Detective Sergeant Janet Cooper picked up a photograph from the Shinto altar and studied it. It was black and white and slightly faded, but it gave a good likeness of the man and woman dressed in traditional Japanese kimonos and proudly holding a newborn baby.
Janet carefully put the picture back and fingered the other mementos on the small makeshift altar. A couple of spent candles in saucers, a battered watch with Japanese characters on the dial, and a string of beads. She looked around the room but found nothing else of interest.
She went back into the sitting-room. It was sparely but expensively furnished. The door was open, and the caretaker of the block stood just inside the door watching them suspiciously. Detective Inspector Tom Brasher turned away from the window and raised an inquisitive eyebrow. Janet shook her head.
"Nothing there," she reported.
Brasher took a colourful folder off the table and handed it to her.
"What d'you think of that?" he asked.
The folder was from a Japanese shipping line. Inside was a number of newspaper clippings. They were all from London papers and the subject was the same in each. Senator Osram Manhelm. Janet skimmed through a couple of articles and learned that the senator was in London with a trade mission. He was due to meet his Japanese counterparts and sign a Nippon/US agreement that evening. But first there was some socializing to do. Janet handed the folder back to Brasher.
"What does that tell us?"
Brasher shrugged. "For one thing this Hisako woman seems to have a special interest in the senator," he said and turned to the caretaker.
"When did Miss Hisako arrive?"
The caretaker was determined to be unhelpful. "It's in the book," he said coldly.
Brasher smiled brightly. "Right. How about you fetch the book and we go down to the station and my sergeant gives it a nice long once-over?"
The smile unsettled the caretaker.
"Three days ago," he mumbled.
"Where from?" Janet encouraged.
The caretaker shrugged. "It's a private booking. Try the estate agents."
Brasher and Janet walked back to their car parked outside the flats. Brasher leaned on the bonnet.
"You go round to the estate agents, see what you can pick up there. I'll take a taxi back to the station and check on immigration," he said as he pushed away from the car and opened the door for Janet in one smooth move.
Janet got in behind the wheel and wound down the window.
"What d'you think this Hisako woman's got to do with those blokes falling to pieces in the hospital?" she queried.
Brasher gave her a bland, humourless smile. "Nothing probably, but she is interesting," he told her.
Brasher stood and watched the car disappear into the traffic. Janet was right of course. Twelve young, fit men cut down in their prime took a lot of swallowing. And just because the Japanese woman had been seen to kiss them shortly before they became walking cesspits didn't necessarily mean that she had anything to do with it. Brasher wasn't keen on coincidences. He couldn't see how the two disparate facts knitted together, but visceral prompting told him the connection was there. He was lucky with a taxi and was back at the station within ten minutes.
A DC called to him as he opened his office door. "Hi, Guv. You're on this rowing club thing, aren't you?" he asked.
Brasher nodded.
"Two more," the DC said cryptically.
"Two more?" Brasher echoed.
"Two more… er… suspicious deaths."
He placed a couple of sheets of paper in front of the inspector. Brasher scanned them and looked up in surprise.
"Why wasn't I told about this before?" he asked, a note of threat in his voice.
"They were just separate incidents. No follow-up for us." The DC shrugged off responsibility adroitly.
"Okay. Get on to the Japanese Embassy. Ask them what they know about a woman called Hisako. Probably just arrived in London. Maybe with the Japanese trade delegation."
The DC nodded and left. Brasher thought for a moment and was about to follow when the phone rang.
"Brasher." He listened, nodded. "Fine. Meet me at St George's Dock. We've got two more… nothing to do with the rowing club as far as I can see."
The large gwooden crate stood isolated by a cordon of Police Keep Out tape. Brasher walked slowly around the box. The front of the crate was slightly open. He pulled the lid wider and examined the interior. There wasn't much to examine. Just a crudely padded plank at sitting height and straps screwed to the wall. Janet was talking to one of the security men. Brasher called her over.
"See if you can get in there," he said.
Janet couldn't come near to wedging her five-foot nine-inch frame into the space provided.
"I'd need to shed two stone and saw my legs off at the knees," she volunteered.
Brasher helped her out of the case.
"What did you get from the guard?" he asked.
"Doesn't know anything," she said as she straightened up. "Jim Bailey has worked here for about twenty years. Retiring at the end of the year." She thought and carefully corrected herself. "Was."
"And the seaman?"
Janet took out her notebook.
"Taki Takamura, twenty-eight years old, from Soma. Taken ill yesterday evening and died this morning," she read.
"Anything else?" he asked in a negative tone.
Janet shook her head. Brasher's mobile rang and he hooked it out of his pocket.
"Brasher." He listened intently without interrupting. "You're sure of this… ? Right, put out a bulletin and let me know if we get a break." Brasher pocketed his telephone.
