CHAPTER TEN
I reached the Land of the Rising Sun just as the sun was setting. My confidence wasn’t exactly in the ascendant either. While most of my fellow passengers had slept through our night over Russia, I’d spent the blank hours thinking so hard about the bind I was in that my brain had turned to mush by the time another day dawned. Then, eventually, I did sleep, deep and dreamlessly – for all of forty minutes before landing.
Travelling as light as I was at least meant I didn’t have to hang around the baggage hall at Narita Airport. I made straight for the bureau de change, swapped my Deutschmarks for yen, then hit the information desk. The legendary courtesy of the Japanese is the only possible explanation for me going away with a street map of Tokyo on which neat red crosses marked the locations of the Golden Rickshaw bar and the Far East office of the Eurybia Shipping Company, along with a note of their addresses in Japanese. (There’d turned out to be three Golden Rickshaws in the Tokyo telephone directory, but one in such a remote suburb that I ruled it out as a former haunt of American GIs and another, logically enough, was actually a rickshaw-hire firm.)
I studied the map as the N’Ex train sped me into the city. The Golden Rickshaw was in a side-street a shortish distance east of Tokyo’s central station. To that extent, my luck was in. (Though the wiseacre I’d sat next to on the plane had assured me that tracking down addresses in Tokyo was like looking for a haystack in a galaxy.) Eurybia’s office was quite a way to the south-west, however, so Rupe wasn’t likely to have chanced on the Golden Rickshaw while sampling nearby bars. Since it was bang in the centre of the city, he wasn’t likely to have lived just round the corner from it, either. No, he’d sought it out. He’d known what he was looking for all along. Though exactly what that was . . .
The Tokyo rush hour was in full swing when I got off the train. It was the usual big city swirl of bright lights and dim humanity, amped up to an oriental pitch I was in no state to deal with. It was also raining hard enough to soak my map as I battled out of the station through a swarm of brolly-wielding commuters. I immediately set off in the wrong direction, then had to double back and soon lost count of how many blocks I was supposed to cover. A department-store doorman eventually put me right and I found the side-street I was looking for. There were several bars along it, all doing a brisk trade, but no immediate sign of the Golden Rickshaw, so I tried my luck in one of the friendlier-looking establishments. A barman wearing sunglasses was a first in my experience, but the inky lenses didn’t stop him studying the piece of paper on which I had the Golden Rickshaw’s address written down, while opening a beer for me at the same time.
‘Seven doors that way, other side,’ he announced. ‘But it’s closed.’
‘Closed?’
‘Six weeks now, must be.’
‘The Hashimotos?’
‘Yeh. They run it. The family, you know, for years. Closed now. Gone.’
‘Gone where?’
‘Hey, they don’t tell me.’ He wrinkled his nose enough to raise the sunglasses clear of the bridge. ‘They just go.’
‘The mother and the daughter?’
‘Yeh. That’s right. Gone. Like smoke.’
Gone like smoke. And so they were. The Golden Rickshaw still had its gilded emblem hanging over the door, but the bar was unlit, its bamboo blinds drawn. Thanks to the headlights of passing cars and the glow of the nearest street-lamp, I could see something of the interior round the edges of the blinds: a bare counter beyond a jumble of stacked tables, chairs and stools, and a slew of unopened mail. They’d gone. No question about it. And those photographs of former patrons decorating the walls? They’d gone too. I could see the nails they’d hung on. But they hung no more. I’d come a third of the way round the world to find a coop the birds had long since flown – without leaving so much as a stray feather behind them.
It wasn’t really surprising, I admitted to myself as I trudged back to the station. They knew they were in danger. The had known, ever since Rupe made off with the Townley letter. I knew it now too. If I could track them down, so could others. In the circumstances, business as usual at the Golden Rickshaw would have been verging on the suicidal.
But where did I go from here? That was the point. Where exactly did I go? There was only one answer, of course. It was the second address written on my piece of paper.
