Silent Parade

35

The bar was located about a ten minutes’ walk from Kikuno station. It was on a narrow side street in a small modern building. Standing at a certain remove from the busy shopping district, it didn’t seem an ideal location but as the place had been in business for years, it probably benefited, like Namiki-ya, from a core of regular customers.

Utsumi pushed open the door and stepped inside. From behind the counter on her right, a gray-haired bartender — the owner, she assumed — wished her a good evening. A wide array of glass bottles was arranged on shelves behind him.

All the tables were occupied by couples and there was another couple sitting at the counter. At a certain distance from them, right at the back, sat the person Utsumi had arranged to meet.

“I hope you’ve not been waiting long?” Utsumi said, speaking quietly as she sat down on the seat next to Yukawa.

Yukawa slipped his phone into his inside jacket pocket and reached for his tumbler. “I only just got here myself.”

The bartender came over to them. Utsumi ordered a Virgin Moscow Mule.

“Planning to head back to the station afterward?”

“Yes. I’ve got a report to write.”

“Hard life, eh?” It looked as though Yukawa was drinking a highball. “Investigation hit a brick wall?”

“Nothing gets past you, does it?”

“You invited me for a drink, but I see no sign of a gift.”

“Sorry about that.” Utsumi sighed and let her head droop to one side. “I don’t think that the investigation’s actually on the wrong track.”

“What did Tojima have to say for himself? Kusanagi told me about the drop in the volume of liquid nitrogen in the company storage tank.”

“Tojima’s saying he doesn’t know how it happened. He’s admitted that he did drive one of the company’s minivans on the day of the parade. He checked up on the freezers at the factory, then set out for the parade venue, he says. Worried that he wouldn’t find a place to park the van, he ended up driving back. We have a statement from a witness who saw a Tojima-ya Foods vehicle very close to the starting point of the parade.”

Yukawa exhaled loudly. “As excuses go, it’s plausible.”

“It doesn’t feel quite right to me. He’s the boss. He can always get one of his employees to inspect the freezers. Plus, why do that sort of thing on a Sunday in the first place?”

“He can just say, ‘It’s my decision and it’s nothing to do with you.’”

“Yes, I know but...” mumbled Utsumi.

The bartender placed a tumbler in front of Utsumi. There was a half slice of lime floating in it. When she took a sip, a fresh, tart fragrance perfumed the air.

“Is Masumura still refusing to say anything?”

Utsumi nodded listlessly.

“He says that he got the job at the recycling company because he’d heard that the place welcomed ex-cons on its workforce; that he had no idea Hasunuma worked there; and that he knew nothing about Yuna Motohashi’s murder.”

“Did you check with Masumura’s previous employer?”

“I sent an investigator to talk to them. They’re a construction subcontractor. The place has such a high level of employee turnover that almost nobody there remembered Masumura.”

“I can believe it.” Yukawa sounded quite unfazed. “If there was any weakness in that part of their plan, the whole thing would disintegrate. Whatever happens, Masumura has to keep denying any link between himself and what happened twenty-three years ago.”

“You said ‘their plan’ — but who exactly is ‘they’? Masumura and Tojima, all three members of the Namiki family, Tomoya Takagaki, both the Niikuras — do you regard them all as suspicious?”

“It would be illogical not to do so.”

“Yes, but all three members of the Namiki family have alibis. We have located the Takagaki and the Niikuras in CCTV footage from the parade and we know that none of them was carrying any bulky items. Based on how long Tojima was away from his factory in the minivan, the furthest he could have transported the liquid nitrogen — assuming he did so — would be to the starting point of the parade. So who transported it from there to the crime scene and how did they do it?”

“Isn’t answering questions like that meant to be your job?”

“We’re doing our best. Have you heard of utility wagons, Professor?”

“Utility wagons? It sounds faintly Wild West.”

“They’re trolley-mounted square boxes covered in plastic sheeting. Delivery company drivers use them. They stick the packages they’re delivering in the box and push them to their destination. The sheeting keeps the packages dry when it’s raining and stops them falling off the trolley. You must have seen them around?”

“Oh, yes. I know exactly what you mean.” Yukawa was nodding enthusiastically. “I see them all the time.”

“Deliveries were still being made in Kikuno on the day of the parade. These utility wagons pop up from time to time on the security-camera footage. In every case, we’ve contacted the delivery company and are checking to see that the deliveries actually arrived. We thought that the perpetrator could have disguised himself as a deliveryman and transported the liquid nitrogen that way.”

“Interesting. Was it Kusanagi who gave that order?”

“Yes, it was.”

Yukawa smiled and drained his highball. “He’s shaping up to be a pretty good chief inspector.”

“Shall I tell him you said that?”

“There’s no need.”

“That gives you an idea of how thorough we’re being. From reviewing the footage of security cameras in every possible location, I’ve got a good grasp of how the spectators were behaving, how they moved around. Despite all our efforts, we still can’t figure out how the perpetrator transported the liquid nitrogen. That’s why I’ve come here to see you tonight.”

“You want me to figure it out?”

Utsumi placed both her hands on her knees and turned in her seat to look directly at Yukawa. “Professor, I’m sure you can solve the mystery.”

“Now you’re just being illogical,” said Yukawa. He called the bartender over and, pointing to his tumbler, asked for a refill.

Utsumi scratched the top of her head. “Are we missing something?”

“Perhaps you are. No, make that a probably. At times like this, it’s always a good idea to look at things from a different point of view.”

“A different point of view, huh.” Utsumi took a sip of her cocktail, then rested her chin on her interwoven fingers and watched the deft movements of the bartender’s hands as he made a whiskey and soda. Her gaze wandered across to the bottles arrayed behind him. A small frog-shaped knickknack at the corner of the bottom shelf caught her eye.

What on earth is that frog doing here? she wondered. She soon realized what it was and her mouth creased into a spontaneous smile.

“What is it?” Yukawa asked.

“That thing there.” Utsumi pointed to the knickknack. “You know its name?”

Yukawa took a look, then snorted. “It’s Kikunon. The mascot of the parade.”

“I’m not a big fan of the design. Just looks like an ordinary frog to me.”

The bartender placed a new highball in front of Yukawa. “One of the customers left it behind.”

“That explains it,” said Yukawa, sounding relieved. “It doesn’t really match the rest of the decor.”

“I can’t just throw the thing away. It’s a bore. I wish they’d hurry up and come and collect it,” said the bartender before walking off.

Utsumi stared at the miniature Kikunon. The giant inflatable version of it had been the last attraction in the parade. The thing required several high-pressure cylinders’ worth of helium.

“Ah!” Utsumi exclaimed loudly.

“What is it now?”

“Nothing. Nothing.” Utsumi flapped a hand from side to side. “I thought I’d had an inspiration... Sorry. It was stupid.”

“What was stupid?”

“My bright idea. It was totally stupid. Far-fetched. Impossible. Forget about it.”

Yukawa returned his tumbler to the coaster.

“You shouldn’t be the one to decide if your idea is stupid or not. And you certainly don’t want to rush to judgment about something being impossible. Buried inside a crazy idea, you can often find useful hints for solving problems. You should come out and say it, and see what a third party has to say.”

“I don’t need to. If I told you, Professor, you’d just laugh. And if you didn’t laugh, you’d be horrified.”

“Now I really want to hear your idea!” This time, it was Yukawa who swiveled around on his seat to face Utsumi. The expression on his face was deadly earnest. “Go on. Tell me.”

Utsumi exhaled slowly. I should never have told him that I’d had a brainstorm. She was kicking herself.

“I thought that... perhaps the perpetrators used the gas from that thing,” she said, pointing at the miniature mascot on the shelf.

“From that?” Yukawa drew his brows together skeptically.

“Yes, the gas from the giant Kikunon inflatable. It contains a lot of helium. They could have drained the helium from it when the parade was over and then transported it to the crime scene. That way they could have asphyxiated Hasunuma using the first method you proposed.” At that point, Utsumi’s self-confidence collapsed. “Look, please just forget about it. After all, it was liquid nitrogen, not helium, that was used for the murder, anyway.”

Yukawa wasn’t laughing. Nor was there an expression of horror on his face. “Interesting,” he simply said, while looking pensively at the Kikunon mascot on the shelf. “With that method, the perpetrators wouldn’t actually need to do anything between the starting point of the parade to the finishing point of the parade, because the members of Team Kikuno would transport the balloon and the gas inside it for them.”

“That’s what I thought. And that’s why I thought — for about a microsecond — that it was a good idea. But it’s impossible, isn’t it? To extract the helium from the balloon, I mean.”

“Extracting the gas from the balloon isn’t difficult. It’s getting it back into the cylinders that would be a mind-boggling challenge.”

“Of course. So, yes, just forget about it. At least you didn’t laugh at me.” Relieved, Utsumi took a sip of her Moscow Mule.

“I’m very far indeed from laughing at you.” Yukawa took his smartphone out of his inside jacket pocket. “I think you may have hit upon the mother of all solutions.”

“Really? Explain.”

Yukawa thumbed the screen of his phone.

“A few minutes ago, you said that you’d examined the footage from all the security cameras along the parade route and had got a good grasp of how the crowd moved and behaved.”

“That’s right.”

“I rather doubt that you paid much attention to the movements of this particular group.” As Yukawa said this, he turned the display of his phone toward Utsumi.

On it were the pirates in the parade.

36

At three stories high, Miyazawa Books was large for a bookstore. On the first floor, they actually sold music, DVDs, and computer games. Books were on the second floor, while the third floor was the company office.

Maya Miyazawa had a firm, straight mouth that suggested strength of will. Clearly, she also had a certain charisma since she was a director of the neighborhood association and the leader of Kikuno’s official parade team.

She had looked askance at Kusanagi when he showed her his police badge, but when he asked if he could see the props for the parade, she looked daggers at him.

“What’s the problem with our props?”

“We just need to check something. Where are they kept?”

“They’re in the parade committee’s storeroom.”

“Where is that? Is the place staffed?”

“It’s just up the road. No, normally there’s no one there. Uh... do you want to see the props right now?”

