Newcomer

1

From his very first glimpse of the crime scene, Hiroshi Uesugi knew that this case wasn’t going to be easy. There was no specific reason for him to feel that way; if he’d had to put it into words, he’d have said something about the killer having luck on his side.

At eight p.m. on June 10 a woman’s body was found in a Kodenmacho apartment. The person who discovered it was a friend who’d dropped by for a visit.

Based on the state of the body, death was estimated to have occurred within the last two hours. The friend had originally planned to get there one hour earlier, at seven. Had she not rescheduled at the last minute, she might have walked in when the crime was under way, or at least caught sight of the perpetrator. That was what made Uesugi feel that the murderer was lucky.

An investigation task force was set up in Nihonbashi Precinct, in whose jurisdiction the murder had been committed. It was there that Uesugi met the detective who’d been first on the scene. His name was Kaga, and he’d just been transferred to Nihonbashi.

Uesugi was familiar with the name. Stories were making the rounds about the various homicides Kaga had solved. Rumor had it that he was also a onetime all-Japan kendo champion.

Something of the athlete was still visible in Kaga’s lean, hard physique, but the laid-back expression on his face hardly radiated professional competence. Uesugi also took an instant aversion to his sloppy way of dressing: a short-sleeved shirt worn over a T-shirt.

“Hey, Kaga, you always dress like that on the job?” was the first thing Uesugi said to him.

“Not always, but most of the time,” Kaga breezily replied. “Lately it’s been so damn hot.”

The guy’s a jerk, Uesugi thought. It was a letdown after all the stories he’d heard about Kaga and his razor-sharp mind and bloodhound nature. When had he lost it? Perhaps the rumors had exaggerated his skills out of all proportion. When you got down to it, if the guy was that good, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police would have plucked him out of a precinct posting long ago.

It didn’t take long to build a profile of the murder victim. Her name was Mineko Mitsui. Divorced about six months ago, she lived alone and worked as a translator. The friend who found her was in the same business.

The day after the body was found, the captain ordered Uesugi to take a junior TMPD detective with him and go to see the ex-husband of the victim, a Mr. Naohiro Kiyose.

When they broke the news of his former wife’s death to Kiyose, he seemed unable to process it. He just sat there with a bewildered look, providing only the most mechanical responses to Uesugi’s questions. It took a while for the news to sink in.

“Is it really true?” he suddenly muttered in an interval between questions. “The poor thing was murdered...? Why her, of all people...?”

Kiyose’s reaction struck Uesugi as too genuine to be faked.

Naohiro Kiyose was cooperative but had no information likely to help solve the case. It was understandable; the man hadn’t seen his wife for over half a year. He claimed to have been having dinner with a client in Ginza when the crime was thought to have occurred, and it didn’t take long to confirm his alibi.

The next person whom Uesugi and his partner from the Homicide Division of TMPD spoke to was Koki Kiyose, Mineko Mitsui’s only son. He was an actor with a small theatrical company.

Like his father, the young man appeared to have no idea why anyone would want to kill his mother. For his part, he hadn’t been in touch with her for nearly two years. He seemed to have no interest in his parents’ divorce and claimed to know nothing about why they’d split up.

“These days, plenty of people get divorced when they’re older,” was his blasé comment. “I was like, hey, if that’s what you want, go for it.”

Typical stupid kid, thought Uesugi to himself. They’re always so sure that they’ve grown up under their own steam, without their parents’ support or protection counting for anything. After dropping out of college, Koki Kiyose was trying to launch a career as an actor. Of course, the boy was too blind to realize that he’d only been able to develop an interest in something so flaky because of the freedom and privilege he’d enjoyed as a college student.

He’s still a child, was Uesugi’s take on Koki. He was still immature; his parents would have to keep an eye on him to make sure he stayed on track. His parents would need to make sure he was making the transition from boyhood to manhood. That was something only parents could do.

Koki was living with a waitress by the name of Ami Aoyama. The apartment they shared was registered in her name.

Why am I not surprised? thought Uesugi, sneeringly. Like I thought, this kid can’t stand on his own two feet. He just went and found someone else to mother him. If I were his dad, I’d grab him by the scruff of the neck and drag him home kicking and screaming.

Uesugi and his partner failed to get any meaningful leads out of the victim’s son or ex-husband; nor did the other investigators have better luck. The only witness testimony they had was from someone who’d seen an insurance salesman leaving the victim’s apartment at 5:30 p.m. on the day of the murder. When the salesman’s statement was found to contain inconsistencies, they thought they might be on to something, but his alibi was corroborated not long after. (Uesugi didn’t know how this had been done.)

Although the task force held a big daily meeting attended by all the investigators, even drawing up a basic list of suspects proved a struggle. Mineko Mitsui, the victim, didn’t have a wide circle of friends. Everyone who knew her was adamant that she was the last person on earth to have enemies. The police, meanwhile, hadn’t managed to find anyone who stood to gain from her murder. From the crime scene, it was clear that the perpetrator had neither robbery nor rape in mind.

The only progress the police could claim to be making was in clearing up a number of little mysteries that had initially appeared hard to explain. These were things like why one of the little cakes at the crime scene had wasabi in it, and why the victim had a brand-new pair of kitchen scissors, despite already having a perfectly good pair. At the daily meeting, the top brass would simply announce that they had “established that such-and-such a detail was irrelevant to the case.” Uesugi had no idea who had solved these mysteries, or how.

On the sixth day after the murder, they finally came across something that deserved to be called a lead. Someone had called Mineko Mitsui’s cell phone a matter of minutes before her murder. Now they managed to establish where she was when she took the call: a clerk at a pastry shop not far from her apartment had overheard snatches of the conversation. The gist of it was:

“Hello, yes?... Oh, it’s you. But why are you calling from a pay phone?... Oh, poor you. Okay, just hang on a second.”

The most striking thing was the complete absence of formality. It was reasonable to assume that Mineko Mitsui was talking to a member of her immediate family, a relative, or a close friend.

Although it was far from certain that the caller was the perpetrator, the chances were that he or she had some kind of connection to the murder. A decision was made to take another look at all the victim’s acquaintances from the present to her previous life as a housewife, and, even before that, when she was a student. A thorough investigation was launched to see if any old acquaintances had recently contacted the victim.

Uesugi was one of the detectives assigned to this task. One thing, however, bugged him. Who’d found out that Mineko Mitsui was in the pastry shop in the first place? No one saw fit to explain that to the investigating team.

Uesugi had a vague sense that there was something not quite right about the whole investigation.

2

While the testimony of the pastry shop clerk was something of a morale boost for the investigative team, neither the relatives nor the friends of the victim could provide them with anything useful. Only one new piece of information came to light — that Mineko Mitsui was consulting about money matters with the same lawyer she’d used for her divorce. Although the division of the assets was over and done with, Mineko Mitsui was hoping to reopen negotiations with her ex-husband. Clearly she’d realized that supporting herself was going to be harder than she thought.

It was thought that Mineko Mitsui could have been planning to sue for compensatory damages based on Naohiro Kiyose having been unfaithful during their marriage. Mineko Mitsui had discussed it with her lawyer only on a hypothetical level. That was why Shizuko Takamachi, the victim’s lawyer, hadn’t seen fit to bring this to the attention of the police earlier.

They immediately started looking into Naohiro Kiyose, and it didn’t take long to unearth someone who looked like mistress material. Kiyose had hired a woman by the name of Yuri Miyamoto as his personal secretary right after the divorce. Rumor inside the company had it that the two were lovers.

If she could prove that the relationship predated her divorce, Mineko Mitsui stood a decent chance of winning compensatory damages. Now, finally, they’d found someone who would profit from her murder.

Naohiro Kiyose had an alibi for the day. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t hired someone to do it. Hiring contract killers off the deep Web was becoming more common. Uesugi was put in charge of investigating Kiyose’s relationship with Yuri Miyamoto.

