Hidden Nexus (13 page)

Friday 31st December 12:15pm

A mere thirty minutes had passed since Fujiwara’s sadistic violation of Rumi Park and yet, as we know, he remained utterly unsatisfied.
Everyday life, each new day, each simple half hour no longer bristled with opportunity and challenge but was now a hideous, tormenting trap. His emotions were the hardest to overcome. He’d never realised that he was capable of such tortuous feelings and in turn he had become drawn to their comforting allies - drugs, alcohol...

And an alarming, out-of-control, libido!

There seemed to be no escape from the chattering, thumping, insistent noises from within his head.

‘Rumi!’ Fujiwara yelled angrily.

No-one answered or came to his call.

‘Rumi!’ he yelled again easing himself out of his chair with some difficulty and discovering, not surprisingly, that he was extremely unsteady on his feet. He exited his office and swayed once again down the corridor maintaining his balance only by gratis of the side wall and barged ungainly into Rumi’s room.

‘Get the fuck out!’ he ordered to the man lying prostrate on the futon who, startled at the interruption to his personal and private service, thought for a second, and only a second, about challenging this unwelcome rescheduling. The look on Fujiwara’s face warned him against such a foolish course of action so he quickly jumped up mumbling unnecessary apologies, he’d done nothing wrong after all, picked up his shirt, and with rather too much grovelling and scraping gathered up the rest of his clothes which were scattered around the room and hurried quickly to the door.

‘Go to Yuki,’ advised Rumi whispering in his ear as she gently pushed him into the corridor and closed the door behind him. She then turned to face Fujiwara, biting her lip knowing full-well what was coming next.

Fujiwara pushed her back onto the futon and then ripped open her masseuse’s white dress revealing her pale yellow underclothes beneath. He then grabbed her roughly by the face, kissing her strongly on the lips and then forced his tongue into her mouth.

Rumi waited submissively for the next stage of the assault. She didn’t have long to wait as he pushed her legs apart and then moved between them. He grabbed her right breast with his left hand in what he mistakenly thought would be interpreted as passionate fondling. With his right hand he grasped her throat pushing her head back. She felt nothing but pain and experienced nothing but aggression. But then, just at the point where she expected him to reach down and tear off her knickers he rolled off her and slipped onto the floor in a fit of uncontrollable howling.

She lay on the futon not daring to move, listening only to her own heavy breathing and his endless, pitiless crying and wondered what had tipped him over the edge. What act had he committed that had reduced him to this?

There were relatively few times in Rumi Park’s life when she’d
not
had occasion to bitterly evaluate the way in which her life had unfolded. Given who she was, where she was and what she was this was not surprising. Suffice it to say that at an early age life had crept up on her and played a malicious trick. One minute her life had seemed fixed within a given (pleasant) trajectory and next it was hurtling off into (an evil) deep space. At the back of a dim, repressed memory she could recall shouts echoing in the dark – accusations and threats, her father pleading for her, begging that they take him and not his beloved Rumi.

For most of her adult life, since the age of thirteen, she’d been held as a virtual prisoner within the confines of Fujiwara’s regime – a regime enclosed by invisible walls but very visible threats. Initially an intimidating concoction of fear, ignorance, youth, drugs and a complete inability with the language had kept her where she was – a hostage to her father’s misfortune and the Yakuza’s metal-fisted reach. At that first, black fork in the road of her life she’d been too young to fully appreciate what was happening to her – save to recognise that her life was in danger and that, too, of her entire family if she did not do as she was told. She’d been too obedient and too scared to do anything else which admittedly was an appropriate and quite effortless thing to be when a knife was at your throat. The men who had taken her, silently, un-speaking and secretly in the dead of night had then shipped her over to Japan, like she was nothing more than a commodity consignment and ruthlessly tipped her into the curious hell that was Japan’s sex industry. There had been no explanation.

The early lesson was compliance - do what you were told and no serious harm would come to you. It hadn’t taken her long to understand, and had only taken a few beatings before she finally acted with the correct degree of submissiveness. The fear and the drugs had kept her ignorant. That and the useful exemplars of those girls who had gone astray – forced back into subservience through a mix of beatings, ritual humiliation and cold-turkey. Everything had been done to make it obvious that there were no alternatives. This was home and this was life. Get used to it!

It had taken her a long time to regain a resemblance of inner-confidence and even longer than that to secretly wean herself off the drugs.

The routine was monotonous. She lived in the apartment block with the other girls – three to a room, an apartment block that was a stone’s throw away from where she worked. The day began where the last one left off. All were alien to the concept of free time or weekends. The apartment block was nothing more than a place to eat and sleep.

Other than that they spent their days within their private rooms in the massage salon – yes, carrying out massages, yes, offering extra ‘services’ and yes, doing this shrouded in the haze of a drug induced euphoria where every day and every night blended into one long swirling high.
Her room was quite unexceptional, being designed with one object in mind. It was taken as read that no-one would be there to admire the décor. It was a simple tatami room with a single futon. There was a tinted window - a locked tinted window and the
Millennium Massage Salon
was at least four stories up.
At all times, if they ever needed reminding, the pimps were on guard. No-one ever escaped. Not for a minute.

Now at the age of twenty-two slowly and tentatively she had discovered an inner resilience which had allowed her to successfully re-evaluate her position. All she understood now was that she was in a place that she’d rather not be. Home was somewhere else – home was Korea and not Japan and certainly not within the Millennium Massage Salon.

Her mind had gradually felt clear enough to rationally consider her position – to plan and organise and to trust to her innate sense of survival. The plan that had formed itself steadily over a period of months was quite simple, direct and grounded – she needed to escape, but she needed to escape at a time when it would be virtually guaranteed that no-one would come searching for her, least of all Fujiwara.
Since that realisation she had bided her time and waited patiently for the opportune moment to come.

