The Valkyrie's Lesson

Ayame

"T hank you for taking the time to meet with me today.”

Detective Kimura responded with a nod and placed a heavy mug with coffee in front of his visitor, whom he had received in one of the bleak, windowless interrogation rooms of the Kyoto Prefectural Police headquarters.

“I was surprised to receive your call this morning. After all, it’s been six months since the murder, that’s quite some time to come forward with information. You said you knew exactly how the victim died. I’m curious to hear more about that.”

Kimura leaned back in his chair and studied the woman across from him. He had performed a quick background check before their meeting. Dr. Taira was thirty-two and held a PhD in organic chemistry from Tokyo University. She had spent several years abroad as a postdoc and had become a full professor at Kyoto University three years ago, the youngest ever in Japan.

Dr. Taira took a tiny sip of her coffee, hot, black, no sugar. “I didn’t contact you earlier because I only returned to Japan five weeks ago. That’s when I first heard of the murder from a colleague, but I was too busy with the start of the semester to sit down with you. Before you ask: I was in Canada for the entire year of my sabbatical. I didn’t even come home for New Year.”

Kimura’s jaws tightened. All his hopes to get new clues had just been shattered. How could she know anything if she hadn’t been in the country on the day of the murder? At least she had mentioned this early, so he wasn’t forced to waste any more time on yet another dead end.

“To be perfectly honest,” he said, reaching for the case file, “after highly publicized crimes like this one, we get a lot of calls from people who want to have seen or heard something or other. We get the clairvoyants and astrologers, too. Usually, we discount them pretty quickly, over time you develop a feeling for those who are seeking attention or fame rather than the truth.”

He stood up and looked down at Dr. Taira who hadn’t moved an inch. Completely at ease, she looked him straight in the eye, and her lack of deference towards him as a member of the police force, which Kimura was so accustomed to, irritated him even more.

“I see. You think I’m one of those. I can assure you, detective Kimura, that I am not. Let me describe the crime scene for you. ‘Slaughter in the dojo’ the papers called it, revelling in the fact that the victim was decapitated and his head placed in the shomen, but they were pretty light on any other details.

“Like that the head sat on a white handkerchief, I’m guessing silk, and that it was positioned to look at the body, which knelt in a pool of blood, slumped to the left, wasn’t it, arms still wrapped around the torso.

“Or that there was blood spatter on the floor and the wall to the right of the shomen, a large arc, consistent with an overhead move to shake blood off a sword.

“Or that the body had numerous stab wounds, a hundred or more, easily. Most of them fairly shallow, but some thirty of them deep. Like one in his left thigh.

“Would you care to listen to me now?”

Kimura’s mouth hung open. “How do you know all this?”

Dr. Taira smiled and had another sip of coffee.

K imura could not disguise his shock. Indeed, the police had not released details about the crime scene. But Dr. Taira had just described it to a T, without hesitating or seeking his approval, involuntary behaviors that often accompanied false testimony. Of course, nowadays one had to take cameras and live streaming into account, but Kimura knew that no video evidence had surfaced since the murder last spring.

There was something about her, something he couldn’t put a finger on. After all, people didn’t confess their involvement in crimes they got away with. And yet, she had come, on her own volition. And she had spoken with a no-nonsense seriousness, as it behooved a scientist of her caliber. His long-honed intuition when interrogating people involved in serious crimes utterly failed him.

He sat down again.

“Thank you,” Dr. Taira said, then took a deep breath. “I wish I could tell you that I had nothing to do with the death of Mr. de Vries, but knowing what I know – and how I came to know it – well, I’m not so sure. However, you must understand that I am not particularly grieved about his demise. You see, despite his excellent reputation as a martial artist, he… let’s say, he didn’t quite live up to the standards he set for others in his dojo. I would even go so far as to say that the person teaching Aikido and the one you might meet socially had nothing to do with each other.”

