The Secret Meaning of Blossom: a fast-moving spy thriller set in Japan Read online

  “Noodles?” he tried.

  “EEeeehhHH?” The boy’s voice plumbed the depths then soared, as if James had uttered some cerebral observation that encapsulated the essential mystery of life.

  “Noodles. I’ll have some noodles, please, and then we’re done.”

  “Eh – tooooooo….” That hum, like Mirai the other day. James wasn’t getting himself across at all. Now the young man was calling his colleagues over! Goodness, all he wanted was the same as the last gentleman.

  “Noodles!” He repeated his request to the three of them who were there now.

  “Ah!” Good! Sounded like one of them had got it. Some muttered words, then: “Nooduru!”

  “Yes! Nooduru!” said James, sounding like a fool, he was sure.

  “Hai! Hai!” Finally! Celebratory smiles all round. What a sense of achievement.

  Balancing the carrier bag with the hot polystyrene noodle bowl, his rice balls, and a couple of other mysterious looking things he’d grabbed on the way, James stepped out of the sliding door and came to a sudden halt when he saw Mirai standing there.

  “Mirai! Good heavens!”

  “James-san!”

  She was all in pink this time, at least the top layer was, as she sported a frilly umbrella-parasol type thing, hard to know which as it was neither sunny nor raining, and a very shiny plastic pink coat which finished somewhere mid-thigh.

  “Well, fancy bumping into you like this!” Did he sound forced?

  “Yes! Yes!” Mirai nodded energetically, smiling, though perhaps a little sadly. “I think you are home now. Weekend.”

  “Yes, well.” He wasn’t sure if he wanted to discuss that. “It’s turned into a bit of a longer trip than I thought. Still, plenty to see around here, isn’t there? I’m exploring the local food at the moment.”

  He held up his carrier bag a little too fast, and some noodle soup slopped out of the bowl.

  “Oh dear. They must have not put the lid on properly. Let me see if I…” He set it down on the pavement and fiddled around with the lid, achieving little except getting his hands covered in hot soup.

  Mirai stood and watched. “You don’t want go home to your wife?” she said morosely.

  James gave up on the lid and stood up. “Well, you see, I’m afraid there was a bit of a hiccup.”

  She looked blank.

  “My wife, you know, somehow managed to – er – get the wrong end of the stick. About you and me. Struggling to understand how, exactly.”

  She frowned. “Wrong end?” Clearly it wasn’t the right choice of words.

  “Well, I mean, Fiona and I never had any secrets. She seemed to think you and I had emailed each other, which is very odd, as of course we haven’t. None of this is your fault, naturally. Just some kind of muddle.”

  Mirai’s mouth opened. She held her hand over it, a comic-book expression of shock. “Your wife read your emails?”

  “Yes, standard practice chez nous, I’m afraid. As I said, we don’t have secrets. Though I don’t get to read hers, I have to say. But I’ve no worries there. If that’s the way she wants it, fine by me. Are you all right? You look a little peaky.” She’d really gone terribly pale.

  “Yes, I’m okay.” She shook her whole body like a dog shakes off rainwater, only there was no rain.

  James could hear himself jabbering again. “Anyway, the long and the short of it is, she’s rather let me know that I’m not currently welcome back right now. Stay out there with her if you like it so much, was the gist of it. And then, unfortunately, she hung up and I haven’t been able to speak to her since, although I’m sure it’s only a matter of time, but one doesn’t want to upset the applecart, if you know what I mean.”

  Did she? Mirai seemed to have gone into some kind of trance.

  “So, I thought, just sit tight for a bit and see how things pan out. And that’s it, really. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes! Yes!” Such a high-pitched voice she had, sometimes.

  “Anyway, I don’t want to seem antisocial, but I bought these noodles, you see, and I’d rather like to try them before they get cold.” He pointed to his dinner.

  This seemed to bring her round. “Ah! Okay!” She gave him a childish kind of wave, although waving seemed redundant as she was standing right in front of him. “Bye, James-san!”

