Bill for the Use of a Body (25 page)

‘I must think,' Hayashi replied. ‘If I do not she will
remain a menace to my life. If I do I may be able to eliminate her, and so both avenge my son and secure my own future. Yes, I must think.'

Taking up a small silver bell, he tinkled it. Almost instantly a painted panel in the opposite wall was slid back to reveal a young woman, dressed in a rich kimono, waiting there on her knees. Hayashi said only one word. The girl bent swiftly forward until her forehead touched the highly polished floor, then scurried away. Two minutes later she reappeared, still on her knees and carrying a tray with opium pipes and impedimenta on it. Shuffling forward with amazing quickness, she set the tray down on the low table, then bowed her head to the floor twice again. Coming up she swiftly moulded two small pellets of opium paste, spiked them in turn with a long needle and held them over the flame of a small oil lamp, then inserted them in the bowls of the pipes. Having completed her task, throughout which her white-painted face had remained as expressionless as a china mask, she repeated her genuflections, shuffled swiftly backwards on her knees and disappeared.

Hayashi took only three draws on his pipe, then laid it aside. The room was warm owing to a charcoal brazier that burned in its centre. For a while he fanned himself; then snapping closed his fan he said:

‘This is what is to be done. You will have another wicker casket made which must closely resemble that in which Mrs. Sang travelled here.'

Giving him an uneasy look, Nagi murmured, ‘Honourable master, if it is required for this evening be so gracious as to consider that I have less than six hours in which to produce such an unusual object.'

‘No matter,' Hayashi replied, flicking one of the photographs that lay on the low table in front of him. ‘In this you have as good a picture to work from as you could require. Use money or whips. It is immaterial which, but it must be ready by half past seven. This afternoon you
will go to Ishimuro Joshu, the antique dealer, and buy from him one of the sacred figures that he fakes for export. It does not have to be a Kuan-yin, and can be metal or stone; but it must be between five and six feet in height and approximately the weight of a heavy woman.'

Nagi gave a smiling bow. ‘Honourable master's intention is to switch caskets. Oh, very very clever.'

Ignoring the compliment, Hayashi went on, ‘We shall need a van. It must be of the same make and colour as that used to bring Madame Sang to Kyoto.'

Nagi ducked again. ‘No difficulty, honourable master. That was a green-painted Ford with the insignia of an Osaka florist's shop on the sides. Such vehicles are common. I can procure one within an hour, and by the use of quick-drying paint it will not be noticeable by eight o'clock that the inscription is freshly painted.'

‘That is well. Have the Ford, the wicker casket and the image brought here. The switch can only be made between a quarter to eight and eight, when the other van will be on its way from the Miyako to the Nest of the Phoenix. Some means must be devised to hold it up and temporarily remove the Chinese couple from it. When they are released they must find our van where they left the other, and drive it to the Phoenix. The casket in it will be brought upstairs and, after I have dined with Urata, opened. I shall laughingly declare the figure in it to be a fake, then condole with him for the trouble he has been put to for no purpose, and return here.'

‘And the other casket, honourable master: that which will have Madame Sang in it?' enquired Nagi softly.

‘That will have been brought to this house.' Hayashi's lined old face creased into a diabolical grin. ‘Tonight I will avenge the death of my son. Or perhaps not tonight. No. We will first leave Madame Sang shut up in the coffin she has designed for herself for a night and a day, or possibly longer; so that she may sample the pangs of
hunger and thirst. But not for too long. I should never forgive myself if I allowed her to die too quickly. When we do open the basket she will be too weak to give us any trouble, and we will have the girl there to provide an hors-d'oeuvre to the prolonged banquet by which I will drain away Madame Sang's reason and life.

‘I am getting on in years, but not too old to enjoy a fresh young woman; and Madame Sang shall be a witness to my enjoying her daughter. Then, Nagi, you who are still strong and vigorous shall have the girl. Although she will lack the training in the art that makes our geishas so accomplished, we should be compensated for that by her being such a dainty morsel. Afterwards, as part of your reward for having conducted the enquiry into this affair with so much zeal, you may take her to your house and instil into her the little tricks by which she can best please you.'

