Silent Parade

14

That Sunday was a special day for the Kikuno shopping district. When Natsumi looked out, the street was heaving with people walking in every direction. It was early — only just after eleven — and there was still an hour until the parade got underway. They must all be hunting for the best place to watch it from.

“Thank goodness the weather’s nice,” came Machiko’s voice from behind her.

“Quite.” Natsumi turned and nodded. “It’s awful when it rains after everybody’s put in all that hard work.”

“Isn’t it?” said Machiko, before heading into the kitchen to help Yutaro, who was already busy cooking. While they were only open in the evenings during the week, on weekends they opened for lunch as well.

Natsumi saw a shadow on the sliding door. The door slid open noisily, revealing the person she’d been expecting.

“The rail company is just too stupid,” said Professor Yukawa with irritation. “They should run more trains on a big day like today.”

“Was the train very crowded?”

Yukawa pulled his chin into his neck and looked thoroughly fed up.

“Like sardines. It wasn’t so much that you couldn’t get a seat, you couldn’t even stand without getting bent out of shape.”

Natsumi laughed. “Sounds awful.”

“The parade route is busier than I was expecting. Everyone’s trying to claim the best spots along the route.”

“You’re probably right. We should get going, Professor.” Getting to her feet, Natsumi pulled on a parka, which was hanging over the back of a nearby chair. “Mom, we’re leaving.”

Machiko’s face appeared above the kitchen counter. “See you later, then. Have fun, Professor Yukawa.”

“Thanks very much. I’ll be back this evening,” said Yukawa, turning toward the kitchen with a big grin.

A couple of folding wooden stools were leaning against the wall. Natsumi held one out to Yukawa. “Here, take this.”

Taking the stool, Yukawa nodded sagely. “What a good idea. It’ll be great to sit down and watch the show.”

“Sadly, life isn’t quite that easy.”

Yukawa frowned inquiringly. “Meaning?”

“You’ll see soon enough. Come along, let’s go.” Natsumi picked up the second stool.

As they emerged from the restaurant, they almost collided with a man holding a camera. A crowd was forming at the edge of the road, so there was very little room on the already narrow sidewalk.

“It really is carnival time here,” grumbled Yukawa, as they walked along the street. “If everywhere’s as crowded as it is here, all the good places will be gone already.”

“This parade gets more and more popular every year. People post tons of pictures on social media and they do it in real time, while the parade’s going on. Some people probably camped out all night to get the best spot for taking pictures.”

“Seriously? Takes all sorts to make a world.”

“The pictures are well worth it. You’ll understand when you see the parade, Professor.”

“Well, I’m looking forward to it.”

They kept moving, pushing their way through the crowd until they reached a large intersection. The road perpendicular to the one they were on was also closed to traffic for the day.

Walking right up to the exterior wall of the building on the street corner, Natsumi unfolded her stool.

“Professor, put your stool here, next to mine.”

“Is here okay?”

Natsumi watched as Yukawa opened out his stool. “Good,” she said and sat down on hers.

“Will we be able to see anything from here?” Yukawa asked doubtfully, as he settled himself on his stool. “I mean, just look at all the number of people walking here in front of us. There’ll only be more of them once the parade gets going. We won’t see a thing unless they squat down.”

“The people in the front might crouch, if you asked them, but the ones at the back definitely won’t. If anything, they’ll all be standing on tiptoe.”

“That’s bad news for us.”

“Don’t worry about it. Trust me.”

As time went by, the crowd continued to grow. Plenty of them were dressed in costumes themselves. The parade’s official home page said that cosplayers were welcome, and the ones in more elaborate costumes were holding impromptu photo shoots.

“I know this isn’t the best time, but did that man ever come back again?” Yukawa asked Natsumi.

“That man?”

“The one who barged into Namiki-ya — I’m not quite sure when it was. The man suspected of murdering your sister.”

“Ah...”

“Your father threw him out, but he threatened to come back. Did he?”

“We’ve not seen him since, no.”

“Glad to hear it. Seeing him must have brought back horrible memories.”

“No.” Natsumi could feel her jaw clenching even as she shook her head.

The truth was that the mere thought of Hasunuma was enough to make her miserable. Now that he was somewhere in the neighborhood, fear rather than hatred was her dominant emotion; fear that perhaps he’d come back for revenge. Machiko, her mother, probably felt the same way, as she had advised Natsumi to go out by herself as little as possible. If Hasunuma was going to target anyone, she thought, he would target her.

Natsumi had no idea why Hasunuma was released instead of sent to jail. The anger and the loathing she felt for him hadn’t weakened, but chafing against the injustice and unfairness of it all was starting to wear her down. If the law couldn’t punish him — if that was an immutable matter of fact — then it would make more sense, and be less painful, to accept it and try to look to the future rather than looking back to the past.

If he wasn’t going to be punished, then at the very least she wanted him to go somewhere far away. She wanted to be able to forget that a man called Hasunuma had ever existed.

The report of a starting pistol brought her back to herself. The parade was about to start. There was a crush of people around them and they could barely move.

Eventually, they heard the distant sound of music. That had to be the first of the teams approaching. Everyone stood on tiptoe and craned their necks for a look.

Natsumi got up off the stool and tapped Yukawa smartly on the shoulder. “Professor, stand up.” She climbed onto her stool without removing her shoes.

Yukawa quickly did the same thing. “Using a stool as a stepladder: Now that’s a smart idea. This is great. I can see everything.”

He looked up the road over the heads of the people. A colorfully costumed group was slowly coming toward them, marching in time with the music. Natsumi pulled out a folded-up flyer from the pocket of her jeans. It was the program of the parade and gave the teams’ order of appearance.

“This must be the team from Kobe,” said Natsumi. “They came in second last year. Their theme was the Arabian Nights. This year it’s Beauty and the Beast.”

The team came close to their side of the road. First to parade by were the attendants, decked out as items of cutlery, crockery, and furniture. It was obvious that money had been spent on their outfits. The two main characters followed in the attendants’ wake. The costume of the Beast was magnificent. As for Beauty, not only was her ball gown splendid, but the young girl in the part was quite beautiful.

Up to this point, the performers had just been marching along and waving to the spectators. When they got to the center of the intersection, however, Beauty and the Beast started dancing together, while the household-item attendants started playing on their instruments. It was a famous scene from the film, and a cheer went up from the crowd.

“Fabulous,” exclaimed Yukawa beside Natsumi. “This is much more fun than I expected.”

“You see.”

“There’s just one thing, though.”

“What?”

“Copyright. This Beauty and the Beast has a striking resemblance to the Disney movie. I’m wondering if they got the proper permissions.”

“Really? That’s what occurs to you right now?”

Yukawa turned toward her, a puzzled look on his face. “What do you mean?”

“Well, timing aside, it is a serious issue. The performance this team put on last year, Arabian Nights, was an exact copy of Disney’s Aladdin, right down to the music. As far as I know, they didn’t get permission.”

“Did they get away with it?”

“It’s complicated.” Natsumi waggled her head. “The issue gets debated from time to time. Most people think that, strictly speaking, it’s piracy and it’s not allowed. On the other hand, this isn’t a commercial event, and this sort of thing is often permitted at Halloween. The municipal organizers decided to leave it up to the individual teams.”

“How does Kikuno itself deal with the problem? They’ve got their own local team, haven’t they?”

“Team Kikuno only puts on performances where copyright isn’t an issue — old legends, fairy tales, stuff like that. Or else things where the author’s been dead for decades and the copyright’s expired. Last year, they did Princess Kaguya.”

“And this year?”

Natsumi consulted the program. “This year it’s Treasure Island.”

“Robert Louis Stevenson, eh? That should be good. I wonder when they’ll be by.”

“Team Kikuno always brings up the rear of the parade. That’s the rule. The program says they’ll step off at around two this afternoon.”

“Two o’clock? Am I meant to perch up here till then?”

“You’re welcome to sit down and take a rest, if you get tired. After all, that’s what stools are for in the first place.”

“Indeed, it is.”

A series of teams then passed by. Many of the performances were based on popular cartoon characters and looked likely to run afoul of copyright law, just as Yukawa had said. Natsumi, however, preferred to believe that the original creators would just smile and let it go. The presentation of all the teams was polished and their enthusiasm tangible.

Natsumi felt her phone vibrating. It was her mother calling. Natsumi was startled when she saw the time. It was past midday.

“Sorry, Professor. I need to pop back to the restaurant,” Natsumi said. She had to shout because of the noise coming from an approaching sound truck. “I’ll be back here before two.”

Yukawa nodded and Natsumi climbed down from her stool.

There were already three groups of customers at Namiki-ya by the time she got there. Machiko, who was looking after them, frowned at her daughter, rolling her shoulders and sticking out her tongue in mock indignation.

The sound of up-tempo music filtered in from the street. There was a variety of tracks: theme songs from animated movies, nursery rhymes, classical music.

The customers came in an uninterrupted stream. From what Natsumi could make out of their conversations, all of them seemed to have a favorite team and only came to grab lunch after their favorite had passed by.

Natsumi was hoping to go and rejoin Yukawa around one thirty, which was the cutoff time for ordering lunch, but a customer came in just a moment before half past. She was a plumpish, middle-aged woman and seemed to be on her own.

“Are you still open?”

“You’re welcome to come in, but it’s already last order.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll make up my mind quickly.”

The woman sat down and immediately ordered fried oysters and a few other dishes. The way she rattled off her order without even needing to look at the menu suggested she’d been there many times, although Natsumi couldn’t recall seeing her before.

Natsumi relayed the woman’s order to the kitchen, then told her mother. “Right. I’m going to rejoin the professor.”

The parade was approaching its climax. Watching a group of popular cartoon robots striding along out of the corner of her eye, Natsumi headed for the intersection where Yukawa was waiting.

The professor was standing on the stool, taking photos with his phone. His expression was so grave that it was almost comical.

“You look like you’re having fun,” said Natsumi, clambering up onto the stool beside him.

“Not so much having fun as learning a lot.” Yukawa pushed his spectacles higher on his nose. “All the teams are re-creating famous scenes from well-known stories. Naturally, though, everyone has different ideas about what the best and most famous scenes are. A few minutes ago, there were a couple of teams who had both taken the same animated movie as their subject but who performed two completely different scenes. It was really fun.”

Natsumi looked at the physicist with amazement. “That’s your idea of fun?”

Several more teams marched past. When the parade first started, there had been fewer teams and their costumes had been less elaborate. Now, with every passing year, there were more teams and their costumes were ever more magnificent and extravagant.

“The next team’s the last one. It’s time for Team Kikuno!” said Natsumi, after consulting the program.

They could hear music in the distance. The applause and cheers seemed to be even louder than before.

It wasn’t long before they caught sight of a large object coming toward them. Straining for a look, Natsumi was startled to see a ship — or rather, a large float decked out to look like an old wooden sailing ship. A number of pirates stood on the deck.

The ship was followed by a giant map showing the location of the hidden treasure, and the map was followed in turn by a number of treasure chests. The lids of the chests had been flung open and they were overflowing with jewels and gold coins. People in pirate costumes were by turns pushing the treasure chests and dancing around them.

No sooner had the ship come to a stop in the middle of the intersection than the pirates started fighting one another, both on and around it. They must have rehearsed exhaustively, because the whole thing went like clockwork. The noise of the treasure chests crashing against one another was tremendous.

Once the skirmish was over, the pirates resumed the parade. Some of them were clearly out of breath.

After the pirates passed by, an enormous blue inflatable appeared to the accompaniment of music. It was the theme song of the parade, and the composer was none other than Naoki Niikura.

“What the heck is that?” Yukawa asked. “That monster frog thing?”

Natsumi bristled. The professor was referring to the giant inflatable.

“It may look like a frog, but it’s actually an imaginary creature. The things that look like eyeballs are its ears, while the things that look like nostrils are its eyes. It’s a PR mascot specially created for this parade. Its name is Kikunon. For the last four years, it’s been the grand finale of the parade.”

“Huh. Kikunon, you said? Inflating that must be quite a task,” Yukawa said, sounding rather unimpressed.

The inflatable was about thirty feet in length. Since it was full of helium, it was lighter than air. Several people were marching underneath, holding guy ropes attached to its body to prevent it from floating away.

“Well, that’s it for this year.” Natsumi climbed down from her stool, keeping her eyes on the inflatable as it disappeared into the distance. When she checked the time on the screen of her phone, she saw it was a little after three.

“It will be about two hours before they announce the results. I wonder who’ll win this year. You saw all the floats, Professor. Which one did you like best?”

Yukawa started fiddling with his phone. Natsumi guessed he was looking over the video footage he had taken.

“They were all great. For me, personally, I liked Heidi, a Girl of the Alps best.”

“Heidi, a Girl of the Alps? A team did that?”

“They’d made this giant swing. I was impressed. I mean, you need guts to climb on something like that.”

Natsumi frowned and tilted her head to one side. She couldn’t really picture it.

She was about to ask the professor for a better description, when her phone started to vibrate. The number of Namiki-ya’s landline appeared on the screen.

“Hello,” she said.

“Natsumi, where are you? Right now, I mean?” Machiko asked.

“Let me see... We’re at the intersection on Fourth. The parade’s just finished.”

“In that case, can you get back here as fast as you can? We’re in trouble.”

“Why? What’s happened?” Natsumi felt a sudden surge of fear.

“One of our customers has been taken ill.” Machiko’s reply took her completely by surprise.

“A customer?”

“Yes, that lady who came in at the last minute. The plump one.”

Natsumi remembered her. “Oh, the woman who ordered the fried oysters?”

“That’s the one. She had her lunch, went to the bathroom — and then didn’t come out for ages. When she did, she said she had an awful stomachache.”

“You think she got a bad oyster?”

“They’d all been properly cooked, so, no, I don’t think it was that. Anyway, we thought she should go to the hospital. Your father drove her there.”

“How terrible.”

“Can you get back as fast as you can? I want to go to the hospital to see how she’s getting on, but there’s a stew I need to slow-cook on the stove for this evening.”

“Okay.”

Natsumi ended the call and explained the situation to Yukawa. He blinked behind his glasses.

“That’s not good. You’d better get going. I’ll bring both stools around to the restaurant later.”

“Really? Thanks, that’s so kind of you. Catch you later, then.” Natsumi dashed off.

Machiko was ready to leave by the time Natsumi got to the restaurant. “Any new developments?” Natsumi asked.

“I’ve no idea,” said her mother, “but I’m going to go to the hospital, anyway. The gas is on, so just leave the casserole in, okay? Oh and, sorry, but while you’re at it, could you finish the washing up?”

Then she left.

There was a big pile of dirty dishes and cooking utensils in the kitchen. Natsumi sighed and reached for her apron, which was hanging on the wall.

Two hours later, Yutaro and Machiko returned. They both looked rather gloomy, so Natsumi assumed the news was bad. When she inquired, however, Machiko told her that it hadn’t been anything serious.

“The lady was moaning and groaning all the time your father was driving her to the hospital, but she started to feel better soon after. By the time I got to the hospital, she’d already seen the doctor and was quite relaxed about the whole thing. She just felt out of sorts, that’s all. She apologized for the trouble she caused us.”

“Well, that’s good news. I was worried it might be food poisoning.”

“Tell me about it. I wonder what was wrong with her, though.” Machiko waggled her head from side to side.

“I didn’t recognize her face. Does she come here often?”

“No,” said Machiko, shaking her head. “I think it was her first time here. Your father says he hasn’t seen her before, either.”

“What’s her name?”

“Yamada, she said,” murmured Yutaro. “Anyway, thank goodness it was nothing serious.” He went into the kitchen. The whole episode must have been pretty nerve-racking for him. He seemed quite shattered.

A text came to Natsumi’s phone. It was from Yukawa. He was asking how things were.

She sent him a reply: Everything’s fine.

They opened the restaurant at half past five. Natsumi was just switching the sign around from CLOSED to OPEN, when she heard a voice behind her. “Perhaps I’m a bit too early?” Yukawa was standing there, holding the two stools.

“Your timing’s perfect. Thanks for bringing back the stools.” She slid open the door and gestured for Yukawa to go in. “After you.”

“Good to hear that your customer was okay in the end,” he said, as he sat himself down.

“Oh, tell me about it. I was terrified that the health and safety people were going to be jumping all over us.”

“Food poisoning is a matter of life and death for a restaurant,” Yukawa said, then he raised a finger. “I’ll start with a beer. Then I’ll have—”

“The takiawase, right? Got it.” Natsumi placed a cool towel on the table in front of him and went into the back of the restaurant.

A little after six o’clock, the regulars began to arrive in dribs and drabs: Tojima, the Niikuras, Tomoya Takagaki. Everyone was enthusiastically discussing the parade. Heidi, a Girl of the Alps had been proclaimed this year’s winner. Natsumi exchanged a look with Yukawa as he contentedly drank his beer.

Maya Miyazawa arrived with two young men in tow. They were going out for a celebratory bar crawl later, she explained, but they thought they’d line their stomachs here first. They were slightly disappointed that Team Kikuno had only placed fourth this year.

“You were fantastic,” said Natsumi, as she delivered them their food. “The ship looked so authentic; the pirates really looked the part, too.”

“Yes, a great job, really impressive,” chimed in Tojima, who was sitting some distance away but had overheard the exchange. Everyone else then joined in with praise.

“Thank you very much. It’s very nice of you to say so. How about a toast,” said Miyazawa. “Cheers!” The three of them clinked their glasses.

After a while, another member of Team Kikuno came into the restaurant. There was a strained, anxious look on his face. He scuttled over to Maya Miyazawa’s table.

“What took you so long? Where’ve you been?” asked Miyazawa, pouring him a glass of beer.

“There was something I had to do. I went to the neighboring district. On the way back, there were all these police cars, so I stopped to see what was going on,” the young man replied, his untouched beer glass in his hand. “It was by the river where all the warehouses are. I found out that—”

He lowered his voice at this point and Natsumi could no longer hear what he was saying.

“I can’t believe it,” exclaimed Maya Miyazawa. “Really?”

“Yes, really. I overheard one of the police officers.”

Maya Miyazawa looked at Natsumi. Natsumi wondered why she was looking at her. There was a moment’s awkward silence.

“Apparently Hasunuma’s dead,” Maya Miyazawa said.

15

He couldn’t believe his ears. Then again, Director Mamiya would never joke about something this serious.

“It’s definitely Hasunuma? You’re sure of that?” asked Kusanagi, gripping his phone tightly.

“Yes, the Kikuno police have confirmed his identity. They don’t yet know whether it was murder.”

“Where did it happen?”

“At an old colleague’s place.”

“Oh, right,” Kusanagi said. “I heard that Hasunuma got kicked out of his own apartment and was crashing with some old workmate.”

“Exactly. It was that old workmate who found the body.”

“I see, sir. Okay, I’ll head over to the scene right now.”

Kusanagi got up from his dining table, a half-eaten plate of pasta in front of him. “If it turns out to be murder, please put me in charge of the case. You’ll do that, won’t you, sir?”

“That’s why I called. However” — Kusanagi heard Mamiya exhale — “I need you to proceed with great care.”

“Yes, sir.”

He put down the phone, picked up his plate of pasta, went into the kitchen, and threw the leftovers into the trash.

Outside, he hailed a taxi and headed for Kikuno. On the way, he phoned his junior officers, Detective Inspector Kishitani and Detective Sergeant Utsumi, to give them the news. Utsumi asked if she could join him at the crime scene, to which he replied that she was welcome, if that’s what she wanted to do.

He then gave Inspector Muto of Kikuno Police Station a call. When he picked up, Muto’s first words were, “Did you hear about Hasunuma?”

“I did. I can’t believe it.”

“Me, either. It’s crazy.”

“I’m on my way there now. Could you meet me there?”

“Not a problem. I’m there now. As soon as Forensics have done their thing, I’ll give you a guided tour.”

When the cab got close to the address, they saw the flashing red lights of police cars, several of which were parked in a cluster.

Kusanagi got out and headed for the crime scene, looking around him as he walked. There was a long stretch of warehouses and workshops, but he couldn’t see any private houses or shops. They’d probably mobilized everyone at Kikuno Police Station for a house-to-house, but getting useful eyewitness testimony in an area like this wouldn’t be easy, thought Kusanagi.

The warehouse was cordoned off with tape and a number of uniformed policemen were standing guard. Kusanagi showed his badge to one of them.

“Is Inspector Muto around?” he asked.

“Just a minute, sir.”

The young policeman spoke into his transceiver. “He says to please wait here,” he told Kusanagi.

There was a second smaller structure beside the warehouse. Kusanagi guessed that was where Hasunuma had been living. People in forensics coveralls were going in and out of it.

After a while, Inspector Muto emerged. After the briefest of greetings, the two men got down to business.

“The body’s been taken away and Forensics is wrapping up. Would you like to see the crime scene?”

“Absolutely.”

“Fine. Follow me. You may be disappointed.”

“How so?”

“You’ll see what I mean soon enough.”

Kusanagi followed Muto to the little hut. The door was wide open and there was a light on inside.

Kusanagi peered in. The floor was made of wooden slats. There was a space just inside the door for putting on and taking off your shoes. Kusanagi took off his shoes and followed Muto into the room, pulling on a pair of gloves as he did so.

The converted office was small, maybe roughly one hundred square feet. There was a single bed in one corner, and a kitchen area with a small sink, a small refrigerator, and some shelves with plates on them.

Otherwise, there was a small table and a television. There was no chest of drawers, but a few wire hangers hung from nails that had been hammered into the walls. Beneath these were a few cardboard boxes. Kusanagi looked inside; the boxes contained clothes, crammed in any old how.

Kusanagi noticed a sliding door at the far end of the room. The door was open. “Is there a second room back there?” he asked.

“Yes. Whether it deserves to be called a room is another question,” Muto said. “Hasunuma’s body was found in there.”

Muto walked to the far end of the room. Kusanagi followed him.

They stood in the doorway and looked in. The floor area was less than fifty square feet and the ceiling was low enough that Kusanagi could touch it. The room had no windows and no storage of any kind. The parquet floor was grubby.

“Apparently, this used to be a storeroom,” Muto said.

“Makes sense,” Kusanagi replied. “There’s nothing in here. Did Forensics take everything away?”

“They did — though there wasn’t actually much here to start with.” Muto tapped his phone a few times, then showed the screen to Kusanagi. “This is what the place looked like when we found him.”

Hasunuma, wearing a gray sweat suit, lay sprawled faceup on a quilt-covered mattress. The floor was covered with a ground sheet. To one side of Hasunuma were his clothes and a bag.

“I can’t see any obvious cause of death.”

“No. When the occupant of the room returned, he found Hasunuma like this; he wasn’t breathing. He called an ambulance and the paramedics contacted the police after they had confirmed that Hasunuma was dead. There were no visible external injuries and no signs of strangulation on his neck. Nor was there any evidence of a struggle. The paramedics estimate he died somewhere between thirty minutes and two hours before he was found.” Muto slipped his phone back into his pocket.

Hasunuma had been found at five thirty. If he had already been dead between half an hour and two hours, that put the time of death somewhere between 3:30 and 5:00 P.M.

“By the occupant, you mean Hasunuma’s colleague, don’t you? Let’s see...” Kusanagi reached for his notebook.

“His name’s Masumura.”

“Could I speak to this Mr. Masumura?”

“He’s currently being interviewed at the police station. They’ve arranged for him to spend the night at a business hotel near the railway station. If you want to speak to him directly, though, I can set that up.”

“Please do. I’d really appreciate it.”

“No problem, sir.”

Muto pulled out his phone and made a call.

Kusanagi ran his eye around the small former storeroom again. What sort of schemes had Hasunuma been cooking up in this cramped little space? One of the first things he’d done was go back to Namiki-ya. Why was he so keen to provoke the victim’s family?

The room had a sliding door with a hasp for a padlock on the outside. Kusanagi guessed it was there for security purposes, back when it was a storeroom.

Muto ended his call.

“They’ve already finished interviewing Masumura. I’ve asked them to bring him here on the way to the hotel.”

“That’s very helpful. It’ll be easier to get him to explain things here.”

“You don’t mind if I sit in?”

“Not at all,” Kusanagi replied.

They heard a noise at the door of the hut and they both turned around. Detective Kaoru Utsumi was peering in.

“Is it all right if I come in?”

“Come on in,” said Muto. He turned to Kusanagi. “I assume that Detective Utsumi is here because the Tokyo Metropolitan Police think this might be a murder?”

“What’s the view of the Kikuno precinct?”

“Murder is definitely a possibility. There’s no lack of reasons why someone would want to kill him. Our investigators have already gone to make inquiries” — Muto paused a moment — “at Namiki-ya.”

Kusanagi nodded wordlessly. Anyone who had worked on the Saori Namiki case would have thought the same.

“Can I go and join them? Would that be okay?” Utsumi asked.

“Better not,” Kusanagi replied. “Kikuno precinct hasn’t yet officially contacted the TMPD to ask for help. Don’t be pushy.”

Utsumi squared her shoulders and looked momentarily disgruntled. “Understood, sir,” she replied.

“You said there were no noticeable abnormalities on the body. What about the rest of the crime scene? Did Forensics have anything interesting to say?” Kusanagi asked Muto.

“Nothing stood out. Nothing obviously disturbed, no sign of anyone having wiped away fingerprints, or anything like that.”

“Okay.”

Kusanagi sighed. Right now, there was no reason to designate this a murder. They would have to wait for the results of the autopsy. If it was murder, the absence of external injuries made it likely that poison had been used.

There hadn’t been a cup or mug anywhere near Hasunuma in the photo Muto had shown him. If that was how the killer got Hasunuma to ingest poison, then he must have taken it with him when he left.

In his mind’s eye, Kusanagi saw Yutaro Namiki. If this was murder, then Namiki would be the prime suspect. He had a motive in spades.

But...

Kusanagi ran his eyes around the little room. He found it difficult to imagine Namiki and Hasunuma facing off within this confined space. Had Namiki forced his way in, Hasunuma would have been on his guard. The idea that he would willingly have drunk anything laced with poison made no sense.

Muto pulled out his phone to take an incoming call.

“We’re inside. Come on in.” He ended the call and looked over at Kusanagi and Utsumi. “Masumura has arrived.”

There were voices outside and Kusanagi’s eyes went to the door.

A uniformed policeman ushered a small man in a windbreaker into the room.

16

The precinct detectives arrived at Namiki-ya just as it was about to close, waited for the last customers to leave, and then interviewed the members of the family separately.

