Dying to Tell (19 page)

"That wasn't very friendly of him."

"He apologized to me. He said there were .. . reasons ... why he had to be so secretive."

"But he didn't say what those reasons were?"

Yamazawa smiled thinly. "No."

"Why don't we have another beer?" I asked, glancing at our suddenly empty glasses.

"Good idea." Yamazawa arranged that with little more than a twitch of the eyebrows. "You like Sapporo beer?"

"It hits the spot."

"For sure. Not for Rupe, though."

"No?"

"He was always careful not to drink too much. I thought it was just .. . self-control. Now I wonder if he couldn't risk it. You know? In case he got really drunk and .. . gave something away."

"Some of those secrets?"

"Some. Or all. I don't know."

"He stole a letter from Mayumi Hashimoto."

"So her brother said."

"I need to find that letter."

"But you are not the only one looking, I think. Hashimoto said his sister and niece were in danger because of it. That is why they went away. To hide. And since then .. . there have been the break-ins."

"You mean the burglaries Penberthy complained of?"

"He lives in the flat Rupe used to live in. It is leased by Eurybia. It has been broken into twice. Nothing has been stolen. But everything has been searched. Thoroughly. Of course, Rupe left nothing there."

"He took all his possessions with him?"

"Not difficult, Bradley-san. I saw how he lived. One suitcase would have been enough. But you are his friend, so I must be honest with you. He did not take everything with him."

"Are you holding something for him?" I asked, reckoning I'd caught his drift.

Yamazawa nodded solemnly in confirmation. "A briefcase. He asked me to keep it safe and secret. I did not tell Hashimoto about it. But that was before the break-ins and the Pomparles scandal. Something is wrong, I think. Very wrong. I have been thinking that maybe the time has come to open the briefcase and see what it contains."

"I think maybe you're right."

"Yes." He took a deep swallow of beer. "We do it tonight."

"Where is it?"

"At my flat."

"How far?"

"An hour on the subway."

That could be a problem for me."

"Why?"

"Claustrophobia."

"We are all claustrophobics on the Tokyo subway."

"No, no. I mean it. Really."

"In that case, I have bad news for you, Bradley-san." He gave me another glimpse of his thin-lipped smile. "You will have to pay for the taxi."

"This is real luxury," he was enthusing twenty minutes later, as our taxi cruised westwards through the wet Tokyo night, its tyres hissing on the rain-slicked streets, the raindrops on its windscreen blurring the passing ranks of neon-lit signs. "To tell you the truth, Bradley-san, I don't like the subway either."

"You suffer from claustrophobia as well?"

"Not exactly. But you've heard of the Tokyo gas attack?"

"Yeh. A few years ago. Some doomsday cult released nerve gas on the subway, didn't they? Were you caught up in that?"

"Yes." He smiled, which seemed an odd way to remember such an experience. "I did not get a serious dose. Not of the sarin, I mean. But I trusted life before that day. Then I saw how easily it could all fall apart. I haven't really fitted in since then. Maybe that is why my wife left me. Maybe that is why I have done a lot of things I should not have done. It conics down to chance in the end. My wife wanted me to take the day off. It was a Monday, March twentieth, and Tuesday was a public holiday for the start of spring, so we could have had a long weekend. I was working for one of the bigger shipping companies then. Working hard. I was a dedicated man. I said I had to go in. And that was the day I stopped' his smile broadened 'being a dedicated man."

I tried to prise out some more details of Yamazawa's brush with death on the subway, but he artfully diverted me into an account of how Rupe had led me into danger then got me out of it the very last time I'd ventured any distance underground. I had the impression Yamazawa had already revealed more of himself than he thought wise. But I also had the impression he couldn't really stop himself.

His flat was on the third floor of a drab, mid-rise block in a remote western suburb: one small living room and three windowless cupboards that the fittings suggested were bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. (The modesty of the accommodation didn't stop me being required on entering to swap my shoes for a pair of mules I could barely squeeze my toes into.) A couple of large bean-bags and a low table were about it on the lounge furniture front. Supplementary decoration was confined to a framed wood-block print showing snow falling across warehouse roofs on a moonlit night. It was beautifully coloured and looked far too good for its surroundings.

