The Cannonball Tree Mystery, page 1
part #5 of Crown Colony Series
Ovidia Yu is one of Singapore’s best-known and most acclaimed writers. She has had over thirty plays produced and is the author of a number of comic mysteries published in Singapore, India, Japan and America.
She received a Fulbright Scholarship to the University of Iowa’s International Writers Program and has been a writing fellow at the National University of Singapore. The Paper Bark Tree Mystery was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger award 2020.
Also by Ovidia Yu
The Frangipani Tree Mystery
The Betel Nut Tree Mystery
The Paper Bark Tree Mystery
The Mimosa Tree Mystery
Copyright
Published by Constable
ISBN: 978-1-47213-204-8
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © Ovidia Yu, 2021
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Constable
Little, Brown Book Group
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London EC4Y 0DZ
www.littlebrown.co.uk
www.hachette.co.uk
Contents
About the Author
Also by Ovidia Yu
Copyright
Dedication
The Flyers
Eve of 1944, Syonan
The Servants’ Domain
Mimi Hoshi
First Sunrise
Official Photograph Day
The Hairpin
The Syonan Weekly
Colonel Fujiwara
Chinese New Year
Memories and Revelations
Negatives and Developments
Dead Mimi
Talking on Tape
Don’t Sit Under the Cannonball Tree
Ryu Takahashi
Tracking Ryu
New Normal
Mimi’s Room
Evening
Flyers
Dead Ryu
Rethinking
The Secret Bunker
Problems at the Top
Message to Prakesh
Making Onigiri
Rotten Winter Melon
Ribbons for Noriko
Waiting Games
Bum Evidence
Dead Joben
Whistling Ghosts
Careless Flyers
Investigators Investigated
Magnifying Things
Out of the Closet
Ima’s Way
Colonel Fujiwara’s Wives
A Final Explosion
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Dedicated with respect and gratitude to
the memory of real-life war hero,
Halford Lovell Boudewyn
The Flyers
During the Japanese occupation, radios were banned in Syonan – as our Japanese lords and masters referred to Singapore – and our only news came through their official channels.
Until the flyers started appearing.
The first I saw read,
US President Roosevelt & Brit PM Churchill & Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo talk combined forces against the Japs. The Allies are Coming. Hold on to Hope, brothers and sisters.
It was a poorly typed carbon copy and I didn’t take it seriously till a rash of official Japanese announcements claimed the Cairo Conference (a) didn’t take place, (b) was a complete failure, while (c) offering cash and extra rations as a reward to anyone who turned in the traitors producing the flyers.
In other words, what the flyers said was true or they wouldn’t have bothered to deny it.
After that, I watched out for them.
British, Canadian and American troops take back Italy! Hitler’s pal Mussolini is out. The tide is turning. Hold on, brothers and sisters.
I couldn’t help feeling encouraged, though even if the tide was turning in the West, Japanese boots still crushed the back of the East.
Then the flyers showed hope moving closer to home:
USA Marines crush Jap stronghold in the Gilbert islands. Japs Pacific blockade cracked! Don’t give up. Won’t be long now, brothers and sisters.
The official Japanese news announcements were silent on these events. But they no longer celebrated the glorious victories of their brothers in the West, and the authorities increased the bounty offered for information on the criminals who distributed printed lies.
So, of course, we went on believing them.
But, day to day, it was hard to believe that anything would ever change. The Japanese were using Singapore much as the British had. Our island’s natural deep-water port and strategic location made it the ideal hub from which to channel arms and supplies across the seas to Japanese-occupied territories all over the region.
But to hold their advantage, the Japanese forces had to consolidate their sea-to-land transition. India’s location at the tip of the Indian Ocean made it their ideal entry point to the South Asia mainland.
It was becoming clear why the Japanese had funded the formation of the Indian National Army (or Free Indian Army) with Indian PoWs captured in Malaya and Singapore. Indians would be sent to fight their brothers, leaving the Japanese to move in after the worst of the carnage. They already occupied India’s neighbour Burma, and would likely launch their attack from there. Even knowing that, the extensive border, along with the coast of the Bay of Bengal, made it impossible to prepare an adequate defence without more information.
And if British India fell to the Japanese, regardless of what Allied victories were won in the West, here in the East we would have Japanese bayonets at our necks for ever.
Eve of 1944, Syonan
‘You people can’t even find out who’s leaving those damn flyers all over the place – and you want to investigate the army and the INA?’
‘The flyers are irritating, like mosquitoes. This is serious. You, girl,’ this was to me, ‘come back. Eat this. Don’t just put it into your mouth. Swallow it!’
Major Dewa watched me swallow a spoonful of the soup I had just brought him. For one crazy moment I thought of clutching my throat and making gagging sounds, just to see how the new chief of the Syonan Police Investigation Bureau would react. Of course I didn’t. That would have got me killed faster than any poison – and probably a lot more painfully.
‘Well, girl?’ Colonel Fujiwara was already halfway through his own soup.
