David Peace - Tokyo Year Zero

I step into the chief’s office. I apologize. I bow –

No Adachi. No Kanehara. No Kai. Just me …

‘Please sit down,’ he says. ‘You look hot…’

I bow and I apologize again. I sit down –

He hands me some tea. ‘Drink…’

I take the tea. I thank him –

‘It’s always hot in this city,’ says Chief Kita. ‘I hate it, this city heat. I have bought a little land, you know? Near Atami. I’ve started to cultivate it. Look…’

Chief Kita holds out his hands across his desk. There are calluses on these hands –

‘These are real calluses,’ he says. ‘From the land. Because the land is important. The land keeps us alive. The land keeps us close to the people…’

Chief Kita has lost both his sons; one dead in China, one missing in Siberia …

I nod. I agree with him. I put down the tea –

‘How was Nakadate?’ asks the chief –

‘Dr. Nakadate thinks that both bodies found in Shiba Park were probably murdered by the same person.’

‘Does he really?’ says Chief Kita. ‘Now do you think that makes things easier or more difficult for us?’

‘I would hope it makes things easier,’ I say. ‘There surely needs to be only one investigation now…’

I stop speaking. It’s too late –

I curse! I curse! I curse!

The chief looks across his desk at me. He tuts. He smiles –

I curse myself! I curse myself! I curse myself!

‘I just don’t think there’s any need for two…’

The chief has one finger raised now –

I curse myself! I curse myself!

‘I am sorry,’ I say. ‘I don’t mean…’

The chief sighs. The chief shakes his head. The chief asks, ‘Why don’t you want this case, inspector?’

‘It’s not that I don’t want it,’ I tell him. ‘It’s just that I —’

‘You want to transfer? To transfer to Room #6?’

‘Yes,’ I say and then, ‘But it’s not just that…’

‘You know Kanehara and Adachi think I am too soft with you? They think I indulge you when I should reprimand you?’

I bow my head. I apologize –

‘And I know they are right,’ he says. ‘But I knew your father and your father was a good friend to me and so I have obligations to his memory and thus to his son…’

I apologize again –

‘And in times such as these,’ he continues, ‘I believe honouring one’s obligations is more important than anything else, that by honouring our obligations we will be able to survive these times and rebuild our country…’

I glance up at the scroll on the wall behind his desk, that blood-flecked scroll on which is written, ‘It is time to reveal the true essence of the nation.’

‘Now is not the time to forget our obligations,’ he says. ‘They are who we are.’

‘I am very sorry,’ I tell him. ‘I have made unreasonable demands on you…’

‘Your eyes are red,’ says the chief. ‘Be careful how you go.’

*

The day is still unbearably hot and I need a drink. I need a meal and I need a cigarette. I take a different route back to Shiba Park through one of the many makeshift markets where street vendors have set up their stalls and stands with their straw mats and reed screens. They squat in what shade there is and shout out their wares, their faces red and their tempers short, fans in their hands and towels on their heads, the men might be women and the women might be men –

But there is drink here. Food and cigarettes –

Here among the shrieks of the vendors and the clatter of their plates, as open-mouthed customers stagger from stall to stall staring with bloodshot eyes at the goods and the food, clutching their crumpled old notes and misshapen bellies –

Drink and food and cigarettes –

I watch a vendor slap putrid sardines on a corrugated grill. I smell the oil on the metal and I listen as the hungry come running with their notes and their bellies –

I can’t eat this food.

I turn away. I keep walking. I come to a woman who is selling rice-balls, each one wrapped in a thin piece of seaweed –

‘Three yen,’ says the woman. ‘Polished rice…’

But there are ten or twenty flies on each rice-ball, the seaweed torn and the rice old. I turn away from the stall and stare up and down the marketplace, looking and listening out for drink or cigarettes –

I watch the man on the next stand but one. I watch him sell candies and sweets from a kerosene drum. I watch him reach inside that metal drum and also bring out packs of American cigarettes –

I walk over to the stand. ‘How much for just one pack?’

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ says the man –

The man wears an undershirt, shorts and army boots –

‘Please?’ I ask him. ‘How much for just a pack…?’

The man stares at me and says, ‘One hundred yen.’

‘How about two packs for one hundred yen?’

The man laughs. ‘Get lost, you bum…’

I look around. I take out my police notebook. I hold it in front of me so that he can see it but no one else. I say, ‘Four packs.’

‘Say what?’ says the man. ‘You’re joking…’

I shake my head. I say again, ‘Four packs.’

The man sighs. The man reaches down inside the kerosene drum. The man brings out four packs of Lucky Strike –

‘There you are, officer,’ he says.

I take the cigarettes. I turn –

‘Stop! Put that back now you thieving little bastard…’

I turn back. The woman at the rice-ball stall has a young boy by his wrist. The boy has a rice-ball in his hand –

I have seen this boy somewhere before …

The young boy is caked black in rags and filth which the heat and his sweat have stuck one to the other, the dirt to the cloth, the cloth to his skin, his face and hands covered in blisters and boils which weep fresh pus in the market sun –

I have seen this boy before …

‘Let go,’ the woman shouts –

But the boy will not let go and he leans in towards her and bites down into her hand and the woman jumps back in pain as she pushes the young boy away –

Back into me –

Banzai!

Biting into the rice-ball as he falls, swallowing it whole as he goes, the boy sends me sprawling back into a stall and onto the ground but before I can hold him, before I can stand, the boy is up and away, into the crowd which now stands and stares down at me –

Among them the man in the undershirt, the shorts and the army boots who shakes his head and says, ‘The thieving bastard.’

*

My trousers are coated in dust. My back aches from the fall. It is 4 p.m. now. I find some of my team sat on the slopes of Shiba Park; Hattori, Takeda, Sanada and Shimoda slumped in the shade with their hats in their hands, swatting at flies and mosquitoes. They struggle to their feet as they see me approach, bowing and apologizing, making their excuses and their reports. I give them cigarettes. I don’t care. I’m not listening. I’m looking for the others. For Detective Fujita –

Hattori, Takeda, Sanada and Shimoda scratch their skulls and suck in air, they shake their heads and say, ‘Detective Fujita was here before. He was definitely here before. But now he’s not…’

‘How about Nishi? Kimura? Ishida?’ I ask them –

Hattori, Takeda, Sanada and Shimoda peer into the sun and shield their eyes, they point up the hill and say, ‘Detectives Nishi and Kimura went up there with the woodcutter…’

‘And where’s Ishida?’ I ask them –

Now Hattori, Takeda, Sanada and Shimoda have a think before they say, ‘With Detective Fujita.’

I turn to go, to walk away, but turn instead to face Adachi –

‘Hard at work as usual,’ says Chief Inspector Adachi –