Natsumi was questioned in a patrol car parked outside the restaurant. Most of the questions were about what she had been doing all day: Where had she been? What had she been doing between such and such time and such and such time? Who had she been with? Had she received any calls; if so, when and from whom? Had she made any calls? If so, when, to whom, and what were they about?

Natsumi answered all the questions with absolute honesty. She didn’t find the experience particularly pleasant; it was clear that the detective was checking to see if she had an alibi.

After the detectives had left, Natsumi talked to her parents. They, too, were questioned with equal persistence.

“Did they tell you how Hasunuma died?” Yutaro looked first at Machiko, then at Natsumi.

Machiko tilted her head to one side and said nothing.

“They didn’t tell me, either,” Natsumi replied. “They just kept asking me an endless series of questions. I never got the chance to ask them anything. What about you, Daddy?”

“I asked them, but they wouldn’t tell me. No, that’s not quite right. My impression was that the detective didn’t actually know. Still, the fact they were asking us about where we were at various times suggests they think he was killed.”

“After all, if Hasunuma was murdered, we’d be logical suspects,” Machiko said.

“I think they could tell we were telling the truth,” said Natsumi.

Her mother and father exchanged a look.

“I suppose so,” said Yutaro, scratching the back of one ear.

A cell phone started to ring. Yutaro walked over to the counter and picked up his phone.

“It’s from Shusaku,” he said, swiping to answer the call.

“Yeah, hi, it’s me... Yeah, they left literally one minute ago. Yeah, Machiko and Natsumi as well. Detectives questioned them both separately... To make sure we weren’t coordinating our stories, I suppose... That’s what it was about.” Yutaro went into the kitchen, still talking on the phone.

“Natsumi, I’m going to turn off the light.” Machiko flicked the wall switch.

“Okay.” Natsumi took off her shoes and went upstairs.

Alone in her room, she checked her phone. She had a text from Tomoya. He wanted to know what was going on.

She decided to call him. It was faster and he was probably still awake.

He picked up immediately. “Yes? Is that you, Natsumi?”

“Hi, Tomoya. Can you talk?”

“Sure. What happened after I left?”

Bedlam had broken out at Namiki-ya after Maya Miyazawa announced Hasunuma’s death. The customers were regulars and they all knew who Hasunuma was. They were all talking over one another, wondering how he had died.

After a while, the hubbub died down and they all fell silent. With no information, they must have realized that speculation was a waste of time.

That was when Yutaro came out of the kitchen. “We’ll get to hear the details soon enough. In the meantime, let’s keep calm, wait, and see how things play out,” he said. His remarks were met with silent nods of agreement.

When Maya Miyazawa and her companions headed out for their cast revel, that triggered a mass exodus. Before he left, Tomoya had whispered to Natsumi, “If anything happens, let me know.”

Natsumi told Tomoya about the detectives who had come and questioned her and her parents.

“I’m not surprised. You and your family are the prime suspects.”

“That’s what my mother said. I mean, we hated the guy.” Natsumi was being brutally honest. “Still, all three of us told them in great detail what we were doing all day. I don’t think they can suspect us anymore.”

“You mean you’ve all got alibis?” blurted out Tomoya.

“Well, my parents do, at least. They were in the restaurant until the end of lunch service and then they went to the hospital.”

“To the hospital?”

“That’s right. One of the customers got sick while she was here—”

Natsumi told Tomoya about the woman and the oysters.

“Wow. I didn’t know.”

“When you think about it, it was a stroke of good luck. Normally, once they stop serving lunch, my parents are here by themselves until we reopen for dinner. If any of us has a problem with their alibi, it’s me, because I was here minding the fort alone.”

“I don’t think anyone would seriously suspect you.”

“Anyway, that’s about all I’ve got to report. I’ve no idea what’s going to happen next.”

“No, I know. As the boss said, all we can do is sit tight and wait.”

“I’ll let you know if I hear anything. Thanks for your concern.”

“It bothers me, too, you know...” Tomoya was mumbling and Natsumi couldn’t make out what he was saying.

“What?”

“I’m just saying that, I can’t stop thinking about who killed Hasunuma, if he was murdered.”

Natsumi didn’t know how to respond. She felt vaguely uncomfortable.

“As far as I know, the police don’t yet know if he was killed or just died suddenly.”

“Hmm.” Tomoya grunted ambiguously. “Still, to keel over and die suddenly like that isn’t exactly normal, is it?”

Natsumi could only respond with a noncommittal grunt of her own.

“No point in agonizing about it, I guess. Good night.”

“Good night.”

Natsumi pressed the button to end the call and plugged her phone into the charger. She was just about to change into her pajamas, when she remembered something.

If he was murdered, Tomoya had said. Who killed Hasunuma, if he was murdered?

Did that mean he thought someone in her family had murdered him?

Well, I think we all know it’s not such an unreasonable idea, is it?

Natsumi sighed to herself.

17

Kusanagi woke up, got out of bed, and went to brush his teeth. Kusanagi looked at his face in the mirror. No two ways about it. You’re getting older. The sagginess of his face couldn’t all be blamed on the stark white lighting.

He took a shower to clear his head and emerged from the bathroom rubbing his wet hair with a towel.

The hotel room was small and smelled, faintly, of disinfectant. The only places you could relax were the bed or a small chair and you had to twist your body into an acrobatic pose to open the closet door. Kusanagi suspected that a cabin on the Orient Express, the train from Agatha Christie’s famous novel, would probably be more comfortable than his room. Nonetheless, the hotel had been full on Saturday night because of all the people in Kikuno for the parade.

Kusanagi had opted to spend the night in Kikuno to be closer to the precinct as information came in. Detective Sergeant Utsumi had wanted to stay, too, but he persuaded her to go home instead. She’d be there soon enough if they were brought in officially.

Eiji Masumura was being put up at the same hotel. While his place was potentially a crime scene, Masumura would be living in the hotel. Maybe he was happy that he got to stay at a business hotel, albeit a modest one, at the police’s expense. In their interview, Kusanagi didn’t get the impression that Masumura was unduly upset by Hasunuma’s death. That probably showed how close the two men had — or hadn’t — been.

Kusanagi tugged his notebook out of his jacket pocket, sat down on the bed, and started working through what Masumura had told him the night before.

He had first met Hasunuma around four years ago, when Masumura started working at the recycling plant where he was still employed. They had ended up becoming friends.

“He approached me first. Someone had told him I’d been in prison, and he started pestering me, asking me what I’d done.”

Hasunuma vanished about a year later. It wasn’t long, though, that Hasunuma got back in touch. That’s when he started calling Masumura to see if the police had shown up.

“I asked him if he’d done something wrong, but he would just hem and haw. He never gave me a straight answer. Then, about a year ago, he stopped calling completely.”

This wasn’t the first time Kusanagi had heard this story. Inspector Kishitani had told him the same thing.

Around two weeks ago, Hasunuma got back in touch. Hasunuma explained that he was being forced to vacate his present apartment and asked if could he stay with Masumura until he found a new place.

“He offered to pay half the rent, so it wasn’t a bad deal for me. ‘You don’t mind the room being so tiny?’ I asked and he said, ‘No,’ all he needed was a place to crash. Two men living together has its downsides, but it’s always good to have a drinking buddy close by.”

Inspector Muto had told Kusanagi about Hasunuma’s first night as Masumura’s lodger. According to the cop who’d been on surveillance duty that night, the two of them had been boozing it up until the small hours.

Kusanagi asked how Hasunuma spent his time.

“Search me.” Masumura cocked his head to one side. “He would drink with me in the evenings, but I’ve no idea what he got up to in the daytime. Probably just hung around here or went out and played pachinko — you know, stuff like that.”

Had Hasunuma been trying to find a new job? Once again, a rather bored-sounding “Search me” was all the response he got. Did Hasunuma ever have any visitors? “How should I know?” Masumura replied.

Then it was time for the crucial questions. Kusanagi asked Masumura to run through his movements for the day. “I’ve already gone through this hundreds of times at the police station,” Masumura said. He looked rather grumpy as he gave his explanation.

“I was at home all morning, then I went out a bit after midday to get a bite to eat. But that thing was on — you know what I’m talking about — that parade thing. Because of the parade, all the restaurants were jam-packed so I walked over to the next ward. I signed up for this internet café there recently. It’s nine hundred yen for three hours, with free manga to read and free showers, too. I picked up a bento-box lunch at the convenience store and then I went there to read manga and watch TV. I left at five.”

Masumura got home around five thirty. Finding the door to the back room open, he had peered in and saw Hasunuma lying on his futon. Sleeping like a baby, he initially thought, but then, when he saw how motionless he was, he put his hand over his mouth and found that he wasn’t breathing. At that point, he got scared and called the emergency number.

When Masumura left the apartment, Hasunuma had been watching television. Masumura had asked him if he wanted to go out to lunch with him, but Hasunuma had said he wasn’t hungry yet.

No, said Masumura, he didn’t think he’d locked the front door behind him.

Kusanagi snapped his notebook shut. He didn’t think that Masumura was lying. What he’d said about going to the internet café was probably true. Anyway, places like that always had CCTV. If Masumura was lying, it wouldn’t take long to find out.

Kusanagi picked up his phone. He was about to send a text to Inspector Muto when he noticed that he’d gotten one. It was from an unlikely sender: Manabu Yukawa.

He was even more surprised when he read the text. I want to talk to you about Hasunuma’s death. Get in touch when you have time, it said. The text had been sent a bit just after seven that morning, or a little more than an hour ago.

When he called, Yukawa picked up almost instantly. Skipping the niceties, he simply said, “So you got my message?”

“How do you even know?” Kusanagi said, getting straight to the point. “That Hasunuma’s dead, I mean.”

“I was at Namiki-ya last night. Some guy overheard the police talking about it over near the crime scene. He came straight over to the restaurant to report the news.”

“Okay, but what were you doing in Namiki-ya to start with?”

“I was there for dinner. What else? Come on, it was you who told me about the place.”

“Go there often?”

“I’m not quite sure what level of frequency the word ‘often’ denotes. I probably go there about twice a week.”

That made him the most regular of regular customers.

“Why do you want to talk to me about Hasunuma’s death?”

“Because the proprietor of my favorite restaurant and his family could be suspects in a murder case. It’s hard for me not to care.”

Kusanagi snorted. “That’s an unusually human thing for you to say. Your time in America has turned you into a softy.”

“That’s nonsense. Come on, just tell me what you know.”

“Sadly, I don’t have any information to share.”

“Meaning it’s information that you can’t share with an ordinary civilian?”

“You know you’re not an ordinary civilian. That’s not the problem. We really don’t know much. The cause of death is still unknown, so we can’t yet determine whether or not it was murder.”

“Oh, I see. I guess I’ll have to be content with that for now. Thanks for calling me so early like this. I appreciate it.”

Yukawa sounded as though he was about to hang up. “Wait,” Kusanagi said hastily to stop him doing so. “You were in Namiki-ya last night, you said. There are a few questions I’d like to ask you. Have you got the time to get together today?”

“I’m free this morning. I haven’t the time to travel into central Tokyo, though.”

“Central Tokyo? So where are you?”

“I’m staying in the staff accommodation at our Kikuno research institute.”

“Why didn’t you say so? Had breakfast?”

“No, not yet.”

“Good,” said Kusanagi. “Then have it with me. My treat.”

About thirty minutes later, Kusanagi was sitting across from Yukawa at the train station coffee shop. It was the same place they got together the last time.

“I never expected to see you again here like this,” Kusanagi said.

“You chose the place.”

“Because it’s easy to find. Anyway, that’s not what I meant. What I meant is that I didn’t expect to see you here as part of an investigation.”

“Am I part of an investigation?” Yukawa raised his eyebrows.

“No, uh...” Kusanagi faltered. “We can’t refer to it as an investigation since we don’t know yet if a crime occurred.”

Kusanagi briefly ran through the facts: how Hasunuma was staying in the room of his one-time coworker; what the crime scene looked like.

“You said the cause of death was unclear.”

“There were no external injuries and no marks of strangulation on the neck.”

“Did Hasunuma have any preexisting conditions? Heart disease, for example?”

“Not that I’ve heard — though he certainly was a hard-hearted bastard.”

“I wasn’t talking about metaphorical hearts. Either way, there’s a low likelihood of disease being the cause of death. Do you think that some kind of drug could have been used?”

“We don’t know yet. Personally, I think that’s the likeliest—”

The waitress came to the table and Kusanagi broke off with a dry cough. They both watched in silence as she put the dishes down in front of them.

“The problem is getting him to ingest the stuff,” said Yukawa, reaching for his coffee cup after the waitress had gone. “The poison, I mean.”

“Exactly. Hasunuma was no fool. Not the kind of person to swill down a suspicious drink without even a second thought.”

“By ‘suspicious drink,’ you mean one prepared by a person with the intention of killing him?”

Taking a bite of his sandwich, Kusanagi nodded as he chewed and swallowed.

“Let’s get down to business. That’s precisely what I wanted to talk to you about. You were at Namiki-ya last night, right? Tell me how the people there were behaving. How did they react when they got the news of his death?”

Yukawa stuffed what was left of his sandwich into his mouth and looked thoughtfully upward and off to the side. Kusanagi guessed that he was trying to picture the scene in the restaurant on the previous night.

“In a nutshell, there was general surprise.”

“General?”

“Everyone at the restaurant. Last night, all the customers were regulars, so they all knew who Hasunuma was.”

“I’m only interested in the ones with murderous intent. I don’t care about the rest of the regular customers.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Yukawa placed his hands flat on the table and looked intently at Kusanagi. “How are we meant to separate people who have murder on their mind from people who don’t? It’s not possible. The best you can do is to pinpoint the people who might have such an intention toward Hasunuma. If we’re only talking about a matter of possibility, then that group will end up being everyone who knew about Hasunuma.”

Kusanagi frowned and scratched the side of his nose. Yukawa had a good point.

“Okay, I’m sorry. It was a poorly phrased question. What I want to know is how the Namiki family reacted; Yutaro Namiki, the father, in particular. How did he respond?”

Yukawa grunted and crossed his arms on his chest.

“There was uproar when the regulars heard that Hasunuma was dead. At that point, Yutaro Namiki and his wife were in the kitchen, so I didn’t see how they reacted. After a few minutes, the customers quieted down. That was when Namiki came out and said something like, ‘Let’s just wait and see how this turns out.’ He was calm and I didn’t detect anything strained or unnatural in his behavior. I can’t tell you about his wife because she didn’t come out of the kitchen. As for Natsumi... well... she looked stunned. That’s all I can tell you about the family.”

“Okay... And what’s your personal opinion?”

Yukawa wrinkled his brow slightly as if he hadn’t understood the question.

“Do you think those three have got anything to do with Hasunuma’s death?”

“If you’re asking, do I think they killed him, I’d say no, they couldn’t have. The police interviewed them and said that each of them had a solid alibi for the rough time of death. I imagine the detectives have already verified the details.”

Yukawa then explained that he had spent the afternoon of the previous day watching the parade with Natsumi until she had to go cover for her parents, who were taking a customer to the hospital.

“From what I know, both Yutaro and Machiko Namiki have almost flawless alibis and while it’s true that Natsumi was alone for a certain amount of time, that was in response to an unanticipated event. She couldn’t have committed the murder.”

Kusanagi groaned softly. “It sounds like they’re above suspicion, then.”

Yukawa put down his salad fork. “We can safely put to rest the question of whether they killed Hasunuma themselves. That still leaves us your original question: Do I think that the three of them had anything to do with Hasunuma’s death? My only answer to that is, I don’t know. We have a man on a murder charge, almost certainly guilty, who’s been released because of insufficient evidence, who then dies mysteriously during a parade that’s held only once a year. We have the family of the murder victim, each with fortuitous, ironclad alibis. I’m not able to ascribe all that to coincidence.”

“You think there’s something behind their alibis?”

Yukawa grunted and tipped his head pensively to one side. “At present, I really can’t say — hence my saying that I don’t know.” He picked up his fork and started to eat his salad.

Kusanagi pondered the implications of the physicist’s gnomic remark. He was about to finish the remains of his sandwich, when his phone started buzzing. He glanced at the screen; it was Inspector Muto.

He stood up and walked over to a corner of the café to take the call. “Kusanagi here.”

“Muto. Can you talk?”

“Yes. What’s up?”

“We’ve got partial results from the autopsy. They haven’t yet managed to identify the cause of death, but they have found petechiae on the body.”

“Petechiae... Meaning there’s a strong possibility of asphyxiation?”

When a person experiences breathing difficulties, the movement of the diaphragm affects the heart, which in turn chokes off the blood flow. With nowhere to go, the blood in the veins breaks through the capillaries and leaks out into the skin. The process is known as extravasation of the blood, while the visible clusters of spots are called petechiae.

“Correct. The petechiae aren’t pronounced enough for manual strangulation or ligature strangulation. And there aren’t any marks where the throat was compressed. There are no abnormalities in the bones or joints of the neck, either.”

“Hmm. That’s unusual.”

“There was one more thing. Some of the blood work came back. They found some of the ingredients of sleeping medication.”

Kusanagi’s grip on his phone tightened. “Are they sure about that?”

“Apparently, yes. And no sleeping medication was found among Hasunuma’s personal effects.”

Kusanagi exhaled loudly and made an effort to tamp down his excitement. “Was it a normal sedative, or could it have been some kind of poison?”

“No, they don’t think so.”

“Okay. And so what’s next?”

“The precinct commander and the head of CID are currently having a meeting. I think they’ll probably call in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department.”

“Great. Thanks for letting me know. I will drop by the station later.”

Kusanagi ended the call and returned to the table. Yukawa, who had finished his food, was drinking his coffee.

Kusanagi summarized what Muto had said. Amazingly, the professor was unfamiliar with the term petechiae.

“So can we sum it up like this, then?” said Yukawa. “Someone induced sleep in Hasunuma by getting him to ingest a sedative and then asphyxiated him somehow.”

“Sounds about right. It’s the ‘how’ that’s the problem. Even if he’d been given a regular sleeping pill, he’d have woken up if he was having trouble breathing. If anyone had been physically covering his nose and mouth, he’d have fought back.”

“How about if his wrists and ankles were tied? If he’d been restrained not with rope, but with gum tape wound around his clothes, that wouldn’t have left any marks on his skin.”

“If he was thrashing around like crazy, his clothing would have left abrasion marks. The medical examiner wouldn’t miss something like that,” Kusanagi said.

“When you put it like that, I have to agree with you,” Yukawa said, backing down, not something he often did. “In that case, it’s the killing method that is the big problem. Do tell me if you manage to figure out how he was asphyxiated.”

Kusanagi pointed at Yukawa with his fork. “When it comes to unraveling impossible crimes, you’re the master. It’s time for Detective Galileo to stand up.”

Kusanagi was expecting Yukawa to pull a sour face and turn him down flat. To his surprise, he complied meekly.

“Why not? Let me think about it when I have the time.”

Kusanagi stared at Yukawa in astonishment.

“What is it? Is something wrong?” Yukawa asked.

“No, nothing. Thank you. I’d appreciate that.”

“I’ll need to see the crime scene. Can you arrange that?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll take you as soon as the local police have filed an official request for TMPD support and my team is put in charge.”

“Great. I’ll wait to hear from you.” Yukawa looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get going. Do you mind?” He picked up the check.

“Hang on. I said I was paying.”

“I got a lot more information from you than you got from me. And besides, you paid last time. I like to keep my accounts in balance. I’ll see you.”

Yukawa lifted the hand with the bill in a gesture of farewell and headed for the cash register.

Kusanagi remembered his friend’s words as he watched him go. We have a man on a murder charge who’s been released because of insufficient evidence, who then dies mysteriously during a parade that’s held only once a year. We have the family of the murder victim, each with fortuitous, ironclad alibis. I’m not able to ascribe all that to coincidence.

From Kusanagi’s point of view, there was one more coincidence at play: the fact that Yukawa got himself involved.

18

He realized that his fingers had stopped moving and he was just staring at the computer monitor. The deadline was tomorrow and he wasn’t making any headway at all. When he glanced at his watch, it was almost four in the afternoon.

Tomoya got to his feet, intending to get himself a coffee. He had only taken a couple of steps when his cell phone started ringing. He didn’t recognize the number but decided to take it, anyway.

“Yes?”

“Am I speaking to Mr. Tomoya Takagaki?” inquired a woman’s voice.

“Yes, that’s me.”

“Sorry to call you at work. This is Detective Sergeant Utsumi of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s Homicide Division.”

“Ah,” Tomoya murmured. He didn’t know what to say.

“There’s something I want to talk to you about,” Utsumi continued. “Could you spare the time?”

“That’s not a problem. Um, when did you have in mind?”

“The sooner, the better. In fact, right now would be good. I’m actually outside your office right now.”

Tomoya gave a little gasp of surprise. With his phone pressed to his ear, he went to a nearby window and peered down but couldn’t see Detective Utsumi in the street.

“Well, Mr. Takagaki?”

“Um, yes, fine. Come on up, then.”

“Thank you very much.”

“See you in a minute.”

As soon as he ended the call, his mind started racing. It had been six months since he’d seen Detective Utsumi. He’d given her his business card but she’d never contacted him before, so why was she here now?

It’s blindingly obvious. It’s to do with Hasunuma’s death. She must suspect me of being involved. I must be very careful.

He took a deep breath.

He was waiting in front of the reception desk when Utsumi walked in. Her long hair was tied behind her head and she was wearing a dark-blue pantsuit. She radiated competence, as she walked toward him with long, brisk strides.

When she reached him, she nodded her head in greeting. “I apologize for turning up suddenly like this.”

“It’s not a problem... Would the same meeting room we used last time be all right?”

“That’ll be fine, yes.”

They sat facing each other in the cramped room. Utsumi placed both hands on her knees and drew herself upright in her chair.

“Let me start by thanking you for your help with our previous investigation.”

“Was I any help?”

“The information you provided was invaluable. In fact, it was thanks to you that we were able to make an arrest.” Utsumi looked at Tomoya intently. “I imagine you heard, Mr. Takagaki, that the case didn’t make it to trial. The prosecutor decided on a deferment of dispensation, so the suspect was released.” She was scrutinizing his face. Tomoya got the sense that she was watching for even the tiniest reaction.

He said nothing, so she followed up with, “But, of course, you were aware of that?”

“Yes, I’d heard.”

“Who told you?”

“Saori’s — Saori Namiki’s family. To be precise, I heard it from Natsumi, Saori’s sister,” Tomoya replied. He wondered why Utsumi was interested in that now specifically.

“How did you feel when you heard the news?”

“How did I feel? I thought it was weird. There was loads of evidence against the guy, right? It makes no sense for him to be let off scot-free.”

“I can see why you might feel like that. What did you decide to do about it?”

“Huh?” Tomoya was thrown off-balance. “Decide to do?... What do you mean?”

“If you don’t mind my asking, do you know what deferment of dispensation means?”

“Uhm, to be quite honest, no, I’m not sure I do. Natsumi said something about there not being enough evidence. So, I figured it meant something like ‘get off unpunished.’”

“It doesn’t necessarily mean that, no. It does involve deferral, so there is a good chance that the suspect will not be indicted. And if the suspect’s not indicted, then obviously he won’t be punished, either. Were you happy with that outcome?”

“No, uhm, what I mean is...” Tomoya was shaking his head furiously. “Of course, I wasn’t happy with that. It’s intolerable. I was hoping the police and the prosecutor would go the extra mile. I wanted them to get to the truth.”

He had spoken with a lot of feeling, but Utsumi was seemingly unmoved. If anything, there was a coldness in the look she gave him.

“If a decision was taken not to punish the suspect — I mean, if it was decided not to indict him, what would you do then?” Utsumi asked.

“You mean, if the case against him was dismissed?” Tomoya knew that his eyes were swimming about shiftily. “I did my best not to think about it. I prayed that it wouldn’t turn out like that.” After a pause, he added, “Prayed from the bottom of my heart.”

Utsumi didn’t respond. Tomoya started feeling uncomfortable.

“Let me ask you frankly. Were you thinking of appealing to the Prosecutorial Review Commission, if the case against him was dropped?”

“The prosecutorial what?”

“The Prosecutorial Review Commission. It’s a commission with the power to review prosecutors’ decisions not to bring charges against suspects in a criminal case. The only people who can appeal to it are the plaintiff, the accuser, or the victim’s family. Given that you were on such friendly terms with Saori’s family, Mr. Takagaki, I thought that you might have proposed or discussed an appeal with them. That’s why I’m asking you about it now. From your reaction, I assume that you didn’t?”

Utsumi’s businesslike explanation only served to make Tomoya more flustered.

“No, it never occurred to me. I don’t know anything about the law...”

“A moment ago, you said that you were praying that the charges against Hasunuma wouldn’t be dropped. Did you think that if the charges against him were dropped and he wasn’t indicted, that then there would be nothing you could do, that you would have no more recourse under the law?”

“Yeah, I guess so... I guess I thought that. Rather fuzzily, though.”

Utsumi nodded curtly and jotted something down in her notebook. Tomoya was curious but there was no point in asking her what she was writing. She would never tell him.

“Uhm, that Prosecutorial...”

Utsumi looked up. “The Prosecutorial Review Commission, you mean?”

“Yes. What would happen if we did appeal to the Prosecutorial Review Commission?”

“They would deliberate the reasoning of the prosecutor’s decision not to indict. Were they to conclude that the wrong decision had been made, the prosecutor would then have to review the case. Were he to decide not to charge the case for a second time, then, depending on circumstances, a second Prosecutorial Review Commission could be convoked. The whole process can take a surprisingly long time.”

“You’re telling me that the prosecutor’s decision can be reversed? Does this commission often recommend that the prosecutor go ahead with a case?”

“Honestly, no, that’s very rare — but it’s not nonexistent. In a murder case where the suspect hasn’t been indicted, an appeal to the Prosecutorial Review Commission represents the last recourse for the victim’s family.”

“I had no idea.”

Tomoya wondered if the Namiki family were any better informed than he was. Natsumi had certainly never mentioned the commission to him.

“Let me change my line of questioning,” Utsumi said drily. “The man who was arrested on suspicion of murdering Saori Namiki — I would like you to tell me what you know about him and his recent activities. In as much detail as possible, please.”

“About Hasunuma, you mean?”

“That’s right.” Utsumi nodded and gave him a wan smile.

Tomoya realized that she hadn’t uttered the man’s name. Was that deliberate?

“Whatever I know about him is stuff I heard from Natsumi or the people at Namiki-ya.”

“That’s fine. Fire away.” Utsumi’s pen was poised above her notebook.