Nagi's dark eyes glistened. ‘Honourable master, you are most generous. She has the bloom of a peach and the perfume of a freshly opened lotus. Had it not been for your express commands I could not have kept my hands off her while bringing her here.'

After a moment he added, ‘This switch of the vans containing the two wicker baskets will need much organising and very careful timing. We have in our favour that to reach the Phoenix the van must pass through several quiet, ill-lit streets bordered only by private houses. Therefore to hold it up will be easy. But, having removed the Chinese couple from its box, to take them out of the street so that they do not see their van driven off, then enable them to return and drive its substitute to the Phoenix, presents a difficult problem. Has my honourable master any ideas on this subject?'

Hayashi remained in thought for a moment, then he replied, ‘Did you not tell me that although the couple are using the name of Pao, they are actually Mok Kwai, earlier known as Ti Chang, and his wife?'

‘That is so, honourable master. Having spoken with Mok at the Moon Garden, I recognised him at once by the scar on his throat, and also recognised his wife.'

‘Then as they are brothel keepers we can make use of that. Have two of our people of respectable appearance—Yoshimitsu, perhaps, and another—be in a car at the Miyako a little before the van is due to leave. They will follow the van. You will arrange for a lorry and other vehicles to block the van's passage in whatever quiet street you select. Yoshimitsu will drive up beside it. His story will be that he was about to go into the Miyako when he recognised Mok, just as he was on the point of driving off, as the owner of the Moon Garden; so he gave chase. He will allege that when in Hong Kong he visited the brothel and was robbed of his wallet. By then you will have had a little crowd of our people collect. Yoshimitsu will tell his story to them and incite them to violence. Mok and his wife are to be pulled from the van and hustled round the corner, then some way along another street on the pretext of taking them to the police station. You will have contacted one of our friends in the police who is off duty and pay him well. He will emerge from a darkened doorway and enquire the cause of the trouble. As it will be only Yoshimitsu's word against that of Mok there can be no question of an arrest. The police officer will take down Yoshimitsu's story in his notebook, ask to see Mok's papers, and take his address; the couple will then be released. Meanwhile, his van will have been driven off and yours substituted for it.'

Nagi inclined his head until it touched the low table. ‘Admirable, honourable master, admirable. All shall be done as you direct. However, one difficulty remains: the Englishman. It must be assumed that he too will set out for the Phoenix with the van, or accompany it in a taxi. It would not be plausible for Yoshimitsu to charge him with complicity in this robbery, and it is to be doubted if he would willingly accompany the Moks when they are
hustled off. Seeing the value of the contents of the van, he would almost certainly remain with it.'

‘In that you are right, sagacious Nagi. Somehow he must be got rid of. It is most unlikely that a man of his kind would be willing to ride with the Moks in the cab of a van, or inside it; so he will be in a taxi. You could arrange for it to be run into by a lorry; a bad smash so that he is injured and taken to hospital.'

Lowering his eyes, Nagi replied, ‘I do not like it, honourable master. The results of such accidents are always uncertain. At times people escape unharmed from the worst of smashes.'

‘Then at the last moment he must be prevented from setting out with the van to the Phoenix. We cannot resort to violence in the Miyako; so we must devise some plan for luring him away.'

‘That would be best, honourable master; and perhaps Hidari Rinzai, the private-enquiry agent, could help us there. You will recall my passing on to you yesterday Rinzai's report that the Englishman had engaged him to try to find out if the girl was here in your house.'

Hayashi smiled and tapped Nagi gently on the arm with his closed fan. ‘An excellent idea. Instruct Rinzai to go to the Englishman at about seven o'clock. He is to say that he has bribed one of my servants and learned that the girl is here safe and well. He must then put the idea into Day's head of attempting to rescue her tonight by saying that as I am dining out most of my servants will take the opportunity to absent themselves. Day can hardly be such a fool as to think there is any great chance that I would exchange the girl for the Kuan-yin. If Rinzai does his work well, Day will decide to come here instead of going to the Phoenix, then we will trap him.'

