The Earthquake Bird (19 page)

I won’t deny it. I wanted to kill her. I wanted to wring her neck and kick her till she stopped moving. I wanted her to know
how much pain I could cause in return for her betrayal. But I didn’t want to stab her. I didn’t want to dismember and decapitate
her, throw the pieces into Tokyo Bay. It never even went through my mind.

T
he officers are back. There is a new one. He is older, bigger, looks tough. His name badge says Suzuki (“bell tree”).

“We are investigating the murder of a young, innocent woman.”

Not so innocent. “I know, but I didn’t do it. I could never have done that to Lily.”

“You know what’s strange about you?”

I meet his stare.
Go ahead
.

“It’s interesting. Normally when a corpse turns up, the friends and family of the victim are determined to believe that it
cannot be the body of their loved one. Until formal identification takes place, they will not accept what may be obvious to
everyone else. And sometimes even then they do not accept it. In your case, though, there seems to be an unstinting willingness
to believe that the body found in Tokyo Bay belonged to your friend Lily Bridges. Strange.”

I don’t understand him.

“The body wasn’t Lily’s?”

“No, it was not. And yet you were so sure.”

He doesn’t know my track record, the number of corpses scattered through my life, and that this next one seemed natural enough,
inevitable even. I wasn’t surprised when I read the newspapers. As soon as her boss had reported her missing, I knew Lily
was dead. I don’t mention this, though. It could be used in evidence against me. Found guilty. The accidental serial killer.
The serial accidental killer.

“Then whose was it?”

“We don’t know. It’s not identifiable. The newspapers were a bit carried away when they made their assumption that it was
Lily Bridges. Of course, it suited you to believe that. Anyone can see you could not have chopped up a whole body in a different
part of Tokyo in so little time.”

“Besides that, I didn’t even want to.”

“But you see, the body of your friend
was
found last night, in an unused shed behind the gas station, just a couple of minutes from your home.”

I’m beginning to see his point.

“She was strangled.”

What is the stench around me? Is it the decaying flesh of the severed pieces found in the bay? Is it the smell of the shed,
in the shadow of my own home, where Lily’s cold body was encased? No, it is the smell of my own vomit.

The police are too professional to let my mishap loosen their glare. I raise my watery eyes apologetically but there is more
to come. My friend—the glass of water friend—hands me a metal wastepaper can just in time and snatches his arm away, though
not fast enough to avoid a little splashing.

And I am empty.

A
nd that’s not all.”

I’d hoped it was.

“We’ve learned of your relationship with Matsuda-san.”

“I don’t know anyone called Matsuda.”

“Don’t lie. Matsuda Teiji. Weird guy who works in a noodle place. His uncle says he’s in Hokkaido now.”

Teiji’s uncle. Soutaro. Lucy’s only remaining link with Teiji. She frowned and considered his story, what she knew of it.

Soutaro was born in northern Tokyo and grew up there, just outside the Yamanote line. In his prewar childhood this meant that
he felt almost provincial. Now the city had sprawled so far that his address was positively metropolitan. He was proud to
be from Tokyo. Osakans were too loud and Nagoyans were flashy and spent too much money. Tokyo was the heart of Japan.

During the war, Soutaro was evacuated to the mountains of Gumma and escaped the firebombing of Tokyo that swept away most
of his family. His father and younger sister survived. He returned to Tokyo determined to be a part of its rebuilding. He
and his father set to work and opened a small restaurant in the neighborhood of Takadanobaba, serving noodles. Soutaro was
proud to work there, serving to his fellow city-dwellers this most basic of dishes.

His sister married and moved to Kyushu. Nineteen years later—though it seemed to Soutaro like nineteen months—she returned.
She brought with her a spindly son who looked as though he would never be good for a day’s work.

Soutaro was proved wrong. This strange, brooding nephew, prone to sudden energetic bouts of laughter, worked hard and became
strong. He seemed content mopping the floors, throwing out the old food, drawing up orders for ingredients. He worked all
day and then in the evenings he wandered off, who knew where to. When Soutaro’s sister died, there was no question that her
son should continue to work there. Soutaro had never married and liked the idea that upon his death the shop would belong
to the son of his sister. But since then, the boy had become something of a worry. What was he doing with that camera every
day? Why did he have no friends except for that sullen foreign girl? Soutaro was just ready to speak to Teiji, to suggest
that it was about time he married (and not a foreigner), when strange things happened. Teiji went away for a weekend, to Sado
Island. When he returned he seemed jumpy and nervous. A couple of weeks later, Teiji left a note on the counter of the shop,
held down with a roll of undeveloped film. He was going north, to Hokkaido, to try his luck.

