David Peace - Tokyo Year Zero

Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …

I turn their shoes to face the door –

Ton-ton. Ton-ton …

I turn away and I walk away, itching and scratching, gari-gari , wiping my face and wiping my neck, as I start to run, to run away.

*

Tominaga Noriko’s last known address was in Ōimachi, near to where Abe Yoshiko’s body was found. Near to where Kodaira Yoshio works. Kodaira country . Near to where Miyazaki Mitsuko was murdered. Near to where Yuki lives. My country …

Tominaga Noriko’s landlady invites me into her house and then up the stairs to Tominaga Noriko’s rented little room at the end of the second-floor passage, next to a bathroom –

‘I dust,’ she says. ‘But, other than that, it’s just as she left it.’

‘Why is that?’ I ask her. ‘Why don’t you rent it out again?’

‘The same reason I reported her missing, I suppose.’

‘Why?’ I ask her again. ‘Just another tenant …?’

The landlady goes over to the small window and opens it. She shakes her head. ‘But Noriko wasn’t just another tenant, you see…

‘She’d lost both her parents and her younger sister in the March air raids, her elder brother still missing in China…

‘I have no one either now, you see. My husband is long dead and my sons are both dead too, one killed in the south early on and one killed in the north. My eldest was married but he had no children, his wife already remarried. I don’t begrudge or blame her, these are the times we live in, but I have no one now but this house which was spared and the people who live here…

‘Noriko had been here just over six months, a very pretty girl, a very polite and very friendly girl. Because of all your inquiries after the murder of her friend, I know now the kind of life Noriko led, but I never ever would have guessed…

‘Noriko was so very quick to share whatever extra food or clothing she managed to get hold of, no matter what she had done for it, no matter what it had cost her…’

‘Asobu …? Asobu …?’

I nod. I ask, ‘So when did Miss Tominaga go missing?’

‘About a month after her friend was killed, I think.’

‘So that would be early to mid July?’

‘Yes,’ agrees the landlady. ‘But it was definitely before the fifteenth of July because that was the date that the rent was due on her room. And so that was when I became worried…’

‘So when did you report her missing?’

‘Not until the start of this month.’

I ask her, ‘Why did you wait?’

‘I thought she might have just gone off for a bit, you see. Because of what had happened to her friend, because of all your investigations into her and her friends, because of all your questions, because of all your insinuations…’

‘So if Miss Tominaga had just gone off for a bit, where do you think she would have gone?’

Tominaga Noriko’s landlady turns away now. Tominaga Noriko’s landlady looks out of the window and does not answer –

‘You said she might have just gone off for a bit; so where?’

The landlady shakes her head. ‘It’s too late. She’s dead.’

‘You don’t know that,’ I say. ‘Maybe she’s scared.’

The landlady shakes her head again. ‘It’s too late.’

‘Maybe she just got scared and she ran away.’

Tominaga Noriko’s landlady walks over to an old wooden chest of drawers. Tominaga Noriko’s landlady opens the drawers. Tominaga Noriko’s landlady says, ‘But Noriko would never leave all her clothes behind, never leave all her cosmetics…’

‘But you don’t know that for certain,’ I tell her again. ‘People’s plans can change quickly these days.’

‘But Noriko would never not say goodbye,’ she tells me. ‘She would never leave like that, you see.’

I walk over to the chest of drawers. I touch the clothes inside. I walk over to the dresser. I touch the jars of cosmetics. I take the cover off the mirror. I touch the glass –

‘Does this become me…?’

I say, ‘There was a man, wasn’t there?’

Tominaga Noriko’s landlady catches a sob in her throat, puts a hand to her mouth. Now Tominaga Noriko’s landlady closes the drawers, covers the mirror and says, ‘You should know, detective.’

‘What do you mean?’ I ask. ‘How should I know?’

‘He was one of you, wasn’t he?’ she whispers –

‘She was seeing a policeman?’

‘For all the good it did her.’

Now I take out my notebook but I do not open it. I ask her, ‘Did you ever see Miss Tominaga wear a yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress over a white half-sleeved chemise…’

The woman is crying. The woman nodding now –

‘Dyed-pink socks and white canvas shoes…’

Nodding now and crying and crying –

‘With red rubber soles…’

‘Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!’ she is crying as she opens the drawers again, pulling out the clothes and sending them into the air as she frantically searches for a yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress, a white half-sleeved chemise and a pair of dyed-pink socks –

But these clothes are not here and neither am I –

Our body has a name. Our case closed …

I am running back down the stairs now –

Case closed! Case closed! Case …

Out of the house and straight into the face of a uniformed policeman asking, ‘Are you Inspector Minami?’

‘What is it?’ I ask him. ‘What is it?’

‘Excuse me, sir,’ he says. ‘There is a meeting of all divisions, sections, and rooms at Metropolitan Headquarters…’

‘How did you know you’d find me here?’

‘Chief Inspector Adachi told me I’d find you here, sir.’

*

The chiefs of all the divisions are here. The heads of all the sections. The heads of every room. The chiefs of every single police station.

The Victors have also sent their observers and their spies; their Nisei translators; their collaborators in their turncoats; race traitors, these banana boys, with their yellow skins and white hearts –

‘Asobu …? Asobu …? Asobu …? Asobu …?’

Down at the very front of the room, Fujimoto Yoshio, the chief of the Metropolitan Police Defence Bureau, stands up and begins his speech about the events of last night –

‘Gentlemen, as you know, though such cases have occurred before in Osaka and in Kobe, this is the first case of Formosans openly attacking a police station in Tokyo…

‘Details remain sketchy for now; however, it is reported that approximately five hundred Formosans, possibly aided by a further five hundred Chinese and Korean allies, all of whom are angry at their perceived exclusion from the New Life Market in Shimbashi, boarded at least five trucks at the Yaesu entrance of Tokyo station at about 7 p.m. last night. They then drove to the site of this Shimbashi New Life Market, where they rode about in a repetition of previous incidents at the market, hoping to confront members of the former Matsuda group. However, as the market is temporarily closed, there were no members of the Matsuda group present on this occasion and no confrontation occurred there. There are reports, however, that a few machine-gun bursts were heard…

‘But finding no Matsuda group members at the Shimbashi New Life Market, the Formosans then headed in their trucks for the Shibuya precinct station and, on arriving there at approximately 9 p.m., they were met by over two hundred policemen who had been assigned to guard the station…

‘Police initially stopped the trucks but then allowed them to pass when the Formosans insisted they were there only to peacefully visit the Kakyō Sōkai headquarters at the request of representatives of the Chinese Mission to Tokyo. However, as the trucks passed through the police lines, occupants of at least one truck opened fire on the police, aiming at the chief of the Shibuya police and seriously wounding two officers…’