After queuing in the rain at the exit on the other side of the station for ten minutes, I got myself a cab, waved Eurybia’s address under the driver’s nose until he gave me the thumbs-up, then sat back and surprised myself by falling straight to sleep.
When the driver jogged me awake, my first thought, based on the fare winking at me from the meter, was that it was the following morning. But no, it was barely twenty minutes later and we were at the foot of some alp of a skyscraper. The driver jabbered something at me that seemed to mean ‘We’re here’ and pointed at the steps leading up to the brightly lit entrance. I filled his hand with yen and clambered out.
The Chayama Building fulfilled the office needs of several dozen corporations, listed on the face of a vast gold monolith that formed a sort of way-station between the door and the distant reception desk. Eurybia was on the ninth floor. But making it to the brushed-steel lift doors meant talking my way past a security man who looked big and grim enough to be a moonlighting sumo wrestler. I had my doubts about whether I looked the part for office visits and it was also – according to a huge clock on the wall behind him, with hands as long as javelins and a pendulum as big as a supertanker piston – suspiciously late. I just had to hope Eurybia’s staff were a dedicated bunch.
‘Hi. Eurybia Shipping?’
The sumotori smiled with surprising warmth. ‘Who you seeing?’
‘Not sure. It concerns . . .’ I shrugged. ‘Well, Mr Charles Hoare of their London office said I was to call round. Could you ask them if I could go up?’
‘What your name?’
‘Bradley. Lance Bradley.’
‘If they ask . . . what about?’
‘Say . . .’ An inspired notion came to me. ‘Say it’s about the Pomparles Trading Company.’
‘Pomplees?’
‘Pom-par-lees.’
‘Pomparlees. OK.’
He picked up the phone, pressed a button and had a brief conversation with somebody in Japanese. I caught my name, and Charlie Hoare’s and the agonizingly enunciated Pomparlees. My name was repeated – twice. Then he waited, phone cradled under his massive chin, grinning at me like this was one big game – as it was, I suppose. After a minute or so, conversation resumed. But not for long.
‘OK.’ He put the phone down. ‘They say you go up.’ He flapped a hand the size of a baseball mitt towards the lift. ‘Floor nine.’
There was a bloke waiting for me when I exited the lift. Middle-aged, sober-tied and dark-suited, stocky going on flabby, he had slicked-back greying hair and a large, lugubrious, flat-nosed face rather like a bulldog’s, with a long diagonal crease across his forehead so prominent it could have been a scar. ‘Mr Bradley?’ he ventured, bowing slightly.
‘Yeh. Thanks for—’
‘I am Toshishige Yamazawa.’ We shook hands. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
‘Me too, Mr Yamazawa.’ I glanced along the corridor and spotted a Eurybia Shipping sign above a set of double doors at the end. It looked like I still wasn’t actually on the premises and Yamazawa didn’t seem to be in a tearing hurry to change that. ‘Shall we, er . . .’
‘Can I see some identification, please?’
‘Passport do?’
‘Surely.’
I handed it over and he looked studiously at my photograph, then handed it back.
‘Rupe spoke about you.’
‘He did?’ (That was a surprise, I’d have had to admit.) ‘So, you, er, worked with him?’
‘Yes. And now I work with Mr’ – he nodded towards the Eurybia doors – ‘Penberthy.’
‘Right.’
‘Mr Penberthy is not a happy man. He wanted me to send you away.’
‘How did you talk him round?’
‘No need. He talks himself round if you let him. But he will soon leave us to it and then . . .’ Yamazawa winked at me with so little change of expression that I thought for a moment it was some kind of muscular tic. But no. He was trying to tell me something. ‘Then we talk.’ (Ah. So that’s what he was trying to tell me.)
‘Mr Penberthy is Rupe’s successor?’
‘Successor, yes. But not exactly a replacement.’ (I couldn’t make up my mind whether his candour was to my advantage or not. Either way, it was the last thing I’d have expected of the nose-to-the-grindstone salary-man I took him to be.) ‘I take you to meet him.’
