End of the World Blues Read online

  “So,” he said. “I gather you were badly injured in the explosion. Also, that you’ve only recently regained consciousness?”

  At least two things were wrong with this suggestion. The most obvious being that Kit had been conscious almost from the time he was brought in for treatment. Well, more or less.

  “The hospital told us you were unfit for questioning. The local police agreed. We have been waiting for four days.” Major Yamota did not seem happy about this.

  “Unfit…?”

  “You can speak Japanese? You understand what I’m saying?”

  Kit nodded.

  “Good.” The Major glanced down at a notebook. Since he was having trouble deciphering the characters, the notes had to be compiled by someone else. “You’ve lived in Japan for twelve years. Your wife owned Pirate Mary’s. You were happily married…This is what I’ve been told by the local force. Is that correct?”

  “I owned the bar.”

  The Major looked up. “Ms. Tanaka’s sister says Ms. Yoshi owned it. Also…” Major Yamota scowled at the notes. “My department can find no official record of your marriage.”

  “We got hitched in San Francisco,” said Kit. “Yoshi was going to register the marriage with the Shimin-ka on our return.”

  “Still,” the Major said. “No record exists. Why do you think that is?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Yoshi never got round to it.”

  Major Yamota chewed his lip. “And you’re certain,” he said. “About having no enemies?”

  Kit thought of Mr. Oniji and his promise that Yoshi’s death had nothing to do with him. And he thought of the strange cos-play returning to collect her knife. Neither seemed like an enemy to him.

  “None,” Kit said.

  After a final question, about any enemies Yoshi might have, Major Yamota stood up, bowed very slightly, and left without bothering to say goodbye.

  CHAPTER 13 — Friday, 15 June

  “Put the following statements in order of descending incongruity…” On screen the final round of a trivia quiz kicked off and a man in a black suit and dark glasses began to read from his list.

  As Kit was the only person in the room, he got up and changed channels. A teen drama, in which three school friends tried to talk a new girl out of throwing herself off the roof. A comedy cop show about an ex-Yakuza turned policeman and a documentary about spawning eels. He’d lived too long in Tokyo to find anything about that selection unusual.

  In Kit’s hand was a photograph, found tucked into the back of his wallet. One of those thumbnail pictures that everyone was printing out back when camera phones were still news. It showed a girl with dirty blonde hair, a smile to kill, and wide eyes, wrapped up in a face that was all cheekbones.

  She looked more fragile than he remembered.

  As fifteen minutes crawled towards thirty and finally became forty-five, Kit stood up from his bench in Roppongi’s police station and decided to see what happened if he tried to leave. At which point a young officer stuck his head round the door and glanced from Kit to the suitcase he’d just picked up. Kit was pretty sure it was an officer he’d seen at the hospital.

  “Are you all right?”

  Rather sheepishly, Kit nodded.

  “Major Yamota won’t be much longer.”

  “What’s he doing?” asked Kit, quickly adding, “Of course, I realise he’s very busy.”

  For a second it looked as if the young man was about to say that Major Yamota was doing something both important and secret. Instead, he shrugged. “Who knows,” the man said. “He’s from Organised.”

  It seemed the junior officer was there to inspect the level in the water cooler and check that the coffee machine was functioning. As the water cooler was virtually empty, the officer removed its old bottle, upended a fresh one, and left Kit to his thoughts and memories. In an ideal world, of course, he’d have left the rubbish and taken the memories.

  On the morning Yoshi died, Kit and Yoshi had made love, if that was the right word. Kit bound nine metres of cord around his wife’s body, in a complicated pattern that went between her legs and around her neck, squeezed both breasts and constricted her hips, before coming to a knot over her belly button.

  Edo rope bondage.

  On the days she really needed to lose herself, Yoshi had Kit hoist her from the floor, in the gyaku-ebi-tsuri position. For this they used a single rope, a hook attached to the storeroom ceiling, and a pulley bought from a chandler in Chiba, where her brother-in-law got fittings for his precious yacht.

