I was taking my wife to Dr Buckle! But the carriage overturned! Just round the corner here! Doctor, I beg you! She’s hurt her head, there’s blood! She’ll die, Doctor!’
Twigs heard low, muffled sobbing.
If it had been anything else, Lancelot Twigs would probably not have opened the door, for he was a man of his word. But he remembered his poor Jenny and his own helplessness and hopeless despair.
‘Just a moment … just a moment.’
And he opened the door slightly, without taking it off the chain.
He saw a plump Japanese man in a bowler hat and frock coat, with his trembling face streaming with tears. The man immediately went down on his knees and held his hands up to the doctor.
‘I beg you! Come quickly!’
There was no one else in the street.
‘You know, I’m not well,’ Twigs muttered in embarrassment. ‘Dr Albertini, an excellent surgeon, lives on Hommura-dori Street. It’s only ten minutes away from here …’
‘While I run there, my wife will bleed to death! Save her!’
‘Ah, what is to be done with you!’
Of course, a man should keep his word, but there was also the Hippocratic oath …
He sighed and took the door off the chain.
The senior sales clerk Jonathan Yamada sobbed.
‘Thank you! Thank you! Allow me to kiss your hand.’
‘Nonsense! Come in. I’ll just change my shoes and get my instruments. Wait in the hallway, I’ll only be a moment.’
The doctor set off quickly towards his study – to get his bag and conceal the secret diagram. Or would it be best to take it with him? No, that probably wasn’t a good idea.
Either the sales clerk didn’t hear that he was supposed to wait in the hallway, or he was too agitated to think clearly, but he tagged along after the doctor, babbling all the time about kissing his hand.
‘At least allow me to shake your noble hand!’
‘Oh, be my guest,’ said Twigs, holding out his open right hand and taking hold of the door with his left. ‘I have to leave you for just a second …’
In his emotional fervour Jonathan Yamada squeezed the doctor’s hand with all his might.
‘Ow!’ Twigs exclaimed. ‘That hurts!’
He raised his hand to his eyes. A small drop of blood oozed out of the base of his middle finger.
The sales clerk started fussing again.
‘For God’s sake, forgive me! I have a ring, an old one, a family heirloom. Sometimes it turns round, it’s a bit too big. Did I scratch you? Did I scratch you? Oh, oh! I’m so sorry! Let me bandage it, I have a handkerchief, it’s clean!’
‘Don’t bother, it’s nothing,’ Twigs said with a frown, licking the wound with his tongue. ‘I’ll only be a moment. Wait.’
He closed the door behind him, walked across to the desk and staggered – everything had suddenly gone dark. He grabbed the top of the desk with both hands.
The sales clerk had apparently not stayed in the corridor after all, he had come into the study too, and now he was coolly rummaging through the doctor’s papers.
Twigs, however, was no longer concerned about Jonathan Yamada’s strange behaviour, he was feeling very unwell indeed.
He looked at the photograph of Jenny in a silver frame, standing on the small chest of drawers, and couldn’t tear his eyes away.
Lancelot’s retouched wife gazed back at him with a trusting, affectionate smile.
Everything changes,
Except for the same old face
In an old photo
DONG, DONG
Erast Petrovich did not sleep for very long, he kept glancing at his watch, and at half-past three he quietly got up. O-Yumi was asleep and he looked at her for half a minute, with an exceptionally powerful feeling that he would have found hard to express in words: never before had the world seemed so fragile and at the same time so durable; it could shatter into glassy fragments at the slightest breath of wind, or it could withstand the onslaught of the most violent hurricane.
The titular counsellor put his boots on in the corridor. Masa was sitting on the floor in front of the cupboard, with his head lowered on to his chest. Fandorin touched him on the shoulder and he jumped to his feet.
‘Go and sleep,’ Fandorin said in a whisper. ‘Neru. I’ll keep watch for a while.’
‘Hai,’ Masa said with a yawn, and set off towards his own room.
Erast Petrovich waited until he heard the sound of peaceful snuffling and smacking lips (he did not have to wait for more than a minute), and paid a visit to the prince.
