Dying to Tell (20 page)

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 disloyally 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.

KANS AI

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Shinkansen super-express lived up to Yamazawa's billing and delivered me to Kyoto on the button of the timetable just after one o'clock. The dawn sunshine in Tokyo had flattered to deceive. It was a cold, grey, autumn day in the former capital.

There was nothing in the least venerable about its futuristic railway station, but the taxi ride to Nijo-jo took me past a couple of ancient temples and it was pretty obvious the city beat to a less frenetic drum than its brash young cousin.

There were a couple of tour buses parked at the front of the castle and a steady stream of visitors filing past the ticket barrier, across the moat and in through the high-porched gate. Those nightingale floors were still pulling in the punters. But relics of the shogunate weren't what had brought me. Clutching Rupe's photograph in my hand, I started off round the perimeter, following Yamazawa's directions.

It didn't take long to find what I was looking for. A double-roofed structure some sort of guardhouse, I supposed -soared above the wall at its south-eastern corner. I'd only to cross the road to the south and look up to match it to the photograph. And I'd only to turn round to see several modern blocks of flats with balconies commanding a good view of it. I was there.

At any rate, I was close. But which block exactly did Smiler live in? I covered fifty yards of the pavement three times before I reckoned I had the right angle on the guardhouse. It led me to a six-storey, ochre-coloured block with railinged balconies. Among the bicycles propped near the entrance stood a big old Harley-Davidson motorbike. As transport favoured by the locals it didn't convince. But as an exiled American's token of his easy-riding youth it was a different matter. I took a look at the names next to the bells beside the combination-locked front door. And standing out like a butte in an Arizona of Japanese script was LOUD ON M. I pressed the bell.

No answer. And repetition didn't change that. Loudon, M." was evidently out. Sans motorbike, but out. I tried the next bell down, but only got a Japanese woman who didn't speak any English. She had the good sense to cut me off. I tried another bell, with pretty similar results. It looked like I was just going to have to wait for Loudon to return, as he was bound to, sooner or later. At least I'd recognize him when he did.

Half an hour slowly (very slowly) passed. Traffic trundled by. Nobody came or went. I started to feel hungry and was giving some serious thought to shoving off in search of food (and drink) when a young woman cycled to a halt at the roadside and wheeled her bike in towards me.

"Excuse me," I ventured. "Do you speak English?"

"A little," she said, bowing and beaming at me.

"You live here?"

"Yes. I live here."

"Do you know Mr. Loudon?" I flourished the photograph. "American guy. Here he is. Loudon?"

"Ah, Miller." It seemed they were on first-name terms, which had to be good, even if she didn't pronounce Miller the way they would in Arkansas. "You friend of Miller?"

"More friend of a friend." She gaped at me uncomprehendingly. "Do you know where I can find him?"

She frowned. "He live here."

"But he's not in."

"Not in?"

"Not at home."

"Ah. Sumimasen. Sorry."

"Any idea where he might be?"

She thought for a moment, then said, "Probably ... he is teaching."

"He teaches?"

"Yes. How do you say? Some of the time? Part of the time?"

"Part-time."

"Hal Part-time. Yes."

"Where?"

"Doshisha most, I think."

"Doshisha?"

"University. Doshisha University."

"Where's that?"

"Ah, two kilometres." She gestured vaguely behind her. "This way. But you can take the subway. It is near Imadegawa station."

"Right. Thanks a lot."

It wasn't the subway for me, of course. I picked up a cab that had just unloaded a few more visitors to Nijo-jo and took the overland route.

I tracked our progress on a map I'd bought at the railway station. We headed east, then north along a wide, straight road past the old Imperial Park. The Doshisha University campus was clearly marked, dead ahead at the northern end of the park.

The taxi dropped me in a leafy driveway that filtered off into a maze of red-brick courtyards across which students were hurrying, on foot or cycle, to their next uplifting class. I stopped a couple of them long enough to try the name Miller Loudon and see if it rang any bells. They talked it over and finally decided that, yes, there was a Loudon on the staff.

"Faculty of Letters," one of them concluded, pointing towards a triple-arched entrance to one of the buildings on the other side of the courtyard. "Ask inside."

I did. Happily, the receptionist turned out to speak excellent

English. "Mr. Loudon is one of our part-time teachers," she agreed. "That is right. American literature." She studied a timetable, then the clock. "He has a class now. Until four."

"I must see him. Urgently."

"You can see him. At four. I will give you the room number." She smiled. "And you can meet him when he leaves."

She was right, of course. Bursting in on him in the midst of his students wasn't a smart idea. Four o'clock it would have to be.

And four o'clock it was, or a few minutes after, with the first shadows of dusk gathering in the corridor, when the relevant door opened on the second floor of the Faculty of Letters and a dozen eager-eyed students spring-heeled their way out and past me.

I stepped into the doorway as the last of them left. Miller Loudon, white-haired and paunchy likeness of his photographed self, was shovelling papers into an old canvas knapsack. He was wearing jeans and a tweed jacket over a checked shirt part academic, part cowboy.

"Miller Loudon?"

"Yuh." He looked up at me. "What can I do for you?"

"Not sure. But I believe you know the Hashimotos. Mayumi and Haruko."