“Go around to this guy’s place and question him,” the captain said, handing Uesugi the name and address of Yosaku Kishida.

“Kishida? I’ve seen that name somewhere before.”

“He’s an accountant. His company handles the finances of Naohiro Kiyose’s firm. He’s known Kiyose for thirty years, apparently. Whenever anyone asked Kiyose’s employees about Yuri Miyamoto, they all said the same thing: ‘If you want the low-down on the boss’s private life, Mr. Kishida’s your man.’”

“I remember where I came across the name. His company was on the list of incoming calls to Mineko Mitsui’s cell phone, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right. Kishida says she had some questions for him about her tax return.”

“Think that’s all it was?”

“Search me. Ask him that along with everything else.”

“Got you.”

Uesugi slipped the piece of paper into his back pocket.

“Shall I assign one of the young guys to go with you?”

“I’m fine. Something like this, I can handle on my own.”

Uesugi had just walked out of the police station, when someone called after him. When he turned around, Detective Kaga was hurrying toward him.

“Would it be all right for me to come along?”

“You know where I’m heading?”

“To Kishida Tax Accountancy’s offices. I heard you discussing it with the chief,” Kaga replied nonchalantly.

“Why so keen to go along? Think you’ll get an arrest out of it?”

Kaga smiled. “If it comes to that, you’re welcome to the credit. I’ve reasons of my own for being interested in Kishida Accountancy.”

“Your own reasons? Meaning?”

“Tell you later. You’re cool with me tagging along?”

Uesugi snorted. “I won’t stop you, if that’s what you mean.”

Kishida’s office was on the second floor of a six-story building. Behind the glass doors at the entrance was a reception desk. Behind the receptionist was a scrawny man in his late fifties, busily typing on a laptop.

Uesugi went in, introduced himself, and asked for Yosaku Kishida.

The man inside the office got to his feet. It was Kishida. Looking slightly rattled, he steered the two detectives over to a meeting area with armchairs.

Kishida presented them with his business card. As he examined the card, Uesugi got things going by asking Kishida about his relationship with Naohiro Kiyose. Kishida hemmed and hawed, but confirmed that the two men had known each other for a very long time.

“What about Kiyose’s family? Were you friends with the late Mineko Mitsui?”

Kishida cocked his head ambivalently.

“Kiyose’s wife and I were not that close. I almost never went to their house.”

“You received a phone call from Ms. Mitsui on June the second. What was it about?”

“I believe I’ve already told you.”

“I’m sorry to ask you to repeat yourself, but kindly talk us through it again. In detail.” Uesugi took out his notebook.

Kishida sighed softly.

“She wanted to know how much we would charge for doing her tax return. Since I knew nothing about the scale of her income or her expenses, I couldn’t give her a quote off the cuff. All I could do was promise that if she brought the job to us, we’d take care of it as reasonably as possible.”

“Did you talk about anything else?”

“No, that was it. We didn’t talk long.”

“What do you know about the reasons behind the Kiyoses’ divorce?”

Kishida thought for a moment.

“I know that Mineko was the one who wanted it. And that’s about it. It’s something that the two of them thrashed out between them; it wasn’t my place to stick my nose in.”

“You don’t think that Mr. Kiyose had reasons of his own? Another woman on the side, something like that?”

Kishida’s eyes widened. He shook his head vehemently from side to side.

“I really don’t think so. President Kiyose’s not smooth enough to pull something like that off.”

Uesugi decided to get to the point.

“He recently hired a new personal secretary, a woman by the name of Yuri Miyamoto. What do you know about her? Were strings pulled to get her the job?”

“No... uhm... that,” Kishida spluttered, his face the picture of dismay. “I’m just the accountant. As an outsider, I really don’t know much about HR issues at my clients’ companies. I heard that President Kiyose was acquainted with Ms. Miyamoto prior to giving her the job, but that’s all I know.”

“They were ‘acquainted’? What exactly was the nature of this ‘acquaintance’?”

“I really don’t know. That’s what I’ve been trying to say,” Kishida said, with obvious irritation.

The man’s frightened Naohiro Kiyose will put him through the wringer if he shoots his mouth off, thought Uesugi.

Uesugi decided to ease off. The guy didn’t look like he could give them much more. Uesugi snapped his notebook shut.

“You’re a busy man, Mr. Kishida. Thanks for your time.”

“Could I just ask one thing?” broke in Kaga, as Uesugi was getting to his feet. “Mr. Kishida, where were you on the evening of June tenth?”

Kishida stared at Kaga with a look of incredulity. Uesugi, too, was taken aback. While it was standard practice to check the alibis of everyone closely associated with the victim, there was no reason to treat Kishida as a suspect. If Kaga pressed Kishida too hard for an alibi now, it might backfire and gum up the investigation later.

“What? Am I a suspect?” Sure enough, Kishida’s face was taut with anger.

“You must understand that this is purely a matter of procedure. We ask everyone the same thing,” replied Kaga serenely.

When Kishida shot an anxious, searching look at Uesugi, he smiled and gave him an encouraging nod.

“I’m sorry, sir. Red tape. You know how it is.”

Kishida’s expression relaxed a little. He retreated to the back of the office, muttering peevishly to himself. When he returned, he was carrying a diary.

“On June the tenth, I went around to my son’s place after work,” Kishida announced, as he leafed through the diary.

“About what time did you leave here?”

“Sometime after six thirty. I can’t be more precise than that, I’m afraid.”

Kishida went on to explain that, after leaving the office, he spent a while in a bookstore and reached the apartment of his son and daughter-in-law around eight. Sometime after nine he set off from there to a Shinbashi bar that was a regular hangout of his, before finally making it home sometime after midnight.

Kaga asked Kishida to provide him with the addresses for his son and daughter-in-law, and for the bar in Shinbashi. “That’s everything from my side,” he announced, bringing the interview to a close.

Uesugi laid into Kaga the minute they were back out on the street.

“That wasn’t the time and place to start pressuring the man about his alibi. Stop playing the loose cannon. I don’t like it.”

“You can’t deny I was right to ask, though. Kishida has no alibi for the time between seven and eight o’clock.”

“What’s the big deal about that? There are always more people without alibis than with alibis. Besides, we’ve got no reason to suspect Kishida.”

Kaga stopped and turned to look at the traffic whizzing up and down the boulevard.

“Have you met Koki Kiyose?” he eventually asked, his eyes fixed on the road. “The victim’s only son?”

“Yeah, I went to see him the day after the murder,” Uesugi replied. “The kid’s a spoiled brat. Wet behind the ears.”

Kaga shrugged. “That’s rather harsh.”

“Kids like him piss me off. Think they’re God’s gift to the world when they can’t do a damn thing for themselves. I blame the parents. Kids only turn out like that if they’re not raised right. Some parents are so terrified of their children hating them that they don’t discipline them. That’s a surefire way to turn kids into arrogant little shits.”

It was only after Uesugi had come to the end of his rant that he realized he’d overstepped. He cleared his throat. “What’s that fool of a boy done anyway?” he asked.

“I tried asking him about his mother’s way of speaking: you know, who she was formal with, who she was more casual with.”

Uesugi was surprised to discover that Kaga was trying to work out who had called Mineko Mitsui from the pay phone. He couldn’t help being interested. “Oh?”

“Basically, he thought that his mother was the same as most people. If she was talking to someone she knew well, then she would be very relaxed and informal. Conversely, if she was dealing with someone she didn’t know well, she could be very proper and polite.”

“Talk about useless. Hardly worth asking the question, if that’s all the answer you’re going to get.”

“I followed that up by asking him to provide me with a list of everyone Mineko Mitsui spoke to without bothering with all the formalities and niceties — everyone he could think of, at least. He hadn’t seen his mother for two years, so chances are he forgot a lot of people. Still, he did his best and came up with quite a few names. Can you guess who was on his list?” Kaga paused for dramatic effect. “Yosaku Kishida, the accountant.”

“What!” Uesugi’s eyes were like saucers. “You’re kidding me?”