Tomoya told Utsumi about the night Hasunuma showed up at Namiki-ya; about him living in an old warehouse office in Kikuno; and finally that he had died the day before. He also told her where he’d gotten the information in each case.

Utsumi’s pen stopped moving across the page. She looked hard at Tomoya.

“Do you know where Hasunuma was living before he moved back to Kikuno?”

“No.”

“Did you ever try to find out?”

“No. Why would I?”

“When you heard the news that this man — a man you felt deserved to be punished — had been released, didn’t that make you curious? Didn’t you want to see what kind of life he was leading?”

Tomoya blinked and shook his head. “It never occurred to me, no.”

Utsumi pulled her chin back. Her mouth was relaxed, but her eyes were as sharp as ever.

“How did you feel when you heard about Hasunuma’s death?”

“Surprised. Shocked.” Tomoya’s eyes widened. “I thought that something must have happened.”

“What did you think caused it? Accident? Illness?”

I must be careful what I say here, Tomoya told himself. He took a deep, slow breath. “I didn’t hear anything about Hasunuma being sick, so it didn’t occur to me that it could be that. But I didn’t assume it was an accident, either. I just had a vague notion that... that he’d been caught up in some kind of trouble; yes, caught up in some kind of trouble. With someone like him, it’s only to be expected.”

“Someone like him?”

“Someone who can happily kill another human being.”

“We don’t officially know that he killed her.”

“He’s guilty. He murdered Saori. I’m sure of it.”

Tomoya was getting annoyed and he scowled at Utsumi. Her face showed only the most complete indifference.

“You used the word ‘trouble’? Are you implying that he was murdered?”

“I hadn’t really thought it through. A brawl, maybe, something that got out of hand...”

“Do you think he could have been murdered?” He thought he detected a gleam in the woman’s eyes.

“Well—” he said, moistening his lips with the tip of his tongue. He knew he had to avoid any kind of verbal slipup here. “I honestly have no idea. At the same time, I don’t think it would be that extraordinary if he had been. There were loads of people with reason to hate him. Like, uhm...” He thought hard before he continued. “Like, if you were to tell me that one of the Namikis had killed him, I’d be surprised — but on the other hand I’d also think, ‘Of course they did.’”

Utsumi nodded her head several times. “And what if it was you?” she asked, pointing at Tomoya with the tip of her ball pen. “If your friends knew that you were the one who had killed him, how do you think they would take it?”

“Me? Killed him?” The unexpected question threw Tomoya off-balance. He could feel the blood rushing to his face.

“It’s common knowledge that you and Saori Namiki were in a relationship. No one would be shocked to hear that Yutaro, Saori’s father, was the killer. By the same token, no one would be surprised to hear that you had done it, either. That’s all I’m saying.”

What was the detective getting at? What was the right way to answer her question?

“Well, I, uh, don’t know what to say. Maybe you’re right. Maybe some of my friends wouldn’t be all that surprised. But it would be a different story with anyone who knew me well: I’m a total coward. You need guts to take revenge...”

“Are you saying you hadn’t even thought about it?”

Tomoya felt the sweat dripping down his temples. He took his handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped it away.

“I fantasized about taking revenge,” he replied candidly. “But that’s only fantasy. I’m not so dumb that I don’t know what the consequences would be.”

“Thank you,” Utsumi said, looking pleased. “Now for my last question. I’d like you to talk me through what you did all day yesterday in as much detail as possible. It would really help to know where you were.”

She was checking his alibi. Tomoya had been expecting this.

He launched into an account of the day. After spending the morning at home with his mother, Rie, he’d gone out just before midday to watch the parade. He got together with two of his younger coworkers, one of whom was a young woman who had only joined the firm this year. He had offered to act as their guide, since neither of them had been to the parade before.

“Where did you watch it from?” Utsumi asked.

“Near the finish. A lot of the teams keep their best gimmicks and performances for the end.”

“Did you watch the parade right through?”

“We did, yes. It finished sometime after three P.M. After that, we split up for a while.”

“Split up?”

“Both my colleagues had things they wanted to do. We decided to separate and do our own thing for a while. We agreed to rendezvous at this bar near the train station at four, then went our different ways.”

This was something that Tomoya hadn’t really wanted to tell the detective. However, since she could check his story just by asking his two colleagues, it made more sense to be up-front with her from the start.

“Where did you go, Mr. Takagaki?” Although her expression and tone hadn’t changed, Tomoya got the sense that she felt she was onto something.

“I went to this area just past the finish line to say hi to the members of the local team, Team Kikuno, who had just finished their performance — Maya Miyazawa and the rest of the bunch.”

“Who is this Ms. Miyazawa?”

“She’s the leader of the team and the manager of Miyazawa Books. I’m not sure I have her contact details...”

“Not to worry. Who else did you talk to?”

“Some people I bump into at Namiki-ya from time to time. Sorry, I don’t know their names.”

“And after that?”

“It was almost time, so I headed to the bar and met up with my two coworkers. We had a few beers and left the place at around six thirty, I think.”

After that, he told her, he went to Namiki-ya. It was there that he heard the news of Hasunuma’s death.

After listening to his account, Utsumi asked him to furnish her with the names and contact details of the two coworkers and unable to think of a reason not to, he did.

“Thank you. This is all very useful. I may need to ask you a few more questions, so I may get in touch again.” Utsumi shut her little notebook and nodded her thanks.

“You won’t be sharing any information with me today, either, then?”

“Huh?” was all the reply Toyoma got.

“Any information about the case. It’s just like last time: You get to ask all the questions. You haven’t even told me whether Hasunuma was murdered.”

“I think I explained my position at our last meeting.”

“Yes, I know, but...”

“Then thank you for your understanding,” said Utsumi, getting briskly to her feet.

“The truth is,” she said, looking Tomoya in the eyes, “there isn’t actually all that much I can tell you.”

“Which means what?”

“Which means we haven’t yet pinpointed the cause of death.”

“Oh, really?” Tomoya blinked.

Utsumi nodded discreetly. “Thank you for your help,” she said, and opened the door.

19

“The Prosecutorial Review Commission? Yes, of course.” Naoki Niikura nodded his head. “Of course, it had occurred to me.”

“So you knew about it? Most people have never even heard of it.” Inspector Kishitani’s eyes widened. The man’s got a surprisingly genial face for a detective, thought Niikura. He had a glass mug of tea in his hand.

“I only heard of it recently. When I heard the news about that guy’s release, I wondered what on earth ‘deferment of dispensation’ actually meant, so I started looking into it.”

“Did you manage to figure it out?”

“I guess.” Niikura shrugged. “To be frank, I thought it was a pretty half-assed rule. No, I mean, legally-speaking, it’s not even official.”

“You’re right. The police send a case to the prosecutor. The prosecutor has to decide whether or not to prosecute within a fixed time period. All they’re doing is postponing that decision.”

“I tried to find out if there was any way to appeal the decision to defer. That’s what led me to the Prosecutorial Review Commission. I realized that you can only lodge an appeal after the final decision has been made. We were still at the deferment of dispensation stage, so we weren’t there yet. On top of that, the only people who can lodge an appeal are the plaintiff, the accuser, or the victim’s family.”

Inspector Kishitani took an appreciative sip of his herbal tea, then placed his teacup on the table. There was a faint smile on his lips. “You’ve certainly done your homework.”

“The only thing we could do was wait — right?” Niikura looked over at Rumi, his wife, for confirmation. She was sitting in a dining chair, a tray clutched in her hands.

She nodded silently.

“How did you see the case going? Did you expect Hasunuma to be indicted in the end?” Smile or no smile, Inspector Kishitani’s eyes were dead serious.

“Well, I, uhm...” Niikura mumbled something incoherent.

He would be lying if he said that he believed Hasunuma would be indicted. He had spent days agonizing at the thought that nothing would be done; that the man would be able to go about his life completely unpunished.

“Would you have filed an appeal if the prosecutor had decided not to prosecute?”

“Probably. Rather, I’d probably have advised the Namikis to do so. They couldn’t possibly accept such a decision.”

“So you hadn’t yet discussed the matter with them?”

“That’s right. Lately, when my wife and I meet the Namikis, we seldom discuss Saori. It’s just too painful for both sides.”

“And that was the case even after Hasunuma reappeared in Kikuno?” Kishitani asked, inspecting Niikura with his eyes.

Aware that he needed to be careful, Niikura tried to focus. “I didn’t actually know anything about that.”

“Sorry, ‘that’?”

“‘That’ being the fact that Hasunuma was back here in Kikuno; or rather, that he was back in Kikuno and had showed up at Namiki-ya. The first I heard of it was last night; the other customers at Namiki-ya told me about it after we got the news of Hasunuma’s death. I’d not actually been to Namiki-ya for quite a while, you see.”

Naoki Niikura hadn’t actually known that Hasunuma was back in Kikuno until Tojima alerted him. No one else had mentioned it to him since then. His story would be inconsistent if he said that he knew anything about it before the fuss at Namiki-ya last night.

“Aha. I see.”

Kishitani’s lips parted in surprise and he started writing in his notebook. He seemed like a genial fellow, but from certain angles his face could also look quite sly. Niikura couldn’t tell if Kishitani believed him.

His pen stopped moving across the page. Kishitani looked up.

“Could you tell me how you feel now? What were your emotions when you heard that Hasunuma was dead? Be honest.”

“How do I feel now?” Niikura paused and looked down. His mind was racing. What was the most appropriate response in this situation? He looked up at Kishitani. “How I feel would depend on how he died.”

“What do you mean?”

“If Hasunuma was murdered, then I’d say the bugger got what he deserved. I’d like to thank the killer for taking revenge on our behalf. If it was disease or some kind of accident, if Hasunuma died just like any other normal person, then I’d feel a bit... no, I’d feel very bitter and angry. I’d have to try and think of it as divine retribution.”

Kishitani gave a grunt, then turned his attention to Rumi. “And you, Mrs. Niikura? How do you feel?”

“Me, too... uhm... let me see. I’ve not fully processed it yet. The whole thing’s a bit bewildering...” Her words just petered out.

“Tell me, Detective.” Niikura looked hard at Kishitani. “What did actually happen? Was Hasunuma murdered? I’m guessing he was, otherwise a detective from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department would hardly be on the case, would he.”

Kishitani listened stone-faced, then grinned at them both.

“We’re still in the middle of our investigation. Now, there’s something else I need to ask you.” He picked up his pen. “Where were you yesterday?”

Here we go. Naoki Niikura steeled himself. Time to confirm our alibis.

“We both went to the parade. It only comes around once a year.”

“If possible, I’d appreciate as much detail as possible. Try and break things down for me: where you were, what you were doing, who you were with. Oh, and give me times.”

“The precise times?”

“As precise as memory permits.” Kishitani smiled self-deprecatingly. “It’s just one of those bureaucratic hoops we detectives have to jump through.”

“We were here at home all morning. We left the house at—” Niikura looked over at Rumi. “Was it after midday?”

“I’m not quite sure. All I know is that the Heidi, a Girl of the Alps float went past the minute we got there.”

“So it did.”

“Where did you watch the parade from?”

“Just a little bit past the start. There’s this raised section in front of the post office and you get a good view from there.”

“Did you watch the whole parade from there?”

“No, not the whole thing. We moved a few times, but we couldn’t find anywhere else as good, so we eventually went back.”

“Did you run into anyone you know?”

“Oh yes. Quite a lot of people.”

“Who were they? I’d like you to tell me their names, if you can.” Kishitani held his ball pen poised above his notebook.

“I’m afraid I don’t recall the exact times and places.”

“That doesn’t matter. We’ll check the details.”

To Niikura that sounded like: We’ll know if you’re lying to us.

Niikura listed several names. They were all people he and his wife had actually bumped into. Kikuno wasn’t a big place and Niikura knew everyone. People were always coming up to say hello.

The last name he gave was that of Maya Miyazawa.

“Miyazawa’s the leader of Team Kikuno. I’m involved with the performance, so I went to wish her luck and have a last-minute chat before the team set off.”

“What’s the nature of your involvement?”

“I’m the music supervisor for their songs. I help them avoid any copyright problems and I composed the theme song for the local mascot that comes after them in the parade.”

“I see. Most impressive,” Kishitani said with slightly insincere admiration. “Where did you go after the parade?”

“We went to Kikuno Park where they hold the singing contest. Rumi and I are on the judging panel. The contest probably wrapped around six, after which we went to Namiki-ya. We were completely stunned by the news of Hasunuma’s death, but we still ate our dinner and left around eight or so, then came back here. That’s the whole day,” Niikura said, rounding things off.

Kishitani muttered to himself as he stared down at his notebook. Niikura wondered if he was reading his notes back to himself. He shut the notebook with a snap.

“That’s all very nice and clear. Thank you for making the time to speak to me.” Kishitani got to his feet and put his notebook and pen into his bag.

Niikura accompanied the detective to the front door and saw him off. When he got back to the living room, Rumi hadn’t moved. She was pale and staring intently at the dining table.

“Any problems?”

“What?” She looked up at her husband.

“The answers I gave the detective. Did I do okay? I didn’t screw up?”

Rumi looked uncomfortable as she tilted her head to one side. “You did okay... I think.”

“I think I did, too.”

Niikura was heading for the sofa when he noticed Rumi’s hands. He came to a stop.

It was very subtle, but they were trembling.

He went and placed his hands on her shoulders.

“It’s all right. There’s nothing to be frightened about.”

Rumi looked up at him. Her eyes were bloodshot.

“Hasunuma killed Saori,” Niikura said. “He deserved to be punished. No one would ever blame us, if they found out what we did.”

20

“You should come out with us just once in a while,” one of her girlfriends had said. Tonight, apparently, there was a big party. A change of pace might be just the thing to cheer me up, Natsumi thought. In the end, she turned her friend down, making an apologetic gesture as she did so. “I’m sorry, I just can’t.” Her mother took over front-of-house duties at the restaurant whenever she took time off, but Natsumi knew it wasn’t easy for her. On top of that, the news of Hasunuma’s death was still a weight on her mind. She wondered if the police were making any progress.

It was after five when she got home. Her parents were already hard at work in the kitchen. She dashed up the stairs and got changed. The stylish clothes she wore to university weren’t suitable for waitressing.

Back downstairs, she gave the dining area a good cleaning, then hung the noren curtain over the front door on the stroke of five thirty.

She was sitting on one of the chairs in the restaurant playing with her phone, when the door slid open. The first customer of the day was someone she had seen only the day before.

“Good evening,” said Manabu Yukawa, as he stepped inside.

“Good evening. Yesterday was fun.”

Natsumi went to the back of the restaurant and returned with a rolled-up cool towel on a little tray. “What would you like to drink?”

“Beer. Then the usual.”

“Coming right up.”

She relayed the order to the kitchen, extracted a bottle of beer from the refrigerator, and took it to his table, together with a glass and the appetizer. Today’s appetizer was boiled and half-dried bonito simmered in soy sauce.

“Thank you.” Yukawa poured beer into his glass. “I got a visit from a detective today. To grill me about my movements yesterday.”

“A detective went to see you? I wonder why.”

“He asked me when we were together — from what time until what time — and then when we were apart. He didn’t say why he was asking. My impression was that he was less interested in my movements than in verifying your statement.”

“Oh... really?”

“I knew you had nothing to hide, so I just told him the facts. He pressed me to be as precise as possible about times. I explained that my memory was a bit hazy and he should take my answers with a pinch of salt. If I did get anything wrong, there may be some small discrepancies in our statements. I just wanted to say sorry in advance.”

“I should apologize to you for the police bothering you like that.”

“No need, you’re the ones who have suffered. Of course, taking a purely objective view, the police have every reason to be suspicious of you and your family.”

“That’s true, but I think we’ll be okay. My mom and dad have both got perfect alibis.”

“They took a customer who wasn’t feeling well to the hospital, I heard?”

“That’s right.”

“Do they know the woman’s identity? I imagine the police will want to speak to her.”

“I’m not sure.”

Natsumi hadn’t thought about that.

“Natsumi,” came Yutaro’s voice from the kitchen. The takiawase Yukawa had ordered was ready.

As she was picking up the dish from the kitchen, Natsumi asked her father if he knew who the woman customer was.

“No, not really. All I know is that her family name is Yamada,” replied Yutaro, busily cooking something.

Natsumi brought the dish of takiawase to Yukawa and told him the woman’s name.

“Yesterday was a Sunday, so there can’t have been all that many patients in the emergency room. If the police know her name, it will be easy enough to get the rest of her details from the hospital. They may not even need to go that far. The nurses can testify that your parents were at the hospital, can’t they?”

“Yes, they can.” Natsumi found Yukawa’s cool and reasonable tone comforting.

For a while, no more customers came in, not even customers who were usually there, day in, day out. Was this because of Hasunuma’s death? Natsumi wondered. Perhaps the locals had decided that the Namikis had something to do with it. Natsumi remembered her phone conversation with Tomoya Takagaki the night before. He certainly seemed to think that. At that moment, who should appear but Tomoya himself.

“Evening,” Natsumi said.

Tomoya looked around the restaurant. He was obviously unsure where to sit.

“Why not this one?” Yukawa motioned to the seat opposite his. “Fancy sharing?”

“May I?”

“Of course. You’re very welcome.”

“I’ll take you up on that.” Tomoya sat down in the seat Yukawa had indicated.

It was a novel sight. Since both men were regulars, Natsumi had often seen them exchange the odd word now and again, but she’d never seen them sitting at the same table.

“Did you a get a visit from a detective?” Yukawa asked, pouring beer into Tomoya’s glass.

“How did you know?”

“It’s not hard to guess. You’re like the Namiki family. From the police point of view, your position is a sensitive one.” Putting the beer bottle down on the table, Yukawa picked up his own glass. “You’re on their list of suspects.”

“The detective who came to see me in my office today is the same one who came to see me after Saori’s body was found,” said Tomoya. “She asked me for my alibi.”

“A woman detective, eh? Does your alibi hold up?”

“It ought to. I was with a couple of friends from work during and after the parade.”

“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about,” Yukawa said. “What else did she ask you?”

“She asked me if I’d heard of something called the Prosecutorial Review Commission.”

“The Prosecutorial... Oh, of course.” Yukawa’s eyes blinked behind his glasses as if he’d just realized something.

“What is it — the Prosecutorial Review Commission?” Natsumi asked the two men.

Yukawa looked up at her.

“It’s a panel that reviews and rules on the rightness of a prosecutor’s decision when he decides not to indict a suspect. If anyone disagrees with the prosecutor’s decision, there can be an appeal. The people on the commission are ordinary members of the public. They’ve got to be over twenty and they are chosen by lot.”

“You’re very well informed, Professor,” Tomoya said.

“One of my friends was selected,” said Yukawa offhandedly.

“Well, I’d never heard of it. To be honest, today I finally understood the difference between deferment of dispensation and simply dropping charges... I don’t quite know why she was asking me questions about that, though.”

“Probably because the police believe that no one familiar with the workings of the Prosecutorial Review Commission would murder Hasunuma at this stage of the legal process. Even if the prosecutor did formally decide not to indict, there would still be the opportunity to lodge an appeal against the decision. There was no need for anyone to do anything as extreme as to take revenge into their own hands.”

“I see. Well, I didn’t know about the commission, so I could still be a suspect.” Tomoya sighed and picked up his beer glass. “The detective asked me another odd question. Had I tried to find out where Hasunuma lived before he moved back to Kikuno? I told her no, I hadn’t. It never even occurred to me to do so.”

“The police must be working on the assumption that whoever killed Hasunuma started plotting their revenge as soon as the prosecutor released him. Finding out where he lived would have been part of that.”

“You think that’s why she asked me? If I were the killer — I’m just speaking hypothetically here — I would hardly give her an honest answer.” Tomoya stuck out his lips in a pout. “I don’t know why she even bothered asking.”

“Because she thought she’d be able to tell if you were lying.” Something in Yukawa’s tone suggested that he knew the detective.

“Maybe you’re right. She’s quite an attractive woman, but she’s got eyes like razors.” Tomoya grimaced and took a swig of beer.

Customers started floating in in dribs and drabs. None of them were the usual familiar faces.

After finishing his dinner, Tomoya left. The professor, who said he was going to stay, insisted on paying for his drinks. It was unusual for Yukawa to hang out in the restaurant for such a long time.

Niikura and Tojima came in together not long after. They had each decided to go to the restaurant and had just bumped into each other on their way there, they explained. They both sat down at Yukawa’s table, where Tomoya had been.

Although Natsumi never heard the three men mention Hasunuma by name, she did catch the occasional phrase like “that bastard” and “divine punishment.”

Niikura was the one who brought up the subject of the Prosecutorial Review Commission. Yukawa mentioned that Tomoya Takagaki had been talking about the same thing. Tojima hadn’t yet been visited by the police, but he was listening intently to this part of the conversation.

Natsumi looked into the kitchen. She guessed that the conversation was probably inaudible to Yutaro and Machiko. At the same time, she got the impression that the two of them were silently focusing on cooking as part of a deliberate effort not to hear what was being said.

21

Someone made a noise and he awakened. When he opened his eyes and saw the white wall and fluorescent lighting, it took him a second or two to remember where he was. He blinked, looked around, and finally realized he was in one of the meeting rooms in the Kikuno Police Station.

“Sorry. I seem to have woken you up,” said a voice from behind him. Swiveling around in his chair, he saw Detective Kaoru Utsumi standing near the door.

Kusanagi plucked at the blanket, which was draped over his shoulders. “You do this?”

“Yes,” replied Utsumi. “We don’t want our chief catching cold, do we?”

With a sardonic smile, Kusanagi dumped the blanket on the chair beside him. “Must have dozed off for a while.”

He looked at his watch. It was a little after 11 P.M.

“It’s late. Why are you still here?”

“I’ve been verifying Tomoya Takagaki’s alibi. I went to speak to his two colleagues, the ones he went to the parade with.”

“How was it?”

Utsumi advanced farther into the room.

“For the most part, their statements tallied with his. They seem to have been together for most of the time.”

“In your earlier report, you mentioned that they’d split up and done their own thing.”

“Yes, for about forty minutes, plus after subtracting time needed for walking.”

“Forty minutes?” Crossing his arms on his chest, Kusanagi noticed that Utsumi was holding up a white convenience store plastic bag. “What have you got in there?”

“Two cans of beer and some snacks,” Utsumi replied. “I thought you might enjoy a bit of a break, sir.”

“Out with it, then. Chop-chop.” Kusanagi pointed at the tabletop.

Keeping one eye on Utsumi as she extracted the beer and snacks from the bag, Kusanagi looked down at the report that he was working on.

He had compiled a list of bullet points, but it wasn’t good enough yet to show to Director Mamiya and the rest of the top brass.

The Kikuno local police had filed an official request for support of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. In line with the original plan, Kusanagi’s team was sent to Kikuno but the head of the Homicide Division wanted to hold off on setting up an investigation task force.

“We’re not yet sure it was murder,” Mamiya had explained. “The executive team has agreed to adopt a wait-and-see attitude at least until we have a clear cause of death. On the other hand, there’s a risk of falling behind if we don’t start gathering information until we know that for sure. We want you to get started with the understanding that an investigation task force will be set up soon.”

Kusanagi summoned his team and held a meeting with the detectives of the Kikuno precinct. Even if this wasn’t yet officially a murder case, they were going to treat it like one.

The first thing Kusanagi wanted to get a handle on were the alibis of the Namiki family, in particular Yutaro, the father. It turned out that the Kikuno investigators had interviewed all three of them the night before.

What they’d found tallied with what Kusanagi had heard that morning from Yukawa. Just as the restaurant was about to stop serving lunch, a female customer had complained about feeling unwell. Yutaro Namiki had driven her to the hospital; his wife, Machiko, joined him not long after. The two of them had waited in the ER until a doctor was able to see the woman. There turned out to be nothing seriously wrong with her, so the Namikis left the hospital at about four thirty and headed home. They went straight into the kitchen and got everything ready before opening up the restaurant as usual at five thirty. Yukawa, one of their regular customers, showed up soon after—

Another local policeman had gone to the hospital this morning to verify the Namikis’ story. He got corroboration from the receptionist in the ER who remembered the Namikis hanging around anxiously in the waiting area.

There was a hiss as Utsumi pulled the tab on one of the beer cans. “Here you go, sir,” she said, placing the beer in front of Kusanagi.

“Cheers.” Kusanagi lifted the can in a gesture of thanks, then took a swig. As the slightly bitter liquid flowed over his tongue, he felt the tiredness of a long day being transformed into a sensation of mild pleasure. He sighed heavily.

“My impression is that Tomoya Takagaki’s innocent,” said Kaoru Utsumi, tearing open a bag of kakinotane spicy baked chips.

“Appearances can be deceiving.” Kusanagi stretched a hand into the bag and crammed chips and peanuts into his mouth. “You’re a detective. How often do I have to remind you of that?”

“Yes, I know.” Utsumi picked up her beer can. “But he was just too panicky.”

“Too panicky?”

“I asked him this question: ‘If your friends knew that you were the one who had killed him, how do you think they would take it?’”

“What was his reply?”

“That no one who knew me well would believe it, because they all know he’s a coward at heart.”

“Sounds like a pretty standard response. What about it?”

“I got the impression that he was extremely on edge before he came out with his answer. Like it had never occurred to him that people who knew him might see him in those terms. I don’t think he’d have been so openly flustered if he was the killer.”

Kusanagi grunted ambiguously and took a swig of beer.

There was some truth to what Utsumi was saying. If Takagaki was the killer, he’d have anticipated the kinds of questions he was likely to be asked by the police and been prepared not to display any nervousness.

“Tomoya Takagaki said he was away from his workmates for forty minutes. What’s he saying he did in that time?”

Utsumi took her notebook out of her bag and opened it up.

“He went to the end point of the parade to say hi to the Team Kikuno performers.”

“Have you confirmed that?”

“I spoke to Maya Miyazawa, the woman who manages the team. According to her, yes, Takagaki came by to say hi to them all right after the parade ended. But—” At this point, Utsumi broke off in a rather histrionic fashion. “Despite what he said about talking to the team, he barely exchanged more than a few words with them. ‘Nice work. Great job.’ That was about it. Probably took him all of thirty seconds.”

“Could you confirm the exact time?”

“Miyazawa couldn’t remember. That’s legitimate enough; we know it was right after the parade ended. Besides, as team leader, Miyazawa probably had a thousand and one things to do.”

“Let me see if I’ve got this right. At just after three, immediately after the parade ended, Tomoya Takagaki was in the vicinity of the finish line. We know that for a fact. But he has no alibi for the next forty minutes, until he joined his friends at the beer bar.”

