Linnear 03 - White Ninja (41 page)

The Pack Rat could see the fullness of knowledge throbbing behind her eyes, and he wondered whether Kusunda Ikusa yet knew what he had got himself into.

'You can seduce me because I allow you to.'

Killan laughed. 'That's not seduction,' she said. 'You're talking about a business deal.' She shrugged. 'Forget it. I don't care about your weaknesses, Kusunda, either real or imagined. You're like a dream to me, or a vision 1 conjure up in a marijuana haze. I don't care about you at all. I do what I do because of my father. I fuck you because it would literally kill him if he found out that I spread my legs for you. I scheme with you because the schemes appeal to my sense of disorder, because I am the outlaw my father is not and never could be. The Americans say I have balls, Kusunda. My Japanese revolutionary friends

say that I have an overwhelming desire for change. What

do you call it?' ,

It seemed as if Ikusa was faintly amused by Killan's monologue. Certainly he was not bored by it, and now the Pack Rat was sure that he was underestimating her. Kusunda Ikusa's black eyes gleamed with a kind of inner insight as she recounted the litany of her philosophy, as if her words had the power to illuminate a hidden part of himself.

Listening to Killan Oroshi, the Pack Rat was reminded of a line from the English poet, Algernon Swinburne, 'Change lays her hand not upon the truth'. But he thought that these two would-be revolutionaries, oddly entwined, could hardly understand what Swinburne had in mind.

'I would call it tatemae,' Kusunda Ikusa said. 'The fagade that talentos use so artfully on television or on the stage. Ten thousand people become caught up in tatemae at once. We Japanese are, after all, fetishists, worshipping the fa?ade, some symbol to which we may attach and defuse our fears, to which we may humbly dedicate our lives.'

'Like the Emperor.' Now Killan's eyes were alight. She had a talent, the Pack Rat observed, for turning even the most clever response back upon itself so that it served her own purpose. But she also spoke as no other eighteen-year-old that the Pack Rat had known. But then, he reminded himself, she fancied herself a revolutionary, and a successful revolutionary's sense of oration and theatrics was highly developed. 'No one knows more about the Emperor than you do, Kusunda. When I am near you I feel so close to him.'

'Stop it!' Ikusa snapped. 'You are making a mockery of the sacred.'

Clearly Killan had reached a nerve, and such was her personality that she pursued her advantage to the limit.

'Who says that the Emperor is sacred? You? The other members of Nami?'

"The Emperor is descended from the son of Heaven.'

Now that she had successfully drawn him into untenable philosophical waters, it was clear to the Pack Rat, if not to Ikusa, that Killan was determined to undermine his position. 'Now who's using tatemae! You are better than any talento at tatemae. The myth of the god-king is ancient, universally revered. It is also, as you well know, an empty talisman that you have seen fit to use to compromise the spirit of the people.'

Kusunda smiled. 'Now you sound merely foolish. If this were true what would you be doing with me?'

'You know, Kusunda. I am as apolitical as you are political. That is the only aspect of balance we have in our relationship.'

'I would have thought apolitical was the wrong term for you,' Ikusa said. 'You are a nihilist. A black-draped sibyl, a futurisuto.'

'Oh, if only you'd call me that while we're fucking!' Killan said.

The Pack Rat could see that Ikusa's tack with her expletives was to ignore them. He pulled her against him. She seemed lost against his massive bulk. The Pack Rat averted his gaze but did not stop the recorder as they made love.

'Futurisuto instead of angel,' Kusunda Ikusa said, afterwards. 'I will never call you angel again.'

Killan Oroshi laughed as she dressed. 'That will suit me just fine,' she said. She put on her coat. Ikusa did not move or make a sound.

When Killan left, the Pack Rat decided to follow her. She took him across town, into the Asakusa district. Into an anonymous post-war building made of ferroconcrete, made up of usagigoya, tiny rabbit-hutch apartments.

The Pack Rat watched as a thin young man with hair

the colour of platinum opened the door to her repeated knocking.

