Beneath Gray Skies (50 page)
Read Beneath Gray Skies Online
Authors: Hugh Ashton
Tags: #Fiction, #Alternative History, #SteamPunk
Time for a drink, he thought, looking around for a drinking fountain.
As he bent over the water spout in the corner of the room, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and heard a vaguely familiar Australian voice. “You all right, mate? Strewth, you look like death warmed over.”
Sharpe looked up. “What the bloody hell are you doing following me about?” he asked Jon, who had reverted to his Australian backpacker look.
“Shut up, and let me get you a coffee. You look as though you could use one,” replied the other. “And what the bloody hell happened to your face?” looking at the scabs on his cheek.
“You’re the one who should be shutting up,” replied Sharpe. It wasn’t the most witty bit of repartee going, but he didn’t care. “Now get out of my way and stay out of my life. OK?” He prodded Jon firmly in the chest with a pointing forefinger.
“No way,” said Jon, pointing a finger back. “There’s no way I’m going to let you walk away from this without finding what’s going on. Tim Barclay’s going to have my balls for breakfast if I come back with no answers.”
“Then I wish him
bon appétit,”
replied Sharpe. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—” His stomach gave a sudden unexpected lurch to port, and he dashed for the cubicle again. When he came out again, Jon was still standing there waiting.
“Oh, for God’s sake, buy me a coffee or something,” snapped Sharpe. “I suppose you’re going to find out all about this sooner or later, so I might as well get a cup of coffee out of it.”
“Good man,” said Jon. He made as if to take Sharpe’s elbow, but Sharpe shrugged him off.
They found a Starbuck’s in the underground mall adjoining the station, under one of the new office blocks that were going up on the Marunouchi side. “We’ll sit near the door,” said Sharpe. “I need the air, even if it is underground. And mine’s a double espresso—no sugar. I’ll get the table, you get the coffee. Don’t worry, I’m not going to run away. I couldn’t if I wanted to.”
He was telling the truth—he didn’t feel like running anywhere. Sitting down at the table, the memory of the bag in the locker came back to him, and he retched again, but there was nothing in his stomach to back it up.
Jon arrived with the coffees.
“Thanks,” said Sharpe, and winced as he took his first sip. Jon just sat, waiting.
“Well, aren’t you going to ask me any questions?” asked Sharpe.
“No, since you probably aren’t going to answer them. I’ll wait until you talk.” Jon sipped his iced latte in silence, and folded his arms behind his head. Neither man spoke for a few minutes.
“Did you see Katsuyama’s body?” asked Sharpe, breaking the silence.
“No, why the hell would I have done?” replied Jon. “All we knew was what we were told by Ishihara.”
“Did he see the body?” asked Sharpe.
“I suppose so. Why? What’s strange about it?”
“I heard a rumour that it wasn’t Katsuyama’s body and that Katsuyama himself is still alive.”
Jon put down his cup and stared at Sharpe. “I think you’re serious.”
Discover other titles by Hugh Ashton on Smashwords:
Keiko’s House
(free)
At the Sharpe End
(thriller set in modern Japan)
H
ugh Ashton was born in the UK in 1956. After graduating from the University of Cambridge, he worked in a variety of jobs, including security guard, publisher’s assistant, and running an independent record label, before coming to rest in the field of information technology, where he assisted perplexed users of computers and wrote explanations to guide them through the problems they encountered.
A long-standing interest in Japan led him to emigrate to that country in 1988, where he has remained ever since; writing instruction manuals for a variety of consumer products, assisting with IT-related projects at banks and financial institutions, and researching and writing industry reports on the Japanese and Asian financial industries. Some of the knowledge he has gained in these fields forms the background for At the Sharpe End.
Hugh currently lives with his wife Yoshiko in the old town of Kamakura to the south of Tokyo, where he is working on future novels and stories.
Extract from “At the Sharpe End”
