The Diamond Chariot (60 page)

On this occasion Goemon Asagawa did not protest about the American’s familiarity, he just smiled at the flattery.

‘This is a genuine discovery!’ the sergeant continued, waxing more and more enthusiastic. ‘Think of the prospects this opens up for police work! What do you do if a criminal clams up and refuses to inform on his accomplices? They used to stretch him on the rack, burn him with red-hot tongs and all the rest of it. But, firstly, that’s uncivilised. And secondly, there are some tough nuts you can’t crack with any torture. But with this – away you go. All very cultured and scientific! Get a stubborn character like that hooked on morphine and then – bang – stop giving him any. He’ll be only too delighted to tell you everything. Listen, Go, I’ll write an article about this for the
Police Gazette
. Of course, I’ll mention your name. Only the idea is mine, after all. You came across it by chance, but I invented the method. You wouldn’t dispute that, would you, my friend?’ Lockston asked anxiously.

‘I wouldn’t, Walter, I wouldn’t. You don’t even need to mention me at all.’ The inspector walked over to the bars and looked at the sobbing prince. ‘Tell me, Doctor, could you find an ampoule of morphine and a syringe in that bag of yours?’

‘Of course.’

Onokoji straightened up, gazing at Asagawi imploringly.

‘Well, Your Excellency, shall we have a talk?’ the inspector asked him cordially.

The prisoner nodded, licking his purple lips.

Erast Petrovich frowned, but said nothing – the Japanese inspector was in charge now.

‘Thank you, Doctor,’ said Asagawi. ‘Fill the syringe and leave it with me. You can go home to bed.’

Twigs clearly did not wish to leave. He ran a curious eye over the bound man and rummaged slowly in his bag, opened the ampoule without hurrying and took a long time to examine the syringe.

No one was intending to initiate the doctor into their secret game of backstage politics, but it simply happened anyway.

‘Come on, quickly, quickly!’ the prince shouted. ‘For God’s sake! Why are you dawdling like that? One little injection, and I’ll tell you all I know about Suga!’

Twigs pricked up his ears at that.

‘About whom? Suga? The intendant of police? What has he done?’

There was nothing for it – they had to explain. And so the group that had investigated the case of Captain Blagolepov’s strange death was reconstituted. Only now it had a different status. They were not official investigators but, rather, conspirators.

Almost as soon as the prisoner had been untied and injected, he turned pink, started smiling and became jaunty and talkative. He spoke a lot, but told them very little of real substance.

According to Onokoji, the new intendant of police had taken part in the conspiracy against the great reformer because he was nursing a grudge – he felt offended at having been subordinated to a worthless little aristocrat with connections in high places. Being a man of intelligence and cunning, Suga had planned the plot in such a way as to achieve two goals at once: take revenge on the minister, who had failed to appreciate his true worth, and land the responsibility on his immediate superior, in order to take his place. Suga had succeeded wonderfully well. The public, of course, might repeat all sorts of rumours, but once a lion is dead, he ceases to be the king of beasts and becomes plain ordinary carrion, and no one was interested in the late Okubo any more. There were new winds blowing at the highest levels; the dead minister’s favourites were making way for appointees from the opposite party.

‘Is Suga’s involvement in the conspiracy just rumour or authenticated f-fact?’ asked Fandorin, disappointed by this frivolous tittle-tattle.

The prince shrugged.

‘Naturally, there is no proof, but my information is usually reliable. Otherwise I would have starved to death a long time ago. That skinflint Tsurumaki, who owes everything to our family, pays me such a pitiful allowance that it’s barely enough for decent shirts.’

Five thousand yen a month, Fandorin recalled. Twenty vice-consular salaries.

‘And who led the c-conspiracy? From whom did Suga receive the estate of Tarazaka as his reward?’

‘The samurai of Satsuma set up an entire organisation, and all the members swore to kill the traitor Okubo. Those people prepared for a long hunt, they collected a lot of money. It would have been enough for a dozen estates.’

Further questioning produced nothing. Onokoji repeated the same things over and over again, occasionally veering into high-society gossip, and finally wore his interrogators down.

Eventually, having realised that they wouldn’t discover anything else useful, they moved away and tried to work out a plan of further action.