Kusanagi bowed curtly while maintaining eye contact. “Yes, if we could.”

“Fine,” said Maya Miyazawa. She opened a drawer in a nearby desk and pulled out a bunch of keys.

She took them to the parade committee building herself. It was a modest, two-story structure, located a little ways from the shopping district. The first floor was a storeroom, while the committee’s offices were upstairs.

“In December, all the shops have their end-of-year sales. Team Kikuno always does a special performance, and we store the costumes and props here. We dismantled the float after the parade, because we don’t use that in December,” Miyazawa said, as she pressed the switch to open the storeroom’s electric shutter.

The storeroom itself was full of piles of cardboard boxes and clothes cases, along with wooden boards, bits of lumber, and metal sheeting.

“So what is it you want to see?” asked Miyazawa, turning to Kusanagi.

Kusanagi gestured to Utsumi who was standing just behind him. He had also brought several junior officers along with them, to handle any physical work.

Utsumi deftly thumbed her phone, then showed the display to Maya Miyazawa. “These things.”

Kusanagi scrutinized the young bookstore owner’s face. He didn’t want to miss even the subtlest change in her expression.

He thought he saw a slight twitch in one of her cheeks. He had no way of parsing her reaction to what Utsumi had shown her. Had she been shocked and dismayed? Or was she expecting it?

“You mean... the treasure chests?”

“Correct,” Kusanagi replied. “I heard from people who saw the parade that there were several of them.”

“Yes, we made five.”

“Are they here?”

“They’re here.” Maya Miyazawa ran her eye around the storeroom. “But they’ve been disassembled.”

“That’s not a problem. If you show my men how to do it, they can put them back together again.”

“Fine. What color chest do you want to start with?”

“How many colors are there?”

“They’re all different. We’ve got gold, silver, copper, red, and blue. They’re all the same size and shape.”

“In that case, any color will do.”

Maya Miyazawa nodded. “Follow me,” she said and headed for the back of the storeroom. With a jerk of his head, Kusanagi indicated for the junior officers to follow her.

As he watched them putting together the chest under Maya Miyazawa’s guidance, Kusanagi took out an e-cigarette and started vaping. He had given up traditional cigarettes three years before.

“Do you smoke that thing when you’re with Professor Yukawa?” Utsumi asked, walking over to him.

“Never. If he knew I smoked this thing, he’d tease me, I know. He’d say that I was illogical — I was giving up smoking without really giving it up.”

“I happen to agree with him.”

“Oh, shut up and leave me alone. They’re my damn lungs.”

While they were chatting, the young officers had finished assembling the treasure chest.

The base resembled a large handcart. The treasure chest, which was about three feet high, had its lid up, and was overflowing with gold and jewels. When Kusanagi touched the “treasure,” it turned out to be a sheet of carved polystyrene that was glued into place.

“It’s pretty tacky when seen up close, isn’t it?” said Maya Miyazawa self-mockingly in a bid to preempt any criticism. “The chest itself is made of plywood.” She rapped the side of the chest with her knuckles. It made a flimsy, hollow sound.

“Can you shut the lid?” Kusanagi asked.

“No, you can’t. It’s fixed open like this.”

“What about the inside?”

“What about it? The treasure part is just a shelf, like a false bottom. There’s nothing under it.”

Kusanagi grabbed the handle part of the trolley with both hands and gave it a shove. It moved much more easily than he had expected. When he pushed down gently on the handle, the front wheels of the trolley rose off the ground.

Kusanagi exchanged a look with Utsumi. She gave a discreet nod, as if to say, Just as Professor Yukawa predicted.

“Is there anything else?” Maya Miyazawa asked.

“We’ll get back to you. So this treasure chest here is complete?”

“Yes.”

“And it was used in the parade just like this?”

“Yes...”

Kusanagi detected a suggestion of wariness on Maya Miyazawa’s face.

“Detective Utsumi, show Ms. Miyazawa that video.”

“Yes, sir,” said Utsumi, thumbing her phone again.

“This video was taken by one of the spectators on the day of the parade,” said Utsumi, showing the screen of her phone to Miyazawa Maya. “There are people dressed in pirate costumes dashing around and pushing the treasure chests.”

“So what?”

“They’re performing little stunts. Sometimes they stand on the backs of the trolleys, but the front wheels don’t lift off the ground. We consulted an expert and he said that would only be possible if the treasure chests were weighted down in some way.”

Maya Miyazawa nodded and moistened her lips with her tongue. “Oh, is that what this is about?”

“Did you do something to make the chests heavier?” Kusanagi asked.

“Yes, we added ballast. Sorry. I forgot to mention that.”

Did she really forget? Kusanagi wasn’t inclined to believe her. “Tell us about this ballast then.”

“When the chest is like this, its balance is hopeless. The lid is open, right? That gives the chest a very high center of gravity. Unless you’re very careful, the whole thing will just topple over. We put ballast in the bottom of the chest to add stability. We actually killed two birds with one stone that way. You need to be a good actor to make it look like you’re pushing something heavy when you’re actually pushing something that doesn’t weigh much. That’s too much for amateurs.”

“Our expert reckons that the overall weight, chest included, would have to be around ninety pounds,” Utsumi said.

“That’s probably about what we had.”

“What did you use for ballast?”

“Bottles of tea and water. We stuck a couple of cardboard boxes — each of them holding six two-liter plastic bottles — into each of the chests. When we’d finished marching in the parade, we gave the drinks away.”

Kusanagi did some quick mental arithmetic. That would be fifty-three pounds per chest.

“How did you get the boxes in and out?”

“That’s not especially difficult. In fact, it’s easy.” Maya Miyazawa undid a couple of metal clips at either end of the chest. The front and both side panels swung down and open, exposing the interior. A couple of straps were bolted to the bottom of the empty chest. “You stick the boxes in here, fix them in place with these straps, and then put the sides back up.”

It certainly was very simple. You could probably do it in less than three minutes.

“When did you put the ballast in the chests?”

“When we assembled them. On the morning of the parade.”

“Where did you do it?”

“At a sports ground near the starting point of the parade. It was the designated place for the teams to prepare.”

“Your team was the last team in the parade. Were the treasure chests in the sports ground the whole time you were waiting?”

“Yes. Does that matter?”

“There are more and more teams taking part in the parade every year. Isn’t there a risk of mix-ups with so many people milling around in one place?”

“To an extent, yes,” conceded Maya Miyazawa. “That’s why we get there early. We want to be sure we’ve got more than enough time to make our preparations.”

“With the place being so crowded, would you notice if someone tampered with your props?”

Maya Miyazawa’s face clouded over. “Tampered? What do you mean?”

“It might, for example, be possible for someone to surreptitiously replace the ballast in the chest with something else.”

Maya Miyazawa looked puzzled. “Why on earth would anyone want to do a thing like that? Still, I suppose that, yes, someone could probably do it, if they wanted to.”

“What did you do with the chests when you got to the end of the parade?”

“We stored them in the yard of the nearby elementary school. Just temporarily.”

“Temporarily meaning how long?”

“Until the results were announced. If you make the top three, you get to do an encore. Sadly, we finished fourth.”

“How long did you have to wait for the announcement?”

“About two hours.”

“I know I’m repeating myself, but were the treasure chests in the schoolyard throughout those two hours?”

“They were,” replied Maya Miyazawa, looking rather fed up. She flung out her right hand, palm facing outward, as if to parry Kusanagi’s next question.

“Don’t! I know what you’re going to ask me. Would I have noticed if someone had tampered with them there? The answer is, no, probably not. Are you happy now?”

“Thank you very much,” said Kusanagi. “Who was responsible for assembling and disassembling the chests?”

“The props team.”

“Did you get any feedback from them? Any reports of anything untoward happening with the chests?”

“No, not so much as a peep.” Maya Miyazawa shook her head.

“Okay. Could I get the names and contact details for everyone on the props team?”

“Sure. I’ll email you a list later.”

Kusanagi peered into the back of the storeroom. “Oh, that reminds me. Would I be right in thinking that the themes of the performances are kept secret until the day of the parade?”

“Absolutely. We never tell anyone the theme unless they’re directly connected to the team.”

“Meaning who exactly?”

“The members of the team and our supporters.”

“Your supporters?”

“Our sponsors, I mean. The money we get from the local authority doesn’t come near to covering our expenses. My bookstore makes a contribution, for example.”

“How about Tojima-ya Foods?”

Maya Miyazawa seemed to catch her breath. She nodded feebly.

“Tojima-ya Foods is one of the bigger local businesses. Yes, they support us, too.”

“You seem to be on friendly terms with Shusaku Tojima, the firm’s managing director. Would he have known the theme of this year’s performance in advance?”

“Probably.”

“Would he have known about the treasure chests?”

“I’m not sure.” Maya Miyazawa tilted her head to one side. “Some of the sponsors drop in on us to see how we’re getting on with our preparations. He could have come by when I wasn’t here. But if he did, someone would have shown him what we were doing.”

“You don’t recall showing him yourself?”

“I don’t remember doing so. I can’t be sure. Maybe it’s slipped my mind.”

Maya Miyazawa was choosing her words with care. One got the impression she was doing her best to avoid any inconsistencies finding their way into her story.

Kusanagi opted for a change of tack.

“You saw the Niikuras at the starting line before the parade got underway, didn’t you?”

“Uh-huh...” There was a look of vague distrust on Maya Miyazawa’s face. “They help out with the music and they did a last-minute sound check for us. I’ve already discussed this with another detective.”

Kishitani had interviewed Maya Miyazawa to confirm the Niikuras’ alibi. At the time, they had regarded her as a third party with no direct connection to the case.

“How long did you chat to the Niikuras for?”

“Oh, I don’t know: ten, possibly fifteen minutes.” Maya Miyazawa’s head was at an angle of forty-five degrees and she was looking off into the middle distance.

“Did you speak to Tomoya Takagaki when you got to the finish?”

“I did, yes.”

“You just said hello and nothing more than that. Is that right?”

“Uh-huh, right.”

