David Peace - Tokyo Year Zero

Off-limits. Off-limits. Off-limits. Off-limits …

The Salon Matsu is just another shabby little building stained with dirt among all the other shabby little buildings stained with dirt, an unlit pink neon sign the only new thing here. I slide open the cracked glass door. There is a young Korean man sat in the genkan , before a split noren curtain. The Korean has a pageboy haircut and spectacles, loud-coloured trousers and a grey undershirt –

He sees us. He stands up. He starts to speak –

‘Shut up!’ I tell him. ‘Police raid!’

I tell Kimura to wait with the Korean in the genkan and then I lead Nishi through the split curtain into the kitchen-cum-waiting room where three Japanese women are sat with their blouses wide open and their skirts up round their thighs, fanning themselves –

They look up at us. They sigh. They roll their eyes –

‘What do you want this time?’ asks the oldest –

I tell her, ‘We’re from Tokyo Metro HQ.’

‘So what?’ she says. ‘We’ve paid.’

I offer her a cigarette. She takes it. I light it for her. I ask her, ‘Are you the mama here then?’

‘So what if I am?’ she asks, and then she winks and says, ‘You after a free ride?’

I take out the envelope. I take out the clipping from the Asahi . I show her the advertisement. I ask her, ‘Are you still hiring?’

‘Why?’ she laughs. ‘You’re too ugly even for here.’

The other girls laugh. I hand out more cigarettes –

I ask her, ‘Do you do the interviews yourself?’

‘Why?’ she asks again. ‘So what if I do?’

‘Come on, play the game,’ I tell her. ‘Answer the questions and then we can all go home.’

She snorts. She says, ‘Home? Where’s my home? This is my home , officer. You like it?’

‘Listen,’ I tell her. ‘The body of a young girl was found up in Shiba Park, up behind Zōjōji. It had been there a while and it is impossible to identify…’

Now they are listening to me, smoking my cigarettes, sweating like pigs and fanning their thighs; the pictures in their heads, the pictures behind their eyes –

The Dead …

‘This advertisement was in one of her pockets, so we are here to see if you can identify her, help us put a name to her body…’

‘So how did she die?’ asks one of the girls –

The picture in her head, behind her eyes …

‘Raped and then throttled,’ I say –

The pictures of the Dead …

There is silence here now, behind the split curtain in this kitchen-cum-waiting room, silence but for the giggles and the groans from upstairs rooms, the panting and the pounding –

Ton-ton-ton-ton-ton-ton-ton-ton-ton-ton …

‘Who says she came here first?’ asks the mama . ‘Poor thing might have been on her way here when…’

‘That’s what I’ve come to find out, to talk to you about…’

‘But you haven’t given us a description,’ she says. ‘How would I know if she was here or not?’

I ask her again, ‘So do you do the interviews yourself?’

‘Not just me,’ she says. ‘Me and Mr. Kim do them.’

‘Is that him outside?’ I ask her. ‘Mr. Kim?’

‘He’s a Kim,’ she laughs. ‘But not him.’

‘Where’s the real Mr. Kim then?’

‘He’ll be here tomorrow.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Recruiting.’

‘Where?’

‘Where? Where? Where?’ she laughs and rolls her eyes. She puts out her cigarette. She picks up a mirror. She primps her perm –

I think about her all the time. I think about her all the time …

‘Ninety per cent of all the girls that come through our door have come from the International Palace,’ she says. ‘Now that doesn’t mean your dead girl did, but it doesn’t mean she didn’t…’

I turn to Detective Nishi. I tell him, ‘Please describe the body and the clothing of the victim for this lady.’

But Detective Nishi is miles away, lost between the breasts and thighs of these girls. Now Nishi blushes, reaches for his notebook and stammers, ‘The victim was approximately seventeen or eighteen years old with shoulder-length permed hair, wearing a yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress, a white half-sleeved chemise, dyed-pink socks and white canvas shoes with red rubber soles…’

‘We’re all corpses then,’ laughs the mama . ‘All ghosts…’

‘It could be anyone,’ says another one of the girls –

Made of tears. Made of tears. Made of tears …

‘She’s all of us,’ says the mama . ‘Every woman in Japan.’

Tokyo, 87°, moonless & cloudy

The three of us leave the Salon Matsu, leave Kanda and walk back towards Headquarters. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari . This time we walk back along the other side of the tracks, the Nihonbashi side, on the opposite side to the old Imperial Palace and the new. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari . This side we don’t have to show our notebooks –

There are no Victors here. No white stars. No lights at all –

From Sotobori to the Yaesu entrance of Tokyo station –

Five trucks in a row. Five trucks full of Formosans –

But not all Formosans, some are Japanese…

Kimura looks at Nishi. Nishi looks at me –

No radio. No telephone. No car…

‘Boss?’ shouts Nishi. ‘What are you doing, Boss? Boss?’

I am walking towards the five trucks. I am taking out my police notebook. I am holding up my ID. I am approaching the passenger door of the first truck. I’m reaching up and opening the door of the truck and shouting, ‘I want you out of these trucks now!’

But now I’m looking up at a submachine gun –

Skin to the metal, metal to the skin…

Fingers on the trigger of the gun –

Bullet through my skin…

I am waiting to die –

Praying…

But the bullet never comes; not yesterday, not today and not tomorrow; not over there and not back here –

I can’t die. I can’t die…

It’s not a bullet to the gut that sends me sprawling back across the ground, it’s a boot to the gut as the trucks speed away down Sotobori-dōri towards Shimbashi –

Towards Senju Akira –

I’m already dead .

*

By the time I have got back to my feet, by the time Kimura, Nishi and I have started to run, by the time we have reached Headquarters, by the time we have repeated and reported our story four or five times, by the time we have been given a telephone that works, by the time we have requested reinforcements, by the time the reinforcements have been raised, by the time the reinforcements have been deployed, by the time we all get down to the Shimbashi Market –

It’s too late…

The Formosan trucks have been and gone –

The shots have been fired –

The blood spilled –

The battle over –

For now –

‘Kuso Formosan shits,’ Senju’s men, the former Matsuda men, all cursing. ‘Kuso American shits. Kuso police shits. Kuso Formosan shits. Kuso American shits. Kuso police shits. Kuso …’

‘Kuso … Kuso … Kuso … Kuso…’

Two dead. Eight injured –

But not Senju Akira –

Never Senju –

Senju with a short sword in one hand and a pistol in the other, his sleeveless white undershirt and the top of his haramaki spotted with fresh blood –

‘Lucky I was elsewhere on business,’ says Senju. ‘A stray bullet here, a stray bullet there and then where would we be?’