‘Apart from the certainty that Suga is guilty and a few other details unconfirmed by any proof, we have nothing,’ Erast Petrovich said acidly, no longer doubting that it had been a waste of time to stir up this whole mess. The cunning and morally dubious operation had produced very little.

Asagawa was gloomy too, but he remained determined.

‘But even so, we cannot pull back now. Suga must pay for his villainy.’

‘How about this?’ Lockston suggested. ‘The intendant receives an anonymous letter that says: “You think you’re a sly dog and you’ve sold everyone a pup, but you’ve slipped up, hombre. I’ve got something on you. I don’t give a cuss for Okubo, he got what was coming to him, but I’m in desperate need of money. Come to such-and-such a place at such-and-such a time: I’ll give you the evidence, and you give me – let’s say, ten thousand”. And to make it convincing, slip in a few details about his dirty dealings: the stolen reports, the gag and the estate. At the very least Suga will get alarmed, he’ll want to take a look at this blackmailer and see what he’s got. If he doesn’t send a detachment of police to the rendezvous and comes himself, that alone will give him away, hook, line and sinker. How’s that for a plan?’ the sergeant asked, giving his comrades a boastful look. ‘Not bad, eh?’

The titular counsellor disappointed him.

‘Terrible. No good at all. Of course Suga won’t come. He’s no fool.’

Lockston wouldn’t surrender.

‘So he’ll send some police? I don’t think so. He won’t want to take the risk. What if the blackmailer really does have some evidence?’

‘And there won’t be any p-police. More Satsumans will just turn up and slice us to ribbons.’

‘Mm, yes, that is very likely,’ the doctor admitted.

The inspector didn’t say anything, merely frowned even more darkly.

The disputants fell silent.

‘Hey! What are you whispering about over there?’ Onokoji shouted, walking up to the bars. ‘If you don’t know how to get Suga’s back to the wall, I’ll tell you! And in exchange you’ll let me out of here. All right?’

The four of them all turned towards the prisoner together and spontaneously moved towards the cell.

The prince held his open hand out through the bars.

‘One ampoule in reserve. And the syringe. As an advance.’

‘Give them to him,’ Asagawa told the doctor. ‘If he talks nonsense, we’ll take them away again.’

Savouring the moment, the high-society gent kept his audience in suspense for a brief moment while he brushed a speck of dust off his rather crumpled frock coat and adjusted his lapel. He carefully placed the ampoule in his waistcoat pocket, after first kissing it and whispering: ‘Oh, my little piece of happiness!’ He smiled triumphantly.

‘Ah, how little I am appreciated!’ he exclaimed. ‘And how poorly I am paid. But the moment they need something, they come running to me: “Tell us, find out, pick someone’s brains”. Onokoji knows everything about everybody. Mark my words, gentlemen. In the century to come, which it is unlikely that I shall live to see, owing to my physical frailty, the most valuable commodity will be information. More valuable than gold, diamonds or even morphine!’

‘Stop blabbering!’ the sergeant roared. ‘Or I’ll take it back!’

‘See how the red-hairs talk to the scion of an ancient Japanese family,’ the prince complained to Asagawa, but when the inspector grabbed him menacingly by the lapels, he stopped playing the fool.

‘Mr Suga is a great pedant. A genuine poet of the bureaucratic art. Therein lies the secret of his power. During his years in the police department he has collected a secret archive of hundreds of files.’

‘I’ve never heard about that,’ said the inspector, shaking his head.

‘Naturally. Neither had I. Until one fine day Suga called me into his office and showed me something. Ah, I am a man of lively fantasy, I flit through life like a butterfly. It is not hard to catch my delicate wings with crude fingers. You, gentlemen, are not the first to have done so …’ The prince sighed woefully. ‘On that day, in the course of a conversation that was most unpleasant for me, Suga boasted that he had similar picklocks to open up many highly influential individuals. Oh, Mr Intendant understands perfectly well the great future that lies ahead for information!’

‘What did he want from you?’ Fandorin asked.

‘The same as everyone else. Information about a certain person. And he received it. You see, the contents of my file are such that I did not dare to argue.’

The sergeant chuckled.

‘Underage girls?’

