Kimura, p.2
Kimura, page 2
Akari furrowed her eyebrows apologetically as she continued, her tone softening as though she was afraid to break something fragile. ‘No.’
Naoko looked back down into her cup and squinted. The smoke was burning at her eyes. She chose to change the subject.
‘The old couple who lived down the road from your inn, the Takagi’s– they stole all the money you saved?’
‘Every last yen. Ditched me just outside of Onomichi. I found my bike thrown from their boat a couple of yards down the port. I think it was probably the impact that screwed it.’
Naoko couldn’t help the look of judgment that assaulted her features.
‘I know what you’re thinking, Nao,’ Akari said, tapping the ground with her foot. ‘But they were the only ones with a boat willing to travel through the night. I was desperate to meet with you as soon as possible after I got the information about Yuki - even enough to let a few of my shadier customers take me across the inland sea. She may have been your sister, but she was my closest friend too. You have to understand, the moment I found something, I couldn’t waste a second.’
‘So, hiring a car’s out of the question now,’ Naoko said dismissively.
Akari swilled the whiskey in her paper cup. ‘There’s always a way. If you’re willing to suffer the consequence.’
Naoko looked at Akari, the beginnings of the festival’s less impressive fireworks glinted in the two small rings of her exposed upper ear. Akari caught Naoko’s questioning look. She glanced across the counter to ensure that the young couple was out of earshot. Conveniently, they were engrossed in a conversation with the stall owner, amicably discussing some recent goings-ons by the harbour. Apparently, several people had spotted what appeared to be a dog paddling just off the coast.
‘You didn’t take Shinobu with you?’ Naoko asked worriedly.
Akari looked perturbed, but then shook her head. ‘No. He’s still in Matsuyama. I left him with Mrs Cho.’
Naoko nodded and returned her attention to the problem at hand. Not one to waste time, she reached down for her rucksack. Unzipping a side compartment, she pulled out her phone. She removed the slim sheet of plastic concealing the phone’s interior and started to remove the battery and sim card. Akari took the hint and did the same with her Nokia.
Naoko turned the phone’s dismantled parts over in her hand. ‘You said we’re going to need money to free Yuki?’
Akari was silent for a moment. ‘Money, and lots of it.’
Naoko noted the change in her tone and suddenly regretted her poor choice of words earlier. ‘I’m sorry. You know I’m not blaming you for losing what little money we had between us. Thanks to the information on Yuki’s whereabouts you managed to get, we’re nearer to finding her than we’ve been in the seven years since she disappeared. Afterall, it was my fault she left in the dead of night in the first place. I would have wanted you to move on it as soon as possible too.’
Akari stopped crumpling the flimsy paper cup as Naoko extended a hand halfway across the table.
‘The fact those old fools tricked you on the way here and stole your savings was just crappy luck. I’ll repay every yen you lost one day.’
Akari looked back up as the hand furled into a small fist.
‘Just another lesson,’ Akari finally replied. ‘I won’t trust people so easily next time.’
Naoko’s eyes met Akari’s flinty ones, her apologetic look softening them slightly. ‘You don’t have any other moral avenue to get this money, do you?’ Naoko asked.
Akari dropped the disassembled phone to the ground in reply. ‘You catch on quickly, don’t you?’ She sighed. ‘With so little time, I don’t know what it is we’ll do, but the way things are shaping up, I believe it’s better now if the police have no way to track us. ‘
On cue, the festival’s main firework display erupted into an earth-shattering spectacle above them.
A series of awed ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ bounced through the crowds as Naoko drove her boot’s sole onto the phone screen. Four golden firecrackers howled to meet their siblings as Akari’s heel snapped the Nokia into two halves, its blocky battery crushed to smithereens by Naoko’s a second later. A young boy a few yards away dropped his toffee apple in shock of the huge, spiralling rocket that roared into the sky as Akari kicked the two wrecks into a drain beneath the stall. His cries went unheard, just like the noise from the small chunks of plastic and shattered mechanical debris as the phones hit the bottom of the grate. Naoko scooted her stool closer to Akari as an erratic series of emerald loops began to explode across the sky.
