The diminutive Suzuki noodle van had served Takada Satoshi well over the time he had spent living in Fukushima. To him it may have been dwarfed in size, but in stature and utility, it was a giant, something he felt they both had in common.
There was a sign that covered each side of the all-white vehicle that said, ‘FRESH NOODLES COOKED WHILE YOU WAIT OR BROUGHT TO YOUR DOOR – DAILY.’ He had not delivered any noodles fresh or otherwise from his little van for many years. Though, to anyone peering inside, they would see every piece of equipment clean and sterile, all tidied away. It was always ‘noodle ready,’ just in case; all that was required was a modest selection of fresh ingredients.
Though in truth, it would be fair to say, there was not much space left for foodstuffs in the chilled stainless-steel larders that lined the floor along the back of the van at the present time.
He turned the ignition key and the van’s little engine faithfully jumped to attention, like an eager pooch, making the vehicle quiver in enthusiastic anticipation, excited at the prospect of doing its master’s bidding. He pressed the little red up arrow on a plastic remote-control fob activating the drive motor to the roller shutter door on his extremely compact garage. Once fully open he accelerated out onto the quiet suburban street where he lived, into the fresh, crisp evening air, as the door quietly closed behind him like a shroud covering a lair. The winter had been reasonably mild, but now – the beginning of Spring – it felt like an unseasonal frost was on the way. He was not that concerned; his little van had four-wheel drive and did well in poor conditions. When he had operated his noodle run, he had never missed a day. After all, reliability and duty to one’s customers was an unquestionable expectation of Japanese culture regardless of one’s occupation.
It was quite dark when he reached the secluded area of countryside two hours later. He had meticulously scouted out the area several weeks earlier and knew exactly the position he needed to stop on the highway. Halting at the side of the road, he deftly engaged reverse gear on the column change lever situated beneath the steering wheel. With a satisfying clunk, followed by a small jolt from the gearbox, he began reversing the little Suzuki up a disused and rather overgrown track that meandered off from the main road up into the shallow hills beyond. The track he knew led to some fallow fields, up along a gently sloping bank that fell away to a star-lit horizon. He knew the owner of the pastures had retired, and with no one in the family willing to carry on the farming business, he had shut up shop long ago. The land had not been farmed for many years and would probably remain so for some time. Ideal for his purposes that night and into the future. He turned his baseball hat around, so the peak lay over the back of his neck and pulled an LED headtorch over his forehead. He switched on the light, got out and retrieved a spade, mattock pick, a lightweight groundsheet and a plastic twenty-five litre can of petrol from the back of the van. He pressed the car’s locking fob and secured all its doors and headed up the track into the folds of the hills.
Following the bright sphere illuminating the ground before him, he briskly made his way up the track. Within twenty minutes of walking, he found the spot he was looking for – a dip in the ground that couldn’t be seen from the road.
He marked out approximately one metre square in the turf by cutting its edge with his spade, stamping the tool below the root line on each penetration. He then dissected from the cut perimeter neat lines, crisscrossing from one side to the other, creating small oblongs, each precisely matching the spade’s blade in both width and length.
He pushed under the first clod of grass, neatly lifting the turf intact with its life-giving roots undamaged by the spade. He laid the pieces gently to one side, placing them in a perfect mirror image of the darkened earth square he had cut them from. With the square complete, he rolled out the groundsheet to one side of the bare earthen patch and began to dig, using the spade where he could and the mattock pick to break up the compacted soil as he got deeper. He worked diligently ensuring that not a crumb of dirt from each shovelful fell anywhere but onto the groundsheet.
Within half an hour he was over a metre down, with a sizeable mound of soil on the sheet. He stepped out of the hole and surveyed the labours of his excavation. Deciding that this would be deep enough for his needs, he placed the tools carefully onto the small mound of earth and, with measured haste, returned to the van. After all it was very bad manners to keep dignitaries waiting, he thought, chuckling to himself as he carefully scurried on his way to retrieve the body of the once Governor of Fukushima Prefecture.
