The Tiger's Gate: Oshima Tokyo Noir, #1

Chapter 1

The knock on the door was not expected. It was too early for the normal visitors of the day, especially on a Sunday. The raps came a second time, and Oshima could hear the urgency in Miss Nakajima’s voice as she called him.

He stepped out into the hall and saw two of his neighbors, Adachi, the greengrocer, and Sato, a retired teacher who still made a living tutoring the local children. He was about to suggest they go into the guest room – the largest and cleanest in the house, always ready, more or less, for visitors, but they stopped him.

‘No, no,’ they said together, ‘You have to come quickly. Before the police.’

Sato added in a quieter voice, ‘There’s no telling what they’ll do.’

‘All right, all right,’ said Oshima, slipping on his shoes as he headed out the door behind them. He made a grab for the hat Nakajima held for him, just managing to secure it before he was chivvied out of the door by his friends.

‘It’s Yamazaki’s place.’

‘The sake merchant?’

‘No, his cousin, the pawnbroker.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Someone broke in. We haven’t been inside to check, but there’s broken glass by the window and no answer when we called.’

‘Yamazaki lives upstairs, right?’

‘That’s right... just him.’

‘No-one else at all?’

‘No.’

They turned the corner and Oshima saw there was already a small group of people standing on the street in front of the shop. Someone saw them and waved excitedly. Adachi and Sato went ahead, beckoning Oshima to follow. He knew most of the faces he saw – all of them were local. That was good. He nodded and was greeted with nods and smiles of acknowledgement.

‘Has anyone been in?’ he asked, looking at the broken window and the glass on the ground.

They shook their heads.

‘Not surprised. I’m not climbing through there,’ he muttered, peering into the dark interior. He reached carefully past the shards of glass, found the catch, and realized it was already released. He pushed on the frame but it didn’t move. ‘The window’s stuck. I don’t think anyone got in this way. Has anyone been round the back?’ he asked.

No-one answered.

‘Well, let’s go and see. Not everyone. Adachi, just you. The rest can wait by the front.’

They walked along the passage that ran along the side of the house to the small yard at the back. Oshima tried the back door. It was unlocked. Adachi looked surprised.

‘That’s not like Yamazaki. He was careful about that sort of thing.’

Oshima nodded. Security was second nature to pawnbrokers. That was why he was not surprised about the window being stuck at the front. It was likely that none of the windows on the ground floor opened, except the ones that were barred, of course.

It didn’t take long to find how someone had got in.

‘Look. See the drag marks over there?’ Oshima pointed with his cane to a large barrel in the corner of the yard.

‘They run from the window.’

‘And back again. Someone must have dragged it over, climbed up and got in through that small window up there.’

‘Someone small, by the look of it. I’d have trouble getting through there.’

‘Small, yes,’ Oshima said thoughtfully.

‘You reckon it was a kid?’

‘Could have been. Not necessarily, though. I might manage it if it wasn’t for the leg. Let’s see if it’s open.’

They didn’t bother with a barrel. Adachi called one of the kids from round the front, a raw-faced, eager looking lad with ears that stuck out rather too much, and they gave him a boost. He fiddled with the window for a few seconds, then slid it open.

‘It’s unlocked,’ the boy called down.

‘Can you get through?’ asked Adachi.

‘Yes, I think so. Do you want me to try?’

‘No, come on down,’ said Oshima. ‘I think we know how he got in.’

A few seconds later, all three of them stood by the open door peering into the dark house.

‘It’s better if you wait here,’ Oshima said. Adachi nodded. The kid, standing behind him, just stared, wide-eyed and nervous. Despite the sunlight from the open door, the house was dark, the atmosphere close. Oshima called out, but there was no answer. The smell, faint but persistent, gave him a good idea of what had happened. It was the smell of death. He walked slowly, looking into each room, trying to feel what might have happened here. He could hear the low murmur of conversation from the people at the front, reminding him he had to be quick – he wanted to be finished before the police came.