  “Yes, bye bye. Take care now.”

  He headed back to the hotel, or least in the direction he thought the hotel was. How strange, to see Mirai standing right there! And what an odd line of questioning. Her response to what he’d said about emails was decidedly peculiar. This country was getting stranger and stranger. Hopefully he could somehow manage to persuade Fiona to come to her senses before he became a permanent resident. This type of thing hadn’t cropped up before, so he was on virgin territory, so to speak. Just going home and showing up at the house was, he sensed, not the right thing to do. Or perhaps he was just scared. Well, it wasn’t a bad idea to trust your instincts every now and then. Yes, trust your instincts.

  He turned for a moment and saw Mirai standing there pink as blossom, ready for a rain shower, staring down the street after him.

  Chapter 7

  Rose was in Soho, which was grimy, wet and cold. She wasn’t expected by the analysis team at Vauxhall Cross until next week. So she had time to do a little more digging.

  Funny James working for a company in the West End. She vaguely remembered on some family visit a few years ago, talk of him ditching his safe job at one of the M4 corridor tech giants to go with some small research and development enterprise. She got the impression her brother’s main motivation for the move was that it shaved half an hour off the commute, but Fiona, as she recalled, had some more articulate reasons. Big fish in small pond, along those lines. Of course, with those two, James’ career moves were agreed by both of them after much discussion. Rose couldn’t imagine anything worse than having to run her career decisions past someone else. But they had little in common, she and her older brother. At the time, she’d imagined some office suite in a business zone somewhere. Croydon, perhaps. But no, here she was, walking past overpriced sandwich shops and late-night bars catering to all tastes, right in the pulsating heart of trendy London, looking for a place with the unlikely name of Viziontecc.

  And here it was on a name plate next to a glass door, alongside various other firms: PR companies, architects, content managers. The name gave little away: futuristic and techy with a casual attitude to spelling. It could be anything. Stop being stuck-in-the-mud, Rose. It’s probably very important. It was well paid enough, she knew that. James’ line of work had provided enough so far to put both kids into private schools. Their incomes had certainly diverged over the years along with everything else. She buzzed.

  A man’s voice answered: “Viziontecc?”

  “Yes, I’m here about my brother, James Clarke.”

  A pause. “He’s not in the office.”

  “Yes. That’s what I’m here about. I’d like to speak to his manager, if I may. Or his colleagues. About his whereabouts. Can I come up?”

  “Well, I’m not sure…”

  “Look, I’ve come all the way into central London just for this. I’m concerned about him.”

  A silence, then the door clicked. “Which floor?” asked Rose through the intercom, but all she got was static.

  She went up the stairs and checked each floor. It was on the fourth. They weren’t really set up for visitors: no reception area, just a door with a swipe card unit and a bell. She pressed it and heard a “ding-dong!” like a domestic doorbell. Eventually it opened. A young man with messy hair and heavy-rimmed glasses stood aside to let her in. Clearly he’d drawn the short straw with the desk nearest the door. Or maybe they rotated.

  “How can I help?” he said.

  “Well, my brother went to Japan for a conference, and I don’t believe he’s come back.”

  The guy looked blank. “And…?”

  “Well, I’d like to kno
w why.”

  Still blank.

  “He does work here, right? I mean, you know he’s out there, don’t you?”

  The man assumed an expression of hesitancy and regret. “I’m afraid I can’t discuss any aspect of who works here, data privacy rules and all that.”

  “Oh, come on. One of your employees doesn’t come back from a business trip and that’s all you can say? I know my brother works here. We both know that. I also know that he went to Japan, as an employee of yours, and that he was scheduled to return and he hasn’t. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask if you, his employer, who presumably paid for him to go out there, and I guess have some expectation that he’ll return to the office, have some idea of what’s going on?”

  The guy looked a little nervous now. Rose looked up at the Viziontecc brand modestly displayed on the wall above them. “What exactly is it that you do, anyway?”

