Salvation of a Saint

SIX

Back at the Mashiba residence, Mamiya had already finished questioning Ayane. Kusanagi informed the widow that Ms Wakayama had been feeling out of sorts and had gone home.

‘I understand,’ Ayane said. ‘I’m sure she’s in as much shock as I am.’ She was holding a teacup in both hands, a far-off look in her eyes. She was still frowning, but as she sat on the sofa there was a certain poise to her posture, a rigidity in her spine that spoke of inner strength.

A mobile phone rang in the handbag that lay beside her. She took it out and glanced towards Mamiya, seeking his approval.

He nodded.

She checked the display on the phone before answering.

‘Yes? … Yes, I’m fine … The police are here right now. They’re not sure yet. They found him lying in the living room … Of course, I’ll tell you as soon as I know. And tell Dad not to worry. Yeah. Bye.’ She hung up and informed Mamiya that the call had been from her mother.

‘Have you told her what happened?’ Kusanagi asked.

‘Only that he died suddenly. She wanted to know why, but I wasn’t sure what to say.’ Ayane put a hand to her forehead.

‘Have you told your husband’s office?’

‘Yes. I told the legal consultant this morning before leaving Sapporo. That’s the Mr Ikai I told you about.’

‘The one at the dinner party on Friday?’

‘Yes. Their office is a mess with the CEO gone … I only wish there was more I could do to help.’ A pained look came over Ayane’s face; she stared at nothing, eyes focused on a single point in space. She’s trying to appear strong, Kusanagi thought. But I can see the tension in her. The façade might crumble at any moment. He felt impelled to help her.

‘Maybe you should have a relative or another friend come to keep you company until Ms Wakayama’s feeling better? Even simple day-to-day things can seem overwhelming at times like these.’

‘I’m all right. And you probably don’t want a lot of people tromping around just yet, do you?’

Mamiya turned to Kusanagi, a discomfited look on his face. ‘Forensics is coming in again this afternoon – we have Mrs Mashiba’s okay.’

So she wouldn’t even be given a chance to mourn in peace. Kusanagi lowered his head to the widow in silence.

Mamiya stood. ‘Sorry to take up so much of your time this morning, Mrs Mashiba. Kishitani will be staying behind, so if you need something – chores, anything – just let him know.’

Ayane thanked him in a small voice, as Mamiya and Kusanagi took their leave.

‘So how’d it go?’ Mamiya asked Kusanagi as soon as they were outside.

‘Ms Wakayama confirmed that she was in a relationship with the deceased, starting about three months ago. She says no one knew.’

Mamiya’s nostrils flared. ‘And the coffee cup in the sink?’

‘Was from when they had coffee Sunday morning – made by Ms Wakayama, apparently. She said nothing seemed out of the ordinary.’

‘So the coffee was poisoned after that,’ Mamiya concluded with a scratch at the stubble on his chin.

‘Get anything from Mrs Mashiba?’

A sour look came over the chief’s face and he shook his head. ‘Nothing good. I don’t even know if she was aware he was having an affair. I asked her pretty directly if there were any other women, but she denied it, and looked pretty surprised that I’d asked. No indecision, no wandering eyes. It didn’t look like an act. If it was, she’s a pro.’

Kusanagi stole a sidelong glance at Utsumi, who clearly was of the opinion that Ayane’s tearful embrace with Hiromi Wakayama had been a performance. She’d said she wanted to ask the chief what he thought, but now the young detective seemed intent only on taking notes.

‘Think we should tell Mrs Mashiba her husband was cheating on her?’

Mamiya immediately shook his head. ‘No need for us to let that particular cat out of the bag. I can’t see how it would help the investigation. I’m guessing you two will be seeing a lot more of her in the coming days, so be careful what you say.’

‘So we hide it.’

‘No, we just don’t go out of our way to tell her. If she figures something out on her own, well, there’s nothing we can do about that. Assuming she doesn’t know already.’ Mamiya pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and glanced at it. ‘I want you to go to this address.’

The name Tatsuhiko Ikai was written on the paper, along with a telephone number and an address.

‘Ask him how the deceased was doing lately, and about that party on Friday.’

‘I hear Mr Ikai’s a busy man trying to keep Mr Mashiba’s business afloat.’

‘Then talk to his wife. Call first. Mrs Mashiba says she just had a baby two months ago, so we should go easy on her.’

Apparently Ayane was told about their intention to question the Ikais. Kusanagi was honestly impressed that she’d had the presence of mind to be concerned about the strain on anyone but herself.

