The fine art of uncanny.., p.1
The Fine Art of Uncanny Prediction, page 1
About the Author
Robert Goddard’s first novel, Past Caring, was an instant bestseller. Since then, his books have captivated readers worldwide with their edge-of-the-seat pace and their labyrinthine plotting. He has won awards in the UK, the US and across Europe and his books have been translated into over thirty languages.
In 2019, he won the Crime Writers’ Association’s highest accolade, the Diamond Dagger, for a lifetime achievement in Crime Writing.
Also by Robert Goddard
Past Caring
In Pale Battalions
Painting the Darkness
Into the Blue
Take No Farewell
Hand in Glove
Closed Circle
Borrowed Time
Out of the Sun
Beyond Recall
Caught in the Light
Set in Stone
Sea Change
Dying to Tell
Days Without Number
Play to the End
Sight Unseen
Never Go Back
Name to a Face
Found Wanting
Long Time Coming
Blood Count
Fault Line
Panic Room
One False Move
The Fine Art of Invisible Detection
This is the Night They Come for You
The Wide World trilogy
The Ways of the World
The Corners of the Globe
The Ends of the Earth
Robert Goddard
* * *
THE FINE ART OF UNCANNY PREDICTION
Contents
GLOSSARY OF PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
1945
2022
1995
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2011
For my good friend Toru Sasaki with many thanks for all his help and advice
Glossary of Principal Characters
Anna Collins Braxton, first wife of Grant Braxton, killed in Loma Prieta earthquake, San Francisco, 1989, along with her children Alice and John
Clyde Braxton, US army officer based in Japan during US occupation, 1945–52, later founder of Braxton Winery, California, and Braxton Institute of Seismological Research and Innovation (BISRI); died 2005
Grant Braxton, son of Clyde Braxton
Lois Braxton, second wife of Grant Braxton
Norifusa Dobachi, lawyer retained by Kodaka Detective Agency
Daiju Endo, civil servant who disappeared after claiming the Kobe Sensitive had given the Prime Minister’s office advance warning of 2011 earthquake and tsunami
Joji Funaki, journalist, old friend of Kazuto Kodaka
Haha, mother of Umiko and Haruto Wada
Andrew Harrington, partner at Anderson McGraw, San Francisco architectural practice that designed BISRI campus
Hosogai, inquisitive neighbour of Manjiro Nagata
Chikako Imada, assumed name of Himeko Sato
Arinobu Jinno, founder and chairman of Jinno Construction; died 1994
Hisako Jinno, adoptive daughter of Arinobu Jinno
Teruki Jinno, adoptive son of Arinobu Jinno, client of Kodaka Detective Agency, 1995
Troy Kimber, son of Lois Braxton by her first husband, stepson of Grant Braxton
Kazuto Kodaka, private detective, Kodaka Detective Agency; died 2019
Koga, successor to Rokuro Yagami as Goro Rinzaki’s enforcer
Kwon Hee, assumed name of Manjiro Nagata
Connie McDermott, security officer, BISRI and Braxton Winery
Juanita Martinez, girlfriend of Manjiro Nagata
Wataru Matsuda, proprietor of Gosuringu Orphanage, Tokyo; died 1945
Mitamura, official at Tokyo Road Transport Bureau, occasional informant for Kodaka Detective Agency
Momo, Goro Rinzaki’s housekeeper at Matsuda Sanso
Nagaharu Myoga, proprietor of electronic gadgets shop, Tokyo, occasionally used by Kodaka Detective Agency for analysis of sound recordings
Fumito Nagata, father of Manjiro Nagata, former husband of Hisako Jinno, client of Kodaka Detective Agency, 2022
Manjiro Nagata, son of Fumito Nagata and Hisako Jinno
Tomohiko Nakamura, husband of Umiko Wada, left in a coma after Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attack on Tokyo Subway, 1995; died 2007
Oda, right-hand man to Koga
Yukari Otonashi, assumed name of Yuma Zaizen
Daniel Perlman, served in US Navy, 1945–52, based in Japan and worked with Clyde Braxton during US Occupation, later proprietor of Flight Deck bar, Yokosuka; died 2005
Itsuko Perlman, daughter of Daniel and Nonoka Perlman
Nonoka Perlman, wife, later widow, of Daniel Perlman