  That morning was simpler. Kit just bound Yoshi tight, lay her flat on a tatami mat, and left her alone for an hour. Then he untied her and helped her shower, telling her to get some rest. The next time they saw each other, she had been standing by the bins behind Pirate Mary’s, about to destroy a pot so perfect it was almost not there…

  On screen a Korean girl raced towards a finish line, with her mouth open and one hand stretched desperately for a Japanese child waiting to start the next lap. The Korean was too self-conscious to run happily, her bust thick beneath a black tracksuit. Although ten girls ran at any one time, five in black and five in white, the camera stayed with the girl at the back, its focus tight to her upper body. In the final seconds, it flipped to the face of the girl she needed to reach.

  Although this one ran herself into the ground, rolling onto her side to gasp for air, the race was already lost. When she raised her face for the camera, her eyes had flooded with tears. Child by child, the camera cut from one losing face to another, twenty-five schoolgirls in black, every single one crying.

  What was interesting was that the Korean—who was large by Japanese standards, but would pass unnoticed on the streets of any capital in the Western world—had known her team was losing before she even began to run, as had the girl who took her place. Yet both had run themselves into gasping despair at not being able to close the gap. Maybe that had been how Yoshi felt.

  A police car had collected Kit from hospital and delivered him to this room on the ground floor of the new Azabu Police Station. A courtesy, that was how his transport arrangements had been presented. Equally, there had been no suggestion Kit might refuse the ride.

  He would have signed himself out of hospital days before, but this suggestion had produced the administrator. A small man in a dark suit and tortoiseshell glasses who appeared in the doorway and announced, politely but firmly, that the doctors insisted Kit stay in bed for at least a week. He still needed to recover.

  “From this?” said Kit, indicating the cast on his left arm.

  The small man had smiled.

  “Is it really broken?” Kit’s fingers worked perfectly, and apart from a dull ache in the elbow, his arm felt fine. The worst thing that could be said was that his skin itched like fuck beneath the plaster.

  “We have X-rays showing a minor fracture. Nothing too serious.” The man spoke with a Hokkaido accent, the extra stress on each Z added a harshness to words someone from Tokyo would have left soft.

  “What about my ankle?” Kit said.

  The administrator appeared to think about this. “All right,” he said. “The cast on that can come off.” He hesitated. “You were killing yourself with drugs,” he said finally. “I don’t expect you to believe that because addicts never do, until they become ex-addicts. Only you know on which side of that line you now stand…”

  The arrival of a police driver at lunchtime the following day was enough to make the administrator reappear, flanked by two technical assistants who looked as if they’d been chosen mostly for the width of their shoulders. Standing once again in Kit’s doorway, the administrator looked as if he personally intended to stop his patient and the police officer from leaving.

  “I am troubled by this,” said the small man. He looked at the driver, who nodded to indicate that the administrator’s reservations had been noted. “Obviously, we are happy to do everything we can to help the authorities, but…”

  “I have my order
s,” said the driver.

  The administrator sighed, his sigh obviously intended to indicate both his unease and the fact the matter was now out of his hands. “I’ll have his cases sent to the station,” he said. It was all Kit could do not to ask, What cases?

  Half an hour after Kit arrived at the police station, still in pajamas and a dressing gown, a pair of matching leather suitcases turned up, full of clothes in his size. A brown envelope tucked into the top of his case contained a broken watch, a broken bead bracelet, and Kit’s wallet, minus its last twist of heroin. Mind you, the wallet bulged with money, far more than when Kit was bundled into an ambulance outside Pirate Mary’s.

  So now Kit wore dark cotton trousers, a pale blue shirt with short sleeves, and a tan leather belt. Not his style at all, but they seemed to play well with everyone who came through the waiting room door.

  “If you’re ready?”

  “If I’m…?” Kit shut his mouth and followed a young policewoman along a corridor and up a flight of stairs. It was obvious that the carpet in the public areas was more expensive than the carpet in areas seen only by the police and those they brought in for interviews.

