Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace Read Free Book Online Page B

instructions are received. Inspector Minami and his team will report to Chief Inspector Adachi.’
    I curse him. I curse him. I curse him
…
    I bow again to the chief. I tell him I understand. I thank him. I promise I will not let him down –
    So tomorrow morning Room #2 will take their trunk to Atago. Tomorrow morning our banner will be unfurled and raised on its poles. Tomorrow the investigation will begin. Day and night, night and day. From tomorrow morning there will be no rest, no time off for twenty days or until the case is closed
…
    ‘Has anyone anything else they wish to say?’ asks Chief Inspector Kanehara. ‘Anything they wish to clarify?’
    There is nothing to say. Nothing to clarify –
    There is silence now, almost –
    Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton
…
    ‘Then tidy up all your affairs tonight,’ Chief Kita tells us. ‘Leave nothing unfinished. No loose ends, please.’
    The chief looks away now –
    I glance at my watch –
    Chiku-taku
…
    It is 8:30 p.m.
    *
    I run down the corridor of Police Arcade to the back stairs. I leave through a back door. I cut through Hibiya Park. The temperature not falling with the night, the flies and mosquitoes hungrier than ever –
    Pan-pan
girls calling through the shadows and the trees –
    ‘Asobu …? Asobu …? Asobu …? Asobu…?’
    I run across Hibiya-dōri. I reach the elevated tracks –
    Pan-pan
girls in the shadows and the arches –
    ‘Asobu …? Asobu …? Asobu…?’
    I follow the Yamate train tracks –
    To the Shimbashi Market –
    ‘Asobu …? Asobu…?’
    To Senju Akira.
    *
    Kettles and pans. Crockery and utensils. Clothes and shoes. Cooking oil and soy sauce. Rice and tea. Fruit and vegetables. The
kakigōri
stalls and over and over, again and again, the ‘Apple Song’ –
    ‘Red apple to my lips, blue sky silently watching
…’
    All laid out on the ground, on stall after stall –
    Half of it Japanese. Half of it foreign. All of it illegal. But there are no police here. No Victors. No Occupiers –
    ‘Apple doesn’t say a thing, but Apple’s feeling is clear…’
    Here there is only one law; buy or be bought. Sell or be sold. Eat or be eaten; this is where the cannibals come –
    ‘Apple’s loveable, loveable is apple…’
    To the Shimbashi New Life Market –
    ‘Shall we all sing the Apple Song?’
    The old Outside Free Market is gone. The old Black Market is finished. This is the new market for the new Japanese yen –
    ‘If two people sing along, it’s a merry song …’
    This is the two-storey Shimbashi New Life Market with its modern arcades for over five hundred stalls –
    ‘If everyone sings the Apple Song
…’
    The dream of Matsuda Giichi –
    ‘It’s an even merrier song…’
    But Matsuda Giichi never lived to see his New Life Market open because two months ago, on the night of the tenth of June, Matsuda Giichi was attacked and shot in his office by Nodera Tomiji, one of his own former gang members, one who had been expelled during Matsuda’s reorganization of his own gang, the Kantō Matsuda-gumi, in their amalgamation with the Matsuzakaya gang –
    But nobody really knows if Nodera killed Matsuda –
    Nobody saw Nodera pull the trigger and fire –
    Nobody really knows because Nodera Tomiji was drunk when
persons unknown
found him in a bar on the Ginza –
    And he was dead when they left him –
    ‘So let’s all sing the Apple Song and…’
    Now Senju Akira is the new boss –
    ‘And pass the feeling along…’
    This is the man I’ve come to see. This is the man whose men are waiting for me. The man whose men are watching for me –
    They know I’m here. They know I’m back
…
    In their pale suits and patterned shirts, with their American sunglasses and Lucky Strikes, they are whispering about me –
    They know why I’m here, why I’m back
…
    Among the kettles and the pans, they come up behind me now, one on either side, and they take an arm each –
    ‘You’re more brave than you look,’