“Apparently, our accountant friend regularly dropped by the Kiyose home. Koki often heard his mother chatting with him in the most casual manner. Of course, given Kishida’s long relationship with her husband, there’s nothing extraordinary about that. Nonetheless, Ms. Mitsui apparently was informal only with people she knew well.”

A groan burst from Uesugi’s lips. “And Kishida just told us that he barely went to the Kiyoses’ house and didn’t know the victim particularly well.”

“Smelling a bit fishy, eh?” Kaga grinned merrily.

Curling his lip, Uesugi looked Kaga in the eye.

“Now I know why you were so eager to come with me. I wonder if that discrepancy is enough to make Kishida a suspect, though? The guy has no motive for killing Mineko Mitsui.”

“Maybe we just haven’t found it yet.”

“Knock it off, will you? If you look at it that way, there will be no end of suspects.” Uesugi turned his back on Kaga and walked off. After a few steps, he paused and spun on his heel. “If you’re desperate to make an arrest, you’d better find another partner. I just do what the higher-ups tell me — no more, no less. My retirement’s just around the corner.”

Kaga merely grinned. Uesugi couldn’t tell whether he’d taken his words to heart.

3

An enormous truck roared past. Beside it, in the outer lane, a red sedan was accelerating fast. An SUV was approaching rapidly from behind.

Out of nowhere, a motorbike appeared. It shot past the SUV and threaded its way between the truck and the red sedan at breakneck speed.

A can of coffee in his hand, Uesugi watched the motorbike until it was out of sight. Then he sighed and took a swig of his drink. He wondered if his body temperature had affected the coffee, making it go from piping hot to lukewarm.

Uesugi was on his way back to the police station after a before-hours visit to a nightclub. Since Yuri Miyamoto used to work as a hostess, it made sense to make inquiries at her old workplace. They needed to pin down the nature of her relationship with Naohiro Kiyose and then, if the relationship was a sexual one, to find out when it had started.

He spoke to several people, all of whom had the same disappointing answer: there was nothing going on between Naohiro Kiyose and Yuri Miyamoto.

“If you saw them together, you’d know what I’m talking about,” declared a grizzled male employee of the club in a black suit. “Yuri was Mr. Kiyose’s favorite girl — no doubt about that — but I don’t think he had designs on her. He enjoyed talking to her. How can I put it? He behaved more like a dad with his daughter.”

Maybe I’m wasting my time here, thought Uesugi. Maybe we’re just overcomplicating things. What if Kiyose had simply decided to offer an office job to his favorite hostess — and that was all there was to it? In that case, Mineko Mitsui would have no grounds to sue Kiyose for damages, and Kiyose would have no motive for murdering her.

Uesugi had just gulped down the dregs of his lukewarm coffee, when he heard a voice to one side of him. “Thought I might find you here.” Kaga was walking toward him.

“How’d you know I’d be here?” Uesugi asked.

“One of your colleagues told me you’d gone to make inquiries in Ginza. He thought you’d probably walk back this way.”

Uesugi crushed the empty can in his fist.

“Some people would do well to keep their stupid mouths shut.”

If his colleague had told Kaga about this place, he’d probably filled Kaga in on the background. Uesugi couldn’t bring himself to look the other detective in the eye.

“What do you want?” asked Uesugi, his eyes averted.

“I want your opinion on something. Will you come to the apartment of the son of the accountant with me?”

“The damn accountant again? You just don’t know when to let things go, do you.”

“It wasn’t about tax returns.”

“What are you going on about now?”

“The reason why Ms. Mitsui called the Kishida Tax Accountancy office. He said she asked him about her tax returns. I don’t think that’s true.”

“What was the call about, then?”

“I’m guessing that she called Kishida to sound him out about the relationship between her ex-husband and Yuri Miyamoto. Was it sexual? When had it started? She may have mentioned something about a tax return, but just as a pretext for the call.”

Uesugi was quiet for a while. Kaga’s theory sounded plausible. The quickest way for Mineko to get the dirt on her ex-husband’s love life was to ask his friends. And if that person was someone she knew, so much the better.

“Why didn’t you mention that when we went to see Kishida?”

“At the time, I thought he knew that Naohiro Kiyose and Yuri Miyamoto were in a relationship and that he was concealing it from us. We now know that’s not the case. There is no special relationship between Mr. Kiyose and Ms. Miyamoto — or nothing romantic, at least. I imagine that you learned the same thing from your inquiries in Ginza, Detective Uesugi?”

Uesugi glared at Kaga.

“How did you find that out?”

“I’ll get to that later. Anyway, given that there was no untoward relationship between Mr. Kiyose and Ms. Miyamoto, then Mr. Kishida had nothing to hide from us. Does that mean Ms. Mitsui didn’t ask him anything substantial on the phone? No matter how you cut it, that just doesn’t seem likely.” Kaga swiveled around and looked Uesugi in the face. “You’ve got to admit that Yosaku Kishida is worth investigating?”

Uesugi snorted contemptuously.

“If you want to do that, then go talk to my captain. He can assign you another partner better suited to the job. The two of you can make your sensational little arrest together.”

“Except that you’re the detective in charge of investigating Kishida. From here we can get to his son’s apartment in fifteen minutes by car.”

“Yes, but—”

Ignoring Uesugi, Kaga raised his hand and hailed a passing taxi. Holding the door open with one hand, he motioned Uesugi in with the other.

Uesugi clambered in, a sour look on his face.

As the taxi sped toward the apartment, Kaga briefed Uesugi on the son and his wife. Katsuya Kishida worked for a construction consulting company; he and his wife were both twenty-nine years old; they had one child, a five-year-old boy.

“If you know that much already, why not go ahead and finish without me? I won’t get pissed off or anything.”

Kaga didn’t reply. “There it is. It’s that building there,” he exclaimed, pointing with his finger. Apparently he’d scoped out the location in advance as well.

Katsuya Kishida was not yet back. According to his wife, he did a lot of corporate entertaining and was back late most nights.

Without mentioning anything about a homicide investigation, Uesugi asked the wife to confirm that Yosaku Kishida had dropped by on the evening of June 10. Reiko stated that he had indeed come by at eight o’clock. Apparently he’d called earlier that day to say that he’d be coming around that night to discuss the ceremony for his wife’s death anniversary. When Uesugi inquired about Kishida’s appearance, Reiko insisted that he was very much his usual self. She didn’t seem to be taking the interview too seriously.

Unable to think of any more questions, Uesugi let his eye drift around the living room. A number of things immediately caught his eye: the oversized TV; the bottles of expensive liquor on the sideboard; a glossy handbag — stamped with a logo that even he recognized — tossed carelessly onto the sofa.

The five-year-old son was playing with a spinning top on the floor. Kaga seemed interested and asked the mother where she’d bought it. Her answer was that Yosaku Kishida, her father-in-law, had brought it with him on the evening of June 12.

“You’re quite sure it was the twelfth?”

“Sure I’m sure. Why should you care, anyway?”

“Oh, no particular reason,” murmured Kaga indifferently. Uesugi, however, detected a sharp new gleam in his eye.

“Well, that was a total waste of time,” declared Uesugi as soon as they were outside the building. “I think she’s telling the truth about Kishida arriving at eight. Nonetheless, that doesn’t provide him a full alibi. I wonder why he made a point of coming here that night?”

“We don’t yet know. But did you see how that young couple lives? Didn’t that bother you?” Kaga asked.

“They’re certainly living large, but I wouldn’t say it bothered me. Bad times or good, people with money always have money!”

“That’s what I mean. The woman said that her husband was out wining and dining clients every night. But I called the company to check. Katsuya Kishida is in the accounts payable department. Correct me if I’m wrong, but normally accountants don’t do a whole lot of corporate entertaining.”

Uesugi stopped midstride and turned to Kaga.

“What are you getting at?”

“I don’t really know myself yet,” said Kaga, raising his arm. A taxi pulled up to the curb beside them.

