The Cloud Pavilion (8 page)

Below the highway between Asakusa and Edo, raindrops pattered into the rice fields. Sano and his entourage rode past pedestrians who looked like moving haystacks in their straw capes. Ahead Sano saw Hirata galloping on horse back toward him from the city.

“Any luck?” Hirata said as he turned his mount and rode alongside Sano.

“Yes and no,” Sano said. “We located the place where my cousin Chiyo was dumped by her kidnapper. An oxcart was seen there, but we couldn’t find it.”

“When you don’t want oxcarts, they’re all around, blocking the streets and stinking up the city,” Marume said. “When you do, there’s not a single blessed one in sight.”

Sano had led his men back to the construction site where they’d seen oxcarts yesterday, only to find the site deserted due to the rain. Sano and his men had combed the Asakusa district, but all the oxcarts seemed to have vanished.

“We’ll have to go to the stables and track down the drivers who were working in Asakusa yesterday and when Chiyo was kidnapped,” Sano said.

“Maybe I can save you the trouble,” Hirata said.

Sano had figured that Hirata must have good news or he wouldn’t have come looking for him, but he was surprised nonetheless. “Don’t tell me the police actually investigated Chiyo’s kidnapping and turned up some suspects?”

“No,” Hirata said, “but their chief clerk says that two other women were kidnapped before your cousin was. Both were missing for a couple of days. Both were found near the places where they were taken.”

Sano felt a mixture of excitement and dismay. He hated the thought that two more women had suffered, but the other crimes might provide clues. “Who are these women?”

“One is an old nun named Tengu-in,” Hirata said. “She lives in a convent in the Z
j
Temple district.”

“Merciful gods,” Fukida said. “Who would rape a nun?”

“She was taken on the first day of the third month and found two days later,” Hirata said. “The other is a twelve-year-old girl.”

That shocked the detectives speechless. Sano, thinking of his own young daughter, felt sick with horror.

“She was kidnapped on the third day of last month, found two days later. Her name is Fumiko,” Hirata said. “I happen to know her father. His name is Jirocho.”

“The big gangster?” Sano said.

“None other.”

The gangster class had proliferated since the civil war era some hundred years ago, when samurai who’d lost their masters in battles had become
r
nin
and wandered Japan, raiding the villages. Brave peasants had banded together to protect themselves. Today’s gangsters were descendants of these heroes. But times had changed. The Tokugawa government enforced law and order throughout Japan. No longer needed to protect the villages, the gangsters had turned to crime. Their ranks had swelled with thieves, con artists, and other dregs of society.

“When I was a police officer, I arrested Jirocho a few times,” Hirata said, “for extorting money from market vendors.” There were two distinct types of gangster—the
bakuto
, gamblers who ran illegal gambling dens, and the
tekiya
, who were associated with trade and sold illicit or stolen merchandise. Jirocho belonged to the latter type. “He made them pay him for not stealing their goods, driving their customers away, and beating them up.”

“Why’s he still on the loose?” Marume asked.

“Friends in high places,” Fukida said.

Hirata nodded. Sano knew that Jirocho and other gang bosses bribed government officials to let them carry out their business. As chamberlain, Sano tried to discourage this corrupt practice, but it was hard to catch the officials colluding with the gangsters, and the gangsters actually benefited the government. They helped to keep the growing merchant class under control and provided public services such as money-lending and security. Still, Sano thought this cooperation between government and gangsters boded ill for the future.

“Well, now Jirocho is a possible witness in a crime rather than the perpetrator,” Sano said. “Marume-
san
, you and Fukida-
san
will go to the stables and track down our oxcart driver. Hirata-
san
, you can question Jirocho and his daughter. I’ll take the nun.”

The Z
j
Temple district was a city within the city, home to forty-eight subsidiary temples, the Tokugawa mausoleum, and thousands of priests, nuns, monks, and novices. The high stone walls of Keiaiji Convent shut out the noises from the marketplace, the traffic of pilgrims and peddlers in the streets, and the chanting of prayers in nearby monasteries. Pine trees cleansed the air in spacious grounds landscaped with mossy boulders and raked white sand. The large building resembled a samurai mansion rather than the typical convent in which nuns lived in cramped, impoverished austerity. The abbess received Sano in a room furnished with a pristine
tatami
floor and a mural that showed Mount Fuji amid the clouds.

“I’ve come to inquire about Tengu-in, your nun who was kidnapped,” Sano said.

The abbess wore a plain gray hemp robe, the uniform of Buddhist holy women. Her head was shaved; her scalp glistened with a thin fuzz of silver hair. She was as short and sturdy as a peasant, with broad features set in a square face and an air of authority.

“Ah, yes. It was a dreadful thing to happen,” she said. “And to such a virtuous woman, yet.”

Sano inferred from her hushed tone that the nun had been raped as well as kidnapped. “My condolences to her, and to you and her sisters,” he said. “It must have been very upsetting for everyone here.”

The abbess shook her head in regret. “Yes, indeed, especially since Tengu-in was such a favorite.”

Her use of the past tense didn’t escape Sano. Had her community ostracized Tengu-in because she’d been violated? “Is she still here?”

“Yes, of course,” the abbess said. “She’s a member of our order for life. What happened to her doesn’t change that.”

But the abbess’s manner suggested that she’d become an unwanted burden, Sano thought.

“Tengu-in has been with us for eight years,” the abbess said. “She joined our order after her husband died. They had been married for forty-five years.”

Widows often did join convents, sometimes because they were devoutly religious, sometimes because their husbands’ deaths left them impoverished and homeless. Tengu-in must be in her sixties, Sano deduced. That someone would kidnap and rape a woman who was not only a nun but so elderly!

“Her husband was a high-ranking official in Lord Kuroda’s service,” the abbess went on. “She came to us with a very generous dowry.”

That explained how the order could afford such a nice home. When a rich woman entered a convent, she brought with her gold coins, silk robes, and expensive artifacts. This order had been lucky to get Tengu-in.

“But that isn’t why we were so fond of her,” the abbess hastened to say. “She is a good woman. She never expected special treatment because she was from high society. She always had a kind word for everyone.”

Sano pitied Tengu-in, who hadn’t deserved to suffer any more than Chiyo had. “Exactly where was she kidnapped?”

“Outside the main temple. Some of our nuns had gone there to worship. She got separated from the group. When it was time to go home, they couldn’t find her. All of us looked and looked, and I reported her missing to the police.”

Those circumstances sounded ominously familiar. “Where did she turn up?”

“Outside the temple’s main gate, early in the morning,” the abbess said. “Some monks found her. They brought her back to the convent.”

Sano thought of the oxcart seen in the alley where his cousin had been dumped. “On the day the nuns went to Z
j
Temple, were there any oxcarts in the area?”