‘The soup is delicious. I hope you’ll like it, sir,’ I said.
‘Ha! If he doesn’t want it, give me his bowl!’
Major Dewa glared at me as though waiting for the poison to take effect. Maybe he sensed how much I would have liked to poison him.
It was 5 p.m. on 31 December 1943, eve of 1944, in Syonan. Singapore Island, once the British Empire’s ‘Gibraltar of the East’, was now a supply port to the Japanese Empire.
We were in the Shori headquarters, the office and official residence of Colonel Fujiwara. His ceremonial photograph hung next to that of the Japanese Emperor in all schools, factories and offices. In person, his face was red and sweaty, and his belly was bigger than his chest. Colonel Fujiwara was fonder of food than of work. If it hadn’t been treasonous, I’d have said he would have been much better off – and happier – running a restaurant than an island.
However, Colonel Fujiwara was Syonan’s highest-ranking Japanese military administrator, and Major Dewa probably wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand what a crippled local girl was doing there.
‘The girl makes good soup,’ Colonel Fujiwara said.
‘You should have a cook and staff who have been vetted by the proper authorities. You know nothing of this girl—’
‘Miss Chen is the daughter of my late cousin,’ Hideki Tagawa said. ‘If you have any objection to her, you may address it to me.’
He had been so quiet in his corner of the room that the others had forgotten he was there. Hideki Tagawa was a small, dark man, who had a way of hunching and dipping his head as though he was trying not to be noticed. He had no official post in Colonel Fujiwara’s government, but those in the know feared him. Hideki Tagawa represented and reported directly to Prince Yasuhito Chichibu, Emperor Hirohito’s only brother. It was whispered that Hideki Tagawa had helped Prince Chichibu establish the military dictatorship in Japan. Also that he had instigated the assassination of the prime minister, Tsuyoshi Inukai, and steered Japan into the alliance with Nazi Germany, even though he had attended university in Great Britain. Now Hideki Tagawa was part of the Kin No Yuri or ‘Golden Lily’ organisation that collected ‘donations’ from Japan’s colonies to finance the Japanese war effort.
‘I’m surprised to see you here too, Tagawa,’ Major Dewa said. ‘It is only one of the many things that surprises me.’
Did the clumsily officious Major Dewa know he was casting suspicion on one of the best-connected (and probably most dangerous) men in the Japanese military empire?
Colonel Fujiwara and Joben and Ima Kobata stared at Hideki Tagawa. They reminded me of children half afraid a dog might bite and half hoping it would. Major Dewa’s aide move
Hideki Tagawa bowed slightly and Major Dewa looked triumphant.
We could hear the trucks of soldiers waiting outside. They were en route to their festive dinner, but it looked and sounded like a coup – maybe intentionally.
Perhaps it wasn’t surprising that the Syonan Police Investigation Bureau was investigating the Shori headquarters. In the past year, some bizarre things had happened there. A senior officer had committed suicide, the editor of the Syonan Weekly had vanished and the entire household staff had been fired.
Colonel Fujiwara was not cooperative. The assassination attempt against him by one of his own officers had left him paranoid and suspicious. Now he trusted only me and Hideki Tagawa because we’d foiled the would-be killer. The colonel had even rejected the trained staff provided by the military. He had brought family from Japan to manage his household for him.
Joben Kobata, bored and half asleep in a chair next to Colonel Fujiwara, was broad-faced and chubby. He looked enough like the colonel to be his son, but was married to his daughter, Ima. The two men got along well, chiefly because they shared a love of comfort and a dislike of work. Ima was from the colonel’s first marriage. His second wife had left no children, and the third was in Japan with his younger son and daughter.
Ima Kobata’s complexion was fair and she had thick brown hair. She wore a lot of powder and had drawn-in eyebrows, giving the impression she was dressed up for a special occasion. She always looked like that. The powder was because she had spots. She had her father’s chubby face and chunky build and wasn’t much taller than me, though almost three times as broad.
‘In fact this girl makes better soup than you will get anywhere else on this island!’ Colonel Fujiwara said loudly. ‘You’re mad if you think Ebisu-chan wants to poison me. She saved my life – not one of your over-trained soldiers!’
Colonel Fujiwara called me ‘Ebisu’ because childhood polio had left me with a limp, like the god of good fortune. He trusted me because – well, because I’d saved his life. I hadn’t intended to, but it’s difficult to think straight under pressure.
I was twenty-four years old and didn’t know if I would live to see twenty-five. Or even next week. I had just discovered that my long-dead mother had not only been Japanese but a cousin of Hideki Tagawa. In fact, my presence in the Shori headquarters was a favour to Hideki Tagawa, who also had rooms there.
I was assistant editor of the English-language Syonan Weekly, and helped with the management of the household since Ima spoke little English and no local dialects.
‘Her soup is irrelevant. She should not be here.’
Well, Major Dewa shouldn’t still have been there either.