4

Uesugi spent the next day making inquiries on a completely different case. When he got back to the task force headquarters, the captain called him over. As Uesugi walked across the room, the captain glanced around suspiciously, then extracted something from inside his desk. Uesugi caught his breath when he saw what it was.

“Ha. So you have seen it before, then?” The captain peered up at him.

He was holding a top: a wooden top decorated with concentric green and yellow lines. The same top that Katsuya Kishida’s son had been playing with.

“What’s that thing doing here?” asked Uesugi weakly.

“Kaga came across it in a toy shop in Ningyocho. This top is sold together with a length of string. He sent the string down to forensics. They’re comparing it against the ligature marks.”

Ligature marks? That meant the strangulation marks on the victim’s neck.

The murder weapon had yet to be discovered. Despite knowing that twisted string with a diameter of three to four millimeters had been used to commit the crime, they hadn’t yet found an object that matched the description.

“Oh, and he asked me to give this to you.”

The captain handed Uesugi a handwritten note.

The hastily scribbled note read: “A top like this one was stolen from a toy shop in Ningyocho on the evening of June 10. Kaga.”

Stolen on the day of the murder!

“Kaga wanted you to fill me in on this spinning top. What’s the man talking about?” The irritation was audible in the captain’s voice.

Uesugi simply ignored the question. “What did forensics have to say?” he asked.

The captain must have sensed that Uesugi wasn’t in the mood to play games. He picked up a document from the corner of his desk.

“The string’s thickness and the width of the fibers were a perfect match for the strangulation marks on the neck.”

Uesugi inhaled noisily. The blood was pumping furiously through his veins.

The captain started to ask a question. Uesugi raised a hand to cut him off.

“Where’s Kaga?”

“No idea. Gone out somewhere. Said he needed to make some follow-up inquiries on this.”

“Okay. I’ll give you my report after I’ve spoken to him. You’re going to have to wait.”

“What the hell?”

In response to the captain’s sour glare, Uesugi bowed and walked away. When he consulted his watch, it was a little after seven.

It was nearly eight by the time Kaga returned. Uesugi grabbed him by the arm and dragged him out into the passageway.

“What the hell’s going on? You want to play to the crowd, be my guest. But don’t try and suck me into it.”

Kaga gently prized Uesugi’s hand off.

“Precinct detectives never get to solve cases all on their lonesome. The important thing is the news about the top. Did you hear?”

“Yeah, the captain filled me in. Why’d you zero in on it?”

“I don’t know, really. Tops are more of a New Year’s present, so it seemed funny for the kid to have gotten one at this time of year. Plus it’s not like there’s a whole load of shops that stock them. Who sells the things? I could only think of one place.”

“That Ningyocho toy shop? Well remembered.”

Kaga gave a nod.

“I’ve been walking around the precinct pretty much every day since I got posted here. I’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s sold where.”

“Don’t imagine the shopkeepers are too thrilled to have a cop swinging by all the time.”

“I thought so, too. That’s why I do my best not to look like one,” said Kaga, giving his shirt a discreet tug forward.

So that’s it! Uesugi suddenly understood why Kaga had been dressing like a slob.

“You said the top was stolen?”

“On the evening of June tenth. Just before the murder.”

“Procuring the murder weapon from a shop along the way to the crime scene? Would anyone actually do that?”

“God knows. Takes all sorts to make a world.”

“The string matches the strangulation marks, but we can’t definitively prove that that particular string was used in the murder.”

“I know. What we can be sure of is that Yosaku Kishida disposed of the string from that top.”

Uesugi frowned. He didn’t understand what Kaga was getting at.

“Kishida gave his grandson a spinning top and a length of string. The string, though, wasn’t the original string that came with the top. It was braided, rather than twisted string. Kishida must have picked up a second length of string somewhere else and put it together with the original top.”

“You think he threw away the original twisted string after the murder?”

“That seems a reasonable assumption, yes.”

“Which means...” Uesugi thought a moment. “That things would get really interesting if we could locate the shop where Kishida got the braided string.”

“That’s why I’ve been trying to find the place,” rejoined Kaga.

“Did you succeed?”

“Perhaps.” Kaga nodded a couple of times. “We should know for sure in two or three days.”

5

The hands of the clock stood at half past six.

Uesugi and several other investigators were sitting in a car parked at the curb, keeping an eye on the lobby of the building next to them. Kishida’s office was in the building, and Kishida was inside. Another team had the back door under surveillance.

An arrest warrant for Kishida hadn’t yet been issued. The plan today was to bring him in for voluntary questioning. Once in custody, Uesugi was convinced, it would only be a matter of time before the man confessed.

Kaga had come across a new batch of tops in Ningyocho. They came in three sizes: small, medium, and large, and he’d brought the shop’s whole stock, boxes and all. He found them on display in the street outside a traditional Japanese handicrafts store. All the tops at this shop had braided string.

“Finding just the string for a top isn’t easy. My guess was that Kishida bought a brand-new top just for the string that came with it. Since he’d be reluctant to buy a second top from the shop where he stole the first one, I tried hunting down another place that sold wooden spinning tops.”

As the string that came with each size of top was different, Kaga speculated that Kishida must have examined a number of them in an effort to find the one with the best string to go with his original top.

Kaga’s hunch was right. When forensics checked the boxes, they found fingerprints that matched the prints that had been lifted from Kishida’s business card on many of them.

The last question that needed to be cleared up was why Kishida felt compelled to give the top to his grandson and had gone to such lengths to do so. Kaga had a theory about that, too.

“Something must have happened involving the top when Kishida went over to his son and daughter-in-law’s place on June tenth. He would never have gone to such lengths otherwise.”

But what could that “something” be? Kaga was currently at Katsuya Kishida’s apartment doing his best to get an answer. He was pretty confident that he’d be able to extract the necessary information from the wife, Reiko.

A call came in to Uesugi’s cell phone at 6:30 on the dot.

“Uesugi here,” Uesugi said.

“Hi, this is Kaga. I’ve just left Katsuya Kishida’s apartment.”

“Did the wife tell you what you needed to know?”

“Sure did. I was right. Yosaku Kishida had a spinning top in his briefcase on the evening of the tenth, the same kind of top that was shoplifted. His grandson found it when he was digging around inside.”

Although Kaga delivered this explanation at breakneck speed, Uesugi managed to follow.

“Okay. So he was forced into a corner: he had to give the top to his grandson.”

“I discreetly let Reiko Kishida know that the string was different and Kishida’s alibi meaningless. I’m prepared to bet that she’s on the phone right now, either to her father-in-law or her husband.”

“Got it. Leave the rest to me.”

Uesugi hung up.

It was about ten minutes later that Yosaku Kishida emerged from the building. He was looking tense. The shadows cast by the low evening sun only deepened the lines on his face.

Uesugi signaled to his crew. All the detectives got out of the car and marched over to Kishida.

He did not respond when they blocked his way. He glanced up at Uesugi vaguely, as if his mind was somewhere else. Eventually the detective’s presence registered: Kishida’s eyes widened, but he still said nothing.

“Mr. Kishida?” said Uesugi. “We’d like to ask you a few questions. Could you come with us, please?”

Kishida’s jaw fell, and his eyes goggled. With his haggard, sunken cheeks, he looked more like a death’s-head than a human being.

A moment later his whole body sagged. He buckled at the knees and crashed wordlessly to the ground.

6 The Statement of Yosaku Kishida

It was twenty-seven years ago that Naohiro Kiyose first contacted me. We’d gone to college together, though he was in the year before me. He was setting up a cleaning company and wanted my help. I had only just started my own accounting practice; as business was still in short supply, I accepted his offer without a second thought. Knowing his character and his abilities, I was pretty confident that any business Kiyose launched was likely to succeed.

His business did succeed and on a scale beyond my wildest dreams. I hadn’t realized how much demand there was for a cleaning service. His company expanded very rapidly.

