David Peace - Tokyo Year Zero

In a similar manner, the maniac admitted killing Abe Yoshiko, aged sixteen years, in Shinagawa, Tokyo, on the ninth of June this year. This girl was also raped .

In all cases, rape accompanies the killing, and in each instance, the body was hidden or buried under dead leaves about thirty to fifty metres away from the scene of the crime. Each victim was strangled to death by her own haramaki sash .

The only case in which the murderer knew the victim and the family well was in the instance of Midorikawa Ryuko, the last of his victims, and which was the first clue to the identity of the killer and which eventually led to the arrest of Kodaira. All the rest of his victims were total strangers to the murderer .

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Board plan to question the sex crazed killer about four further murders; seventeen-year-old Shinokawa Tatsue who was raped and murdered in the basement of the Toyoko Department Store in Shibuya and whose umbrella was found at the home of Kodaira’s wife’s family in Toyama, and the murders of Baba Hiroko, Ishikawa Yori and Nakamura Mitsuko, whose bodies were all found in Tochigi Prefecture near Kodaira’s family home .

I finish the newspaper. There have been others . I finish the cigarette. No mention of Miyazaki Mitsuko . The dogs wait for me. There have been others . The children wait for me. No mention of the second Shiba body . In the rain. There have been others . In the ruins.

*

In the half-light, I can hear the wind against the door, rattling around the roof and under the eaves of her house. But there is no rain, there is no thunder tonight, just the clatter of sandals and the calls of children in the streets outside. I shouldn’t have come here, not tonight . Tonight I should have stayed at home with my wife and children. My wife serving up their dinner of zōsui , my children’s bowls in their outstretched hands, asking their mother for more –

‘ Okawari… Okawari… Okawari…’

Yuki stands hands on hips, barefoot on the earthen floor of the hallway, and looks out between the ribbons –

I should not be here, not tonight …

‘But you’ll stay awhile longer?’

I nod and I thank her.

Yuki opens a cupboard. She takes out a saucer of pickled radish and a small aluminum saucepan. She sniffs at the contents of the pan and shrugs. She places it on the charcoal embers –

‘And you’ll eat with me, won’t you?’

I nod again and I thank her again.

She lifts up the lid of the pan –

‘Are you married?’ she asks.

*

Night is still day here. The queues through the gates, the queues to the doors, the queues in the corridors. I have spent too long here . I run through the gates, through the doors and down the corridors. Past the queues, past the patients and past the gurneys to the elevator. Hours, days and weeks . I push the button, I step inside, and I press another button. The doors close and I ride the elevator down in the dark. Weeks, months and years . The doors open –

Here in the half-light, the half-things …

I run past the tiled walls of sinks, of drains, the written warnings of cuts, of punctures, to the mortuary –

She is here. She is here. She is here …

I read the names of the dead –

She is here. She is here …

I pull open the casket –

She is here …

No name –

Here …

I take out her clothes and now I take out her bones –

Half-things in the half-light, the half-things …

I put her clothes in my army knapsack –

Here, here in the half-light …

I put her bones in my bag –

Debts to the dead …

Down the corridor of tiled walls and written warnings, I push the button and I wait for the elevator. I glance into a mirror above a sink. I glance away. Now I glance back into the glass –

‘I almost didn’t recognize you…’

Her bones on my back, I stare into the glass –

No one is who they seem …

I vomit in the sink. Black bile . I vomit again. Brown bile . Four times I vomit. Black bile, brown bile, yellow bile and grey …

I stare into the mirror above the sink –

I scream, ‘I know who I am!’

Now I smash the glass, breaking the mirror into one thousand pieces, one thousand pieces falling, falling to the ground –

Broken and splintered …

‘I know who I am!’

*

I shouldn’t still be here. Not tonight. I should have gone home to my wife and children. But in the half-light, I watch Yuki at dinner. There is still no rain tonight, no sound of thunder, only the wind, louder than the radio now. She finishes her second bowl of rice. She rinses her chopsticks and then her bowl. She puts the utensils back into the cupboard. She puts a hand to her mouth, stifles a belch and laughs –

‘I suppose your wife is much more polite than me?’

My heart aches and my body stinks –

I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari …

Behind the six-panel screen, two pillows placed side by side, she is dressed in a yellow kimono with a dark-blue stripe; the collar is off her shoulder, her hand upon my knee –

I think about her all the time …

I run my hand up her back –

She haunts me …

Her hairbrush in one hand, she leans forward to stare at herself in the three panels of her vanity mirror –

She turns to look at me and smiles –

She has dyed her teeth black –

She drops the brush, ton , and asks, ‘Does this become me?’

*

The chief has reserved the same room in the same recently reopened restaurant near Daimon, the one near the kitchens of the Victors. The chief is treating the whole of the First Investigative Division to a celebratory meal. The whole of the First Investigative Division sitting sleeve against sleeve, knee against knee on the new mats –

There is no Ishida. No Fujita. No Adachi or me …

There is beer and there is food; zanpan from the Victors’ dustbins, the men grateful not to eat zōsui again –

Raising their glasses, taking off their ties, tying them around their foreheads and singing their songs; their songs of endeavour, their songs of courage, their songs of battle –

Their songs of victory –

Case closed!

But there are only the names of three detectives on the interrogation report; Adachi, Kanehara and Kai –

Three names and one signature –

Kodaira Yoshio .

The other detectives from Room #1 and Room #2, the uniforms from Atago, Meguro and Mita, the other detectives and uniforms from Saitama and Tochigi Prefectures –

Dogs starved at their masters’ feet …

Their names are all missing –

Beneath their tables …

But no one cares; everyone still talking about Kodaira Yoshio, about his confession to the murder of Kondo Kazuko, twenty-two years old, of Jujo, Kita Ward, Tokyo, whom Kodaira had met queuing for a ticket at Ikebukuro station on the fifteenth of July last year, whom he took into the woods at Kiyose-mura, Kita Tama-gun, out in Saitama Prefecture, and throttled and raped and then robbed of sixty yen and her paulownia geta clogs –

Death is here …

Everyone still talking about Kodaira Yoshio, about his confession to the murder of Matsushita Yoshie, twenty years old, also of Kita Ward, Tokyo, whom he had met in a queue at Tokyo station on the twenty-eighth of September last year, whom he took into the same woods at Kiyose-mura and throttled and raped and then robbed of one hundred and eighty yen, her handbag, her best black suit jacket and her mother’s umbrella –