“Correct.”

“Roughly how far is it from the parade finish to Hasunuma’s place?”

“Something over a mile,” Utsumi answered promptly.

Let’s say roughly three miles there and back, then. Kusanagi did some rapid mental arithmetic. Assuming that Tomoya Takagaki used a car traveling at an average of twenty miles per hour, the return journey would take him ten minutes. He’d need some extra time for things like getting to the car, finding a parking space, and so on, leaving him with only around twenty minutes for everything else. Could he really accomplish everything required to kill Hasunuma in such a short amount of time? Plus, an average speed of twenty is probably unrealistic in an area like Kikuno.

“There’s no way he could have knocked Hasunuma out with sleeping medication and then asphyxiated him,” sighed Kusanagi. “Tomoya Takagaki cannot have carried out the murder.”

“My opinion, too, sir. In addition, we have no indication that he knew where Hasunuma lived, now or before he moved back into the area. When I asked Takagaki about that, he said the thought had never even crossed his mind. I don’t think he was lying.”

“Okay, so what do we have? The Namiki family are in the clear and Tomoya Takagaki is in the clear, too?” Kusanagi looked down at his half-written report.

“Inspector Kishitani went to interview the Niikuras, didn’t he?” said Utsumi. “What was his impression?”

“Fishy,” he said.

“How so?”

“Naoki Niikura claimed not to be aware that Hasunuma was back in Kikuno. He says that the first he heard of it was last night at Namiki-ya, when some of the regulars there told him. It’s true that he hasn’t been going to Namiki-ya much recently; even so Kishitani thinks that the idea that no one would have told him strains credulity.”

“Very perceptive. I think he’s right.”

“However,” Kusanagi continued, “Kishitani can’t see Naoki Niikura as the kind of person who would murder anybody as an act of revenge, even if that person has killed his favorite pupil. And Kishitani is a good judge of people.”

“What did the Niikuras have to say about the Prosecutorial Review Commission?”

“They knew what it was. And speaking hypothetically, they said that they would probably have teamed up with the Namiki family to figure out a legal strategy, had the prosecutor ultimately decided against indicting Hasunuma.”

“Sounds very reasonable.”

“Yes, as far as we know.”

When Kusanagi had sent Utsumi and Kishitani to interview the persons of interest in the case, he had them find out if the interviewees were familiar with the Prosecutorial Review Commission. Anyone who was would be less likely to murder Hasunuma at this particular point in time.

“What about the Niikuras’ alibis?”

“A little wobbly,” answered Kusanagi, looking down at his report. “They claim to have gone to watch the parade and to have bumped into a number of people they know in the course of it, but no one else was with them for the duration of the event. After the parade, they went to judge the singing contest. There is a brief period that’s unaccounted for between the two events.”

Utsumi put her beer can down on the table and cradled her chin in her hands.

“Since we don’t know how long it took to murder Hasunuma, it’s difficult to interpret these gaps in time. Of course, that’s assuming that it was a homicide in the first place.”

“That’s the problem!” Kusanagi scratched his head and frowned. “There are clusters of petechiae on the body. That means that death by asphyxiation is a high probability. Against that, there are no marks on the body suggestive of manual or ligature strangulation; plus, the petechiae would be much more pronounced, if he’d been strangled.”

“What if he was asphyxiated without any pressure on his neck? By occlusion of the nose and mouth, I mean.”

“Then why didn’t the victim resist? Yes, some sleeping medication was detected in his system, but not large quantities of the stuff.”

Kusanagi smiled at the sight of Detective Utsumi plunged in thought. “What is it?” asked Utsumi testily.

“I met with Yukawa this morning. Turns out he’s a person of interest, too.”

Kusanagi told Utsumi about his conversation with Manabu Yukawa.

“Professor Yukawa’s a regular at Namiki-ya? That’s a surprise.”

“If Hasunuma was murdered, then how was it done? I suggested to Yukawa that he might apply his famous powers of deduction to answering that question. Somewhat to my amazement, he said yes. He asked to look at the crime scene, so I’m planning to take him there soon. There’s a good chance he of all people will notice something that everyone else has overlooked.”

“That sounds promising.” Kaoru Utsumi cocked her head to one side. “But it’s still a surprise.”

“What?”

“From what I hear, Namiki-ya is a very casual and friendly place that’s kept in business by a faithful cohort of regulars. It’s hard to see Professor Yukawa going there on a regular basis. He’s someone who actively dislikes ties of any kind.”

“I see what you mean,” Kusanagi said. “I think he changed a bit after going to America. You should go and visit him. You’ll see.”

“I will. Soon.” Utsumi smiled and drank another mouthful of beer from the can.

22

The young uniformed policeman who was standing in front of the hut where Eiji Masumura lived was looking thoroughly bored. He stifled a yawn. No one’s going to break into a place like this, his fed-up expression seemed to say.

His expression changed as Kusanagi and his companion approached the hut. His eyes brightened and his whole face perked up.

Kusanagi pulled out his badge. “Kusanagi, TMPD.”

The young policeman saluted him. “I was told you were coming, sir. It’s good to see you.” He spun on his heel, and briskly unlocked the door of the hut. “There you go, sir.”

Kusanagi extracted a couple pairs of latex gloves from his pocket and passed one back to Yukawa. Yukawa took them without a word.

It was day three since Kusanagi’s team had officially joined the investigation. No progress had been made in determining the cause of Hasunuma’s death, which left the investigation at a standstill. In an attempt to break the logjam, Kusanagi got permission to show Yukawa the crime scene.

Turning the knob with his gloved hand, Kusanagi opened the door of the hut. Forensics must have been in and out of the place countless times, but the interior looked exactly the same as when he was last there.

He removed his shoes and climbed onto the duckboard floor. “This is a modest little place,” said Yukawa, following his example.

Kusanagi strode directly to the far end of the room and came to a stop in front of the back room. The sliding door was open.

“So this is the room.” Yukawa came and stood beside him. “It’s tiny. It would be unbearable for anyone with claustrophobia.”

“It’s all a question of mindset,” Kusanagi said. “Some people actually enjoy staying in capsule hotels. Hasunuma seems to have been comfortable enough. He spread out a ground sheet, then put a mattress and a quilt on top.”

“You’re the one who described him as a hard-hearted bugger.”

“Exactly.”

“Can I go in?”

“Be my guest.”

Yukawa went inside, took up a position in the center of the room and slowly looked around. After a while, his gaze came to rest on the sliding door.

“Have you noticed something?”

Pulling the door part of the way shut, Yukawa started fiddling with the door hasp to which a padlock could be attached.

“This room can be locked from the outside.”

“Probably because it used to be a storeroom. The lock was to keep whatever was inside safe.”

“What about the padlock? Did Forensics take it away?”

“Nobody said anything about a padlock, but I’ll ask.”

The next thing Yukawa turned his attention to was the door handle. He looked at the handles on both sides of the door.

“Could I send the officer on sentry duty to go buy something?” Yukawa asked.

“Buy something?”

“Yes, I want him to get me a set of screwdrivers.”

“Screwdrivers? Why?”

“Just something I need to check. If he can’t go, I’ll do it myself.” Yukawa’s gaze was still fixed on the metal door handle. In profile, he looked every inch the scientist.

“Fine. I’ll tell him.”

Kusanagi went outside and had a word with the policeman who was a little puzzled but agreed to go. When Kusanagi came back inside, he found Yukawa sitting on the bed, sunk in silent thought.

“He’ll be right back with what you need.”

“Very good of him,” said Yukawa, not opening his eyes. “There was no evidence of resistance, was there?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Hasunuma. There were no indications of him having struggled or fought back?”

“No, none. He was just lying on top of his quilt. His clothes weren’t even disheveled.”

Yukawa opened his eyes, rose to his feet, pushed the sliding door shut, then ran his eyes around the whole doorframe.

“What are you checking for?”

“Airtightness. I’m trying to see how much air can get in and out when the door’s fully closed.” Yukawa slid the door back open. “Even when you push it shut as hard as you can, there are still lots of gaps between the door and the frame. It’s not remotely airtight. It would be different if you sealed it up with duct tape.”

“And if there was a high level of airtightness?”

“If you could make the room fully airtight, then all you’d need to do would be to shut and lock the door while Hasunuma was asleep inside. With no oxygen going in, the room would fill up with carbon dioxide and he would eventually suffocate.”

“I see.” Kusanagi cocked his head to one side. “But wouldn’t he wake up if he was having trouble breathing?”

“Yes, he’d definitely regain consciousness,” said Yukawa, po-faced. “The room is small, but not so small that you would suddenly run out of oxygen. Hasunuma would still be capable of moving, so he would do his best to open the door. If he found it locked, he would try to smash it down.”

“That theory’s no good. It doesn’t fit with the facts.”

Yukawa was wagging a finger in front of Kusanagi’s face.

“You’re getting ahead of yourself as usual. There’s an order for doing things. All I did was propose the simplest possible solution first. Now I’m going to gradually build on that to develop new ideas. We know that simply sealing the door shut isn’t going to produce a sudden oxygen deficit. How to produce that is the next question we need to consider.”

“So how do you do it?”

Yukawa frowned. “Aren’t you tempted to try and figure it out for yourself?”

“What do you think I brought you here for?”

Yukawa shook his head in a theatrical display of disappointment. “What about getting Hasunuma to take a sleeping draught? Have you had any thoughts about that?”

“No, I’m stumped there, too.” Kusanagi held both hands out, palms upward. “I have no idea when, where, or how he was fed the stuff.”

Yukawa pointed to one corner of the room where there was a small refrigerator. “Did you check the contents?”

“Of course. Forensics removed and examined everything that was inside it. They didn’t find anything suspicious.”

The only drinks they had found in the refrigerator were an open bottle of oolong tea and an open bottle of water. Neither of them contained any sleeping medication.

“Still, there is one thing that’s bothering me,” Kusanagi said. “According to the pathologist, it’s highly likely that Hasunuma was drinking beer. His blood alcohol was a little on the high side. We know that Hasunuma was quite a drinker, so if someone offered him a beer, chances are he would drink it. To some extent, it would depend on who offered it to him.”

“What about the occupant of the apartment? It would be easy enough for him to get Hasunuma to ingest something laced with a sedative.”

“True, but he has no motive,” Kusanagi replied smartly. He had already thought that possibility through. “There is no connection whatsoever linking Eiji Masumura and Saori Namiki. Masumura and Hasunuma actually met almost a year before Saori was murdered. I trawled through his past and couldn’t find any kind of link.”

“What if the killer bribed Masumura to spike his drink... or would that be too risky?”

“Too risky. Masumura could blow the whistle anytime he chose. And even if he didn’t say anything, he could always ask for more money.”

“That’s true,” Yukawa murmured, resuming his inspection of the little room.

A moment later, the young policeman popped his head around the door. “I’m back. This is what I got. Will it be okay?”

He held out a plastic case containing multiple varieties of screwdrivers. “That’s more than good enough. Thank you,” said Yukawa, taking it from him.

Yukawa sat on the floor by the sliding door of the storeroom and used one of the screwdrivers to loosen the screws that held the door handle in place. He was a scientist and obviously used to working with his hands.

“What are you doing?”

“Wait and see.”

Yukawa needed only two or three minutes to detach the handle fittings from both sides of the door, exposing a square hole in the wood beneath.

“As I thought.” Yukawa smiled complacently as he put his eye to the hole.

“What’s this all about? Come on, tell me.”

“It’s so blindingly obvious, I really shouldn’t need to.”

Yukawa had slithered off to one side, so Kusanagi crouched down and peered through the hole. He could see to the far back wall of the small room.

“I can see right through it.”

“Indeed, you can. When carpenters fit handles to doors, they seldom drill a hole right through. This door, however, is on the thin side, so they did.”

“I can see that, but what’s your point?”

“Do you know the mystery novel The Judas Window by John Dickson Carr?”

“Never heard of it.”

“Why am I not surprised?” said Yukawa, shaking his head. “What I’m saying is that this door contains a little secret window.” Yukawa pulled the door shut. “Even if you shut the door like this, you can exploit this window to do something to the person inside.”

“What can you do with a hole this small?”

“I told you a minute ago. It’s about causing a sudden oxygen deficit. I can think of several ways to do it, using this hole.”

“For example?”

“For example, by sucking out the oxygen through it.”

“Huh?”

“You could use an aspirator of the kind found in vacuum cleaners. You couldn’t make a perfect vacuum, but I suspect you could probably make the air very thin indeed.”

“For God’s sake, Yukawa?” Kusanagi peered into the professor’s eyes behind the rimless spectacles. “Are you serious?”

“I haven’t got the time to fool around.”

“Do you think that method could work?”

“Probably not. If that level of thinness of air was enough to cause asphyxiation, then all the world’s mountain climbers would probably be dead.”

Kusanagi felt himself go weak at the knees with disappointment. He braced himself. If he got upset by this sort of thing, he should stay away from Yukawa altogether. “And what’s your next idea?”

“Since the aim is to reduce the amount of oxygen, another thing you could do is to make the room smaller. To put that in the terms a physicist would use, you need to reduce the room’s volumetric capacity.”

“Using this hole here? How?”

“First, you seal up any gaps around the door, then you introduce some object or objects into the room through this hole. The volume of the room will diminish in proportion to the volume of the object introduced, driving the air out. If you persist, the room volume will eventually diminish to the point that an oxygen deficit can easily occur.”

Yukawa delivered this speech with great solemnity. Kusanagi looked at him and then pointed at the square hole. “And what sort of object can you introduce through this hole? It’s only big enough for a glass bead. Yes, the room is small, but you’d still need tens of thousands — no, hundreds of thousands — of the things.”

“That’s true, if we’re talking about objects that don’t change shape. How about, though, if you used, say, balloons?”

“Balloons. How?”

“You stuff an uninflated balloon through the hole keeping the mouth of the balloon on the outside of the door. You then start to inflate it with air from this side. Once the balloon has expanded to a sufficiently large size, you knot the mouth and let it go. As I explained a minute ago, the volume of the room will shrink in proportion to the cubic volume of the balloons. Provided you use balloons that can be blown up to a large size, it should be a highly efficient method.”

Kusanagi pictured the interior of the room filling up with more and more balloons. How many would you need to fill up fifty square feet?

“That’s certainly a novel idea — but it doesn’t seem altogether realistic.”

“Doesn’t find favor with you? Killing someone by burying them in a welter of colorful balloons strikes me as a surrealistic, humorous, and rather delightful trick.”

“I’ll allow you the surrealistic part. A couple of problems remain, though. First, the victim wouldn’t asphyxiate rapidly, and second, he would come to when he had trouble breathing. Once he realizes that his problem is being trapped in a small room with a whole load of balloons, then all he needs to do is to start popping the things.”

“Perhaps you’re right. Okay, what if the balloons weren’t filled with air?”

“What are you getting at?”

Yukawa smiled meaningfully, then laughed under his breath.

“If you didn’t use air, I suppose you wouldn’t need balloons in the first place.”

23

Detective Sergeant Utsumi opened her almond-shaped eyes wide. “Helium?”

“Yes. You shut the sliding door, lock it, and pump helium gas from a tank in through this little square hole. Helium’s lighter than air, so it stays in the upper part of the room. As more and more helium is pumped in, the air is pushed out of the room through gaps around the door. Hasunuma may be lying on his mattress down on the floor, but the overall concentration of oxygen in the room is still going down. If he realizes something funny’s happening halfway through and gets to his feet, there’s even less oxygen in the upper part of the room than the lower part. He tries desperately to breathe, but now he’s inhaling helium and not air, so he loses consciousness instantly. If his unconscious state persists, he will inevitably lapse into anoxia.” Kusanagi fidgeted with his empty paper coffee cup as he looked up at his team.

They were in one of the meeting rooms at the Kikuno precinct station. Kusanagi had been relaying a hypothetical scenario from Yukawa to Detectives Utsumi, Kishitani, and Muto.

“Vintage Detective Galileo!” said Kishitani with a sigh. “I’d never have thought of anything like that.”

“I discussed it with Forensics. They thought it plausible enough. Sudden loss of consciousness would explain why there were no signs of a struggle in the room or of Hasunuma having flailed around. I also talked to the pathologist who conducted the autopsy. He said that there’s nothing incongruous about helium causing anoxia. In fact, helium would actually help explain why the petechiae is so much less pronounced than it would be with strangulation.”

“In that case, the problem we need to figure out is where the perpetrator got the helium,” Muto said.

“Professor Yukawa had some interesting ideas about that, too. Inspector Muto, you may be familiar with this creature.” Kusanagi pulled up a photo on his phone and showed the display to the three detectives.

“What is it?” Utsumi frowned as she looked at the screen.

“Is it a... frog?” Kishitani tipped his head quizzically.

“That’s what everyone says,” Muto exclaimed. “That’s what I thought when I first saw it.”

“It is the local parade mascot. It’s called Kikunon, apparently,” explained Kusanagi to his subordinates. “It always brings up the rear of the parade. As you can see, it’s an enormous inflatable. Since it’s around thirty feet long, it needs a very large amount of helium gas to inflate it. Obviously, it depends on their size, but Yukawa reckons that you need more than a couple of large high-pressure cylinders to get the job done.”

“You think one of those cylinders might have been used in the murder?”

“I think it’s definitely worth exploring.”

“Fine. I’ll send someone to investigate immediately,” said Kishitani. He turned on his heel and left the room.

“If that’s your opinion, Chief, shouldn’t we be looking elsewhere, too?” Muto asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Kikunon is the only giant inflatable in the parade, but the teams often make use of smaller balloons as props. I didn’t watch this year’s parade, but I imagine it was the same as previous years. Free balloons are also handed out to kids at several locations along the route. They must have had tanks of helium, too.”

“That makes sense...”

A parade is like a traditional Japanese matsuri festival — and no matsuri is complete without balloons.

“If helium was used for the crime,” Muto continued, with a degree of hesitancy, “I think it’s highly probable that the gas cylinder wasn’t stolen.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Helium is actually very easy to buy. When my kids were small, we often got balloons for their birthday parties. My wife would buy helium for them online.”

“Same with a friend of mine,” Utsumi chimed in. “I went to her house and she had all these balloons floating around from her daughter’s birthday party. She’d also bought a little tank of helium to inflate them.”

“Huh.” Kusanagi looked at Utsumi. Given her age, most of her female friends probably already had kids. He kept the thought safely to himself.

“The tanks are disposable. You don’t need to return them after use. They only cost about five thousand yen each,” Muto said.

“Five thousand yen? That’s really cheap.”

“If we assume that this crime wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing, then the perpetrator would buy the helium in advance, wouldn’t they?”

“I suppose so. It might be difficult to trace the purchase.” After a moment’s thought, Kusanagi had an idea. “Wait a minute. If you don’t have to return the helium tanks after use, then how would the perpetrator get rid of them?”

“The tanks are bulky and heavy, too. The killer would want to get away from the crime scene as fast as possible; having to lug a gas canister around would really slow him down.” Muto seemed to have grasped the implications of Kusanagi’s remark. He got to his feet. “Let’s round up everyone who’s free and get them to search the vicinity of the crime scene,” he said, and dashed out of the room.

Utsumi gave a curt bow and made as if to leave the room. Just before reaching the door, she stopped and turned around. Something was obviously on her mind.

“What’s the problem?” Kusanagi asked.

“Why opt for such a complicated method?” asked Utsumi, a disgruntled look on her face. “First knock him out by getting him to ingest sleeping medication, then asphyxiate him by pumping helium into a sealed room. Isn’t the whole thing a bit convoluted, a bit grandiose?”

“What?” Kusanagi looked at Utsumi with open surprise. “That’s not like you. Have you got your doubts about Yukawa’s theory?”

“It’s not so much that. It’s more that I can’t see what the perpetrator was trying to accomplish.”

“My guess is that he wanted to make it hard for us to pinpoint the cause of death. Hasunuma’s preliminary death certificate says that the ‘possibility of cardiac failure of unknown origin cannot be ruled out.’ Because we haven’t got proof that it was a murder, we haven’t been allowed to set up a proper investigation task force.”

“If we were talking about anyone else, I might be able to accept that. But this is Hasunuma we’re dealing with! The dead man is the one and only Kanichi Hasunuma.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“That unless the killer was hopelessly naive, he would expect the police to launch a murder investigation, whether or not they could identify the cause. Given that, why not opt for a simpler murder method?”

Kusanagi had no answer. Detective Utsumi’s argument was logical and cogent.

“You think that the elaborateness of the killing method may imply something else?”

“I think it’s possible.”

“Okay,” Kusanagi said. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”

Utsumi bowed briskly and left the room.

About two hours later, Kishitani returned to the meeting room. He looked rather downcast and the news he gave Kusanagi was disappointing.

None of the helium cylinders used to inflate the giant mascot were missing.

“It took four seven-thousand-liter cylinders to inflate the Kikunon balloon. The empty cylinders were collected by the gas merchant the day after the parade, the same as they are every year.”

“Could somebody have stolen one of the cylinders and then replaced it later?”

Kishitani shook his head. “The person responsible for Kikunon was at his post all day.”

“I see.” Kusanagi clicked his tongue in frustration.

Maybe Muto was right, he thought. Maybe buying gas is easier than stealing it; it’s certainly less risky.

“Get in touch with any businesses that sell helium. See if anyone’s bought any recently under a false name.”

“Yes, sir,” Kishitani said. He was about to leave the room, when the door burst open and Muto came rushing in, his face slightly flushed.

“Chief Inspector, I found it.”

“Found what?”

“The tank. I found the helium tank.”

24

Behind the counter, the silver-haired bartender was solemnly polishing glasses as he stood in front of a wall covered with an array of different bottles: whiskey, brandy, vodka, and tequila. Kusanagi should be able to enjoy a variety of good, strong tipples.

It was nearly 11 P.M. A couple had just left a moment ago and now he was the only customer in the bar.

He was inspecting the old film posters on the walls and was about halfway through his pint of Guinness, when the street door creaked slowly open and Yukawa strolled in.

Kusanagi waved.

Yukawa ran his eyes around the bar with evident curiosity, before making his way to the small table where Kusanagi was sitting.

“I would never have expected to find a trendy place like this here in Kikuno,” said Kusanagi, as Yukawa himself sat down opposite him. “I asked one of the guys at the police station if there was anywhere good for a quiet drink that stayed open late, and this was the place he recommended. They have got all sorts of different brands.”

If you go a few times and the bartender gets a sense of what you like, he’ll probably create a special, original cocktail just for you, Muto had said when describing the place to Kusanagi.

Yukawa inspected all the various bottles lined up on the shelves behind the bar before making his order: “Ardbeg and soda, please.”

The silver-haired bartender narrowed his eyes approvingly. “Very good, sir,” he said.

“Were you doing your research this late at night? You’re seriously busy,” Kusanagi said.

“Not really. At the moment, I’m getting my assistants to conduct this experiment for me. It’s been dogged with problems and it failed to produce any of the data I was expecting to spend today checking. Since I had nothing to do, I just played chess against my office computer. My opponent was only a first-generation program, but my record was still dismal: played three, lost three. It’s not easy for an amateur to win against AI.” Yukawa shrugged and sighed.

“A hard day at the office, then.”

“Speak for yourself. Anyway, what are you doing in Kikuno at this time of night? Are you staying here now?”

“Yes. Looks like I’ll be staying here for a while.”

Yukawa blinked uncomprehendingly.

“The text you sent me said you wanted to thank me in connection with the investigation and that I should get in touch, if I was here in Kikuno. Was my advice some use to you, then?”

“Extremely useful.” Kusanagi pointed a finger at Yukawa’s chest. “Good old Detective Galileo. You’re just as perceptive as ever. Your theory was about half right.”

“Only half?” Yukawa knit his brows doubtfully. “Then I was wrong about something?”

“You were right about the use of helium. We found the tank. It wasn’t one of the large high-pressure cylinders used for the giant inflatable.” Kusanagi pulled his phone out and pulled up a photograph. “There’s a river running behind the warehouse where the crime scene is located. The investigators from the Kikuno Police Station found it. It had been dumped in a patch of weeds on the riverbank about sixty feet from the warehouse.”

The photo showed a small tank about fifteen inches high and twelves inches wide. Someone had put a beer can next to it to give a sense of scale.

“The tank was empty. All the helium in it had been used. There were several sets of fingerprints on it. We’re in the process of getting them checked.”

“This thing?” Yukawa was looking at the picture with his head tilted to one side. “How many of them?”

“How many what?”

“Tanks. How many tanks like this did you find?”

“Just the one. Should there be several of the things?”

“One? That simply makes no sense,” Yukawa said forcefully, just as the bartender came gliding over. He slipped a coaster onto the table and placed a tumbler on top of it. Fine bubbles danced in the amber liquid.

Yukawa took a sip. A benign expression spread across his face. He looked up at the bartender. “Delicious. You got the proportions just right.”

The bartender smiled happily and went back behind the counter.

Yukawa put the tumbler down and pointed at the phone on the table. “I’m just asking this to be sure. What’s the capacity of that tank?”

Kusanagi took his notebook out of his pocket. “It weighs roughly six and a half pounds. A full new tank contains around four hundred liters.”

Yukawa gave a derisive snort. “Ridiculous. That’s impossible.”

“How so?”

“We need to start by calculating the volume of the small room at the crime scene. Let’s say that it’s about eight feet wide, six and a half feet deep, and six and a half feet high. That would come to a volume of ten thousand liters. Would pumping in a paltry four hundred liters of helium cause death from oxygen deficiency? Hardly. To kill someone, you would need to use high-pressure, industrial-use helium cylinders. They would be difficult to purchase under a false name. That’s why I suggested that the killer might have ‘borrowed’ a gas cylinder from the giant inflatable.” Yukawa was speaking rather faster than usual. Kusanagi wondered if he was annoyed.

“Yes, I remember. But I’ve not yet told you the most important thing.” Kusanagi took his smartphone off the table and put it back in the inside pocket of his jacket. “I told you we had found a gas tank. I didn’t tell you that it wasn’t just lying there; it was inside a forty-five-liter garbage bag.”

“A garbage bag?” Incredulity was etched onto Yukawa’s face.

“We checked the inside of the bag very carefully and found something else.” Kusanagi didn’t think the bartender was interested, but he still lowered his voice. “Hair. Just two strands of it, but still enough for analysis.”

“Hair?”

“We thought it might be Hasunuma’s hair and the results of the analysis confirm it.”

Yukawa scowled ferociously, muttered under his breath, then nodded slowly. “Oh, I get it. So that’s what this is all about.”

