‘I didn’t find out for days. Finally a little guy in a suit arrived to interrogate me.’
‘Japanese?’
‘Definitely. He knew all about Emi coming to my room in the hotel and he knew I traded in netsuke. But he didn’t seem to know they were mammoth ivory or where they were made. Gradually it got home to me that my selling around Europe had got up their nose. They had a good thing going trading in ivory objects, illegal elephant ivory, and they viewed me as unfair competition. My netsuke were getting a reputation as superior work and they weren’t happy. They wanted a closer look at some of my merchandise and Emi had been instructed to sleep with me and beg, borrow or steal a piece.’
‘Which she’d done successfully.’
‘Right. But she hadn’t reported back. She’d disappeared. And he wanted to know what I’d done with her. I couldn’t tell him where she was. I had no idea she was dead. In this situation I had no reason to hold back, so I told him what happened that night. He didn’t believe me. He talked about codes of behaviour and certain penalties prescribed by the organisation he belonged to.’
‘Which organisation?’
‘Have you heard of the yakuza?’
‘No.’
‘You’d better know. They’re the Japanese mob. A network of huge syndicates making money out of crime. Their roots go back to the 1800s and they had a peculiar privileged status in Japanese society, allowed to bear weapons in return for helping the police to keep order. They still command some respect, even though they’re the biggest managers of organised crime. Like the mafia, they have their tentacles into just about every institution, banking, the stock exchange, the media. You name it. Like you, I knew nothing about them. I picked this up gradually.’
‘You were down in the cellar some time, then?’
‘Weeks. They were in no hurry. I lost weight and went into a deep depression. Then one morning the guards came in and made it clear I was being moved again. I allowed myself to hope they might be returning me to Budapest. Some hope. I won’t bore you with all the discomforts of the journey. We ended up in Vladivostok.’
‘That’s a huge distance.’
‘Tell me about it. I was taken there to be questioned by someone else from the organisation. And this guy didn’t mess about. He told me I was a murderer, that Emi’s body had been found in the Danube canal in Vienna and she had one of my netsuke tucked inside her clothes. I denied knowing anything about it, of course, but I wasn’t believed. He talked about honour and punishments. He was definitely out to scare me. It was only at the end of this grilling that I realised what they really wanted was the name and address of my carver.’
‘Hadn’t you told them?’
‘It hadn’t come up before, but now I was in Vladivostok I sensed that the guy interrogating me was the local yakuza don. He was miffed because he’d lost face from not knowing who had been carrying out this beautiful work in his own backyard. He expected me to volunteer the name and address of my carver, but he was too proud to ask in front of his henchmen. You have to understand that dignity is paramount to these people. The thing was, it gave me something to bargain with, or so I told myself. So I kept shtum. There were two more sessions and I let him know my terms. If I supplied the name, I expected to get my freedom. They would have no reason to keep me.’
‘What was his reaction?’
‘Inscrutable, to say the least. He wasn’t going to grovel for sure. No promises were made. But one afternoon I was blindfolded and taken out of my cell by two of his thugs and driven a short distance. They removed the blindfold and I knew exactly where they’d brought me. It was the Japanese quarter in Vladivostok. At first I thought they were about to release me. Ever the optimist.’
‘They wanted you to take them to your carver.’
‘You’ve got it. And of course there was a slight ethical dilemma. Did I want to lead the mob to my obliging little helpmate? You wouldn’t wish that lot on your worst enemy. But I’d gone past the point of behaving honourably. I figured they wouldn’t kill him. The worst they would do was pressure him to work for them, using elephant ivory instead of mammoth. He was my ticket to freedom. So, driven by desperation, I led them to his address.’
‘And was he there?’
‘Gone. No sign. Another family had moved in. It was a different business altogether, run by women selling silk fabrics. I was shocked. I definitely had the right building. I knew the houses on either side. Yet the women there claimed to know nothing about my guy or where he’d gone. Of course the heavies who were with me took a poor view of this. They talked to the women in Japanese and still got no help. Then they turned on me, accusing me of taking them on a wild goose chase.’
‘Did you make a run for it?’
‘No chance. It may have crossed my mind, but they each had a hold of one of my arms. I was marched back to the car and blindfolded again and taken back to my prison. That was a low point, believe me. I’d played my ace and lost. I’d had my first glimpse of freedom in weeks and now I was back in captivity having angered my captors.’
‘Do you think your carver had got wind that he was about to be visited?’
‘He must have. He would surely have let me know if he was changing his address. I was his best customer. Maybe the women with the silks were his own family, covering for him. Whatever it was, I was shafted.’
‘What happened then?’
‘It gets worse. The guy I called the don came back next day with his helpers. He said I was a murderer and a liar and his organisation had a time-honoured way of dealing with such people, to warn others what to expect. It was known as yubitsume. Do you know about it?’
‘No.’
‘It’s a form of penance or apology and generally the offender is expected to carry out the punishment himself. In my case, the don said, I couldn’t be trusted, so they would do it for me. They placed a square of white cloth on a table and grabbed me by the wrist and held my hand over it. Then the don himself took a knife from his pocket and cut off the end of my left little finger just below the top joint.’
Mel felt a crawling sensation along the length of his spine. ‘God — that’s cruel.’
‘Painful, anyway,’ Harry said. ‘The original idea of yubitsume was that it weakened your ability to use a sword. In Japanese martial arts the bottom three fingers are used to grip the hilt. So you become more dependent on your yakuza brothers defending you. And of course everyone who saw your maimed hand knew you had disgraced the family in some way. If you transgressed a second time they cut it to the next joint, leaving you with a stump... like this.’
He removed his left hand from his pocket and held it up. He had a thumb and three fingers. The mangled end testified to the truth of his story.
‘They took the second joint?’ Mel said in horror.
‘A few days later. I was considered a serious offender.’
‘But it means...’ Mel’s voice trailed away.
‘I can’t do the fingering on the viola. I won’t be asking for my job back.’
The cruelty of the punishment would have been savage enough for anyone. On a professional musician it was the loss of his life’s work. Mel understood why Harry had said earlier that he might as well be dead. There was no way he could ever play again. A few times in the last few minutes Mel had wondered if he was being strung along. This ugly stump was proof of Harry’s integrity.
‘When did they let you go?’
‘I escaped. I think they were planning to take the finger on my right hand. Certainly they showed no sign of letting me go. I pretended the wound had gone septic and asked to see a doctor. They drove me out to see one of their own doctors in the city. I was acting as if I was weak and delirious from blood poisoning. This put them off their guard and between the car and the surgery I made a run for it. They chased, but I managed to escape through the side streets. So there I was, a free man again, but with no money, no form of identity, and on the run from the yakuza, who were not going to hand me the keys of the city if they found me. Not much use throwing myself on the mercy of the Russian police either.’