  “Ah,” said Major Yamota. “There you are…This won’t take long.” Nodding to his assistant, he waited while the junior officer spread papers and photographs across a desk. The photographs mostly showed the ruins of Kit’s bar. The papers were more varied, with one whole pile relating only to Yoshi, everything from a certified copy of her family register to school certificates and a newspaper article about her status as one of Japan’s rising stars.

  The paper Major Yamota actually wanted was an official-looking document from the Tokyo Institute of Police Science, Investigation Division/Explosions. “It was an accident,” said Major Yamota, holding up the report. “A gas explosion. All the evidence is in here.”

  “Evidence?”

  “Of fire patterns,” said the Major. “Smoke signatures and burning rates. Deeply regrettable, but still an accident.”

  Kit held out his hand. “May I see the report?”

  Major Yamota’s mouth twisted.

  He had, Kit realised, just insulted the man. An insult so deep that it would have been regarded as utterly unforgivable had Kit not been gaijin. As such, his crassness was excused on the simple grounds that it would be unreasonable to expect better from a foreigner.

  “I’ll have a copy made.”

  “Thank you,” said Kit. “And the rest?” he asked, indicating the papers and files spread across the desk.

  “Let’s see,” Major Yamota said. He gathered up a couple of forms and hesitated for a second over a third, before selecting it and a handful of other pieces of paper. “All of these you can read. Unfortunately, to see reports relating directly to Miss Tanaka you will need her family’s permission.”

  A stab of a button produced Major Yamota’s assistant, who rushed away the bundle of forms. Seconds later the sound of a photocopier could be heard through the walls.

  “Why do I need their permission?” Kit demanded.

  “Because of the complication,” said Major Yamota, and before Kit could ask which complication, the Major told him. “It seems the two of you were not married.”

  “But we…”

  “Under Japanese law,” said the Major. “Citizens who wed abroad must register their marriage with the relevant ward office within a year. This did not happen. As you were not actually married to Miss Tanaka your rights to information are limited by statutory regulation. Her family also have the right to claim her remains. I should probably tell you,” he added, “that the funeral was yesterday.”

  “In Tokyo?”

  “No,” said Major Yamota. “They took her home.”

  Kit knew where Yoshi’s sister lived and that Yoshi had an aunt in Kobe. Yoshi and Kit had shared a bed, lived in the same house, and together run a bar but he still didn’t know where she’d been born. Some shitty little village in the hills…That was what Yoshi said, when he asked her in the early days.

  He had no idea which village or which hills.

  CHAPTER 14 — Friday, 15 June

  Major Yamota cut Kit loose from Azabu station with the two suitcases full of clothes he hadn’t chosen and a replacement resident’s permit. He had some money in his wallet and about 2,000,000 yen in his savings, roughly £10,000. Without it ever being put into words, Mr. Oniji had made it clear that Kit’s job teaching English to Mrs. Oniji was now over. At the door to his office, Major Yamota asked Kit where he intended to go.

  “Back to the bar,” Kit said.

  The Major opened his mouth to say something, then changed his mind. This is no longer my business, said the expression on his face. That Kit could read Major Yamota’s expression was a surprise. Maybe Kit had learned more from his time in Tokyo than he thought.

  The wind outside was warm and stank of the river, which was a slightly sour smell, like that of an unwashed dog. It was years since Kit had smoked anything but the dragon, but a slot machine stood outside the steps to the metro and he found himself feeding coins into the slot before he even realised what he was doing.

  Crumpling cellophane, Kit pushed the wrapper deep into his pocket and realised he still needed a light.

  “Here,” said a boy. He looked about thirteen, bleach-blond hair and brutally ripped jeans. Too old to be out this early from school, but still young enough to offer his lighter to a foreigner standing on a street corner with an unlit cigarette.

  “Domo arigato,” said Kit.

  The truant brushed away his thanks. “Tourist?”