"You belie veT He walked over to me with a stiff-hipped limp. "Who are you?"

"Lance Bradley. A friend of '

"Rupe Alder's." He nodded grimly. "That's whose friend you are, isn't it?"

"Yes. How did you '

"Never mind. What in God's name are you doing in Kyoto?"

"We need to talk, Mr. Loudon."

"I was hoping we'd never need to. But you're right. We do now. Not here, though."

"Where, then?"

"Follow me."

We took the lift down. "My hip doesn't care for stairs," said Loudon as we descended. "I keep asking them to schedule my classes for the first floor, but at my age you don't have a lot of bargaining power. I should be retired by rights, but where else would they find someone who can see inside Hemingway's soul?"

The patter seemed genial enough, but I had the impression it was just a holding operation and that something far less genial was simmering beneath the surface of his remarks. He led the way out of the building, across the courtyard and down the drive towards the road that ran along the northern side of the Imperial Park.

"Mind telling me how you found me, Lance?" he asked as we went.

In answer, I held up the photograph for him to see.

"Holy shit. Where's that come from?"

"It was among some things Rupe left with a colleague at Eurybia in Tokyo for safekeeping."

"What colleague might that be?"

"Name of Yamazawa."

"Never heard of him. And let's hope no one else has either."

"What do you mean?"

"If you can follow the trail, so can others."

"And that might lead those "others" to Mayumi and Haruko?"

"Shut up until we're off the grounds, can't you? At least try to be careful."

"All right."

So, chastened into silence, I said nothing as we crossed the road and entered the park. The outer wall was separated from the inner wall surrounding the old Imperial Palace by a vast expanse of gravel, where a few dog-walkers and strollers were dotted about blurred figures in the encroaching twilight. Loudon took a scarf from his knapsack and draped it round his neck as a concession to the deepening chill, his breath misting as he crunched along.

"There's something I have to tell you .. . Miller," I began. "About Mayumi's brother."

"Oh, there's plenty, yeh, Lance. But if you're honing your

breaking-bad-news technique, I ought to let you know that we do get TV and newspapers in this city."

"You've heard?"

"Take a look at this." He opened his knapsack and pulled out an English newspaper. At least, it looked to be English, but then I saw the title: The Japan Times. And a fraction of a second later I saw Kiyofumi Hashimoto's photograph low down on the front page. Japanese businessman slain in Berlin ran the headline. "The Yomiuri Shimbun made a bigger splash of it," Loudon went on, reading the surprise on my face. "When you're on the run, you really should pay more attention to the news-stands."

"On the run?"

"Well, what would you call it?"

"Something that doesn't sound so guilty, I suppose."

"But you are guilty, Lance, aren't you? The German police obviously think so, even though they haven't come out and said it."

"Guilty of what?"

"What do you think?"

"Look, OK, strictly speaking I should have stayed and helped the police with their inquiries, but I reckoned Berlin wasn't a safe place to hang around. And would you really have wanted me to anyway? There was nothing I could do to help Kiyo."

"I'm not talking about Kiyofumi." He stopped and stared at me. "Hold on. Are you saying .. . you didn't do it?"

"Didn't do whatT

"Kill Eric Townley."

"He's dead?"

"Oh yeh. Well and truly. Found battered about the head '

"In my hotel room. Oh my God."

"So you do know."

"No. He wasn't dead. Not when I left. I mean, I hit him, yes. With a lamp. But '

"That's the trouble with German furniture. Heavy."

"He wasn't dead, I'm telling you. Unconscious, but breathing. And it was self-defence, for God's sake. He had a gun."

"No mention of that in the papers." "What do they say?"

"See for yourself." He handed me The Japan Times and I held up the article to read in the dwindling light.

JAPANESE BUSINESSMAN SLAIN IN BERLIN Kiyofumi Hashimoto, 47, a senior manager with the Fujisaka Microprocessor Corporation, was shot dead on Tuesday while aboard an open-top tour bus in the center of Berlin. German Police say the killing appears to have been the work of a professional assassin.

They believe it is connected with another death in the city on Tuesday, the apparent murder of Erich Townley, 45, a dual German-American citizen found dead from head injuries in a room at the Hotel Adlon. They are trying to trace the person who had been staying in the room, Lancelot Bradley, 37, a British citizen believed to have been with Hashimoto at the time of the shooting.

They are also seeking witnesses to both deaths, especially those who may have seen a man behaving suspiciously in or near the Hotel Botschafter, opposite the bus stop in Tauentzienstrasse where Hashimoto was shot. The hotel has been undergoing refurbishment and its rooms facing Tauentzienstrasse have been empty during the work. It is thought the assassin fired from one of these rooms during the builders' lunch break.

In Tokyo yesterday, Ryozo Moriguchi, Executive Director of the Fujisaka Corporation, paid tribute to Hashimoto, saying

"Bloody hell," I mumbled, handing the paper back to Loudon. "On the run is right."

"Fraid so, Lance."

"None of this was my fault."

"Reckon not."

"It could just as easily have been me as Kiyo who died on that bus."

"Kiyofumi was a good man. A loyal brother to Mayumi. A

loving uncle to Haruko. I knew him. I don't know you. So, you'll understand if I personally regret that it wasn't you."

"I was trying to help."