Occupied City (19 page)

In the Fictional City, I go back to my desk in the press office. I re-write the story:

Ten Workers of Teikoku Bank Slain In Broad Daylight – Robbery Behind Killing?

TOKYO, Jan. 26 – Ten were killed and 6 others are in critical condition as a result of the attempted robbery and poisoning of the entire staff of the Shiinamachi branch of the Teikoku Bank at Nagasaki-chō, Toshima-ku, Tokyo by a cold-blooded criminal who apparently tried to snatch away heaps of bank notes in broad daylight on the afternoon of January 26
.

The sensational ‘poison bank holdup’ case was perpetrated about
4
o’clock Monday afternoon shortly after the bank had closed for business for the day when a man entered the building posing as a health official. The fiendish doctor told the entire staff to drink a dysentery preventative medicine
.

In no time the bank turned into a veritable death chamber with all the victims writhing in agony. When the relief party arrived at the scene, 10 of the victims had already died. 6 others were rushed to the Seibo Hospital in the neighbourhood and remain in a critical condition
.

According to the police, who are strictly keeping away outsiders in an effort to find a clue, an intensive search is now being conducted across the city for the bank robber
.

   I stop writing. I file the story. I get my hat and my coat. I tell Shiratō to wait where he is, that I’m going to the Seibo Hospital, and I’ll be back in a couple of hours.

IN THE FICTIONAL CITY, in the Seibo Hospital, I am wearing a stolen white coat, I am pretending to be a doctor –

Pretending, impersonating, deceiving…

I smile at the policeman. I open the door. I step inside the room. She is alone in the room, lying in the only bed, her eyes closed. I walk to the end of the bed. I read the name above her head –

I write it down in my notebook:

Murata Masako …

I sit down in a chair beside the bed. I see her hand on top of the blankets. I sit forward in the chair beside the bed. I reach for her hand on the blankets. I hold her hand. I lean towards her face. I whisper in her ear, ‘Miss Murata, Miss Murata …’

I see her swallow in her sleep –

‘Can you hear me, Miss Murata …?’

I see her eyelids flicker –

‘Can you tell me what happened to you, Miss Murata?’

I see her eyes opening. I see her looking at me now –

‘Can you tell me what happened to you in the bank?’

Now her body starts to tremble. Her mouth begins to open – ’

Get away!’ she shouts. ‘Get away from me!’

I let go of her hand. I stand up. I want to apologize. I want to explain. But I turn away. And I walk away –

‘Get away! Get away from me!’

Out of the room. The hospital.

IN THE FICTIONAL CITY, I walk her streets and I hear her stories, telephones ringing and voices whispering, along the wires and down the cables, a telephone and a voice with a time and with a place –

An hour later, I turn a corner off the main street, and I walk down an alley of pawnshops and mahjong parlours. Half-way down the alleyway, I push open a frosted-glass door. A bell above the door rings and five pairs of eyes glance up from the shadows of the dark and narrow room. I walk through these shadows, past their glances that are now stares, and I sit down on a sofa at the back of the room. Across a large porcelain brazier, a man is sitting opposite me, reading a newspaper, my newspaper –

The
Yomiuri…

The man slowly folds up the newspaper. He takes off his glasses. He puts the glasses in the breast pocket of his jacket. He sits forward in his chair. He stretches out his hands over the edge of the brazier. He looks up at me and he says, ‘I hope you brought your wallet with you?’

IN THE FICTIONAL CITY, the MPB have made a statement, and then another, and another, and so I write a story, and then another, and another:

Slayer Believed Familiar With Medicines; Assisted By Several Accomplices?

TOKYO, Jan. 28 – With the above description of the culprit given by the four survivors as the chief clue, the Metropolitan Police Board, mobilizing its most experienced criminal investigators, is on the search for the perpetrators of one of the coldest-blooded crimes of modern times
.

The search is on for the man who, as reported yesterday, posed as a health inspector and induced 16 persons at the Shiinamachi branch of the Teikoku Bank to take poison, killing 12 of them
.

