Salvation of a Saint

FIFTEEN

The tea shop and café ‘Kuzay’ was located on the first floor of an office building in Odenmacho, a corner of the Nihonbashi district in eastern Tokyo. Not far from Suitengu Avenue and its rows of bustling financial institutions, it was the perfect spot for an office lady’s lunchtime outing.

Kusanagi walked in through the glass doors and up to the sales counter. He had heard that the store stocked over fifty varieties of tea, and sure enough, there they were, all individually labelled and sorted into neat rows. Behind the counter was a little tea room. Even at the relatively quiet hour of four in the afternoon, he saw a few customers scattered around the café, sipping tea and reading newspapers. One or two were dressed in company uniforms. Male customers were definitely in the minority.

A diminutive waitress in white approached. ‘Just one of you?’ she asked with a plainly artificial smile. Kusanagi guessed he didn’t have the look of the regular clientele.

He nodded and the waitress showed him to a table against the wall, her smile still intact.

The menu was a long list of teas, none of which Kusanagi had even heard of before yesterday. He now had a passing familiarity with several of the varieties and had even sampled a few. This was his fourth tea shop so far.

He called over the waitress and ordered a chai. He knew from a conversation at one of the previous cafés that it was made by steeping Assam tea leaves in milk, and had decided that he rather liked this combination. He could stand having another cup.

‘I was wondering,’ Kusanagi said to the waitress, pulling out his business card and showing it to her, ‘if it might be possible for me to speak with the manager briefly?’

One look at the card and the waitress’s smile evaporated. Kusanagi hastily waved his hand. ‘Don’t worry, it’s nothing serious,’ he said. ‘I just need to ask about one of your customers.’

‘I’ll go and ask.’

‘Thanks.’ Kusanagi was about to ask whether it was all right for him to smoke when he spotted the no smoking sign on the opposite wall.

He took another look around the tea room. The atmosphere was quiet and pleasantly relaxed. There was enough space between the tables that two people on a date wouldn’t have to worry about other patrons overhearing a conversation. He could picture Yoshitaka Mashiba coming to a place like this. Nonetheless, Kusanagi kept his expectations low. The other three tea rooms he’d already visited were practically carbon-copy versions of this one.

Moments later, a woman wearing a black vest over a white shirt was standing by the detective’s table, a nervous look on her face. She wasn’t wearing much make-up, and her hair was tied in a knot at the back of her head. Kusanagi guessed she was in her mid-thirties.

‘Can I help you?’

‘Hi.’ Kusanagi smiled. ‘Detective Kusanagi with the Metropolitan Police. I’m sorry, your name was?’

‘Hamada.’

‘Thanks for coming out to talk with me. I promise not to take up too much of your time. Please, sit down.’ Kusanagi indicated the chair across from him as he pulled out a photograph of Yoshitaka from inside his jacket. ‘I was wondering if you ever saw this man at your establishment? This pertains to an ongoing investigation, but if he came here, it would have been about two years ago.’

Mrs Hamada took the photo from him and looked at it for a while before shrugging. ‘He looks familiar, but I can’t say for sure. We have a lot of customers here, and I don’t make a habit of staring at them.’

It was the same answer he had got at the other three places.

‘Right. I’m guessing he came here with a woman …’ Kusanagi added, on the off chance that it might help.

She smiled and shrugged again. ‘We have a lot of couples here,’ she said, laying the picture back down on the table.

Kusanagi nodded and smiled again, a little thinly. He wasn’t exactly disappointed – he hadn’t expected much more. But the constant dead ends were getting a little tiresome.

‘Was that all you wanted to know?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

The manager stood and walked away just as the waitress arrived with Kusanagi’s tea. She was about to set it down on the table when she noticed the photograph and her hand stopped.

‘Oh, sorry.’ Kusanagi picked up the picture.

The waitress stood there, cup and saucer still in hand, looking at him. She blinked.

‘Yes?’ Kusanagi prompted her.