Yamazawa led the way to the doors, where he tapped out a code on a number-pad to gain access. Inside, we walked down a short corridor into a large, stark, grey-furnished office. A block of desks, about half of which were still occupied despite the fact that seven o’clock had come and gone, filled the centre of the room, where assorted Eurybians nursed telephones and squinted at computer screens. None of them paid me the slightest heed.
We pressed on towards a trio of larger, partitioned-off desks, behind one of which sat a thin, blue-suited European. He was leaning back in his chair, conducting a telephone conversation that his frowns and grimaces suggested wasn’t pleasing him. He had fair, receding hair and dark shadows round his eyes. His skin had an unhealthy, yellowish tinge to it. All in all, I’d have said his nearest and dearest had good reason to be worried about him.
‘Penberthy-san, this is our visitor,’ Yamazawa announced as we approached. ‘Mr Bradley.’
Penberthy slammed the phone down and frowned at it rather than me. ‘Bloody Charlie Hoare,’ he said. ‘Not in yet. Can you believe it?’
‘It’s only ten-fifteen in London,’ said Yamazawa (sounding deliberately provocative to me).
Penberthy glared at him, then turned his attention to me. ‘Mr Bradley, is it?’
‘Yes. I—’
‘We’ve had nothing from Charlie Hoare about a visit from you. And this is a pretty odd bloody hour to come calling.’
‘Mr Bradley gave Charlie Hoare some information about the Pomparles Trading Company,’ said Yamazawa.
‘Only the origin of the name,’ I explained, grinning to cover my surprise. How did he know I’d done that?
‘Very considerate of you,’ snapped Penberthy. ‘God, if I ever hear the end of this bloody Pomparles business I think I’ll be dreaming.’
‘It is a complicated affair,’ said Yamazawa.
‘Don’t I know it? Complicated enough to get me targeted by burglars in this supposedly crime-free city.’
‘You’ve been burgled?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes. And not just once. But—’ He broke off and eyed me doubtfully. ‘Without the say-so from Hoare Who Must Be Obeyed, I’m not sure we should be discussing Eurybia business with you, Mr Bradley.’
‘I’m an old friend of Rupe Alder’s. I’m trying to find out what’s happened to him, on behalf of his family.’
‘It’s still no can do as far as I’m concerned.’
‘I would be willing to help Bradley-san as much as I can,’ said Yamazawa.
‘Why?’ asked Penberthy.
‘Why not?’
‘Because Charlie mightn’t like you to, old man.’
‘In that event it would be my problem, not yours, Penberthy-san.’
‘Bloody right it would. I’d make sure of that.’
‘Of course.’ Yamazawa smiled. ‘So would I.’ (Penberthy looked as puzzled as I felt. What was Yamazawa up to?) ‘Bradley-san and I can have little talk at the Nezumi. Off the record.’
‘It’ll be on the record if this goes pear-shaped. Your record.’
‘But if I learn something of importance . . .’
‘You’ll be in Charlie Hoare’s good books. Fine. Go on. I don’t care. Do what you like. It’s not worth the risk for a few brownie points in my opinion, but, then’ – he waved one hand expansively across his desk – ‘when did my opinion ever count for anything around here?’
The Nezumi was a small bar a few blocks from the Chayama Building. Yamazawa seemed to be well known there, exchanging a strange Japanese version of high-fives with the barman and several of the customers. Most of them looked to be salary slaves in his own age bracket. They were drinking and smoking at a stiffish pace, inebriation a certain destination – unless asphyxiation got them first.
Yamazawa lit up and ordered a couple of beers. ‘Kampai,’ he announced, polishing off half of his in three swallows. ‘We drink to health and happiness for Penberthy.’
‘We do?’
‘A pompous hope, of course.’
‘Don’t you mean pious?’
‘Not sure.’ He flicked his tie back over his shoulder, out of harm’s way, finished his beer and ordered another. ‘But I have done my duty.’
