Linnear 03 - White Ninja (7 page)

'This is what Musashi called Injuring the Corners, barbarian,' Koten gloated. 'I'll beat you down in small strokes. I'll make you scream yet.'

He ran at Nicholas, feinting with the long sword, employing oshi now to throw Nicholas hard on to the floor. He knelt over him on one knee. The blade sizzled downwards, cutting a vicious arc through the air.

Desperately Nicholas twisted, raising his left arm so that it broke inside Koten's upraised arm, deflecting the blow out and away from him. But because of the injury to his shoulder, he was unable to complete the suwari waza move.

Instead he was obliged prematurely to release Koten's arm to deliver an atemi, a percussive strike, with his left elbow. He heard the answering crack as ribs caved in beneath the blow.

Koten cried out, twisting his body up and away, at the same time slashing back towards Nicholas's body with the sword.

The steel blade was Nicholas's first priority. He made contact with Koten's forearm, gliding his left hand along the flesh. At the bottom of the wrist, he broke inwards, twisting. The bone snapped.

Now they were even in a way; Koten was obliged to drop the two-handed grip on the sword, his right arm hanging loose and ungainly at his side.

But his second attack could not be stopped, and he used a shoulder throw to Nicholas's right side. This time Nicholas cried out. He rolled away, scrambling, directly into a powerful tsuki that forced all the air from his lungs. His head went down and he began to wheeze reflexively as his lungs tried desperately to regain the oxygen denied them.

A second vicious tsuki to his sternum rocked him

backwards. In an instant, Koten's massive bulk was over him, his weight pressing on Nicholas's chest, further denying him air. Bile rose into Nicholas's throat. This was the enormous danger in sumai - the form of battle sumo of which Koten was a master. Its territory was in bringing the superior weight to bear in an area close to the ground, increasing the strength of the sumai warrior exponentially.

Koten brought-the bright bladepoint against Nicholas's black cotton &. Koten leaned forward, bringing pressure down on to Nicholas's chest. Beginning the first cut, skin rupturing, peeling back like the rind of a fruit. Blood welling, dark and hot.

Nicholas's mind was screaming for surcease. Reaching back for the 'no mind' of the Void, he allowed the organism to work on its own. His left arm shot straight up, the fingers together and as rigid as any swordblade ever forged. Into the soft spot of flesh joining Koten's chin and throat.

Nicholas struck as he had been taught kenjutsu, as he would have done a sword strike: with all his muscle, mind, and spirit. He thought not of Koten's flesh but rather of what lay beyond it.

The kite struck through flesh and cartilage. The sumo was dead before sensation could reach the brain and register.

Afterwards, exhausted in spirit, sick at heart at what the violence in his life had engendered, Nicholas had taken the dai-katana and thrown it into a lake not far from where he now lived. It had vanished immediately, taking with it the last vestiges of a life he was determined to leave behind.

Now Nicholas ripped apart the black cotton of his gi, feeling with his fingertips the raised horizontal scars on his chest, proof of the wounds he had received from Koten. For without that assurance surely he would have thought this memory nothing more than a dream.

Abruptly, he heard a sound in the room, and his head

snapped up just as if he were expecting an attack from an enemy.

He saw Justine, walking barefoot across the tatami mats towards him. He said nothing as she crouched beside him. Her eyes searched his dark face, but she did not touch him.

'If you are in such pain,' she said softly, 'the least you can do is let me help you.'.

He was silent for a time. 'There's nothing you can do,' he said finally.

'You mean there's nothing you'll let me do.'

His head was down, his face in the shadows he created.

'You're being foolish, Nicholas.'

'Since you're so sure of yourself, so be it then.'

Justine sat back on her heels, contemplating him. 'You helped me when I was in pain. Why won't you let me... ?'

'It's not the same.'

'Isn't it?' She shrugged. 'Well, maybe not.' She touched him now, her fingertips on his forearm for just an instant. 'You know, Nick, for a long time after... the death, I had no interest in sex. Well, that must have been fairly obvious.'