‘Is that the customer you came to ask about?’ she asked with apparent reluctance.

Kusanagi’s eyes widened, and he turned the photograph towards her so she could get a better look. ‘You know him?’

‘Yes – only as a customer, though.’

Now the manager returned; she’d been hovering nearby, and she had overheard the conversation. ‘Really?’ she asked the waitress. ‘You know him?’

‘I’m pretty sure it’s him,’ the waitress said. ‘He came in several times.’ Though there was still some hesitation in her voice, the girl seemed confident in her memory.

‘Do you mind if I speak with her a moment?’ Kusanagi asked Mrs Hamada.

‘Yes, of course,’ the manager quickly replied, turning to greet a newly arrived customer.

Kusanagi invited the waitress to sit down across from him. ‘When did you see this man?’ he asked.

‘I think the first time was about three years ago. I had just started working here, and I didn’t know all the teas yet. He got impatient with me. That’s why I remember him.’

‘Was he alone?’

‘No, he always came with his wife.’

‘His wife? What did she look like?’

‘Pretty, with long hair. I thought she might not be entirely Japanese – maybe Eurasian?’

Not Ayane Mashiba then, Kusanagi thought. Ayane was pretty, but there was no mistaking her for anything other than pure Japanese. In any case, three years ago was well before Mashiba had met her.

‘How old did she look?’

‘Oh, early thirties. Maybe a little older.’

‘Did they say they were married?’

‘Well …’ The waitress frowned, thinking. ‘Maybe I just assumed they were. They certainly looked like a married couple. They were very close … they often came in after going shopping.’

‘Do you remember anything else about the woman? Any little detail would be helpful.’

A worried look came into the girl’s eyes. ‘Well, this might’ve just been another assumption of mine, but …’ she began slowly. ‘I think she was a painter.’

‘A painter … Like an artist?’

She nodded, looking up at him. ‘She brought a sketchbook with her one time … or something like that, anyhow. It was in a case about this size.’ She spread her hands about sixty centimetres apart. ‘It was square and flat.’

‘But you never saw inside it?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ she replied, looking down.

Kusanagi recalled that Hiromi Wakayama had told him one of Yoshitaka’s exes was involved in publishing. If she was a painter, maybe she published books of her artwork. But that didn’t fit with what Hiromi had said about Yoshitaka not wanting to give his opinion of her books. Looking over a collection of drawings or paintings couldn’t have been that onerous a task.

‘Anything else you noticed?’ Kusanagi asked.

The waitress shook her head, then shot him a curious look. ‘Were they not married?’

‘I don’t think so, but why?’

‘Well, I don’t remember all the details,’ she said, putting a hand to her forehead, ‘but I have the feeling they talked about kids – not their own kids, but about wanting to have kids. At least, I think that was them. Or, I don’t know … I might be getting them mixed up with another couple.’

Bingo. She wasn’t confused. The couple had definitely been Yoshitaka Mashiba and his girlfriend of the time. A lead, finally. Kusanagi let himself get a little excited.

He thanked the waitress and let her go, reaching out for his cup of chai. It had gone cold, but the blend of spice and sweet milk was sublime.

He drank half the cup, considering how he might track down Mashiba’s painter. Then his mobile phone rang. He checked the display and saw with some surprise that it was Yukawa. He kept his voice low as he answered, not wanting to bother any of the other customers. ‘Kusanagi speaking.’

‘It’s me. You good to talk?’

‘Yeah. I’ll have to keep my voice down, but how could I refuse a rare call from you? What’s up?’

‘Got something I wanted to talk to you about. Any time today?’

‘I can make time, if it’s that important. What’s this about?’

‘I’ll save the details for when we meet, but suffice to say, it’s about your current case.’

Kusanagi sighed. ‘You and Utsumi got some secret plan brewing again?’

‘If it were a secret, would I be calling you? So do you want to meet or not?’

Arrogant bastard, Kusanagi thought with a dry chuckle. ‘Fine. Where do you want me?’

