Rules of Honour (8 page)

‘When I read about Bruce Tennant, I did not realise what his death meant. It was many years since we last spoke to him; he was not the type of man we wished to keep as a friend.’ She didn’t expound, but I had read that his criminal disposition had ensured he was in and out of prisons most of his adult life. ‘Even when Andrew was murdered I wasn’t sure,’ Yukiko went on. ‘But with Jed’s murder, there could only be one thing that tied all of them together in a way that they each would be targeted by this killer. With Dan Lansdale also a victim, I am now positive . . . but only
now
, Joe.’

I didn’t bother placating her. I’d been caught and was guilty as charged. Instead, I said, ‘I take it that neither Bruce Tennant nor Jed Newmark have any surviving families? You felt that your silence was justified in that there was no one in their lives you could hurt by talking. You were hoping the killer would end things there, that he’d be finished with the murders, that by keeping quiet it would all just go away? What about Lansdale? He has a wife, children?’

‘They still need protecting from the past, Joe. Daniel was murdered, but they need not learn what he did. It would destroy them: can’t you see that?’ She glanced at the door to the living room, and I knew what she was thinking. Whatever secret she held, it might destroy Rink too.

‘Nothing you tell me would change Rink’s opinion of his dad. He loved him dearly. He idolised him –’ I allowed a smile to slip into place – ‘almost as much as he idolises you. Nothing you can tell me will make him think otherwise.’ I leaned forward and took her hands in mine as before. This time she turned them over so that we could entwine our fingers.

‘Tell me,’ I urged, ‘then we can figure out who is responsible and stop him from hurting any one else. By saving them, you’re not betraying anyone, least of all Andrew.’

Yukiko looked once more to the closed door. Then she nodded, a gentle gesture, and I could see that some kind of peace had flooded over her. They say a problem shared is a problem halved, but even I had not steeled myself for what she soon told me, and to be honest I wasn’t sure how I was going to break what I learned to Rink.

Chapter 11

Hitomi Yukiko was afraid of the big men with knives on their guns. She tried to keep away from them, to avoid their cold stares. She was only a child, but even children weren’t safe, she’d been warned. It seemed like she had run and hidden from these men for as long as she could remember. Even the vague recollections of when she was a little girl held images of men with knives on their guns. She had been in her mom’s arms when the soldiers came, forcing them from their home. Her parents had begged to stay, proclaiming their loyalty to their new country, but their words had fallen on deaf ears. She had snatched memories of their belongings piled on the street outside their home in Japan Town, in San Francisco, and men in suits and buttoned down collars greedily hauling them away, their father staring in dismay at the pittance of dollars shoved into his hands
.

Then there was the train journey. They had been crammed alongside hundreds into the carriages, small bags all they were allowed to carry. The soldiers were on the train, and others waited for them when they finally arrived at the sprawling camp that she later learned was in a place called Desha County, in Arkansas. The camp terrified her with its rigid conformity, the rows of barracks-like buildings ringed by tall fences topped with barbed wire. Her young mind had not made sense of why they must stay at this place and she had wept and asked her father to take her home. Her father had approached a soldier, seeking answers, but had been knocked to the ground instead. She still had nightmares about the man bending over her dad, aiming the long knife on his gun at her father’s chest
.

Her dad was taken away. Yukiko had cried for his return and her mom had hushed her and told her he’d been taken to a place called Tule Lake. Yukiko thought that a place with a lake must be much nicer than somewhere called Rohwer Relocation Center. Four years later she was old enough to learn the truth, that Tule Lake was a segregation facility in the Rocky Mountains, where those deemed troublesome or dangerous were held. Her dad was a gentle man, not troublesome at all, and Yukiko had blamed herself for having got him in trouble. She had asked one of the soldiers when her father could come back. The man had laughed at her – brutal and harsh – then spat on her. Wiping his hot spittle from her cheek she told him he was a nasty man. The soldier had jabbed at her with his long knife and she had fled screaming. He had laughed even louder
.