Utsumi brought the car around and they headed towards the Ikai residence. Kusanagi called while they were on the way. The moment he introduced himself as a policeman, Yukiko Ikai’s voice took on a grave tone. Kusanagi emphasized that all they needed was to ask some simple questions, and she finally relented and invited them over, but asked them to give her an hour. The two detectives spotted a coffee shop where they could wait and went inside.

‘What you were talking about earlier – you really think that Mrs Mashiba knows her husband was cheating on her?’ Kusanagi asked, picking up his cup of hot cocoa. He’d reached his limit on coffee for the day when they were talking to Ms Wakayama.

‘I just said that’s how it felt.’

‘But you do think she knows.’

Utsumi stared into her cup and didn’t reply.

‘If she did know, then why didn’t she confront her husband or Ms Wakayama? She even invited Hiromi to her dinner party. People don’t normally do that, do they?’

‘I’m sure your average woman would lose her head the moment she found out.’

‘But Mrs Mashiba isn’t your average woman?’

‘It’s too early to say, but I have a feeling she’s very smart. Not just that, but she’s patient too.’

‘Patient enough to endure a husband’s infidelity?’

‘I think she understands that she had nothing to gain by going on the offensive. In fact, she would lose two important things: a stable married life and a talented apprentice.’

‘Sure, but she couldn’t just put up with her husband’s lover hanging around forever. You think a marriage of pretences is that valuable?’

‘I think everyone’s idea of value is different. There’s no evidence of domestic violence, for one, and things were apparently smooth enough within their marriage – on the surface, at least – for them to host a party. She had no financial worries and she could spend all the time she wanted to on her patchwork – she’s not stupid enough to throw all that away on an impulse. Maybe she thought that, ultimately, it made more sense to wait for the affair between her husband and her student to run its course and end naturally.

‘At least – that’s what I imagine, anyway. I could be wrong.’

Kusanagi took a sip of his hot cocoa and grimaced. It was too sweet. He quickly chased it with a swig of water. ‘She doesn’t look like the calculating type.’

‘It’s not a calculation. It’s a smart woman’s instinct for self defence.’

Kusanagi wiped his mouth with one hand and looked at the junior detective. ‘Do you have those instincts, too, Utsumi?’

She chuckled and shook her head. ‘I’m afraid not. If my husband were cheating on me I’d probably go ballistic.’

‘I feel sorry for the guy already. Anyway, I don’t understand how anyone can go on living a regular married life when they know their partner’s unfaithful.’

He glanced at his watch. It had already been thirty minutes since his conversation with Yukiko Ikai.

The Ikai residence was as upper-class as the Mashibas’, with a large gate sporting decorative posts covered in brick-shaped tiles. Right next to the gate was an extra garage for visitors, which saved Utsumi the trouble of having to find parking.

Yukiko Ikai and her husband, Tatsuhiko, were waiting for their visitors inside. Apparently, she had called her husband after Kusanagi talked to her and he had hurried home.

‘Everything all right at the office?’ Kusanagi asked.

‘We’ve got a great team, so I’m not worried. I’m not looking forward to explaining this to our clients, though. Speaking of which …’ He looked up at the two detectives. ‘What did happen? What’s going on?’

‘Yoshitaka Mashiba passed away at home.’

‘I know that. But if the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department is involved, then this is something more than an accident or suicide, isn’t it?’

Kusanagi gave a little sigh, remembering that he was talking to a lawyer who likely wouldn’t settle for the usual vague explanations – and who, if he really wanted to, would have other ways of finding out what he wanted to know if they tried to stonewall him. After emphasizing that all facts pertaining to the case were to be kept secret, Kusanagi told the Ikais about the poisoning, and that arsenous acid had been found in the coffee Mr Mashiba had been drinking.

Yukiko, sitting next to Tatsuhiko on the sofa, put both hands to the sides of her round face. Her eyes were wide and a little red. She was somewhat on the plump side; Kusanagi wondered whether she had always been that way, or whether it was because she had just had a baby.

Tatsuhiko ran his hands back across his head. His hair was slightly curly, as though he had got a perm some time ago and it was beginning to fade. ‘Well, that explains that,’ he said. ‘When I heard that the police had been called, and there was going to be an autopsy, I thought something was up. That, and I couldn’t imagine him committing suicide.’

‘But you could imagine him being murdered?’

‘I don’t know what other people might think of him. Still, poison’s no way to go …’ He frowned and shook his head.

‘Is there anyone who might have had ill will for Mr Mashiba?’