‘I get the impression you won’t be seeking the presidency of Penberthy’s fan club.’
‘I couldn’t afford to refuse it. But there are different kinds of duty. The office kind. And our kind.’
‘You mean friendship?’
‘Rupe is my friend and yours, Bradley-san. He did me . . . a great kindness.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘You could say he saved my life.’
‘How?’
‘A private matter. We leave it there. OK?’
‘OK. Though, as it happens, you could say he saved my life too.’
‘Strange.’ Yamazawa peered at me through his cigarette smoke. ‘Rupe is more careful with his friends’ lives than his own.’
‘You think his life’s in danger?’
‘For sure. Unless . . . it is already over.’
‘Pessimistic bugger, aren’t you?’
‘It is in my nature. Not in Rupe’s, though. He always sees a bright dawn. Which is good . . . unless you are dazzled by the brightness.’
‘Do you know anything about the Golden Rickshaw bar?’
‘You have been there?’
‘It’s closed.’
‘I know. My fault, you could say.’
‘How’s that?’
‘I introduced Rupe to it. He used to ask me about Tokyo in the old days. Fifties and Sixties. The American bases interested him. One weekend, he got me to drive him round them – Yokosuka, Zama, Atsugi, Yokota. The whole lot. A long day of gates and fences and Jeeps and helicopters. And Rupe looking . . . for something.’
‘What was he looking for?’
‘He didn’t say. But when I mentioned a bar I’d heard about in Ginza with a . . . strange kind of reputation . . .’
‘The Golden Rickshaw?’
‘Yes. The Rickshaw.’
‘And the reputation?’
‘My uncle used to mention it. He was a fish merchant. Quite a successful one. The American bases were good customers of his. He got to know some of the men. He talked with them. That’s how he heard about the Rickshaw.’
‘And what did he hear?’
‘Normally the officers used certain bars and clubs, the lower ranks certain other bars and clubs. They didn’t mix. Except at the Rickshaw. That made it very unusual. Unique, I should think. It was a long way from the bases, of course. You wouldn’t go there without a reason. Or an invitation.’
‘Who issued the invitations?’
‘Who knows? Uncle Sato didn’t, for sure. But he did supply fish to the American Embassy as well as the bases. And he heard the Rickshaw mentioned there also. Or, to be correct, he was asked about it there.’
‘Asked?’
‘Yes. Was the Golden Rickshaw a customer of his? It seemed important, so he said. It seemed like it would make a difference to whether they went on using him. He said no, which was the truth. And they did go on using him. But it was strange, he said, being asked, and being asked at that particular time. You remember Gary Powers?’
‘The American pilot shot down over Russia in a spy plane?’
‘May, nineteen sixty. That is right. Powers flew his mission from Atsugi Naval Air Station. Uncle Sato was asked about the Golden Rickshaw just a few days after the news broke.’
‘What’s the connection?’
‘Who is saying there is one?’
‘You are, good as.’
‘No, no, Bradley-san. I am just warming up Uncle Sato’s stale old stories, like a loyal nephew should.’
‘Did Uncle Sato know the Hashimotos?’
‘No. But he knew people who did. Tokyo was a smaller city then. There was nothing said against them. They were a respectable family. They still are.’
‘So, you took Rupe along to the Golden Rickshaw?’
‘Yes. We went there.’
‘What was it like?’
Yamazawa shrugged. ‘Like a lot of other places. Quieter than most, maybe. Mayumi Hashimoto was the mama. She ran it well. Helped by her daughter. There were no Americans. That time was gone.’
‘But there were photographs of that time on display, weren’t there?’
Yamazawa looked surprised. ‘How did you know about those, Bradley-san?’
‘I met Kiyofumi Hashimoto, Mayumi’s brother.’
‘Ah. He also is looking for Rupe.’ Yamazawa nodded. ‘Of course.’ (I wondered if I ought to tell him then that poor old Kiyo was looking no more, but some instinct held me back.) ‘He came to see me shortly after Rupe left Tokyo.’