“Have you figured it out?”

“The killer slipped the garbage bag over Hasunuma’s head while he was asleep, pulled it tight around his neck, then opened it just enough to pump the helium in—”

“Exactly.” Kusanagi rapped the table with his knuckles. “Hasunuma would lose consciousness in ten seconds and die pretty soon thereafter. The pathologist confirmed our theory.”

Yukawa picked up his tumbler and took a sip of his whiskey and soda. He was gazing off into the middle distance.

“What’s wrong?” asked Kusanagi. “You don’t look happy. Is there something wrong scientifically?”

“No.” Kusanagi shook his head gently. “Scientifically, I have no problem with the theory. It’s just that I don’t understand what the murderer’s intentions were, why he would use that method...”

“If you’re going to go down that road, remember you were the one who deduced this method in the first place. Utsumi actually felt the same. ‘What’s the point of using such a grandiose and convoluted method to kill a person?’”

“The killing method I proposed was laden with significance. It was based on the hypothesis that the murder was an act of revenge by someone with a grudge against Hasunuma.”

“And what was its significance?”

“It implied an act of execution. I believe that the killer wanted to take the place of the state and to execute Hasunuma. There are different ways of executing people. In Japan, we use hanging. In America, they’ve got a long history with the electric chair, even if lethal injection is much more common now. There were also some states that until recently used the gas chamber. It’s a method of execution which involves confining a person in a small room and killing them by filling it with hydrocyanic acid gas.”

“‘Confining a person in a small room...’” A vivid image of Hasunuma lying dead in the tiny converted storeroom came to Kusanagi. “You think that the killer wanted to carry out the death sentence using the gas-chamber method?”

“It’s pure speculation on my part. Then again, as a method of killing, it has a second benefit.”

“What’s that?”

“The killer doesn’t need to lay so much as a finger on Hasunuma. With the door of the room locked and Hasunuma shut up inside, it’s possible to follow through with the murder even if he regains consciousness halfway through. Oh, and that reminds me, slipping a garbage bag over Hasunuma’s head and pumping helium into the bag is a very risky method, because there’s the danger of Hasunuma waking up and fighting back. If, however, he was sleeping so deeply that you didn’t need to worry about him waking up, then why use helium at all? Why not just tie up his wrists and ankles while he was unconscious and strangle him or stab him? Don’t you agree?”

Kusanagi groaned. Yukawa’s arguments were typically logical and persuasive.

“To be quite frank, I’ve no idea what the killer’s purpose was,” Kusanagi admitted reluctantly. “No doubt there was a reason why he adopted this particular method, but I don’t think we need to worry about that right now. Isn’t it better if we catch the guy and get him to tell us?”

Yukawa nodded simply. “That’s the most rational and reliable thing to do.”

“What’s important is that we now know that we can classify Hasunuma’s death as a murder. I told you I’d be staying here in Kikuno for a while. The decision has been made to set up an investigation task force at the Kikuno Police Station. Starting tomorrow, things are going to ratchet up a notch. I invited you out this evening because we’ll probably have fewer opportunities to discuss things in the days ahead.”

That makes sense, thought Yukawa, his expression softening. He picked up his tumbler. “At any rate, you’re now the bigwig chief inspector at Homicide.”

Kusanagi winced. “Please don’t call me that.”

“Here’s to solving the case.” Yukawa lifted up his tumbler.

As he reached for his glass to join in the toast, Kusanagi discovered he had finished his Guinness. He called out to the bartender to bring him another.

25

It was the day after Kusanagi met for drinks with Yukawa that the police managed to identify the fingerprints on the helium gas tank.

The fingerprints belonged to a man by the name of Morimoto. He was the owner of an auto repair business in North Kikuno.

Kusanagi got one of the investigators to look into Morimoto. He couldn’t find any link between Morimoto and Hasunuma; nor could he find any point of contact between Morimoto and Saori Namiki or anyone else in the Namiki family.

He did, however, uncover one very interesting fact. As a director of the North Kikuno Neighborhood Association, Morimoto helped run the festival singing contest on the day of the parade, and free balloons had been handed out to children at the contest venue.

Kusanagi decided that they needed to bring Morimoto in for questioning. He was willing to believe that Morimoto had nothing to do with the killing but his fingerprints were on the “murder weapon.” Kusanagi sent a few officers to pick Morimoto up in case he tried to make a run for it.

That proved unnecessary as Morimoto, although confused, came along quietly.

Kusanagi assigned Kishitani to question Morimoto. While that interview was in progress, he joined Utsumi and Muto in the conference room to prep for their first big investigation meeting.

“It doesn’t look as if we’ll get much joy from the security cameras near the crime scene,” said Muto, despondently. “We found one in a metered parking lot nearby, but there were no suspicious vehicles in the footage.”

Kusanagi groaned and looked at Utsumi, who was sitting beside him. “What about the ‘likely suspects’? Did you manage to track their movements on security-camera footage?”

“Partly, yes.” Utsumi swiveled her laptop around so that Kusanagi could see the screen.

It was a still image from an outdoor security camera that showed a large number of pedestrians walking in opposing directions.

“This particular camera is near the end point of the parade. I believe that this man in the navy-blue jacket is Tomoya Takagaki.” Utsumi pointed at a section of the screen.

Although Kusanagi had only ever seen a photograph of Tomoya Takagaki and the resolution of the CCTV image was on the low side, he was pretty sure that Utsumi’s identification of him was correct. He was looking off to the side onto the street, rather than in front of him, which suggested that he was walking and watching the parade at the same time. The time stamp was just after two in the afternoon.

“The young man and woman we see here walking alongside Tomoya Takagaki must be his colleagues from work. The video footage shows them chatting to one another. Do you want to watch it?”

“No need. Have you got any later footage of them?”

“I’ve asked our local precinct colleagues to look. They haven’t found any yet.”

“Okay,” replied Kusanagi, resuming his scrutiny of the image.

Tomoya Takagaki didn’t have a backpack or any other item of baggage. Nor did his male companion, though the girl did have a small shoulder bag.

A few days ago, Utsumi reported that Tomoya Takagaki had no alibi for between three thirty and four in the afternoon. The problem was, what could he actually achieve in such a short period of time?

“And the other avengers?” Kusanagi asked.

Kusanagi had come up with the “avengers” nickname for the group of people he thought likeliest to have killed Hasunuma. That meant all three members of the Namiki family; Saori’s boyfriend, Tomoya Takagaki; and Naoki Niikura, Saori’s manager.

Tapping a few more keys, Utsumi pulled up a different image. It was a different location this time with what looked like the entrance to a post office on the right-hand side.

“This is the Niikuras.”

Utsumi pointed to a man in late middle age wearing a brown bomber jacket and a woman in a violet cardigan. They were standing side by side and looking out toward the road. Neither of them was holding or carrying anything and Kusanagi couldn’t see any baggage at their feet, either. The time stamp said 2:25 P.M.

“This would be exactly when Team Kikuno started marching,” Utsumi said. “That’s probably why the Niikuras start moving soon after. They were probably following Team Kikuno. Since that was bringing up the rear, plenty of other people decided to do the same thing.”

“There should be more security cameras on this stretch of road,” Muto chimed in. “If we examine the footage from them, we should be able to track the Niikuras’ subsequent movements. Let’s get anyone on the team who’s free to trawl through the footage for them.”

“Good idea,” Kusanagi agreed, with the briefest hint of a smile. His expression tensed the moment he returned his eyes to the screen.

The fact that neither Takagaki Tomoya nor the Niikuras were carrying any baggage bugged him. The murder of Hasunuma required at least one tank of helium, and a gas tank that was close to sixteen inches high and twelve inches wide would require a very large bag or backpack.

Of course, the killer could always have stashed the tank somewhere in advance and picked it up later. In that case, though, where could it have been hidden?

Kusanagi called Muto over. “Inspector Muto, I need you to go through this video footage and check for anyone with a large item of luggage. We’re looking for something big enough to hold that helium tank we found.”

“Yes, sir,” said Muto, grasping what his superior wanted. His eyes gleaming with enthusiasm, he left the room.

Kusanagi and Utsumi then started compiling the documentation they needed for the investigation meeting. They were still at it when Kishitani came into the room, having finished interviewing Morimoto.

“We’ll need confirmation but my impression is that Mr. Morimoto is clean. According to Forensics, all of the fingerprints on the helium tank belong to him. That tells us something important.” There was a glint of smugness in Kishitani’s eyes. “The gas tank was stolen.”

“How did you work that out?”

“On the day of the parade, Morimoto was distributing balloons to children in the park where the singing contest was held. He started at three thirty P.M. He had about one hundred balloons and three tanks of helium. As one tank is enough for around forty balloons, he had slightly more gas than he needed. When I showed him the tank we found in the weeds, he confirmed that it was the same type.”

Kishitani looked down at his notes, then went on with his report.

As a director of the neighborhood association, Morimoto had a range of tasks to perform. These tasks often took him away from his post. Since he had no one helping him with the balloons, when he went on an errand, he would take the uninflated balloons with him, but leave the gas tanks behind.

The first time he left his station was at about 4:30 P.M. When he got back around fifteen minutes later, he was about to start distributing more balloons, when he realized something wasn’t quite right. Despite him having only just switched out the gas tanks, there was no helium coming out of the new one. When he took a closer look, he discovered that the tank was the first out of the three, which was already empty. That’s a bit odd, he thought, but he switched to a new tank and went on filling and handing out balloons. In the end, he handed out around sixty balloons in total. He had enough gas and didn’t experience any difficulties.

“Morimoto realized that the second canister had been stolen while he was away from his station. Since he didn’t run out of helium and wasn’t too keen to alert people to his own negligence, he didn’t mention the theft of the tank to anyone else.” Kishitani looked up from his notes. “When I spoke to him, I found him quite credible.”

“That would mean that the gas tank was stolen between four thirty and four forty-five P.M. Remind me, what’s the distance between the park where the singing contest was held and the crime scene?”

“Approximately two miles,” replied Kishitani promptly. He had obviously anticipated Kusanagi’s question. “Hasunuma’s body was discovered at five thirty. A car would be essential to travel between the two locations in that time frame.”

“I see...”

This cleared Tomoya Takagaki of any suspicion. By 4 P.M., Tomoya Takagaki was already in the beer bar with his coworkers.

And then—

It also cleared the Niikuras. They were both judges for the singing contest, which had started at 5 P.M. Even if they had used a car, they couldn’t have committed the murder.

“The first thing we’ve got to do is look for witnesses. Ideally, we want someone who saw the tank being stolen; failing that, someone who saw a person carrying an item of suspicious-looking luggage. Someone lugging around a large piece of baggage would stick out like a sore thumb at a singing contest! Next, we need to check the footage on any security cameras in or around the park. The metered parking lots will all have cameras, so why not start with those? If you find anyone suspicious, try and figure out who they are. Let’s be systematic about this.”

“Yes, sir.” Kishitani picked up his notebook.

“Got any ideas, Utsumi?” Kusanagi asked, turning to his subordinate sitting next to him.

“Traffic restrictions were being enforced on the main roads because of the parade,” said Utsumi calmly. “And there were lots of pedestrians. The number of viable routes from the park to the crime scene was probably limited. It’s possible that a vehicle got picked up on the N-System somewhere along the way.”

“Great idea. Work with the Kikuno Police Station guys. Check every vehicle that was logged on N-System in the vicinity of the crime scene in the half hour between four thirty and five on the day of the incident.” There was a note of excitement in Kusanagi’s voice.

“Yes, sir,” Utsumi said. Her tone was lukewarm and her mind seemed to be elsewhere.

“What’s wrong? Something bothering you?”

“Well... uhm... yes. I still don’t understand why the perpetrator choose such a convoluted method of killing?”

“That again?” Kusanagi grimaced. “Who cares? We’ll find out soon enough when the killer confesses. Even Yukawa’s accepted that.”

“Professor Yukawa?”

“I saw him last night.”

Kusanagi told Utsumi about meeting with Yukawa at the trendy local bar.

“Now that we’ve found physical evidence, we need to push things forward hard and fast. I intend to throw all the manpower we’ve got at this problem. We’ll do whatever it takes to find the person who transported the helium tank from the park to the crime scene.”

After delivering this rousing speech, Kusanagi consulted his watch. Now that the investigation task force was officially up and running, Director Mamiya was supposed to put in an appearance.

We need to be able to report some progress. Otherwise I won’t be able to look him in the eye, he thought to himself.

26

Detective Sergeant Utsumi took a deep breath as she looked up at the imposing gray building. She didn’t know why she was feeling so nervous. Even when she interrogated the toughest of criminals, she was never this anxious.

As she walked up to the front entrance, her eyes were drawn to the metal plaque on the wall: TEITO UNIVERSITY METALS MATERIALS RESEARCH INSTITUTE. The sans serif font felt cold and aloof. To her, it seemed to be looking down on the visitors.

She went in. There was a small office on the right, with a gray-haired guard sitting inside. She filled out the form he handed her and slipped a lanyard and visitor pass over her head. When she asked for directions, the reply was terse and ungracious: “Third floor, far end,” the guard said.

She rode the elevator to the third floor and made her way down the long corridor. There was a whole series of doors. On one of them was a sign that read MAGNETISM RESEARCH SECTION, and beneath that RESEARCH LABORATORY 1 and RESEARCH LABORATORY 2. Kaoru was supposed to go to the Magnetism Research Section: Chief Research Officer’s Room.

Utsumi took another deep breath and knocked on the door.

“Come in.” Utsumi felt a twinge of nostalgia when she heard the resonant voice.

“Hello?” She pushed the door open. In front of her was some armchairs and beyond that, a desk. The person sitting at the desk spun briskly around in his chair. “Very nice to see you.”

There was a moment’s silence. “It’s been a long time,” Utsumi said with a little bow.

Manabu Yukawa rose slowly to his feet.

“I wasn’t expecting you to get in touch. With the task force up and running, I thought you’d be too busy.”

“You’re right. As I said in my message, my visit today is much more than a simple courtesy call.”

“Let’s get straight down to business, then.” Yukawa dropped into one of the armchairs and motioned with his open palm for her to sit in the one opposite.

“Thank you,” said Kaoru, sitting down. “Has our unit chief explained to you how Kanichi Hasunuma was killed?”

“When you use terminology like ‘unit chief,’ I’m not quite sure who you’re talking about.” Yukawa narrowed his eyes behind his lenses. “Yes, Kusanagi told me: the combination of helium gas and a plastic bag.”

“What do you think?”

“Think? If you mean, do I think it’s scientifically plausible? Then yes, I do.”

“It was slightly different from your own theory, Professor.”

“There’s nothing odd about that. In science, we create hundreds of hypotheses, most of which end up being proved wrong.”

“Don’t you have any doubts about it?”

“Doubts? In what way?”

“Doubts about that method.”

Yukawa’s jaw twitched and his eyes became cold and rational. He looked hard and appraisingly at Utsumi.

“What is it?”

“Kusanagi told me. That you were critical of the method of killing. That you couldn’t understand the point of anything so grandiose and convoluted.”

“Yes, but I was prepared to accept it after Chief Kusanagi explained the theory to me in greater detail. The method of killing you deduced, Professor, came with real advantages for the killer. As for the deduction that the small room where the crime took place was a substitute gas chamber — that is the sort of idea that only you could have come up with.”

“Nonetheless, ingenious though my deductions were, they were also wrong, so they mean nothing.”

“Wrong?... Do you really think so? I’m inclined to think you were right, Professor.”

Yukawa was breathing hard and his chest was visibly rising and falling. He fixed his eyes on Kaoru. “Why do you say that?”

“First, there’s the issue of the nature and quantity of the sleeping medication. Based on the traces that were found in Hasunuma’s bloodstream, the sleeping medication he took wasn’t very powerful; nor did he take it in any significant quantity. If he was asleep, his state was far from comatose. He would probably have woken up if anybody had touched him. In terms of making sure that he wouldn’t wake up while the crime was in progress, the method you proposed seems far likelier to succeed. I even think that the killer might have deliberately made a lot of noise specifically in order to wake Hasunuma up after locking the sliding door.”

“Deliberately woken him up?” Yukawa frowned. “What for?”

“To frighten him.”

“To frighten him.” Yukawa gazed at Utsumi admiringly and straightened himself against the back of his chair. “That’s certainly novel.”

“I was working on the hypothesis that the motive in the Hasunuma killing was revenge. I tried to imagine how I would take revenge if someone had murdered a member of my family. I certainly wouldn’t slip a plastic bag over anyone’s head and use helium to kill them through oxygen deficiency. And the reason is not because it’s too convoluted or troublesome. Why do you think it is?”

Yukawa shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“There’ve been a lot of articles on the internet recently about using helium to commit suicide. Do you know why?”

Yukawa thought for a moment. “Perhaps,” he murmured, “because you can die... comfortably?”

“Correct.” Utsumi gave a crisp nod. “If helium works fast, you can lose consciousness with your first breath and then go on to die from there. You barely suffer. But would anyone deliberately select a method like that to kill someone whom they hated? If it was me, I’d choose a method that caused maximum pain and fear.”

“There’s some truth—” said Yukawa, crossing his long legs. “No, I think there’s a great deal of truth in what you’re saying. It’s highly logical and persuasive.”

“That’s why I think your theory is right: The killer deliberately wakes Hasunuma up and only then does he start pumping the helium into the room. The oxygen concentration gradually goes down. Hasunuma starts to feel nauseous and gets a headache. He’s trapped. He’s got to be feeling intensely afraid.”

“In other words, it’s the perfect way to execute a cold-blooded killer. It’s a very original idea, but it does have one problem: the very large amount of helium required.”

“That’s what I thought, too.” Kaoru bit her lip. “Nobody helped themselves to one of the gas cylinders used for the giant inflatable mascot, and if the killer had bought a high-pressure cylinder, there’d be some trace of the purchase...”

Yukawa broke into a beatific smile.

“Is something wrong, Professor?”

“No, no. It’s just been a long time, so I’m feeling a bit sentimental. Here I am with a beautiful young lady detective theorizing her heart out in front of me.”

“I’m hardly young anymore.”

“But you’ll accept the beautiful label?”

Kaoru scowled at her old friend. “If you’re going to make fun of me, I’ll just leave.”

“What have you learned about the helium tank that was found?” asked Yukawa, ignoring her threat.

“We know that it was being used in Kikuno Park on the day of the parade and we know what time it was stolen. The man who was looking after it had an alibi.”

“That sounds like a bounteous harvest to me. You don’t think so?”

Utsumi couldn’t suppress a sigh.

“Is there a witness who saw the tank being stolen? Are there any reports of a suspicious-looking person carrying a package or luggage big enough to hold the helium tank? Is there any useful footage on any of the nearby security cameras? I’ve been running around like mad since yesterday hunting for answers to all those questions. That’s what I’ve been doing since early this morning, too — with absolutely nothing to show for it.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. People started piling into the area early in the morning on the day of the parade to secure a good spot; the sidewalks were absolutely heaving. It’ll be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack,” Yukawa said.

“If that helium tank played a part in the crime, timing issues mean that the killer must have made use of a vehicle. There’s a major road he would have to cross to get from the park to the crime scene. There’s an N-System monitoring device on that particular intersection, so we’ve managed to identify all the vehicles that passed that way in the relevant time period, but...”

“You can’t find anyone who’s linked to the case?”

“Exactly. You talked about a ‘bounteous harvest,’ but I have the opposite impression. As far as I can see, finding that helium tank only served to knock the whole investigation off course.”

Yukawa crossed his arms on his chest and leaned back in his armchair. “That’s a serious allegation.”

“You think? Anyway, shall we keep it between the two of us?” said Utsumi, lowering her voice. “Did Kusanagi tell you where the helium tank was found?”

“He said something about a patch of weeds.”

“Yes, a patch of weeds only about sixty-five feet from the crime scene. Close enough to be within the radius of any police search. That helium tank was literally crying out to be found. Plus, there was Hasunuma’s hair. Plus, the tank had fingerprints on it that made it easy to work out when and where it was stolen. The whole thing strikes me as just a little too convenient. We then use this piece of physical evidence to work out the killer’s movements, and what do we end up with? The most likely suspects now have alibis that hold up perfectly.”

“I agree about keeping this between ourselves. I’m planning to drop in to Namiki-ya any day now.”

“Oh, sorry, Professor. The chief told me you’re one of the regulars there.”

“The vegetable takiawase is a culinary masterpiece,” Yukawa said. A dreamy look flitted across his face, then he was all business again. “What you’re saying is that the helium tank the police found was nothing more than a decoy designed to confuse the investigation?”

“I think it’s a very real possibility. My theory is that a different helium tank was in fact used, which was then disposed of somewhere else. But” — Utsumi cocked her head — “I still have my doubts about the method of killing. Why should the perpetrator be so obsessed with helium? What’s the point of such a fixation?”

“You’re wondering why he fetishized helium?” said Yukawa. Suddenly, he drew a breath sharply, then frowned, gazed off into the middle distance for a while, and finally expelled all the air in his lungs, slowly and loudly.

“Had an idea?” Utsumi asked.

“At the crime scene, there was a sheet on the floor with a mattress and a quilt on top. That’s where Hasunuma was lying.”

“I believe that’s right, yes. Does it mean something to you?”

Yukawa didn’t answer right away. He was looking down, deep in thought.

“Professor?” Utsumi said.

“Just wait a moment.” The physicist hushed her by holding up his hand, palm out.

After a minute or so, Yukawa looked up again.

“There’s something I want you to look into for me. Ask Forensics; they should be able to do it.”

“What is it?” Utsumi reached hastily for her notebook.

“It’s several things, in fact. I’ll go through them with you later. There’s something else I want to deal with first. Now, am I right in thinking that Kusanagi has made up his mind that the Hasunuma case is connected with Saori Namiki’s unnatural death and that he isn’t pursuing any other lines of inquiry?”

“Such as what?”

“Well, there’ve got to be other people who bore Hasunuma ill will. Take Kusanagi as an example: He’s got his own special feelings for Hasunuma.”

Utsumi realized what Yukawa was getting at.

“Because of the other unresolved case from twenty-three years ago... Let me have a look.” She flipped opened her notebook and found the victim’s name. “You’re talking about the family of Yuna Motohashi?”

“They’re a possibility.”

“Possible — but unlikely.”

“Why so?”

“Simple. Too much time has passed. Yes, the case was brutal and the court’s verdict was unconscionable. Her family had every right to feel embittered. But that strikes me as a very good reason for why, if they were planning to take revenge, they would have done so earlier. Why should they suddenly pick now as the right time for retribution?”

“We’d need to ask them that. They could have their reasons. Either way, I don’t think it’s smart to reject the possibility out of hand. Will you be informing Kusanagi of your visit here today?”

“Yes,” Utsumi replied. “I don’t want him to think I’m trying to keep it secret.”

“In that case, could you give him a message? Even if he doesn’t have much faith in my hunch, he should take a look at the victim’s family and any other people of interest in the Yuna Motohashi murder case. He may find a link to the present case. No, I guarantee that he will.”

Yukawa spoke with such force that Utsumi felt almost uncomfortable.

“Where does your sense of conviction come from, Professor Yukawa? How can you be so unequivocal?”

“The reason is—” Yukawa held up his index finger. “If my latest hypothesis is correct, then as things stand now, we’re only missing a single piece to complete the puzzle. And that piece must exist in the past.”

27

Hearing the sound of raucous laughter, Natsumi looked away from her phone and up at the television. A popular comedian was swimming in a dirty river. Natsumi had heard that this show, which featured different television personalities tackling a range of challenges, was very popular. She’d tuned in for the first time tonight, but it quickly bored her and she’d switched her attention to social media.

Glancing up at the clock, she saw that it was just before 8 P.M. At Namiki-ya, it was a time-hallowed custom to keep the television on even when the restaurant was empty. They didn’t want potential customers who looked in to get the impression that the place was lifeless. Typically, at this time of night, they would have the channel set to NHK, the national broadcaster. Now, because they didn’t want to watch the news, it was set to another channel. Crimes and disasters, even ones that didn’t involve them directly, were the last thing they wanted to hear about.

Customers had noticeably declined since Hasunuma’s death. A few people would wander in around seven o’clock, but otherwise the place was deserted. In the eyes of the public, the restaurant was run by murder suspects and people wanted to give it a wide berth. The Namikis could hardly put up a sign out front that said: EVERYONE HERE HAS AN ALIBI.

Natsumi saw a silhouette from the outside of the sliding glass door. She was on her feet before the door even opened.

It was Yukawa who walked in. “Welcome,” said Natsumi with studied cheerfulness.

Yukawa looked around the restaurant and selected a four-person table.

“Beer and the takiawase. Then I’ll have the miso-simmered mackerel,” Yukawa said, as he wiped his hands on the wet towel Natsumi had handed him.

She went back to the kitchen and relayed the order to Yutaro, then returned, carrying a tray with a bottle of beer, a glass, and the day’s appetizer to Yukawa’s table. The appetizer of the day was spicy konnyaku.

“This is unusual timing for you.”

“Someone I’d not seen for years dropped by to see me and we got to talking.”

“Oh, that’s what happened. I suppose the people who drop in to see you are all physicists?”

“No, it was the antithesis of a physicist.” Taking off his glasses, Yukawa began wiping the lenses with a cloth. “In fact, it was a detective.”

“What?... Another detective came to see you?”

“This was a different detective, one I’ve known for a long time.”

“Oh really?”

A physicist and a detective — what can the link between them be? Natsumi wondered.

“By the way, has Mr. Tojima been in yet?” asked Yukawa, putting his spectacles back on his nose.

“Tojima? Not yet, but he’ll be here soon enough. Have you arranged to meet him?”

“No. I just thought it’d be nice to have someone to chat to. He’s about the only regular I know who’s always here at this time.”

“You’re right about that.”

Even after Hasunuma’s death, her father’s childhood friend Tojima was still coming to the restaurant regularly, and would make a point of asking Natsumi if everything was all right. He would never get too specific, but it was obvious that, in his own way, he was worried about her and her parents. Natsumi was grateful.

Yukawa had nearly finished his dinner by the time the man in question appeared. “Evening all. Hey there, Professor. Okay if I sit with you?” said Tojima, already pulling out a chair for himself on the opposite side of the table.

“Go ahead,” conceded Yukawa with a smile.

Tojima ordered his usual beer.

“The professor was waiting for you to show up. Said he wanted somebody to talk to.”

Tojima grinned.

