The Japanese Corpse by Janwillem van de Wetering Page B

right hand raised itself a little, and the ambassador made a slight bow in response.
    "About the two suspects we are holding in jail at present," the chief constable said quietly. "I believe the prosecutor has something to say about them."
    "Yes," the prosecutor said. He looked immaculate, in spite of the heat, and his chin was set fiercely. "I am not impressed by the police reports. It seems we are holding the two gentlemen on a very flimsy pretext. A hostess employed in a local Japanese restaurant has accused them of murdering Kikuji Nagai, her boyfriend and allegedly a member of a Japanese gangster organization which employs, or employed—we are not sure if the skull fragment found in Mr. Nagai's car does indeed belong to Mr. Nagai—him as a salesman, and perhaps also a buyer, of valuable religious art. O.K. That's one statement by one person. We can't hold suspects on such an allegation; we can't even brand a man as a suspect because another person accuses him of this and that. We have further evidence that the two gentlemen had a meal with Mr. Nagai on the day that Mr. Nagai disappeared. The manager of the restaurant and his wife both say so, and Miss Andrews says so too. But sharing a meal is not a criminal act. The State Police has brought in three witnesses. One person saw an Eastern man—Chinese or Japanese, he doesn't know what race or nationality— buy a spade in a store in Abcoude, a town near the speedway between Amsterdam and Utrecht. We introduced the two suspects to this witness, one by one, and he stated that the first suspect had bought the spade. When the second suspect was brought into the room the witness seemed confused and said that the buyer of the spade could also have been the second suspect. We had the same experience with the other two witnesses who had seen a Japanese or Chinese man washing a new white BMW near a pond, again close to the speedway between Amsterdam and Utrecht. It seems that Japanese look alike to our citizens." He looked at the Japanese ambassador as if to apologize, but the ambassador was bowing and smiling.
    "Yes, indeed," the ambassador said, and giggled. "You will find that the reverse is also true. Foreigners are called 'gaijin' in our country and they look alike to us. It is strange, for some foreigners are tall and have red hair; others are small and have black or brown or blond hair. But they still look the same in our eyes. I began to see differences after a short while, but then—I am often in the presence of foreigners and have been ever since I started my career."
    "Right," the prosecutor said, "but this means that the witnesses are useless. Officially we have little to go on and I would be happy in a way if the suspects could be released forthwith. On the other hand, I have my doubts too. I met Mr. Takemoto and Mr. Nakamura, and they do not look like salesmen of chemicals to me. They might very well be gangsters and professional killers, not innocent tourists. They are, to my mind, too calm about their predicament. The Japanese consul in Amsterdam was good enough to act as an interpreter and I fired a lot of questions at them. So did the judge whom I was accompanying at the time. None of the questions seemed to touch them. They just smiled and sat back and smoked and drank tea."
    "Japanese people are reputed to react differently to a difficult situation," the chief constable said softly.
    "What did my consul say after the questioning was over?" Everybody turned to the Japanese ambassador who had lost his smile and was looking intently at the prosecutor.
    "He said they could be very dangerous men."
    "Yes," the ambassador said. "He said something like that to me on the phone. My consul is an experienced man. He was a naval officer during the war and our naval officers used to be the elite of our fighting forces. I would be inclined to let his words weigh heavily."
    "So I would suggest that we hold them," the chief constable said, "even on the flimsy evidence we have