  “Probably more than I realised…”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Nothing,” said Kit. He smiled at the boy. “Your English is very good…”

  The boy nodded. In the end, because Kit was unable to face the ruins of Pirate Mary’s, the boy found him a taxi. None of this was put into words. Instead, the boy looked at Kit’s suitcase, looked at the crowds streaming around them, and smiled sympathetically. Putting up an arm, he pulled an empty taxi out of the afternoon traffic as if performing magic and stepped back so the automatic doors could open.

  “Green for occupied, red for empty,” said the boy. “Don’t tip.”

  Nodding to show he understood, Kit watched the boy wave brightly as the taxi pulled away. It felt really shitty to check he still had a wallet and his watch but Kit checked anyway.

  The taxi dropped him outside the Shinjuku branch of Mitsukoshi, next to a bank of ATM machines and a street down from Ryuchi’s Burger Bar. There was a two-star hotel above the bar, run by Ryuchi’s mother and catering mainly to sex tourists too nervous to base themselves in the heart of Kabukicho. Mrs. Keita knew all the local girls and kept an eye on their comings and goings, having once been one herself. On occasion, she would even call their pimps if customers got ugly or things looked like they were getting out of hand.

  “Konban wa,” Kit said, reaching the top of the stairs.

  Mrs. Keita glanced up from her paper and Kit caught the moment she recognised him. Very carefully, Mrs. Keita folded her copy of the Asahi Evening News, although she’d quite obviously finished it, right down to doodling little squares across the sports section at the back.

  “Can I help you?”

  It wasn’t the reply Kit had been expecting.

  “It’s Kit Nouveau,” he said. “Ryuchi’s friend.”

  The woman nodded.

  “I need a room,” said Kit, “for a week, maybe more. Until…” He expected her to say something about Pirate Mary’s. At the very least to mention Yoshi, but the woman remained silent.

  “A room,” repeated Kit.

  “Very difficult,” she said, consulting her ledger. “Unfortunately we’re fully booked.” She made a pretence of studying the ledger to make sure, shifting her bulk onto her elbows as she pored over its pages. “Sadly,” she said, “they’re all taken. You could try…”

  She recommended a love hotel at the edge of the Golden Gai shopping mall, once site o
f Kabukicho’s most notorious maze of nomiya bars, jazz clubs, and pigeons permanently drunk on salaryman vomit. The Moonlight Venus got by on location alone, being within spitting distance of two soaplands, a strip club, and a branch of Bottomless Kup. It was sleazy even by Piss Alley standards.

  Opening his wallet, Kit extracted 50,000 yen. “Surely you must have one room?”

  Mrs. Keita regarded the money wistfully, something very close to regret crossing her wide face. “Unfortunately not,” she said. It seemed unlikely, given Mrs. Keita’s hotel had never been booked out in its long and insalubrious life. This was the place that charged a group of Germans floor space in the boiler room when a typhoon had ripped away the hotel’s roof and made their original room unusable.

  “Okay,” Kit said. “No problem.”

  Hair bleached and a new stud through his lip, Ryuchi leaned against a wall by the counter, a position undoubtedly chosen so he could watch a young Filipina flash fry a tuna burger. Having drenched the nugget of yellow fin with mango relish, she sprinkled chopped coriander over the top.

  “One to go,” she said.

  So low slung were the girl’s jeans that it looked only a matter of time before gravity eventually won. Mind you, Kit still reckoned Ryuchi could have done more than glance across at him and then look back.

  “Hi,” said Kit. “How’s it going?”

  Ryuchi had spent two summers in London in the late nineties, which had frozen his personal style and command of English into something resembling a manga interpretation of post-rock lite.

  “Fine,” Ryuchi replied.

  “You got a moment?” said Kit, wanting to ask what he’d done to offend Ryuchi’s mother, a woman who made a living out of being almost entirely unshockable. “I could buy you a beer.”

  “I’m kinda busy…” Ryuchi shrugged. “You know, work to do.”

  There was one customer in the café, a foreigner in a dark suit scrawling something into a black notebook with a silver pen. He’d finished his tuna burger in a couple of bites and was now trying to wipe mango relish from his book’s cover.