Kusanagi was about to ask another question when Maya Miyazawa said, “Detective, could I ask you a question?”

“What?”

“I’m familiar with the concept of perjury, but what about remaining silent? Is that also a crime?”

“Remaining silent?”

“Yes. Not lying, but not answering any questions, either. Does that count as a crime, too?”

Kusanagi gave a small shake of the head. “No, it doesn’t.”

“I thought as much. There is such a thing as the right to remain silent.”

“What are you trying to say, Ms. Miyazawa?”

Maya Miyazawa inhaled deeply. “I’m not going to inquire why you’re so interested in these treasure chests. At the same time, I don’t want to make any careless remarks involving people who are my customers and whose patronage I value.”

“Customers. Who do you mean?”

“Everybody who lives around here. No, I’ll rephrase that. By customers, I mean not just the people who live in this neighborhood but anyone who could come into my bookstore. I don’t want to do anything that might be prejudicial to any of them. So, if you’re planning to come and see me again to ask me about my customers, let me just tell you up front that you’ll probably be wasting your time.”

“You mean to cover for them?”

“I mean to keep my mouth shut. I have the right to remain silent if I want,” said Maya Miyazawa with a smile. She turned around and looked at the treasure chest. “If you’ve finished what you came for, I’d appreciate it if you tidied up after yourselves.”

Kusanagi glanced over at the junior officers. “Give the woman a hand,” he said, with a jerk of his chin.

37

Feeling a light tap on his shoulder, Tomoya Takagaki turned around. Tsukamoto, his section chief, was standing close behind him. Although he was a good-natured fellow, he looked unusually tense. “You got a minute?”

“Sure.”

“Okay.” Tsukamoto pointed in the direction of the door and marched off toward it. That must mean Follow me. Tomoya scrambled to his feet.

It was only when they were sitting across from each other in the meeting room that Tsukamoto began to speak.

“Tanaka told me something bizarre. About a detective coming to his apartment the other day. A woman.”

Tomoya gasped.

“I’m guessing from your reaction that you know what this is about,” Tsukamoto said. His voice was low and tense, and his eyes, behind the lenses of his glasses, were stern. “Tanaka told me that the same detective also went to see Ms. Sato. Sato was asking him for his advice.”

Tanaka was one of Tomoya’s colleagues, and a little younger than he was. Sato was a brand-new hire. Tomoya had taken both of them to see the parade.

“What sort of questions did she ask them?”

“About the day of the parade in Kikuno. You took them, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“She interviewed them in great detail about their movements that day. They both said that the detective was particularly persistent about confirming the precise time when the three of you split up to do your own thing.”

Tomoya pictured Detective Utsumi’s intelligent face. When she had the bit between her teeth, she wouldn’t care how irritating she was.

“What the hell is this all about, Takagaki? Have you done something wrong?”

“Me? No, nothing,” he replied reflexively. He had a sudden spasm of blinking.

“Then why are the police investigating your every move? It’s not exactly normal.”

“It’s because—” Tomoya’s voice broke. “It’s because the guy who murdered my girlfriend was found dead...”

“What?” Tsukamoto glared at him.

“And I seem to be a suspect. He died on the day of the parade. That’s the reason they wanted to verify my alibi.”

The blood drained from Tsukamoto’s face, and the skin of his cheeks visibly tautened.

“Just a minute. This guy who killed your girlfriend, didn’t they arrest him?”

“He was arrested, then released due to lack of evidence.”

Tsukamoto’s face was a picture of amazement.

“That’s a serious crime you’re connected to... Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s a personal matter. Besides, I didn’t want to inconvenience the firm...”

“It’s all very well you saying that, but it seems to me the inconvenience has already happened! Tanaka and Sato are both rattled.”

“I’m very sorry.”

Tsukamoto was jiggling his legs nervously up and down. It was obvious that he was annoyed and was having trouble getting his thoughts in order. His eyes swam around the room before finally coming to rest on Tomoya.

“Are we really okay here?”

“Is what okay?”

“I mean you: You didn’t have anything to do with this incident, did you? Well?”

“No... I... uh... didn’t.”

He knew he should have put more oomph into his answer. He had sounded awkward and clumsy. Maybe that was why Tsukamoto still looked less than satisfied.

“Okay, fine. But I want you to let me know if there are any developments. You understand?”

“Yes, sir. I’m very sorry.” Tomoya bowed his head apologetically.

Tsukamoto rose to his feet and opened the meeting-room door. He turned around as he was about to leave the room. “And I don’t want you giving Tanaka and Sato any blowback.”

“I understand, sir.”

Tsukamoto went out into the hallway and slammed the door behind him.

Tomoya waited a moment, then headed back to his desk. Tanaka’s desk was in the corner of the same room. Their eyes happened to meet. Tanaka looked desperately embarrassed. Tomoya, meanwhile, produced his best forced smile.

When the end of the working day arrived, he hurriedly tidied up his desk, then left the office. There was still work he had to do, but today he couldn’t bear to stay in the office even a minute longer.

He was on his way to the station when he heard someone calling his name. He started. He recognized that voice.

He stopped and looked around. He was right. It was her — and she was walking toward him.

“Good evening. I see you’re done for the day,” said Utsumi, by way of a greeting.

“Not again?”

“I’m afraid so. I’ve got lots of questions I want to ask you.”

“Lots?”

The female detective took a step closer. “So, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to accompany me to the Kikuno Police Station. It shouldn’t take long and I can drive you home afterward.”

“Accompany you...?” murmured Tomoya in a stupor. He looked past Utsumi and realized that, at some point, several men in suits had surrounded him.

“If you don’t mind?” Utsumi bobbed her head. Tomoya couldn’t muster a reply.

There was a black car parked nearby. He was ordered to get in. When he looked out of the car window, he got a shock.

Tsukamoto, his section chief, was standing on the sidewalk, rooted to the spot in amazement.

Tomoya, who had never been in an interview room in a police station before in his life, found himself sitting opposite a man by the name of Kusanagi. He reminded him of a recently retired athlete. Kusanagi started by telling Tomoya his name and rank, but Tomoya wasn’t listening. The knowledge that Kusanagi was a battle-hardened detective was enough to make him shrivel up inside.

Tomoya’s heart was still pounding even though it had been several minutes since he had been brought into the station. And shivers were running up his spine, despite his temperature having spiked from all the excitement.

“You look pretty nervous,” Kusanagi said, as if he could read Tomoya’s emotions like a book. “Just relax. As long as you answer my questions, this will be over and done with in no time.”

What kind of questions are you planning on asking me? Tomoya wanted to say, but his lips wouldn’t cooperate.

“There’s just one thing I want you to tell me.” Kusanagi held up the index finger of one hand. “Your movements on the day of the parade. That’s all.”

Tomoya finally managed to speak.

“But I’ve already...”

“Yes, I know, you’ve already told Detective Utsumi. She reports to me.” Kusanagi glanced to the side, where Utsumi was sitting with her laptop, then returned his gaze to Tomoya. “A couple of your colleagues... Let’s see.” He picked up a sheaf of documents from the table. “Ah, here we go. You watched the parade with a Mr. Tanaka and a Ms. Sato. There was, however, a stretch of time when you separated; from a little after three P.M. to four P.M. It’s that hiatus I want to ask you about. We know that you went to say hello to Ms. Maya Miyazawa, the owner of Miyazawa Books, at the finish area — but what were you doing for the rest of the time?”

“What was I doing? I don’t know. Nothing special... Just walking around the place.”

“The place being — where exactly?”

“The shopping district.”

“That’s funny.” Kusanagi dropped the sheaf of documents onto the table and crossed his arms. “We’ve reviewed all the footage of all the security cameras in the shopping district, but we can’t find you on any of them for that whole hour, even though we did find your friends Tanaka and Sato in multiple locations. So where were you all that time?”

Tomoya lowered his eyes. His heart was beating even faster. He could feel the sweat beading on his temples.

Tomoya knew better than to make anything up on the fly. He had no idea where the damn security cameras in the shopping district were located.

“I don’t remember,” he said weakly. It was the best he could do in the circumstances.

“Mr. Takagaki,” Kusanagi said to him. “Mr. Takagaki, look at me.”

Tomoya timidly looked up. Kusanagi placed a single photograph on the desk. When Tomoya saw what it was, his heart started pounding even faster.

“You know what this is?”

“A treasure chest...”

“That’s right. It’s one of the props Team Kikuno used in the parade. Now, we know something interesting about these treasure chests. They were loaded with bottles of oolong tea and water as ballast to stabilize them. Once the parade was finished, the drinks were distributed to the staff — but that was when something odd happened. With this one chest, the original oolong tea had disappeared, while the number of bottles of water had increased! Everyone assumed that the guy in charge of the props had just made a mistake. He is adamant that he didn’t. I wonder what really happened?” Kusanagi was speaking softly, but every word he uttered was boring a hole into Tomoya’s guts.

“We believe that this strange episode of the treasure chest is intimately connected with Kanichi Hasunuma, the suspect in a murder, who died that day. Through our investigative work, we’ve identified your actions as a key issue — particularly that unaccounted-for gap of thirty or forty minutes. That’s why we must find out what you were doing in that time.”

Tomoya lowered his eyes again. He couldn’t maintain eye contact with Kusanagi.

Suddenly, Tojima’s voice was echoing around his head. It was something he had said to him on the phone the other day.

Tell the truth, if you absolutely have to. You don’t have to lie and you don’t need to hide anything—

Is now that time? he wondered. But if I come out and tell the truth, what will that mean for everyone else? Won’t they be charged with a crime? I can’t let that happen. A man died!

“There were five treasure chests,” Kusanagi continued. “We’re currently checking them all for fingerprints, paying particular attention to the metal clasps on the side panels.”

I’m okay there, thought Tomoya. I had gloves on.

“Of course, fingerprints aren’t the only thing we’ll be checking for. There’s also DNA. The science is now so advanced that we can analyze the tiniest amount of anything: sebaceous matter, sweat, dandruff. Unless you wear a full face mask, it’s almost impossible to prevent crap like that falling off your head and sticking to things. We’ll also be checking for hair. Oh, and, last but not least, glove prints.”