Yukiko hid from the soldiers from then on, avoiding them as best she could. It was difficult, because she was forced to work alongside the women with guards watching their every move, even when they were in the communal eating, laundry and washing areas there was always a soldier on the door
.

Yukiko couldn’t remember when first she met Rose Kurihara. It must have been back in San Francisco, because she could never think of a time when her friend wasn’t in her life. They were much the same age, with a shared background, and they had bonded within days of arriving at Rohwer, becoming inseparable. They were best friends, almost sisters, and they ran together. They had both learned to hide from the men with long knives. But there was one occasion when Rose did not hide in time
.

‘He raped her? A child?’

Yukiko hung her head in shame. ‘I watched. I was hiding under a pile of laundry in the washroom. He had come in while Rose was bathing, but I had already done so and was drying myself. When I heard the springs on the door, I quickly dropped down and crawled to where the used towels were bundled. I tried to call out to Rose but she could not hear me for the running water. I saw the soldier walk into the room and watch Rose. She did not know he was there. He had the eyes of a snake, the way they slithered over her nakedness.’

I did not want to picture the terrible deed that followed, but it was unavoidable. I felt sick, even contemplating that a grown man would do such to a child. I found that I was now hanging my head in shame, mirroring Yukiko, as if somehow I had failed to protect Rose too.

The soldier was a big man, a giant. His uniform was dusty from being on guard duty, with dark rings of sweat under his arms and down the centre of his back. Sweat glistened on his brow as well, and he had licked his lips. Perhaps he tasted the salt – or was he imagining how sweet Rose would taste when he ran his tongue over her body?

Rose was oblivious to his presence. She was washing the soap from her hair, and humming a tune that was lost amid the splash of water.

Yukiko thought that if she only stood up, then the soldier would know he had been seen and would go away. But she was too afraid. What if he grew angry that she had hidden herself and punished her? She looked at his gun and the wicked length of steel that rose a foot in length from its tip. That knife could go all the way through Yukiko with many inches to spare.

The soldier had walked slowly towards Rose, and Yukiko saw how violently his fingers were trembling as he’d reached to touch her raven hair. Yukiko fought down the urge to shout out a warning, her gaze bouncing from the tips of the giant’s fingers to the gleaming tip of his knife. When he grabbed Rose’s shoulder, Yukiko had to cover her mouth with her hands. Rose had jumped. Not immediately frightened because perhaps she thought it was only her friend playing a prank on her. Then her head had come up and she’d looked into the face of the soldier. She was small, waif-like, the nubs of her breasts barely an indication on her chest, yet she had thrown an arm over them, the other hand covering her modesty down below. The soldier didn’t waste time with speech: there was no attempt at calming her – in his eyes she was his to do with as he pleased. He placed his rifle down and reached for her, grabbing her at her shoulders and lifting her from the shower stall. Rose was stricken with terror, her mouth wide but emitting no sound. The giant still clamped one hand over her face, encircling her with his other arm and lifting her over to a bench against one wall. There he continued to press a hand tight over her mouth, while his other fingers pulled at the buttons on his trousers.

Yukiko paused in her tale, unable to voice what happened, and I was glad. I did not need the details to know what Rose must have endured. The old lady was shaking, the memories so vivid in her mind that she must have felt transported back through those years and was once again that tiny girl, hiding beneath a pile of dirty laundry, watching her best friend being violated by a monster.

I touched her on her knee.

‘You were a child, Yukiko. There was nothing you could do to stop him. Don’t blame yourself, OK.’

‘I should have done
something
. Even if I’d shouted and run away, it would have made him stop. He would have feared repercussions, because I know now that he was an aberration – only one of a few men who were beastly towards us. He would have been punished for his crime then . . . instead of later.’

I now knew where Yukiko’s story was leading, but I did not want to rush her to the conclusion.

‘I helped Rose as best I could. I got cloths and cleaned her. She was bleeding, Joe, from down there: a small girl bleeding as if she was a woman. Afterwards Rose swore me to silence. She felt dirty, afraid, that somehow she was to blame for what that monster did to her. She thought that if the truth were told then she would be seen as spoiled and she would be disowned by her family, like a used vessel that was no good any more.’