‘Accusing him of theft?’
‘Yes. And of deceiving Hashimoto’s niece, Haruko. That was a surprise to me.’
‘Didn’t you know about their engagement?’
‘No. I did not. I never even knew Rupe had gone on visiting the Golden Rickshaw after that one time I took him there. He said nothing to me about any of it. He kept his resignation secret too. I only found out he was leaving when London faxed us with news of his replacement.’
‘That wasn’t very friendly of him.’
‘He apologized to me. He said there were . . . reasons . . . why he had to be so secretive.’
‘But he didn’t say what those reasons were?’
Yamazawa smiled thinly. ‘No.’
‘Why don’t we have another beer?’ I asked, glancing at our suddenly empty glasses.
‘Good idea.’ Yamazawa arranged that with little more than a twitch of the eyebrows. ‘You like Sapporo beer?’
‘It hits the spot.’
‘For sure. Not for Rupe, though.’
‘No?’
‘He was always careful not to drink too much. I thought it was just . . . self-control. Now I wonder if he couldn’t risk it. You know? In case he got really drunk and . . . gave something away.’
‘Some of those secrets?’
‘Some. Or all. I don’t know.’
‘He stole a letter from Mayumi Hashimoto.’
‘So her brother said.’
‘I need to find that letter.’
‘But you are not the only one looking, I think. Hashimoto said his sister and niece were in danger because of it. That is why they went away. To hide. And since then . . . there have been the break-ins.’
‘You mean the burglaries Penberthy complained of?’
‘He lives in the flat Rupe used to live in. It is leased by Eurybia. It has been broken into twice. Nothing has been stolen. But everything has been searched. Thoroughly. Of course, Rupe left nothing there.’
‘He took all his possessions with him?’
‘Not difficult, Bradley-san. I saw how he lived. One suitcase would have been enough. But you are his friend, so I must be honest with you. He did not take everything with him.’
‘Are you holding something for him?’ I asked, reckoning I’d caught his drift.
Yamazawa nodded solemnly in confirmation. ‘A briefcase. He asked me to keep it safe and secret. I did not tell Hashimoto about it. But that was before the break-ins and the Pomparles scandal. Something is wrong, I think. Very wrong. I have been thinking that maybe the time has come to open the briefcase and see what it contains.’
‘I think maybe you’re right.’
‘Yes.’ He took a deep swallow of beer. ‘We do it tonight.’
‘Where is it?’
‘At my flat.’
‘How far?’
‘An hour on the subway.’
‘That could be a problem for me.’
‘Why?’
‘Claustrophobia.’
‘We are all claustrophobics on the Tokyo subway.’
‘No, no. I mean it. Really.’
‘In that case, I have bad news for you, Bradley-san.’ He gave me another glimpse of his thin-lipped smile. ‘You will have to pay for the taxi.’
‘This is real luxury,’ he was enthusing twenty minutes later, as our taxi cruised westwards through the wet Tokyo night, its tyres hissing on the rain-slicked streets, the raindrops on its windscreen blurring the passing ranks of neon-lit signs. ‘To tell you the truth, Bradley-san, I don’t like the subway either.’
‘You suffer from claustrophobia as well?’
‘Not exactly. But you’ve heard of the Tokyo gas attack?’
‘Yeh. A few years ago. Some doomsday cult released nerve gas on the subway, didn’t they? Were you caught up in that?’
‘Yes.’ He smiled, which seemed an odd way to remember such an experience. ‘I did not get a serious dose. Not of the sarin, I mean. But I trusted life before that day. Then I saw how easily it could all fall apart. I haven’t really fitted in since then. Maybe that is why my wife left me. Maybe that is why I have done a lot of things I should not have done. It comes down to chance in the end. My wife wanted me to take the day off. It was a Monday, March twentieth, and Tuesday was a public holiday for the start of spring, so we could have had a long weekend. I was working for one of the bigger shipping companies then. Working hard. I was a dedicated man. I said I had to go in. And that was the day I stopped’ – his smile broadened – ‘being a dedicated man.’