Unlocking the Suzuki, he began to hoist the woman through the rear doors of his compact van. Her body felt quite rigid after her time being stuffed in the small larder area under the counter. He reached in with his overly muscular arms to encircle the plastic sheet which held her petite body and, very carefully so as not to tear the translucent plastic, he drew her cold, foetal-shaped torso, out.
He held her against his chest with one hand while he closed the doors and locked them with the other. Then, cradling her across the front of his body in both arms, in an almost tender embrace as one might carry a sleeping child, he made steady progress back to the grave he had just dug. He was now committing to what was the most vulnerable phase of the foray. Being caught out in the open in the possession of a dead body at any time, would not be an ideal position for any self-respecting professional killer to find one’s self in. The discovery of the deceased, who had been a high-profile politician and had already been overtly missing for several days, would lead to a somewhat all together more challenging situation no doubt. He effortlessly lifted the Governor again, carefully placing her into the pit. He manoeuvred her body into a more compact, foetal position to ensure a proper fit. With meticulous attention, he made sure every part of her, along with the plastic covering, was well below the surface. Taking a small penknife out of his pocket he made an incision in the plastic sheet, slitting it open along most its full length. He poured the remainder of the petrol into the grave, moving the nozzle up and down to ensure that every part of her body was saturated with the fuel.
He peered down at the broken and battered body of the Governor, watching as her clothes soaked up the flammable liquid. She had not died well, but he had not expected her to. The woman had no honour – that fact had been already made apparent to him long before he had decided to kidnap her.
He had eventually received all the information he required. It had taken a few days of rigorous interrogation, but nothing too exotic. Using the usual practices of psychological and physical torture had given him all the information he wanted.
Although she had been a professional politician of strong will and undoubted fortitude, for a female in their late forties, of fragile disposition, she was never going to put up much resistance to the insidiously destructive techniques he had applied to both her body and soul. Towards the conclusion of her torture, he felt a surge of satisfaction upon obtaining not only the essential information he sought, but also a collection of captivating, unexpected bonus insights. Watching, waiting for the petrol to soak into the corpse and saturate the soil beneath it, he pondered on what she had revealed to him. It always fascinated him with many of his victims, that even as they saw the end growing near, with all hope lost, adrift in a miserable sea of agony and desolation, something held them back from releasing that final grasp on the fading threads of existence. At that critical moment, a mere hint of redemption often proved to be enough to persuade them to relinquish their deepest secrets, despite their blatant disregard for the permanent consequences of their degradation.
So many people truly do not appreciate life until it is all far too late, he thought, as he set fire to a box of matches and threw it onto the body. He retreated rapidly from the inevitable fireball that would follow.
Even from where he was standing, he could feel the heat of the cleansing flames, their scorching scourge removing any trace of himself from the body. The heat was good, it was the light that came with it that concerned him.
While the furnace crackled and rendered the body to ash, he walked the short distance to the top of the hill that overlooked the main road and kept watch as the flames did their work, until they steadily died out about ten minutes later.
He returned to the pyre, the smell of burnt flesh and plastic catching in his nose and throat. He looked down at what was left of the body, which was very little. Globs of blackened, melted plastic were stuck at numerous points around the woman’s remains. If her body were ever found, he was confident that only the teeth and DNA could potentially reveal her identity. However, he was assured that nothing about her would trace back to him, leaving no forensic evidence to connect him to the discovery. He had been careful not to break any bones, and all of her soft tissue had been consumed by the flames, with most of her skeleton no more than a powdery shadow.
Reviewing his handiwork, he meticulously cut away some singed edges of grass and then began to back-fill the grave, being careful not to spill any dirt onto the grass surrounding the hole. He methodically compressed the soil over the corpse using the flat side of his spade. To ensure an even surface, he also jumped on it, leaving a gap of approximately one hundred centimetres from the surrounding ground level. This gap was necessary to accommodate the turf, allowing it to be laid flat and seamlessly blend back into its original environment. He quickly reassembled the grassy jigsaw, returning it to the same orientation as it was taken. He then pulled up the corners of the sheet, retaining the remaining unused dirt within it. Securing the bunched ends of the plastic within the grip of one hand, he retrieved the rest of his gear with his other and set off back to the noodle van.