"We've had feedback from the Japanese Embassy," he said. "Hisako is not a member of the trade delegation and there is no report of anyone with her name or fitting her description entering the country in the last ten days." He thought through his next words carefully before continuing.
"There is, however, a report about a Hisako who went missing from a military hospital in Soma. Her description fits and it could be her — except for one thing. She has a rare lymphatic disease and has been living in an isolation bubble since shortly after she was born. The doctors insist that she would be dead by now. And you know what caused the disease?"
Brasher sucked in his breath and answered his own question. "Fallout from the atomic bomb the Yanks dropped on Nagasaki."
Janet frowned and walked to the edge of the jetty and stared out over the gently heaving water.
"She can't be that old," she said slowly.
Brasher nodded agreement. "She's not. It was her parents who were affected. They showed no ill-effects but passed on the disorder to their daughter."
He thought for a minute. "Any ideas?" he asked.
Janet turned to face him. "Those clippings in the folder. There was one that gave some background on Senator Manhelm. He was a part of the team that dropped the bomb."
The party at the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square was in full swing when Brasher and Janet arrived. The embassy staff had flatly refused to give them security status and insisted that they were there only as guests.
The invitation had said 8:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. It was 9:45 p.m. and Brasher was beginning to think they had overreacted, seen too many Arnie Schwarzenegger films. When you thought it through rationally, in a detached manner, the whole theory was ridiculous. How could a young woman with a deadly disease come all the way to London, leave a trail of hideous death behind her and still move around with every appearance of good health?
He was about to suggest to Janet that they picked up their coats and left when there was a ripple of comment that cut across the hubbub of sound. Brasher glanced around. Everyone was looking towards the main entrance.
Nothing had prepared Brasher for the sheer beauty of the exquisite woman who stood in the doorway. She was small but beautifully proportioned. Her midnight-black hair was piled high on her head and secured with brightly lacquered combs. The light blue silk kimono she was wearing covered her from throat to toe but the thin material did nothing to disguise the body beneath.
"That's got to be her," Janet stated unnecessarily.
The senator was the first to snap out of it. He put on a wide Texas grin and bore down on the diminutive woman like an avalanche in early spring.
Janet tapped Brasher on the arm and claimed his attention. "What now?" she asked simply but to the point.
Brasher physically shook himself and refocused on the job in hand. "Just keep an eye on her."
The senator was busy introducing Hisako to the other guests. He was obviously smitten and he was oblivious to the venomous looks his wife shot at him as he pranced around in a flawed attempt to shed fifty years. Half an hour later the guests were beginning to drift away. Brasher beckoned to Janet and stationed himself by the door. Janet joined him.
"When she leaves, identify yourself and ask her to come down to the station. If you get any trouble, arrest her," he instructed.
Janet winced. "What are the charges?"
"Being a danger to the health of ageing senators for a start. We'll think of something. Just don't lose her," Brasher told her.
He looked around. There was no sign of either the senator or Hisako.
"Damn. Where'd they go? Watch the door," Brasher ordered.
He placed the empty glass he had been nursing on the windowsill and walked purposefully towards the spot where he had last seen the senator and his lovely guest.
The door to the terrace was open and he eased into a position where he could see outside. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he could just make out two figures standing by the balustrade. He didn't know what to do. He felt like a Peeping Tom. Hisako moved closer to the senator and took off the long gloves she was wearing. There was something menacing about the way she unveiled her hands and it was not lost on Brasher. He still had no clear idea what he was going to do. He coughed and stepped out on to the terrace. The senator saw him and swayed back, putting a little distance between himself and temptation. But he wasn't pleased.
"Yes?" he barked.
Before Brasher could think of something to say, Hisako reached up and took the senator's face in her hands and gave the old man a passionate kiss on the lips. Hisako stepped back and gave a deep bow. A faint, amused smile lurked around her lips, taunting the policeman to do something. With a movement that Gypsy Rose Lee would have envied, Hisako ripped off her silk kimono and dropped it to the floor. Underneath she was wearing a tight-fitting catsuit which revealed every curve and dimple of her perfect body. The senator was beginning to recover his equilibrium.
"What's going on here?" he asked loudly, but nobody bothered to answer. Still with her eyes fixed mesmerically on Brasher's face, Hisako tossed aside the highly lacquered hairpiece she was wearing. Beneath it her skull was hairless. But even this didn't diminish her ravishing beauty. Brasher managed to pump some air through his vocal cords.
"Detective Inspector Brasher. I wonder if you would mind accompanying me to the station. I would like to ask…" He trailed to a halt, feeling inept.
Hisako walked slowly towards him.
"I don't think so, Inspector. I have other plans," she said softly.