Tomoya was horrified and his shoulders spasmed.

“Something wrong?” asked Kusanagi, who had noticed his reactions. “Haven’t you heard about glove prints? They’re marks that are left when you touch something wearing gloves. We can work out what kind of gloves a person was wearing. Cotton work gloves leave behind fibers that we can identify. Which reminds me—” Kusanagi paused a moment, then went on. “Forensics have found glove prints on one of the chests. Leather gloves, they tell me. The thing with leather gloves is that leather has a distinct grain, meaning every pair is different. Once we’ve checked the glove prints properly, we’ll be able to identify the gloves that were used.”

Cold sweat was oozing from Tomoya’s armpits. He could feel his ears reddening, but his body was beyond his control.

“Mr. Takagaki,” Kusanagi repeated. “I’m sure that you own at least one pair of leather gloves. I just need to put through a little paperwork, then we’ll have the right to go and look around your house. It’s something called a domiciliary search. If we find any leather gloves, we’ll test them to see if they’re a match for the prints on the treasure chest. If we don’t find any gloves at your house, then we’ll go to your office. We will dig around everywhere: your desk, your locker, you name it. Is that what you want?

“Of course it isn’t,” continued Kusanagi, answering his own question. “It will be a nasty surprise for your mother. Worse than a surprise. She’ll be so worried about what her little boy’s gone and done that she’ll probably get stomach cramps. It’ll be the same with the people at work: your bosses, your coworkers — they’ll all start looking at you differently. That’s got to be something you want to avoid?

“To be frank, it’s not how we want to proceed, either. We’d like to get the job done without having to go so far. That’s why we’re offering you a way out. This thirty- or forty-minute-long gap on the day of the parade — just tell us what you were doing, and we can all spare ourselves a great deal of unpleasantness. Well? Are you tempted? Or do you prefer the other path where you break your mother’s heart and get shunned by your workmates?”

Kusanagi was a veteran detective who had locked horns with the wiliest of criminals over his career. He had driven Tomoya into a corner. In his mind’s eye, the young man could see his mother, Rie, brooding and fearful, and his boss, Tsukamoto, bitter and aggrieved.

“Mr. Takagaki.” Kusanagi was almost shouting as he smacked the table hard. Tomoya’s head jerked up in shock.

“This is your last chance. Tell me about that thirty- or forty-minute gap. If you choose not to answer, it’s no skin off my nose. But, if that’s what you opt to do, we will keep you here in the station overnight. And as soon as we release you, I will be applying for a search warrant. If you change your mind then, I’m afraid it will be too late. What do you want to do?” Kusanagi was speaking fast in an effort to bulldoze Tomoya into submission.

Tomoya felt lost. He buried his head in his hands. In front of him, he seemed to see a deep, dark abyss.

When he glanced off to the side, his eyes met Utsumi’s. She nodded tenderly, giving him a look that seemed to say, I know exactly how you feel. He had always thought of her as coldhearted and hardheaded; now, however, she could have been the Virgin Mary.

Tomoya drew himself up and looked Kusanagi in the eye.

“You promise you’ll keep this secret from my mother and my colleagues at work?”

“I promise,” Kusanagi replied emphatically.

38

Tomoya Takagaki’s statement went something like this.

One evening, a few days before the parade, he had just left Namiki-ya, when Tojima called out to him from his car. “I’ve got something important I need to talk with you about.” They drove a certain distance away, at which point Tojima made his surprising pitch. He wanted to strike Hasunuma a hammerblow, and he needed Tomoya’s help.

“We’re not going to kill the guy,” Tojima said. “But we are going to punish him — sanction him, if you like.”

Tojima didn’t go into any detail of how Hasunuma was going to be punished. “It’s better that you don’t know,” was all he said. “If everything ends up going according to plan, then I’ll tell you. Until then, I want you to act in good faith and accept being kept at arm’s length. Everyone’s agreed to those terms.”

Tojima couldn’t reveal who “everyone” was, he explained.

“If you insist that I reveal their names, then that’s it. If that’s what you want, you should get out of this car right now and go home. And this little talk we’re having now, it never happened.”

Tomoya could guess easily enough: It had to be Yutaro Namiki and Naoki Niikura.

“Can I decide after you’ve told me what it is you want me to do?” Tomoya asked.

“Of course you can,” Tojima replied.

What Tojima went on to say was nothing like what Tomoya had been expecting. On the day of the parade, Tojima wanted him to transport an item hidden inside one of Team Kikuno’s props from one place to another.

“When I say prop, I mean it’s a treasure chest. The theme of this year’s performance is Treasure Island, so it’s going to feature five treasure chests. They’re all different colors; the item we need will be hidden inside the silver chest. Once Team Kikuno gets to the finish line, we need you to remove the item from the chest, transport it somewhere in a truck, then return the truck to its original location. That’s all you have to do.” Tojima paused. “If you agree to do the job, I can share a few more details with you.”

From Tojima’s description, the job didn’t sound especially difficult. Tojima offered him a day to consider, but Tomoya felt that dithering would be an insult to Saori’s memory.

“I’m in,” he said.

Come the actual day, Tomoya watched the parade with his two coworkers. They briefly went their separate ways just after 3 P.M., when the parade ended. It was Tomoya himself who suggested that they do so.

He went to the finish line and looked for Maya Miyazawa. Tojima had advised him to go and say hello to her, so he’d have an alibi.

Having found and exchanged a few words with her, Tomoya headed for Yamabe Shoten, a rice shop about one hundred feet farther along the road. The shop was closed for the day. A minitruck was in the parking lot to one side of it. On the flatbed of the truck were a trolley, two cardboard boxes, and a white plastic bag. Each of the cardboard boxes contained six two-liter bottles of water, while the plastic bag contained one of the official staff jackets worn by volunteers helping with the parade.

Tomoya slipped on the jacket, loaded the two cardboard boxes onto the trolley, and headed for the nearby elementary school. The area was full of people bustling about wearing the same jacket he had on. Nobody gave him a second glance.

He went to the schoolyard and looked around for the silver chest. It didn’t take him long to find it. There was no one nearby.

As he walked up to the chest, he slipped on the leather gloves he had in his pocket, then, after checking that no one was watching, he opened the side panels of the chest as Tojima had taught him to do.

Inside, he found a large cardboard box held in place with two straps. When he slid it out and put it to one side, he was surprised at how much it weighed.

Tojima had told him that the box contained liquid nitrogen. (Tojima hadn’t wanted to reveal the contents to Tomoya, but he was worried that keeping him in the dark could be dangerous.)

“The cardboard box is not hermetically sealed. A sealed box would swell and burst because liquid nitrogen is gasifying all the time. Be sure to wear leather gloves when you carry the thing. That’s not just to avoid leaving fingerprints; it’s also a precaution against getting any liquid nitrogen on your hands, should the container topple over inside the box. Cotton or cloth gloves aren’t good enough; liquid nitrogen will penetrate them and give you frostbite.”

The leather gloves he used had been a Christmas present from his mother.

He put the two boxes full of bottled water into the chest, retied the straps, and put the side panels back in place. Then he lifted the cardboard box he had removed from the chest onto the trolley and went back the way he had come. No one paid him any attention. After looking around to check that no one was watching, he took off the staff jacket.

When he got back to the rice merchant’s, he loaded the cardboard box onto the flatbed of the truck, then went to check the front number plate. The car key was stuck to the back of it with tape, just as Tojima had said it would be. He fired up the minitruck and headed for the hut where Hasunuma lived. When he got there, he dumped the box outside the door, got back into the minitruck, and returned to the rice shop. He put the key back behind the license plate and set out for the place where he had agreed to rendezvous with his friends, clutching a plastic bag with the staff jacket inside. On the way, he shoved the bag into the basket of an abandoned bike.

After spending a certain amount of time at the beer bar with his coworkers, he then headed off to Namiki-ya by himself. He wanted to find out what had happened. Had Hasunuma’s punishment gone to plan?

A couple of the regular customers showed up after he got there, followed by Tojima, then the Niikuras. None of them would tell him anything.

Eventually, a friend of Maya Miyazawa’s came into the restaurant. He looked rather shell-shocked. He gave Miyazawa a shocking piece of news: Hasunuma was dead.

Tomoya looked at Tojima.

Tojima refused to make eye contact.

Tomoya still had no idea what had happened that day and who — other than himself — had done what. Now that he had made his confession, he was eager to learn the whole truth as soon as possible.

39

When he had finished reading the statement, Director Mamiya looked up at Kusanagi. The crotchety expression on his face turned into a smile as he dropped the document onto his desk. “Good job.”

“Thank you, sir.” Kusanagi nodded.

“Utsumi told me that you called Takagaki’s bluff big-time.”

“Oh, the business with the leather gloves?”

“Yes. She told me Forensics hadn’t actually reported finding any glove prints.”

“I was using something I’d picked up from Yukawa. If liquid nitrogen was used in the crime, he said, whoever handled it would have to have worn leather gloves. Takagaki’s expression changed when I brought up the subject of glove prints, so I thought, maybe I’m onto something.”

“Nice.” Mamiya picked the statement off the desk. “The way they transported the liquid nitrogen — that was a surprise.”

“Honestly, I was skeptical when Utsumi first told me about Yukawa’s theory. It was only after we went to see Maya Miyazawa that I started thinking he might be onto something.”

Yukawa had theorized that the liquid nitrogen had been transported concealed inside one of the treasure chests. Still, the idea that all the members of Team Kikuno were in on it hardly seemed plausible. It seemed more likely that Maya Miyazawa, the team leader, was the only one involved. Even she probably had no idea how dangerous the cargo was and probably took no direct part in the loading and unloading of the chest. The person who handled that task had to be someone more intimately associated with Saori Namiki.

That was when they thought of Tomoya Takagaki. Suddenly, the fact that he had talked to Maya Miyazawa after the parade and that unexplained gap of thirty or forty minutes felt very suspicious.

