CHAPTER THIRTEEN
According to the women in my life (who’ve all had a habit of leaving it), I don’t understand – at some fundamental level that they do – what a close and loving relationship is really about. Even Ria, whose middle name certainly wasn’t commitment, reckoned I was just too easy to be with. By which she meant (I think) that, when the chips were down, I’d always be inclined to walk away from the table. Why put myself through the angst of accepting responsibility for the happiness, or, God forbid, the material needs, of another? Why put myself through any of it?
Because, of course, it’s supposed to be worth it. But is it? I’d have liked to debate the point with Rupe that Culture Day afternoon in Kansai. I’d have liked to be able to ask some sympathetic listener, ‘Do I really need or deserve this anguish?’ (Not to mention the considerable personal risk.) But sympathy for me was out of stock and season. I had, finally and illogically, accepted the responsibility I’d always tried to dodge – responsibility, in this case, for the future of two women I’d never even met before. Yamazawa did most of the talking at first, explaining the grievous realities of the situation to Mayumi as swiftly and as sensitively as possible. (I had to take that on trust, of course, since they conversed in Japanese.) Mayumi scarcely said a word, glancing often and cryptically at me as he spoke. I couldn’t have judged from her expression the moment at which she realized Loudon was dead. But, after she’d gone to fetch Haruko, Yamazawa told me he’d held nothing back.
‘She is a proud woman, I think. But frightened also. More for her daughter than herself. She will not let you see how upset she is.’
‘At least they’re not in any immediate danger, with Ledgister under arrest.’
‘But Ledgister may not be alone. She understands that. That is why she has accepted my offer of shelter.’
‘Where are you going to shelter them?’
‘At my home.’
‘You’re taking them in?’
‘Yes. You also, Lance. They cannot stay here. Neither can you. And there is nowhere else to go.’ He shrugged. ‘It is best.’
I didn’t have any choice but to trust him, even if I’d not been inclined to. Nor did Mayumi and Haruko. We loaded their belongings into the Range Rover, leaving the dented Nissan where it was, and set off, crossing the river and heading south through the western outskirts of Kyoto.
‘We will take the Meishin Expressway to Ashiya,’ Yamazawa said, translating for my benefit something he’d already told Mayumi in Japanese. ‘That is where I live. On the coast, between Osaka and Kobe.’
Mayumi and Haruko sat in the back, saying nothing beyond the odd whispered exchange between themselves. I hadn’t the nerve to speak to them at that stage. I glanced as often as I dared at their reflections in the mirror on the back of the sun-visor. Mayumi’s composure never slipped, though her bloodshot eyes and the dark rings beneath them suggested it was being tested to its limit. Haruko was less self-controlled, clutching her mother’s hand and dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief to staunch the tears of grief and fear. She’d lost weight since the summer. Her face was paler and thinner than in Rupe’s photographs. The smile she’d worn for him was just a memory. Her lover had betrayed her and, because of him, her uncle and her protector in Kyoto were both dead. The only people she and her mother had left to rely on were a cold-blooded, steely-nerved Yakuza . . . and me.
The coastal strip west of Osaka was an undistinguished urban sprawl of which Ashiya looked to be the most prosperous part. Yamazawa’s house was in the foothills of the mountains above the town, where high walls, conspicuous security devices and a total absence of pedestrians suggested twitchy residents with a lot to be twitchy about. I spotted a couple of Rottweilers patrolling the adjacent garden as we waited for the automatic door leading to the garage to slide slowly up.
‘You are thinking that crime pays well,’ Yamazawa said to me as we drove in. ‘And you are wondering how my neighbours feel about living next to a Yakuza.’
‘It’s none of my business.’
‘The answer is that they pretend to believe I lost my finger in a taxi door and, in return, I do not ask where they got their money from.’
‘Get-togethers round the barbecue not the norm here, then?’
‘The point of living here, Lance, is not to get together.’ It was a point he pondered for a moment before adding, ‘There is nowhere safer.’
I was happy to believe him. The house was vast and bare, white-walled and strangely un-Japanese, the shortage of furniture somehow conjuring up emptiness rather than simplicity.
A housekeeper evidently hired for her inscrutability talked to Yamazawa in an oriental language that sounded more like Chinese than Japanese (it was actually, I later learned, Korean), then took Mayumi and Haruko off to their quarters. I was left alone, padding round a tatami-matted lounge big enough to hold a ball in (which you could have done without needing to move anything), a pair of fluffy cream guest slippers muffling my footsteps.
A soaring triangular window looked out on to a well-tended garden contained by high stone walls. I noticed the late afternoon sunlight glinting on broken glass concreted into their tops. Uninvited visitors were definitely not welcome. There didn’t seem to be any Rottweilers on the premises, though – just a four-foot-high bronze panther bestriding the patio.
