The Devil of Nanking (41 page)

I hurriedly counted out Strawberry’s money, divided it between my two coat pockets, a hundred and fifty thousand yen in both rolls. Then I pushed my hands into my pockets, and began to walk. I ducked into back-streets to keep from the main routes and found myself moving through a magical world – the snow falling silently on the air-conditioner units, piling on the lacquered bento boxes stacked outside back doors waiting to be collected by the takeaway drivers. I wasn’t dressed properly: my coat was too thin and my stilettos left funny exclamation-mark tracks behind me. I’d never walked in the snow in high heels before.

I went quietly, cutting over the crossing near the Hanazono shrine, with its ghostly red lanterns, and back into the alleys again. I passed lighted windows, steaming heating vents. I heard television sets and conversations, but in all the time I walked I only saw one or two other people. Tokyo seemed to have shut down its doors. Someone in this city, I thought, someone behind one of these doors, had the thing I was searching for. Something not very big. Small enough to fit into a glass tank. Flesh. But not an entire body. So, a piece of a body, maybe? Where would someone hide a piece of flesh? And why? Why would someone steal it? A line from a long-ago book came back to me, Robert Louis Stevenson maybe: ‘The body-snatcher, far from being repelled by natural respect, was attracted by the ease and safety of the task . . .’

I traced an arc across Takadanobaba so that I arrived back at the house via a small passageway between two apartment buildings. I stopped, half hidden behind a Calpis drinks machine, its blue light flickering spectrally, and cautiously put my head round the corner. The alley was deserted. The snow fell silently, lit by the lanterns outside the
ramen
restaurant. On my left rose the house, dark and cold, blotting out the sky. I’d never seen it from this angle – it seemed even bigger than I remembered, monolithic, its curved, pantiled roof almost monstrous. I saw I had left the curtains open in my bedroom and I thought of my futon all laid out in the silence, my painting of Tokyo on the wall, the silent image of Jason and me standing under the bead galaxies.

I dug in my pocket for the keys. I checked once over my shoulder, then slipped silently into the alley, staying close to the buildings. I stopped at the cleft between the two houses and peered over the air-conditioner. My holdall was still there, tucked in the dark, snow piling on it. I continued along the edge of the house, under my window. Ten yards away from the corner, something made me stop. I looked down at my feet.

I was standing in a gap in the snow, a long black groove of wet Tarmac. I blinked at it. Why had instinct halted me here? Then I saw, of course, it was a tyre track. I was standing in the greyed-out shadow left by a car, recently parked. Adrenaline bolted through my veins. The print stretched out all round me. The car must have sat there for a long time because the outline was clear, and there was a pile of soggy cigarette ends exactly where the driver’s window would have been, as if they’d been waiting for something. I backed hastily into the shadows of the house, my blood pressure spiking. The tyre tracks led straight ahead, all the way to Waseda Street, where I could make out one or two cars passing as usual, silent, muffled by the snow. The rest of the alley was deserted. I let out a nervy breath, and glanced up at the windows in the tumbledown old shacks, some lit yellow, shapes moving in them. Everything was as normal.
This doesn’t mean anything
 . . . I told myself, licking my sore lips, and staring at the car print.
It means nothing
. People were always parking in alleys, privacy was so difficult to find in Tokyo.

I moved on cautiously, avoiding the car shadow, as if it might be a trick trap-door, and keeping close to the house, my shoulders brushing the snow from the security grilles on the ground floor. At the corner I leaned round and peered at the front door. It was closed, as if it hadn’t moved since I’d left, a snowdrift already piled up against it, perfect and downy. I glanced once more up the alley. Although it was deserted I was trembling as I stepped forward and hastily fumbled my key into the lock.

Jason’s TV was on. A flickering blue light was coming from under his door, but the bulb on the landing had been shattered by the Nurse and the house was unusually dark. I climbed the steps slowly, jumpily, all the time imagining something shadowy and rapid hurtling down the corridor towards me. At the top I stood in the dim light, breathing hard, the memories of last night like shadows racing away from me along the walls. The house was silent. Not a creak of floor or a breath. Even the usual sound of the trees rustling in the garden was muffled by the snow.