‘I’ll leave that to you. Just somewhere smoke-free, if you don’t mind,’ Yukawa said, his tone suggesting that it was irrelevant whether Kusanagi minded or not.

They met in a coffee shop near Shinagawa station, close to the hotel where Ayane was staying. Kusanagi planned to wrap up the talk with Yukawa quickly so he could go and ask her about the painter ex.

He found Yukawa already there, sitting at the back of the no smoking section, reading a magazine. Despite the fact that winter was around the corner, the physicist was wearing a short-sleeved shirt. A black leather jacket rested on the chair next to him.

Kusanagi walked over to his table and stood beside it. Yukawa didn’t look up.

‘What are you reading so intently?’ the detective asked, pulling out a chair.

Yukawa tapped his magazine with his finger. ‘It’s an article about dinosaurs. They’re talking about using CAT scan technology to analyze fossils.’

‘A science magazine, then,’ Kusanagi said, secretly disappointed that he hadn’t managed to catch Yukawa unawares. ‘So what’s so great about CAT scanning dinosaur bones?’

‘Not bones. Fossils,’ Yukawa said, finally looking up. He adjusted his glasses with one finger.

‘What’s the difference? Aren’t all dinosaur fossils bones?’

Yukawa’s eyes narrowed with mirth. ‘That’s what I like about you. You never defy expectations. You always say exactly what I think you’re going to say.’

‘Your point being that I’m an idiot.’

A waiter approached, and the detective ordered a tomato juice.

‘An unusual choice,’ Yukawa said. ‘Watching your health?’

‘So what if I don’t feel like tea or coffee right now? Cut to the chase. What’s this all about?’

‘I would’ve been happy to talk about fossils a bit more, but fine.’ Yukawa lifted his coffee cup. ‘Did you hear what Forensics had to say about my poisoning idea?’

‘I did. Doing anything with gelatin would’ve left traces, meaning the possibility such a trick was used in this case is zero. I guess even the great Galileo makes mistakes sometimes.’

‘It’s not very scientific to say things like “absolutely” and “zero possibility”. It’s also rather unorthodox to say someone made a mistake when they’ve only presented a hypothesis that proved to be incorrect. But I’ll forgive you on the grounds that you’re not a scientist.’

‘If you want to be a sore loser, you could at least be a little more straightforward about it.’

‘I don’t see how I’ve lost anything. Disproving a hypo -thesis is progress. It narrows our options by closing off a possible path of entry for the poison into the coffee.’

Kusanagi’s tomato juice arrived, complete with straw. He left the straw on the table and gulped it down. The sharp taste of the juice stung his tongue after all that tea.

‘But there’s only one path of entry,’ Kusanagi said. ‘Some -one put the poison in the kettle. Either Hiromi Waka yama, or if it wasn’t she, someone else Yoshitaka Mashiba invited in on Sunday.’

‘So you deny the possibility that the poison was mixed in with the water?’

Kusanagi’s mouth curled upward at the corners. ‘I make it a policy to believe what Forensics and the labs tell me. They found no poison in any of the bottles. That means it wasn’t in the water.’

‘Utsumi thinks the bottles might’ve been washed out.’

‘Yeah, I heard about that. She thinks the victim washed the bottle out himself. Problem is, people don’t wash out bottles of water. I’d be willing to put money on that.’

‘But you have to agree there’s a possibility he did?’

Kusanagi snorted. ‘Not a bet I’d like to make. But if that’s the way you like to play, by all means. I’m more of a sure-thing kind of guy myself.’

‘I’ll admit your current path of investigation is more of a sure thing. But remember, there are always exceptions. In science, it’s important to cover everything.’ Yukawa shot the detective a serious look. ‘I have a request.’

‘Yeah?’

‘I’d like to see the Mashiba house again. Think you can get me inside? I know you have a key.’

Kusanagi raised an eyebrow at the eccentric physicist. ‘What are you going to look at? Didn’t Utsumi show you everything the other day?’