I’d been alone there for twenty minutes or so, wondering what was to happen next, when Yamazawa came in to join me, frowning ominously.
‘I have spoken to my contact in the Kyoto Police. What he has said is not good.’
‘What is it?’
‘For such a thing to happen . . .’
‘What?’
‘Ledgister has escaped.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘I do not joke.’ (Ever, I assumed he meant.) ‘It seems two men from the local station – Keihoku – got there first. After they had untied Ledgister . . .’ Yamazawa snorted irritably. ‘He shot one of them and lost the other in the forest. I should not have relied on the police. They are . . . shiroto.’
‘Could he have followed us here?’
‘Not possible. He has no car. He does not know the mountains. He is free. But he cannot know where we are.’
‘That’s something.’
‘But not enough. The police will probably think he is you. He hired the car in your name. By now the German police will know you flew to Tokyo. It will look bad for you. Very bad.’
‘I don’t remotely resemble Ledgister.’
‘Do you want to contact the police to explain that to them? I should have killed him, Lance. That is the truth. I should have finished him.’
‘You said yourself that would only have made things worse for me.’
‘Not much worse than this. You should leave the country. As soon as possible.’
‘What about Mayumi and Haruko?’
‘They are safe here.’
‘For the moment. But you can’t shelter them for ever. Besides, how can I leave? I’d be stopped at the airport.’
‘I could get you out.’
‘To go where? I don’t even know what I’m really up against. I have to find out, Shintaro. Do you understand?’
He nodded solemnly. ‘Yes.’
‘I think Mayumi can tell me.’
‘Then ask her, Lance. Soon.’
‘Now’s hardly a good time, is it?’
‘No. But it is the only time you have.’ He looked out of the window and sighed. ‘I will tell her about Ledgister. Then I will ask her to speak to you. She is my guest, so . . . I do not think she will refuse.’
She did not refuse. The housekeeper brought tea and, a few minutes later, Mayumi came into the room, expressionless and outwardly calm. We sat down and she poured tea for both of us.
‘Kiyofumi said you are a good man, Bradley-san.’
‘Not as good as he was. And, please, call me Lance.’
‘You are involved in this only because you are Rupe’s friend?’
‘Yes. I suppose it comes down to that.’
‘Haruko loved him greatly. She thought – we thought – he loved her too.’
‘I can’t undo anything he did.’
‘I know. But . . . he broke her heart.’
‘Not beyond repair, I hope.’
‘I hope not also. She is young. It is harder for those of us who are no longer young.’
‘I told your brother I’d do everything in my power to help you.’
‘And, unlike your friend, you keep your promises.’
‘The question is, Mayumi: how can I help you?’
‘Save Haruko. That is all I ask now. I have lost so much. I must not lose her.’
‘Why is she in danger, Mayumi? Why are we all in danger? What’s in the Townley letter?’
She sat forward and sipped some tea, seeming to grow more solemn still. ‘The only way to save Haruko is to make Stephen stop hunting us.’ (It was quite a shock to hear her refer to Townley by his first name.) ‘We must communicate with him.’
‘But he won’t listen.’
‘I do not think he has heard. I think the man Ledgister is doing this without Stephen’s knowledge.’
‘Why would he?’
‘Because it is not only about Stephen. A son-in-law in the oil business would be in danger too. Miller—’ She broke off and looked away, taking time to compose herself. ‘Miller explained the consequences to me. There seems no end to it. But there must be.’
‘No end to what?’
She gazed at me, her calmness restored. ‘I know you want me to tell you. I know you think it will be better if you understand. But it will not be. It will destroy you. It has destroyed enough, I think.’
‘Mayumi—’
‘Please listen.’ She held up a hand to silence me. ‘You may have guessed – I do not know – but Miller was Haruko’s father.’ (I suppose I had guessed, though until she’d said it I hadn’t been conscious of doing so.) ‘When he came back to Japan, twenty-five years ago, we were together for a while. Then . . . we parted. Haruko does not know this. I would not let him tell her. That is why he told Rupe about the letter. To make himself matter to Haruko and the man she would marry. Also to punish me for keeping him out of his daughter’s life. He admitted it to me later. I forgave him. He did not know what was in the letter. He did not know how dangerous it was until I told him, after Rupe had stolen it. I kept it in a safe-deposit box at my bank. There were things of Haruko’s in the box also, inherited from her grandmother. She had access to it. Rupe persuaded her to let him see the letter. She would have done anything for him. She did not know he meant to steal it. How could she? She loved him. I think she still does, in spite of what he has done. I cannot tell her that Miller was her father. Not now. But I will. When she is safe.’
‘But when will that be?’
‘Stephen was trained to kill people, Lance. He was a dangerous man when I knew him. But he is old now. He is not evil. He is probably as frightened as I am.’
‘Miller didn’t seem to think so.’