Kimura perked up. All but one single other person had expressed a stellar opinion of the victim. Although de Vries had only visited the local Aikido dojo for a weekend seminar, the owner had known him for many years and had nothing but praise for his late friend. Only de Vries’s ex-wife, whom Kimura had met briefly when she arrived to claim the body, had not concealed her disdain. But their acrimonious divorce, granted only a few months before the incident, surely accounted for that. Unfortunately, her alibi was unimpeachable.

Then again, Kimura hadn’t had the opportunity to interview more than a handful of members of de Vries’s own dojo in the Netherlands. Even in a case like this, where international relations were at stake, their budget did not allow for a trip abroad. So, he’d had to make do with bumpy video calls aided by unenthusiastic interpreters, and second-hand observations and opinions of local Dutch colleagues. Now he nodded encouragingly, and Dr. Taira continued.

“Well, let me start by telling you how we met, Mr. de Vries and I. Eight years ago, I started my first postdoc at Leiden University in the Netherlands. First time abroad, I had no friends there, and didn’t speak the language. Of course, a university environment is international by default. The Dutch themselves are open-minded, so overall I didn’t feel too isolated in whatever little time was left outside of my research. Still, the people there are blunt, the land is as flat as this tabletop, even the sea looks and smells different somehow. All this to say: I missed Japan. When I learned that there was an Aikido class at the university, I joined immediately.

“You see, these extracurriculars are not run by student groups like ours. The university administration organizes everything, and in turn, all members of the university, from students to full professors to other staff, may join any class they want. It creates a fairly relaxed and egalitarian environment, a mirror of Dutch society.

“Anyway, the Aikido class was held by de Vries, I believe he was a fifth dan at the time. He had trained at the Hombu dojo in Tokyo for a few years when he was younger and eventually set up his own dojo at home.”

Kimura’s own investigation had confirmed that. De Vries had been a gifted student and breezed through the examinations for the kyu- and lower dan grades. Ranks above fourth dan were bestowed by the Hombu dojo only for special services to the community, and opening a dojo was a first step to the higher ranks. De Vries had officially been awarded seventh dan at the beginning of the year, and had come to Tokyo to pick up his certificate. Before returning home, he visited his friend in Kyoto where he was to teach a weekend seminar. The murder happened late at night that Saturday.

Dr. Taira reached for her coffee. For a while, she held the mug in her hands, her gaze focused on the steaming liquid. Kimura waited patiently.

“You see, I took Aikido classes back in high school and I made it to first kyu at the time. It was easy to remember the kata and when de Vries noticed that I became his favorite uke, attacker, during classes and was even expected to help beginners sometimes. I enjoyed it, and when he invited me to his own dojo for training, I went. I also went to the special weekend seminars that he held all over the country. And when he invited me into his bed, I went there too.” She gently stroked the rim of the mug with her thumbs and looked straight into Kimura’s eyes, earnest and sober. “It was not a good idea.”

“You knew he was married?” Kimura watched her expression carefully.

“Yes, but he said that they were separated. Given all the nights he spent with me, there was no reason to doubt him.” She looked away. “But then, just a few weeks before the end of my contract, I found out that he was sleeping with other women. Yes, plural. I was devastated.

“You see, in his dojo he offered weekly women-only classes, ostensibly to foster a safe training environment. I have since come to believe that these classes were always meant to find new recruits for his bed. Looking back, I couldn’t tell you if the fact that he was sleeping with everybody was generally known. I never learnt Dutch as well as I hoped to, but nobody ever talked about this, certainly not with me. I thought we were exclusive, that he was just as much in love with me as I was with him. After all, we made plans for our future together, five years down the line.

“Not that he had any intentions of keeping his promises. When I confronted him about his infidelity, he shrugged it off. ‘Hey, I have needs,” was all he said. That’s when I realized that it was never about me, not even about us, it was all about his ego. When our relationship became complicated, he discarded me and had me replaced in no time. In fact, the replacement had already been installed…”

She closed her eyes and smiled, the pain on her face apparent. When she opened her eyes again, her face was neutral. “These days, everybody uses the term ‘narcissist’, but then we thought he was charismatic. It seems to me now that he enjoyed breaking women, the strong ones especially. He liked to dominate, could be quite rough and loved it when we pleaded with him – in the dojo and in bed, too. Please don’t misunderstand me, whatever happened, I did it willingly, de Vries didn’t rape me or anything. But he could be very persuasive. He certainly knew exactly how to get what he wanted.”