“I’m honored. If you’re okay with an old geezer like me, I’m happy to have a drink with you anytime. I should warn that I don’t have a whole lot to talk about. I’m not a betting man and I don’t have any interesting hobbies.”

“Perhaps your work is your hobby?”

“That’s a nice way to put it, but yes, I suppose it is.” Tojima patted his hair, which was combed straight back from his forehead.

When Natsumi brought him a bottle of beer, he filled his glass and clinked glasses with Yukawa.

“Shall we talk about your work, then?” Yukawa said. “Now, if I remember right, the firm you manage is a food processor. What’s your big product?”

“You really want to know?” Tojima sipped his beer appreciatively. “Well, our biggest earner right now is boil-in-the bag foods. They can be stored at room temperature, which makes them very popular these days, when e-commerce is such a big thing. And actually, they don’t taste half bad. You wouldn’t want to compare them with the food you get here at Namiki-ya, but they can certainly hold their own against your average restaurant.”

“Interesting. How about frozen food?”

“Of course, we handle that, too,” Tojima said. “It’s a key product line, up there with boil-in-the-bag. The big sellers are fried rice dishes and gyoza dumplings.”

“What kind of freezers do you use?”

“Huh—? Freezers? When you say what type...?”

“There are different types of freezers: screw compressor, reciprocating compressor, and so on. What type do you use at your factory?”

Tojima laughed and threw himself back in his chair.

“The things you academics are interested in! Not like ordinary people. Do you really care?”

“I’m sorry. People often tell me I’m weird.”

“I think it’s great. What was the question again?”

“About the freezers you use.”

“Oh, of course. We mainly use the screw-compressor type.”

“You said mainly. Have you got some other ones, too?”

“Yes, for very specific purposes...”

“The cell walls of food suffer less damage if food is frozen very fast, don’t they? I assume you use a special quick freezer for the more delicate foods?”

“I’ll be damned. You really know your stuff.” Tojima sounded rather less enthusiastic than before.

There was the rattle of the sliding door. Looking toward the entrance, Natsumi saw a middle-aged woman walk in. She wasn’t a regular, although she did come in from time to time. She held up four fingers. “Party of four?” she said.

“Yes, no problem. Please, come in.” Natsumi led the group to a table for six.

After that group, a second group — three women of around the same age as the first group — came in. As they settled down, Natsumi handed them their cold rolled towels and took their orders. She got the impression from the way they spoke to one another that they were old friends. They had just been to see a play and were all chattering away at the top of their voices.

As she moved back and forth between their table and the kitchen, Natsumi could no longer keep tabs on Yukawa and Tojima’s conversation. Things seemed to be going less than swimmingly. The expression on Tojima’s face was getting grimmer by the minute.

Yukawa eventually raised his hand and summoned Natsumi over to the table. “Could I get the check, please?” he asked.

He settled up. “That was most informative. Thanks very much,” he said to Tojima and left the restaurant.

Tojima then asked for his check. Natsumi worked out what he owed and brought the check to his seat.

“What time did the professor get here tonight?” Tojima inquired in a low voice, as he dug a handful of thousand yen notes out of his wallet.

“About eight, I think.”

“Doesn’t he normally come earlier?”

“Yes, he does. He was catching up with an old friend. That’s why he was later than usual today.” Perhaps influenced by Tojima, Natsumi also lowered her voice. “His friend is a detective.”

“A detective?” Tojima’s eyebrows shot up. “What business does an academic have with a detective?”

“I didn’t ask...”

Tojima looked preoccupied and said nothing.

When Natsumi returned with his change, Tojima put it in his wallet without checking it and without a word of thanks. He marched to the back of the restaurant and said a few words to Yutaro in the kitchen. Eventually, he turned away from the counter and headed for the door. “Thank you very much. Good night,” he said to Natsumi and went out.

Natsumi peered into the kitchen. Yutaro was busy at the fryer.

“Daddy, what did old Tojima say to you?”

“Nothing much. Just some neighborhood gossip,” Yutaro replied, without leaving off his work.

Natsumi’s and Machiko’s eyes met. Her mother, who was standing farther back in the kitchen, had her head cocked slightly to one side. Natsumi guessed that she hadn’t heard what the two men had been talking about, either.

“What are you doing staring into space like that?” Yutaro said to Machiko. “Get a move on or the food will get cold.”

“Oh... ah... sorry.” She quickly put a rolled omelet onto a plate.

“There, I’m done. Natsumi, serve this, would you?” said Yutaro testily, as he dumped a plate heaped with fried mackerel on the counter.

28

He went to his room to change into his sweatpants. When he got back to the dining room, dinner was neatly arranged on the table. There was a big dish of grilled ginger pork and a smaller dish of spinach salad, along with miso soup with lumps of tofu in it. It was a classic family meal.

Tomoya Takagaki sat down, put his phone on the table, and placed his hands together in a gesture of gratitude. “This looks delicious.”

“You deserve it,” said Rie, his mother, placing a small bowl heaped with rice in front of him. “It’s not like you to be back so late.”

“I was nearly done for the day, when my section chief had a sudden change of heart. ‘Sorry, Takagaki, but I’m going to need these designs ready first thing tomorrow morning.’ I get that he wants to please the client, but he should think a bit about us, too.”

With a sigh, he reached out with his chopsticks to help himself to some grilled ginger pork. By the clock on the wall, it was nearly 10 P.M. Tomoya had never done more than two hours of overtime before in his life.

Poor old you.

Since she had already finished her meal, Rie walked over to the sink and started doing the washing up. Tomoya looked at her from behind. She had turned fifty the month before. She definitely seemed to have more gray hair than before; or perhaps she was just too busy to go to the hairdresser.

Rie was an excellent cook. The taste of the grilled ginger pork was a little more intense than usual tonight, but when you mixed in the generous helpings of shredded cabbage she served with it, the flavors balanced out perfectly.

He had just polished off the last grain of rice in his bowl, when his phone started to vibrate. He blanched when he saw the incoming caller’s name: it was Tojima.

He got to his feet, grabbed his phone, and went out into the hall.

“Takagaki here,” he whispered.

“It’s me, Tojima. Can you talk now?” Tojima’s voice was so low that Tomoya immediately started feeling nervous.

“Yes. What’s the problem?”

“Has anything odd happened since we last met? Have any more detectives been around to see you?”

“No, nothing I can think of...”

“That’s good.”

“Why? Has... uhm... something happened?”

“Yeah.” There was a brief pause. “It’s that professor fellow,” Tojima said.

“Sorry? Professor?”

“Professor Yukawa. You see him all the time at Namiki-ya.”

“Oh, him.” Tomoya was puzzled. It wasn’t a name he’d been expecting to hear. He knew Yukawa quite well. Although something of an oddball, the professor was very knowledgeable and well worth talking to. “What’s he done?”

“You need to watch out for him.”

“Wha—? Watch out? Why?”

“Because it looks like he’s poking around the Hasunuma business. Plus, I heard that he’s pals with a detective. He may have been asked to spy on us.”

“Him?”

In his mind’s eye, Tomoya pictured Yukawa. He really didn’t strike him as the spying kind.

“Planning to pop into Namiki-ya anytime soon?”

“Namiki-ya? No plans to go, no.”

“Best hold off on it for a while, then. That fellow — the professor — if you bump into him, he might start asking you all sorts of questions. I thought we were talking about something completely different, but he suddenly starts asking me all these really on-the-nose questions, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He even asked me to account for my movements on the day of the parade, for God’s sake!”

“He asked you that?”

“Yeah. Caught me completely off guard and I panicked. What surprised me even more was when he suddenly brought up, you know — I mean, when he starts asking me about my freezer systems.”

“How could he even—?”

“Search me. Anyway, that’s what happened, so I’m advising you to stay well away from the guy. If he phones you and asks to meet, make up an excuse.”

“Got it. I’ll be on my guard.”

“Good. Bye, then.”

Tojima was about to hang up, so Tomoya hastily blurted out, “Oh, uh, Mr. Tojima, wait. I... uh... something’s really bugging me.”

“What?”

“What actually happened. And who did what.”

He heard a heavy sigh.

“Haven’t I told you a thousand times? The less you know, the better.”

“But—”

“All right, Takagaki,” Tojima interrupted. “It’s like I said at the start of this. Tell the truth, if you absolutely have to. You don’t have to lie and you don’t need to hide anything. Again, the less you know, the better off you’ll be. Got that? I’m going to hang up now.”

Tomoya couldn’t accept what Tojima was telling him. At the same time, he didn’t know how to express his reservations. He knew that Tojima was thinking about what was best for him.

Before he could say another word, the phone went dead. He could imagine Tojima wincing at his whining.

Feeling dejected, he went back into the dining room. Seated at the far side of the table, Rie was looking at him intently. He started.

“You’ve finished the dishes?” Tomoya said, sitting down and picking up his chopsticks.

“Who was it?” Rie asked.

“A colleague from work. The section chief’s demanding the impossible from him, too.”

“Why are you lying to me?” Rie was leaning forward and peering up into his face.

“I’m not lying.” Tomoya looked away.

“You said ‘Namiki-ya.’ I heard you.”

A wave of anger coursed through him. He felt hot all over.

“Then you heard wrong. Why would I be talking to him about Namiki-ya?”

“Well, what did you say? Tell me.”

“Oh, just shut up,” snapped Tomoya, unable to meet her gaze. “It’s nothing to do with you. Just back off.”

“If my son’s mixed up in any funny business, I’ve no intention of backing off.”

“‘Funny business’? What are you talking about?” Tomoya lifted his face and looked at his mother. He recoiled. Her eyes were red and tearful.

“That’s what I want to know. What have you done? What have you got yourself involved in?” Rie’s voice was shaking. “I heard you saying something about being on your guard. On your guard against what?”

Tomoya looked away again. “It’s nothing you need to worry about, Mom.”

“Then tell me. Tell me the truth. Please.”

Tomoya put down his chopsticks. “Thanks for dinner,” he said and got to his feet. He no longer had any appetite.

“Just tell me this one thing,” said Rie, in a pleading voice. “That incident a little while ago — you know, when the man who murdered Saori died — you weren’t involved with that, were you?”

“Of course I wasn’t.”

Tomoya again thanked his mother for dinner and turned on his heel. As he headed for his room, there was a welter of confused emotions in his chest.

Then tell me. Tell me the truth. Please. His mother’s words echoed in his brain.

Tomoya knew exactly how she was feeling.

29

Naoki Niikura was sitting on the sofa in his living room talking on his cell phone. Tojima was on the other end of the line.

From her husband’s expression, Rumi could tell the call wasn’t going well.

“By professor, you mean that professor? That Yukawa chap? Why should he be asking questions about things like that...?” Niikura scowled.

Rumi had no idea what the two men were talking about. Yukawa, she supposed, must be the academic chap she saw from time to time at Namiki-ya. But what had he done? The expression on her husband’s face was unrelentingly grim.

Unable to bear the sight of him looking so miserable, Rumi went out to the kitchen. She decided to prepare for the worst by making herself a nice cup of jasmine tea. It would help calm her nerves.

She switched on the kettle and placed the glass teapot and a teacup on the counter nearby. There was a wide range of different teas lined up in cans on the shelf. She took down her favorite variety of jasmine and was trying to open the lid, when her hand slipped. The can tipped sideways, and the tea leaves scattered over the floor.

She felt a sense of existential misery as she contemplated the mess. She couldn’t be bothered to tidy it up and just stood there indecisively, doing nothing.

Why have I ended up like this? Life used to be so good, just one wonderful day after another.

Rumi didn’t come from a well-to-do family. Her father, a taxi driver, was a luckless fellow who, according to her mother, said, “Specialized in driving around in circles in the parts of town where no one needed a cab.” When Rumi got to the last year of primary school, her mother announced that she would have to start working, too, so she got herself a part-time job at the local supermarket.

When she was on her own, Rumi spent a lot of time listening to music. The high school girl who lived in the apartment next door would give her any CDs she was bored with. Rumi was thrilled, even if the songs weren’t the latest hits. She would listen to the albums over and over again until she knew all the melodies and lyrics by heart. The portable CD player that she had begged her mother to get for her was her most prized possession. She would put it in her bag and take it with her whenever she left the house.

While she was in junior high, she made friends with a girl named Kumiko. Kumiko played the piano. They were discussing their favorite songs one day, when out of the blue Kumiko suggested that they go to the karaoke parlor. Rumi was a little startled. Her parents had taken her to karaoke often, but she didn’t really think that children were supposed to visit karaoke parlors by themselves.

“It’s fine. And the daytime rate’s cheaper.” Kumiko was clearly an old hand at karaoke.

Early one Saturday afternoon, the two of them went to a parlor near the station. Kumiko insisted that Rumi go first, so, after a little bashful hesitation, she sang one of her favorite songs. It was the first time Rumi had sung in front of anyone other than her parents.

Kumiko’s eyes lit up and she clapped along with the music. When the song was over, she declared that Rumi was “incredibly talented.” Although Rumi assumed her friend was just being nice, the expression on Kumiko’s face was deadly serious when she asked Rumi what other songs she knew and begged her to sing some more.

Everybody likes to be praised. And Rumi enjoyed singing, anyway. She was wondering what song to sing next, when Kumiko picked out a song for her. “Can you sing this one?” A recent hit, it was a difficult song with plenty of high notes.

Rumi hadn’t sung it before, but was prepared to give it a go. It felt good when she started to sing along with the backing track. The way she synchronized with the music, it was almost a physical sensation.

Kumiko applauded at the end. “You’re better than good, Rumi; you’re professional level. You could definitely make it as a singer,” she said. It was what she went on to say after that that changed Rumi’s life. “Let’s start a band. I’ve been looking for someone like you.”

Rumi was a little taken aback. She liked to sing, but she’d never thought doing anything with it. As Kumiko poured out her heart and the two of them discussed her idea of starting a band, singing was transformed into a beautiful but realizable dream for Rumi.

They started out as just piano and vocals. They called themselves Milk, a name made by combining some of the syllables in both their names. They began by performing cover versions in amateur competitions but once they realized that was hardly the high road to success, they started to write their own songs. Kumiko handled the composition, while Rumi added lyrics to the finished melodies. She just cobbled words together so they’d be as singable as possible.

When they got to tenth grade, the two of them went to different high schools. Milk, however, continued. It was only in their final year of high school that Kumiko suggested pausing the band so they could focus on their university entrance exams. Rumi was stunned. The two of them had always talked about becoming professional musicians. The idea of going to university had never crossed her mind.

“If you can make it as a professional, the more power to you. In case you can’t, you always need a backup plan.”

Kumiko’s own backup plan was to become a teacher, which was why she was applying for the education department at university.

Kumiko was a logical, dispassionate person. In her mind, dreams were dreams and reality was reality and a clear line divided the two. Rumi was different. She felt that her best friend had drifted away from her and that she had been left all on her own.

When she sat down to discuss her future with her parents, neither of them was especially keen for her to go to university. Since her school grades were rather mediocre, they couldn’t see much point in sending her to an expensive private university. Rumi felt the same: Music was all she was interested in doing.

It was at that moment that a club where she’d performed got in touch. Someone had approached them for Milk’s contact details. Was it okay for them to give them out? The someone was a musician who was trying to recruit a young female vocalist.

Her interest piqued; Rumi said yes. And that was how she met Naoki Niikura.

Niikura played the synthesizer in several bands as well as composing music and lyrics for other artists. Rumi discovered later that he was well-known in the music world.

Niikura had actually seen Milk perform live on several occasions. That was why when someone floated the idea of putting together a new band, he thought of adding her in on vocals.

When Rumi explained all this to Kumiko, her friend was thrilled. The chance to team up with a group of real professionals was the luckiest of lucky breaks for Rumi. Kumiko was also relieved. She’d been feeling guilty because she’d decided not to restart Milk after its current pause.

Niikura didn’t hold back. He promised Rumi he would make her into a star, a household name in Japan. Rumi found his extravagant praise intensely motivating, that only she had the talent necessary to sing the songs he wrote.

After around a year of rehearsals, their band made its debut on a major record label. The first CD they released garnered little attention, but the single they put out afterward was used in the credit sequence of an anime and became a respectable hit.

Rumi started to dream big. Maybe we can make it. Rapturously, she imagined herself performing in an arena in front of tens of thousands of fans.

Sadly, real life is seldom so sweet. The new songs they put out got no traction at all, their concert tickets went unsold, and sales of their CDs drifted downward.

They battled on with limpet-like persistence. Niikura was convinced that Rumi’s talents would be recognized somewhere down the line.

“You’ve got something, Rumi. People can’t overlook you forever. It’s simply can’t be,” he used to say when he was drunk.

The band stuck together for exactly ten years. Niikura then made a couple of proposals to Rumi, who was on the eve of turning thirty. The first of these was to retire from performing.

“I wasn’t able to bring out your full talent. That’s my fault. Sadly, I think we’ve missed our moment as a band. If you want to find someone else to work with, I won’t stop you. I can help you if you need an introduction. For myself, though, I plan to retire from onstage performance.”

Rumi accepted what Niikura was saying, but that didn’t make her feel any less sad. She felt even worse that he was tying himself up in knots for her sake. He insisted that he was to blame, but Rumi knew full well that wasn’t true. It was down to deficiencies in her that the wonderful songs composed by Niikura had failed to get the recognition they deserved.

“I’m so sorry,” said Rumi, bursting into tears. “I let you down. I’m sorry. I can’t imagine working with anyone else. If you’re going to retire, then I’ll retire, too.”

That was when Niikura made his second proposal. It concerned their shared future. Would Rumi marry him?

Until then, their relationship hadn’t been romantic. Despite admiring Niikura and harboring feelings for him, Rumi had worked hard to conceal them. Niikura didn’t approve of romantic entanglements between band members.

On the one hand, she was sorry to retire from performing. On the other hand, the joy she felt at Niikura’s second proposal was more than enough to compensate. She accepted his proposal on the spot.

From that day on, she and Niikura became a tight-knit team. Niikura moved into the business of finding and nurturing young talent. Making money was never his primary goal — and his family was sufficiently well-off that he could safely take that approach. Rumi worked behind the scenes to support her husband. The second phase of their life was by no means a disappointment. Their inability to have children was the only thing that didn’t go according to plan. When, however, they sent the young artists they had discovered out into the world, they got a sense of quasi-parental satisfaction from watching their “children” making their own way.

Time passed. Eventually, they stumbled upon an extraordinary raw talent: Saori Namiki. Rumi would never forget the thrill of hearing Saori sing for the first time.

The glory of her voice and her technical skill as a singer were both overpowering. This girl’s talent is of a completely different order to mine. She is a born singer, Rumi told herself. At the same time, she was further excited by the enthusiasm she could feel coming off Niikura, who was sitting beside her.

“I want to manage that girl,” Niikura said, as they made their way home from the cultural festival where they had seen Saori perform. He spoke in a monotone, but Rumi could feel the extraordinary conviction behind what he was saying.

The passion Niikura devoted to training Saori was astonishing. Eager to elevate his new protégée’s abilities to the highest possible level, he put everything he had on the line for her. Inevitably, Rumi saw echoes of the past, when Niikura had been guiding her career. It was obvious that he was taking a second run at the dream that he had failed to realize with her.

Naturally, Rumi gave him her full support. She and Niikura were spending less time together, but that was only to be expected. Her husband’s single-minded obsession with Saori caused Rumi no unease. There was no reason for jealousy.

Under Niikura’s direction, Saori made steady progress. Her ability to learn was quite extraordinary. She could pick up techniques quickly that an ordinary person would need months to master. This is what genius looks like, thought Rumi in amazement.

They were almost there.

The gateway to success was right in front of them. All they had to do was push it open and a bright, shining road into the future would stretch out before them. They just needed to stay on track and single-mindedly put one foot in front of the other.

But, all of a sudden, their personal treasure was torn away from them. The road to the future was cut off. When Rumi recalled her sense of despair, even now she would start trembling uncontrollably. It was that bad—

“What’s wrong?” asked a voice.

The question brought Rumi back to herself. She found herself squatting down on the kitchen floor, the tin of jasmine tea still in her hand.

Niikura was standing over her with an anxious look on his face. “Are you all right?”

“Uh... I’m fine.” Rumi started sweeping up the tea leaves from the floor. “Finished your call?”

“Uh-huh.” There was something ominous in the brevity of his answer. “I got some slightly — no, some very worrying — news.”

“What is it?”

“You know that Yukawa guy? The one we’ve met a few times at Namiki-ya?”

Rumi stopped her sweeping and looked up at her husband. “Yes, I know who you mean.”

“He was at Namiki-ya tonight and he was asking Tojima all kinds of questions.”

“Him? But why?”

“Apparently, he’s got a friend on the police force.”

Rumi gasped.

“Tojima thinks the police may have seen through the trick with the helium tank and figured out how Hasunuma was really killed.”

Rumi swallowed and put her right hand to her chest. Her heart was beating painfully fast.

Niikura walked over to her. Rumi buried her head in his chest.

“It’ll be all right,” the husband said to the wife. “There’s no need to worry.”

30

When you revisit a street that you frequented as a child, it is often far smaller and narrower than you remembered it. This probably comes down to the change in one’s physical size. Typically, when, after the interval of a few years, you revisit a street you first saw as an adult, the impression hardly changes.

However, as Kusanagi walked along this particular street after almost two decades, it felt a great deal more cramped than he remembered. As he walked along and looked around him, he finally realized why.

Several big apartment blocks had been built where there had once been low-rise workshops and storehouses. They blocked the view, creating the sense that the already-narrow street had gotten even narrower.

Kusanagi came to a halt before a house. Back when it was surrounded by old, traditional Japanese houses, it had stood out for its elegance with its white façade and Western architecture. Now that it was surrounded by contemporary buildings, it felt more like an anachronism.

“This seems to be the place,” Utsumi said. She was standing beside him, looking at the engraved stone nameplate on the front gate. The name was Sawauchi. Nineteen years ago, it had been Motohashi.

“No doubt about it.”

Utsumi pressed the button on the intercom.

“Yes,” a woman’s voice answered almost immediately.

“This is Detective Sergeant Kaoru Utsumi. We spoke on the phone this morning.”

“Of course.”

Up at the far end of a little path, the front door of the house opened. A little woman with spectacles and silver hair came out. Kusanagi’s first impression was of dourness, so he was relieved to see the shadow of a smile playing around her lips.

The woman’s name was Sachie Sawauchi and she was the younger sister of Seiji Motohashi. Seiji Motohashi was fifty-two when his daughter Yuna’s remains were found. If he were still alive, he would be seventy-one.

Kusanagi got Utsumi to follow up and she found out that Seiji Motohashi had died six years ago. The family firm was now being run by a hired manager, and his sister and her husband had moved into the old Motohashi house over a decade ago.

Sachie Sawauchi showed Kusanagi and Utsumi into a living room furnished with a big leather sofa and armchairs.

Before sitting down, they presented the old woman with the box of candies they had brought for her. Motohashi. She waved her hands in a gesture of deprecation.

“You really shouldn’t have.”

“We are the ones dropping in on you out of the blue.”

“I really don’t mind. Anyway, thank you.” With a demure little bow, Sachie Sawauchi took the box.

“I’m going to make some tea. Won’t you have a seat?”

“There’s no need. This is a work visit.”

“To be honest, I’d like some for myself. It’s not often I get the chance to have a nice cup of tea with visitors.” Sachie Sawauchi smiled and left the room.

Kusanagi took a deep breath and turned to his female colleague. “Shall we sit down then?”

“Let’s,” Utsumi replied.

They sat down on the sofa next to each other. Kusanagi ran his eyes around the room. There were some heavy-looking bookshelves filled with hardbacks, including a number of English books, and some framed paintings of flowers on the walls. Were they the work of a well-known artist? he wondered.

“How does it feel, Chief?” Utsumi asked. “Is it different to when you were here all those years ago?”

“Yes,” Kusanagi replied, glancing around the room for a second time. “Completely different, frankly.”

“Oh yes?”

“Everything was different then. There’d been a family — a mother, a father, and a daughter. The daughter disappeared at the age of twelve. The mother took her own life soon after. Then, four years after that, the daughter’s remains were found in the mountains. That’s when I was here. Seiji Motohashi was living on his own, sure, but do you think he’d put away his wife’s things and his girl’s toys?”

Utsumi sighed sympathetically. “The opposite, I imagine. He probably wanted to keep their things around to remember them.”

“Exactly. Everything connected to Yuna was left exactly as it was when she disappeared.” Kusanagi pointed at the bookshelf. “There was an upright piano over there with a family portrait on top of it. The room still felt like the living room of a family with a young daughter. Time had stopped for Seiji Motohashi.”

Kusanagi remembered being ushered into this room nineteen years ago. He was with Mamiya; they had come to announce the arrest of Hasunuma to Motohashi. “We should be able to crush him with the full might of the law,” Mamiya had said confidently.

Kusanagi had never dreamed that he would be back, let alone under these circumstances. The whole experience of the Yuna case had been painful and frustrating, but — assuming that it was all in the past — he had done his best to let go.

He wasn’t surprised when Utsumi told him about going to see Professor Yukawa. The two of them were old friends, after all. Their shared interest in Hasunuma’s unnatural death was further motivation. Without Yukawa’s theories, figuring out how the murder was committed would have taken far more time and trouble.

If he was honest with himself, though, Kusanagi was puzzled when Utsumi had passed on Yukawa’s advice about looking into the people connected with what was a twenty-three-year-old case. No doubt, some of the people with links to Yuna Motohashi’s murder might still be nursing a grudge against Hasunuma. But why act on it now?

But Yukawa, Utsumi said, had been emphatic that the one missing piece of the puzzle was to be found in the past. When she followed up by asking him what sort of thing to look for, he’d simply said, “Relationships.”

“I don’t want to plant any preconceptions in your heads. I’ll just say this: There’s a link of some kind between that old case and the present case. And that link is a person.”

As perverse as Yukawa was, though, Kusanagi knew that his powers of deduction were quite extraordinary.

So what was Yukawa’s new hypothesis? Kusanagi was eager to know. Their investigation centered around the helium tank found in the clump of weeds was going nowhere fast.

There were multiple security cameras in and around Kikuno Park and they had yielded a considerable amount of footage, even for the fifteen-minute period that was their focus. The task of reviewing it had been divided between many investigators but they had failed to find anyone carrying a case, bag, or box big enough to accommodate the helium tank. The team’s current thinking was that the killer must have known where the cameras were located and exited the park via a blind spot.

They imagined that the perpetrator’s next move would have been to travel by vehicle from the park to the crime scene. They had, therefore, analyzed the N-System data for the area around the local main road. This, too, had failed to produce any results, despite the traffic restrictions having greatly reduced the number of cars on the road that day.