'Kalian!' he cried, clearly delighted.

'Hello, Scoundrel,' Killan said, closing the door behind them, shutting the Pack Rat out.

When Tomi went to interview Dr Hanami's widow, she asked Nangi to come along, and was pleased when he accepted her invitation. Tomi found his comments and opinions insightful rather than intrusive. More and more she was coming to see that he was a natural detective: his intense curiosity combined with his sense of detail and the analytical bent of his mind. And he had become her only ally in the murder of the dancer, Mariko. He seemed as fascinated by the case as Tomi herself was. Besides all that, Tomi liked him.

Haniko Hanami was a tall, slender woman of imperious mien. She came, so she told them with no humility, from one of the oldest samurai families in the north of Honshu. She wore a magnificent silk kimono which, by its workmanship, appeared to be at least fifty years old. A scattering of flowers crisscrossed its deep blue background. Golden threads winked and shone as she moved.

She had entered into marriage with Dr Hanami and, according to her, had an ideal marriage until his untimely death. This was all she would say, no matter what questions Tomi tried? Clearly, she did not like anyone prying into what she considered her private life, and she resented the intrusion even from such a commonly acknowledged authority as the police. Almost everyone in Japan co-operated with the police. Why wouldn't she?

'If you don't mind, Mrs Hanami,' Nangi said when the silence had taken on the aspect of a stalemate, 'might I have a chair? Often my legs do not allow me to sit in the traditional fashion.'

'Of course. This way, please.' Haniko Hanami led

them into a room furnished in the Western manner. She studied Tomi as Nangi sat down, careful not to cause him any embarrassment should his legs inadvertently give out.

When he was comfortably seated, she said, 'Is the pain bad?'

'Bad enough, sometimes.'

She nodded, kneaded her hands. 'I suffer from arthritis,' she said mournfully. 'Now it is not so bad, save in the morning when I wake up. But in winter...' She clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

'Winter is the worst,' Nangi agreed.

Tomi watched the growing rapport between them with something akin to awe. The angry, sullen Haniko Hanami who had met them at the door, had disappeared. In her place stood this suffering old woman.

'Is your pain bad now?' Mrs Hanami enquired.

'I have perhaps overwalked today,' Nangi admitted.

'Then I have just the thing to help you.' She rushed out of the room, returning within moments with a jar, which she held out almost shyly to him. 'This is what I use on my hands. It works very well. My husband made it.'

Nangi took the jar and, much to Tomi's astonishment, rolled up his trouser legs and began to apply the ointment. 'This way?' he said.

'No,' Mrs Hanami said, 'this way.' And, kneeling beside him, she dipped her fingertips into the ointment, began to massage it into his calves precisely as if she were his mother. "There," she murmured. 'There, there.'

When she was finished, Nangi thanked her, helping her to her feet. She was blushing.

'I am old and childless,' she said wistfully. This is all I am good for now.' She brightened somewhat. 'Still, it is good to be useful in any way one can, neh?

'Indeed,' Nangi said. 'Since my retirement some years

ago, I too seek to be of help to others. Which is why I am here today.' He leaned on his cane. 'Mrs Hanami, it is important that we ask you some questions. Whoever killed your husband has killed before. Without doubt, he will kill again. Do you see how vital it is that we find this person?'

This was more or less what Tomi had said to Mrs Hanami at the beginning of the interview. But that had been before Nangi had adroitly found the key to her spirit. Tomi continued to marvel at the man.

'I understand,' Mrs Hanami said as she rose. 'Shall we go outside? There is so little sunshine these days, only industrial haze, one must take every advantage of it.' She led them out on to a stone porch that overlooked a jewel of a garden. She led them down a path of flat blue-grey river rocks artfully laid to seem naturally scattered.

'My husband, as you no doubt already know, was a perfectly brilliant surgeon. His hands were like those of a master sculptor, and he obsessed over them. He used more hand cream than I did.'

She confessed this as they sat in a tea room across the lush but tiny garden from the main house. It was redolent of dried grass, spice and woodsmoke.

