It was hardly surprising it wasn’t a journey of non-stop chatter. Our only previous conversation had involved him threatening to beat me into contortions that would terrify a gymnast, and his general demeanour was on a par with Kurotaki’s. This time the silence was welcome. I had a lot to take in.
I wanted to think about Tomoe. I suppose I wanted to start the grieving process, to try to come to terms with the horror of her death. But I couldn’t give myself over to her because of everything that had just been thrown at me. Some of it possibly by her.
If I was to believe Takata, all the complex strands led to a simple end: the scheming of a corrupt politician and a brutal yakuza gang. Getting retribution was going to be far less straightforward.
I sat back to reflect on what it would involve. I’d be going after whoever forced Tomoe into the water business and whoever drove her to her death. That meant taking on Yabu, Tokyo boss of the Ginzo-kai and guilty on both counts. And Onishi, the puppet master choreographing events from above.
They were two men I should never have known about but for their appearances on TV and in the press. Two men who certainly shouldn’t have been aware of me. Yet somehow I’d arrived in a situation where I was to try to take them down while they did their best to kill me. Considering they were two of the most powerful men in Japan, I had to think their chances of success were far better than mine.
I finally had the answers I’d been seeking. Except for one. The one that had been nagging at me from the start. The one that had nearly killed me as I sought it.
What was I going to do?
I fell asleep almost before my head hit the pillow in my sparsely furnished new home. It was getting dark when I woke. I stretched and my bumps, bruises and amputations reintroduced themselves in a sharp shock of pain. Admitting defeat in a brief attempt to get up I rolled over and realised there was one spot of discomfort that had held itself back. A sore piece of skin the size of a horimono courtesan that Horitoku had been filling in.
And for some reason it made up my mind. As outlandish as it was I decided to go with Takata’s suggestion. I’d trust Tomoe to provide my answers. I’d put myself in her hands.
It seemed so simple. Sit back, relax and wait for the solution to be placed before me. My plan of action decided, I even managed to drag myself the few feet to the sofa to watch an evening film. When it finished I tumbled back into bed and slept again, this time for the night.
I woke the next morning still far from comfortable but everything seemed to hurt just a little bit less. It wasn’t such an effort to get out of bed and by the time I’d showered I was close to feeling refreshed. The problem with my plan struck me soon after that.
Once you’re done sleeping, there’s very little you can do in a twenty-square-metre flat. I switched on the TV to see a presenter shouting, his key phrases flashing in neon on the screen. I’d been beaten around the head enough recently – I didn’t want to inflict equivalent punishment on my sense of sound and sight. I flicked through another couple of channels then turned to my phone for distraction before I gave up on that.
I tried the kitchenette, walking the three strides from the fold-up sofa to a radio on top of the fridge. I bobbed my head to a song briefly but bored of the one that came after that.
I looked around for something else to distract me but I’d exhausted all the possibilities the flat had. I cursed it, without apparent effect, and gave up.
Despite Takata’s reasoning I felt far from safe as I stepped into the street. I scanned it both ways but there were only a couple of lookalike salarymen and a few students milling around. I looked harder, wondering where the Takata-gumi man was. I’d been left an emergency number and told there would be someone nearby at all times. I couldn’t see any likely candidates but I still had the uncomfortable sensation of being watched.
I headed down the road and then wandered into side streets. Signs for girly bars and massage parlours immediately caught my eye – they were exactly the kind of places to attract yakuza for work or play. The thought sent a shiver down my spine. The lack of stimulus in the flat seemed to have been over-compensated. A happy medium might be better sought elsewhere.
I got off the train at Harajuku and, unusually, felt pleased to have arrived. It was hard to imagine anyone but schoolgirls, shoppers or tourists wanting to get caught in the crush. It certainly wasn’t the kind of place to top a yakuza’s go-to list.
I let myself be washed by the tide of people down Omotesandō Dōri but soon fought my way off to the left. I was rewarded with instant calm. Twenty metres down the small side road and I was where I wanted to be: The Ōta Memorial Museum of Art.
It was Tomoe who’d recommended it, a small museum housing one of Japan’s biggest collections of ukiyo-e. It was one of her favourite places and as such seemed a prime candidate for a venue if she’d had a message for me she wished to hide.
They changed their exhibitions on a monthly basis and I stopped outside to see what was on.
‘Flowers of the Floating World – The Courtesans of Yoshiwara’.
This was it. It was too much to be coincidence. Tomoe’s message had to be inside.
I came out an hour later soothed by the museum’s understatement, made melancholy by Utamaro’s languid charm – and just as ignorant of what to do next. For despite the apparent sleight of hand by the gods there was nothing from Tomoe. I had no better idea of how she wanted me to take her revenge.
I sat on a step outside and shut my eyes. Perhaps I had received some kind of clarification, but from my unconscious instead of the Divine. Because it was suddenly obvious. It was time I returned to reality and stopped looking for answers in dreams and messages from the dead. I’d allowed Takata to overwhelm me. I’d let him project his desires onto Tomoe and through her onto me.
Now was the time for it to end. I’d thought of her as a force of nature but it hadn’t prevented her from being killed. That alone should have made me see sense. However much she’d seemed to encapsulate life, she’d been as mortal as the rest of us. Instead of trying to lift her above the fact, it was time to let her rest.
Despite it leaving me at a dead end, the moment of clarity brought a kind of peace. That night sleep came hard and fast. I woke as though from a coma ten hours after I’d lain down. But even if I hadn’t been aware of it, my brain must have been active while I slept. Because the well-reasoned closure I’d gone to bed with had been discarded with the previous day.
It didn’t make sense. This implacable drive was more like Tomoe. But as much as I tried I couldn’t rediscover the sense of the evening before. However sound my rationalisation, an internal imposter was leading me another way. Whatever had lodged itself in me was relentless in urging me on.
I decided to head to Ginza – I’d met Tomoe there not more than three months before. She’d sauntered up with a smile brighter than a supernova and a kiss that radiated through me. She’d acted as though there was nothing unusual. I’d had to ask why her hair was set like a geisha’s and she was wearing a kimono of clouds swirling around blue-green hills.
‘I felt like it,’ she shrugged. ‘You don’t like it?’
‘I love it – you look sensational. It’s just a little different to what you normally wear.’
She’d just lifted her shoulders again, angled her head and given me another heart-stopping smile. I’d spent the rest of the day in her glow, admiringly despised by male passers-by.
But there were no hidden messages there either. Or in Daikanyama the next day, or Shimokitazawa the one after that. It was no good. There were memories aplenty but no missives from beyond. I hoped the opportunities Takata was expecting were presenting themselves with greater haste to him. I was at the point of giving up.
The next day, when boredom struck, instead of reaching for my psychic’s hat, I grabbed a matinee ticket to the first thing about to start. I settled in as the room faded to black.