Another possibility was that the killer had used a bicycle, rather than a car. They started checking footage from the security cameras over an expanded area. They failed to find any suspicious bicycles.

The investigation hit a brick wall. That was when Kusanagi remembered the opinion that Detective Utsumi had so hesitantly proffered: that the helium tank they had found was nothing more than a decoy designed to throw the investigation off track. Yukawa felt the same way.

The main reason that Kusanagi had taken Yukawa’s advice and was talking to people associated with the twenty-three-year-old Yuna Motohashi case was that the investigation was flailing and he had no other options.

Sachie Sawauchi came in, pushing a trolley. On it was a hot water dispenser, a Japanese teapot, and three Japanese teacups. She had clearly meant what she said about enjoying teatime with her visitors.

Sachie Sawauchi sat down opposite the two detectives. She briskly poured some boiling water into the teapot, then filled the three cups with green tea.

“Here you go,” she said, placing a white teacup in front of Kusanagi.

“Thank you,” he said, and took a sip.

“I heard that he’s dead,” said Sachie Sawauchi, placing another teacup in front of Utsumi. “That Hasunuma fellow; the one they found not guilty in Yuna’s case.”

“You knew?” Kusanagi asked.

“Yes,” she replied softly. “I seldom watch television and I don’t do the internet, whatever that is. One of my neighbors told me the news. Even though it all happened twenty years ago, there are always good-natured people who are keen to help.” She put sarcastic emphasis on the word good-natured. “As soon as you said you were from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department on the phone this morning, I knew you’d be coming around to see me.”

“We’re very sorry for the inconvenience,” Utsumi said.

Hasunuma’s death had been a major news story over the past few days. The whole world and his dog seemed to know that he had been arrested several months earlier in a murder investigation, then released due to a lack of physical evidence.

“How did you feel when you heard that Hasunuma was dead?” Kusanagi asked.

Sachie Sawauchi looked at him blankly.

“I didn’t think or feel anything. Perhaps it’s because I never wanted to have to think about that man, ever. Whether he’s alive or dead, it makes no difference. All I wanted was never to have to think about him again. How many people suffered because of him? How many people’s lives destroyed?” Her face was reddening and her voice rising. She must have realized, because she looked down at the floor and apologized, her voice little more than a whisper. “I’m sorry.”

“Your brother... Seiji Motohashi... he passed away six years ago now?”

“That’s right,” the silver-haired lady replied. “Cancer of the esophagus. By the end of his life, he was like a chicken, just skin and bone... I think death was probably a release for him. He always said his life was empty of happiness.”

The phrase landed like a heavy blow to Kusanagi’s gut. “I see...”

Sachie Sawauchi ran her eyes briskly around the room.

“My brother lost everything because of what happened to Yuna. He lived a lonely life for years and years, all by himself in this big house. When he got to sixty, he retired from managing the firm and moved into an apartment complex for seniors. He couldn’t bear to sell off this piece of land — it’s been in our family for generations — so he asked me and my husband to live here. That’s why we moved in. We had always lived in a rented apartment before; my husband prefers that. Our only child, a boy, had just left home and we had been talking about moving out of Tokyo and out into the country, anyway. My husband passed away two years ago, so I’m alone here now. It makes me realize just how lonely my poor brother must have been, though. Of course, he suffered in ways I can’t even imagine.”

“Your brother... did you ever talk to him about the case?”

“We discussed it right after the not-guilty verdict came out. We were thinking about gathering signatures for a petition and demanding a retrial. It never happened. Our supporters gradually drifted away. My brother had his company to run and I started getting the sense that he didn’t want me bringing it up. He’d certainly never broach the subject himself.”

“How about when he was dying?”

“I don’t know.” Sachie Sawauchi tilted her head to one side. “He must have looked back over his life, I suppose. My guess is that he thought about Yuna’s death every day. He never spoke about it in front of us, though. He probably thought it would only make us even more unhappy.”

Listening to her, Kusanagi felt a weight in his belly if he had ingested a lump of lead. He couldn’t imagine how Seiji Motohashi must have felt. Not only had he lost his whole family but no one had been punished and the truth never brought to light.

“I’m just going to ask you this straight.” Kusanagi looked the old woman in the eye. “Did your brother ever think of taking the law into his own hands?”

Sachie Sawauchi’s eyes opened wide behind her spectacles. The question had taken her by surprise. She blinked, then said, “You mean avenge Yuna by killing that Hasunuma fellow?”

“Yes.”

Sachie Sawauchi cocked her head and looked slantwise down at the floor. After a moment or two, she lifted her face and looked at Kusanagi. “‘I’d like to kill the guy’ — I certainly heard him say that on a number of occasions. I don’t think he actually meant to do it. You only say you want to kill someone when you know you can’t really do it.”

“That makes sense. Can you think of someone who’s the opposite? Someone who wouldn’t say anything but might actually do something?”

“Someone who would actually take revenge? Oh no, I really don’t know.” Sachie Sawauchi tilted her head even farther to one side, then began shaking it from side to side. “I can’t think of anybody, no. People were angry, but why would anyone who wasn’t directly involved go so far?”

She’s got a point, thought Kusanagi. No one would avenge the death of someone else’s child.

“May I?” Utsumi piped up from where she was sitting on the sofa next to Kusanagi. Apparently, she was asking permission to ask a question. He grunted his agreement.

Utsumi turned to Sachie Sawauchi.

“Have you had any reason to think about the Yuna case recently? Has somebody said something to you about it? Asked you something about it?”

Sachie Sawauchi was waving her hand from side to side in a deprecating gesture before Utsumi had even got to the end of her question.

“As I told you, yesterday one of my neighbors told me that Hasunuma was dead. That brought back all sorts of horrible old memories. That aside, no, no one’s mentioned it to me for years.”

“Do you ever talk about it with your relatives?”

“It happened twenty years ago. There aren’t that many people around who still remember those days. My son was still very young then. He doesn’t even remember his cousin Yuna.”

“Is there anyone who was particularly fond of Yuna who is still alive?”

“I think that would be me,” said Sachie Sawauchi, breaking into a grin. “I lived here with the family until Yuna was two. As far as my brother’s wife Yumiko was concerned, I was the annoying sister-in-law who was taking far too long to get married! I’m sorry, I really can’t think of anyone else. After all, her father and mother are both dead.”

“Of course,” Utsumi said, then she nodded at Kusanagi.

“What about Yumiko’s family?” Kusanagi asked. “They must have adored Yuna.”

“No.” Sachie Sawauchi was waving her hand again. “Yumiko didn’t have any family.”

His phone vibrated inside his jacket. He pulled out the cell and saw that it was Kishitani. “Excuse me,” he said, turning away from Sachie Sawauchi to take the call. “Yes, what is it?”

“I looked through all the old case files. I couldn’t find anyone who looks as though they could be involved in our current case,” Kishitani said.

“Okay. Well, thank the guys at the Adachi Police Station and get back to Kikuno,” said Kusanagi and hung up. He’d ordered Kishitani to go and review the documentation of the Yuna Motohashi case at the Adachi Police Station. It had apparently been another dead end.

“Would you like another cup of tea?” Sachie Sawauchi gestured toward Kusanagi’s teacup with her open hand. His cup was empty, though he had no recollection of drinking anything.

“Thank you, I’m fine. Could you tell me what you did with your brother Seiji’s effects?”

“I threw most of them away. There are a few things I didn’t know what to do with. They’re still stored here.”

“Could we see them?”

“Certainly, but I’ll need your help. They’re a bit on the heavy side.”

“Of course,” Utsumi said, springing to her feet.

The cardboard box the two detectives carried back into the living room was jam-packed with old photo albums and letters. They pulled on latex gloves, determined to look through everything.

Kusanagi dealt with the photo albums. Whenever he came across a photograph of Yuna with another person, he would ask Sachie Sawauchi who the other person was. The Motohashis had obviously been over the moon when their daughter was born. There were reams and reams of pictures of her.

Once Yuna started going to school, there were more and more people Sachie Sawauchi didn’t know in the photographs. Some of them were Yuna’s friends, some were the friends’ parents, and others looked like teachers. Kusanagi found it hard to believe that any of Yuna’s classmates — no matter how close they had been as children — would wait twenty years to plot revenge after a twenty-year interval. Anyone prepared to do something like that would have to be more intimately connected to her.

It took Kusanagi almost two hours to go through all the photographs. Utsumi had finished reviewing all the letters. Neither of them found any leads.

Sachie Sawauchi, who had popped out of the room, reappeared, this time with coffee.

“Oh, that’s too kind. Here we are, already taking up so much of your precious time.” Kusanagi felt embarrassed.

“Please, don’t worry about it. Looking through all those old photos for the first time in years was fun,” she said, before adding, “though it had its painful side.”

“What about this album?” Utsumi picked up an old photo album with an expensive-looking leather cover that lay in the bottom of the cardboard box.

“Mrs. Sawauchi says that all the pictures in it are from before Yuna was born,” answered Kusanagi.

“Oh, yes?” said Utsumi. She flipped the album over and started leafing through it backward. She apparently wanted to see the pictures with the chronology reversed.

“Yumiko, you said her name was? Yuna’s mother was beautiful.”

“She was young and bursting with energy,” said Sachie Sawauchi. “The whole house was so bright and cheerful after she became part of the family. Our mother was still alive back then. You hear a lot about young wives always being at daggers drawn with their mothers-in-law, but there was none of that here. Yumiko was a great daughter-in-law and a fabulous mother for Yuna, too... That’s why she was so hard on herself when Yuna went missing. It was painful to see. She killed herself by jumping off a building not far from here. My brother said she’d been behaving a bit strangely.”

Kusanagi felt even more gloomy. He found himself thinking about “cycles of misfortune.”

He heard a little gasp of appreciation. Peering across at the album that Utsumi was examining, Kusanagi saw a picture of Yumiko in her wedding dress and Seiji Motohashi in his tuxedo. They were both beaming with happiness.

“Seiji was always going to take over running the family firm from our father, but as a young man he spent a couple of years working for this big manufacturer. That was when he met Yumiko. My brother was thirty-three when they got married. Yumiko must have been twenty-three or twenty-four.”

Kusanagi looked at the wedding photograph again. Yumiko was all alone in the world with no family at the time...

“When did Yumiko lose her parents?”

“Her father died in an accident when she was little more than a baby. As for her mother, she died just after Yumiko started high school.”

“Was she sent to an orphanage?”

“She never mentioned anything like that. She said something about boarding school.”

“With both her parents dead, who was her legal guardian?”

Sachie Sawauchi looked perplexed.

“I don’t know much about it. I didn’t want to pry.”

“I can understand that...”

Utsumi, who was now sitting next to Sachie Sawauchi, was leafing through the album. As she went further back into the past, the pictures became all of Seiji Motohashi by himself, and there were none of Yumiko. By the time she had gone from his university days all the way to his primary school years, the pictures were all in black and white.

Kusanagi checked the inside of the cardboard box. There were no more albums in it.

“Yumiko didn’t bring along any photographs of her own when she married your brother?” he asked Sachie Sawauchi.

“Apparently not. I was struck by that, when I was tidying her things...”

Kusanagi turned his attention back to the album. Utsumi was flicking through the pages faster now. The picture on the frontispiece was of a baby: presumably, the infant Seiji Motohashi.

“That’s odd,” Kusanagi muttered. “Yumiko’s mother only passed away when her daughter was already at high school. It’s hard to believe she never took any pictures of her daughter at all. If there were any family photos, she would have brought them with her here, when she got married. So, where have those photos gotten to? Do you think Seiji threw them out?”

“Strikes me as unlikely,” said Utsumi.

“Me, too.”

Kusanagi pondered for a moment. Yuna Motohashi wasn’t the only victim in the crime from twenty-three years ago. Yumiko Motohashi was a victim, too. The idea that someone would want to avenge her was by no means unthinkable. Could that be the missing piece of the puzzle Yukawa had mentioned?

“Detective Utsumi,” he called peremptorily. “I want you to check the family register for Yumiko Motohashi— No, check for Yumiko Fujiwara, her maiden name. Draw up a comprehensive list of her immediate family and her relatives.”

“Yes, sir,” Utsumi promptly replied.

31

The man sitting opposite him in the interview room looked like a completely different person compared to the last time they met. There was nothing ingratiating in his attitude, and his face was as expressionless as a mask. He’s ready for the worst, Kusanagi thought. He’s probably just starting to figure out why he’s been asked to come in for questioning. I mustn’t make any mistakes.

“What’s your name?”

The man only smiled faintly. “You know my name.”

“I need you to state your name.”

The man’s face went blank again. “My name is Eiji Masumura.”

“And what about the name of your father?”

At the word father, Masumura caught his breath. Then he said, “I don’t have a father.”

“I don’t think so.” Kusanagi looked down at a sheet of paper he had in his hand, then looked back at Masumura’s expressionless face. “Your parents were properly married. You should know your own father’s name.”

“It was Isamu. Or was it Osamu? I don’t remember much about my old man. He walked out on us when I was a kid.”

“His name was Isamu Okano. Your parents got divorced when you were six.”

Masumura snorted. “Why bother asking, if you know already?”

“I told you. Because I want to hear you say it. What was your mother’s name?”

“Kimiko.”

“And her family name?”

“Masumura.”

“That’s not true.” Kusanagi jabbed his finger at the sheet of paper he was holding. “Tell me the truth.”

“I’ve forgotten her name,” Masumura said morosely. “It’s all so long ago. Besides, it’s got nothing to do with anything.”

“Your mother’s family name was Fujiwara. She remarried when you were eight. Her second husband was a man called Yasuaki Fujiwara, but you were never enrolled in his family register.”

The name Fujiwara elicited a wan smile from Masumura.

“That’s it. Fujiwara. God, I’ve not heard that name for years.”

“You never used the Fujiwara name?”

“Not that I recall.”

“You can still use your father’s family name, even if you’re not officially adopted. I know you were born in Yamanashi prefecture. If I want to, I can easily find out which schools you went to and the name you used there.”

Masumura sank into a sullen silence. His body language seemed to say: Go on. Do your worst.

“Yasuaki Fujiwara died five years after he married your mother,” Kusanagi said, looking down at the piece of paper, before returning his gaze to Masumura. “That’s very tragic. Your mother — Kimiko Fujiwara — she must have been crushed by that.”

Masumura frowned and looked uncomfortable.

“What’s the point of digging up the past like this? If there’s something you want to say, Detective, just come out and say it.”

“You’re in a better position than anyone to know what we should really be talking about today. I don’t want to tell you anything; I want to ask you something — and please, don’t make me repeat myself. How did your widowed mother make a living?”

Averting his eyes, Masumura scratched one of his eyebrows with the tip of a finger.

“Don’t remember. A bit of this and a bit of that, I guess.”

“Like working in bars and nightclubs?”

“Yeah, that’s about right.”

“It must have been hard for her. I mean, she had two children. And her second child was only four years old when her husband died.”

Kusanagi noticed that Masumura’s cheek was twitching.

“Ms. Yumiko Fujiwara. Yumiko is your little sister’s name, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, something like that. Sure.”

“Your fathers were different. That’s why your baby sister was nine years younger than you. I bet she was adorable. I bet you doted on her.”

Masumura exhaled loudly and tilted his head to one side. “There was a big age gap between us. Like you say, we had different dads. My parents told me Yumiko was my baby sister, but I never really believed them. To me she felt more like, I don’t know, the neighbors’ kid. She wasn’t especially attached to me and I didn’t have much to do with her. I stayed away.”

“But you must have done some babysitting?”

“Babysitting?”

“Yes, with your mother out working in those clubs and bars. You must have taken care of your sister when she was out of the house at night?”

Masumura rubbed the bottom of his nose. “I dunno. Don’t remember.”

Kusanagi shuffled the pieces of paper he was holding, moving the bottom one to the top. On the second sheet, there were edited excerpts from the records of Masumura’s manslaughter trial.

“Talk me through your job history after you left junior high school.”

“My job history?”

“You didn’t go to high school, did you?”

“Uhm... no, I got a job with an electronics manufacturer in Kanagawa prefecture.”

“How long did you work there?”

“I dunno... twelve years, give or take.”

“And why did you quit?”

“I had no choice. I was fired. You really want to go there?”

“You were found guilty of manslaughter. Sentenced to three years.”

“Yes,” growled Masumura.

Kusanagi looked carefully at the paper in his hand.

Masumura had just moved into a new apartment. There was friction between him and one of the residents on the floor below, who thought he made too much noise.

The downstairs neighbor showed up at his door one night, roaring drunk and holding a beer bottle. Yelling incoherent insults, he threw himself at Masumura and began raining punches on him. The bottle he was holding hit something and broke. There was glass everywhere, but the neighbor didn’t slow his assault.

There was a kitchen knife on the drainage board by the sink in Masumura’s apartment. Instinctively, Masumura grabbed it. He only meant to use it to threaten the other man, but when the neighbor came at him in a frenzy, he stabbed him without really knowing he was doing so.

The knife buried itself deep in the other man’s belly. Vast quantities of blood poured out of him. He crashed to the floor.

Although Masumura called an ambulance, the man was past saving.

Those were the bare facts of the case.

“It was the middle of Japan’s high-economic-growth period at the time. The production line of the factory where you worked was running twenty-four hours a day. One of your coworkers made the following statement about you at your trial. ‘For us, Saturday is a workday like any other day. There are three shifts a day, every day. We do day shifts for two weeks, followed by a week of night shifts. In the course of that one week, we all lose weight — about four to five pounds — which we put back on while we’re doing the day shift. Swings and roundabouts. Many of the guys try to get away with doing as little as possible, but Masumura is serious: He works hard, never complains, never slacks off. He was sending most of what he earned to his family — it can’t have been easy for him.’”

Masumura gave a dry cough. “That’s all old news. I’d rather not think about it.”

“You’d been on the job about ten years, when Kimiko, your mother, died from a subarachnoid hemorrhage. Your little sister, Yumiko, was still in ninth grade. So what did you do?”

Masumura said nothing. He knew that Kusanagi would see through any lies he told immediately.

“You sent Yumiko to a girls’ boarding school.” Kusanagi was reading from the document in his hand. “You paid for her tuition fees, living expenses, room and board, everything. According to the trial record, on your salary, the money left over was barely enough for you to scrape by on. Yumiko provided testimony to the same effect. ‘My brother was willing to sacrifice his quality of life to protect mine,’ is what she said.”

Masumura snorted. “That’s just tactics.”

“Tactics?”

“The lawyer was trying to plead extenuating circumstances. It was one of the tricks he came up with. Yes, I looked after Yumiko until she graduated high school, but that was all I did. After that, I’d had enough of caring for her, so we broke off contact.”

“After high school, Yumiko got a job with an auto manufacturer in Chiba. At the trial, however, she testified that you always used to tell her she was smart and should go to college.”

“Yeah, because that—” Masumura’s voice was getting louder. “Because that was my lawyer’s strategy. He wanted to work the whole sob-story angle as hard as he could.”

“You’re saying that Yumiko provided false testimony to the court as part of that strategy?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. That’s what trials are all about. That shows you what trials are worth.”

“Yumiko must have adored you if she was willing to perjure herself for you.”

Masumura grunted. He groped around for a reply and, when that proved hopeless, he waved his hand dismissively from side to side. “That’s not how it was,” he finally said. “She did it for herself. Having a murderer in the family can seriously fuck up your life. She thought that getting a lighter sentence for me would help make things easier for her. That’s all it was.”

“Did Yumiko visit you in jail?”

“No, she didn’t. Why should she? After going to jail, I never saw Yumiko again. She never contacted me, either. It’s only natural. I mean, who wants to fraternize with a jailbird?”

“Did you tell her not to come? Refuse her visits?”

“That’s bullshit. It wasn’t like that. I’d completely broken off contact with her. I had no idea what she was doing with her life. She didn’t know anything about mine. That’s how it was.” He delivered this speech so forcefully, it was clear that he would never give ground on this point.

“Were you aware that Yumiko is dead?”

“What? You’re serious?” Masumura’s eyes widened. “I’d no idea. When did it happen? Did she get sick?”

“No, she committed suicide. Over twenty years ago, in fact.”

Shocked, Masumura exhaled long and loudly. “I can’t believe it. I really had no idea. We weren’t in touch.”

At this point, Kusanagi realized that Masumura was committed to a strategy of all-out lying.

Did he know that Yumiko had a daughter called Yuna? Did he know that a man by the name of Hasunuma had been arrested for Yuna’s murder? Did he know that ultimately Hasunuma was found not guilty? Kusanagi had a whole series of questions he wanted to ask Masumura, but he decided against it. He would never get the truth from him at this rate.

Kusanagi put down his papers and looked at the small man sitting in front of him. His perceptions had been flipped on their head.

Masumura was doing his best to come across as a tough guy. In reality, he was a good man who’d been prepared to go to any lengths to take care of his little sister. Kusanagi was ready to believe that the positive character testimony at his trial was probably all true. Yes, he had been declared guilty, but the manslaughter itself was an unavoidable accident.

A man like this would never be able to sit quietly on the sidelines when someone had driven his darling baby sister to suicide. It wasn’t difficult to imagine him nursing his hatred for almost twenty years. And there was something almost surreal in the fact that he should have a connection to the current case. Kusanagi was now convinced that the stone-faced man in front of him was the person Yukawa had directed Utsumi to look for: the hinge between the old case and the current case.

“How’s life in the business hotel?”

The question caught Masumura briefly off guard. His expression softened and he grunted, “Pretty darn good. I’d like to stay on, if I could.”

“I think we’ll be sending you back to your own place very soon. We need to do a search first and may confiscate some of your things. I hope that’s okay,” Kusanagi said, looking Masumura right in the eye. “We’ll do a very thorough search. We’ll be looking for photographs of the people you care about most.”

Masumura’s face stiffened. There was a determined glint in his eye.

“Be my guest,” he said. “There’s no one I care about and I don’t have even one photograph. You go ahead and search all you damn well want.”

32

“He was so sure of himself. I can’t believe he was bluffing. My guess is that he really doesn’t have any photos,” Utsumi said.

The red Kilchoman Distillery box that Utsumi had brought with her stood on Yukawa’s desk. Kusanagi had asked her to get Yukawa a nice bottle of Scotch to thank him for his brilliant deduction.

Utsumi was in Yukawa’s office to update him on the interview with Eiji Masumura, which had taken place earlier that day. While Kusanagi had asked the questions, Utsumi had been sitting next to him, taking notes.

“It sounds like we’ve got a formidable opponent on our hands.” A paper cup in each hand, Yukawa made his way back to his armchair. Putting both cups on the low table, he asked Utsumi if she took milk.

“I’m fine without. You don’t believe in mugs?”

“As you can see, this room doesn’t have a sink. It’s not very ecologically sound, but there you go. It’s paper cups or nothing.”

“Thanks,” Kaoru said, sipping from the paper cup. It should have tasted the same as any other instant coffee, but for some reason it always tasted just a bit special when it was brewed by this particular physicist.

She put her cup back on the table and looked up at Yukawa. “Why do you call him formidable?”

“It would be different if Masumura was telling the truth: that after he went to jail, he and his sister really had broken off all communication and had nothing to do with one another. But that’s not what you think happened, is it?”

“No. The chief and I agree on that point. At the cost of making dramatic economies in his own life, he somehow drummed up the money for Yumiko’s school fees and living expenses. He wouldn’t have done that unless he loved her. As for Yumiko herself, she testified about the debt of gratitude she owed him. Ultimately, the manslaughter thing was just a silly squabble that spiraled out of control. I don’t think he would have cut off the relationship. Still, it’s always possible that Masumura tried to break off with his sister because he loved her and was worried about her future. They’ve got different family names, and there’s no mention of a stepbrother in Yumiko’s family register. My guess is that Masumura thought no one would ever know that she had a convicted felon in the family, provided they both kept quiet about it. And sure enough, she married a well-established man from a good family. I’m sure it wasn’t easy for Yumiko, but I think she saw complying with Masumura’s request to keep his existence secret as a way to repay him for his kindness.”

“That would explain why she didn’t bring any family photos with her to her new husband’s house.”

“Yes.”

Yukawa resettled himself in his chair, took a sip of his coffee, then put his coffee cup down on the table.

“What do you think happened to those photographs? Do you think Yumiko threw them out before her marriage?”

“I don’t think she’d do that. My guess is that she gave them to Masumura for him to take care of.”

“I agree. The pictures were probably Masumura’s most prized possession. I can imagine him keeping a couple of them in his wallet and taking good care of the others, taking them with him as he moved from place to place. If anything, his photo collection probably grew after Yumiko got married.”

Utsumi understood what Yukawa was implying.

“You think Masumura and Yumiko stayed in contact and met in secret.”

“Masumura lived for his little sister’s happiness. When Yuna was born, I think she became a source of joy for him. I can easily imagine Yumiko bringing baby Yuna with her to their secret rendezvous.”

“They may even have taken photos. The three of them together.”

“Lots of them, I bet. But Masumura is adamant that no such photos exist and is quite happy for you to knock yourselves out looking for them. Why do you think that is?”

“Because he chucked them all out?”

“That’s right.” Yukawa gave an emphatic nod. “I suspect that he got rid of them all in advance, so that even if the police did find out that Yuna Motohashi’s mother was Masumura’s little sister, he could counter that, no, they had broken off all contact and he didn’t even know she was dead. He probably burned them to prevent us finding even a scrap. Those pictures were an irreplaceable treasure for him. The fact that he destroyed them shows just how committed he is. That’s why I described him as a formidable opponent.”

Utsumi nodded and sighed. She remembered Masumura fearlessly facing down Kusanagi’s searing scrutiny. Throughout the interview, he’d radiated a sense of passionate conviction.

“The other day, Professor, you said we were missing only a single piece to complete the puzzle, and that that piece existed in the past. Did you know that Masumura was the missing piece?”

“Of course I did,” Yukawa replied. “I knew that if my process of deduction was right, it had to be him.”

“Why didn’t you just say so?”

Yukawa raised an eyebrow and grinned at her.

“You mean the investigation would have been easier for you if you’d known it was him from the get-go?”

“I don’t know about it being easy but it would have been more efficient.”

“Oh... efficient?” A smile played around the corners of Yukawa’s mouth. “The reason I didn’t hand you our missing puzzle piece on a plate was because I wanted to make sure that the answers you came up with were all objective.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s say I had told you that Masumura was the missing piece. What would have happened then? Most likely, you would have gone through Masumura’s past with a fine-tooth comb, searching for his connection to the abduction and murder of Yuna Motohashi twenty-three years ago.”