‘Yes, but my viewpoint’s changed since then.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Call it a shift in my thinking. Maybe I did make a mistake, after all. I’d like to know for sure.’

Kusanagi tapped a finger on the table. ‘You mind being more specific?’

‘I’ll tell you once we’re there, if I find that I did, indeed, make an error. It’s better for both of us that way.’

Kusanagi leaned back in his chair and sighed deeply. ‘What are you up to, Yukawa? This is some deal you’ve made with Utsumi, isn’t it?’

Yukawa chuckled. ‘Don’t start jumping at shadows yet. Like I said, I’m only interested in this because it’s piqued my scientific curiosity. Which means, by the way, that should I lose interest, I’m out. That’s why I want you to let me into that house again. To make my final determination.’

The detective looked his friend directly in the eye. Yukawa looked back, cool as ever.

Kusanagi hadn’t the slightest idea what the physicist was thinking. This was nothing new. Kusanagi knew that there was a point when he just had to let go, and trust that Yukawa would come to the rescue as he had so many times before.

‘I’ll call Mrs Mashiba. Give me a second,’ he said, standing and pulling out his phone.

Going to a quiet corner, he dialled Ayane’s number, and when she answered he asked if it was all right for him to let himself in one more time. ‘I’m sorry to make this request yet again, but there was one last thing we really needed to check.’

He could hear her give a little sigh on the other side of the line. ‘You don’t need to check with me every time, you know,’ she said. ‘It’s an investigation; I expect you to be going in and out frequently. I hope you find something.’

‘Thanks. I’ll water the flowers while I’m there.’

‘Thank you so much. It’s a big help.’

Kusanagi went back to the table. Yukawa was looking up, observing him as he approached.

‘You got something to say?’

‘I was just wondering why you felt the need to get up in order to make the call?’ Yukawa asked. ‘Was there something you didn’t want me to hear?’

‘Of course not. All I did was get permission to go inside her house.’

‘Huh.’

‘What is it now?’ Kusanagi glared.

‘Oh, nothing. It’s just, when I watched you making the call, I couldn’t help but think you looked less like a detective, and more like a salesman making a pitch to an important customer. Is there some reason you have to tread lightly around this Mrs Mashiba?’

‘I was asking if we could go into her house. It’s a sensitive subject.’ Kusanagi picked up the bill from the table. ‘Let’s get going. It’s late already.’

They hailed a cab by the station. Sliding into the seat, Yukawa pulled out the magazine he had been reading in the café.

‘You were saying earlier that dinosaur fossils were all bones, but that assumption carries a considerable amount of risk. In fact, it’s an assumption that led many paleontologists to discard a lot of extremely valuable material.’

This again. ‘All of the dinosaur fossils I’ve seen at the museum were bones.’

‘That’s right. That’s because they threw out everything else.’

‘Everything else? Like what?’

‘Say you’re digging a hole and you find some dinosaur bones. Naturally, you get excited and dig them right up, brushing off all the dirt, so you can construct your big impressive dinosaur skeleton. Then you start making observations: “So that’s what a tyrannosaurus jaw looks like”, and “Look at those short forelimbs”. But, it turns out, you’ve already made a terrible error. In 2000, a certain research group dug up a chunk of dirt with some fossils in it and ran the whole thing through a CAT scan without cleaning it all. And guess what? They found the heart. The dirt trapped inside the skeleton had preserved the shape of the creature’s internal organs perfectly. These days, it’s standard practice to run a CAT scan on all fossils.’

Kusanagi grunted. ‘That’s pretty interesting, actually,’ he admitted. ‘I’m just not sure what it has to do with anything. Or were you just making small talk?’