It was the fly that led him to the room at the front that served as a shop, its slow buzzing quite clear over the dulled noises from outside. He was thankful it was still early and the stink of death had not yet drawn more.

The body lay as if it had just fallen. There was little sign of disturbance or struggle, and that, in itself, was strange. He did not need to look hard to see the bruising on his throat. He had been strangled, but not here – it couldn’t have been here. He was a small man, but old and small as he was, he must have struggled, kicked the floor with his heels, waved his hands frantically with all the feeble strength he could summon, but there was nothing – no marks, nothing disarranged.

He bent down with some difficulty in the small space, and looked at the body more carefully. It was Yamazaki – of that, there was no doubt. He noted a bruise high up on the forehead. Could it have been caused by a blow? Or when he fell? Using a handkerchief, he lifted the head carefully. Tilting it, he peered at the back, but if there was any bruising there, he did not see it.

He was about to stand when something caught his eye. As he swatted a fly away, his hand caught on Yamazaki’s jacket. The soft material gave way to something harder. He pulled back the jacket to reveal the handle of a small knife embedded in the side of his chest. His shirt showed barely any blood. The blade must have stoppered the wound. He had known such things, especially if the blade was thin, as this one appeared to be. There was more blood on his shirt over the chest on the right side, but only a little. The cloth was pierced, as if by a stab – a small hole, and underneath a shallow wound, he guessed. But the second strike had certainly gone home. Were these wounds made after he was strangled, or before? If they were made afterwards, why would that be? He had heard of some schools of bujutsu, the old martial arts of the country, old, old schools these would be, that still taught certain cuts could still the vengeful ghosts of the slain. They might look like this, he thought. But if not, what did that mean? With some effort, he rose to his feet and left the room.

He walked through all the rooms downstairs, quickly and carefully. It was a business and had that sense of order. Nothing seemed out of place, nothing disturbed. Nowhere was there a sign of a struggle. The only sign of life was in the front room that served as an office. It was tidy and well kept, except for the nicotine stained ceiling that told of a lifetime of smoking. On the low desk were some ledgers – one of them lay open as if Yamazaki just been called away. Oshima looked at it and saw rows of numbers and figures. He was a bookkeeper himself and recognised the tally of goods, the profit and the very occasional loss. There was also some kind of cataloguing system he didn’t recognise, but he did little more than glance at it before he heard his name called, indistinctly, from the direction of the back door.

‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ he called back.

He made his way back through the house to the bottom of the stairs. With his leg, climbing stairs was never easy, and these were steep. He knew that coming down would be worse. With a sigh, he began the climb.

At the top, he leant against the wall, grasping his leg and willing the pain not to come. He waited a few moments, then straightened up slowly. He looked at the two doors in front of him and cautiously slid open the one on his left. He saw it was a bedroom. The sharp smell of burnt paper hung in the air. He stepped into the room and noted the hibachi charcoal burner against the wall. The long-stemmed pipe sticking out of it and the box of matches placed carelessly next to it struck a false note in this spartan room where everything else was arranged so neatly. From outside he could hear the subdued chatter of the crowd, reminding him that time was pressing. He crossed the room and saw the thick ash of burnt paper. He was about to turn away when something caught his eye. He reached down and plucked out the charred edge of a photograph. Stirring the ash with the pipe, he found another. Giving them only a quick glance, he tucked them both in his pocket and left the room.

When he opened the other door, the room was dark. He groped for the string hanging from the ceiling and the dim light bulb flickered into life, lighting up wall-lined shelves stacked with boxes up to the ceiling. Wedged under each box was a small paper tag. He looked at a couple and noted a character and a number written on each. He nodded to himself – unless he was mistaken, it matched the code he had seen in the ledger.