‘He did not know Stephen as I did.’ (And how was that exactly? I wondered, knowing I could never ask.) ‘I have to trust what my memories and my instincts tell me. Stephen has lost his son. I have lost my brother. Haruko has lost her father. It is enough. I think he will understand that. I cannot give him the letter. I do not have it. But I will never tell anyone what is in it. I ask you to be the proof of that.’
‘Me?’
‘I want you to take a message to him from me. I want you to ask him to end this. Before we all lose everything.’
‘How can I do that?’
‘Kiyofumi said he has a grandson at Stanford University, in California.’
‘Clyde Ledgister. What about him?’
‘I want you to speak to Clyde. He will know how to contact his grandfather and there is no other member of the family we can ask. You must persuade Clyde to take you to Stephen. And you must see Stephen face to face. Tell him he has to stop. I will never reveal his secret. That is all I can offer him. But he will believe me, I think. Because even my messenger will not know what the secret is.’
I was caught in a velvet vice. I wanted the truth. But I also wanted to help Mayumi and Haruko. I’d heightened the danger they were in by leading Ledgister to their hiding-place. I was, in some ill-defined sense I couldn’t refute, Rupe’s representative, obliged to do everything I could to repair the damage he’d caused. Mayumi’s plan, desperate as it was, was the only plan in town. Keeping me in ignorance just might win Townley over. (And a very big might it was.)
‘I am sorry to have to ask you to do this, Lance,’ Mayumi said. ‘There is no one else I can ask. You do not have to do it. I would understand if you refused.’
There was, of course, as we both knew, no way I could refuse. Mayumi genuinely regretted having to ask so much of me. But she knew she had a right to ask it. And so did I.
Yamazawa didn’t see it that way. In fact, though he didn’t say so, it was pretty obvious he thought I was mad. We talked in his study. (Well, I suppose that’s what you’d call it, though the fact that it contained nothing beyond a desk, chair, computer, phone and fax made it feel more like an office – a paperless one at that.)
‘It is the kanji for mountain,’ he said, seeing me glance at the single item of decoration – a framed piece of calligraphy on the wall. ‘Pronounced yama.’
‘Like the first syllable of your name.’
‘A gift from Toshishige, actually. He sends me a mountain. Then he sends me a man who thinks he can climb one. Without rope. And without knowing how high it is. I have much to thank my brother for.’
‘I get the impression you don’t think what I’m proposing to do is a very smart idea.’
‘You have to decide what is best for you to do, Lance. But there will be nobody to watch your back in California. Mayumi’s knowledge of Townley is from forty years ago. I would not like to risk my life on such knowledge.’
‘I offered to help her. This is the help she’s asked for.’
‘Then I suppose you must go.’
‘Well, you said I should leave the country as soon as possible.’
‘I will see what can be done. You will need a new name and passport. Also safe passage. Stanford University is near San Francisco, right?’
‘So I believe.’
He thought for a moment. ‘I will need to speak to some friends. The airports will be watched, for sure. So, safe may be slow, OK?’
‘I’m in your hands, Shintaro.’
‘But soon you may be in Townley’s hands. You should think about that, Lance. You should think hard.’
As it turned out, I had plenty of opportunity for thought over the next twenty-four hours. Yamazawa was absent most of the time, making arrangements with his ‘friends’ on my behalf. Mayumi and Haruko kept themselves largely to themselves. We didn’t even eat together. I couldn’t leave the house, of course, and neither could they. We were prisoners by choice and necessity.
As to just how extreme that necessity was, the television was our only source of information. Naturally, I had no idea what was being said on the news programmes about Loudon’s murder. For that I had to look to my fellow prisoners. My name hadn’t been mentioned, they told me. The reports were thinly factual. A man found dead; a policeman in hospital with a bullet wound; a dangerous fugitive at large in the mountains north-west of Kyoto. All we knew for sure then was that Ledgister was still on the loose.
‘But we are safe here, I think,’ said Haruko, when, for the first time, Mayumi left us alone together.
‘Yes. I’m sure you are.’
‘How long will we have to stay?’
‘I don’t know. It depends . . .’
‘On what happens when you meet Townley.’ She looked searchingly at me. ‘You are taking a big risk for us, I think.’
‘I’ll try not to take any risks at all.’
‘Will you find Rupe?’
‘Maybe.’
‘He talked to me about you once.’
‘What did he say?’
She smiled nervously. ‘That he sometimes wondered if he should have lived his life like you.’
‘Really?’ (It was an idle piece of wondering. Rupe never had enough of my sit-down-and-stop.)
‘I asked him if I would ever meet you. He said he was sure I would. I thought—’ She blushed and looked down, then started again. ‘I thought he meant at our wedding. But now . . . I wonder if . . . really . . .’ Her words petered into silence.
‘He couldn’t have foreseen this, Haruko.’