‘But by keeping her secret you were also inadvertently allowing this man to get away with what he did. It must’ve been a terrible thing for you to carry, being so young yourself.’

‘Yes, a terrible burden, but it was worse than that, Joe. Later I learned that the soldier had raped other girls. One lady died. Not at his hand but indirectly. She was so ashamed that she took her own life. She was found hanging in a store closet. Her death wasn’t so much covered up as simply ignored. Life was hard in the internment camps, and she wasn’t the first to choose death over such a brutal and disheartening existence. But
we
knew, Rose and I, for we had been watching the monster watching her and knew what he’d driven her to.’

‘Her death was never investigated fully?’

‘No. People died from inadequate medical care, others from the high level of emotional stress they suffered. The lady was just another statistic, Joe, that’s all any of us were back then. We thought that the commanders suspected something was going on, but they chose to turn a blind eye. Finally – following the lady’s suicide – someone must have decided to take action because he was moved away. I heard later that he had been sent to Tule Lake. It sounds stupid, but I feared that he would hurt my father. I know now that he was a coward, and it was only helpless girls and ladies he had any interest in.’

I was cold. I had a ball of ice at my core and the more Yukiko explained the harder it grew. I knew about this dark episode in American history, but like many had not given it much thought.

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, US citizens had feared another attack and war hysteria had seized the country. Pressure was placed on President Roosevelt to sign Executive Order 9066, and under the order 120,000 citizens of Japanese descent were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in internment camps, on the unfounded fear that they would spy for the Japanese. More than two thirds of those interned were American citizens and half of them were children. None had ever shown disloyalty to the US. During the course of the war ten people were convicted of spying for Japan: ironically all of them were Caucasian. People are horrified that Nazi Germany ran concentration camps – and rightly so – but no one wants to accept that we were also guilty of similar if less atrocious crimes. It made little difference that the US government later apologised, paying reparation to those families affected, because it would never make up for what they suffered at the hands of their own people.

Rink once told me how he’d come to be born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas. Having been forced into swearing fealty to the US, the Japanese internees were finally allowed to return home in January 1945. Some of them, angered by their treatment, had returned to Japan, but some had stayed. However, their previous home was no longer available and, instead of returning to San Francisco from where they hailed, Yukiko’s family had settled in Arkansas, after her dad was returned to them.

It was much later when Yukiko had met a young Scottish-Canadian soldier called Andrew Rington and given birth to the first of three children. Rink had mentioned how Yukiko always felt no attachment to Little Rock and vowed that she would one day return to the West Coast, to her home in San Francisco.

I found it sad that the horror she’d endured then had continued to dog her the rest of her life. And it had finally killed her husband.

‘Tell me about this beast,’ I said. I couldn’t bring myself to call him a soldier.

Chapter 12

By 1970 Charles Peterson was on to his third marriage and it was no more successful than his previous two. In fact, if anything it was the worst position he’d been in. Each successive failure had brought him down, first from a homeowner to a man renting a squat, and now to this trailer on a patch of dusty ground surrounded by discarded electrical equipment he’d intended to fix up and sell but hadn’t got round to yet. There was that old place of his father’s out in San Francisco, but his wife had refused to pick up sticks and move halfway across the country, so here he was stuck in this shithole in the middle of nowhere. His latest wife was called Michaela, twenty-three years his junior, and already too old for his taste. He thought that before long he’d have to get shot of the bitch and go trawling for someone much younger. But he was stuck for now – at least until the brat was old enough to kick out on to the street with her. The useless bitch had purposely done it, he thought: forgot to take her pills. She knew he had no love of babies, the last thing he wanted making his life more miserable being a squawking toddler. Shit, how could a man think with all that howling going on, let alone find a fucking job to support them? His ass-wipe life was all her fault, and she’d asked for the smack in the jaw he’d given her earlier. Let her run off for a few hours, it’d do her good – see what she was missing. It certainly pleased him to have the trailer to himself for a while.