The men looked me up and down. Prisoner 156, a balding former dockworker, mocked me. ‘I thought the special investigator was from the Special Higher Police. But a brand-new student-soldier? Well, sir, we haven’t done a thing.’
I’d heard about him. Prisoner 156 had stowed away ten years ago to Shimonoseki, and three years ago he’d received a seven-year sentence for leading a dockworker riot in Tokyo. The Japanese workers were the ones who’d plotted and instigated it, but 156 had been made a scapegoat. I studied each man carefully. One of them spat on the ground and another feigned disinterest, picking dirt from under his nails. I could tell they were hiding something. Then again, everyone in this prison was hiding something.
‘I didn’t say you did,’ I snapped. ‘But you might in the future. Your talents lie in fighting, ostracizing, violating the rules and getting sent to solitary, no?’
‘A student-soldier? Then you can’t even be twenty,’ Prisoner 945 mocked. ‘A snot-nosed kid investigating a murder?’
Prisoner 397 turned to him. ‘The warden knows that if this incident gets out, he’s done for. That’s why he’s not calling the Special Higher Police. He’s trying to hush it up.’
They were all playing with me. My cheeks burned. I wanted to pull my club out and hit them.
‘It’s too bad that the guard died, but it has nothing to do with us. Just leave us alone,’ said Prisoner 945 soothingly.
‘I’m not going to bother you. But I’m going to uncover who did it.’ I met each person’s eyes as though I were stamping a seal.
Prisoner 156 frowned. ‘Don’t even think about blaming us. You don’t have any proof. I don’t know anything about how that arsehole died, but I know one thing. He got what was coming to him. So watch out, if you don’t want that to happen to you.’
I swallowed. ‘Is that a threat?’
‘I guess so, if it scares you.’
‘Don’t you talk back to me. I can send you to solitary.’ My flinty words didn’t have any effect.
‘Go ahead, put me in solitary. I can spend a week there — easy. Wanna beat me up? Be my guest. Any wound will heal in a week.’ 156 pounded his chest with his fist and shoved his head towards me, taunting me to club him.
I glared at him, my hand trembling on the club. I knew I would lose, the moment I pulled it out. I wasn’t Sugiyama. The club wasn’t the solution.
Prisoner 543 glanced at the watchtower. ‘It’s stupid to kill a guard,’ he commented slyly. ‘Who could have done such a ridiculous thing?’
Not caring that I was right there, Prisoner 156 snapped impatiently, ‘Why is it stupid to kill an evil guard? Comrade, you know he deserved it!’
They all turned to look at a man standing far away, whose wide chest bore clear numbers: 331. He continued walking around the yard, oblivious to the men. Then he turned and came closer.
‘Comrade Choi!’ 156 called loudly. ‘You tell us. Who do you think killed that son-of-a-bitch?’
‘It doesn’t matter who killed him,’ Choi answered as he rubbed the tip of his reddened nose. ‘What’s important is who survives.’
He was clearly addressing me. He looked up at the sky, then at the watchtower with its two guards, a loaded machine gun and a 2,000-watt searchlight that illuminated the prison at night, tracing automatic arcs.
The waning sun faded. The men’s voices became heated, ignoring my presence, as they argued with one another. A long bugle sounded, signalling the end of outdoor break.
‘Disperse!’ I shouted.
The men slowly parted ways, shuffling their feet. Their toes were poking out of their worn shoes; their yellowed toenails were split and their heels were chapped and cracked. The guards quickly finished the head count. Grousing in Korean, the prisoners went back into the work areas like a herd of sheep. Choi and his men walked along together. I noticed that the fabric on their knees was baggy and threadbare. They must have habitually knelt before someone. Who had brought them all to their knees?
Back in the guardroom I searched through files, looking for the log listing the names of inmates sentenced to solitary and the length of their stay. The solitary wing was a makeshift cement building in the knoll between the prison wards and the cemetery. It consisted of small rectangular cells, one metre wide by two metres long, closed off by thick steel doors. A prisoner lying on the floor would touch each wall with each shoulder. It was as stuffy as a furnace in the summer and froze like a block of ice in the winter. Being sent to solitary during a heatwave or a cold snap was, for all intents and purposes, a death-sentence. All you got to eat was half a rice ball and half a bowl of miso soup, once a day. Countless men left wrapped up in straw mats, and even if one managed to walk out on his own two feet, his life often hung by a thread.
Maeda looked over my shoulder. ‘The murderer’s name isn’t written in the log, you foolish boy! It doesn’t matter who it is. Just hang those Koreans upside down and beat them, and they’ll talk. There’s no harm in giving them a little tap on the hand.’ His eyes creased in a smile.
Was he actually urging me to force someone to give a false confession? But then that prisoner wouldn’t be the murderer, he would merely be a pitiful liar. I flipped through the solitary log. Even if I did end up interrogating someone, I still had to be prepared.
‘There’s nothing useful there,’ Maeda said. ‘It’s filled with Koreans. They’re all troublemakers: 397, 156, 331, 543, 954, 645.’ He smirked. ‘I know all of them, each and every one. Kang Myeong-u, Lee Man-o, Choi Chi-su, Choi Cheol-gu, Kim Gwing-pil, Hiranuma Tochu! Those dirty pig-names are fouling my mouth.’
I paid no attention to him as I started to scan the records from six months ago.
Maeda spat on the floor. ‘They love it in there. Those dumb monkeys don’t even keel over.’
I pointed at the numbers. ‘But last August all the solitary cells were empty for two whole weeks, as if they planned it!’
Maeda was indifferent. ‘Obviously. It was during the worst heatwave.’
‘Why do such aggressive men become so docile during a heatwave?’
‘Because they know being in solitary during a heatwave is the express train to the graveyard. They were probably more careful.’
‘If they’re able to avoid solitary because of a heatwave, why wouldn’t they behave all the time? Isn’t that odd?’
‘What’s so odd about that?’
‘They kept going to solitary at other times, as if they wanted to.’
‘You wouldn’t think that, if you saw those cells. The fittest person couldn’t survive a week. It’s next to the cemetery. Even the guards are spooked. It’s actually a problem. They keep making up fake reports and skipping their rounds. Anyway, why would those imbeciles choose to go? It’s not like they’ve hidden a pot of honey there!’
‘They might be hiding something, though. I’ll have to take a look.’
The solitary wing was a shabby building of eight cells and a small guard post. The wind raced around the ridge of the hill, causing the dark fir trees to howl like wolves. Maeda jerked open the door to the guard post. An old guard wearing thick, padded clothes was hunched by the extinguished furnace, his face blue from the cold, awaiting the end of his shift.
‘Rounds of the solitary cells! Open the doors!’ Maeda shouted.
The old guard scampered off, his bundle of keys clanging. The steel doors of the solitary wing were secured by a thick metal bar and by two large locks. With clumsy hands, the old guard unfastened the locks and removed the bars. Four cells lined either side of the hallway. When the old guard opened the door to a cell, a terrible stench assaulted my nose.