Soon after Kiyose’s marriage, we decided to set up a second company, a dummy company, as a tax shelter. He appointed Mineko, his wife, as nominal CEO of this new entity. She had to be paid a salary, of course. I opened a special bank account: it was in her name, but I was the one who managed it. The plan was to keep it as a source of emergency funds.

Twenty years passed. The Kiyoses and I remained on friendly terms. If there was any change, it was on their side. As you are aware, the Kiyoses ended up getting divorced. I don’t know much about the reasons. After the divorce, Kiyose hired a former bar hostess called Yuri Miyamoto as his personal secretary, but I’m pretty sure that she wasn’t what caused the divorce.

The two of them got divorced by mutual consent. Mineko hired a lawyer and demanded a fair settlement of assets. Both sides provided the details of their various personal bank accounts for the negotiations. I was there, of course, but largely kept quiet.

I believe that Mineko got a fair settlement. There was no evidence of Mr. Kiyose making any unaccounted-for withdrawals, and Mineko accepted the proposed settlement. So, as far as possible, their divorce was easy. I thought that it was all over and done with, at least as far as money matters were concerned.

I was wrong. Early this month, Mineko called my office. She wanted to get me to check up on something for her. She was adamant that I had to keep it a secret from Kiyose. I had no idea what the whole thing was about.

We met in a café close to Tokyo Station. Mineko seemed lively, far more animated than when she’d been married. It was nice to think that she was finally getting what she wanted out of life.

After a bit of a small talk, Mineko broached the topic she wanted to discuss. It was Yuri Miyamoto. She’d heard rumors about the president’s new secretary and the kind of woman she was. She asked if I thought she was Kiyose’s lover. Earlier I said I didn’t think Yuri Miyamoto was the reason they got divorced. That was because of this conversation: obviously, at the time of the divorce Mineko was unaware of Yuri Miyamoto’s existence.

I said that I didn’t know if they were lovers. And that’s God’s own truth. I still don’t know. With her background as the boss’s favorite hostess, chances are that something was going on, but Kiyose himself never said anything about it to me.

Mineko wasn’t worried about Yuri Miyamoto being her ex-husband’s lover; all she cared about was when their relationship had started. That was when I realized that she planned to sue for compensatory damages if Kiyose had been unfaithful during their marriage.

I reiterated that I knew nothing about Kiyose and Yuri Miyamoto’s relationship. Mineko proposed that we examine the movement of money in his accounts. If the two of them were lovers, she guessed that he’d have been giving her cash and buying her all sorts of expensive things.

I explained that payments to and from his accounts had been reviewed as part of the original divorce settlement. Mineko’s answer was to suggest that perhaps Kiyose was using company money. It would be simple enough for him, as company president, to set up an account for her under a plausible-sounding name and direct money to it. That was totally out of the question, I countered. If he were doing anything like that, I’d be the first to know. I was the person who had to sign off on the accounts.

But Mineko wouldn’t listen. I was a friend of her ex-husband, she argued, so maybe I was covering for him? She wanted the company’s books to be audited. My guess is that she planned to hire another accountant to do the audit.

I started to get a bad feeling: it looked like things were heading south fast.

Sure enough, my worst fears came true when Mineko started talking about the shell company we had set up twenty-some years ago. She wanted someone to investigate its accounts for her. When the Kiyoses negotiated their divorce settlement, the shell company had been classified as a “tangible asset belonging to the main company.” As such, it was off the table.

I managed to keep a calm exterior, but inside I was in a state of complete panic. Things were going on with that shell company that I didn’t want anyone else finding out about.

I’d been helping myself to money from the CEO account — the one in Mineko’s name — for several years. But that wasn’t the half of it. Kiyose had signed over control of all the shell company’s accounts to me. Taking advantage of that, I’d diverted monies way in excess of what he owed me for handling his taxes to my own company’s account. It was probably around thirty million yen, all told.

All the money I embezzled went to pay off my debts. Not only was my accounting business doing poorly, I’d also dug myself into a major hole with my gambling habit. I always hoped I could repay the money before anyone noticed it was gone. I couldn’t, though.

Anyway, Mineko and I went our separate ways, after arranging to meet at the same café in a week’s time. I was insane with worry. I’d advised her not to mention her plans to anyone for the time being, but I knew that if I didn’t take action, she would eventually get herself a lawyer and approach Kiyose directly. I knew him. Since he had nothing to hide, he would be quite happy to let her poke around all she wanted. That would mean exposure and ruin for me.

The week went by, and I still had no idea what I was going to do. As agreed, Mineko and I met for a second time. She was getting impatient. It was obvious that if I didn’t help her, she’d get in touch with Kiyose herself. Panicking, I promised to have a report ready for her within the next couple of days. In fact, I had no idea what I was really going to do.

I couldn’t catch a wink of sleep that night. I was obsessing over how to deal with Mineko, but still I couldn’t come up with a plan. Time seemed to pass much faster than normal.

I don’t know when the solution came to me. All I can say is that by the time I left my office the next day, I knew exactly what I had to do. The fact that I called my son’s place to say I’d be there at eight is proof of that. I wanted to be sure I had an alibi. Yes, that’s right. The solution that had come to me was that Mineko had to die. It was evil, I know, but what other option did I have?

I set out for Kodenmacho, briefcase in hand. I was already on the subway when I realized my mistake. I didn’t have anything to kill her with. Maybe a strong man can throttle someone bare-handed, but me? No way. I couldn’t expect to chance upon the perfect murder weapon in her apartment, either.

I got off the train and began wandering around looking for a knife. There were all sorts of shops. After a few minutes, I stopped outside a place called Kisamiya. It’s a cutlery shop that’s been in business since the Edo period. They had all these handmade carving knives on display.

The things in Kisamiya were all so sinister and menacing. They freaked me out. There were these monstrous shears that doubled as a sashimi knife. The sight of them made me physically flinch.

I realized that I could never do it with a knife. I needed to kill her quickly, so she wouldn’t be able to run away. Even if I managed to do that with a knife, blood spatter would be a big risk. Disposing of the weapon wouldn’t be easy, either. Above all, buying a knife in a place like that would probably come out during the police investigation.

If knives were out, what weapon should I look for? Strangling seemed like the best option; it would prevent her from crying out and eliminate the risk of blood spatter. I started looking for string. I didn’t want to use my own necktie. I was worried that it might leave fibers on the neck that the police could trace back to me.

String is something you can buy anywhere. I went into a convenience store to buy a roll, but changed my mind when I saw the CCTV cameras. The police were sure to send someone around there when they figured out what kind of string had been used. Quantity was another problem. I needed a meter at most; how was I supposed to get rid of all the string I didn’t use?

Leaving the convenience store, I resumed my wandering, looking for a place that sold string more suited to my purpose. I came across a fabric store that had a wide selection of string and cord. Still, a man like me buying a length of cord and nothing else at a shop was sure to strike people as odd. The clerk would definitely remember me. I went into a few places that sold belts and ties, but my nerve failed. I was convinced that the store clerks would remember me, no matter what I bought or where I bought it.

That was when the tops caught my eye. There was this shop — I didn’t notice its name — with all these wooden toys displayed outside. The tops were there along with everything else.

I was lucky. There was no one near me in the street and no one in the shop, as far as I could tell. I grabbed one of the tops, shoved it into my suit pocket, and hightailed it out of the area. I’d never stolen anything from a shop in my life, and my heart was pounding away for quite a while after.

Once I’d put some distance between myself and the shop, I pulled the string off the top and put the top into my briefcase. The string felt strong enough to strangle someone with. I put it in my pocket and went over to a nearby pay phone. I didn’t use my cell, in order to avoid my number coming up on Mineko’s phone.

Mineko picked up fast. When she expressed surprise about my calling from a pay phone, I lied and told her my cell phone was broken.

She’d been out, she explained, but would be back home in a minute or two.

I asked her if we could meet up at her place. That would be fine, she said, provided we finish up by eight, when a friend of hers was coming over. I assured her that I was already close by and that our business wouldn’t take long at all.