“Well, yes.” Utsumi couldn’t deny it. “I sure would.”

“If that process had led you to the right answer, then all well and good. But there was every reason to think you might go off track and end up with the wrong answer. The Yuna incident took place in Adachi Ward, didn’t it? What if, purely by coincidence, Masumura had once had a job in that part of Tokyo? You’d have been in ecstasies; you’d probably have started investigating all his friends and associates from that time. The only way to find out that Masumura had a stepsister was to check his mother’s family register — but would you have gone that far? I think you’d have started believing that all sorts of irrelevant details were important clues, got sidetracked, and ended up taking an enormous detour. Or do you disagree?”

Kaoru bit her lip. Mortifying though it was to admit, Yukawa probably had a valid point.

“Who knows... perhaps, you’re right.”

“It’s something I see all the time when my students do experiments,” Yukawa said. “They usually know what the result of the experiment is supposed to be. Because of that, they conduct the experiment specifically to produce the desired result. They do things like deliberately misreading the numeric display on the measuring apparatus, either on the high or the low side. They’re happy to end up with a result close to what they wanted and they don’t even realize that they’re guilty of committing a very basic error. If you want to conduct an experiment properly, you’re much better off not knowing what sort of result it’s going to produce. That’s why I thought it was better for me not to reveal the last piece of the puzzle. I was ensuring the objectivity of your answers.”

Yukawa often likened police investigations to scientific experiments, but this time the comparison felt particularly compelling.

“I see. I’ll relay your explanation to the chief — though I doubt I’ll be as eloquent as you, Professor.”

“Give it your best shot.”

“I have one more question. Why did you think that Masumura might have some kind of link to that murder case from twenty-three years ago?”

“That’s easy enough to answer. Masumura had to be involved in Hasunuma’s murder for my hypothesis to hold up. I’m referring to my hypothesis about the killer transforming the little room into a gas chamber for an execution. A number of conditions had to be in place for the hypothesis to work. Let me tell you about three of them.”

“Just a moment.” Kaoru pulled a notebook from her bag and readied herself to take notes. “Go on, please.”

Yukawa took a sip of coffee, then raised an index finger.

“First, the killer had to get Hasunuma to take some sleeping medication. Second, Hasunuma had to fall asleep specifically inside the little storeroom. Third, the killer had to be aware that the little room could be locked from the outside. Those are my three conditions.”

Yukawa had rattled them off and Utsumi was having trouble keeping up. “Okay. And?”

“Masumura was the only person who fulfilled all three conditions. It was easy for him to get Hasunuma to drop his guard and to slip sleeping medication into his drink. Since they lived together, Masumura obviously knew where Hasunuma slept. The most crucial condition is number three. Unless you actually lived in the hut, you would never know that the sliding door could be locked shut.”

Utsumi raised her eyes from the scrawl in her notebook and looked thoughtfully at the physicist.

“It seems so obvious when you explain it.”

“You think I’m right?”

“So obvious, I’m almost disappointed.”

Yukawa frowned. “I disappointed you?”

“No, I disappointed myself. I mean, why couldn’t I figure out something so simple? The chief will be annoyed with himself, too.”

“It’s because both of you had made up your minds that Masumura had no connection to the case. Hasunuma went to live in Masumura’s place of his own volition; the two men met long before the death of Saori Namiki; and, to top it all, Masumura had an alibi. He was one of the first people to be struck from the suspect list.”

“But that’s not how you looked at it, Professor.”

“No. Kusanagi told me that there was no point of contact between Masumura and the Namiki family. In that case, Masumura’s motive had to predate Saori’s death. Could something have happened when the two men were working at the recycling firm where Masumura is still employed? Hardly. If there had been friction between them, Hasunuma would not have gone to live in Masumura’s spare room later, would he? That was when I tried flipping the problem.” Yukawa turned his hand palm upward to illustrate his point. “The question became had Masumura met Hasunuma completely randomly, or did Masumura actively seek him out? Once Masumura managed to track him down, did he insinuate himself into the same workplace, befriend Hasunuma, and wait for an opportunity to take his revenge? Hasunuma, however, quit his job and moved on before Masumura could execute his plan. A few years later, the opportunity to do so presented itself in an unexpected fashion. This time, it was Hasunuma who approached Masumura. And, this time, Masumura was determined to settle his decades-old score. Okay, if we assume that all that was indeed the case, then what was this old grudge of Masumura’s?”

“That’s when you realized that Masumura might have a connection to the Yuna case.”

“Yes, if my hypothesis was correct, he had to.” Yukawa swallowed a mouthful of coffee with an air of smug composure.

“What about Masumura’s alibi?”

“I don’t think he’s lying about that. Masumura is just an accomplice. He didn’t do the deed himself.”

“You think someone else is the principal?”

“I suppose I must.” Yukawa put down his cup with a sigh. “This problem is not a simple one. To be honest with you, my hypothesis remains something of a work in progress. I still haven’t solved the mystery central to the whole thing.”

“What do you mean? Is it something to do with the method that was used?”

“No, I think I’ve got that covered.” Yukawa sounded confident.

“The idea of converting the little room into a gas chamber?”

“Yes.”

“What should we be thinking about the helium issue? You were the one who said that a huge amount of helium would be needed.”

“I’d like to hear the results of that thing, before I go into that. You know, that thing I asked you to get Forensics to check up on? Did they get back to you?”

“They gave me a written report. I’ve brought the results with me.” Utsumi extracted several folded sheets of paper from inside her bag and placed them on the table.

After adjusting his glasses, Yukawa picked up the report.

“How is it?” Kaoru asked somewhat timidly. “The guy in charge at Forensics was actually rather skeptical. ‘Why does Professor Yukawa care about something like that?’”

Yukawa’s mouth, which had been a stern straight line, suddenly creased into a smile. His eyes twinkled.

“This is fantastic,” the physicist said. “Now I think we need Forensics to conduct a little experiment for us. Naturally, I’ll have to be there myself.”

33

The young technician from Forensics was down on one knee in front of the sliding door, using a screwdriver to loosen the screws that kept the door handle in place.

Having removed all the screws, the technician detached the handles from both sides of the door, revealing what Yukawa had referred to as the Judas Window.

Utsumi peered over the technician’s shoulder. “It’s true. It goes right through.”

“That’s absolutely key,” said Yukawa, who was standing next to Kusanagi behind Utsumi. “What can you get through a small square hole of this size is the crucial question.”

“A hole this size is fine,” said Shimaoka, the director of Forensics. He was there to both direct and observe the test.

They were about to conduct an experiment in Eiji Masumura’s small apartment. Kusanagi, Utsumi, and Yukawa were the only non-technicians there. They planned to photograph every stage of the experiment using multiple cameras and report back to Director Mamiya and the other top brass.

The young technician had moved away from the sliding door, so Kusanagi peered into the little room, which was the actual crime scene. Inside, everything was ready.

A ground sheet had been laid over the parquet floor and a mattress and quilt placed on top of it. A mannequin lay on the mattress. It was a crash test dummy but had the same weight, articulation, and size as a real person.

“We’ve tried to re-create the scene exactly as it was when the body was found. The mattress and the quilt are identical,” Shimaoka said. “The victim’s actual bedding is not available, so we’ll be using a brand-new quilt and mattress. Is that all right, Professor Yukawa?”

“You know their weight?”

“Yes, we’ve already weighed them.”

“That’ll be fine then. Thanks very much.”

Kusanagi examined the little room. Cameras had been set up in two locations and several square devices eight inches high were dotted around the room. One of them was very close to the dummy.

“What are those machines?” Kusanagi asked Shimaoka.

“Oxygen densitometers. Obviously, we can’t have an observer inside the room, so we’ve set it up so we can monitor the video feed and the densitometer readings from out here.” As he said this, Shimaoka pointed at a folding table that had been erected to one side of the sliding door. On it were two laptops.

The forensic technician who had removed the door handles came back in and said something to Shimaoka. Shimaoka nodded and turned to Kusanagi.

“Everything’s ready. We can start whenever you like.”

Kusanagi looked at Yukawa. Yukawa nodded. “Go ahead,” Kusanagi said to Shimaoka.

Two more technicians came in carrying a cylindrical tank with handles on either side. It was about two feet in height and one foot in diameter with a rubber bulb and special hose on the top. They carefully placed the cylinder on the floor in the middle of the room.

“We need to keep the room well ventilated. Let’s have the front door and the window open,” Yukawa said.

The technicians opened the door and the window as directed. Shimaoka then pulled the sliding door of the small room shut. “Okay, are we ready?”

“Before we start the experiment proper, could you discharge a small amount onto the floor here?” Yukawa said.

“Here in this room?” Shimaoka asked, just to make sure.

“Yes,” replied Yukawa. “I’d like to give Detectives Kusanagi and Utsumi the chance to witness this phenomenon directly.”

“Fine,” said Shimaoka. He nodded to his subordinates.

Leaving the hose dangling onto the floor, the technicians turned several valves and squeezed the rubber bulb on top of the tank until it was flat. A mixture of white vapor and liquid spouted out of the hose and onto the floor.

The liquid disappeared instantaneously, meaning that the floor didn’t get wet.

“What we have here is liquid nitrogen,” Yukawa said. “It has a boiling point of minus one hundred and ninety-six degrees Celsius. Pouring it onto the floor is like dripping waterdrops into a hot frying pan. It vaporizes instantaneously, as you can see. So, what will happen if we take this liquid nitrogen and” — here, he pointed at the sliding door — “we feed it in large quantities into the closed-up small room via the Judas Window?”

“What does happen?” Kusanagi asked.

“That’s what we are going to put to the test right now.”

“Proceed,” Yukawa said to Shimaoka.

Shimaoka gave the word and the forensic technicians got to work. One of them carried the tank up to the sliding door and fed the hose through the square aperture. The other turned on the two laptops. One of the monitors displayed the room’s interior, the other displayed various numeric readouts and graphs.

Yukawa had taken up position behind the technician who was monitoring the computers. Kusanagi and Utsumi followed suit.

“Let’s go,” Shimaoka said.

Just as he had done a minute or two before, the technician squeezed the bulb at the top of the gas cylinder several times. Immediately, a change was visible in the interior of the room on the computer display.

It was filling up with a white mist. The ground sheet, the mattress, and the quilt were only dimly visible through a haze.

“The liquid nitrogen cools the water vapor in the air, condensing it into small gloating droplets of water. You might say we’ve created a cloud inside the room,” Yukawa explained.

“The door cracks... It’s coming through...,” Utsumi murmured.

Kusanagi looked up. Sure enough, white smoke was seeping through whatever gaps there were, though it quickly vanished. When Kusanagi commented on it, Yukawa snapped back, “The temperature’s warm in here, so it’s reverting to water vapor. How’s the concentration of oxygen?” Yukawa asked the technician seated at the table.

“Almost unchanged in the upper part of the room. In the vicinity of the mannequin, it dropped below eighteen percent very rapidly. It’s about to go below seventeen,” the technician replied.

“When the oxygen concentration gets to sixteen percent, you get subjective symptoms like headache and nausea,” Shimaoka said, keeping an eye on the monitors. “Once you go below twelve percent, you start to feel dizzy. And once you go through ten percent, mental functions are impaired.”

Ten minutes later, the oxygen densitometer nearest the dummy was giving a reading of just six percent.

“Six is the level where you experience respiratory arrest. What’s the capacity of the tank?” Yukawa asked Shimaoka.

“Twenty liters. It was almost full when we started. We’ll weigh it when we’ve finished, of course. I don’t think there’ll be much left.”

Yukawa nodded and turned to Kusanagi and Utsumi.

“When liquid nitrogen vaporizes, its volume increases by around seven hundred times. In other words, a twenty-liter tank like this produces fourteen thousand liters. The cubic capacity of that room is around ten thousand liters. Any excess gets pushed out here through the gaps around the door. Since the original air inside and the vaporized nitrogen don’t instantaneously mix, the oxygen concentration is different in different parts of the room. As you can see from this experiment, the oxygen thins out in the lower part of the room first. For anyone asleep inside, there’s a high likelihood of getting oxygen deficiency culminating in respiratory arrest, even if the person were to get to their feet halfway through the process.”

“You’re saying that the murder weapon wasn’t helium after all?” Kusanagi said.

“The helium tank we found was a decoy. It was designed to throw us off track. I owe you an apology there. I was the one to suggest that helium might have been used.”

“Where did you get the idea of liquid nitrogen?”

“I asked myself why the killer had to opt for helium rather than anything else and what he really used for this murder. That’s when it came to me. Perhaps the killer actually wanted the police to think that helium was the murder weapon. Now, if we start looking for a substitute for helium, then what have we got?” Yukawa smiled and pointed at the liquid nitrogen tank. “An inert gas that’s the most abundant element in the atmosphere. And nitrogen is its name. If you use it in liquefied form, all you need is a paltry twenty liters,” said Yukawa, then turned and looked at Utsumi. “I asked Detective Utsumi to check one thing to help me verify my hypothesis.”

“What was that?” Kusanagi asked his female colleague.

“The quantity of moisture in the mattress and quilt when Hasunuma’s body was found,” Utsumi replied.

Kusanagi frowned. “The quantity of moisture?”

“You saw the video feed from inside the room, didn’t you?” said Yukawa. “When liquid nitrogen is pumped into the room, the water vapor in the air turns into a floating white mist. If the temperature in the room goes up, the mist dissolves into the air. If, however, liquid nitrogen keeps on being pumped in, then the temperature in the room does not rise. The room becomes something like the inside of a cloud. It’s an environment where condensation forms very easily. What do you think would happen to a quilt and mattress in a place like that?”

“They would absorb a lot of moisture?”

“When Forensics checked, they found that they were damper than under a normal-usage scenario,” Utsumi said. “In fact, they contained a large amount of moisture; equivalent to about half a cup of excess water.”

“Director Shimaoka,” said Yukawa. “Could we have a look at the interior of the room?”

“Of course. For safety reasons, I’d like you to stand back a little.”

The three of them did as they were told and stepped away from the door. One of the technicians slid the door open but didn’t go in. The oxygen level was still too low.

Cold air came wafting toward them. They gasped and shivered.

“Oh, it’s chilly — no, more like downright cold,” Utsumi said.

“No surprise there. Twenty liters of liquid nitrogen at a temperature of minus one hundred and ninety-six degrees has just vaporized,” Yukawa said. “Quite a long time ago, this really heartbreaking accident took place in a research facility up in Hokkaido. The temperature in the low-temperature testing room started rising because the temperature-control machinery had broken down. The staff poured large quantities of liquid nitrogen onto the floor in an effort to get the temperature back down as fast as they could. They must have panicked, as they completely forgot to ventilate the room properly. In the end, they were all asphyxiated.”

“I hadn’t heard about that,” Kusanagi said.

“Something similar must have happened when Masumura opened the sliding door after getting back from wherever he had been. Since he was aware of the dangers of liquid nitrogen, I suppose he didn’t go directly inside.”

The technician at the computer said, “Oxygen concentration is now above twenty percent.”

Shimaoka nodded to Yukawa. “Go ahead, Professor.”

Yukawa went inside. Kusanagi followed him.

The interior of the room didn’t appear to have changed. The white mist had already dispersed.

Yukawa, who was looking down at the floor near his feet, stopped and extracted a pair of leather gloves from his pocket. He pulled them on, squatted down, and picked something up off the floor.

“What have you got there?” Kusanagi asked.

Yukawa opened the palm of his gloved hand to reveal something that looked like a small, thin rice cracker.

“The liquid nitrogen was all pumped into a single spot in the room. That area was supercooled in a very extreme fashion. The carbon dioxide in the air got frozen as well as the water vapor. This here is dry ice.”

“Forensics didn’t report finding any.”

“Of course they didn’t. Masumura would have got rid of it.”

“Oh, right...”

Still clutching the little piece of dry ice, Yukawa started touching the walls, before crouching down to scrutinize the ground sheet.

“What is it?” Kusanagi asked. “Have you noticed something else?”

Yukawa pulled himself to his feet and adjusted his spectacles on his nose.

“I know that I’m repeating myself, but the key thing is what happens to the water vapor in the atmosphere. It will vary depending on the conditions — the temperature, the humidity, the degree of airtightness, and so on — but I thought it possible we might find some waterdrops on the ground sheet. As far as I can see, though, there aren’t any. There is a certain amount of moisture on the walls, but nothing one could describe as abnormal. Anyway, the walls would have dried somewhat, or possibly even reverted to their original state by the time the crime scene was inspected. What do you think, Director?”

Shimaoka and his crew of technicians were busy rolling up the mattress and quilt and tying them with string in preparation for attaching them to a suspension weighing scale.

“The pre-experiment weight of mattress and quilt was thirteen point eight pounds. According to the digital readout here, that’s now increased to fourteen point one pounds. A weight gain of roughly three and a half ounces.”

“Which is the equivalent of half a cup’s worth of water. That tallies perfectly with the condition of the mattress and quilt found at the scene,” said Yukawa. He turned to Kusanagi. “We seem to be one step closer toward proving my hypothesis.”

34

A search and seizure warrant was issued for Tojima-ya Foods, the company owned and managed by Shusaku Tojima, the day after they ran the liquid nitrogen experiment. Kusanagi, who took personal charge of the search, went to the managing director’s office with Detective Sergeant Utsumi and Detective Inspector Kishitani.

Tojima recoiled at the sight of the warrant. “What is the meaning of this?” he protested. “Are you trying to say that my company’s got something to do with your murder investigation? We’re just a food-processing company! We’re not doing anything illegal here!”

“In that case, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Kindly cooperate with the search,” Kusanagi said, returning the warrant to his chest pocket.

It was something that Yukawa had said to him after the liquid nitrogen experiment that inspired him to order the search.

“When I realized that liquid nitrogen had probably been used and not helium,” the professor had told him, “I realized something else, something important: Someone very close to the Namiki family could get his hands on liquid nitrogen with ease. Shusaku Tojima, the childhood friend of Yutaro Namiki, runs his family company, which handles frozen food. You can use a whole range of machines to freeze food, but flash-freezing systems rely on liquid nitrogen.”

Yukawa went on to explain that he’d already spoken to Tojima in order to confirm his hunch.

“It was after Detective Utsumi came to visit me at the university research center. I went to Namiki-ya specifically at a time I knew Tojima would be there, too. I managed to share a table with him, so I got the chance to ask him what freezer systems he used. As I’d expected, Tojima-ya Foods did use liquid-nitrogen-based freezer systems. Chiefly for desserts, he said. I questioned Tojima pretty persistently, so I may have aroused his suspicions.”

This was important. Kusanagi had no excuse for dillydallying. He quickly pushed through the necessary paperwork to execute a search of Tojima’s company premises.

Some eight hours after the search of Tojima-ya Foods had ended, Kusanagi was in the meeting room at the Kikuno precinct station with Utsumi and Kishitani, giving an update to Director Mamiya.

“From interviews we have conducted, we have learned that this March there was an accident involving liquid nitrogen at Tojima-ya Foods,” said Kusanagi, referring to his notes. “Instead of using an automatic freezer, one of the workers was manually spraying some food products with liquid nitrogen, when he lost consciousness and collapsed. The cause of the accident was poor ventilation. The worker’s condition wasn’t life-threatening or even especially serious, but further missteps could have resulted in death.”

“And you think that the accident gave Tojima the idea for the murder?” Mamiya asked.

“We don’t know whether it was Tojima himself who had the idea or someone he mentioned the accident to,” Kusanagi replied circumspectly. “Detective Utsumi!” His tone was suddenly peremptory.

Utsumi tapped a few strokes on the keyboard, then swiveled her laptop around so that it faced Mamiya. On this display was the entrance of the Tojima-ya Foods factory.

“This footage comes from the security camera at the entrance to the Tojima-ya Foods factory. It’s from the day of the parade and, as you can see from the time stamp, it’s from around one o’clock. As it’s a Sunday, you’d expect the whole place to be closed, but the shutter on the loading dock is up.”

Utsumi tapped her keyboard and the video started to play. A minivan drove up to the loading dock. Mamiya gasped.

“I’m now going to jump a few minutes forward.” She fast-forwarded the video to 1:20. The minivan was driving away from the loading dock.

“Can we see the driver’s face?” he asked.

“With this particular footage, we can’t. But there is some from another camera.” Kusanagi shot a glance at Utsumi.

Utsumi pulled up another video. It showed a line of minivans parked in a row.

“This is the parking lot for commercial vehicles at Tojima-ya Foods,” Utsumi explained. “The time’s slightly earlier than the other video. See. The time stamp is 12:56.”

She started the video. A few seconds later, a plump man in a bomber jacket appeared in the left-hand corner of the screen. He clambered into one of the vans and drove off.

Utsumi rewound the footage slightly, froze a frame, and enlarged the man’s face.

Kusanagi had brought a copy of the photograph from Shusaku Tojima’s driver’s license. He showed it to Mamiya. “We think it’s the same person.”

Mamiya narrowed his eyes and scrutinized the picture. “Tojima procured the liquid nitrogen from his own factory?”

“We think it probable, yes.”

“Any evidence?”

“The quantity of liquid nitrogen in the factory’s storage tank is monitored on a daily basis. Between the Friday and the Monday, it decreased by roughly twenty liters. With liquid nitrogen, there’s always going to be a small percentage that evaporates. The tank manager, however, was adamant that it had never gone down so much before.”

“I see. Still, that’s hardly decisive,” Mamiya said grumpily. “Did you manage to track the minivan’s movements?”

“He handled that,” Kusanagi said, with a jerk of the chin in Kishitani’s direction.

“We went through the footage from the security cameras in the vicinity of the factory. So far, we’ve not been able to find the minivan in question,” Kishitani said to Mamiya. “N-System didn’t catch it on the main road, either.”

“Is there a way to get from the factory to the crime scene while avoiding N-System?”

“It’s possible, but it involves such a major detour that no one would ever decide to go that way. You’ve got to remember that ordinary civilians have no idea where the N-System monitoring points are located,” Kishitani said.

“Moving on,” said Utsumi. Tapping her keyboard, she pulled up an image of the parking lot. The minivan drove back in and a man resembling Tojima climbed out and walked off.

“The time stamp says 1:51. Since we know Tojima left the factory at 1:20, that gives him roughly half an hour. Even by the shortest route, it still takes over ten minutes to get to the crime scene. He certainly wouldn’t have taken a roundabout route.”

Mamiya crossed his arms on his chest and turned to Kusanagi. “Has Tojima got an alibi?”

“Yes, he has,” Kusanagi shot back. “He was with his friends at the neighborhood association from around three P.M. He did step outside occasionally, but never for very long. He stayed with them until early evening, when he went to Namiki-ya. His alibi checks out.”

“In other words,” muttered Mamiya, “Tojima isn’t the principal.”

“No, I don’t think he is,” Kusanagi said. “We should probably think of it in these terms. Tojima used the minivan to take the liquid nitrogen out of the factory and deposit it somewhere, before driving back. Somebody else — not him — then took the liquid nitrogen from there to the crime scene.”

“And that somebody else is the principal. But who is it?”

“We don’t know. Our prime suspect is Yutaro Namiki, but, as you know, he has an alibi. The same’s true for Masumura.”

Mamiya groaned softly, knitted his fingers behind his head, and leaned back in his chair.

“That fellow... Detective Galileo... what does he have to say? Hasn’t he been able to come up with one of his beautiful theories?”

“He has come up with what he calls a ‘for-the-time-being solution.’”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I should warn you, it’s an outlandish theory...”

It was a theory Yukawa had unveiled after he’d come to the same conclusion: that Tojima wasn’t the principal.

“Masumura is one accomplice and Tojima is probably another. But are they the only accomplices who took part in the crime? Take Tomoya Takagaki, for example. While he appears to have an alibi, there’s also a roughly thirty-minute chunk of time that’s unaccounted for. What was he doing in that time? In addition, if the helium tank we found in the clump of weeds was only a decoy, that makes it possible that the murder was committed before the helium was stolen at 4:30 P.M. — something that undermines the perfect alibi of the Niikuras. Taken all together, do these facts amount to anything significant?”

Yukawa’s theory had hit him like a bombshell, Kusanagi went on. The physicist was proposing that a large number of people might have been involved in committing the crime.

Yukawa had emphasized that what he was putting forward was “no more than a for-the-time-being solution.”

“Up to a point, at least, I know all the people involved. They’re all good, decent, ordinary folk. I know that they loved Saori Namiki and probably hated Hasunuma. At the same time, I just can’t see them taking part in a murder. Just because there are, say, ten accomplices doesn’t mean that each of them only suffers one-tenth of the normal pangs of conscience. That’s why my hypothesis remains incomplete.”

Yukawa had delivered this speech with a melancholy expression on his face. Kusanagi understood Yukawa’s point: It was hard to believe that so many people would participate in a murder plot.

Seeing that Kusanagi had finished, Mamiya weighed in. “I agree with that last point of Yukawa’s,” he said. “The multiple-accomplice theory is certainly an interesting one, but with a crime as atrocious as murder, it’s difficult for a lot of people to preserve a united front. More people just multiplies the risk, especially when the crime is detected.”

“Still, sir, it looks like Masumura and Tojima are definitely. And since there’s got to be something to connect the two of them, it’s hard to think that the connecting link would be anyone other than Namiki...”

“Yet Namiki, the crucial figure, has an alibi.” Mamiya crossed his arms. “Which means we end up going around in circles.”

“This is what we need to look at, if we want to break the logjam.” Kusanagi pointed at the computer display, which was showing a still of the minivan parked in the Tojima-ya Foods lot. “Our experiment proved that roughly twenty liters of liquid nitrogen were needed for the crime. A standard tank for liquid nitrogen is around two feet high, around a foot in diameter, and weighs around fifty-five pounds when full. The question we have to answer is, once Tojima took it out of the factory, how did a second person transport it to the crime scene?”

“Okay, so the helium tank has now become a tank of liquid nitrogen. Regardless which gas it was, the perpetrator still had to transport something very large. We haven’t yet found any such a person, have we?”

“Our focus until now has been the security cameras in the vicinity of the park from which the helium tank was stolen. We also focused on a time period after four thirty, when the theft of the tank took place. What we need to do now is to conduct interviews and analyze the security camera footage over an enlarged area and a longer time frame.”

Although Kusanagi’s tone was confident, in his heart of hearts he still felt uneasy. Not even Professor Yukawa had managed to put together a complete hypothesis. He had no faith that the investigation was proceeding along the right track.