The police base their belief (a) that the culprit was familiar with medicine and epidemic prevention and (b) that he was someone who knew the district and the bank well on the following two factors:

1. Dysentery cases had been reported in the district recently
   .
   

2. The criminal wore the armband of the Tokyo Metropolitan sanitation bureau and did not arouse any suspicion among the 16 who drank the poison
   .
   

Investigation headquarters have been established at the Mejiro police station
.

The names of the victims of the mass poison slaughter have been ascertained as follows:

Dead:— Watanabe Yoshiyasu, 43, chief treasurer; Shirai Shoichi, 28; Kato Teruko, 16; Uchida Yuko, 22; Takeuchi Sutejiro, 48, messenger; Nishimura Hidehiko
, 38;
Akiyama Miyako, 22; Takizawa Tatsuo, 46, messenger; his wife, Takizawa Ryuko, 51; Takizawa’s son, Yoshihiro
, 7;
Takizawa’s daughter, Takako, 18; and Sawada Yoshio, 21
.

Those in critical condition: – Yoshida Takejiro, 42, assistant manager; Akusawa Yoshiko, 18; Murata Masako, 21; and Tanaka Norikazu, 28
.

The first of the two bottles that the culprit induced his victims to drink is ascertained to have contained potassium cyanide
.

The armband he wore is believed to have been one issued at the time of the recent flood disaster to students, hospitals, ward offices, and volunteer workers
.

The crime is believed to have been planned by several persons in conjunction with the culprit who appeared at the bank
.

Four persons who figured in a similar attempt made previously at the Nakai branch of the Mitsubishi Bank are believed to have some connection with the Teikoku Bank case
.

The latest check shows that from ¥110,000 to ¥120,000 of the bank’s money are missing
.

TOKYO, Jan. 28 – Police suspicion in the Teikoku Bank mass murder case has fallen on a certain middle-aged doctor living within the jurisdiction of the Mejiro police station who fits the description given by Miss Murata Masako, one of the survivors, it is learned
.

TOKYO, Jan. 28 – A man committed suicide with potassium cyanide at a hotel not far from the Shiinamachi branch of the Teikoku Bank early this morning
.

As the poison taken by the suicide is the same as that which killed the bank employees, the Mejiro police station is investigating whether he is connected with the mass murder case
.

The suicide, who registered as Yokobe Kunio, a company official at Komagawa-mura, Iruma-gun, Saitama prefecture, put up at the Kiraku Inn at 2156 Shiina-machi 5-chōme, Toshima-ku, yesterday at about 9.30 p.m. and took the potassium cyanide today at about 6 a.m
.

He was wearing a grey sweater, khaki coat, black serge trousers and black overcoat. In his wallet was only about ¥100
.

His hair was not cropped
.

   In the Fictional City, this city of millions, millions will buy my newspaper, millions will buy my stories.

IN THE FICTIONAL CITY, I am back in the Seibo Hospital, back wearing a stolen white coat, back pretending to be a doctor –

Pretending, impersonating, deceiving…

Back beside her bed, her eyes closed, her hand in mine, I am whispering, ‘Can you hear me, Miss Murata…?’

There is sweat on her brow, in her hair, shadows on her cheeks, round her eyes. Her mouth opens and then closes, her fingers tighten and then loosen. She is dreaming, dreaming bad dreams –

‘Miss Murata, I can help you. Please believe me …’

Her eyes are open now but still not close, she is struggling to get back, back to this room, this white room in this hospital –

‘I can help you,’ I tell her. ‘You can trust me …’

Her fingers turn in my hand, tighten around my own, as she looks at me now and asks, ‘Who are you? Are you a doctor?’

‘No, this white coat is just so I could talk to you. That’s all. I just want to talk to you. I just want to help you …’

‘But why?’ she says. ‘Who are you?’

In the Fictional City, in the Seibo Hospital, in my stolen coat, I say, ‘My name is Takeuchi Riichi. I’m a journalist.’

‘You’re a journalist?’ she laughs. ‘Not a doctor?’