It was probably a little past seven when, doing my best not to be noticed, I slipped into her building, walked up to her apartment, and rang her doorbell. By this point, I’d taken the string out of my pocket and was holding it bunched up in my right hand.

Mineko didn’t suspect a thing. She invited me in. It was just the two of us.

The minute she turned her back on me, I threw the string over her head and pulled it tight, crossing my hands at the back of her neck.

Mineko had no idea what hit her. She hardly even fought back. It must have been a good ten seconds before she began thrashing with her arms and legs. She really struggled, flinging herself this way and that, jerking her head around. She never made so much as a peep, though; perhaps she couldn’t.

Eventually, she just sort of crumpled and collapsed and stopped moving entirely. Doing my best not to look at the body, I unwound the string from around her throat. I opened the front door a crack and peeped into the hallway. There was nobody there, so I slipped out. Using my handkerchief, I wiped my fingerprints off the doorknob and the doorbell.

Once I was out of her building, I walked a couple of blocks and caught a taxi to my son and daughter-in-law’s place. I must have got there slightly before eight. We were supposed to be discussing the arrangements for the anniversary ceremony of my wife’s death, but I was so tense that even small talk was a struggle.

It was then that my five-year-old grandson discovered the top in my briefcase. My daughter-in-law asked me why I was carrying something like that around with me. Unable to improvise anything clever on the spot, I made up some lame story about having been given it by a friend and left the string for it at the office. In fact, the string was right there, burning a hole in my trouser pocket. It was just that I couldn’t bear the thought of my grandson playing with a piece of string that I had killed somebody with. I retrieved the top from him and promised to bring it back, along with the string, the next time I was there. I planned to pick up a suitable piece of string from somewhere.

I left my son and daughter-in-law’s place and headed for Shinbashi. I drank a few whiskies at a bar, one of my regular haunts. In part, that was to give myself an alibi. Since the body had already been discovered by then, it was useless in that regard. I didn’t know; I just imagined that I’d be better off being with other people than by myself. I got home late and burned the string.

The murder was big news the next day. Word of it even came to my office. I couldn’t face the idea of going looking for new string for the top. I wasn’t up to it; I spent the day cowering in terror, expecting a detective to show up with an arrest warrant at any moment.

The police contacted me for the first time on June the twelfth. They telephoned to say that they’d found my company’s number in Mineko’s list of recent incoming calls. They were nice enough and asked me what we had talked about.

I cooked up some story about her consulting me about her tax returns. Given Mineko’s postdivorce plans to work as a freelance translator, she’d need to start filing a tax return of her own. The detective I spoke to seemed to swallow my story.

The fact that the police seemed to buy my story gave my confidence a boost. That evening I went out looking for a string for the spinning top. I hadn’t the faintest idea where I could find one. Despite only needing the string, I figured I’d have to buy another top. Unable to think of any other neighborhoods likely to have shops selling old-fashioned spinning tops, I set off for Ningyocho again.

I didn’t feel comfortable going back to the shop where I’d stolen the top, so I walked around until I came across a shop that specialized in traditional handicrafts. It had these wooden spinning tops outside. There were three sizes: small, medium, and large. I had to look at all of them to see how they compared to the top I’d stolen, and eventually I settled on the small one. After leaving the shop, I pulled off the string and dumped the top in the trash outside a convenience store. I then went straight to my son and daughter-in-law’s place and presented my grandson with the old top and the new string that I’d just bought. I thought I had successfully covered all my traces.

In fact, I hadn’t shaken off the police. Far from it. I could sense their suspicions intensifying with every day that passed. The news that a detective had been around to my son and daughter-in-law’s place really frightened me. My time’s up, I thought.

It was when my daughter-in-law told me about a detective named Kaga giving her the right string for the top I’d given my grandson that I knew for sure that I wasn’t going to get away with it.

What I did to Mineko is unpardonable. I wasn’t myself when I did it. I should have come clean about embezzling the money and paid the price. Instead, in a misguided attempt to protect my good name, I killed an innocent woman. I am ready to take my punishment, no matter how harsh.

7

There were no major inconsistencies in Yosaku Kishida’s confession. The police, who used it as the basis for a reenactment of his movements at and in the environs of the crime scene, concluded that he could plausibly have done everything that he claimed to. Sure enough, when they investigated the accounts of Naohiro Kiyose’s shell company, they found thirty million yen missing and unaccounted for. On top of that, almost twenty million yen had been withdrawn from the account in the name of CEO Mineko Kiyose. Naohiro Kiyose himself was quite unaware that money was being siphoned off in this way. He had complete faith in his accountant, who had been his friend for thirty or so years.

Despite getting off to a slow start, it looked as though the Kodenmacho murder case was going to be neatly tied up. You could see the satisfaction in the faces of the captain and the other higher-ups in charge of the case.

Did they have all the backup proof they needed? Not quite. The single biggest issue that still needed to be resolved was what Kishida had done with the money he’d embezzled. In his statement, he claimed it had gone to paying off the debts of his business and large gambling losses. As far as the police could tell from going over its books, his company wasn’t actually doing that badly. Also, none of the people who knew Kishida well knew anything about his being a gambler.

Although the police pressed him repeatedly on this point, Kishida held to his story. If his company appeared to be in relatively good financial health, his cooking of the books explained that. As for the gambling, he’d been careful to indulge his habit only where he wouldn’t be seen by people who knew him.

As the days passed, the higher-ups began grumbling that enough was enough. The perpetrator of a homicide had provided them with a confession, and they had everything that they needed to indict him. Knowing where the embezzled money had gone was neither here nor there.

Although Uesugi had been leading the questioning when Kishida provided his confession, he took a step back from the case. He wasn’t the one who had cracked it; it was a local precinct detective who actually figured the whole thing out. Since openly admitting that would entail a division-wide loss of face for Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s Homicide Division, Uesugi decided that staying away from the task force HQ was the best course.

A persistent, gentle rain was falling. Uesugi was walking down Amazake Alley, umbrella in hand, when his cell phone buzzed. He checked to see who was calling: it was Kaga.

“What d’you want?” he asked.

“Where are you?”

“Out. Taking a stroll.”

“If you’re anywhere near Ningyocho, could we get together briefly?”

“What the hell is it now?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you. I’ll be waiting by the subway station,” said Kaga tersely, then rang off.

When Uesugi got there, Kaga waved extravagantly to catch his eye. He then hailed a cab and ordered it to go to Asakusabashi.

“Where the hell are you taking me?”

“I want it to be a surprise. You’ll enjoy it more that way,” declared Kaga earnestly.

Uesugi guessed their destination just before they got there. He’d been there before: it was the performance space of the theater company that Koki Kiyose belonged to.

“What’d you bring me here for?”

“You might as well go inside.”

The actors were busy rehearsing in the cramped space. Several people turned to look at the two men as they walked in. Kaga nodded hello and, losing interest, the actors turned back to what they were doing.

Kaga pulled up a couple of folding chairs and set them side by side. Uesugi took the hint and sat down. Kaga did the same.

The play continued up on the stage. From the well-finished stage sets and props, it looked as though opening night was just around the corner.

In between scenes, the stagehands changed the sets. They performed their task fast and efficiently. It occurred to Uesugi that the actors weren’t the only ones who needed practice to get their jobs right.

Uesugi recognized one of the people busily moving things around: it was Koki Kiyose. He had a towel wrapped around his head and was wearing a sleeveless running shirt. His bare shoulders glistened with sweat.

“Isn’t that fellow in the play?” muttered Uesugi. Kaga put his finger to his lips to shush him.

The play was set in England a long time ago. It had a relatively small cast, and the main character was an old man. He, it turned out, was a celebrated detective, now retired, who was recalling his past cases as he looked back over his life.

The two detectives ended up watching the play all the way through. Despite having arrived when it was about halfway through, Uesugi enjoyed it. It was poignant and touching.