Even I knew that when Colonel Fujiwara said, ‘I’m going to take a break to have some soup. Will you join me?’ It was a dismissal, and the correct thing to say was ‘Thank you, but I was just leaving,’ and bow your way out.
After all, others were waiting for their audience with Colonel Fujiwara. The New Year’s Eve meetings were a formality for the island’s top brass to congratulate Colonel Fujiwara on a successful year and exchange good wishes for 1944.
The hall and grounds were filled with officials and administrators waiting their turn to bow and present the small gifts that would formally wipe out all errors of 1943. Ceremonially, at least, the new year would start with a clean slate.
But still Major Dewa stayed. He seemed determined not to leave until Colonel Fujiwara had signed the authorisation forms he’d brought. ‘I tried to make appointments to meet you. Many, many times I tried. But your people always say you’re too busy. I don’t want this swept under the carpet because the year is over.’
Major Dewa had announced his intention of eradicating all corrupt officials from the Syonan administration. This meant that while all officials applauded him, none helped him. It was impossible to get on without back-door help and black-market goods.
‘You’re chief of local investigations. Go and investigate whatever you want!’
‘The local administrators won’t cooperate. But once you sign these forms, the police can force them to do so.’
‘Leave the papers. I’ll look at them tomorrow.’
‘Sir, tomorrow you have the official photograph ceremony. I don’t want to inconvenience you.’
‘You are already inconveniencing me. I’ll deal with them in the New Year. Give them to Kobata.’
Colonel Dewa looked at Joben Kobata. ‘Sir, if you authorise these investigations now, we can start immediately. No more waste of time.’
‘The worst part of this war is all the nobodies that crawl out of the mud and think themselves important just because somebody gave them a uniform,’ Joben Kobata said. He held out a hand for the papers, not bothering to stand up. ‘Come on, bring them over here.’
Major Dewa held on to his forms. ‘I just want to get all this paperwork cleared up before the new year.’
‘This is no time for work,’ Colonel Fujiwara said. ‘It’s New Year’s Eve, man!’
‘Once you’ve signed, you can leave the work to me.’
‘Father, a lot of people are still waiting to see you,’ Ima said.
Major Dewa should have been in and out of the office in less than fifteen minutes but still he hung on. ‘We cannot close the year’s records without resolving the matter of the missing funds and the pineapple grenades.’
The two captured American grenades had supposedly been sent to the Shori headquarters for inspection – and vanished. ‘If you’re looking for missing things, see if you can find our missing photographer while you’re at it,’ Joben said. ‘Ryu Takahashi. Dark-skinned, dirty, lazy, drinks too much and doesn’t wash very often …’
Colonel Fujiwara laughed but Major Dewa ploughed on, ‘We say “missing” or “lost”, rather than stolen, because there may have been an administrative error. They were definitely brought here after being captured from American soldiers in the Philippines. They were signed for by your office. Two yellow pineapple grenades.’
‘Are you accusing me of stealing them?’ Colonel Fujiwara said. His voice was suddenly very calm, a frightening contrast to his earlier manner.
‘Of course not, sir.’ Major Dewa looked taken aback. ‘But they are to be sent to Japan. The technicians are waiting to work on them. I must trace them—’
‘Even if they were brought here, they are not here now. Unless you’re saying I ate your pineapple grenades as a snack.’ Colonel Fujiwara laughed at his joke.
Major Dewa did not. ‘Sir, you are not the only one with access to your office.’ His eyes went around the room.
‘They’re probably in the snake shrine,’ Joben Kobata said.
The snake shrine had stood under the cannonball tree at the back of the building since before the British colonials had arrived. It housed either a snake spirit or the spirit of someone killed by a snake. Or it might have been a shrine to the tree itself. The cannonball flowers look like the hooded nāga, the snake, and the tree is sacred to several religions.
Anyway, people sometimes left protection offerings there. I did, too. I wasn’t particularly superstitious, but when there’s a war on it doesn’t hurt to cover all your bases. And if monkeys or squirrels ate the spoonful of rice or slice of fruit I left, that suited me fine.
‘The snake shrine?’ Major Dewa looked suspicious,
‘The servants leave offerings there. Whenever something goes missing here, they say the snake spirit must have taken it. Do you want to check it for your pineapples? It’s beyond the kitchen garden, behind the bamboo and banana trees.’
‘Do things often go missing here?’
‘It’s the servants,’ Ima said. ‘They’ll say anything. They’re the ones stealing things and lying about it. Please, Father, a lot more people are waiting to see you. Some of them have other stops to make.’
‘Just sign these.’ Major Dewa went up to Colonel Fujiwara’s desk but suddenly stopped and sniffed. ‘What’s that smell?’
It was the strong, strange fragrance of cannonball flowers arranged on the table behind the colonel. Since I’d told Ima their scent kept snakes and mosquitoes away, she’d insisted on always having some in the house.
‘Haru! Get rid of those ugly flowers. They smell poisonous!’