“By that time, we had already reviewed all the security-camera footage in an effort to find someone with a large piece of baggage. What we had failed to scrutinize were the start and the end points of the parade. The performers were carrying large props and pieces of scenery around in those areas, but we didn’t see that as problematic, as long as they stayed in those two areas.

“Did Takagaki remove the item from the treasure chest at the end of the parade? When we started asking that question, we realized something else: There had to be another person who had put the item into the treasure chest at the start of the parade.

“We assumed that this individual would be as close to — or possibly even closer to — Saori Namiki than Takagaki. That left us with a short list of candidates. We asked those people to come in for questioning and Inspector Kishitani and his team are currently interviewing them.”

Mamiya nodded. He seemed pleased.

“Do you think that there were more accomplices?”

“Perhaps. But the functions of the different individuals all had a different level of importance. Take Takagaki as an example. Although he knew that the plan was to punish Hasunuma, no one filled him in on the details. There may be other people who played their part knowing even less than he did. This morning, I sent an investigator to Yamabe Shoten, the rice merchant, to speak to the proprietor there. He admitted lending his minitruck and a trolley to Tojima, as well as buying some bottled water for him. Tojima gave him the staff jacket in advance and told him to put it together with the other things. The explanation Tojima gave was that he’d been asked to help out with the parade at the last minute.”

Mamiya stroked his chin. “Do you think Tojima masterminded it all?”

“I’m pretty sure he did. What I can’t get my head around, though, is the way none of the Namikis seem to be tied in. If the goal was to avenge Saori, then it is weird for the Namiki family not to be involved.”

Mamiya said nothing. Kusanagi interpreted his silence as agreement.

One of the junior detectives sidled over. “Excuse me, sir?”

“What is it?” Kusanagi asked.

“Shusaku Tojima is here, sir.”

Kusanagi and Mamiya exchanged a look.

“The eagle has landed,” Mamiya said.

“I’ll go and look in on him.” Kusanagi saluted the director, turned smartly on his heel, and marched off.

Shusaku Tojima was waiting in the interview room, his shoulders slumping with an air of slighted virtue. Kusanagi exchanged a look with Detective Utsumi, who was once again going to be taking notes, and sat down. “Thanks for coming in.”

“Not at all,” said Tojima, with a curt nod.

His salt-and-pepper hair was cut close to his scalp. His face rugged and tough-looking. He certainly wasn’t most people’s idea of what a successful businessman should look like, but he must have excellent people skills to have expanded a modest family business to its present size. With an opponent like this, things wouldn’t be as easy as they had been with Tomoya Takagaki, Kusanagi thought.

“Has Mr. Takagaki been in touch with you?”

“Mr. Takagaki? Oh, you mean young Tomoya? No. Why?”

Although Kusanagi thought it highly unlikely that Tomoya Takagaki hadn’t phoned Tojima after getting home from the police station the night before, he never expected Tojima to admit it.

“We heard that you and Mr. Takagaki had a very private conversation just a few days before the parade.”

“When exactly?” Tojima tilted his head to one side. “I’m always bumping into that guy. At Namiki-ya and elsewhere.”

“This was outside Namiki-ya. You were sitting in your car and called out to Mr. Takagaki after he left the restaurant. ‘There’s something I need to talk to you about,’ you said. Jog your memory?”

“Ah.” Tojima’s jaw slackened a little and he jerked his chin. “That day.”

“What did you talk about?”

After calmly looking at each of his interviewers in turn, his questioning eyes came to rest on Kusanagi. “What did he tell you?”

“We do the asking here.” Kusanagi smiled sourly. “Just answer the question. What did you talk about?”

“A private matter.”

“Takagaki told us everything.”

Tojima nodded and stretched.

“If he’s already told you, then you’re all right, aren’t you? You can take what he said on trust.”

“Should we?”

“That’s up to you, Officer.”

“‘Help me punish Hasunuma,’” said Kusanagi, looking the other man right in the eye. “That’s what Takagaki told us you said to him.”

Nothing changed in Tojima’s face. If anything, he appeared to relax a little.

“If that’s what he says, then maybe it’s true.”

“Are you denying it?”

“I’m not denying anything, Detective.” Tojima grimaced. “I said maybe it’s true.”

He’s a sly old bugger, this one, thought Kusanagi.

“A certain item was necessary for that punishment. You needed that item delivered to the hut where Hasunuma was living. That’s what Takagaki says you asked him to do. Is that true?”

“Well, if that’s what he says—”

“I am asking you,” Kusanagi interrupted. “Did you ask Takagaki to do that?”

Tojima wasn’t going to cede an inch. “I’ll leave that to your imagination.”

Kusanagi half rose from his chair and leaned over the table toward Tojima.

“What was that item? What did you ask Takagaki to deliver for you?”

“Is it a crime,” Tojima said, glaring right back at him, “if I refuse to answer?”

“What’s your reason for not answering?”

“I don’t want to.”

Keeping his eyes firmly on Tojima and the butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth expression on his face, Kusanagi pulled his chair in closer.

“As things stand, Mr. Takagaki’s statement will be used as evidence in court. Doesn’t that bother you?”

“Court? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Tojima shrugged demurely. “Anyway, there’s nothing I can do.”

Kusanagi put his clasped hands on the table.

“When we arrested Hasunuma several months ago, I was put in charge of the investigation. Did you know that?”

“Uh-huh.” Tojima gave a curt nod. “Yutaro told me.”

“Yutaro... Still on first-name terms at your age — isn’t that sweet? That’s friendship for you. And I bet you adored his daughter Saori, too.”

“I used to change her diapers on the tables in Namiki-ya,” Tojima said, grinning.

“Believe me, I understand why you loathed Hasunuma. We felt frustrated, too, not being able to get him off the streets.”

“You felt frustrated? You can’t compare your frustration to ours,” Tojima said. He was still smiling, but there was a fierce light in his eyes. “Ours was of a different dimension, a different level.”

“You don’t mind if we make a record of that?”

“Be my guest,” said Tojima. “If it’s speeches about my loathing for Hasunuma you want to hear, I can keep going all day.”

“What we want you to tell us is what you did because of your loathing him.”

“I’ll leave that to your imagination.”

“Would you be prepared to sign a statement we come up with based on us letting our imaginations run wild?”

Tojima snorted derisively. “Of course not. But if you do produce one, I’d be happy to read it. I’m curious what you think I did.”

“You want us to give free rein to our imaginations? Okay, then. I bet that when Takagaki phoned you last night, you were even more spooked than when we searched your factory. I bet that you never expected us to figure out the liquid nitrogen thing, let alone the treasure chest ploy, too. Some people have exceptional powers of imagination.”

A shadow flitted behind Tojima’s eyes. It was the first sign of insecurity he had shown so far.

“Are you talking about that... that university professor? That Yukawa fellow...?”

“Yes, what about him?”

“If I’m wrong, fine.” Tojima waved a hand. “Just forget about it.”

“Which is why, Mr. Tojima” — Kusanagi stared at the other man with renewed intensity — “it’s only a matter of time before we figure out how all of you worked together to do what you did. Tell us everything now and the penalty you face will be that much lighter. Do you get that, Mr. Tojima? Maybe Hasunuma was a brute and maybe he didn’t deserve to live — but killing him is still a crime. Only the judiciary has the right to sentence a man to death.”

Tojima remained stone-faced. The twinge of alarm he had shown at the mention of Yukawa’s name was gone.

“Except that they couldn’t,” said Tojima with open scorn. “The judiciary couldn’t do it. They couldn’t even bring the guy to trial.”

“So you banded together and bumped him off for the family?”

Tojima endured Kusanagi’s stare impassively and in silence. The silence lasted until there was a knock on the door.

“Come,” Kusanagi said. The door opened. Inspector Kishitani stuck his head in.

“Excuse me one second,” Kusanagi said to Tojima, getting to his feet.

He exited the interview room and shut the door behind him. “What’s up? Has one of them cracked?”

Kusanagi had put Kishitani and his team in charge of interviewing Naoki Niikura and Rumi Niikura. Separately, of course.

“We’ve got a problem,” Kishitani said quietly and with a look of dismay on his face. “The wife collapsed in the middle of the interview.”

40

After seeing off the last of the customers, Natsumi went out to take down the noren curtain from above the entrance of the restaurant. It was about ten past ten at night. Namiki-ya had been busy for the first time in long time.

She was taking the curtain back inside, when she heard a male voice behind her. “Good evening.” She recognized the voice.

“Professor... what are you doing here at this time of night? We’re closed.”

“I can see that. I’m here not as a customer, but as a friend. There’s something important I need to discuss with your father.” His eyes were grave even if his mouth was smiling. He’s different from normal, Natsumi thought.

“Just a minute, Professor.”

She went back into the restaurant and explained the situation to her parents, who were busy tidying things up in the kitchen. “That fellow?” Yutaro said, looking skeptical. He thought for a moment. “Fine, show him in,” he said.

Natsumi went back outside and invited Yukawa in.

Yutaro and Machiko had come out of the kitchen. They both looked tense.

“Good evening. I’m sorry to barge in on you so late.” Yukawa ducked his head apologetically at each of them in turn.

“What’s this important thing you want to talk about?” Yutaro asked, not bothering to sit down.

“It’s a little complicated. It involves the unnatural death of Kanichi Hasunuma.”

“You’re just an academic. His death’s got nothing to do with you.”

“Yes, I am an outsider — and that’s an advantage here. When you know people on the police force, there’s always a certain amount of information that leaks.” Yukawa glanced briefly at Natsumi, before returning his gaze to Yutaro. “I have a friend who’s a police officer. This friend of mine is actually in charge of the Hasunuma case. He doesn’t officially know that I am here now.”

Apparently, this meant that he did, in fact, know.

“I see,” Yutaro said. He turned to Natsumi. “You, go upstairs.”

“No. I want to hear this, too.”

“Natsumi.”

“If it’s okay with you,” Yukawa broke in, “I’d like Natsumi to hear what I have to say as well.”