‘When I first heard about the discovery, you know what I thought? I thought: here is a very clever trick, one that it took several millennia for Mother Nature to pull off. You can hardly blame the paleontologists who cleaned the dirt off the first dinosaur bones they discovered. But, as it turns out, the dirt they discarded as “useless” turned out to be extremely important.’ Yukawa closed the magazine. ‘You may have heard me mention the process of elimination, by which we invalidate one hypothesis at a time, eliminating all the possibilities until we’re left with a single truth. However, when there is a basic error in the way we form our hypotheses, that method can lead to extremely dangerous results. Sometimes, when we’re too eager to get those bones, we end up missing the point.’

So this conversation does have something to do with the investigation. ‘You think we made a mistake in our thinking about the route of entry for the poison?’

‘That’s what I’m going to go and check now. It’s just possible that our killer is quite the scientist,’ Yukawa added, half to himself.

The Mashiba residence was quiet and dark. Kusanagi retrieved the key from his pocket. He had already tried to return both copies of the key to Ayane, but she’d left him with one, saying that the investigators might still have need of it and as long as she didn’t have any plans to go home, it was no use to her.

‘The funeral’s over, isn’t it? No plans to do anything at the home?’ Yukawa asked as he was taking off his shoes.

‘She didn’t mention anything. The husband wasn’t a very religious man, so they did a flower ceremony in place of a formal funeral. There was a cremation, but none of the other usual observances.’

‘Sounds like a logical way to go about doing things. Maybe I should put in a request to receive the same treatment when I die.’

‘Fine by me,’ Kusanagi grunted. ‘I’d be happy to make the arrangements.’

Inside, Yukawa walked swiftly down the hallway. Kusanagi watched him go, then made his way up the stairs, opening the door to the master bedroom. He opened the sliding door that opened onto the balcony and picked up the large watering can on the other side – a purchase he had made at the home repair centre yesterday after Ayane asked him to water the flowers.

Can in hand, he went back downstairs. He found Yukawa in the kitchen, under the sink again.

‘Didn’t you check under there last time?’ he called out.

‘Aren’t you police always talking about fine-toothed combs? That’s all I’m doing,’ Yukawa countered. He was carefully examining the space by the light of a small penlight. ‘Oh well – no sign that anyone touched anything in here at all.’

‘Didn’t you check that last time?’

‘Yes, but I thought it might be prudent to go back to square one. We have the dinosaur fossil in front of us, all we have to do is avoid carelessly removing the dirt.’ Yukawa turned towards Kusanagi; a suspicious look came into his eyes as he caught sight of the object in the detective’s hand. ‘What’s that?’

‘Never seen a watering can before?’

‘Oh yeah, I seem to recall you sending Kishitani off to water the plants last time. Is this all part of a new PR campaign? “The police – we’re not just public servants, we’re servants”?’

‘Laugh it up,’ Kusanagi said, pushing past him to get to the sink. He placed the can under the tap and opened it all the way.

‘That’s an awfully big can,’ Yukawa noted. ‘Doesn’t she have a hose in the garden?’

‘This is for the flowers on the second floor. The balcony’s covered with planters.’

‘A policeman’s work is never done,’ Yukawa said, grinning, as Kusanagi headed out of the kitchen.

Back up on the second floor, Kusanagi began to water the flowers. Though he couldn’t have named a single one of them to save his life, even he could tell that the plants weren’t doing so well. Better not let them wilt. The watering complete, he shut the balcony door and hurried back through the bedroom. Even if he was here by permission, it didn’t feel right to linger in someone else’s sleeping quarters.

When Kusanagi got downstairs Yukawa was still in the kitchen. He was standing with his arms crossed, glaring at the sink.

‘Why don’t you just come out with it and explain to me what you’re thinking? Because if you don’t, there’s no way I’m giving you special treatment like this again.’

‘Special treatment?’ Yukawa asked, lifting an eyebrow. ‘Is that what you call it when one of your officers barges into my laboratory and involves me in yet another tangled, hopeless investigation?’

Kusanagi let his hands fall down to his hips and stared back at his friend. ‘I don’t know what Utsumi said to you, but it has nothing to do with me. In fact, if you wanted to check the house, why didn’t you just call her again? Why drag me into this?’