  That seemed to galvanise him. “If you’ll take a seat, I’ll fetch the manager.”

  He pointed to two colourful but uncomfortable-looking chairs shoved into a corner, and walked off. Rose barely had time to get her phone out and check for messages before a woman appeared in front of her, holding out her hand and introducing herself as Susan.

  “And your name is?” Susan asked.

  “Rose Clarke. James is my brother.”

  “And he’s been in contact with you, has he?”

  “He sent me a postcard.”

  Susan’s face said it all. Rose may as well have said he sent a carrier pigeon. “Was it informative?”

  “No, not really. Postcards generally aren’t. Listen, what do you think is going on with him? Why is he still out there? The conference finished days ago. He missed his flight, didn’t he?”

  Susan sat down next to Rose. “His itinerary seems to have changed, yes.”

  “Seems to have? You mean you don’t know what’s going on either? Is it to do with what he’s working on? The conference was related to his work, I guess?”

  “The subject of the conference fell within James’ area of expertise. That’s all I can say.”

  “Listen, Susan, what I’m really hoping to hear from you is some recognition that something peculiar is going on, that Viziontecc is aware of this and is doing everything in its power to sort it out.”

  “Well, you can be assured of that. Our local office in Tokyo has also been making attempts to get in touch with him.”

  “You can’t get in touch with him?”

  “I’m sure it’s a temporary glitch. James isn’t the type to go off-grid.”

  “He isn’t the type to write postcards either. Look, is there any way at all this could be work-related? That’s what I’m asking.”

  “Rose, I don’t know what you do for a living, but I’m sure you must appreciate that in some sectors there’s a need for a certain discretion.”

  Discretion? The word slapped her in the face. She was being lectured about discretion?

  Susan continued. “We carry out high-level cutting-edge research and development into IT applications that may well shape our future. As you can imagine, competition for ideas is fierce, and we would lose the trust of our clients if we discussed our projects with anyone outside the company, or indeed outside of the project team. I appreciate your concern about James’ delayed return. But I can’t discuss with you any detail of what James is doing. Rest assured we take the welfare of all our employees very seriously.”

  This may be an alternative-thinking blue-sky enterprise but there was nothing new about Susan’s management-speak.

  “Delayed return? It sounds to me like you’ve completely lost contact with him.”

  “A temporary situation. You’re very quick to jump to the conclusion this is to do with work. Have you spoken to his wife at all?”

  “Of course I have. And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  Susan stood. “I appreciate this is frustrating but there isn’t anything more I can say to you. As I said, we take the —”

  “Yes, yes, the welfare of your employees. That’s really it?”

  Susan went to the door and opened it. “We’re in touch with his family. When we hear something, we’ll let them know.”

  I’m family, Rose thought. But she didn’t say it. Susan waited. Rose wasn’t getting anywhere. “Thanks for all your help,” she said, and left.

  Outside, she made for Vauxhall Cross, to see if she could call in a favour. How could James be involved in something sensitive? Was it military? Was Viziontecc a front for something? She could find out if they were on an approved supplier list for secret intelligence work. She racked her brain to try and remember what James actually did. If she were honest, he made it sound so dull it went in one ear and out of the other. But if it had got him into some kind of trouble, maybe it wasn’t so dull after all.

  On the other hand, Fiona wasn’t being forthcoming either. James was meant to be the ordinary one out of the two of them, but suddenly he seemed to have all the secrets.

  Chapter 8

  Chosen at random, and because it was located conveniently on the main circular subway line, Shinjuku turned out to have a certain buzz to it. James’ first sight of the place was of an enormous traffic interchange, billboards flashing on the sides of buildings all around, then when the lights changed a tidal wave of people crossing in all directions. This city certainly heaved with people, and he’d always thought London was hectic. Surely there were other foreigners – it was a pretty international capital city after all – but as the throng passed by on all sides he felt a foot taller than everyone else, quite a bit wider, too, and the only person for miles with blond hair. He sensed one or two shy stares, which he didn’t happen to welcome at that time. He’d prefer to stay pretty invisible, truth be told.