Her father looked pained but said nothing, so Natsumi sat down.

“Professor, please, take a seat,” Machiko said to Yukawa, pulling out a chair for herself. Yutaro also sat down, albeit with bad grace.

Natsumi bunched her hands into fists on her knees. She knew that whatever Yukawa had to say, it was going to be something extraordinary.

If she was honest with herself, both her parents had been behaving a bit strangely. It started late the night before when Yutaro got a phone call. Natsumi didn’t know for sure who’d called him, but she guessed that it was Tojima.

“The police are learning more and more about Kanichi Hasunuma’s unnatural death,” Yukawa began, his tone bland and uninflected. “They are aware that multiple people were involved in the crime and they have already secured a statement from one of those people. I suspect, Mr. Namiki, that you were already aware of that. The person in question is Tomoya Takagaki, a frequent customer here at Namiki-ya.”

How was Tomoya involved? Natsumi wondered.

“Takagaki said that he did what he did because Tojima asked him to. ‘We want to inflict a hammerblow on Kanichi Hasunuma. Can you give me a hand?’ The police believe that Tojima made a similar request to quite a few people and that ultimately a large group of people collaborated on Kanichi Hasunuma’s punishment. I think their theory is correct. However, I cannot believe that Mr. Tojima would embark on something like this without your blessing. Would I be right in thinking that you were cognizant of the plan?” Yukawa was looking directly at Yutaro Namiki.

Yutaro cocked his head and emitted something halfway between a grunt and a sigh. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

“As a thought experiment, I tried putting myself in your shoes,” Yukawa continued in a matter-of-fact tone. “First, I imagined there was someone that I loathed with a complete and absolute hatred. Then I imagined myself wanting to get revenge on this person. I knew that if I killed him, suspicion would immediately fall on me. At that point, a close friend of mine proposed killing the man on my behalf. ‘I’ll deal with him,’ he says. ‘You focus on creating the perfect alibi for yourself.’ I’m grateful, naturally, but would I actually agree to his proposal? Any slipups and my dear friend could go to jail. Personally, I wouldn’t accept it. I wouldn’t agree to such a proposal. And I don’t think that you, Mr. Namiki, would do so, either. Well?”

Aghast, Natsumi listened to Yukawa’s fluent little speech. Had all this been happening on the day of the parade without her knowledge?

“That’s a complete and utter fairy tale. I don’t know what else to say,” Yutaro replied, his voice a lifeless monotone. “And even if it were true, I’d never have agreed to it.”

“I think you’re telling me the truth. Which means that, as I suspected, Mr. Tojima acted of his own volition and without your permission. When the police and the prosecutor have a clearer idea of how the murder was committed, they’ll have to assemble a narrative of the crime in which has Shusaku Tojima as the mastermind and you having nothing to do with it. However, unnatural that particular version of events may feel, that’s what they’ll have to do. Because that’s the way trials work. Will you be able to live with that, Mr. Namiki?”

Yutaro lowered his eyes. Machiko anxiously scrutinized his profile.

“Personally, I think that an accident occurred,” Yukawa said. “On the day of the parade, a customer became sick. That threw everything out of whack. Not just for you but for Tojima and his associates, too. The police suspected that the whole indigestion episode might be an exercise in alibi creation, but it wasn’t. After all, if you needed an alibi, you could have easily gotten your wife here to pretend to be sick and taken her to the hospital. What happened with the customer really was something that came out of left field. Someone who’d eaten at your restaurant was feeling unwell. You couldn’t just ignore the woman. Taking what must have been a very difficult decision, you drove her to the hospital. But what would have happened if that accident hadn’t occurred? What role were you assigned in the original plan?”

Yukawa, who had delivered this speech with great energy, paused and sighed.

“I believe that you will regret it for the rest of your life if you have to sit by and watch Tojima and his associates being punished while that particular question remains unanswered. I believe you will end up blaming yourself for what happens to them. That’s what I came here to say.”

“Is it true, Dad?” Natsumi broke in. “What’s going on, Mom? Tell me.”

“Keep your mouth shut,” Yutaro bellowed.

“I’m not going to—”

Yutaro gave the table a resounding smack before Natsumi could finish.

The silence lasted for a few seconds. Yutaro cleared his throat and looked at Yukawa.

“I appreciate your tact, Professor. What you say is right. Speaking as one man to another, you’re right. Assuming your theory is correct, of course.”

“But there’s nothing you want to say?”

“I’m sorry,” Yutaro said gloomily. “Now is not the right time for me to say anything. The others are all sticking to their guns and staying silent. How could I face them, if I talked?”

“Is that how you feel?” Yukawa broke into a smile. “Then there’s nothing I can do. I’ll stop interfering.”

Yutaro bowed his head in silence.

“I’ll be on my way,” Yukawa said. As he got to his feet, his phone started buzzing in his inside jacket pocket. He pulled it out and looked at the display. “Excuse me a second,” he said, turning away. Lifting the phone to his ear, he opened the sliding door and went out into the street.

Natsumi looked at her parents. Yutaro got up and made for the kitchen in a bid to avoid his daughter’s gaze. Machiko stared broodily down at the floor.

“Mom—” Natsumi began. The sliding door opened, cutting her off. Yukawa stepped back inside, his face slightly flushed.

“There’s been an important development. I may be divulging more of the investigation’s secrets, but this is something I feel I absolutely I must tell you.”

Yutaro came out of the kitchen. “Why? What’s happened?”

“Naoki Niikura has confessed. He’s saying that he was responsible for the death of Kanichi Hasunuma.”

41

Chief Inspector Kusanagi and Eiji Masumura were once again facing each other in the interview room. When Kusanagi told Masumura that Niikura had confessed, the old man’s shoulders slumped and he sighed loudly.

“He confessed, did he? Well, if he’s admitted it, then that’s that, I guess. That guy was probably in the tightest corner of all of us.”

“That guy?” Kusanagi repeated. The phrase struck him as odd.

“Yeah, I’ve never met him. This Niikura guy. I’d never even heard his name before today.”

Kusanagi exchanged a glance with Utsumi, who was sitting beside him taking notes on her laptop, then turned his attention back to Masumura.

“What do you mean? I need the full story.”

Masumura groaned feebly. “Where should I start?”

“How about twenty-three years ago — with the Yuna Motohashi case?”

“No,” said Masumura, tilting his head to one side. “I’ll need to go further back than that for you to really understand things.”

“Further back is fine.”

“This’ll be a long story. Very long.”

“That’s not a problem,” Kusanagi said. He spread his arms in a gesture of invitation. “Please. Go ahead.”

Masumura resettled himself in his chair and cleared his throat.

He started to talk.

And his story really was a long story.

Masumura’s main concern after his arrest for manslaughter was the negative impact it was likely to have on Yumiko’s future.

Masumura adored his little stepsister, who was nine years younger than him. It was his determination to save her from the sort of hardships he had experienced that inspired him to work so hard, to send her money, and to then keep looking after every aspect of her life after their mother’s sudden death, including arranging for her to attend an all-girls boarding school.

Masumura was keen for Yumiko to go to university. She had excellent grades. But after finishing high school, Yumiko, who was adamant that her brother had already done more than enough for her, got a job at a car manufacturer. She worked in a factory in Chiba and lived in an employee dormitory.

Convinced that he could at last put a difficult period of his life behind him, Masumura moved into a new apartment. The manslaughter incident occurred almost immediately after the move. When Yumiko came to visit him in the detention center, Masumura told her to stop visiting him.

“We should break off all contact. We’re lucky. We’ve got different names. Even if people check your family register, they won’t find out that we’re related.”

“Do you honestly think I could do that?” Yumiko protested through her tears.

She appeared as a character witness at his trial. Masumura couldn’t hold back the tears when he listened to her heartfelt testimony about how much she owed her big brother and what a compassionate person he was.

She wrote to him often while he was serving his sentence. Her letters were a source of both comfort and concern to Masumura. He couldn’t stop worrying that his life might have a baneful influence on her future.

A little before he was due to be released, a letter came from Yumiko in which she revealed that she had a new boyfriend. The man in question worked at the same firm as her and was on the management fast track. He was the son of the head of one of the company’s subsidiaries and had been sent to Yumiko’s factory for training.

Masumura lost no time in replying. She must never tell her boyfriend that she had a brother who’d been in jail and they should stop writing to each other immediately, he told her.

Yumiko, however, disobeyed, sending him another letter in which she begged him to contact her when he got out of jail.

The day of his release finally arrived. He called Yumiko with considerable trepidation. He hadn’t heard her voice for a long time. She sounded well. As they chatted, they both became tearful.

Yumiko told him that she wanted to see him. He felt a hot surge in his chest. Unable to refuse, he agreed to meet her the very next day.

When he went to the agreed-upon place, he discovered that his baby sister, Yumiko, had grown into a woman. He couldn’t find the words, even though there was so much that he wanted to say. It didn’t matter. He was content just to look at the woman his sister had become.

“There’s someone I want you to meet,” Yumiko said.

A young man walked over to them. He was polite and sincere.

It was Seiji Motohashi — Yumiko’s boyfriend.

Masumura was taken aback. He thought that his sister had kept his existence a secret.

“I told him about you because I knew he would understand,” Yumiko said, looking at her boyfriend.

The two men started talking. Masumura learned that Motohashi’s father’s company was based in Adachi Ward and that Motohashi, who was then twenty-eight years old, would be moving back to the family firm in a few years’ time.

When Motohashi went on to make a formal bow and ask for permission to marry his sister, Masumura was flabbergasted. He had never expected anyone to care how he felt.

“I’m wholeheartedly in favor of the marriage. What about you, though? Are you okay having me in your family?”

“That is a problem.” Motohashi’s face was drawn.

What he went on to say was pragmatic and down-to-earth.

He was in love with Yumiko and he trusted her implicitly. If she felt respect and a sense of indebtedness toward Masumura, then, for his part, he was prepared to overlook the fact that he’d been in jail. From what Yumiko had told him, it sounded as though the episode was more a matter of extreme bad luck than anything else.