‘If you’re asking me whether he ever butted heads with people, then I couldn’t say no. As far as I’m aware, though, what conflicts he had were strictly about business. I doubt he ever gave anyone reason to dislike him personally. Whenever there was trouble, it tended to be me they pushed out to the front line, not him,’ Tatsuhiko explained, jabbing his thumb towards his own chest.

‘What about outside the office? Did Mr Mashiba have any enemies in his personal life?’ Kusanagi asked.

Tatsuhiko leaned back on the sofa and crossed his legs. ‘I can’t say. He and I were close business partners, but we tended not to pry into each other’s private lives.’

‘But he did invite you to parties at his home.’

Tatsuhiko shook his head dismissively. ‘He invited us to his parties precisely because we don’t pry. It’s more convenient that way. These are the lengths to which we busy people have to go in order to attain some semblance of a normal life.’

In other words, he didn’t have time to lounge around with mere ‘friends’.

‘Did you notice anything out of the ordinary when you were at the Mashibas’ house on Friday night?’

‘If you mean did I expect something like this would happen, then the answer is no. It was a good party. We had fun.’ Tatsuhiko furrowed his brow. ‘Hard to believe that was only three days ago.’

‘Did Mr Mashiba mention any plans to meet with anyone over the weekend?’

‘Nothing I heard,’ Tatsuhiko said, looking over at his wife.

‘I didn’t hear anything, either. Just that Ayane was going back home …’

Kusanagi nodded, scratching his temple with the back of a ballpoint pen. He was growing increasingly certain he wasn’t going to get any useful information from the Ikais.

‘Did you go to parties with the Mashibas often?’ Utsumi asked.

‘Once every two or three months.’

‘Was it always at their house?’

‘We invited them here once, right after they got married. Since then, the parties were always at their house, with Yukiko being pregnant and all.’

‘Did you know Ayane before she married Mr Mashiba?’

‘Sure. I was there when they first met, actually.’

‘Where did they meet?’

‘Mashiba and I were at this little party that she happened to be at – they started dating after that.’

‘When was this?’

‘Well …’ Tatsuhiko scratched the back of his neck. ‘About a year and a half ago? No, maybe a little more recently.’

‘But they married a year ago,’ Kusanagi cut in. ‘That was fast.’

‘I suppose it was.’

‘Mr Mashiba wanted kids,’ Yukiko put in. ‘It took him a while to find the right person, and I think he was getting a little impatient.’

‘That’s really none of their business,’ Tatsuhiko said to his wife. He looked back at the detectives. ‘Or is how they met, and their marriage, somehow related to the case at hand?’

‘I didn’t mean to suggest that,’ Kusanagi said with a wave of his hand. ‘We just don’t have many leads at present, and I thought it might behove us to learn a bit about the Mashibas’ married life.’

‘I understand why you’d want to gather as much information as you can about the victim … but pry too far and you could get into trouble,’ Tatsuhiko said, putting on his lawyer face. There was a look in his eye that Kusanagi interpreted as a mild threat.

‘I’m aware of that,’ the detective said, lowering his head in an apologetic bow before looking back up at the lawyer. ‘Apologies in advance for my next question – but to satisfy our standard operating procedures, I’ll need to ask you how both of you spent your weekend, if you don’t mind.’

Tatsuhiko nodded slowly, the corner of his mouth curling upward. ‘You want our alibis? I suppose that’s to be expected.’

He pulled a small, leather-bound organizer out of his jacket pocket.

Tatsuhiko Ikai had gone to work at his own office on Saturday, after which he went out drinking with one of his clients. On Sunday, he went to play golf with another client, returning home some time after ten in the evening. Yukiko had been at home the whole weekend, and on Sunday her mother and sister had come to visit.

That night, an investigation briefing was held at local precinct headquarters, the Meguro City Police Station. The head officer from the First Investigation Division of the Metropolitan Police Department opened by repeating that they were, in all likelihood, looking at a homicide. It would be hard to explain the presence of the particularly virulent arsenous acid found in the used coffee grounds any other way. If it had been a suicide, the deceased probably wouldn’t have bothered mixing the poison into his coffee – and even if he had, it would have been far more typical for him to mix it into an already brewed cup.

Someone from Forensics had a report on the ongoing investigation to determine how the poison had got into the ground coffee, but there was nothing Kusanagi hadn’t heard before; it could all be summed up with ‘we don’t know’. Forensics had gone back to the Mashiba residence that afternoon, with the intention of examining everything in the house that Yoshitaka Mashiba might have put in his mouth: food, spices, drinks, medicine. The same attention was given to all of the cutlery and silverware in the house. At the time of the briefing, they had already checked eighty percent of the items; so far they hadn’t found traces of poison on anything. The liaison from Forensics suggested that it was unlikely they would find anything in the remaining twenty percent.