‘Tell me everything,’ she said.
Akari nodded. ‘It all started with sightings of this van. All black— – Honda, I think. It’s been spotted multiple times around the bars and inns a few streets away from mine. Rumours have been floating around for about three months, but it wasn’t until yesterday that I even thought of connecting them to Yuki.’
Akari glanced over her shoulder and back to Naoko.
‘They’re taking people, Nao. I don’t know who they are or how long they’ve been operating, but anybody who’s ever seen the thing says the same: whenever that van is spotted, someone goes missing.’
‘Three months? She’s been missing for seven years, Akari,’ Naoko said, unable to strip the doubt from her voice.
‘I know. That’s exactly why I never connected the two to begin with, but then—–’ Akari fell out of earshot as she reached down below the bar. After a few seconds of rummaging, she resurfaced, holding a shattered black object in her hand. She dropped it on the countertop with an unheard thud and flicked her excited eyes back on Naoko.
‘Yesterday afternoon, I spoke with one of the owners a few bars down from mine. He caught them dead in the act of bundling one of his customers into the back of the van as he ran out back.’
Akari pointed to the shattered wing mirror. ‘In their haste, they were reckless. The thieving twat made me pay 10,000 for this. A price I wouldn’t even have considered paying half of had he not then slipped the words that have us sitting here tonight.’
Naoko swallowed and leant closer to Akari, determined not to miss a single word through the undercurrent of rockets exploding above.
‘A woman with bright eyes and the name Kimura, Yuki Kimura. He heard the men describing such a person before he confronted them. What about, he didn’t know. But he says he was sure he heard something about the price she was going to fetch for them. And what’s more, she was going to be staying in the same location until October 3rd. That’s five days from now.’
Akari pushed the wing mirror closer to Naoko.
‘I think it’s just like we guessed. Yuki never got very far that night she ran away. Someone picked her up. The wrong people.’
‘You think these past years she’s been a victim of trafficking?’ Naoko said.
‘I do. She must have switched hands several times over these past years. And I also think they intend to sell her off again on the 3rd. They have some way of evading the police, perhaps someone in the department feeding them information on anyone who gets too close to finding them out. Either way, going to the police without solid evidence will be no good. The only option we have with so little time is to deal with this ourselves. I haven’t figured out the logistics of how we’ll pose as buyers yet, but what I do know is that we need to find the means to pay these people more in order to buy Yuki back in time.’
Naoko pushed down the wrenching feeling in her gut as she followed Akari’s outstretched finger to the base of the wing mirror. She reached out and picked up the mirror. Her hands were shaking. She strained her eyes to discern the tiny, raised letters dotted across the rim. They read, ‘Sakata Auto Repairs Jpn. – Sakata, Yamagata Prefecture.’
Naoko puzzled over the words for only a moment before snapping her gaze back up to Akari. ‘That’s brilliant.’
Akari smiled in acknowledgement. She took a drag on her cigarette before speaking through a breath of smoke. ‘It’s the address of a small business run by only a handful of employees— – probably even family-owned. The guys who did this could only have acquired this replacement mirror from Yamagata. It’s a small lead, and they may only have been passing through. But right now, our only option is to assume that whoever they are and whatever they’re kidnapping people for, they’re operating in Sakata.’
‘And if you’re right and we do find the place?’
‘Our first priority is to get Yuki out. But, yes, an ambiguous note to the police detailing solid evidence on a kidnap scheme years in the making wouldn’t go amiss either.’
Naoko dropped the mirror on the reed surface. The thrill that was building in her stomach was suddenly flushed down in tandem with the cruel logic that was beginning to take root in her mind. Sakata. That was at least 400 miles away. They had no car and only a pittance to their name. She looked to the other woman haplessly, a small pile of cigarette ash forming on the tabletop before her. And though Akari didn’t know it, soon enough she would be wanted for murder. Did they even stand any chance of getting out of Kobe?