  He'd done no research before coming here and felt rather naked without his devices, but logic dictated he should leave them behind. He’d heard of these capsule hotels, who hadn’t? But here’s the thing – what’s the Japanese for capsule? Would he even recognise that he’d found one if he stumbled upon it? The mere prospect of trying to ask someone in the street filled him with dread. What kind of pantomime would he have to perform to get that one across? In the end he got lucky and spotted a display next to a doorway. It looked somewhat like a photo of a bank of lockers at a railway station, except that the doors were glass and there were people inside them, lying down or sitting up, although the sitting up part didn’t work at all for him, sad to say.

  So much concrete! Really, every inch of space was road or pavement or building, and the sky above as well. Seven, eight, nine storeys or more everywhere, it made the West End look a bit stocky, actually. There was nothing here even remotely old. Signs and lights stretched vertically up every available wall space, turning luminous as darkness started to fall. The rounded corner of one such building was decorated with giant animated characters, some kind of king, a warrior, a maid, possibly, with ears like a cat, a couple of punky-looking rabbits.

  Manga! He’d almost forgotten. He’d been into manga way back, before they became all the rage, and spent many hours in his local comic shop making long-drawn-out decisions about which highly-priced new edition to spend his pocket money on. He’d made some pretence at understanding them – at least he knew enough to read them back to front – and almost felt inspired enough to try and learn Japanese, but not quite. Languages really weren’t his thing, apart form the universal and beautiful language of mathematics of course. Rose was much more the linguist than he was. But manga! how enthusiastic he’d been back then. What was he, nine, ten? Same age Henry was now. Maybe Henry would get into them. Or Sophie, let’s not be stereotypical. He realised he’d stopped to stare up at the cartoon figures, causing the river of passing pedestrians to divert round him on both sides. Well, he had nothing else to do. Just twiddling his thumbs, really. So he went in.

  They didn’t do things by half round here. By the look of what he assumed was a store guide, the place had seven floors. He went a
ll the way up, to get the lay of the land. One and two, books and magazines; three, clothes; four, toys and figurines; five, karaoke maybe; six and seven some kind of cafe bar set-up. He went back down to the bottom. Unable to make any sense of any signage, he wandered, hoping to spot something familiar.

  Overwhelming, the scale of it! He found himself looking at boys in red jumpsuits riding futuristic motorbikes through a flooded polluted post-apocalyptic Tokyo. He remembered that one. Sort of Lord of the Flies, only not. A whole aisle just on that one. Then things turned into more of a fantasy world, muscular chain-mail-clad warriors with swords and pendants, tales of loyalty and betrayal. He remembered that one, too. Rather bloodthirsty, it was. When he was a kid they weren’t even officially translated. You had to rely on someone’s precis in a hand-written badly-photocopied fanzine. Technology had certainly moved on since then. And here was Astro Boy! With his quiff and his big brown eyes, not forgetting his ability to fly and do all that superhero stuff, this little chap kicked it all off, back in the fifties it was, probably. Good to see he was as popular as ever, given the quantity of the merchandise.

  Moving on, things turned into some kind of fairyland world. This wasn’t familiar. A town on a hill, or was it a castle with all those turrets? And a host of creatures with wings and tongues and tails. The women seemed to rule the roost here, wielding all kinds of fearsome tools, long hair and exaggerated bodices. Ah, interesting. Here was one dressed all in yellow. Short dress, strappy sandals, bulging bust, and dancing around her a halo of purple flowers that seemed to have some magical properties, judging from the popping eyes and toothy smiles of the various males in the tableau. Across her front she clasped a sheathed sword that was practically the length of her own body, and she was clearly proclaiming something loud and powerful, though it being in Japanese he couldn’t tell what it was.