She looked intently at the coffee mug, but it failed to conceal her blushing. Kimura could imagine that she must have thought herself a strong woman too, hence the embarrassment. He sympathized, but didn’t offer consolation. He had a feeling that the prelude was over, that she was ready to get to the meat of her story, and he didn’t want to kill her momentum.

“It took me two years to get over him,” she continued quietly. “Over his endless lies, my anger at myself that I let him use me as he did. Even now, when I am reminded of that time I feel… not angry, really, just…” She wrinkled her forehead, trying to find the right expression. “Anyway. A few months ago, I dreamt of him. I was in a dojo, in a basement somewhere, there were small windows in the wall opposite the entrance, just below the ceiling. It smelled musty. It had a size of maybe thirty mats and the walls were scuffed at the bottom from too many bodies bumping into them over the years. The shomen was at the left, it had a picture of O-sensei and a katana and wakizashi on a stand. De Vries had a pair of swords like these in his own dojo too.” She scoffed and turned the mug in her hands. ”Not that he knew how to use either of them, of course.

“It was one of his women-only classes. We all had wooden tanto knives, and the goal is for the nage, the defender, to avoid the weapon and take it from the uke. Per convention, the uke always loses, but still must put enough energy into the attack so that the nage has something to work with. De Vries chose a white belt as uke – she was small and looked quite young – who didn’t really go for it, so he mocked and provoked her. He had often done that in real life, but we never thought much of it, to us it was just part of normal training. In any case, the little white belt followed his command and put all she had into her second attack. And because de Vries didn’t defend himself, the blade went all the way into his stomach – and it came back bloody.”

Involuntarily, Kimura shook his head. Even in a dream, this was pretty far fetched. A wooden tanto is sturdy for sure, but also much too thick and blunt to cut through skin and flesh. Not even the strongest and fastest martial artist could make this happen, let alone an inexperienced beginner.

Dr. Taira nodded and raised her hand, acknowledging his unspoken objection. “De Vries saw the bloody tanto, but he smirked and said ‘There’s my blood on your weapon instead of your blood on mine’.” She looked down for a moment. “If you have ever seen tanto, you know they can look almost like a penis. He once told me he couldn’t understand why women didn’t want to have sex during their period, after all, he surely didn’t mind. I said, ‘Because it’s not you who’ll wash the sheets afterwards.’ He only laughed and kept pushing over and over for us to… you know.

“In any case, in the dream I could see by her embarrassed reaction that he had asked the same of the little white belt, and I felt a stab in my heart. It was as if I had discovered him sleeping around all over again. ‘How dare you!’ I wanted to yell at him and when I looked at the other women I could tell they were equally disgusted. And at that moment, I knew that all of us who were there in the dream had been in de Vries’s bed at one time or another.

“The room became deathly still as this realization dawned upon everybody; we first looked around at each other to confirm, and finally at de Vries, to accuse.

“And then time seemed to warp somehow. We all got up in slow motion, tanto in hand, and in the next moment we were all over him, stabbing, screaming, trying to get ahead of the others to attack him again and again. Piranhas in a feeding frenzy. There was blood everywhere, and its rusty smell even penetrated my rage. But de Vries just kept laughing, as if nothing of this mattered, as if we didn’t matter, as if he was invincible, untouchable. The big sensei.”

The way Dr. Taira spat out the last word finally laid bare her true feelings for the man. She held the coffee mug in a tight grip, an anchor to keep herself focused. With narrowed eyes she looked past Kimura, her breathing became faster, as if she needed all her strength to stay in the here and now while telling her story.

“Suddenly we heard two sharp claps. In the dojo, such clapping is the sign to stop the current exercise and wait for new instructions. Conditioned through countless training sessions, we backed off and sat down. But it wasn’t de Vries who had brought us to heel. It was a Valkyrie.”

Kimura startled. “Who?”