'Neither of us were prepared to go on that way then,' he said.

She waited for a moment, to let him know that he must allow her to finish. He knew from experience how difficult it was for her to speak her mind, or her heart, in personal matters. She said, 'My abhorrence of sex -well, not sex so much as the ultimate fruit of sex; that it had brought us such pain instead of joy - lasted longer than it should have, longer than was normal.'

She caught the look in his eye, and said, 'Yes, Nick, I knew what I was doing, what I was doing to the two of us. But, you see, I couldn't stop. In retrospect, I think it might have been a perverse kind of penance, a feeling

that crept over me, a malaise. I was certain that, after what happened, you would no longer find me attractive. No - ' She put her hand over his mouth. 'There's no need for you to tell me otherwise.' She smiled. 'It's all right. Really it is. Whatever I did, I did to myself. You were not a cause; you were only affected. I'm sorry about that.' She settled nearer to him. 'I wish... in a way, I wish we could go back in time, so I could deal with my own pain more effectively, and not allow it to spill over. I - '

'You had every reason to feel as much pain as you did,' Nicholas said.

She looked at him oddly. 'What about your pain, Nick? She was your baby, too.' She said it quietly, and had not meant to inject an accusatory note into her voice.

'I don't want to talk about it. Whatever I feel about her is private.'

Justine was taken aback. 'From me? I'm your wife, Nick!' She was dimly aware that her voice was rising, but she could not seem to stop herself. 'We made our daughter together. She was ours.'

'It does no good to belabour the obvious.'

Justine's anger abruptly burst through. 'Oh, stop it! It's so unreal, the way you are able to suppress everything. Love, hate, resentment, anger. What did you really think about me when you saw me wallowing in my self-pity day after day? Surely, from time to time, you must have been angry, hurt at my closing you out. And, speaking of that time, I don't even know what you felt after the baby died. You never cried - at least not in my presence; you never talked about it, even when I got up enough courage to bring up the subject. Did you bury it so deeply inside you that you now feel nothing at the passing of that tiny spirit?'

'I see,' Nicholas said, 'that you've returned to your habit of playing judge and jury in condemning me.'

'No, damnit! I'm giving you a chance to explain yourself.'

'You see?' he said more easily than he felt. 'I am, in your eyes, already guilty, because in order to calm you down I now have to explain my actions.'

'I'm perfectly calm!' Justine shouted.

'Your face is red,' Nicholas pointed out.

'Go fuck yourself!' She jumped up. She began to walk out of the room, then turned back to him. 'You engineered this fight. I want you to remember that!'

Their gazes met, and Nicholas knew she was right. Why couldn't he bring himself to tell her how he felt then - when their daughter had died - or now?

And suddenly he knew, and the knowledge, like a stone lodged in his throat, made him break out into a sweat. It was because he was afraid. He was afraid of the fear that was like a living thing growing inside him.

Senjin Omukae picked up the phone, and sent for Sergeant Tomi Yazawa. While he waited, he lit a cigarette and, inhaling deeply, blew smoke at the ceiling. He stared out of the small window of his cubicle at the ancient Imperial castle where the Tokugawa shoguns had commenced the longest and surely the most paranoid suzerainty in Japan's history, approximately 250 years.

On the other hand, the Tokugawas had been canny rulers. Aware that they must ruthlessly destroy any hint of rebellion against their rule as near to its infancy as they could manage, they conspired to import from China a form of Confucianism suitable to their needs. This branch of religion stressed duty and loyalty above all other traits. Initially, in its purest Chinese form, this meant loyalty to one's father and mother, but the Tokugawas, like most Japanese, could not resist tinkering with the original product. The result was that duty and loyalty came to include one's shogun - namely the Tokugawas themselves.