The trouble was that other people weren’t necessarily going to see it like that. He expected both his immediate and his extended family to oppose the marriage, Motohashi said.

That was why Motohashi wanted to keep Masumura’s existence a secret, at least for a while. Yumiko, who was listening in silence, looked increasingly uncomfortable.

“No. That’s not good enough,” Masumura said. Both Motohashi and Yumiko flinched. “A while is not good enough. It’s got to be permanent. You’ve got to keep me a secret permanently. If word gets out about me, Yumiko will be the one to suffer. Promise me that you’ll never tell anyone in your family about me. Unless you make that promise, I’ll withhold my consent. I won’t permit the marriage.”

Tears coursed down Yumiko’s cheeks. Seiji Motohashi bowed his head. There was a pained expression on his face.

And that was how the two of them got married. It was the autumn of Yumiko’s twenty-fourth year. Masumura gave her the family’s old photo album as a wedding present. He had never showed it to anybody else.

Although the newlyweds never breathed a word about Masumura to anyone, Yumiko didn’t break off contact with him. Brother and sister continued to meet, albeit at irregular intervals. Whenever they met, Yumiko would bring the baby Yuna with her. Since her husband was the only person who knew what she was doing, Masumura couldn’t object.

Once Yuna started becoming aware of her surroundings, Yumiko stopped bringing her along. It was too risky; she might mention Masumura to someone else. Masumura, who missed his niece, had to content himself with photographs. Every time he met his sister, his stock of pictures of Yuna grew. They were a treasure more valuable than life itself.

More than ten years passed in this way. Yuna was twelve years old when the calamity occurred. One day, she just vanished. In a frenzy of anxiety, Masumura went to see Yumiko.

She was haggard. An empty shell. Completely. He was terrified she might do something rash.

His sense of foreboding proved prescient. Yumiko jumped to her death from the roof of a nearby building one month after Yuna’s disappearance. In the suicide note she left behind, she apologized for being a bad mother.

Masumura wept inconsolably when he got the news from his brother-in-law.

His memory of the next few years was unclear. He lived in a daze, his life empty and devoid of purpose.

The discovery of Yuna’s body brought him back to earth with a jolt. He learned about it from a random newspaper article that happened to catch his eye. He had lost touch with Seiji Motohashi.

He thought he had steeled himself but having to confront the fact of her dead body being found was still a shock. The profound despair that overwhelmed him was reinforced by a second wave of grief at the loss of his sister.

Who could have committed such an atrocious act? he wondered. Several years had already passed and Masumura wasn’t hopeful that the killer would ever be found.

He turned out to be wrong. Soon after, the perpetrator was caught. A man by the name of Kanichi Hasunuma.

Masumura couldn’t help himself. Full of trepidation, he reached out to his brother-in-law.

When Seiji Motohashi answered the phone, he sounded utterly dejected. Was it because the arrest of the perpetrator would still not bring Yuna and Yumiko back to life?

No.

Motohashi explained that the arrested man was refusing to say anything. This was preventing the police from getting any closer to the truth of what had happened.

“That’s just a temporary thing. It won’t last,” Masumura said. “I’ve got firsthand experience, so I know what I’m talking about. Your brain shuts down when you’re arrested. Often, even if you want to say something, your mouth can’t get the words out. You’re terrified that you might say something stupid that you can’t ever take back. Don’t worry. Detectives know how to get people to talk; it’s their job. Just hang in there a little longer, the guy’s sure to confess.”

“I hope so...,” Motohashi muttered gloomily. The police had already briefed him, so he knew that Hasunuma was probably keeping quiet as part of a strategy to get maximum leverage from his right to silence.

Masumura was more optimistic. Now that the perpetrator had been arrested, he would have to go on trial at some point. The man hadn’t just murdered a child, he had also driven her mother to suicide. He deserved the death penalty.

Masumura was expecting the day the verdict was announced to be the day when the spirits of Yuna and Yumiko could finally attain their eternal rest. As the day approached, he started to think that perhaps it was time for him to make a fresh start in life, too.

The reality turned out very different. As he read about the trial verdict in the newspaper, he was incredulous. Was this even possible? Not guilty? He read and reread the article. Was the journalist talking about some other case? No, there was her name — Yuna Motohashi — in black and white.

Masumura immediately phoned Motohashi. “What the hell’s going on?” he asked, knowing the question was futile.

“It was a matter of... insufficient evidence. I don’t know what went wrong. All we can do is trust the prosecutor.”

The pain in Motohashi’s voice made Masumura acutely conscious of his own powerlessness. There was nothing he could do — and he despised himself for it.

All he could do was pray; pray they would win the appeal. If Hasunuma managed a second not-guilty verdict, he would know that there was no God.

But the second trial likewise failed to produce a guilty verdict. This time, Masumura saw it on the television news. His legs turned to water and he couldn’t stand up for several minutes. The whole thing seemed like a terrible dream.

On this one occasion, he didn’t call his brother-in-law. He knew that Motohashi would be as devastated — no, perhaps even more devastated — than he was.

He wondered if Motohashi was thinking of taking justice into his own hands when the courts failed. If he was, then he wanted to help. He hoped that Motohashi would contact him. He waited and waited — but the call never came. There was nothing on the news about Motohashi having taken revenge on Hasunuma. On reflection, that only made sense. After all, the man was the director of a company; many people depended on him.

Masumura realized that if anyone was going to act as the instrument of divine justice, it would have to be him. From that point on, revenge became the whole purpose of his life. He would find Kanichi Hasunuma and he would kill him. If he ended up in prison for his pains, then so be it.

Accomplishing that plan proved remarkably difficult. After the two trials, Hasunuma vanished. Masumura, who didn’t have a wide circle of friends in the first place, had no way of tracking down someone who had deliberately dropped off the map.

Long years passed during which he achieved nothing. He needed to work to make a living, but, as an ex-con, finding a steady job was always a challenge. He seemed to spend too much of his time in a desperate search for work. While the intensity of his hatred for Hasunuma remained the same, he had half given up on his plan. He felt the same about life in general: It meant nothing to him anymore.

That was brought to an end by someone’s chance remark.

The someone was a man he had met on a building site where he was working as a day laborer. When Masumura explained how being an ex-con made finding work difficult, his friend said that he knew the perfect company for him in Kikuno, a Tokyo suburb.

“The boss is a real character. He has this policy of hiring ex-cons. His theory is that they work harder than regular people, if you give them a second chance.”

The company specialized in junk removal and recycling, he continued, and he’d been working there himself until recently.

“There’s this one amazing guy there. Not an ex-con, but he was arrested for murder and managed to secure a not-guilty verdict by keeping his mouth zipped shut throughout his trial.”

Masumura’s ears pricked up when he heard the words murder and not guilty. What was the man’s name? he asked. “Hasunuma,” came the answer.

The blood rushed to Masumura’s head and he began to tremble all over. “Tell me more,” he demanded. Puzzled by Masumura’s sudden display of excitement, his friend explained that what he knew about Hasunuma was from listening to his coworkers’ gossip; he’d never spoken to the man himself.

Masumura found the recycling company online. One phrase on the page for recruitment caught his eye: We welcome applications from seniors, it said.

Masumura didn’t waste any time. He phoned the HR department. When they asked him why he was interested in a job, he explained that he’d been in prison. The HR guy seemed happy with that.

The next day, Masumura went to the company office, armed with his résumé, for a one-on-one meeting with the boss. He spoke candidly about the episode that had led to his manslaughter conviction. “You caught a bad break,” the boss commented, before offering him a job on the spot.

Did he have a place to live? the boss then inquired. When Masumura said that he was going to start looking right away, the boss countered that he happened to have the perfect place.

It was the office part of an old warehouse that was barely used anymore. It had a sink and a toilet, if not a bath. The boss arranged for someone to show him the place. Since it wasn’t too decrepit or dirty, Masumura was happy to take it.

He had hardly almost no stuff of his own, so moving was easy. Masumura started his new job the following week.

A wide range of people worked at the company: Some of them smelled like trouble while others seemed quite good-natured.

It was his third day there that he found the man he was looking for. A group of men were smoking in the designated smoking area; one of them wore a nameplate saying HASUNUMA.

Masumura had never seen Hasunuma before. His deep-set eyes, thin lips, and pointed chin all radiated coldness. He was smoking at a slight remove from the rest of the group. Perhaps he liked to keep his distance from people.

That’s the man who murdered Yuna and drove Yumiko to suicide!

Masumura was tempted to grab a knife and go for him right there — but he fought down the impulse.

Simply killing him isn’t enough, he thought. Before I do that, I want to hear the truth from his lips.

To do that, he would have to become friends with Hasunuma, though it was the last thing he wanted to do. He needed to find an opportunity to get close to the man.

The opportunity came knocking in an unexpected form a few days later. Masumura was enjoying a cigarette in the smoking area, when Hasunuma came up and asked him for a light.

“Heard you’re an ex-con?” said Hasunuma, blowing out smoke.

“Yeah, well. It’s something that happened a long time ago.” Masumura was surprised at how calm he sounded.

“What were you in for? Robbery?”

“Not even close.”

Masumura told Hasunuma about the manslaughter incident, keeping nothing back. Telling him the unadorned truth, he believed, was the best way to win Hasunuma’s trust.

After hearing his account, Hasunuma shrugged his shoulders. “All I can say is, you were pretty darn stupid.”

“It was all over in a second. I was out of my mind. I thought the guy was going to kill me.”

Hasunuma shook his head.

“I wasn’t talking about you stabbing the guy. I’m saying, why’d you go and spill your guts to the police like that?”

Not quite understanding what the other man was getting at, Masumura said nothing.

Hasunuma went on: “You should have said that you didn’t remember stabbing the guy; that he reached for the knife before you, that you tried to take it off him and he was down on the floor bleeding out before you even knew what was going on — something like that.”

Masumura shook his head. “I couldn’t have done that.”

“Why not?”

“The police can tell if you’re lying. They ask you a ton of questions at the crime scene reenactment. Say even one thing that doesn’t tally and your whole explanation is shot.”

