David Peace - Tokyo Year Zero

I have skimmed the evidence and statements in the files. I have seen the hopes and fears in their eyes. I say, ‘Let them look.’

‘They can wait,’ says Kai. ‘Until after the autopsies…’

‘Why not just let these five look? It might help us…’

‘Why?’ he says. ‘They’ll either be lucky or late.’

‘Let them look before the autopsy,’ I say again.

‘No.’

‘What if it was your daughter that was missing?’ I ask him. ‘Would you want to see her after an autopsy?’

Inspector Kai stops in the corridor now. Inspector Kai says, ‘My daughter is dead. My daughter burned to death in an air-raid shelter. My daughter had no autopsy…’

Now I shut up. Now I remember. Now it’s too late. Now I say, ‘I am sorry. I’m really sorry…’

But Kai is away from me now and away from the five mothers, already half-way down the corridor. Down the narrow corridor to the service elevator. To push the elevator button. To wait. To watch the elevator doors open. To step inside. For me to follow him. To push another button. To watch the elevator doors close –

There are no electric light bulbs in here, for the sake of economy one of the orderlies tells us, and so we ride down in an elevator so dark that I cannot see my hand before my face –

I think about her all the time …

I cannot see the body on the gurney beside me. The body on the gurney parked up against my leg. The body that smells –

That smells of fruit, that smells of rotten apricots …

The elevator stops. The elevator doors open –

The light returns. The half-light . The basement not much brighter than the elevator. Half-things move in the half-light . People and insects drawn like magnets towards the few naked bulbs there are. Half-things . The people working in their shirtsleeves or their undershirts; the insects feasting on their sweat and their skin, their flesh and their bone. In the half-light . This labyrinth of corridors and rooms. Here where the dead come . The tiled walls of sinks, of drains. Where the dead live . The written warnings of cuts, of punctures. Here in the half-light . The orderlies washing and rinsing their hands and their forearms, again and again. Here. Down here …

The autopsy room is along the corridor to the right, beyond the mortuary. There are slippers waiting for our feet, the room itself back beyond a set of glass doors, bomb tape still upon the glass –

She is coming now. She is coming …

Dr. Nakadate is waiting for us outside the autopsy room, before the glass doors, before the tape. Nakadate is finishing his cigarette, smoking it right down to the stub –

A familiar face, a familiar place …

Dr. Nakadate glances up at us. He greets us with a smile. ‘Good morning, detectives.’

‘Good morning,’ we reply. ‘We are very sorry we are late.’

‘There are no clocks down here,’ says Dr. Nakadate –

He puts out his cigarette and opens the glass doors to the autopsy room where five junior medical examiners in grubby grey laboratory coats are already gathered round the three autopsy tables and two smaller dissecting tables; the three autopsy tables which stand on the concrete floor in the centre of the room, three elongated octagonal tables made of white marble and of German design, slanted for drainage with raised edges to prevent leakage –

I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari …

She is coming …

The glass doors open again. The first body is brought in from the mortuary under a grey sheet on old wheels. The grey sheet is removed. The body lifted from the gurney –

In the half-light, she is here …

The naked body of the first woman lain out on the table –

Here where half-things move in the half-light …

Her body seems longer, paler. Eyes open, mouth ajar –

‘And I am here because of you,’ she says …

Her sex is noted. Her age estimated at eighteen –

‘Here where there is pain…’

Her weight is taken. Her height measured –

Here in the half-light …

Dr. Nakadate puts on a stained surgical gown and a pair of rubber gloves. The orderlies raise the body. The orderlies place a rubber body block beneath it. Her breasts and chest rise upwards, her arms and neck fall backwards –

I turn away now.

‘There is still no name?’ asks the doctor. ‘No identification?’

I glance over at Inspector Kai and I say, ‘No names yet.’

‘Then this is Number One. The next is Number Two.’

I nod. I take out my pencil. I lick its tip.

Nakadate begins his gross observations on the exterior condition of the first body, one of his assistants noting down everything he says on the chalkboard on the wall, another writing in a large hospital notebook, the observations in German and Latin –

Mumbled evocations. Muttered incantations …

‘Irises are black, corneas clouded,’ intones the doctor. ‘Haemorrhaging in the surfaces…’

I look up again –

She is watching the doctor, watching him work …

‘Removal of a piece of material from the neck reveals a ligature mark — to be known as Ligature A — below the mandible…’

She is staring up at the fabric he holds …

‘Minor abrasions present in the area of Ligature A but the lack of haemorrhage suggests Ligature A is post-mortem…’

She opens and closes her eyes …

‘Heavy bruising on the neck is of a pattern that suggests an attempt was made to throttle the victim…’

She swallows now as …

‘In the same area as the bruising on the neck, a second ligature mark is present — to be known as Ligature B — which encircles the neck, crossing the anterior midline of the neck just below the laryngeal prominence…’

As she remembers …

‘The skin of the anterior neck above and below Ligature B shows petechial haemorrhaging…’

Her own death …

‘The absence of abrasions here is consistent with the use of a softer ligature…’

‘Like a haramaki?’ asks Kai.

Dr. Nakadate looks up from her neck. He nods. ‘Yes, like a haramaki , Inspector Kai.’

Kai looks across at me. I open my mouth to start to speak. To ask him again. Inspector Kai shakes his head. I stop –

Dr. Nakadate has moved down her body to her genital area. ‘There is evidence of forced sexual activity here…’

Here there is pain. Pain is here …

‘Pre- or post-mortem?’ I ask him –

‘I am here because of you…’

Dr. Nakadate looks across her body at me. He holds up a finger. ‘One moment please, inspector.’

Her cheeks blush, her eyes close …

‘Possibly both,’ he says –

Here is pain. Pain is here …

Dr. Nakadate and his assistants now minutely examine every part of her skin, every nail and every hair, every tooth and every orifice, every spot and every blemish –

‘Are there any distinguishing features for identification, doctor?’ I ask him. ‘Anything…’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘There is evidence of a small whitlow scar on her left thumb…’

I look over again at Inspector Kai. Kai making his own notes. I cough. I clear my throat. I start to speak again, to say, ‘Then maybe we should let the mothers see the body now, Inspector Kai?’

Dr. Nakadate stops his observations. He looks up –

‘No,’ says Inspector Kai again.

‘But with this scar,’ I say. ‘And the haramaki , the five darned holes in the haramaki …’

‘No,’ says Kai.