If this was a self-serving revision, it was not wholly so. Senjin knew that before leyasu Tokugawa, the first shogun, Japan was a wholly feudal nation, prey to constant internecine warfare between regional warlords known as daimyo. leyasu Tokugawa changed all that, uniting by blood and battle an entire nation, and thus immeasurably strengthening it.

But, on the other hand, Japan's absolute dependence on the rigid caste system began with the Tokugawa shogunate, who saw this, too, as a way of effectively controlling the majority of the population.

In a way, Senjin mused, not for the first time, the Tokugawas were control freaks. Just like me.

He heard a discreet cough and, swivelling around to face the door to his cubicle, he saw Tomi Yazawa standing on the threshold. He beckoned. 'Come in, Sergeant.. It was Senjin's habit never to refer to any of his staff by their name, only by their rank. To his way of thinking, it gave him the proper degree of control, while making it clear to his people where they stood not just with him, but within the family of the police department.

'How are you progressing with that murder-rape case? Mariko something.'

'Poor abandoned thing. No one at the strip club seemed to know her last name,' Tomi said.

'Quite so.' Senjin did not ask her to sit down. It was his feeling that subordinates should stand in his presence. He drummed his fingers on the top of his steel desk. 'Have you any progress to report?'

'No, sir.'

'None at all?'

'I know you have read the master file as well as my weekly updates.'

'And the message found on the corpse, "This could be your wife"? Have you made any progress with that?'

'Some. I've determined that the victim was unmarried,

and that she dated. Her men friends never came to the club, and in interviews with the other dancers it became dear that Mariko had no confidantes there. In fact, the dancers did not much care for her. They said she thought that, essentially, they were dirt. Mariko was apparently filled with high-flying dreams.'

He grunted. 'She was in the wrong business, then.'

'Apparently so, sir.'

Senjin regarded Tomi Yazawa. She was a small, powerful woman, yet with all the requisite female curves. She had a strong face, dominated by large, glossy black eyes, more uptilted than most. Her hair was long, also glossy under the office lights, pulled back tightly from her face, wrapped in an elaborate knob atop her head. Senjin knew from experience that she was very smart, which was why he had assigned her to Mariko's murder. If she didn't find anything, no one would.

'It's been, what, eight months? I think it's time to close the file on the Mariko murder,' Senjin said.

'Sir, may I point out that I have been the only officer assigned to the case.' Tomi was staring at a point on the wall approximately a foot above and to the left of where Senjin sat. 'I know what it's like to be alone in the world. The victim Mariko may seem like no one to you, to the department, but she was a human being hi many ways no different from me. I would very much like to continue on the case until it is solved.'

"The Metropolitan Police Department does not care what you would like, Sergeant,' Senjin said. 'It has its procedures and its manpower problems irrespective of your desires.' He watched with satisfaction as a deep flush crept up Tomi's cheeks. 'Do I have to remind you who it was who allowed you these months free rein on a homicide we both suspected was unsolvable from day one? Be grateful for the time I have given you on your own private crusade.'

'Yes, sir,' Tomi said. 'I appreciate your understanding, It's just that when she was alive, Mariko had no one to help her. I wanted her to know that she had someone now.'

'You've done what you could, Sergeant. You have your duty now.'

'Yes, sir.'

Senjin suddenly stood up, moved so that he was directly in Tomi's line of sight. 'The men don't like me much, do they, Sergeant?' he said.

'Sir?'

'Is it my age?' Senjin asked in a tone of voice that precluded an answer. 'In just over six weeks I will be twenty-nine. Am I too young in their eyes to be commander of the Homicide division?'

'Age is irrelevant to talent, sir.'

Senjin was looking directly into Tomi's eyes when she said this, and he had a sudden premonition. He had the uneasy sense of having allowed another predator into his territory, and he wondered whether he had misjudged Tomi Yazawa's intelligence. Senjin prided himself on not underestimating his enemies. But, then again, this detective sergeant was not his enemy. At least, not quite yet.