"My proudest possession," said Yamazawa, noticing my gaze linger on it. "You know the artist? Kawase Hasui."

"I don't know any artists. Especially not Japanese ones."

"Ah, but Hasui was a genius. You can see that, can't you?"

"I suppose so."

"My best investment as well as my proudest possession. It would probably bring a bigger price than this flat."

Tempted to sell?"

"Often. But I have not yet been desperate enough. Now, to business. Sit down, please. I fetch the case."

I lowered myself onto one of the bean-bags while Yamazawa hurried away into the bedroom. I heard a cupboard door open and close. Then he was back, carrying the briefcase Rupe had entrusted to his care. It was a slim, black leather briefcase, with combination locks a standard-issue executive sandwich carrier. "I do not think we will find the stolen letter inside," said Yamazawa, laying it flat on the table and kneeling down opposite me.

"No. He'll have taken that with him."

"But something important, for sure. Something he did not want them to find if they came looking."

"When they came looking. I guess it was always a certainty."

"It is not going to be easy to break open."

"Maybe we don't need to break it open."

"You know the combination?"

"No. But I know Rupe. He chose the name Pomparles for a reason. It'll be the same with the combination. A four-figure number .. . with some secret significance." I tried 1963. But no joy. "Too obvious, perhaps. How about a Wilderness Farm connection? Peter Dalton died on the nineteenth of August." But 1908 didn't work either. Nor did 0863.

"His birthday, maybe?"

I tried it. "No."

"His father's birthday?"

"I wouldn't know when that was. But hold on." (A thought had suddenly struck me.) "I do know the date of his father's death. The seventeenth of November." And 1711 did the trick. The case opened.

To reveal a sheaf of papers and a wallet of photographs. "What is there?" asked Yamazawa, craning over the lid.

"Not sure. Take a look at these pics." I handed him the wallet, then took out the papers and began leafing through them. They were all photocopies. A lot were of the very same Central Somerset Gazette stories Dad had dug out for me, plus several he hadn't, though all on the same theme the crop of deaths around Street during the summer and autumn of 1963. There were articles from the national press as well, about the Great Train Robbery and the search for the gang and their loot TRAIN ROBBERS' HIDE-OUT DISCOVERED, blared an August 1963 headline. Others were parts of large-scale Ordnance Survey maps of the Street area, which looked as if they dated from the same period. Wilderness Farm was picked out in yellow highlighter. And so was Cow Bridge. There was also a copy of a page from an old British Railways Western Region timetable showing services on the Somerset and Dorset line, with stopping times at Ashcott and Meare highlighted. Rupe had been plotting the past to prepare for the future. But what sort of future had it been?

"Does it tell you anything?" asked Yamazawa.

"Nothing I didn't already know." I looked up at him. "What about the photographs?"

"See for yourself." He spread them out on the table.

They were apparently unremarkable snapshots, mostly of an attractive young Japanese woman, sometimes posing as solemn-faced as a priestess, sometimes smiling radiantly. Whichever the expression, there was a trusting intensity in her gaze that convinced me at once that she loved the person taking her picture to the point of adoration. "Haruko Hashimoto?"

"Yes," said Yamazawa. "A most charming fiancee."

"And this must be Mayumi." I pointed to a picture of Haruko standing next to an older woman. They'd been snapped in front of some kind of temple with other people wandering past in the background. Both were lightly and casually dressed. It looked like high summer. There was a strong family resemblance between the two women and it was pretty obvious where Haruko had got her looks from.

"Mother and daughter taking a stroll in Ueno Park," said Yamazawa, recognizing the spot. "Also charming."

"Until you know Rupe's just stringing them along."

"He stays out of the picture."

"So he does." I looked for Rupe in vain, then noticed one photograph that appeared to be black and white, which it obviously couldn't be if it was from the same film. "What's this?"