‘Ah, if only … But there’s no need for you to know about it. What matters to you is that I gave Suga what he wanted, but I didn’t want to remain a puppet in his hands for ever afterwards. I turned to certain masters of secret arts for help – not in person, naturally, but through an intermediary.’

‘Masters of secret arts?’ Twigs exclaimed. ‘You wouldn’t be talking about
shinobi
, would you?’

The doctor and the vice-consul exchanged glances. Was this really possible?

‘Precisely,’ Onokoji said, as if that were perfectly normal, and yawned, putting his elegantly manicured hand over his mouth. ‘To the dear, kind ninja.’

‘S-so … So they do exist?’

Lurid images appeared before Erast Petrovich’s eyes – first the gaping jaws of the snake, then the red mask of the man with no face. The vice-consul shuddered.

The doctor shook his head mistrustfully.

‘If the ninja had survived, people would know about it.’

‘Those who need to know, do know,’ the prince said with a shrug. ‘Those who trade in these arts do not print advertisements in the newspapers. Our family has been employing the services of the Momochi clan for three hundred years.’

‘The same clan? The descendants of the great Momochi Tambi, who killed the witch disguised as a moon with his arrow?’ the doctor asked in a trembling voice.

‘Aha. The very same.’

‘So in 1581 on Mount Hijiyama the samurais didn’t kill all of them? Who escaped?’

‘On which mount?’ Onokoji was clearly not well informed about the history of his own country. ‘I’ve no idea. All I know is that the masters of the Momochi clan serve a very narrow circle of clients and charge very dearly for their services. But they know their job well. My intermediary, my late father’s senior samurai, contacted them and gave them the commission. The
shinobi
discovered where Suga hides his secrets. If you’re interested in the conspiracy against Okubo, you can be certain that all the information you need is kept there. Suga does not destroy documents, they are his investment in the future.’

‘I have no doubt that my missing reports are there too!’ Asagawa said rapidly, turning to Fandorin.

But the vice-consul was more concerned with the masters of secret arts.

‘But how do people contact the ninja?’ he asked.

‘At our court it was the senior samurai who dealt with that. The prince’s most trusted adviser. They always come from the same family and have served
our
family for almost four hundred years. That is, they used to serve …’ Onokoji sighed. ‘There are no more principalities or devoted vassals now. But our senior samurai, a most magnanimous man, carried out my request for old times’ sake. He even paid Momochi the advance out of his own funds. An old man with a heart of pure gold – to do that he had to mortgage his family estate. The
shinobi
did a good job and, as I already said, they found the hiding place, But they didn’t enter it, they wanted more money for that – those were the terms of the arrangement. And as bad luck would have it, I was going through a dry spell at the time, and I couldn’t make the payment. The ninja are very sensitive about that sort of thing. If the client breaks the terms, that’s the end of him. They’ll kill him, and in some nightmarish fashion too. Oh, they’re terrible people, truly terrible.’

‘But you seem to be alive, my friend,’ Lockston remarked.

The prince was astonished.

‘What do I have to do with it? The client was our vassal. And he was the one who had to answer to them. The old man fell ill all of a sudden, out of the blue, with a very strange complaint. His tongue swelled up and fell out of his mouth, then his skin turned black and his eyes melted out of their sockets. The poor fellow screamed in agony for two days and then he died. You know, the
shinobi
are virtuosos at preparing all sorts of unusual potions, both for healing and for killing. They say that the
shinobi
can …’

‘Oh, damn the
shinobi
!’ the sergeant interrupted, to Erast Petrovich’s considerable displeasure. ‘Where’s the hiding place? Did the samurai get a chance to tell you?’

‘Yes, the hiding place is always within Suga’s reach. Last year they built a new headquarters for the police department, in the Yaesu district. Suga, who was vice-intendant at the time, supervised the building work in person, and unknown to almost anyone, he had a secret room built adjacent to his office. The work was carried out by an American architect, who later drowned. Do you remember that sad story? All the newspapers wrote about it. In gratitude for their good work, the police department organised a steamboat cruise for the architect and the best workers, but then, didn’t the boat go and capsize … And the best workers included the three who built the secret room.’

‘What villainy!’ the inspector gasped. ‘Now I understand why Suga stayed in his old office when he was put in charge of the department. And everyone in the department admires his modesty!’