Dr. Taira chuckled. “More a ‘what’, detective. Valkyries are old Nordic goddesses of war. Imagine them as your stereotypical Scandinavian woman, tall, proud, blue eyes. The one in my dream had a thick blonde braid flowing over her shoulder all the way down to her waist. I almost expected her to wear armour, but no, it was just a standard training uniform. Except that her hakama trousers weren’t black like ours, but white.”

Kimura glanced at his case file, but Taira closed her eyes to prevent any further interruptions. “Her solemn demeanor allowed no objections. While we settled at the back of the dojo in an orderly row by increasing rank, the Valkyrie without hesitation took de Vries’s place in front of the shomen. He watched her with an amused expression, then knelt down before us students, facing the Valkyrie.

“‘So, you’re teaching now,’ he mocked.

“‘Yes. A special lesson for you.’ Then she addressed us. ‘One more attack, each of you. Make it count.’

“And that’s what we did. One by one, we first bowed to the Valkyrie, then to the tanto in front of us, before putting it into our belts. We walked over to de Vries, who still knelt there in anticipation, and plunged the blade into his body with all our might. Then we took our seat again and placed the tanto in front of us as before. The next one would get up, strictly by rank, and do the same. No more scrambling for space or to get in there first. Now, the whole procedure was formal and orderly.

“On our part, that is. But de Vries… he had been all smirks and laughter when he knelt in front of the Valkyrie, even though he was bleeding all over already. But when the first one, the little white belt, stabbed him in the shoulder, everything changed. Now he grunted, as if his body had suddenly remembered to feel pain. When he was attacked the second time, he gasped and reached for the wound. The third time, he screamed. But soon he fell silent, as if all the pain from the earlier attacks washed over him and drowned out every sound.

“Finally, it was my turn. I sat in the middle of the line, the first black belt. Just like the others, I made my bows and walked over to de Vries. I got on one knee so I could look into his face. Now I could see pain, fear, and even, I like to believe, a pleading look in his eyes. ‘Remember me?’ I whispered. ‘Remember your five-year-plans for us?’ And I looked him in the eyes when I stabbed him in the thigh. Deep. I wanted to make him hurt as much as I hurt all those years ago. It felt so good to see him wince.”

She bit her lip and fell silent. Kimura had watched her closely, trying to decipher her feelings as she relived the dream experience behind closed eyes. There seemed to be anger and satisfaction, but above all, there was pain, and Kimura wondered why she put herself through all this again just to confess to a crime she couldn’t have committed in reality. Was she feeling guilty? But why, what for?

Kimura’s musings were interrupted when Taira drew a deep breath and opened her eyes. “I pulled out the tanto, wiped it on his uniform, and went back to my spot in the row of waiting women. The next one got up as I sat down. As I said, all very orderly.

“When we all were finished, he wrapped his arms around his body and slowly rocked to and fro. We looked at the Valkyrie in anticipation. She bowed to the class, then turned around and bowed to the shomen. We bowed with her. But instead of turning around to dismiss us, she took the katana from its stand and bowed to it. With the smooth, practiced movements of an expert, she girded herself with the sword and positioned herself next to de Vries. When she unsheathed the katana and gripped it with both hands, we knew what was coming. There were no objections. The sentence had been pronounced, now we were to watch its execution. Even de Vries just looked up at her in silence, breathing heavily.

“‘Enough pain,’ she said. ‘There will be no more pain for you. Or from you.’

“The Valkyrie raised the sword up high and with a powerful shout cut off the head of the man cowering in front of her. His death felt deserved, cathartic. I had held my breath, but now I relaxed. It was over, finally, for good. The Valkyrie shook the blood from the sword and placed it back onto its stand. Almost gently, like a mother holding the face of her child, she picked up the severed head with both hands and placed it into the shomen. Once again she knelt and bowed to the shomen and we all bowed with her. That’s the last thing I remember.”

D r. Taira looked at her mug, but didn’t pick it up. The left-over coffee must have been as stone-cold as Kimura’s, which had barely been touched. The detective had been completely enraptured by the final part of her story. Now that she was finished, he blinked as if waking before getting up to pace the tiny room.