Casting his eye around the shelves, he saw several spaces where boxes had been removed. He stopped by one. Standing on tiptoe – he was just at eye level with the shelf – he noted the thin layer of dust glistening in the light. He moved to another, lower down. He bent to take a closer look and noted the outline of dust showing a box had recently been removed. He was straightening up when something on the floor caught his eye. He bent to take a closer look and saw it was the end of one of the tags poking out from under the lowest shelf. He bent further, grimacing as he felt the strain on his leg, careful not to touch any of the boxes, and picked it up. He read off the number, Ma 3-236, and quickly scanned the shelves to see if any of the tags seemed to be missing. They didn’t. He dropped the paper, nudging it back to where he had found it with his stick. It was just curiosity, but the open ledger was fresh in his mind.

It was an awkward climb back down, and he had just reached the bottom of the stairs when he heard a voice.

‘Oshima – quick, the police are here.’

‘What’s that?’

He didn’t wait for an answer, and was already in the office before the reply came. Ignoring it, he ran his finger down the page of the ledger. There it was, half way down – the same number, Ma 3-236. He peered at the entry that was written beside it. It was difficult to read the crabbed handwriting, but he could make out ‘lacquer’. After that it was probably ‘bowl’. There was something else as well. It looked like a name, but this, too, was difficult to read. The characters, like so many in the language, had more than one reading. The family name could be Kado, the personal name, Shin, or perhaps Seiji. It took seconds for his mind to run through these possibilities before he saw another. Read together, it could be an artist’s name – Keisei. A curious name, but one he had heard somewhere.

There was another muffled but urgent call from the back door. He hurried out of the room and saw Adachi, silhouetted against the back doorway beckoning him furiously. He hurried over and was hustled out of the house.

‘Come on, would you? The police are just down the street.’

‘His body’s in there. He’s...’ He stopped as he noticed the look on the boy’s face. ‘Yes, he’s dead,’ he continued, injecting a note of gravity into his voice. ‘We’ll let the police deal with the how and why.’

‘Was he...?’ began Adachi.

Oshima gave him a look and signalled in the direction of the boy with his eyes. ‘I don’t know any more than that.’

Adachi signalled to the boy, who ran back round the corner.

‘But you’re sure he’s dead?’

‘Oh, yes. I’m sure.’ He paused, listening to the footsteps and the murmur of the small crowd as the boy told them the news. ‘There’s more,’ he said in a whisper, ‘but I’ll tell you later.’

Chapter 2

To the police, it seemed this was all part of a day’s work. They were the model of efficiency, bustling about with great authority, taking statements and acting with professional confidence that filled the onlookers, now swelled to a small crowd, with respect and the feeling that the crime would be cleared up within days if not hours. They talked to Oshima at some length, making some show of courtesy, but to the others, they exhibited all the professional condescension that was expected of them. From the questions they were asking, Oshima gathered they were treating this as a regular break-in. He didn’t say anything about what he had noticed. They should have been quite capable of finding it for themselves, if that was what they were looking for.

He nodded to his two friends as he left, and walked slowly back, taking the long way round, along the banks of the stream that flowed down towards the river – one of several that wound sinuously through the city to open out into the bay. This had been near the edge of the city when he was growing up; the neighbourhood was still the same, but now the city stretched far, far beyond it. He walked past the back of the public baths, ignoring the chicken coops, tied dogs, crawling infants, rows of bonsai, and hanging washing that spilled from the backyards, trying to throw off the feeling that had taken hold of him. He was unsettled, but he wasn’t sure why. It was not the death – he had become used to that in the war. It was the other. The burnt photographs, the missing box. He felt the questions tugging at his curiosity. He didn’t know where they might lead, but the pull was there.

He lowered himself to the grass with a sigh. It would be so much easier. Should he just give in? He prodded at a stone with his cane, nudging it to the edge of the path. He tried to remember when he had been here last, but it escaped him. It must have been years ago, before he was called up. It hit him, too, that he had become colder since his return from the war. He wasn’t sure if he felt anything more than mild surprise that Yamazaki was dead. They weren’t friends, but even so...

