The Devil of Nanking by Mo Hayder Read Free Book Online Page A

different. The dread I felt on that morning more than fifty years ago is something I recognize well. It is the same feeling I have now, when I pull back the blinds and look out of the window at the sun beating down on Tokyo.

5
    That day was so interminably hot that the pavements were gooey underfoot. Condensed sweat dripped out of the air-conditioners on to the pedestrians below and Tokyo seemed ready to slide off the continental plate and slip sizzling into the ocean. I found a kiosk selling magazines and bought a can of cold green tea and some Lotte coconut chocolate that melted on my tongue. I ate and drank as I limped along the road, and soon I was feeling a little better. I got on to the subway and travelled packed in with all the sparkling clean commuters, my dirty cardigan rubbing against their laundered shirts. I noticed that in Tokyo people didn’t smell. It was funny. I couldn’t smell them, and they didn’t say very much: the trains were packed but it was quite silent, like being jammed into a carriage with a thousand shop-window mannequins.
    Jason’s house was in an area called Takadanobaba, ‘the high-up horse field’. When the train stopped and I had to get out, I did it very cautiously, stepping on to the platform and staring curiously up and down at the machines and the energy-drink posters. Someone bumped into me, and there was a moment of confusion as the rest of the crowd hopped and skipped and tried not to fall over. Remember – there are rules in society that you’ll always have to consider .
    Outside the station the streets were crammed with students from Waseda University. At the top of the road, next to a Citibank, I turned off the main road, and suddenly everything changed. I found myself in a scrap of old Tokyo. Away from the electronic roar of commerce there were silent, cool alleys: a warren of cranky little streets jammed into the crevices behind the skyscrapers, a dark, breathing patch like a jungle floor. I held my breath and looked around in wonder: it was just like the pictures in my books! Crooked wooden houses leaned wearily against each other, rotting and broken – exhausted survivors of decades of earthquakes, fires, bombing. In the cracks between the houses lush, carnivorous-looking plants crowded together.
    Jason’s house was the biggest, the oldest and the most decrepit I had seen in Tokyo so far. Forming the corner of two small streets, all its ground-floor windows were boarded up, nailed over, padlocked, and tropical creepers had broken through the pavement, coiling up round it like Sleeping Beauty thorns. Tacked to the side of the house, protected from the elements by a corrugated-plastic roof, a staircase led to the first floor, guarded by a little wooden door and a grimy old doorbell.
    I remember exactly what Jason was wearing when he opened the door. He had on an olive green shirt, shorts and a pair of battered old desert boots, unlaced, his feet crammed into them so that the backs were squashed down. On his wrist was a woven bracelet and he was holding a silver can of beer, Asahi written on the side, condensation running down it. I had a brief chance to study him in the sunlight – he had a clean, unlined skin that looked as if he spent a lot of time outdoors. The words ‘He is beautiful’ flashed briefly in my mind.
    ‘Hey,’ he said, surprised to see me. ‘Hi, weirdo. You changed your mind? About the room?’
    I looked up at the house. ‘Who else lives here?’
    He shrugged. ‘Me. Two of the girls from the nightclub. Some ghosts. Don’t know how many of them, to be honest.’
    ‘Ghosts?’
    ‘That’s what everyone says.’
    I was silent for a while, looking up at the tiled roofs, the upturned eaves crested with chipped dragons and dolphins. The house did seem bigger and darker than its neighbours. ‘Okay,’ I said eventually, picking up my bag. ‘I don’t mind about the ghosts. I want to live here.’
    He didn’t offer to carry my bag and, anyway, I