Goro Rinzaki, clerk at Gosoringu Orphanage, Tokyo, later worked for Clyde Braxton during US Occupation of Japan, 1945–52, founder and chairman of Kuraikagami Film Corporation, client of Kodaka Detective Agency, 1995
Himeko Sato, domestic servant apparently able to predict earthquakes – the so-called Kobe Sensitive
Arvad Singh, office cleaning contractor, California
Seiji Tago, disgraced former sumo wrestler, lodging with Haha
Takuto Umetsu, Bank of Japan official, regular informant for Kodaka Detective Agency
Haruto Wada, brother of Umiko Wada, based in New York
Umiko Wada, private detective, Kodaka Detective Agency, formerly secretary-cum-assistant to Kazuto Kodaka
Rokuro Yagami, chauffeur-cum-enforcer employed by Goro Rinzaki
Taro Yamato, civil servant, friend of Daiju Endo
Sonoko Zaizen, introduced to Kazuto Kodaka as former mistress of Arinobu Jinno
Yuma Zaizen, daughter of Sonoko Zaizen
1945
THE CITY IS GONE, OR SO IT SEEMS, SWEPT AWAY, BURNT OUT OF existence. The centre of imperial Japan is a scorched and hollowed wilderness, slowly revealed in its grey, smouldering vastness as the thin early morning light spreads across the sky. Smoke rises with the dawn, staining the livid sunrise indigo and purple. The full expanse of Tokyo Bay is visible as Goro Rinzaki has never known it, shimmering in the distance. And Mount Fuji too is clear to see, as he has only previously seen it depicted from here in ancient woodblock prints. This, he realizes with dismay, is how Hokusai and Hiroshige and all those other artists of the pre-Meiji world would have seen the city’s surroundings. And now this is how he sees them too.
His view is perhaps less sharp than theirs would have been, thanks to the cracks in the right lens of his glasses. But it’s likely to be a long time before he can call on the services of an optician again, so the blurry striations across part of his vision are merely one of the many hardships he has to endure, along with cold, hunger and an overwhelming pessimism about what the future holds. The Japan so many of his fellow countrymen have fought and died for is finished. That much is certain. It is finished, even though it is not yet done. The struggle will continue, for how long he cannot say. But eventually it will end. The Americans are coming. The drone of the bombers last night announced the fact. And the fire and destruction they unleashed confirmed it. They are coming. And when they arrive they will remake Japan in whatever image they choose.
Goro Rinzaki’s thoughts are fixed on how to survive between this moment and then. He is sixteen years old, but what those sixteen years have held have hardened his soul to that of someone much older. There has been nothing carefree about his life to this point. Japan has been at war with a steadily growing number of enemies since he was eight. He is shrewd enough to have known for several years what many in Tokyo have only just begun to understand: they cannot win; they can either surrender – or die. And Goro does not want to die.
Neither does the man he is accompanying through the rubble-strewn streets. Wataru Matsuda has been his saviour in many ways, pulling strings when they needed to be pulled to ensure Goro’s poor eyesight would excuse him from military service, however desperate the army became for new and ever younger recruits. Matsuda hasn’t done so for altruistic reasons. He values Goro for his discretion, his energy and his reliability. As Matsuda’s assistant at the Gosuringu Orphanage, and technically his ward, since he was an orphan there before he was an employee, Goro is privy to the innermost workings of the organization and therefore well placed to know that its operations stray far beyond a concern for the welfare of waifs and strays. He has seen its darker side. He has grasped the truth. And his conscience is no longer troubled by it. His conscience, indeed, is just another casualty of the war.