Before Brasher had a chance to move, her hand shot out and crashed into his throat. Brasher staggered back, knocking over a stand with a huge pot plant. The sound of the crash brought two of the guards running, pistols in hand. Hisako was already on the move. As the first guard came through the door he was met with a flying mata-geri which crashed him into the wall. The second guard decided it was one of those times when you shoot first and ask questions later.
Hisako did a back flip and her arched foot thudded into his neck. His gun went off but missed Hisako. Other guards came running. They were no match for their daintily lethal opponent.
Janet arrived on the scene in time to see one of the 18-stone bodyguards tossed over the balustrade. If the trained American guards with their guns weren't getting anywhere she was hardly likely to make a difference with her telescopic night-stick.
Janet hastily hid behind the thick wooden door leading to the entrance hall. She saw Hisako break away and run towards where she was hiding. The policewoman threw her weight at the heavy door. There was a satisfying crash as Hisako, taken completely off guard, ran into the swinging portal. The force propelled her across the room.
Janet didn't hang about. The dazed Japanese woman was already recovering, almost on her feet. Janet snatched up a bronze statuette of John Wayne and dived forward. The heavy ornament smashed into the side of Hisako's head with the full weight of the policewoman and the impetus of her dive behind it. The thud as it crunched into Hisako's bald head echoed around the room.
Exhausted by the effort, Janet slumped to the floor and stared at the hideous wound she had opened in Hisako's naked skull.
She let the guards take care of the unconscious woman and eventually went looking for Brasher. She found him crouched over the senator. He looked up.
"Get an ambulance," he told her. "The senator's been shot."
Hisako was proving to be a medical miracle. The wound in her head was healing at a phenomenal rate. It was only four hours since Janet had laid her out, but already the gash had closed and left only a jagged red scar to mark its passing.
The senator hadn't fared so well. He had begun to develop the symptoms that were becoming so well known to Brasher and Janet.
The doctors had no answers to their questions. The best they could come up with was that Hisako's body was basically different; it had become more efficient and, they reluctantly added, improved. The interesting thing about her immune system seemed to be that it was externalized through her lymph glands. This explained the deaths of those unfortunate enough to come into physical contact with her.
Shortly before midnight the senator died an agonizing death, virtually rotting alive. The doctors were having a field day. Already they were calling the disease, which totally destroyed the victim's immune system, the Hisako Syndrome, and vying for the honour of giving it a Latin label. Hisako was locked up in an isolation cell until a secure and germ-free environment could be made available to her at the hospital.
Janet finished reading through her report on the incidents of the day. She felt a certain sympathy towards the captured woman. It must have been terrible for her. All her life she had been kept in an airtight bubble. Treated like a guinea pig. Somehow she had been touched by another human being. Only to see him or her die, rot and shrivel before her eyes. Janet could imagine the rage that welled inside her.
Her records showed that she was way above average intelligence. She spoke several languages and had a score of PhDs. Her intelligence and isolation had fed her mind, but she had no idea about the simple things of life. And it was all down to the bomb the Americans had dropped on her home town.
Somehow Senator Manhelm had become responsible for all her problems and she had set out to destroy him. The rowing club and the others had just been unfortunate to get in her way.
Janet locked the report in her drawer and was preparing to leave when the telephone rang. Hisako had become ill and was asking to see her. Janet hesitated. Although sympathetic, she didn't want to get too close to the captured woman. Then she shrugged. What harm could it do?
When Janet entered the cell she gagged on the smell of putrefaction which even penetrated the surgical mask she was wearing. Hisako was strapped in a strait-jacket, lying on her side facing the wall. Her bald head was already mottled and had developed nauseating, pus-dribbling boils. Hisako rolled over so that she was facing Janet. The policewoman was shocked at the change to the delicate features of the beautiful woman. Hisako's face had blown up into a scarlet pumpkin. Her eyes, which had been so fine and clear a few hours earlier, were now milky cataracts that flickered feverishly. Her perfect mouth a deformed crater of festering ulcers. Slowly Hisako pushed herself to her feet. Effortlessly, she flexed her muscles and the strait-jacket ripped and fell in a heap on the floor.
Janet wanted to call out, alert the guard to what was happening, but she couldn't move.
Hisako limped painfully towards the mesmerized policewoman and reached out her nightmarish hands.
Janet felt her mind slipping away as the ghoulish entity ripped aside her shirt and jacket and gently touched ulcerated lips to her bare breast. As consciousness fled, Janet felt Hisako's feverish breath suck the vitality from her body.
When Janet regained consciousness, Hisako was sitting on the floor by the side of the door. She was still naked, but her skin was as clear and unblemished as it had been defiled and corrupt a few minutes earlier.
Janet knew with a terrible certainty what that meant. She calmed the panic the thought provoked in her mind and looked at Hisako. She was no longer afraid of the woman.