This meant that the guilty party had specifically targeted the coffee Yoshitaka was going to drink. This, Forensics informed them, could have been accomplished in one of two ways: the killer could have put poison in the ground coffee, the paper filter, or the cup in advance; or they could’ve mixed it in when the coffee was being made. There was no way of telling which it had been at this point, without finding arsenous acid anywhere else in the house, and with no way of knowing whether someone had been with Yoshitaka when the coffee was made.

Someone else had gone around questioning the neighbours. No one had seen anyone visit the Mashiba residence on that day prior to the time of death. Of course, in a quiet residential neighbourhood like the one in question, people tended not to pay attention to anything that didn’t affect them directly, so they might not have noticed a visitor’s presence.

Kusanagi reported on what he’d learned from talking to Ayane and the Ikais, without mentioning the relationship between Hiromi and Yoshitaka. Before the briefing, Mamiya had told them to keep that under wraps for now, though he had included it in his own report to the head officer from Division. Apparently, the higher-ups felt it was too delicate a matter to spread beyond those directly involved in the investigation until it was proved to have some connection to the case. If word leaked out to the press, it would mean headaches for everyone.

After the briefing, Mamiya called Kusanagi and Utsumi into his office. ‘I want you to go to Sapporo tomorrow,’ he told them.

‘You want us to check on Mrs Mashiba’s alibi?’ Kusanagi asked.

‘You got it. A man having an affair was killed. That makes his lover and his wife both suspects, and we’ve already established that the lover doesn’t have an alibi. Division wants us to narrow in on our perpetrator as quick as we can. Speaking of which, you’ve only got a day up there to do your thing. I’ll make sure the Hokkaido police are ready to help you out any way they can.’

‘The wife said the police contacted her at a hot springs resort – we’ll probably have to go there, too.’

‘Yeah, Jozankei Hot Springs. It’s about an hour out of Sapporo by car. The wife’s family home is in Nishi Ward, right in the city. You can split up and get it all done in a few hours.’

I guess so, Kusanagi thought, scratching his head. Shame on me for even imagining that he’d put us up at the hot springs for a night.

‘What is it, Utsumi? You look like you want to say something,’ Mamiya said.

Kusanagi glanced over to see the junior detective standing with her lips pressed together as if she could barely contain a question.

‘Are we only checking out her alibi for the weekend?’

‘What do you mean?’ Mamiya asked.

‘Mrs Mashiba left Tokyo on Saturday morning, and returned on Monday morning. I was wondering, is that the only time period for which we need an alibi?’

‘You don’t think that’s enough.’

‘I’m not sure. But it seems to me that as long as we don’t know how the poison was mixed into the coffee, or when, we can’t remove her from the list of suspects just by knowing where she was over the weekend.’

‘Wait a second,’ Kusanagi said. ‘We might not know how it was done, but we do know the time. Hiromi Wakayama drank coffee with Yoshitaka Mashiba on Sunday morning and neither of them died then. The coffee must have been poisoned after that.’

‘Are you sure we can say that?’

‘Can’t we? When else could the poison have been put in?’

‘Well … I don’t know.’

‘You think Hiromi Wakayama’s lying to protect the wife?’ Mamiya asked. ‘That would suggest that the lover and the wife were in cahoots, which seems unlikely.’

‘I agree. I don’t think that’s it.’

‘So what’s the problem?’ Kusanagi said, a little roughly. ‘All we need is her alibi from Saturday to Sunday. Actually, we only need it on Sunday to clear the wife. Is there something wrong with that train of logic?’

Utsumi shook her head. ‘No, nothing. It seems perfectly reasonable. I was just wondering if there wasn’t some way of poisoning the coffee that we haven’t thought of, something that wouldn’t require the guilty party to be present at the house on Sunday. Maybe a way to get Mr Mashiba to poison it himself?’

Kusanagi’s eyebrows drew together. ‘You mean someone compelled him to commit suicide?’

‘Not that. They didn’t have to tell him it was poison. What if he thought it was something to make the coffee taste better? A secret ingredient?’

‘A secret ingredient? In coffee?’

‘Like garam masala for curry – you sprinkle on a little before you eat, and it improves the flavour and aroma. Whoever it was could’ve told Mr Mashiba the poison was like that, but for coffee. I know it’s a bit of a stretch … but he could’ve not used it when he was taking coffee with Ms Wakayama, then only remembered it later when he was brewing a cup for himself.’