“Not bad, eh?” commented Kaga.

“S’pose not,” Uesugi rejoined, although he had actually liked it a lot better than that.

What bothered him was the fact that Koki Kiyose came out for a bow only at the final curtain. In this play, the kid was a full-time stagehand rather than an actor, Uesugi realized.

Just then, Koki Kiyose ran over to them shouting a greeting. He unwound the towel from his head, revealing hair sodden with sweat. He bowed deeply to Kaga.

“Thank you for everything you’ve done for us, Detective. I say that on behalf of my mother, too.”

“Don’t mention it. We’re just doing our jobs, right?”

Kaga turned to Uesugi for confirmation. Uesugi nodded.

“I’m sure things will be tough, but good luck to you.”

“Thank you.”

“You weren’t acting today?”

“No. I won’t be performing for a while yet,” Koki replied crisply. There was a determined look in his eyes.

“Because of what happened?” Uesugi asked, with a touch of hesitancy.

“My mother’s murder was the trigger. I had to step down from the lead role because I couldn’t concentrate. I think it was all for the best, in a way; I wasn’t ready. I plan to resume acting when I’ve done some work on myself, built up my confidence.

“I’ve got to get back to work. I’ll say good-bye,” Koki said, returning backstage.

“Shall we go?” Kaga suggested.

“You brought me all the way here just to meet that spoiled brat?”

Kaga blinked with surprise. “Did he look like a spoiled brat to you?”

“I guess not.” Uesugi rubbed his chin. “There was something different about him.”

“You bet there was.”

“How come?”

“I’ll tell you later. Bear with me a bit. It won’t take long.”

The next place Kaga took Uesugi was a pastry shop in Kodenmacho. It had a café area at the back, where the two men sat down. Although the place was clearly proud of its cakes, Uesugi, like Kaga, ordered a simple iced coffee.

“Surely this place is—”

“That’s right. Mineko Mitsui was here just before she was murdered.” Kaga directed a meaningful glance toward the counter. “You see the sales clerk there? She’s the one who told us about the phone call Ms. Mitsui got.”

“So it was you who located this place? No wonder my bosses didn’t say anything about it. How on earth did you do it?”

“There’s something else I want to tell you first. Let me take things in the proper order.” Kaga took a long swig of his iced coffee, as if getting ready for a long speech.

He began with something that had happened at a rice cracker shop. It involved an insurance salesman who became a suspect when he concocted a fake alibi for the police.

The next episode, which was about an old-style ryotei restaurant, was connected to the single wasabi-spiked snack cake discovered in Mineko Mitsui’s apartment. That was followed by stories involving a china shop Mineko Mitsui frequented; the proprietor of a clock shop whom she knew only by sight; then a friend of hers who was a translator. Although none of the individual stories had a direct link to the murder, Uesugi was kicking himself as he listened to Kaga. The precinct detective had looked into things that the rest of them had all dismissed as insignificant, keeping at it until he got to the truth, regardless of whether there was a connection to the murder or not.

Kaga finally got around to the pastry shop they were in. Uesugi was startled when the name of Koki Kiyose came up in this context. Kaga explained how Mineko Mitsui had made the mistake of assuming that the pregnant girl who worked there was the girlfriend of her son.

“That’s the girl there,” said Kaga, rolling his eyes at the girl behind the counter. Sure enough, her belly was somewhat swollen.

“Let me guess how this particular story goes: Ms. Mitsui was so thrilled that her son was about to become a father that she moved to be closer to him. Since, however, he was an aspiring actor, her precious boy didn’t have a proper full-time job or salary to go with it. The idea of claiming compensation from her ex-husband came out of her desire to help him out?” Uesugi sighed. “No wonder he seemed different today.”

“That’s not the only thing that affected him.”

Kaga then launched into another story — the most surprising one so far, thought Uesugi. Yuri Miyamoto, who was widely believed to be Naohiro Kiyose’s mistress, was in fact his daughter.

“Keep that under your hat, please. The two of them haven’t gone public yet about their relationship,” Kaga said.

Uesugi was shaking his head in amazement.

“I can’t believe that so many other things were going on in the background of this case. Anyway, if that’s not enough to inspire the son to get serious about life, nothing will. He must have learned not to take his parents for granted.”

“You’ve put your finger on it, Uesugi.” Kaga leaned toward him. “Doing this job, this is something I think about a lot. When a terrible crime like murder is committed, of course we need to catch the person who did it. But we also need to follow through until we’ve figured out why the crime happened in the first place. Unless we can identify the cause, there’s nothing to stop someone else from making the same mistake. Learning the truth can teach us all sorts of valuable lessons. Look at Koki Kiyose: he learned his lesson, and he changed as a result. Can you think of anyone else who would be better off changing?”

Uesugi was using his straw to stir his iced coffee. His hand came to a complete stop. He looked Kaga in the eye.

“What are you trying to say?”

“I think you know what I’m getting at. Kishida is hiding something from us. Why aren’t you working harder to get him to come clean?”

Uesugi looked down at his hands. “I still don’t get what you’re saying.”

“Maybe you sympathize with Kishida? But are you satisfied with the way things are now? Seriously, are you?”

“You listen to me.” Leaning forward slightly, Uesugi glared at Kaga. “If there’s something you want to say, why don’t you just come out and say it.”

“Okay then, here goes.” Kaga’s face darkened, and his eyes gleamed with an intensity Uesugi had not seen before. “You’re the only person who’s capable of getting Kishida to open up. So why don’t you? Make him tell us the truth.”

The bastard! Uesugi realized that Kaga must know all about him. He wouldn’t be speaking to him like this unless he knew about the unspeakably foolish mistake he had made three years before.

“I’m not interested in standing out,” said Uesugi softly. “I’m a scumbag. I don’t deserve to be in the police. I applied for early retirement back then, but I let myself be talked out of it. I regret changing my mind. I wish I’d just walked away.”

“Why don’t you share your regrets with the suspect and see what happens?”

Reaching for his iced coffee, Uesugi shook the glass. The ice cubes clinked and rattled.

“That’s just bullshit,” he muttered.

8

Yosaku Kishida was even thinner than the last time Uesugi had seen him. His cheeks had hollowed out further, and his eyes sunk even deeper into his skull. His shoulder blades protruded through the fabric of his jacket. He was like a skeleton in a suit.

Kishida was not looking at Uesugi. Are those eyes actually seeing anything? Uesugi wondered. They were unfocused, staring off into the middle distance.

“There’s this one rather bossy detective in this precinct,” Uesugi began. “He insists that I’m the only person who can do this. That’s why I’m here to interview you again. To be honest, I have no idea whether I’ll succeed in getting you to speak. I’m not confident in my chances. Still, at least do me the favor of hearing me out. I can’t do more than that.”

Uesugi sipped some tea from his cup.

“I’m going to be fifty-five this year. I’ve been married twenty-one years. I was keen to have kids from the get-go, but we had trouble conceiving. It took my wife three years to get pregnant. When she had a baby boy the next year, I was jumping up and down for joy.”

Although Kishida didn’t seem to be listening, a subtle change came over his expression, and his eyebrows were twitching.

“Maybe it was because I was already middle-aged by the time he came along, but I adored the boy; I was infatuated. Even when I was on stakeouts, I’d call the house when the other guys were out of earshot so I could listen to my son saying words he’d just learned in that sweet little voice of his. I was the original doting dad. I knew I was being ridiculous, but I felt more proud than ashamed.”

Again Kishida’s expression seemed to change. From staring vacantly at the table in front of him, his eyes swam into focus, as if he was making an effort to see something.

“I adored my son. No one can deny that — but adoring someone and taking proper care of them are two very different things. If you want to take proper care of your child, you make the choices that will give them the best possible future. I couldn’t do that. I was happy floating on cloud nine, thrilled to have someone to pour my love into.”

Uesugi took another swig of his tea.