The beautiful killer grabbed the front of Janet's tattered shirt and hauled her to her feet so that she was standing facing the entrance. With the flat of her hand she pounded on the cell door. There was a flutter at the spy-hole, a rattle of the key in the lock and before Janet could shout a warning the door began to open.
Hisako gave Janet a sweet smile as she wrenched open the door. The policeman on guard didn't stand a chance. Hisako's dagger-like hand pierced the wall of his stomach and drove up into his heart. Janet lunged forward but the deranged woman brushed her, almost gently, aside. It was as if she didn't want to harm her. Just leave her to die the horrendous death that was her ultimate legacy.
Brasher was on his way to check out the condition of the prisoner for himself. He heard the scream as Hisako ripped open the PC's body. He was just in time to see Hisako smash through the door that led into the reception area of the station. He ran after her, but by the time he reached the outer office she had overpowered the officers who attempted to restrain her and left by the front door.
A couple of police constables walking towards the building stopped in surprise as the naked woman burst out of the front door. Brasher shouted to them to stop her. There was a ten-foot wall along the side of the road. Without decreasing her speed, Hisako leaped on to a parked car and without apparent effort cleared the obstacle.
Brasher ran to his car. As he began to pull away from the kerb, Janet leaped into the road and stopped him. She jumped into the front passenger seat.
"What happened?" he asked as he accelerated away in the direction taken by Hisako. "You all right?"
Janet ignored the question and pointed off to the right. "There she is."
Hisako had made it to the Embankment and was running along the parapet at a fantastic speed. Brasher tried to cut across the traffic to the opposite side of the road, but the after-theatre rush hour was heavy and he lost valuable seconds before he managed it. By this time Hisako had disappeared.
"Where the hell has she got to?" Brasher demanded.
Janet opened the car door. "She's making for Lambeth Bridge. It'll be quicker on foot."
Brasher nodded agreement and pulled out his radio.
"Control — Brasher here. Get someone to block off the south side of Lambeth Bridge. I'm in pursuit on foot with DS Cooper, north of the Embankment. We need back-up. Fast!"
Brasher stowed his radio away and set off at a jog behind Janet. As they turned on to the bridge they saw a police car pull across the road at the far end. Janet slowed to a walk and Brasher caught her up.
"Can you see her?" he panted as he bent over and sucked air into his heaving lungs.
Janet shook her head. "She must be on the bridge. She didn't have time to get completely across."
A police car pulled up beside them and the driver leaned out of the window.
"What you want me to do, Guv?" he asked.
Janet answered. "One of you stay here and divert the traffic. The other clear the bridge. Now!" she ordered.
The driver swung the car sideways, effectively blocking off that end of the bridge. Brasher and Janet took opposite sides of the road and walked slowly towards the patrol cars at the far end. Brasher was the first to spot the hunted woman. She was learning elegantly against one of the suspension struts of the antique viaduct, the suspicion of a smile on her lips.
"Okay, Miss," Brasher said reassuringly. "Just come down off there and let's talk. I'm sure we can sort something out."
Hisako swung around one of the stanchions and landed on the side wall with a peal of laughter, as if it were all a game.
"Of course we can, Inspector. You'll find me a nice warm isolation cell where I can become a clinical curiosity for every half-baked doctor with a theory and a fascination with Jekyll and Hyde. Thanks but no thanks, Inspector."
Hisako hunched down on her knees so that her head was almost at the same level as Brasher's. Her eyes appeared to have become enormous. The inspector had an overwhelming desire to let himself float down into their dark depths.
"Come on, Inspector. Come to me," Hisako whispered.
Brasher's reason told him to keep a safe distance between them, but his will was not strong enough. He took a faltering step towards the woman.
"That's right, don't fight it, you know you want me. Quick, give me your hand." Her voice was a soft erotic caress. Brasher was a spectator as his hand reached out to the beautiful temptress crouched naked on the parapet. Their fingers were almost touching. Brasher made one last supreme effort to control his action, but Hisako's will was too strong.
He heard Janet's voice call out to him to stop, but it meant nothing. He had to be with Hisako.
Suddenly there was a pounding of feet and he was thrown violently aside.
Hisako saw Janet coming and tried to move into a more secure position on the narrow parapet. The policewoman had nothing left to lose. She knew with a terrible certainty that within hours she would fall victim to all the ills that Hisako was able to release and that knowledge drove her on.
She hurled herself at the ogress on the parapet, wrapped her arms around the other woman's legs.
Hisako tried to brace herself, but the force of the impact of Janet's hurtling body was too much for even her superior strength to withstand. For a moment they teetered on the edge of the bridge and then, almost in slow motion, they toppled backwards.
Brasher snapped out of the trance he was in and ran to the bridge, too late to save either woman.
He could only stand and watch as they plunged down into the dark, swirling waters of the Thames below.
The police searched the river and its banks for days, but they never recovered the bodies of either Janet Cooper or the mysterious Hisako San.