Ryu Murakami - Piercing

Arranged neatly on the L-shaped table that dominated the room were all the implements Yoko needed to teach the day’s classes.

‘We’ll have to get you packed, then,’ she said with a natural, unforced smile. ‘Just be sure to keep in touch. I mean, don’t forget to call.’

I won’t forget, Kawashima said, nodding. He walked into the bedroom and bent over the crib to peer at the baby. Lightly touching her downy cheek, he whispered, so Yoko wouldn’t hear:

Everything’s going to be all right.

FOUR DAYS LATER, KAWASHIMA was checking in at the Akasaka Prince Hotel. He used his JCB card and registered under his real name. It was a twin room with a view of Tokyo Tower in the distance, and he’d reserved it for a week. He’d never taken any serious vacation time before, and for that reason — and in recognition of his just having won the jazz festival account — the firm had immediately agreed to his request and even presented him with nearly nine hundred thousand yen in cash for expenses. His boss had joked, in typically poor taste, that the idea of observing salarymen was brilliant, but not to fall in love with one and end up with AIDS.

Kawashima checked in shortly after noon and gave Yoko a call first thing. He could hear the babble of middle-aged women in the background and could almost smell the freshly baked bread. Neither Yoko nor anyone at the office had seemed the least bit suspicious of his motives. Come to think of it, he reflected as he sat back on the sofa and gazed out at the heart of the city settling into dusk. . Come to think of it, somewhere along the line I became a man who never does anything people consider suspicious. Maybe something fundamental had changed since the old days — since parting with the stripper. He’d gone back to school, taken up drawing again, found a job and met Yoko, and he often felt as if he wasn’t even the same person he’d been as a teenager. But if he was someone different now, which of the two was the real him? They’re both the real you , some part of him whispered, but the rest of him wasn’t so sure. Sometimes the old and new selves seemed completely unrelated.

Inspired by a magazine article he’d read and photocopied in the library, Kawashima had decided to buy a knife as well as an ice pick. The article was about a thirty-two-year-old ‘soap tart’ who’d been found murdered in a hotel room, with her Achilles tendons severed. An anonymous police detective had volunteered this explanation: ‘When you cut the Achilles tendon, the sound it makes is as loud and sharp as a gunshot. The killer must have known that and taken pleasure in it.’ Kawashima decided that before stabbing the victim’s stomach with an ice pick — or afterwards, if need be — he’d slice her Achilles tendons. He was curious what it would sound like exactly. And he wanted to see the expression on the woman’s face when it happened.

Thinking about these things didn’t set his pulse racing or leave him staring into space, grinning and drooling. He experienced, rather, a sort of creative calm similar to his state of mind when pondering which photo to use for a poster. His heartbeat had been a problem during the ten days he’d lived in fear of stabbing the baby, but not since that night in the convenience store. Between the man who was coolly deciding to cut his victim’s Achilles tendons and wondering what it would sound like, and the man who’d smiled at his wife that very morning in a room saturated with the fragrance of freshly baked bread, there was clearly a gap. Exactly what the gap consisted of he couldn’t have said, but he knew there was one.

He got up and closed the curtains. From his briefcase he took the magazine article, an S&M magazine, a weekly sex-industry guide, and a notebook. He sat down at the desk and began making notes in an attempt to marshal his thoughts.

First of all, the victim would have to be a prostitute — it was the only logical choice. But what type of prostitute should he choose? That was important, as was the question of where the killing was to take place. He’d been hauled in by the cops once years ago for sniffing thinner, but they’d never taken his fingerprints. The cops were at a big disadvantage when a murderer wasn’t acquainted with the victim and had no previous record. He’d already determined that he couldn’t just stab the woman — he had to be sure and kill her. Naturally it would be best if her body were never discovered, but trying to dispose of the corpse would involve unacceptable risks. She’d have to be a freelancer, with no pimp or office or syndicate to report to. Stab her in some dark, deserted alley, maybe? Luring a streetwalker into an alley under the pretence of negotiating a price would be simple enough, but in such a dimly lit place he wouldn’t have a clear view of the ice pick puncturing her stomach, and he probably wouldn’t have time to slash her Achilles tendons.

Walking through the Kabuki-cho district of Shinjuku two nights ago, he’d confirmed that most of the freelance streetwalkers were from overseas, particularly South-East Asia. Among the advantages of choosing such a woman was the fact that any search for her would be half-hearted at best, since she was unlikely even to be in Japan legally. But it was essential that the flesh he pierced with the ice-pick be as white as possible. And now that he thought about it, not even a fair-skinned foreigner would do. If the victim didn’t speak Japanese well, it would be difficult to set things up properly, and, besides, it was imperative that her expressions of terror and anguish be in Japanese. Why? He wondered about that for a moment but stopped when an image of his mother threatened to form in his mind. He must concentrate only on the business at hand.

No, it would be insane to do it in an alley or park or vacant lot, or anywhere outdoors. He’d have to get a separate room somewhere. The sex businesses that would send girls to a customer’s hotel room were limited to soap-tart services, erotic massage operations, and S&M clubs. As soon as the ice pick made its appearance, the woman was likely to try to flee. And to scream. She’d have to be restrained, and for an extended period of time, since she wouldn’t die right away — after all, he wasn’t going to be stabbing her in the heart. It would be best to watch her expire slowly, from loss of blood, but of course you couldn’t get that much blood-flow from ice-pick wounds. You could cause death by internal bleeding, puncturing certain organs, but what good was that if you couldn’t watch it happening?

In any case, the first step would be to get the woman tied up and gagged. That meant S&M. Apparently most S&M clubs wouldn’t send their girls to ‘love hotels’. The advantage of a love hotel was the shutter at the front desk that prevents the attendant from seeing your face. But the staff at places like that were always on the lookout for trouble, understandably enough, and Kawashima had read somewhere that occasionally, if a call girl’s office grew concerned about a situation and phoned the hotel, someone would actually go up to the room to check on her. Besides, if anything did go wrong, the narrow little entrance and reception area would only make escape more difficult. And love hotels tended to be on quieter streets, with only scattered couples strolling discreetly up and down, so it wasn’t as if you could run out and melt seamlessly into the crowd.

At a regular hotel, on the other hand, they’d see his face at the front desk, and he’d have to leave his handwriting on a registration card. But he could reserve a room using a fake name and telephone number and they’d never know the difference, as long as he checked in on time. He’d confirmed this today, here at the Akasaka Prince. He’d given them his work number and a check-in time of two o’clock in the afternoon when making the reservation, and though he waited at the office until one-forty-five, no one called from the hotel. Nor had they asked for ID. His normal handwriting was so generic that it shouldn’t be a problem — provided he didn’t make some idiotic mistake like leaving behind his driver’s licence or business card or address book, or an envelope or sheet of paper with his company’s letterhead.