My teeth chattering now, I went to Jason’s room. I could hear him breathing inside the wardrobe, a congested, bloody sound that quickened when I pulled back the door. ‘Jason?’ I whispered. The room was freezing and there was an unpleasant organic smell in the air, like animal dung. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘Yeah.’ I could hear him shifting painfully in the wardrobe. ‘Did you speak to someone?’

‘They’re on their way,’ I hissed, scrambling over the dressing-table and dropping silently to the floor. ‘But you can’t wait, Jason, you’ve got to get out now. The Nurse is coming back.’ I stood next to the wardrobe, put my hand on the door. ‘Come on, I’m going to help you downstairs and—’

‘
What’re you doing?
What the fu—
Stay back!
Stay away from the wardrobe.’

‘
Jason!
You’ve got to get out
now
—’

‘
You think I didn’t hear you? I HEARD. Now get away from the fucking door
.’

‘I won’t go anywhere if you shout. I’m trying to help.’

He made an irritated sound, and I heard him sink back in the wardrobe, breathing fast. After a moment, when he had calmed a little, he put his mouth to the wardrobe door. ‘Listen to me. Listen carefully—’

‘We haven’t got time to—’

‘I said
listen
! I want you to go into the kitchen. There are rags under the sink. Bring me as many as you can find – and get towels from the bathroom too, anything you can get hold of.’ He was struggling to get up. From inside the wardrobe a pool of something viscid, matted with hair, had crept a short way across the floor and congealed. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. ‘Then get my holdall from the peg, and my suitcase – is it still outside the door?’

‘Yes.’

‘Bring me everything from the suitcase and then I want you to switch off the lights and leave the house. I’ll take care of the rest.’

‘Switch off the lights?’

‘This isn’t a fucking freak show. I don’t need you staring at me.’

My God
, I thought, clambering back over the desk into the corridor,
what has she done to you? Is it what she did to Bison? He died. Bison died from what she did
. The shutters were all open and in the garden the snow was still falling, huge fat grey flakes the size of hands, circling and batting into one another, their shadows skittering across the floor. The carrier-bag in the tree sent a long, lantern-like shape on to the wall. I couldn’t remember the house ever being so cold – it was as if the air had frozen in blocks. In the kitchen I grabbed an armful of rags, then some towels from the bathroom. I climbed shakily back over the desk.

‘Put them near the wardrobe.
I said don’t look at me!
’

‘And
I
said
don’t shout
.’ I clambered back into the hallway, pulled his suitcase to the door, lifted it over the desk and pushed it down on to the floor. Then I went to the row of pegs at the top of the stairs to get his holdall from where it hung under the coats. As I pulled aside the coats and jackets I kept my ears trained on the alley, all the time imagining the Nurse silently sidewinding down the streets towards us, standing outside the house looking up at the windows and trying to decide how she would—

I came to a halt.

Jason’s holdall.

I stood absolutely still, staring at it, only my ribs rising and falling under the coat. An odd idea was whorling through me. The house was silent, only the
click click click
of the floorboards contracting in the cold and the muffled sound of Jason shuffling around in the wardrobe. He had been carrying that holdall the night of Fuyuki’s party. Slowly, dazedly, I looked along the silent corridor stretching into darkness, then I turned stiffly and stared at his door. Jason? I thought, the blood in my veins like ice.
Jason?

I placed my hands on the holdall, looking at it thoughtfully.
Listen
, he’d said, when he’d come to my room after the party. He’d been holding this bag. I remembered it all clearly.
We’ve both got exactly what the other needs. I’m going to tell you something you’re really going to love
. Suddenly I wasn’t imagining the Nurse lingering outside in the alley – instead I was imagining her hurrying past a black pool with the sky reflected in it, a red emergency light flashing on and off above her head. Last night I hadn’t seen Jason reappear with the Nurse when Fuyuki was choking. There had been a few minutes, just a few, when in the confusion anything could have happened . . .