“Then, miracle of miracles, my little boy started growing up. Kids can’t stay adorable bundles of cuteness forever. They start causing all sorts of problems. Most dads react by running away, taking refuge behind that convenient old pretext of ‘being busy with work.’ I know I did. When my wife tried to talk to me about our boy, I’d just blow up at her. I never made a serious effort to discuss his problems with her. If she criticized my parenting, I trotted out the line about ‘already having one full-time job’ and deftly shunted all the family’s difficulties onto her shoulders. I wasn’t overly concerned when she warned me that our son was hanging out with a bad crowd. ‘It’s just a phase that any normal, healthy kid goes through,’ I told her. I was determined to look on the bright side. I was deceiving myself.”

Kishida shot a glance at Uesugi. The instant their eyes met, the older man looked away.

“It happened three years ago. I was on standby at Metropolitan Police HQ in central Tokyo when a call came for me. It was a local cop. We’d worked a case together one time. Anyway, this guy says he’d picked up a kid who was just about to ride off on a motorbike without a helmet on, and that the kid was making a big song and dance about his dad being ‘Detective Uesugi of TMPD Homicide.’ The cop was calling to confirm that he was my kid. He gave me the details, and I confirmed that yes, the kid was my son. I was pretty shocked: riding without a helmet was bad, but worse still was that my son didn’t have a driver’s license to begin with. The cop asked me what he should do. I said I was really sorry, but could he see his way to turning a blind eye just this once?”

Uesugi’s voice was getting croaky. He reached for his teacup, but his hand stopped in midair when he realized that the cup was empty.

“The cop did as I asked. Since he’d not actually caught my son riding the bike, he was able to send him home with just a warning. It was a huge relief. The boy had just got into a good high school and could have been expelled. It was only later that I realized what a disastrous judgment call I’d made. I should have been tough. I should have asked the cop to follow the rules and come down on him like a ton of bricks. Perhaps then...”

Uesugi’s voice caught in his throat. He sucked in a couple of deep breaths.

“Of course, I gave the boy a good telling-off myself. I don’t think that anything I said really registered with him. He could probably tell that I didn’t really mean it. It was a week later that I got the news: my son had been killed in an accident on the expressway. He took a sharp curve at eighty miles per hour, lost control, and smashed into a wall. He still didn’t have his license, of course. The bike was borrowed from a friend; it was the same one he’d been caught trying to ride without a helmet the week before. I later discovered that he’d been bragging to all his friends that he could get away with anything by throwing around the name of his ‘big-shot detective’ father.”

Pulling himself upright in his chair, Uesugi looked at Kishida, who was half hunched over the table.

“My son did something wrong, and I tried to protect him. In fact, all I succeeded in doing was pushing him even farther down the wrong path. I failed both as a parent and as a cop. Parents have a duty to set their kids on the right path, even if being loathed is the only reward they get. If parents don’t do it, who will? You committed murder, Mr. Kishida, and you’re going to pay for your crime. But do you want to pay that price without even confronting the truth? Chances are that will only lead to more disasters down the road. Well?”

Kishida was trembling all over. As the trembling slowly increased in intensity, a groan burst from his lips. When he finally lifted his head, his eyes were red with tears.

“Tell me the truth,” commanded Uesugi.

9

For the first time in several weeks, the sky was a cloudless expanse of blue. As if the clear weather came with a penalty clause, though, the sidewalk radiated heat. By the time Uesugi reached the coffee shop, his back was drenched with sweat.

Detective Kaga was sitting at a table that overlooked the street. He was busy jotting something down on a napkin. He grunted hello as Uesugi came up.

“What are you adding up there?” asked Uesugi, sitting down opposite him. The napkin was covered in pen strokes.

“What this?” Kaga screwed the napkin into a ball with his fist. “It’s the number of men going by with and without jackets. The number of people with jackets on has gone down.”

Uesugi called the waitress and ordered an iced coffee.

“We’ve verified how much Katsuya Kishida stole from his employer. It was close to fifty million yen.”

“Wow, definitely not peanuts,” Kaga replied, looking rather bored.

It turned out that Yosaku Kishida hadn’t been siphoning money to cover debts of his own. He had started embezzling money — reluctantly — when Katsuya, his son, came begging for his help. Katsuya had been embezzling money himself from the construction company where he worked and, with an audit imminent, was about to be found out.

“The incredible thing was that Katsuya had absolutely no idea how his father got his hands on all that money. He just thought that his dad had the money on hand. Astonishingly obtuse! Katsuya’s wife was equally oblivious about her husband’s embezzling. She seemed barely aware that their lifestyle was more lavish than normal.”

Kaga said nothing. He was staring at the street beyond the window. Uesugi followed his gaze to the signboard of a rice cracker shop on the far side of the street.

Uesugi’s iced coffee arrived. He tossed it down without bothering to use the straw.

“There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you. When did you first zero in on Kishida’s son?”

Kaga tilted his head quizzically.

“I never really ‘zeroed in on him.’”

“You sure? I think you figured out early on that he was involved and deliberately chose me as your partner.”

Kaga’s head tilted even further over, to signal complete incomprehension.

“When a detective’s as sharp as you, you can partner with anybody; it doesn’t matter. You chose me, and I know why. You’d heard about what happened to my son, and you thought I’d be the perfect person to get Yosaku Kishida to open up. Am I right?”

That was certainly the way things had turned out. Uesugi was convinced that this precinct cop had stage-managed the whole saga from start to finish.

Kaga smiled amiably and gave a little shake of his head.

“You’re giving me way too much credit.”

“Why did you choose me, then?”

“Two reasons.” Kaga held up a couple of fingers. “The first is that you were responsible for investigating Yosaku Kishida. If someone else had been in charge, I’d probably have worked with them instead. What I knew about your son was the second reason. I heard that you very nearly quit the force because of what happened to him. It was a terrible experience, but the more terrible the experiences we go through, the more we should try to apply them to the work we do as detectives. That’s why I chose you as my partner.”

Kaga looked at Uesugi with cool, detached eyes. Uesugi looked away, wiping the moisture drops off his glass with a fingertip.

“You talk like you know all about me. How much do you really know?”

“You know that I was right about you.”

“Were you?” murmured Uesugi. He was tempted to fight back. I know all about you, he wanted to say. He still recalled the story he’d heard just before he was assigned to this task force.

Kaga had once been in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s Homicide Division. He’d been demoted back to a precinct detective after being summoned to appear in court as a circumstantial witness in a murder case. The victim’s family had made a formal complaint about the “investigator’s inappropriate emotional involvement” having delayed the resolution of the case. (As a matter of fact, Kaga’s efforts had made a decisive contribution to unraveling what was a very difficult case.)

In the end, though, Uesugi kept his mouth shut. Detective Kaga probably wasn’t the kind of person to waste time wallowing in regret.

“Yosaku Kishida’s trial will be starting any day now. It was all too brief, but thanks for everything.” Uesugi stood up, putting the money for his coffee on the table.

“Let’s do it again sometime. I can show you around the neighborhood.”

“Maybe next time we can choose a cooler time of year?” replied Uesugi, as he headed for the exit.

Just then, a young girl came in from the street. She wore jeans and a T-shirt, and her hair was dyed brown and symmetrically cut. She made a beeline for Kaga.

“Goofing off again, Detective Kaga?”

“Absolutely not. I’m on patrol.”

“Pull the other one. You’ll never get promoted at this rate.”

Kaga chuckled merrily.

“Want a banana juice? My treat.”

“No thanks. I’ve got to come up with some new hairstyling ideas. I’ll be seeing you.”

The girl left the café, crossed the street, and went into the rice cracker shop.

“She’s the daughter of the family that runs that place,” said Kaga. “She’s studying hairdressing.”

Uesugi walked back to the table. “May I ask you one last question, Detective Kaga? What kind of man are you?”

Picking up a fan that was lying on the table, Kaga flicked it open and began fanning himself.

“Me? Nobody special. In this neighborhood, I’m just a newcomer.”