Soutaro couldn’t continue without Teiji. His back was bad and he was ready to retire. He had the film developed, hoping that
Teiji had left him a clue, but the pictures were strange shots of deserted beaches, railway tracks with no trains, boarded-up
buildings, abandoned trash cans. Emptiness. He looked at them from every angle, turned them upside down. He put on some old
3-D spectacles that had come with a wildlife magazine and peered at each photograph again. Finally he threw the pictures away
and sold his shop to a stranger. In his apartment he sketched flowers and birds onto backgrounds of deserted places. He knew
he wouldn’t see Teiji again.

Matsuda Teiji. Teiji Matsuda. How had I never known his surname? I am shocked that in a country where family names are used
over given names, I’d somehow evaded Teiji’s. I must have seen it on an envelope, or something in his apartment, or heard
a regular customer asking for him by his name. But no, I hadn’t. And now, more than when I’d seen him at the station with
Lily, I feel I hardly knew him, that he has fooled me and eluded me.

“Yes, I knew him.”

“You were his girlfriend. And guess what. He left you for your friend Lily Bridges. You were so upset that you didn’t even
go to work for over a week.”

Natsuko must have talked to them. Or even Bob. Lily may have sought his advice before paying her visit to Lucy. She may have
told him what she’d done with Teiji. But there is no use in accusing friends. It is equally possible that my neighbor deduced,
and gave them, this information.

I’m feeling dizzy, the way I felt on Sado Island before I collapsed on the clifftops. My hands reach up for my face. I rest
my elbows on my knees, hold my chin in both hands. The room is hot. My jeans are stuck to my legs with sweat and sick. Someone
gives me a bowl of cold water and a cloth. I rub the wet cloth on my arms and legs, twist it in the bowl, wring it to squeeze
out brownish drops. I put the cloth in the bowl. It floats and bobs against the surface. I feel cleaner, cooler.

Now my mouth is moving, talking and talking though my tongue feels as if it’s been anesthetized and I sound drunk. I’m telling
them what they want to hear. The story spills out quite easily, almost of its own accord. My insane jealousy of Lily is first,
followed by the blind rage that threatened to consume me like fire when she let me down. Next, I detail my obsessive love
for Teiji, love that stopped me believing that it was over, that he no longer wanted me. Finally, the pair of stockings that
proved such an opportune weapon, and how I caught Lily off guard because she was still willing to believe that I would be
her friend and so she even smiled at me. The conclusion: Lily’s squawk of surprise, her short and feeble struggle. Her heavy,
lifeless body, still warm as I dragged it to the hiding place. I tell them the long, uncomplicated story and, finally, they
are pleased with me.

A man leads me down a corridor. It seems different from the one I saw several hours ago. The walls are dirty. The floor is
slippery under my feet. There are no fluorescent lights here, just single lightbulbs hanging, at intervals, from the ceiling.
I close my eyes but the bulbs still dazzle, one by one.

No, I didn’t kill Lily. Lucy is innocent of murder and guilty only of spinning a story. But she is also very tired. So many
people have slipped through my butterfingers, like rounders balls on a summer playing field, that I no longer trust myself.
It is pointless to fight my arrest, knowing that I could kill again. I would like some time out of the sun, a rest. And after
all, how innocent am I? How not guilty? If I had let Lily speak to me on the phone, she wouldn’t have been in my street that
night. It was I who introduced Lily to Teiji and I who persuaded her not to return to Britain when she wanted to. The defendant
must decide how to plead. And here is my plea. Not guilty, but not not guilty. Not entirely guilty but not entirely innocent.
The truth may out in the trial, but for now I’ll be the murderer.

I realize I’m not wearing my own clothes but garments of soft cotton. I suppose someone told me to change, let me take a shower.
I don’t remember it. I feel as if I might have been asleep but I don’t know how much time has passed, whether it was an hour
or a night, whether it’s now the same day or it’s tomorrow.