He stumbles as he walks, his legs heavy with fatigue, his brain fogged by the horrors of the previous night. He never seriously expected to survive once the fires began to rage, roaring and moving like ravening beasts through the wooden houses and their inhabitants. Burning men and women walking in plumes of flame spring into his mind’s eye. The cracking of dry timber, the unearthly noise, half wail, half roar, that the blaze and the wind united in: he can hear it still. It was a miracle most of the children remaining in the orphanage survived. Somehow he and the night staff managed to shepherd them to safety. They are huddled now, beneath a makeshift roof of bedsheets and bamboo props, down near the site of the Hama Palace, silent and immobilized by shock. When Matsuda arrived, Goro was briefly impressed by his apparent concern. He must have travelled into the city just as many were leaving it to find out what had become of them all.
But he soon realized Matsuda had more on his mind than how many of the children had been saved and how they were to be cared for in the days and weeks ahead. He wanted Goro to give him an account – a precise account – of the extent of the damage to the orphanage building. What was left standing? Which parts of the structure remained? Goro could not say. He had not lingered to assess the damage. He had run for his life. But the Gosuringu was built of stone. The walls would still, he reckoned, be in place. And anything fireproof within. Of which there was very little.
‘We must go there,’ Matsuda declared. ‘We must go there now.’
‘There will be nothing left, Matsuda-san,’ Goro objected. But he knew what, in all likelihood, would be left. He knew what had drawn Matsuda back.
The look on the older man’s face was heavy with calculation. Goro knew him to be cunning and ambitious, his occasional rages compensated for by far-sightedness and meagre hints of paternalism. He was already thinking ahead. His interests, once so wide ranging, had narrowed dramatically with Japan’s retreat from its conquered lands. But still he was plotting a course ahead. And he expected Goro to join him on it. As why would he not? He had got this far on Matsuda’s coat-tails. He might get further yet.
But Goro was tired. His eyes were stinging. The smoke had affected his breathing. His whole body ached. ‘We should wait until all the fires are out,’ he meekly protested. ‘We should wait until it is lighter.’
‘We are not waiting,’ Matsuda growled. ‘Stand up. Ready yourself. It is time to go.’
And so he stood and followed, as he always had.
But now, as they pick their way forward through the debris and the carnage, Goro wonders if obedience to Matsuda is not one of the many things whose time has expired in the Japan of the present. He wonders if he should not shake himself free of this domineering man he sees striding ahead of him in his raincoat and hat and business suit and polished black shoes – so different from the rags and tatters the few other people they see are dressed in. The few other living people, that is. The dead outnumber them by many thousands, their mangled and blackened remains heaped and sprawled and tangled in the wreckage of the city. Matsuda pays them no heed. But Goro, glancing at them, thinks, ‘I am lucky to be alive – and I must make the most of my luck.’
Their destination looms ahead. The stone walls of the Gosuringu Orphanage are largely intact, though the wooden roof and floors have been reduced to ashes, along with everything the building held. The windows are charred and empty eye-sockets, staring out at them, reproachfully, it seems to Goro. The Gosuringu was his home, which he abandoned because he had to. But still, it was his home.
He has been carrying, since Matsuda thrust it into his hands, a collapsible bamboo ladder. He suspects he is there principally because Matsuda may need him to climb up to the first floor of the building. That assumes the concrete-reinforced section of the first floor where Matsuda’s office was located has survived, which will become apparent as they move round to the farther side.
Their progress slows as they do so, on account of the piles of ash and debris they have to manoeuvre round. Smoke is still rising from charred timbers, despite the early arrival on the scene of fire crews – a service Matsuda paid various officials to ensure would be made available but which, in the event, made no difference whatsoever. They would have needed to drain the bay to quench the fire that raged last night.