“Ridiculous. You were at the other end of the world that night. There is no way you could have killed him or even have contributed to his death. You dreamt all this and he died as a consequence? It’s absurd!”

Dr. Taira managed an exhausted smile. “And yet the evidence matches what I’ve just told you, no? The beheading, all the stab wounds, countless of them shallow but a deep one for each of us. And then there’s the reason why you’re not getting anywhere with your investigation: No footprints in or around the pool of blood, no fingerprints anywhere. At least none that couldn’t have been left earlier that day during the seminar.”

Kimura sat down and pulled the case file in front of him. He sat there in deep thought for a while before he wordlessly retrieved a photograph from the file and placed it in front of Dr. Taira.

Her eyes widened in surprise as she drew in a breath.

The woman in the enlarged passport photo before her looked almost exactly as Taira had described her. Pale skin, steel-blue eyes, and blonde hair, although not in a long thick braid but closely cropped. But otherwise, a Nordic queen. A Valkyrie.

“That’s her! She’s real? How is that possible? And how did you find her?”

“You’re wrong about the crime scene, Dr. Taira. There was one single fingerprint, a partial, in a drop of blood on the saya, the scabbard of the sword. Any of our local crooks it matched had alibis. Eventually we thought that somebody might have followed de Vries from abroad, and there she was, in the immigration database.

“It appears your Valkyrie is in reality a financial analyst in Rotterdam. She was also one of de Vries’s best students and, if the rumours are to be believed, another one of his countless lovers. That was after your time,” Kimura hastened to add.

“Really?” After the initial shock had worn off, Taira took in the photo in detail. “I wouldn’t call her beautiful. More like striking. And I’d say there’s a touch of arrogance too, don’t you think? Still, I wish I could’ve met her for real, I can feel her aura even now.”

“Right… well, even without your testimony, she makes a fine suspect. Except, she hasn’t been in Japan for two years, when she travelled here with de Vries himself. With the help of the Dutch authorities we could verify her whereabouts at the time of the murder. It’s quite impossible that it was her. Then again…”

Taira nodded. “I’m with you, detective. After all, I’m a scientist. Dreams do not create reality, no matter how much that silly New Age manifestation-through-wishful-thinking movement is trying to convince people. But the evidence matches, we both know it. I can describe the dojo in detail, even though I have never set foot in it, not before nor after the incident. I don’t even know where in Kyoto it is. In other words, how can I know what I know if my dream wasn’t real?”

Dr. Taira looked at the photo again and smiled. “But what I do know is that I haven’t once thought of de Vries since I dreamed of his death, not until I heard what had actually happened. It seems that thanks to our Valkyrie, I’m free of him at last.”

A fter Kimura had seen Dr. Taira out of the building, he returned to the interrogation room. A stale smell of coffee and a little perfume were all that was left behind. If her story was true, and there was no reason to believe otherwise except reason itself, he had no case. He couldn’t arrest people for what they did in their dreams, even if the results somehow did manifest in the real world.

No, stop it, Kimura thought, bring it back to reason.

Dr. Taira may have been out of the country, but she must have been involved somehow. The real murderer – the Valkyrie, or perhaps the ex-wife? – must have contacted her, before or after the fact. Maybe local organized crime committed the murder and staged the crime scene with her help. A live stream to the other end of the world was definitely possible, and such video evidence might surface eventually.

But if that was the case, why did Dr. Taira call him at all? Her promising academic career would be over if it were discovered that she believed in the power of dreams to bend reality, not to mention if she were actually involved in a gruesome murder.

Kimura turned the flash card with the interview round and round in his fingers for a long time. It was preposterous. Never mind the matching evidence, nobody would believe this. He would never get permission to interview the woman in the photo if she even was the Valkyrie. He had to make a decision.

Against all regulations, Kimura took the memory card home, noting “camera malfunction” in the case file to account for the missing interview. He obliterated the doctor’s name, and his interview summary read only:

Time wasted. Another crank. This one thinks she saw the murder in a dream.

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