Free Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace Page A

seen
…
    The meals they had eaten –
    ‘But why?’ they’ll ask –
    The scars they carry or the teeth they have lost or any other unique features that might help to eliminate or identify their daughters from among the rotting flesh and bleached bones we found in Shiba Park, but not today –
    ‘But if not today?’ these mothers ask. ‘Then when?’
    Today there is no consolation for these mothers –
    ‘When?’ they ask, again and again…
    The day after the autopsies these twenty mothers must return, these twenty mothers and the one father –
    The one father in his last good suit with his hat in his hand who steps from the mothers to ask – ‘May I speak with you?’
    *
    ‘My name is Nakamura Yoshizo and I am a grocer in Kamata. My daughter’s name is Nakamura Mitsuko. She is my only daughter. She graduated from the Aoyama Domestic Science College and she had a number of wartime jobs with the Yasuda and Taito Yokosan companies as well as some volunteer work. But she is my only daughter and so, as the situation worsened in Tokyo last year, my wife and I decided to send Mitsuko to live with her elder brother and his wife in Ibaraki Prefecture. And so, on the twelfth of July last year, she left our home in Kamata to travel to Ibaraki. Mitsuko never arrived at her brother’s house. She was twenty-two years old, but she will be twenty-three now. She is my only daughter, detective.’
    ‘Did you report Mitsuko missing?’ I ask him –
    The father nods. The father says, ‘Of course.’
    ‘And what did the local police tell you?’
    ‘That they could find no clue…’
    I open my notebook. I lick the tip of my pencil and I ask him, ‘Can you remember what clothes your daughter was wearing on the day she went missing last year?’
    ‘A pair of brown
monpe
trousers and a pale yellow blouse.’
    ‘Can you remember her footwear that day?’ I ask him.
    ‘A pair of traditional wooden
geta
sandals…’
    ‘And can you describe Mitsuko for me?’
    Mitsuko’s father takes a deep breath and says, ‘She is one hundred and fifty-five centimetres tall and she weighs about fifty kilograms. She has long hair which she usually wears in two plaits. Mitsuko also wears round silver spectacles.’
    In the half-light, no one forgets
…
    ‘Anything else?’ I ask him.
    ‘On the day she went missing,’ he nods. ‘She was carrying a beige-coloured cotton rucksack…’
    ‘And what was inside?’
    ‘A
bentō
lunch box.’ ‘Anything else?’
    Nakamura Mitsuko’s father nods again, wipes the sweat from his face and says, ‘For her twentieth birthday, I gave her an elliptical-shaped ammonite brooch…’
    No one forgets
…
    I stop writing now. I close my notebook. I put away my pencil. I tell him, ‘As you know, the autopsies on the two bodies have yet to be performed. However, one of the victims died very recently and the clothing found on the other does not match that of your daughter, at least on the day she went missing. So it’s doubtful your daughter is one of these bodies…’
    The father holds a handkerchief to his face. His shoulders begin to tremble –
    ‘It was in the newspaper,’ he whispers. ‘About the two unidentified bodies in Shiba Park and so my wife and I thought that we should…’
    ‘I understand,’ I tell him. ‘And I will contact you if I do find anything…’
    He bows his head –
    ‘Thank you.’
    *
    The first trunk is packed and ready. Nishi and Shimoda will each take a handle. The second trunk is packed and ready. Kimura and Ishida will each take a handle. The others have got their things together. They have tidied up their loose ends. They have cleared their desks. They are ready to go to Atago. They know there will be no days off now. They know there will be no rest now. They are waiting to go, passing round the newspaper, talking of the latest suicide –
    A Rear Admiral Sato Shiro, a fifty-four-year-old former commander of the Japanese Naval Forces in the New Guinea area,