He shook his head. He couldn’t help it if he didn’t feel anything, but he still had a duty to his friends. He knew he should also feel a responsibility to his neighbourhood to look into this as far as he was able; if nothing more, to discover whether there was any danger to anyone else here. He hoped the police would take care of it – an unexplained murder in the community was not something he wanted hanging around – but he was not at all sure they would. He hoped, at least, that they wouldn’t turn the neighbourhood upside down with fruitless searches.

The orange glow of the sunset had not long faded when Oshima heard the familiar rattle of the front door being opened and Sato and Adachi’s voices. He had been waiting, and was there even before Nakajima.

‘Come in, both of you. Ms Nakajima, take care of these, would you?’ Oshima said, handing her the bag of edamame that Adachi had brought, still succulent in their pods. ‘Sit down, both of you. Here, I’ll take that.’

He held out his hand for the bottle of rough sake that Sato held out to him, raising an eye-brow at what was usually considered a working man’s drink.

‘So,’ he continued when they had settled down, ‘What did they have to say?’

‘Ah... what do you think?’ Adachi sighed. ‘They called it a simple robbery. Said it was most likely connected with all the gang activity round the docks and the rail depot. They told me to take care in locking up at night and let them know if I saw anything strange. I told them, Yes, sir, yes, sir, of course, sir. You know the drill.’

Sato gave a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘Gangs, huh? Does it look like gangs to you?’

‘What was missing?’ Oshima asked. ‘It looked pretty clean to me. Not much of a robbery.’

‘A bit of cash. Maybe something small that was on hand.’

‘That’s all?’

‘All they told me. No-one else heard anything different.’

‘How did they say he died?’ asked Oshima.

Sato looked at Adachi before answering. ‘Stabbed. Or strangled, depending who we spoke to. I don’t see how...’

Adachi coughed uneasily. ‘Let’s save this for later. First comes first.’ He handed them both a glass, then picked up the bottle and filled their glasses. ‘Yamazaki Keiichiro – time to cease your labours. May you have good fortune on your journey.’

They all bowed their heads, then drank.

‘Aah,’ said Sato, ‘A bit rough.’

‘But good. Just what I needed,’ replied Adachi.

‘Ms Nakajima, thank you,’ said Oshima as his housekeeper slid open the door. ‘Just put them there.’

She crossed the room and placed the beans on the low table in front of the men, bowed, then left, saying nothing.

‘Is she always like that? asked Adachi.

‘More or less. I’ve been trying to get her to say a bit more. To say anything, really, but never a peep. Tonight she seems even quieter than usual.’

‘Maybe it’s this business,’ said Adachi. ‘She had some connection with Yamazaki, didn’t she?’

‘I really don’t know.’

‘You remember, Sato. It’s only been a few months.’

‘Now you come to mention it there was something. I assumed there was some kind of family connection. Wasn’t she staying there for a while?’

‘Nothing I can remember,’ said Oshima. ‘It could be something to do with her husband. Late husband,’ he corrected himself.’

‘Where was it she was from?’ asked Adachi.

‘I don’t really remember. Tsuruga, maybe. It was my aunt who hired her. I didn’t see the need at the time, but I just went along with it. I must say I’m getting used to having her around.’

Adachi shifted closer, ‘Are you, you know, with her?’

‘Nah,’ said Oshima, shaking his head.

‘She’s a young woman, you know. It’s perfectly normal.’

‘My household’s running fine. I don’t need the complications.’ Oshima said nothing more, but the fact was, he had been thinking of Nakajima in a different light lately. Adachi was right, perhaps, but he’d never thought of her like that. But she was certainly a puzzle.

Sato interrupted his thoughts.

‘So, the police...’

‘Ah, yes.’

‘The police wouldn’t say.’

‘Did you expect anything else?’

‘They might have taken a bit more time over it.’

‘If they weren’t going to look into it...’

‘Why waste time? Yeah, I get it.’

‘But stabbed? Strangled? Which one was it?’

‘Both, actually. At least, there were two separate sets of wounds. I can’t say for sure how they happened.’

