Beate nods. Her mouth is dry. “I’ve had much the same feelings all my life,” she says, without explanation.
He stares at her long and hard. She reminds him of a watchdog: big, heavy, alert.
“Would it be an insult if I told you I’ve lived more in the last two days than in the last six months?” she asks.
He raises his eyebrows.
“Not because the situation excites me,” she hastens to add, “but because it’s forced me to make choices, and to feel.” She places the emphasis on the last word. She’s angry with herself, but also emotional and confused. She thinks: I hate the way Japanese men size women up. He’s probably no exception. But for some incomprehensible reason she feels for him.
“I cheated on her,” says Takeda. He pushes his chin forward. “Several times a month. In rabuho, those hotels you book by the hour. I paid for sex. It was something I had to do.” He turns to her: “When I was young I thought the word “love” meant something. Now, I’m not sure.”
His words throw her off balance. She knows that Japanese men never talk about such things. Not under normal circumstances. She wonders if he can read her thoughts when he adds: “I never told her. I didn’t want to hurt her. But now I think she knew all along.”
The inspector peers out of the window at the jagged contours of the Righa Royal Hotel looming up in the darkness.
Just before they step out of the car, Beate Becht says with a voice as cold as ice, as if she’s accusing him of something: “I think I’m falling in love with you.” She laughs nervously. Typical me, she thinks. I always know when to press the shutter release… but that’s it.
83
Xavier Douterloigne isn’t sure where he is. It’s a kind of no-man’s-land. He’s too tired to lift a finger or raise an eyelid. He’s weighted down with sadness like an overloaded barge on a mist covered river. The pain is everywhere, every centimetre of his body. It makes him want to burst open. But it’s concentrated in his head. This is what it must feel like when you set yourself on fire. There’s only room for one thought in this prison of pain, and he holds on to it like grim death: he has to keep the promise he made to Anna at Tyne Cot Cemetery in Ypres when he was thirteen. Xavier opens his mouth to tell her he’s determined to keep his promise. He cocks his ears to listen to her response, but the roar of the fire burning inside him gets louder, too loud to…
“Quick, call a doctor.”
“Do you think? He’s coming out of the coma, isn’t he?”
“Or dying.”
84
Reizo Shiga wakes with a start from one of those unbridled nightmares that had plagued him since childhood. His nose is swollen and throbbing, his mouth full of sticky saliva from the dose of gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid he took after locking Mitsuko up in the metro service tunnel and trying to write. The ghb hadn’t produced the desired effect on time so he treated himself to a little crack to speed up the process. Reizo isn’t a fool. He knows the combination is dangerous. He feels agitated, as he always does after a dose of ghb and the short deep sleep that inevitably follows, but he’s having a hard time getting his thoughts straight. When he sees the men in the main room he thinks at first they’re members of the Suicide Club. Then he realises they’re armed. Reizo tries to figure out what’s going on. There’s no staggering stab of anxiety, the kind he used to feel when he had to go to school or prepare for an exam, just the irritation of your average junky completely caught up in his own little world. These men don’t have the right to disturb him. He sees a giant lurching towards him and thinks for an instant that he’s still stuck in his ghb trip. The giant has horns, the nose of a pig, yellow eyes and upturned tusks, a creature of nightmares. The men have torches and their light makes the coarse hair sticking up between the giant’s horns appear glossy, like a woman’s hair. Reizo starts to get nervous when he sees that the man is wearing the Noh mask of the storm god Raijin, just as he himself had worn it to harass Mitsuko a couple of hours earlier. It dawns on him that the men must have been in his basement cubby-hole, where he did his writing. The feeling of defeat in his chest surprises him. He hangs his head when he realises that two of the men are pointing their guns at him.
“Reizo Shiga?” The voice behind the cypress mask with its ambivalent undertone drops a contemptuous octave: “The junky Reizo Shiga?”
Reizo rubs his nose. He suddenly remembers the depression that took hold of him after he failed the university entrance exam. “The writer Reizo Shiga,” he says.
The man grabs Reizo’s battered nose and twists it hard.
85
Takeda tries to stay calm as they head for Denny’s Diner in a taxi. The situation is evolving so fast he has a feeling he’s lost his grip on reality. His wife’s murder doesn’t seem to have hit home completely.
Takeda ponders about what happened: Adachi gave him chief commissioner Takamatsu’s mobile number back in the gay bar. Takeda punched in the number and treated the chief commissioner to a few carefully rehearsed threats. He revealed that he had official documents at his disposal that could expose the identity of the Oyabun called Rokurobei, the man who had given orders for the attack on Dai-Ichi-Kangyo Bank. Much of the conversation was one-way. This was Takeda’s chance to say what he wanted and he refused to let himself be interrupted. The chief commissioner didn’t even squeak when Takeda accused him of being a member of a criminal organisation that was responsible for his wife’s death. Instead, he asked unruffled what Takeda wanted in exchange for the documents.
“I want my name cleared and my share of the takings.”
“What takings, inspector?”
“Don’t fuck with me, Takamatsu. Don’t try to tell me the attack on the bank was only to get rid of the ceo. You don’t happen to have the golden Buddha from the Abukama-do caves back at your apartment by any chance? Or other Golden Lily war treasures?”
A lengthy silence followed.
“I’m sure we can come to some kind of arrangement,” said Takamatsu. “Meet me at my place.”
Takeda laughed. “So you can kidnap and torture me to make me tell you where I’ve hidden the documents? I prefer something a little more anonymous.” Takeda gave the chief commissioner the address of Denny’s Diner in the Hakushima district, a family restaurant, part of an American chain, that serves yoshoku, western dishes with a Japanese touch. The lights in the place are blinding and the serving staff smiles even worse. Takeda threw in a final warning for good measure: “Just in case you’re planning to kill a bunch a people – let’s say an entire restaurant – to cover up the elimination of one single person: I’ve hidden the documents in a very safe place.”
“Always true to form, inspector Takeda,” said Takamatsu cool and collected.