I tried to prise out some more details of Yamazawa’s brush with death on the subway, but he artfully diverted me into an account of how Rupe had led me into danger – then got me out of it – the very last time I’d ventured any distance underground. I had the impression Yamazawa had already revealed more of himself than he thought wise. But I also had the impression he couldn’t really stop himself.
His flat was on the third floor of a drab, mid-rise block in a remote western suburb: one small living room and three windowless cupboards that the fittings suggested were bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. (The modesty of the accommodation didn’t stop me being required on entering to swap my shoes for a pair of mules I could barely squeeze my toes into.) A couple of large bean-bags and a low table were about it on the lounge furniture front. Supplementary decoration was confined to a framed wood-block print showing snow falling across warehouse roofs on a moonlit night. It was beautifully coloured and looked far too good for its surroundings.
‘My proudest possession,’ said Yamazawa, noticing my gaze linger on it. ‘You know the artist? Kawase Hasui.’
‘I don’t know any artists. Especially not Japanese ones.’
‘Ah, but Hasui was a genius. You can see that, can’t you?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘My best investment as well as my proudest possession. It would probably bring a bigger price than this flat.’
‘Tempted to sell?’
‘Often. But I have not yet been desperate enough. Now, to business. Sit down, please. I fetch the case.’
I lowered myself onto one of the bean-bags while Yamazawa hurried away into the bedroom. I heard a cupboard door open and close. Then he was back, carrying the briefcase Rupe had entrusted to his care. It was a slim, black leather briefcase, with combination locks – a standard-issue executive sandwich carrier. ‘I do not think we will find the stolen letter inside,’ said Yamazawa, laying it flat on the table and kneeling down opposite me.
‘No. He’ll have taken that with him.’
‘But something important, for sure. Something he did not want them to find if they came looking.’
‘When they came looking. I guess it was always a certainty.’
‘It is not going to be easy to break open.’
‘Maybe we don’t need to break it open.’
‘You know the combination?’
‘No. But I know Rupe. He chose the name Pomparles for a reason. It’ll be the same with the combination. A four-figure number . . . with some secret significance.’ I tried 1963. But no joy. ‘Too obvious, perhaps. How about a Wilderness Farm connection? Peter Dalton died on the nineteenth of August.’ But 1908 didn’t work either. Nor did 0863.
‘His birthday, maybe?’
I tried it. ‘No.’
‘His father’s birthday?’
‘I wouldn’t know when that was. But hold on.’ (A thought had suddenly struck me.) ‘I do know the date of his father’s death. The seventeenth of November.’ And 1711 did the trick. The case opened.
To reveal a sheaf of papers and a wallet of photographs. ‘What is there?’ asked Yamazawa, craning over the lid.
‘Not sure. Take a look at these pics.’ I handed him the wallet, then took out the papers and began leafing through them. They were all photocopies. A lot were of the very same Central Somerset Gazette stories Dad had dug out for me, plus several he hadn’t, though all on the same theme – the crop of deaths around Street during the summer and autumn of 1963. There were articles from the national press as well, about the Great Train Robbery and the search for the gang and their loot – TRAIN ROBBERS’ HIDE-OUT DISCOVERED, blared an August 1963 headline. Others were parts of largescale Ordnance Survey maps of the Street area, which looked as if they dated from the same period. Wilderness Farm was picked out in yellow highlighter. And so was Cow Bridge. There was also a copy of a page from an old British Railways Western Region timetable showing services on the Somerset and Dorset line, with stopping times at Ashcott and Meare highlighted. Rupe had been plotting the past to prepare for the future. But what sort of future had it been?
‘Does it tell you anything?’ asked Yamazawa.
‘Nothing I didn’t already know.’ I looked up at him. ‘What about the photographs?’
‘See for yourself.’ He spread them out on the table.