The track leading to where the vehicle was parked had a drainage ditch running along one side. As he walked alongside the ditch, he released one corner of the plastic sheet allowing the soil to trickle in as he went, leaving the first rain shower to melt it back into the ground and obscure its origin.
With a final check of the area, he got in, started the vehicle, and quickly drove off. He had arrived from an easterly direction, he now turned north onto the main road in the opposite direction to the way he had come.
The journey back was longer, which would mean less sleep before his early shift in the morning, but he never took unnecessary risks having learnt the lessons of his craft well.
He was confident her body would never be found. Spring would be here soon enough and the grass would grow strong and succulent around the grave. In the unlikely event that she was discovered, there was nothing to trace the body back to him, the only secret she could give up now was her identity.
It was the identity of others that concerned him now because the Governor’s information had radically shuffled his list of suspects. Several had now been elevated across his deadly threshold of complicity into that zone where she had once taken the prime position. He was surprised that he had overestimated her importance, which concerned him as he was not a man who liked surprises at all. When one is surprised by an event, it indicates a lack of control, a true marker of sloppiness, which in his experience could lead to fatal mistakes. He had no reservations regarding his own ability to protect himself whatever circumstances evolved before him. However, the killing of innocents had never sat well, even on his stunted conscience. Undoubtedly, the Governor had committed several misdemeanours that, in his view, amounted to capital offences. Therefore, by the esteemed principles of Takada’s law, she was justifiably deserving of her dreadful fate, based solely on those.
He drove on into the creeping dawn, back to Fukushima City to begin his shift at the restaurant that serviced the hotel where he was employed as a chef. It was 04.30 when he arrived to start the day’s work. He parked his van in the car park beneath the hotel and made his way up to the top floor to start preparing the kitchen for the morning’s breakfast rush.
He collected a fresh apron and chef’s hat from the linen store and put them on. Adjacent to the kitchen island, he crouched down to unlock the cupboard beneath, where he stored the implements of his secondary, expertly honed craft. He carefully extracted a robust brown canvas knife wallet, secured by two brass buckles at each end. Adorning the space between the buckles was a leather patch, elegantly embossed with the words ‘Ritz Paris’, signifying its distinguished origin. He unbuckled the wallet and rolled out an exquisite set of extremely high-quality knives, mainly of Japanese origin, but also some of European design. He lovingly ran his hands over them, these were the tools of his trade, but also much, much more. A set of good knives is all a chef requires to get work, but it is also a passport to go anywhere in the world.
This set of blades, combined with his masterful skill, had made him welcome at some of the very best restaurants in many countries during his career. He withdrew one of the knives from its protective sheath within the wallet, holding its blade close to his face for inspection. He could tell just by looking at the edge alone that it was a Japanese blade. The profile of the cutting edge being the epitome of what made Japanese knives stand out against all others. The edges of European knives, and their swords for that matter, were sharpened from both sides, into a ‘V’-shaped cutting edge. This was fine for heavy work, such as chopping through thick bones and joints when one was in a hurry, but to a Japanese chef, useless for the correct preparation of any type of food.
The cut of the food was regarded as divine to this culinary art. All types of food, whether they were meat or fish, fruit or vegetables, could be enhanced in appearance and taste by the slice of a blade that would leave a molecularly smooth surface in its wake. To achieve this required the chiselled edge of the traditional Japanese design. These blades were continuously flat on one side with only the opposite edge honed to extreme sharpness. This allowed for the most delicate and exquisite of cuts to be made and used expertly, could turn a mere chef into a culinary maestro.
Some of the dishes he had created in his career had been masterpieces, and through these fleeting works of art he had built a reputation for excellence with restaurateurs in kitchens located in the East and the West. They were always eager to procure the services of the Japanese chef, even if he never seemed to stay very long at any one establishment. That chapter of his life, marked by a deep love for gastronomy, now felt like a distant memory, overshadowed by other, more extreme passions. Yet, as he reflected on the unpredictable and often surprising nature of life’s journey, he entertained the thought that perhaps, one day, he might reclaim his position among the world’s culinary elite.