Naoko drew her eyes back up to the sky, as she was overcome by a light-headed profoundness that she was relatively certain had nothing to do with alcohol. The final round of fireworks had already begun their awesome song. She bit her tongue as a lone firecracker burst into a shower of electric red and green, the metallic taste filtering over her taste buds as she finally understood that ‘so close you could taste it’ wasn’t just an abstract expression.
‘Just tell me something, Nao. Before all this starts.’
Naoko, hypnotised, nodded absently as she watched the array of colour erupting across the sky. ‘I knew it was always going to happen at some point, but I need to know,’ Akari continued as the final act, a gorgeous white rocket, burst, its magnificent glory reflecting across the port’s navy waters. ‘After all those years taking out your anger on her. The extent to which you abused her before she finally left. If we do find her out there, alive and sane, what in hell do you intend to tell her to fix all that happened between you two?’
Naoko didn’t blink the spots away from her eyes, even as the cacophonous bang hissed to no more than a thousand crackling whispers.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ she whispered, ‘I’ll tell her that I’m sorry. That even then, I was sorry.’
Chapter 3
Beach
Naoko jerked from her musings and turned to Akari, who had her hand clamped over her mouth, a flush of blood rising steadily across her temples.
‘Oh my God, what if I did take Shinobu after all?’
Suddenly she got up, almost toppling her bar stool, grabbed her bag and darted into the crowd.
Bewildered, Naoko stood up too. She dropped a 1000-yen note and some coins to the countertop, called out to the stall owner and picked up her rucksack. He raised a hand in acknowledgement as she slung the bag over her shoulder and took after her companion.
Naoko was grateful the impractical haze of intoxication was already falling away from her senses. Her heavy breaths greatly aided the effort. However, the hard pavement below still pushed back under the balls of her feet with a strangely springy quality. The adrenaline rushed through her system, the only thing enabling her consistent balance as she forced a dead sprint after Akari.
The two of them sliced through the herds of festival goers much faster than they had entered them. Twisting and weaving through multi-patterned kimonos and yukatas, they navigated the sheer gaps as efficiently as possible. The mass of bodies got thicker the closer the pair got to the centre, the crowds only reacting to step aside as Akari near shoved them into the roadside stalls.
They were forced to slow their pace as they hit the eye of the storm. Akari growled with impatience as she struggled to seek out gaps. Naoko shot down every new path Akari created with her agitation, undeterred by the insults raining down on her as she finally neared the edge of the crowd.
The last stall of the market flashed by as Akari burst through the herd. Naoko swerved around the boy who’d lost his toffee apple and broke out just behind her. The scent of salt quickly overwhelmed the fried takoyaki as the two raced towards the waterfront, the sweltering heat in turn consumed by the icy chill of the coastal night air. Naoko leapt over a lounging cat, aware of her creeping fatigue as the ocean slid back into view. Akari reached the harbour and vaulted over the surrounding railings, her teeth gritted as she considered the worst possible outcome. She sprinted across the dock as Naoko finally hit the railings.
Naoko got one leg over, attempted to replicate Akari’s graceful action, slipped and then dropped awkwardly onto her left ankle. She tumbled to the platform below, pain shooting through her leg as she clambered back to her unsteady feet. She quickly drew herself back into a staggering jog, grateful that the alcohol in her system had somewhat numbed the temporary pain.
Unaware of her injured companion, Akari stopped at the foot of the bay and mounted the breeze-block wall surrounding it. Naoko finally caught up and squinted up at Akari in the building darkness. The pale light of the crescent moon illuminated her eyes. They skittered across the beachfront, her chest rising and falling just as erratically as she desperately searched the sands below.
With difficulty, Naoko ascended the infuriatingly smooth breeze-block to take her place beside Akari. A collection of sailors and cabin boys pooled around the edge of the harbour, peering with great intrigue at something out in the bay. The pointing and chatter increased as more people got out of their boats to investigate the commotion. Naoko, panting heavily, finally opened her mouth to ask Akari what she was thinking in her recklessness. Naoko stopped in alarm and snapped her eyes to the inky distance. Something was writhing in the water. It was some time before stunned recognition hit Naoko.