They were apparently unremarkable snapshots, mostly of an attractive young Japanese woman, sometimes posing as solemn-faced as a priestess, sometimes smiling radiantly. Whichever the expression, there was a trusting intensity in her gaze that convinced me at once that she loved the person taking her picture to the point of adoration. ‘Haruko Hashimoto?’
‘Yes,’ said Yamazawa. ‘A most charming fiancée.’
‘And this must be Mayumi.’ I pointed to a picture of Haruko standing next to an older woman. They’d been snapped in front of some kind of temple with other people wandering past in the background. Both were lightly and casually dressed. It looked like high summer. There was a strong family resemblance between the two women and it was pretty obvious where Haruko had got her looks from.
‘Mother and daughter taking a stroll in Ueno Park,’ said Yamazawa, recognizing the spot. ‘Also charming.’
‘Until you know Rupe’s just stringing them along.’
‘He stays out of the picture.’
‘So he does.’ I looked for Rupe in vain, then noticed one photograph that appeared to be black and white, which it obviously couldn’t be if it was from the same film. ‘What’s this?’
I picked it up to examine, holding it between us so that Yamazawa could see as well. The picture was in black and white. Three men in lightweight US military uniforms were sitting at a table in a bar. There were drifts of smoke and blurred figures in the background at other tables. One of the three had his back to the camera and was half in shadow. He was young and slim, his dark hair cropped just shy of a crew-cut. He was looking across the table to his left, the light catching his chin and cheekbone. The man he was looking at was facing the camera, though apparently unaware of its existence. He was stockier and slightly older, with a hint of flab around his jaw and waist and a smile creasing his wide face as he raised a beer bottle in his hand. ‘It is a photograph of a photograph,’ said Yamazawa. ‘One of the pictures from the wall of the Golden Rickshaw.’ He was right. There were odd patches of sheen on the print that could only be reflections from the glass in the frame.
‘Yeh,’ I said. ‘And I know why he chose this particular picture.’ The third man at the table, also facing the camera, was thinner and grimmer-faced than his beaming companion. He was also slightly younger than in the only other photograph of him I’d seen. Or maybe that was just the effect of his trim, pressed uniform. Whatever the case, there was no mistaking the way he was holding his cigarette behind his palm, between forefinger and thumb, just as he had the day he’d been waiting for a train at Ashcott and Meare station. ‘It’s Stephen Townley,’ I said.
‘Who is Stephen Townley?’
‘The subject of the letter Rupe stole.’
‘An important man?’
‘Maybe. Dangerous, for certain.’
‘Who are the other two?’
‘Haven’t a clue.’
‘I think we have.’
‘I don’t see one.’
‘The smile.’ Yamazawa pointed at the grinning bloke with the beer bottle. Then he picked up another photograph and held it in front of me. ‘The smile is the same.’
And so it was. Worn by a forty-or-so years older man. His hair was still short, but had turned white with age. The surplus flesh under his jaw had become a wodge of fat, the sagging stomach a substantial paunch. But the smile hadn’t altered. He was standing next to Haruko Hashimoto, dwarfing her almost, given how much taller and broader he was, grinning amiably at the camera – and hence at Rupe. ‘Bloody hell,’ I murmured. ‘It’s the same man.’
‘For sure.’
‘He’s still here.’
‘Not here, actually.’
‘You can see for yourself.’
‘Yes, Bradley-san, I can. But that is not Tokyo.’
I looked more closely. Smiler and Haruko were standing on what was probably a balcony, its railings visible behind them. On the other side of the street below was a neatly clipped hedge and, beyond it, a moat, a stone-block wall and part of what looked like a castle or palace, high-roofed and ornately eaved.
‘That is Nijo-jo,’ said Yamazawa. ‘In Kyoto.’
‘Kyoto?’
‘Yes. The ancient capital.’
‘Are you sure this photograph was taken there?’