The extent of their efforts is nevertheless to be seen before them, as water is completely filling the basement, though much of that may have seeped in from the nearby canal, whose bank was breached in the bombing. Not that Matsuda has time to dwell on such matters. He looks up, not down, and sees, as he clearly hoped, that the concrete section of the first floor is still in place, suspended above the void of the burnt-out interior of the building.
He turns to Goro. ‘You must go up there. We need to open the safe.’
The safe, an expensive and very heavy German model, was installed before Goro became Matsuda’s assistant, though he well remembers the mystery surrounding its delivery, preceded as it was by the strengthening of the office floor to bear its weight. He does not ask why they need to open the safe, because he is sure he knows, although why Matsuda vests such importance in what it contains he cannot understand. It is hard to see how even the most closely guarded secrets of the Gosuringu Orphanage will be of any use to them in the hard times that lie ahead. Assuming, as Goro does not, that those contents survived the fire. ‘Everything inside the safe will have been burnt as if in an oven, Matsuda-san.’
‘Nonsense. The safe is fireproof. Stout German technology. Foresight, Goro. That is the essence of success. Erect the ladder and put it in place.’
Goro hesitates for a moment, then sets off. He threads a path through the cinder piles and enters the building through a doorway. From there he works his way carefully round to a position opposite the triangle of reinforced office floor in the storey above him. Matsuda follows him at a cautious distance. They are standing on a slab of the concrete foundation, with the water-filled chasm of the basement below them. Goro slots the three sections of the ladder together and braces it against the wall, then props the top against the edge of the office floor. The angle is shallower than he would like, but he suspects Matsuda isn’t going to accept any excuses. He has to go up there.
‘Take this.’ Matsuda hands him a scrap of paper.
Goro takes the piece of paper and looks at it. It is the combination for the safe. He knows it already, but Matsuda does not know he knows it.
‘The box, Goro. That is what I want. Never mind the rest. Just the box.’
It is as Goro anticipated. Matsuda wants the steel box that is stored in the safe. He wonders again how its contents can be of any value now, but he does not ask. Foresight, he supposes, is the answer. Matsuda has a plan. For the moment, Goro cannot imagine what it might be. But it exists. And its existence is in itself hopeful.
‘Up you go.’
Goro nods and starts a gingerly ascent of the ladder, which slips and jolts on the jagged edges of the concrete as it bears his weight. As he can see, part of the reinforcing slabwork has been knocked off during the fire and is now protruding from the murky water filling the basement, in which he glimpses other objects floating that he has no wish to identify.
‘Hurry,’ Matsuda calls after him. ‘I need to be gone from here.’
Goro bites his tongue and climbs on up. As ever, Matsuda has no care for the young man’s safety. He simply wants him to do what he is too old and fat to do himself. But this is no easy task, no matter that Goro is neither old nor fat.
As he reaches a height where he is at eye level with the office floor, he sees piles of ash, one of which is probably what is left of Matsuda’s handsome teak desk. Embers are still glowing in places. Smoke hangs acridly in the air. In the corner, untouched, it seems, by the fire, stands the safe, exposed to view where previously it was concealed beneath the desk. It is bathed in a preposterously beautiful pale pink shaft of dawn sunlight.
‘Can you see the safe?’ calls Matsuda, who is now at the bottom of the ladder, one foot lodged on the bottom rung.
‘Yes. I see it.’
Goro reaches the top of the ladder and clambers off onto the office floor, fearing, for a second, that it will give way beneath him. But why should it? He is much lighter than the safe. The floor holds.
Avoiding the glowing embers, he steps awkwardly over the ash heaps and reaches the corner. He crouches in front of the safe. Most of its dark green paint has peeled off in the heat, but otherwise it appears undamaged. He touches the door lightly with one finger, wondering if it is still hot. But no. He is actually surprised by how cool it is.
He makes a show of looking at the piece of paper, although Matsuda cannot see him from where he is. Then he begins rotating the dial, first one way, then the other, then the first way again, then …