And that opportune moment was now!

One thing was certain. Fujiwara was not the man she thought she knew. He was not the man she had come to detest – and fear. Something within him had changed. Something within him had cracked. Recently he’d appeared overweight and unfit and almost permanently drunk. Rumi Park, by contrast, had always prided herself on her strength, agility and fitness - honed ironically through the sexual acts she had been forced to perform day-in, day-out. But she wasn’t sure if she’d have the ability and presence of mind to confront a man for whom aggression seemed more than just a pastime.

She would need to take him by surprise.

A previously taken itinerary of her room had revealed little by way of a suitable weapon. Aside from a collection of dildos there seemed nothing that was appropriate. It was then that she’d noticed the handcuffs, and the final pieces of the strategy had fallen into place.

As soon as she had witnessed him sobbing on the tatami matting, caught within his own self-inflicted prison, she considered that her moment might have come.

It was what she had been waiting for and what she was hoping for. With a movement swifter than he could credit her with she removed her hand from under the pillow and jabbed him painfully in the eye with a well selected dildo. As he fell back onto the matting in agony she rolled over and reaching to the side she grabbed hold of the more weighty, and therefore more damaging plant pot, and smashed it over his head. She did this a further two more times to ensure, emphatically, that he could not rise and finally she handcuffed him wrist to ankle. The totality of her actions came to no more than forty seconds but it left Fujiwara unconscious and bleeding on the floor.

She wasted no further time, dressed as quickly as she could, gathered her bags along with money that she’d been gifted by her clients and ran as quick as she could, through the door to freedom.

Friday 31st December 1:30pm

For Mori, the last hour would not be one that he would later treasure. Usually at the point of arrest he experienced an adrenaline rush, a veritable high based on the fact that the evidence had drawn him to a pinnacle of deduction - the final conclusion; but not so in the case of Eri Yamada. The minimal ‘excitement’ of having a suspect in the cells had dissolved
quite rapidly when Sakamoto had proceeded with his questioning. It was a scene he was all too used to, but at the back of his mind he couldn’t shake the uncomfortable impression that he was looking at a completely innocent man added to which he couldn’t work out why Sakamoto was so determined to be entirely one-tracked.

He was relieved, therefore, to flee the questioning and to grab a bite to eat. Lunch for Mori was typically nothing much more than a couple of
onigiri
(rice balls) and an apple but today he felt he needed something a little more substantial and something that lay a little further up the culinary scale. It wasn’t so much a full, invigorating meal that he was after but more an escape from the current investigation in general and Inspector Sakamoto in particular.

It had been quite normal for him to be lead by the hand (rather than the nose) when it came to selecting places to eat. Inspector Saito seemed to possess an unending list of places he recommended - little back street noodle shops that he’d just discovered or fantastic emporiums of gastronomy that simply had to be savoured. Without Saito on hand to proffer a suggestion he was quite often at a loss. He’d even been known to consider a MacDonald’s. Inspector Saito would have died in shock.

Consequently he sat in a Japanese curry house that Saito had once introduced him to, had ordered a
Katsu-kare
(Pork cutlet & curry sauce on rice) and was attempting to enjoy the break in proceedings. He’d blown his nose three times before his meal arrived and as he waited, and blew, he’d read through his newspaper.

Unlike many of his colleagues he was never particularly eager to pounce onto the first, fresh news clipping that was pressed under his nose concerning whatever the present investigation was, but with time on his hands he found himself glancing down the journalist’s description of the case so far.

In truth not much had been released to the press – name of senior investigating officer, name of victim, location of crime but that notwithstanding the article continued liberally on its way, suggesting improbable and misleading theories surrounding possible reasons behind the unfortunate murder, none of which Mori felt had any grounding in truth. Probably with copious prompting from Sakamoto, a great deal of suspicion had been pointed in direction of the unfortunate Hideki Yamada.

In Mori’s experience usually a case surrounded the development of corroborated suspicion. A clue was found, its relevance pursued, a suspect targeted, an alibi checked, a motive weighed and a response to questioning interpreted as to whether or not it tipped the balance of suspicion. It was all a matter of accumulation with each piece of the jigsaw fitting neatly together to create a picture of unassailable guilt leading to a formal charge being brought.

That was the usual pattern and on most occasions Mori would proceed with earnest. Not so with this particular case despite the fact that it nearly fitted the pattern…

A suspect had been targeted, his alibi checked and a response to questioning interpreted with the balance of suspicion tipping quite clearly towards guilt – at least as far as Inspector Sakamoto was concerned. Two things concerned Mori, though. The sequence had not been followed – what had been the initial clue and more importantly what was the motive?

The irony that hadn’t failed to strike him was that his distaste for Sakamoto’s approach and consequently his desire to work once again with Inspector Saito couldn’t hide the fact that it was quite usually Inspector Saito’s approach to shun the heap-of-evidence approach and leap to mismatched conclusions. Mori had seldom, if ever, observed Saito finger through a detailed forensic report or rifle through a file of dutifully transcribed statements especially in the case of the latter where Saito quite rigidly stuck to his belief that since
he
found it difficult to remember what he was doing a week ago how on earth could he rely on anyone else to recall events in their life with greater, reliable, clarity.

No, Saito seldom worked that way. If anything the opposite was Saito’s preferred MO. He usually opted for hunch and supposition.

He flicked through the rest of the paper, glanced at his watch – 1:55 and decided it was time he got moving. The
Katsu-Kare
dish had been wolfed down – it usually took five minutes to prepare and less time to eat.

As he walked out of the restaurant he overheard a couple of women exclaiming their shock at the recent murder case.

‘Who could have done such a thing,’ one of them said.

‘Probably the husband,’ the other proclaimed with deadly conviction.