‘I think he might have done. You see . . .’
‘What?’
‘I know what he did was unforgivable. I know he only pretended to love me. But he is not cruel, Lance. He could only have done as he did . . . for a grand reason.’ (For grand read noble? This was surely love at its blindest.) ‘In business, he told me once, you must always have a fail-safe. And I think’ – she gazed at me through her large, dark, guileless eyes – ‘that you are his fail-safe.’
Yamazawa returned a few hours later and called me into his study. He handed me my passport (which he’d borrowed earlier). As I took it, I noticed it was closed around a second passport. This one was American.
‘Your photograph’s been scanned onto the details of Gary Charlesworth Young.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘He was born in New York on May twenty-six, nineteen sixty-one.’
‘That doesn’t exactly answer my question.’
‘It’s all you need to know. Mr Young does not require his passport any more.’
‘We’re sure about that, are we?’
‘Completely.’
‘How long has he . . . not required it?’
‘I know people who supply such documents, Lance. There is a trade in them. The source of this one is most reliable. Asking questions is not part of the transaction.’
‘I’ll bet it isn’t.’
‘Container ship Taiyo-Maru leaves Kobe Monday morning, bound for Europe. It calls at Busan, South Korea, Tuesday, to take on cargo. You can get off there and—’
‘I’m leaving by ship?’
‘Slow but safe, like I told you.’
‘How slow?’
‘Train from Busan to Seoul and an evening flight to San Francisco. With the time change, it will still be Tuesday when you arrive.’
‘But that’s three days from now.’
‘These arrangements are secure, Lance. If you try to fly direct, I estimate a seventy-five per cent chance you will be picked up.’
‘There’s been nothing on the news about me.’
‘Maybe not. But I have spoken to Toshishige. The police have been to see him.’
‘How did they get on to him?’
‘His boss at Eurybia—’
‘Penberthy?’
‘Yes. Penberthy. That is the name. He contacted the police as soon as he read about you in Thursday’s Japan Times.’
‘Bastard.’
‘Toshishige said the same.’
‘What did Toshi tell the police?’
‘As little as possible. But they will have made the connection with Loudon’s murder by now. So, we have to be careful.’
He was right. And I couldn’t explain what was really at the root of my impatience without admitting that he was right about something else as well. Going after Townley was crazy. I’d promised Mayumi I’d do it. But it was still crazy. And the longer I had to think about it, the crazier it got. ‘Whatever you say,’ I meekly conceded.
‘Good. Because there is more care we have to take. It is possible – just possible – that the police will suspect Toshishige of helping you. If they do, they might decide to investigate his friends and . . .’
‘His family.’
‘Exactly. I do not think they would be able to trace me. I do not think they will try. But we cannot take the risk. Mayumi and Haruko can stay. They have nothing to fear from the police. But you must leave. Tonight.’
He was right, of course. Again. ‘OK. Where do I go?’
‘I have booked Mr Gary Young into the Hotel Umi in Kobe. I will drive you there as soon as it is dark. Tomorrow night, at twenty-two hundred hours, a man called Ohashi will call for you. He will take you to the container terminal and put you aboard the Taiyo-Maru. Officially, you are an employee of the ship’s owners – the Seinan Shipping Company. There is a crew of twelve – Japanese master, mate and chief engineer, the rest Filipinos. None of them speak English. But the master has his instructions. There will be no problem.’ (No problem, that is, until I arrived in San Francisco.) ‘From Busan’ – he handed me a thickly filled brown envelope – ‘there is enough here in US dollars to take you as far as you need to go.’
‘I can’t accept that.’
‘You must.’
And he was right yet again.
There was time for a last, futile attempt to persuade Mayumi that she should trust me with the secret contained in the Townley letter. But her gentle manner veiled the firmest of resolves. ‘If I told you, Lance, I could not let you go. This is the only way.’ And in her gaze, lingering on me after she’d stopped speaking, there was conveyed a strange form of blessing, which I knew instinctively was all I’d get from her.
Later, after a final exchange of stilted but hopeful farewells with Haruko and her, I set off with Yamazawa in his Range Rover. Cruising along the empty expressway towards Kobe, he revealed the use he clearly thought I’d be wise to put my fistful of dollars to.
‘This is a cellphone number which you can reach me on any time,’ he said, handing me a slip of paper. ‘Mayumi and Haruko will be anxious to hear what happens.’
‘Won’t you be?’
‘You have an American passport, Lance. And money in your pocket. When you get to California, you will have a choice.’
‘I don’t intend to run out on them.’
‘Sometimes, what we intend . . . we cannot do.’
‘I’m going through with this.’
‘They will be safe even if you don’t. I will make sure of that.’
‘I’m still going through with it.’
‘OK.’ He fell silent as the car surged on towards the lights of Kobe, then said, ‘It’s your choice.’