‘Oh my God, Akari.’
Akari raised her stare from the dark sands below to the direction of Naoko’s wide-eyed gaze. What could have originally been mistaken for a mere buoy bobbing amidst the waves, manifested itself as a living creature. It drew closer, obviously struggling in its determined attempt to paddle back to shore.
Suddenly, the animal was assaulted by a merciless wave a few metres from the sand, forcing it back into the surprisingly deep shallows. There was a moment of inaction before a panting head broke the surface followed by the dog’s convulsing body, all four legs erratic in continued battle toward the dry land. A second wave reared up behind its tail, this time, however, curling and hitting the dog at just the right angle. The wave crashed against the beach, throwing the lame animal the remaining stretch to the beachfront. Naoko turned to Akari, but only an empty space remained where she had previously stood on the breeze-block.
Naoko flicked her gaze down as she heard a wet squelching, Akari kicking up sprays of damp sand as she sprinted to the end of the beach. She skidded to a stop at the water’s edge just as Shinobu’s limp form rolled onto the sludgy sand.
‘Nobu?’
The dog raised his sopping head and acknowledged the aggrieved face of his owner. The soft wind ghosting across the beach caressed the brown hairs carpeting his ears. The fur on his cheeks was ruffled and his eyebrow ridges perked up a little as he exhaled a soft whimper and sneeze-like breath from his obstructed airway. Akari shifted as the thick barrel clenched between the dog’s weak jaws finally fell. The rifle hit the sand with a low thud, slipping in tandem with the buoyant hunting case that had, until recently, clothed it.
Akari glared down at the rigid brown fabric of the rifle case that enabled it to float on the surface of the water. She cast her eyes over the puncture marks in the material, matching them to the open jaws of the animal that lay panting before her. Before she could process any more, Shinobu gave another agonised whine and collapsed, sprawled out in a twisted heap alongside the ugly weapon. Akari fell with him, her upper body paralysed as she watched the dog stop moving next to the thing that had undoubtedly administered the lethal, bloody wound in his chest. She felt no pain as her knees hit the ground. She struggled with her shock. She couldn’t comprehend the black stains marring her beloved dog’s wet coat. It was exceedingly unfathomable that they came from her dog’s body and not from some regrettable vermin that had made its last late-night trip into her inn. The wind rolled across the beach again, but Shinobu didn’t react to the gusts displacing the greying hairs on his eyebrows.
Akari looked at Shinobu’s shiny nose, begging for any movement, even so much as a twitch, knowing it wasn’t coming. She shuddered as the first tears fell from her eyes, as though the act of forcing moisture through her tear ducts was the very thing causing her pain. Her tears plopped gently onto the wet fur between Shinobu’s ears. She forced a glance to the hole torn into his chest, and her face burned. The wound burrowed through his shoulder. It must have reopened as he hit the sand.
She started to gasp, the tears and saliva clogging her lips in clumpy streams. The world suddenly felt so surreal. The white port lights alive in her periphery shone harshly, the song of the gulls manic overhead. She gaped at Shinobu’s fragmented image through the film of tears, then down to the black lumps that were her bent knees and finally back to the object of the dog’s pain. She blinked away her tears, feeling their itch as they stung her cheeks. Her eyes locked with the kanji etched into the rifle’s walnut stock.
Mr Uki. The vile pet name caught in her throat. It poisoned her.
Her anger ran rampant, its onset far too intense to tolerate the reality that the weapon that had dealt Shinobu his lethal blow had also kept him alive. The buoyancy of the case encasing the rifle had kept it, and the dog attached to it, above the surface of the fatal waves through the torment of the past hours. The fury crackled across her quivering lips. She let out the scream that had been building inside her.
The gun was sent hurtling across the fine grains. It kicked up a belt of sand and ripped the ground out from beneath a tower of seashells, before colliding with the toe of Naoko’s boot. The other woman, who had just made it to the beachfront, stared at the gun in bewilderment.