‘But what then, honourable master? Remember he is a British subject. Immediately we release him he will go to the police and the British Consul. Through the newspapers it is common knowledge that the girl was kidnapped
and is being held somewhere against her will. He will quote Rinzai as having found out that she was here. As he is in love with her that will be accepted as excuse enough for his having broken in hoping to rescue her. When we catch him we can pretend that we thought him to be a burglar, but in such a case we should at once hand him over to the police. Instead it is necessary that we detain him, and afterwards that we did not hand him over to the police will need a lot of explaining. You can be certain that he will insist on a full enquiry, and although in the meantime we can remove the girl to another place are you entirely sure that all your servants are to be trusted? I believe them to be reliable, but under police examination one of them may be trapped into an admission that the girl was here. No, honourable master. Once the Englishman has been freed I foresee trouble: bad trouble.'

For several minutes Hayashi remained deep in thought then he said, ‘You are right, Nagi; so he must not be freed. Have Rinzai tell him that the girl is locked up in an upstairs room: at the back of the house at its south end. When he breaks in let him go up there and only then surprise him. Afterwards it can be said that you thought he was a burglar, and on being discovered he tried to escape by the window. But you will throw him out, Then go downstairs and break his neck.'

When Julian picked himself up from his drop off the wall into Hayashi's garden he looked quickly about him. As he had landed in a shrubbery and the moon was not yet up, he could not see much; but by passing between the bushes he could make out against the night sky a part of the back of the roof of the house and, to his left, the glimmer of lights. Having edged his way through a border of big azaleas, he got a better view.

By Japanese standards the house was a large one. Its two storeys formed a solid rectangular mass topped by a typical incurving roof with eaves that turned up at the corners. At its northern end lay a huddle of one-storey buildings and it was from these that the lights came. They were, Julian felt sure, not only garages and so on, but also the servants' quarters; and he blessed the custom of well-to-do Japanese families whereby, in such old properties as this, they had always been averse to having servants living in the house. No lights could be said to show in the house itself, but from the central windows there came a faint glimmer suggesting that a light had been left on in the main hall.

Although the big building appeared to be deserted, Julian did not approach it direct. He had come in over the north wall and Rinzai had said that the room in which Merri was kept a prisoner was on this side of the house but at its southern end.

From what Julian could see of the garden it was laid
out in the same way as those of most small temples. In the middle was an ornamental lake with, on the side facing the house, a little pavilion in which to hold the tea-drinking ceremony. A belt of trees, that he knew to be mainly pines, ran all round the inner side of the wall, screening the garden from being overlooked by other buildings in the vicinity; while smaller trees, that were probably cherries just coming into bloom, had been planted in carefully chosen positions. There would, he knew, be no flower beds but numerous groups of flowering shrubs.

Turning away from the house, he stepped out on to a stone path and, placing each foot with great care, began to walk along it. As he progressed, he entered a small woodland that lay beyond the end of the lake. There, as he had expected, the path curved in a semi-circle that brought him round until he was approaching the south end of the house.

Suddenly he halted and his heart gave a lurch. Just where the woodland ended, at right-angles to the path, there was a wooden humpback bridge, spanning a few feet of water and leading to the pavilion. On the far side of the bridge, silhouetted against the lighter background above the water of the lake, he had caught sight of a man. His body was hidden by the curve of the bridge, but his head and the wide-brimmed, high-crowned hat that he was wearing stood out above it. He made no sound and was standing quite still; but Julian took him for a night watchman who had been patrolling the garden, had caught the sound of his footsteps and was now listening for his approach.

Thanking his gods that he was standing in deep shadows, Julian remained rigid with apprehension for a good two minutes. But the man did not move. For another two minutes Julian waited, striving to control his breathing and afraid he would give himself away if he moved either forwards or backwards. Then realisation came to
him. It was not a man but one of the stone lanterns with which the Japanese are so fond of decorating their gardens.