‘Because a real debate can only happen between two people with opposing points of view.’

‘So you oppose the way I’m running this investigation? I thought you said I was on to a “sure thing”.’

‘I have nothing against you running a proper investigation. I just don’t like it when people discard angles of attack just because they seem improper or unlikely. Even if only the slightest possibility remains that something might’ve occurred, one shouldn’t disregard it too easily. Don’t toss out the dirt.’

Kusanagi shook his head in exasperation. ‘So what’s the dirt, in this case?’

‘Water,’ Yukawa replied. ‘The poison was mixed into the water. At least, I think so.’

‘Now we’re back to the victim-washing-the-bottle theory.’ Kusanagi snorted.

‘I’m not concerned with the bottle. There are other sources of water.’ Yukawa pointed at the sink. ‘That tap, for one. Plenty of water there.’

Kusanagi stared back into Yukawa’s cool eyes. ‘You’re serious?’

‘It’s a possibility,’ Yukawa said with a shrug.

‘But Forensics found nothing unusual about the water line at all.’

‘Yes, Forensics did analyze the tap water. But they only analyzed it in order to tell whether the water left in the kettle was from the tap or from a bottle. And I understand they couldn’t tell the difference, because of all the tap water residue that had built up inside the kettle.’

‘But if there was poison in the tap water, wouldn’t they have found it?’

‘It’s possible that by the time they checked, the poison had already washed out entirely.’

‘But the victim only used bottled water when making coffee.’

‘So I hear,’ Yukawa admitted. ‘But who told us that, exactly?’

‘The wife.’ As soon as Kusanagi said it, he bit his lip and stared at Yukawa. ‘And of course you think she’s lying, though you haven’t even met her. What ideas has Utsumi been putting in your head?’

‘She has her own opinion, and she’s entitled to it. All I’m doing is formulating a hypothesis, based on objectively observable evidence.’

‘And does your hypothesis tell you the wife is the killer?’

Yukawa ignored him. ‘I gave some thought to the question of why the wife told you about the bottled water. There are two possibilities. One is that the statement “Mr Mashiba only uses bottled water” is false. The other is that it’s true. If the statement is true, no problem. The wife is simply doing her best to aid the investigation. I think Utsumi would still say the wife is guilty, but I’m not half as stubborn. The real problem here is if the statement is false. Firstly, because lying would suggest that the wife was somehow involved with the crime – but it also means that there’s some reason for her to tell that particular lie. So I considered the effect that her statement about the bottled water had on the course of the police investigation.’ Yukawa wet his lips and continued. ‘First, the police investigated the empties to make sure there was no poison in any of them. At the same time, they found poison in the kettle. This led to the assumption that it was likely that the killer put the poison in the kettle. Which naturally provides the wife with an ironclad alibi.’

Kusanagi shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘That’s where I don’t follow you. Even if she hadn’t given us that tip, Forensics would’ve checked the water line and the bottles. In fact, by telling us he only used bottled water, she actually hurt her alibi. For example, Utsumi still hasn’t given up on the idea that the poison was in a bottle to start with.’

‘That’s just it,’ Yukawa said. ‘Many people would think exactly the same thing as Detective Utsumi. It made me wonder if the whole bottled water testimony might be a trap laid to catch just that kind of person.’

‘Huh?’

‘Anyone who suspected the wife wouldn’t be able to let go of the idea that the poison was added to the bottled water, because they’d think there was no other way for her to have done it. But if she used an entirely different method to poison her husband, anyone still obsessed with the bottled water would be left spinning their wheels for an eternity, never reaching the truth. If that’s not a trap, what is? That got me thinking. If the husband didn’t use bottled water—’ Yukawa stopped suddenly in midsentence. His face was frozen, his eyes looking over Kusanagi’s shoulder.

Kusanagi turned around, then stood, as startled as Yukawa.

Standing there in the entrance to the living room was Ayane Mashiba.