A flat, male voice tells me that I’m being taken to a room where a visitor waits. I wonder who has come to see me.

Could it be Teiji? Teiji with a full name he never told me of. Teiji who abandoned me for my friend, why did you do that,
Teiji? That’s the only question I shall ask if, indeed, you are my visitor. And the answer I’m hoping for is an impossible
one, you see, because it’s an answer that allows us to forget Lily, to go back in time to where we were before I let her in.
And I think I see you through the open door but already you’re vanishing into nothing, the way your voice dissolved before
when it was all I wanted to hear. I wish you wouldn’t go. But there, you have and my heart sinks. No. What was Lucy thinking
of? I know my visitor can’t be Teiji for he is in Hokkaido. He has no reason to come here and the police will never find him
in the city or the mountains. He’s disappeared already into thin shadows.

So then it must be Miriam, who’s tired of waiting for me by the sea and wants a real daughter to look after her and cook for
her, not Felicity, and as I think of her I wonder how she could come to Tokyo when she can barely leave her house, her pain
is so bad that she sits in the same chair all day, and it’s impossible so I think that it might be Jonathan here instead,
who used to be a policeman himself, and he’s come to take me home. I’m blinking now, because my eyes are salty and I can almost
hear the sea, and I can make out his shape through the open door ahead of me but then, how would I know it’s Jonathan? I haven’t
seen him since he was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen at the most. But there he is, and Miriam behind him, looking so old and
haggard now, staring at me with sad eyes, and I see the brothers: Luke, Nathan, Samuel, Simon, Matthew, smiling at Lucy but
without a trace of cruelty and she sees them quite differently, not a jeering pack in Boy Scout uniforms but happy, healthy
little boys with shining eyes. They’re small, and sweet. I’m glad to see them but if they’ve come to take me back with them,
I’ll have to let them down, poor children. They can’t speak Japanese, I’m sure they can’t, and that is half my language now,
it’s more than half.

But they’ve faded into dots and gone. It isn’t Jonathan or any of the brothers. It’s Lizzie with her trombone, her greasy
hair and illnesses. She’s come to play music and she wants me to return with her to work for the BBC. Of course, I’ll tell
her that I can never do that because I haven’t watched British television for more than ten years and I won’t know how to
do the job. And I haven’t seen my cello since Mrs. Yamamoto died and musical instruments are very expensive, as George and
Miriam always said. Lizzie, I’m sorry to say that it will be impossible to play with you.

Lizzie’s voice says it’s not her, silly, it’s Brian Church and he says, no it isn’t. But I’m becoming confused and making
mistakes. I must keep it clear in my head. I’m not dead yet. Noah, Brian, George, Mrs. Yamamoto, Lily. They’ll have to wait.
I’m still alive. I
am
.

I stand in the doorway, force myself to get a grip because I know I haven’t lost my mind, I’m sure I haven’t lost it. I count
to ten, five times, ten times, twenty times. I wait a little longer to be certain. And then I’m ready. I force my brain to
produce a logical thought. It does. My logical thought is that the visitor can only be Natsuko or Bob.

I enter the room. I can’t feel my legs anymore. It’s as if I’m being wheeled along on casters. A person sits in front of the
window, facing me. The sun is shining through and my eyes are not accustomed to natural light. I can’t make out any features
on the face but I’m sure I don’t know this figure.

“Hello, Lucy. Do you remember me?”

I swear I don’t. I squint. Is she speaking English or Japanese? I understand her words but I don’t know which language they’re
from.

“You don’t look well. We’re going to get you out of this place and then you’ll be fine.”

She giggles and I blink. It is Mrs. Katoh, the viola player.

I suppose she has come to accuse me so I begin my flurried defense.

“I didn’t mean to kill Mrs. Yamamoto. I really didn’t. It was an accident. I just put the cello in a different place and I
don’t know why, but I didn’t know she’d fall over it. I’m sorry—”

“What are you talking about?” She laughs again, a glass tinkle. “We all miss her terribly but you can’t get away from the
fact that Mrs. Yamamoto was always a clumsy so-and-so. She said as much herself. I knew she’d have an accident one day. I
was always telling her.”