'He never used soap on his hands at home. Indeed, I often thought he had a phobia against it. Of course, that could not be so, since he obviously used soap when he scrubbed up for an operation. Still, he was nervous if he caught even a hint of chapped skin on the backs of his hands. He had the hands of a teenager, of a girl, really.'

Initially, Tomi was surprised, not to say shocked, by these revelations unseemly told of the dead, and she found herself feeling a growing antipathy towards the woman. But slie soon came to realize that Haniko Hanami needed to unburden herself of secrets she had too long carried unaided in her breast, and Tomi's heart softened in acknowledgement of her plight.

Whatever faults Haniko Hanami might have, making tea wasn't one of them. Tomi watched, entranced, -as the older woman deftly turned the ash whisk to create a froth the palest shade of green imaginable.

'Well, he was a wonderful surgeon,' Mrs Hanami said, 'but as a husband he was something less than that.' She paused for a moment to take more tea and, seeing her thin face above her lifted hands, the tiny cup, Tomi was given a startling glimpse of the coquette she once must have been. 'I had wanted so much from this marriage," she said. 'I had such high hopes. Well, perhaps that was a mistake. But I didn't know my husband very well at the time we were married. Apparently I never did.'

'Why do you say that, Mrs Hanami?' Nangi asked.

Haniko Hanami sighed. 'My husband grew tired of me over the years. When he was younger, he liked an assortment of women. Later on, there was only one.' She looked at them in turn. 'Lack of stamina or perhaps a sense of - what shall I call it? - stability.' She sipped tea. 'You may think that an odd word for an adulterous liaison, but in my husband's case it was accurate, I assure you.'

'Do you know what it was your husband wanted?' Nangi asked gently.

'Wanted?' Mrs Hanami blinked. 'Why, yes. I'd have thought it obvious enough. He did not want to die. Or, I suppose more accurately, to get old. The parade of women assured him of new faces - and bodies - that, for him, never aged. His women were like a mirror into which he could look, seeing with absolute assurance the man he had once been.'

'But somewhere that changed,' Nangi said.

'What?' She appeared startled, as if he had interrupted a private meditation.

'He went from many to one, you said.'

'Oh, that.' She nodded. 'I believe this one was very

young, her flesh very firm. Lately, my husband had begun to long for more. Perhaps he had come to see the parade for the charade it really was, Perhaps he needed to hold youth in his hand in what would have been for him a permanent way.'

Nangi said, 'Was there ever any talk of divorce?'

Mrs Hanami gave a startled little laugh. 'Oh, my goodness no. It is clear that you never knew my husband. There was never a hint of that, and there never would be. My husband had no idea that I knew of his liaisons. He would have been mortified had I been cruel enough to tell him that I knew.'

'Why didn't you tell him?' Tomi asked in the same gentle tone of voice Nangi was using.

Mrs Hanami's eyes opened wide. 'But why would I? We loved each other.'

Into the silence that had wrapped itself around them, Nangi said, 'About this last girl your husband was seeing. How do you know she was very young and very firm-fleshed?'

'Well, she was a dancer, wasn't she?' Mrs Hanami said.

'You knew who your husband was seeing?' Tomi said.

'Not who, dear,' Mrs Hanami said. 'What.' She was perfectly composed now, the mask she had presented to them on their arrival firmly back in place. It was forged of pride, Tomi saw, a family pride of samurai forebears, a procession of centuries. Nowadays, Tomi thought, that iron-bound tradition must be difficult to shoulder.

Haniko Hanami rose and, with the grace and bearing befitting her station in life, crossed to a dark wood tatami chest. She opened a top drawer, took out something, came back to where they were sitting. She held out her hand, opened it up like a chrysanthemum budding.

'I found this in one of my husband's suits when he came home very late one night,' she said. 'I went through it while he slept. I felt I deserved that much.'

Tomi and Nangi looked at what she displayed. It was a tiny plastic flashlight. Along its side was emblazoned the name of the tokudashi club that Tomi had come to know so well, The Silk Road.