‘I took my son to Kyoto for a holiday two years ago. We saw many temples. But Koichi preferred the castle of Nijo-jo, because of its so-called nightingale floors. They squeak, however softly you walk on them – an old trick of the shoguns, to warn them of intruders. Koichi loved that. He made me take him several times. So, I remember Nijo-jo. This photograph was taken in somebody’s flat, I would guess, overlooking the castle. Rupe must be standing in shadow for the light to be right. So, he is in the room. They are on the balcony.’
‘Whose flat?’
‘Not Haruko’s or Rupe’s, obviously.’
‘But Smiler’s.’
‘Probably.’
‘An American in his sixties who was based here as a soldier and stayed on – or came back.’
‘Could be.’
‘And he could be sheltering Haruko and her mother. Now.’
‘It is as likely as anything else.’
‘A flat near . . . what was it?’
‘Nijo-jo. Quite a landmark.’
‘And Smiler’s probably a landmark in his own right round there. Which means it should be possible to trace him.’
‘I think you would have a good chance.’
‘And I haven’t got a lot of chances to choose from, have I? How far’s Kyoto?’
‘By one of our famous bullet trains, less than three hours.’
I sat back and gazed vacantly at the photographs in front of us. Chances and choices? I never seemed to have enough of either. ‘It’s the bullet train for me, then.’
With my next move decided, we both relaxed. Yamazawa (Toshi, as I was calling him by now, even though I couldn’t shift him from Bradley-san) invited me to stay the night, which was more or less inevitable, given how late it was. He then opened a bottle of some potent spirit called shochu, into which we made alarmingly mind-mangling inroads as the night deepened.
Yamazawa had identified another of Rupe’s photographs as having been taken in Kyoto – Haruko strolling along a picturesque tree-lined canal; the Philosopher’s Walk, he’d called it. This and all the other snapshots of the winsome maiden Rupe had heartlessly strung along led us into gloomy reflections on the human capacity for deceit, which in turn plunged Yamazawa into a morbid analysis of the failure of his marriage, something he admitted to being so ashamed of that he could only discuss it with a foreigner.
But that was only a detour. All conversational roads – if you could call our slurred ramblings a conversation – led back to Rupe, our loyal friend who was clearly capable of big-time disloyalty where others were concerned. That thought got to me in the end and I decided that Yamazawa deserved to be told the truth. So, some time around midnight, I broke the news of Hashimoto’s death.
‘These are serious people you are mixing it with, Bradley-san,’ he said after a lengthy pause.
‘Believe me, Toshi, if I’d known how serious . . .’
‘You never would have got involved.’
‘Too right.’
‘Then be glad you did not know.’
‘Glad?’
‘Yes. Because you would have done nothing. You would have turned your back on your friend. And that shame – that dishonour – would have stayed with you for the rest of your life.’
‘I could have lived with it.’
‘For sure. But living like that’ – he nodded solemnly to himself – ‘is a kind of death.’
‘It’s the other kind I’m worried about.’
‘No need.’ Yamazawa grinned at me. ‘Our trains are very safe.’
I woke next morning on Yamazawa’s lumpy guest futon to a stream of sunlight through the window and a headache for which the word ‘ache’ was pitifully inappropriate. I felt as if I’d had brain surgery and a scalpel had been left carelessly embedded in my cerebellum. Yamazawa would probably have told me this was what shochu hangovers were always like, but a tottering exploration of the flat revealed he was in no position to, since he’d already gone to work – long since, for all I knew – leaving a farewell note Blu-Tacked to the inside of the front door.
Bradley-san,
I cannot give Penberthy more to complain about by being late, so I leave you sleeping like a baby. (I would not let a baby drink shochu, of course.) The easiest way to get to Tokyo station for your train to Kyoto is by subway, but I expect you prefer another way. So, walk down the hill to the local station and take a taxi. To save some yen, take it to Shin-Kawasaki station. That is on the main line. You can travel into Tokyo above ground from there. Call me on my mobile (not at Eurybia) and let me know what happens in Kyoto. The number is 90-5378-2447. Good luck and stay well.
Toshishige
PS  There is nothing for breakfast.