Gingerly, moving slowly, painful inch by painful inch, I unzipped the bag and put my fingers inside. I could feel tissues and cigarette cartons and a pair of socks. I pushed my hands in deeper. A set of keys and a cigarette lighter. And in the corner of the bag something furred. I stopped. It was something furred and cold, and the size of a rat. I became very still, the skin on the back of my neck twitching.
Jason? What’s this?
I brushed my fingers over it, felt the fibrous tug of old dead animal skin, and a memory came to me. I took a breath and pulled the object out and stared at it in dumb surprise. It was a model of a bear – about five inches tall. There was a long red and gold braided string tied to a ring in its nose, and the moment I saw it I knew it was Irina’s lost fighting bear.
He a strange one, that one
, I remembered her muttering one day so long ago.
He watch the bad video and he thief too. You know that? Stole my bear, my glove, even stole picture of my grandmama, my grandpapa
 . . .

‘Hey!’ Jason called suddenly. ‘What the fuck’s going on out there?’

I didn’t answer. Moving woodenly, I took the holdall off the peg and went back to his room. I stopped outside the door, and stared at the suitcase lying on the floor. I was thinking of him weeks ago, throwing his hand into my face, mimicking Shi Chongming’s exploding dragon. He’d known I was looking for something. But –
I had no idea how perfect you were, not until tonight
 . . .

Of course, Jason
, I thought, my knees weak.
Of course. If you found Fuyuki’s medicine it would be exactly the sort of thing you’d like
 . . .
You’re a thief, aren’t you? Someone who’d steal for nothing but the thrill
.

The suitcase wasn’t closed properly – his belongings were hanging out of it, a pair of trainers, jeans, a belt. ‘Yes,’ I said, under my breath, as things began to fit into place. ‘Yes – I see.’ All the questions and answers were knitting dreamily together. Something else had been nagging at me since that morning, something about all the other objects that had been strewn around the corridor: a camera, paperwork, some photos. His passport.
His passport?

‘Jason,’ I murmured, ‘why were all those – those things . . .’ I lifted my hand, pointing vaguely at the suitcase. ‘Those—You were
packing
last night, weren’t you? Packing. Why would you have been packing if you hadn’t known –’

‘What the fuck’re you talking about?’

‘–
if you hadn’t known
 . . . that she might come?’

‘Just put everything on the floor and go.’

‘That’s it, isn’t it? You realized what you’d done. You suddenly realized how serious it was, that she might come because you’d stolen—’

‘I
said
put everything—’

‘Because you’d stolen,’ I raised my voice. ‘You’d stolen from Fuyuki. You had. Hadn’t you?’

I could almost hear his indecision, his lips moving silently, muttering his fury. For a moment I thought he was going to leap out at me, full of aggression. But he didn’t. Instead he said irritably, ‘So? Don’t start lecturing me. I’m choking with it, believe me. Choking with you and all your weird fucking issues and obsessions.’

I dropped the holdall and put my hands to my head. ‘You . . .’ I had to breathe in and out very quickly. I was shaking all over. ‘You – you . . .
Why? Why did you
 . . .’

‘
Because!
’ he said, exasperated. ‘Just
because
. Because it was
there
. Suddenly this fucking thing you’d been . . .’ He caught his breath. ‘It was
there
. Right in front of my eyes and, believe me, I had
no idea
of the fucking hell-fire that was going to rain down on my head if I took it, and now is
not
the time to be giving
me
judgement, so just put the
stuff
on the
fucking floor
and—’

‘Oh, Jason,’ I said dazedly, ‘what is it?’

‘You really don’t want to know. Now put the—’

‘Please, please, tell me what it is, where you’ve hidden it.’ I turned and looked up the empty corridor, stretching into the darkness. ‘Please, it’s so important to me. Where is it?’

‘Put the holdall on the floor—’

‘Where is it?’

‘And move the towels nearer the wardrobe.’

‘
Jason
, where is it?’

‘I said move the towels to the wardrobe and—’

‘Tell me now or I’ll—’

‘
Shut up!
’ He hammered on the doors, making them bounce in the runners. ‘Fuck you,
fuck you
, and
fuck
your shitsucking little treasure hunt. If you’re not going to help me then either fight me – because I
will
fight you, I’m not afraid to hit you – or
go
and
screw
yourself.’