I picked it up to examine, holding it between us so that Yamazawa could see as well. The picture was in black and white. Three men in lightweight US military uniforms were sitting at a table in a bar. There were drifts of smoke and blurred figures in the background at other tables. One of the three had his back to the camera and was half in shadow. He was young and slim, his dark hair cropped just shy of a crew-cut. He was looking across the table to his left, the light catching his chin and cheekbone. The man he was looking at was facing the camera, though apparently unaware of its existence. He was stockier and slightly older, with a hint of flab around his jaw and waist and a smile creasing his wide face as he raised a beer bottle in his hand. "It is a photograph of a photograph," said Yamazawa. "One of the pictures from the wall of the Golden Rickshaw." He was right. There were odd patches of sheen on the print that could only be reflections from the glass in the frame.

"Yeh," I said. "And I know why he chose this particular picture." The third man at the table, also facing the camera, was thinner and grimmer-faced than his beaming companion. He was also slightly younger than in the only other photograph of him I'd seen. Or maybe that was just the effect of his trim, pressed uniform. Whatever the case, there was no mistaking the way he was holding his cigarette behind his palm, between forefinger and thumb, just as he had the day he'd been waiting for a train at Ashcott and Meare station. "It's Stephen Townley," I said.

"Who is Stephen Townley?"

"The subject of the letter Rupe stole."

"An important man?"

"Maybe. Dangerous, for certain."

"Who are the other two?"

"Haven't a clue."

"I think we have."

"I don't see one."

"The smile." Yamazawa pointed at the grinning bloke with the beer bottle. Then he picked up another photograph and held it in front of me. "The smile is the same."

And so it was. Worn by a forty-or-so years older man. His hair was still short, but had turned white with age. The surplus flesh under his jaw had become a wodge of fat, the sagging stomach a substantial paunch. But the smile hadn't altered. He was standing next to Haruko Hashimoto, dwarfing her almost, given how much taller and broader he was, grinning amiably at the camera and hence at Rupe. "Bloody hell," I murmured. "It's the same man."

"For sure."

"He's still here."

"Not here, actually."

"You can see for yourself."

"Yes, Bradley-san, I can. But that is not Tokyo."

I looked more closely. Smiler and Haruko were standing on what was probably a balcony, its railings visible behind them.

On the other side of the street below was a neatly clipped hedge and, beyond it, a moat, a stone-block wall and part of what looked like a castle or palace, high-roofed and ornately eaved.

That is Nijo-jo," said Yamazawa. "In Kyoto."

"Kyoto?"

"Yes. The ancient capital."

"Are you sure this photograph was taken there?"

"I took my son to Kyoto for a holiday two years ago. We saw many temples. But Koichi preferred the castle of Nijo-jo, because of its so-called nightingale floors. They squeak, however softly you walk on them an old trick of the shoguns, to warn them of intruders. Koichi loved that. He made me take him several times. So, I remember Nijo-jo. This photograph was taken in somebody's flat, I would guess, overlooking the castle. Rupe must be standing in shadow for the light to be right. So, he is in the room. They are on the balcony."

"Whose flat?"

"Not Haruko's or Rupe's, obviously."

"But Smiler's."

"Probably."

"An American in his sixties who was based here as a soldier and stayed on or came back."

"Could be."

"And he could be sheltering Haruko and her mother. Now."

"It is as likely as anything else."

"A flat near .. . what was it?"

"Nijo-jo. Quite a landmark."

"And Smiler's probably a landmark in his own right round there. Which means it should be possible to trace him."

"I think you would have a good chance."

"And I haven't got a lot of chances to choose from, have I? How far's Kyoto?"

"By one of our famous bullet trains, less than three hours."

I sat back and gazed vacantly at the photographs in front of us. Chances and choices? I never seemed to have enough of either. "It's the bullet train for me, then."

With my next move decided, we both relaxed. Yamazawa (Toshi, as I was calling him by now, even though I couldn't shift him from Bradley-san) invited me to stay the night, which was more or less inevitable, given how late it was. He then opened a bottle of some potent spirit called shochu, into which we made alarmingly mind-mangling inroads as the night deepened.

Yamazawa had identified another of Rape's photographs as having been taken in Kyoto Haruko strolling along a picturesque tree-lined canal; the Philosopher's Walk, he'd called it. This and all the other snapshots of the winsome maiden Rupe had heartlessly strung along led us into gloomy reflections on the human capacity for deceit, which in turn plunged Yamazawa into a morbid analysis of the failure of his marriage, something he admitted to being so ashamed of that he could only discuss it with a foreigner.