‘No,’ I smile. ‘A journalist, with the
Yomiuri.’

She turns her face away from me now, not laughing any more. I let go of her hand.
I want to apologize
. She stares at the white wall, tears on her pillow. I stand up.
I want to explain …

‘Get away from me!’ she cries.

IN THE FICTIONAL CITY, a telephone rings, a voice whispers, along wires, down cables, with another time, another place –

Down another alley, in another room, through the shadows, past the stares, in another chair, another man –

A man with an envelope.

I open the envelope. I read the letter. I take out my wallet. I hand him the cash and I say, ‘I hope you didn’t write it yourself.’

The man counts the cash. The man puts it in his jacket pocket. The man smiles and says, ‘What difference would it make?’

IN THE FICTIONAL CITY, with an envelope and a letter on my desk, an editor and a deadline on my back, I write another story:

Reward for Capture Now ¥80,000; Police Still Baffled

Painfully slow progress was being made in the Teikoku Bank ‘Poison Holdup’ case as police officers continued to be enmeshed in difficulties because of the lack of tangible evidence
.

Rewards for the capture of the diabolical killer of 12 bank employees rose to ¥80,000 and one silver cup
.

A sinister letter was received on January 29 by the manager of the Shiina branch of the Teikoku Bank. Signed ‘Yamaguchi Jiro’, the alias used on the day of the diabolical crime, the letter said in part: ‘I am sorry I caused quite a disturbance the other day. I let Murata Masako (the girl who crawled into the streets to seek help) live because I have some use for her later. In due time, I shall pay her a visit… At first I had an unpleasant feeling watching so many people writhe and squirm in agony but later I didn’t mind at all…’

Police are investigating to see whether it really came from the poisoner or from some callous citizen with a dubious sense of humour
.

Meanwhile, the description of the man who claimed the cheque stolen from the scene of the crime failed to tally with that of the poisoner
.

Police officials, however, expressed gratification for public cooperation in the manhunt and said that scores of letters and phone calls are being received daily at the search headquarters
.

   In the Fictional City, so many letters and so many calls, so many stories and so many tales, so many doubts and so many, many questions.

IN THE FICTIONAL CITY, in the Seibo Hospital, there is sweat on her brow, in her hair again, shadows on her cheeks, round her eyes again. Her mouth opening and then closing, her fingers tightening and then loosening. She is dreaming, dreaming bad dreams again –

‘Help me,’ she says in her dreams. ‘Please help me …’

In this white room, her hand in mine, I say, ‘I can help you. Please believe me. I can make that dream go away …’

Pretending, impersonating, deceiving…

She opens her eyes. She stares into me. She squeezes my hand. She whispers, ‘How can you help me?’

‘I can save you,’ I tell her –

Pretending, not pretending…

‘Until yesterday,’ she says, ‘I thought a cup was a cup. Until then, a table was a table. I thought the war was over. I knew we had lost. I knew we had surrendered. I knew we were now occupied.

‘But I thought the war was over. I thought a cup was still a cup. That medicine was medicine. I thought my friend was my friend, a colleague was a colleague. A doctor, a doctor.

‘But the war is not over. A cup is not a cup. Medicine is not medicine. A friend not a friend, a colleague not a colleague. For a colleague here yesterday, sat in the seat at the counter beside me, that colleague is not here today. Because a doctor is not a doctor.

‘A doctor is a murderer. A killer.

‘Because the war is not over.

‘The war is never over.’

‘I know,’ I say, pretending to pretend, in my stolen white coat, not pretending to pretend, beside her hospital bed, squeezing her hand and telling her again, ‘I know, I know.’

‘I was still going through that day’s thirty deposits when the killer arrived,’ she says. ‘I didn’t see what time it was when he entered, but business had closed as usual at 3 p.m., and I had then immediately begun to count up the deposits. The thirty deposits would have taken me no longer than ten minutes which means the killer must have arrived sometime between 3 p.m. and 3.10 p.m.

‘When the killer began to distribute the poison, I looked him in his face. I will never forget that face. I would know it anywhere.’