‘Yeah, that’s stretching it a bit too far for me,’ Kusanagi declared.

‘Is it?’

‘I’ve never heard of anyone mixing something in with their ground coffee to make the brewed stuff taste better. And I don’t think Yoshitaka Mashiba’s the kind of guy who would believe them if they did. If he did believe it, why wouldn’t he have told Ms Wakayama? He had a conversation with her about how to make coffee! Besides, if he had put it in himself, there would be traces of it somewhere else. Arsenous acid is a powder. You’d have to carry it in a baggie or a paper sack, but nothing of the sort has been found on the scene. How do you explain that?’

Utsumi nodded as Kusanagi quickly dismantled her theory.

‘I’m afraid I don’t have a way to explain it. I think what you’re saying is probably right, sir. I’m just worried that there might be some other way we haven’t thought of yet.’

Kusanagi sighed. ‘You want me to trust your female intuition?’

‘I said nothing of the sort. But maybe women do have a different way of thinking—’

‘Hold it right there,’ Mamiya butted in, a weary look on his face. ‘I don’t mind lively discussions, but let’s not lower this to hunches and intuition. Utsumi, you suspect the wife?’

‘Yes, though I’m not completely sure.’

Sounds like intuition to me, Kusanagi thought, but he resisted the urge to say it.

‘What’s your reasoning, then?’ Mamiya asked.

Utsumi took a deep breath before saying: ‘The champagne glasses.’

‘Champagne glasses? What about them?’

‘When we arrived at the scene, there were five recently washed champagne glasses in the kitchen.’ She looked at Kusanagi. ‘You remember?’

‘Yeah, I remember. They were left over from the party on Friday.’

‘The champagne glasses were usually kept in a cupboard in the living room. That’s why when we got to the house there was an empty space on the shelf.’

‘And?’ Mamiya asked. ‘Maybe I’m just slow, but I don’t see what the problem is with the glasses.’

Neither could Kusanagi. He studied her profile, seeing a steady determination.

‘Why didn’t the wife put them away before she left?’

‘Huh?’ Kusanagi grunted. A moment later, Mamiya echoed him.

‘So what if she didn’t put them away?’ Kusanagi demanded.

‘I just think that normally she would have. You saw the cupboard, right? It was perfectly organized – so well that the space for the missing champagne glasses was obvious. I’m guessing she’s the kind of person that can’t relax if her important glassware isn’t exactly where it should be. Which makes the fact that she didn’t return the champagne glasses to their proper place rather curious.’

‘Maybe she just forgot?’ Kusanagi suggested.

Utsumi firmly shook her head. ‘Impossible.’

‘How so?’

‘Maybe on any old day she might forget for a little while, but she was heading away on a trip that weekend. It is very hard to imagine that she would have left those champagne glasses out.’

Kusanagi glanced over at Mamiya, wondering if his own face looked as astonished as the chief’s. Utsumi had raised a question that hadn’t even occurred to him.

‘I can only think of one reason why the wife wouldn’t have put away the champagne glasses,’ the young detective continued. ‘If she knew she wouldn’t be away for very long, she wouldn’t have felt the need to rush and clean them up.’

Mamiya sat down in his seat, crossing his arms. He looked up at Kusanagi. ‘Your rebuttal?’

Kusanagi scratched his head. He didn’t have a rebuttal. Instead, he turned to Utsumi and asked: ‘Why didn’t you bring this up sooner? Didn’t it occur to you as soon as we got to the house?’

She shrugged, an unusually demure smile rising to her lips. ‘I didn’t want to get scolded for obsessing over details. And I figured that, if the wife really was guilty, we’d probably find out some other way eventually … Sorry.’

Mamiya breathed out a deep sigh. ‘We’ve got some work to do, Kusanagi,’ he said. ‘What’s the point of having our new detective on the team if she doesn’t feel at ease sharing her observations with us, hmm?’

‘Oh, it’s not like that—’ Utsumi began, but Mamiya lifted his hand.

‘Don’t be afraid to speak what’s on your mind any time you like. There’s no rank and no gender when we’re on the case. I’ll pass what you just told us on to Division, but don’t get too comfortable, no matter how keen your observation may be. It is a little odd that she didn’t put those glasses back, but it’s not exactly incriminating evidence. What we need is something we can prove. So right now, what I want both of you to do is find proof that Mrs Mashiba’s alibi holds, if it does. It’s not your job to worry about how we’re going to use that information. Understood?’

Utsumi lowered her eyes for a moment and blinked several times before she looked back up. ‘Understood,’ she said, staring the chief straight in the eye.