The other two men looked surprised. Oshima couldn’t say he blamed them.

‘What does that mean?’ asked Sato.

‘I don’t know. Not yet. It could have been a fight. The police are sticking to their story of a gang, then?’

‘They are. But gang? Here?’

‘Not known for their creativity, are they? Lucky they didn’t say it was his wife.’

‘Did he ever have one?’

‘Long time ago – old story.’

‘So we all agree on that?’ Oshima raised his eyebrows. The others nodded. ‘Thought so.’

‘Which means?’ asked Sato.

Oshima shrugged. ‘You tell me. There were things going on in his life I don’t know about.’

Perhaps the police had seen what he had, perhaps not. He didn’t want to get in their way. He ran his hand through his hair and gazed into a dark corner of the room. He wasn’t thinking, he was waiting. Somewhere there was an answer – he wasn’t sure if he wanted to find it. His friends were quiet, respecting his silence. He had already made his decision, he realised, as he started talking – he just hadn’t known it.

‘l’ll tell you what I know, and we’ll wait to see if the police do anything. Then we’ll know what we need to do. Whatever the police say, something was going on there. I don’t know how he died, but it was more than just a random fight or robbery. Something was taken, something very particular.’

‘What was it? Was it valuable?’

‘Not directly – at least, no more than many of the things he had. I don’t really understand it. It was lacquer. Just one piece. Whoever took it knew what he was looking for. He came and he took it.’

‘Aah,’ Adachi sighed heavily. ‘So death came calling, one way or another. He drew an unlucky fortune at New Year, don’t you remember?’

Oshima remembered that New Year as cold. It hadn’t snowed – not then, anyway, but he remembered the flags on the street and the radio broadcast reporting the thousands who had gone to the palace to watch the distant figure of the emperor on the balcony. Not him, of course. He had hobbled around to pay his respects to his neighbours. Sato had invited him in, and a few others had joined them. He couldn’t remember any talk of fortunes, only of which shrines they should visit. It was one of those things that people did at New Year. He had bowed out. His leg was troubling him, and in the cold, it was worse.

‘Yes,’ he said, vaguely recalling some conversation he’d had with them all a week or so later. Had Yamazaki been there? Probably.

‘That’s right,’ continued Sato. ‘I wasn’t so lucky either. But who cares about that sort of thing? You can’t go about worrying all the time.’

‘Maybe he should have done,’ said Adachi. ‘Maybe he should have been more careful.’

‘Perhaps we all should, in a perfect world,’ said Oshima. ‘Did he have any reason to suspect danger? Had he mentioned anything to either of you?’

‘I hadn’t seen him to speak to for a couple of weeks, but you saw him just the other day, didn’t you?’

‘That’s right,’ said Adachi. ‘Difficult to tell with him. Business was business, and I won’t say he didn’t have his share of unusual clients, but he always did. It goes with the job.’

Oshima nodded. Anyone might visit a pawn broker. Normal folk down on their luck, failed businessmen, widows, prostitutes or gangsters. It needed a sharp eye and a hard heart. Yamazaki had them both.

‘We want you to look into this, Oshima. If the police won’t, that is.’ Sato looked round at Adachi, who reached into his jacket and pulled out an envelope.

‘It’s not much, but...’

‘Don’t. I can’t take that. I don’t need it.’

‘Don’t be stubborn, Oshima.’

‘I’ll do it because we’re friends, because he was one of us. I don’t need...’

‘It’s not payment. It’s just something to help with costs. This is going to take up your time. You’re going to have expenses.’

He held out the envelope. Oshima took it with some reluctance and placed to one side, on the table. He recognised the truth of their arguments, but he felt it marked him out, separating him from his two friends.

‘Does his cousin know about this?’

Adachi looked at Sato before saying, ‘No. We didn’t think it would be a good idea. The fewer people who know, the better. For now, at any rate.’

‘Later,’ said Sato, ‘If you find anything. Until then, we don’t know how he might react. If he went shouting off at the police...