Onokoji seemed to have made himself rather comfortable in his refuge. The shelves holding Masa’s supplies and small household items had been concealed by a blanket, there was a lamp, now extinguished, standing on the floor, and the remains of supper were lying on an empty crate. The prince himself was sleeping serenely, with his thin lips set in a subtle smile – His Excellency was apparently reposing in the delightful embrace of sweet dreams. After O-Yumi, to watch anyone else sleeping, especially an individual as distasteful as this one, seemed blasphemous to Erast Petrovich. Moreover, the source of the wondrous nocturnal visions was not in any doubt – there was an empty syringe glinting beside the pillow.
‘Get up,’ said Fandorin, shaking the witness by the shoulder. ‘Sh-sh-sh-sh. It is I, do not be afraid.’
But the idea of being afraid never entered Onokoji’s head. He opened his bleary eyes and smiled even more widely, still under the influence of the narcotic.
‘Get up. Get dressed. We’re going out.’
‘For a walk?’ The prince giggled. ‘With you, my dear friend – to the ends of the earth.’
As he pulled on his trousers and shoes, he jigged and twirled around, jabbering away without a pause – the vice-consul had to tell him to be quiet.
Fandorin led his disorderly companion out of the building by the elbow. To be on the safe side, he kept his other hand in his pocket, on the butt of his Herstal, but he didn’t take the gun out, in order not to frighten the prince.
It was drizzling and there was a smell of fog. As the fresh air started bringing Onokoji to his senses, he glanced round at the empty promenade and asked:
‘Where are you taking me?’
‘To a safer place,’ the titular counsellor explained, and Onokoji immediately calmed down.
‘I heard a woman’s voice in your apartment,’ he said in a sly voice. ‘And that voice sounded very familiar. Ve-ry, ve-ry familiar.’
‘That’s none of your business.’
It was a long walk to the thirty-seventh pier, long enough for the effect of the dope to wear off. The witness stopped jabbering and looked around nervously more and more often, but he didn’t ask any more questions. He must have been feeling cold – his shoulders were trembling slightly. Or perhaps the trembling was the result of the drug?
This looked like the place. Fandorin saw the number ‘37’ daubed in white paint on a low godaun. A long pier stretched out from the shore into the sea, its beginning lit up by a street lamp, and its far end lost in darkness. Set along it were the black silhouettes of boats, with their mooring cables creaking.
The wooden boards rumbled hollowly under their feet and water splashed somewhere down below. The darkness was not completely impenetrable, for the sky had already begun turning grey in anticipation of dawn.
Eventually the end of the pier came into sight. There was a mast jutting up from a large boat, and Inspector Asagawa in his police uniform, sitting on a bollard: they could see his cap and broad cloak with a hood.
Relieved, Erast Petrovich let go of his companion’s elbow and waved to the inspector.
Asagawa waved back. They were only about twenty steps away from the boat now.
Strange, the titular counsellor suddenly thought, why didn’t he get up to greet us?
‘Stop,’ Fandorin said to the prince, and he stopped walking himself.
&n
bsp; The seated man got up then, and he turned out to be a lot shorter than Asagawa. Has he sent another policeman instead of coming himself? Erast Petrovich wondered, but his hand was already pulling the revolver out of his pocket: God takes care of those who take care of themselves.
What happened next was quite incredible.
The policeman whipped the cap off his head, dropped the cloak – and he disappeared. There was no one under the cloak, just blackness!
The prince cried out in a shrill voice, and even Fandorin was seized by mystical horror. But the next moment the darkness stirred and they saw a figure in black, approaching them rapidly.
A ninja!
With a plaintive howl, Onokoji turned and took to his heels, and the vice-consul flung up his Herstal and fired.
The black figure was not running in a straight line, but in zigzags, squatting down or jumping up as it went, and performing all these manoeuvres with unbelievable speed – too fast for Fandorin to follow it with the barrel of his gun.
A second shot, a third, a fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh. Could every shot really have missed the target? The distance was only fifteen, ten, five paces!
When he was at close quarters with Erast Petrovich, the invisible man leapt high into the air and kicked the Herstal (now entirely useless anyway) out of Fandorin’s hand. The revolver rattled across the wooden decking and there, right in front of his face, the vice-consul saw two slanting eyes, like two blazing coals, in the slits of a black mask.
Once seen, those eyes could never be forgotten.
It was him! Him! The snake-charmer, the man with no face! He was alive!
The titular counsellor simply couldn’t understand how this was possible; in fact he couldn’t understand anything at all any more, but he was determined to sell his life dearly.