“You’re too honest for your own good. You’ve got to brazen it out with ‘I don’t remember anything’ and ‘I’m not sure about that.’ Your story doesn’t have to hang together. That doesn’t matter. It’s not your responsibility. Maybe you were the person who ended up with the knife, but they can’t definitively say that the other guy didn’t have it before you. Your fingerprints could have got on top of his and erased them. Believe me, if you’d made a statement like that, you’d probably have been found not guilty.”

Masumura looked on dumbfounded as Hasunuma expounded with absolute self-assurance.

Maybe Hasunuma was right. Maybe his trial would have ended in a different verdict if he had made a statement like that after his arrest, taking a complete what-the-fuck-do-I-know-or-care attitude to any inconsistencies in his story.

In reality, that had been beyond his powers. Stared down by hard-faced detectives and pressured to tell the truth in the interview room, he wouldn’t have been able to come up with any off-the-cuff lies or equivocations. Even if he had, the detectives would probably have seen through him, forcing a confession out of him anyway.

But this man — this Hasunuma — he was different. He’d only needed to hear the bare outlines of Masumura’s story to come up with a strategy for evading punishment. He seemed to be uniquely quick-witted when it came to acts of criminality. And he had nerves of steel. He was quite comfortable defying the authorities and refusing to answer any questions he couldn’t answer.

Masumura felt that he had gotten a glimpse into the evil recesses of the mind that had killed Yuna.

“You really know your stuff,” said Masumura, stifling the anger that was rising in his gorge. “Speaking from experience?”

Masumura was hoping to get Hasunuma to say something about Yuna’s murder. He just grinned and sidestepped the question with a noncommittal “Who knows?”

After that, the two men took to exchanging a word or two whenever their paths crossed. Hasunuma was standoffish with all the other employees, but with Masumura, for some reason, he lowered his guard. Perhaps spending time with someone who’d ended up in jail out of sheer dumb honesty gave him a renewed appreciation for his own ingenuity and sense of superiority. Although this only served to fan the flames of Masumura’s hatred of Hasunuma, he worked hard to hide his true feelings. He focused instead on getting friendlier with Hasunuma. The ultimate goal was to get him to open up about Yuna’s murder.

After around six months, the two men started going drinking together. Although Hasunuma seldom spoke directly about himself, he did let slip the occasional detail about his background.

Apparently, he loathed his father, who’d been a police officer.

“My dad despised ordinary civilians. He was quite open about it. He was the original fuck-you cop. When he snapped his fingers, he expected everyone to jump to it. The guy was a moron.”

Hasunuma went on.

“When he got hammered at home, he liked to brag to me. ‘Today, I got this guy to spill his guts. We knew he was guilty, but we had no evidence; we were stumped. So what do we do? We arrest him on another charge, stick him in the interview room, give him the third degree, and get a confession out of him that way.’ My dad always used to say: ‘Confessions are the king of evidence. I extract the confessions, so I matter more than any damn prosecutor.’ You know what that made me think? That if I ever got investigated by this bunch of clowns, I’d rather die than say a single word to them.”

So that’s what this is all about. Everything began to make sense. Hasunuma’s father had given him the speech about confessions being the king of evidence one too many times. From it, he had learned that silence and dogged denial would see you safely through. And he had put that knowledge to work when he was arrested.

It wasn’t long after that that Masumura got Hasunuma to say something definitive. They were having a drink when the subject of detention centers happened to come up.

“Those places are awful. Tiny cells. Boiling in summer, freezing in winter. What the hell right have the cops got to treat people like that?”

Masumura’s response was reflexive. “What did you do?”

“What?”

“You were in the detention center? So what did they arrest you for?”

Hasunuma had never spoken about his own arrest before.

He seemed to hesitate a moment, then said “murder” in a quiet voice. “Like you, it’s ancient history.”

“So who’d you kill?”

Hasunuma didn’t answer the question right away. With a self-important air, he deliberately poured some sake into his little sake cup, which he drained in one gulp. Only then did he continue.

“The factory I worked at — the boss’s daughter went missing. They found her remains a few years later. They arrested me on suspicion of murder.”

“Did you kill her?” Masumura’s heart was beating rapidly in his chest. “Did you?”

Hasunuma shot Masumura a sideways glance, then looked off into the middle distance.

“I was indicted and sent to trial. But I never said a word more than I had to. My lawyer said that was fine. We went through the motions and — long story short — I was found not guilty.”

“That’s good news for you. But what really happened? Did you do it? I won’t blab. You can tell me about it,” wheedled Masumura, working hard to stifle his rage.

Hasunuma leered. He started to chuckle, his shoulders moving up and down.

“You want the truth? What does true even mean? I was declared not guilty by a court of law. That’s all you need to know. They even paid me compensation for the time I spent in detention!”

He made a gesture as if zipping his lips shut. “That’s all I’m going to say about that,” he said.

Thereafter, no matter how much Masumura tried, Hasunuma wouldn’t be drawn out on the subject. “Just give it a rest, okay?” he would say with a scowl. Eventually, Masumura gave up asking. The last thing he wanted was to needle Hasunuma to the point of driving him away.

He’d managed to get results already. Hasunuma had spoken about the Yuna Motohashi case for the first time. As long as Masumura stayed on this same path, he should get the truth from him at some point.

However, that plan got thrown off course. Hasunuma abruptly stopped coming to work one day. He called the boss to say that he was quitting. When Masumura went around to his apartment, it had already been cleared out. When he tried calling his cell, he couldn’t get through because his phone contract had been canceled.

Masumura asked around, but none of his coworkers knew where Hasunuma had gone. He hadn’t given any reason for quitting to the boss, either.

Masumura was completely nonplussed. If he’d known that this was going to happen, he’d have taken his revenge sooner. He felt faint with regret at the thought of the opportunity he’d allowed to slip through his fingers.

A few days later, he got a call on his cell. It was from a pay phone. When he picked up, he was surprised to hear Hasunuma’s voice at the other end of the line.

“What happened to you? Disappearing like that.”

“I’ve got my reasons. Any cops show up at work?”

“Cops? No, not that I’ve heard.”

“Good to hear.”

“What’s going on? What have you done?”

Hasunuma snickered.

“Nothing much. Let’s leave it there.”

Hasunuma sounded as though he was about to hang up.

“Just a minute,” Masumura said hastily. “Where are you?”

“Can’t tell you that right now. Be in touch. Bye,” said Hasunuma. He ended the call.

Hasunuma phoned Masumura on multiple occasions after that. He always used a pay phone and the first question he asked was always whether anything “funny” had happened at the firm.

The calls became less and less frequent over time. And the intervals between them went from a few days, to a few weeks, and finally to several months. Masumura was worried about losing track of Hasunuma entirely. He was still using pay phones and hadn’t yet revealed where he was living.

Three years went by, then, one day, when Masumura went into work, a couple of men were waiting for him. They were detectives. They showed him a mug shot. Did he know this man? they asked. It was Hasunuma.

When he said that, yes, he knew him, they bombarded him with questions.

Their questions mainly focused on the time when Hasunuma quit his job and disappeared. What had he talked about? Was there anything unusual about him? Had he been in touch since then? After a certain amount of hemming and hawing, Masumura came clean and told them about the sporadic phone calls he was getting.

The detectives seemed to be pleased. They thanked him for his help and went on their way without ever revealing what crime they were investigating.

He found out soon enough when the case became a major news item. The remains of a girl had been found in the ruins of a burned-out house in Shizuoka prefecture. One of Masumura’s coworkers had heard that the girl’s family ran a restaurant in Kikuno.

So that’s what this is all about. It all started to fall into place. Hasunuma had occasionally mentioned the ‘cute little sexpot’ who worked in a restaurant he sometimes went to. He must have attacked her, killed her, hidden the body, and then gone AWOL to avoid being caught. He’d been calling Masumura to find out what the police were up to.

Not long after that, Masumura heard the news that Hasunuma had been arrested.

He felt mixed emotions. Surely this time — this time — Hasunuma wouldn’t get away with it. Surely this time he would get the punishment he deserved. Whatever punishment he got, though, it wouldn’t be for the crime of killing Yuna. And if he ended up in jail, he would be out of Masumura’s reach.

That wasn’t how things played out. With his route to revenge cut off, he was at a loss what to do: Sticking with his present job was futile, but he had nowhere else to go. One day, to his surprise, he got a call from Hasunuma.

“You? I thought you were under arrest?”

“I was. But they let me go.”

“Let you go...?”

“It’s like I told you. The confession is the king of evidence. And without the king, the cops can’t do a thing.”

Masumura was dumbstruck. Had Hasunuma used his strategy of remaining silent to elude justice for a second time?

“You still living in Kikuno?” Hasunuma asked, when Masumura said nothing.

“I am, yeah...”

“In that case, I may drop by to see you any day now. Look forward to it.”

“Uh, okay.”

Hasunuma hung up. Masumura stared at his phone, stupefied.

He couldn’t believe it. Hasunuma had now killed two people — and was still not going to be brought to justice?

He didn’t know the Namikis, but his heart ached at the thought of the pain they must be going through. None of this would have happened if I had killed Hasunuma earlier.

Sometime later, Masumura went around to have a look at the restaurant. It was closed. You could hardly expect the family to keep operating their restaurant at a time like this.

Masumura racked his brains. What should he do? He couldn’t let things go on as they were. He had to make sure that Hasunuma got the punishment he deserved. But he had no idea how to proceed.

In this impotent state, every day was torture. The more time that passed, the more desperate he became.

One day, he got a call from a number he didn’t recognize. It was Hasunuma. It was almost three months since he had last called.

“I’ve got a favor I want to ask,” Hasunuma said. “Can I crash at your place for a while?”

“My place? Why?”

“My bastard landlord didn’t renew my contract. I kind of expected it. No big surprise. I thought maybe you could put me up at yours. I’ll pay a decent rate.”

“What are you planning to do?”

“Going to take my time finding myself a new place. Anyway, how about it? Can I come stay?”

It was a one-in-a-million chance. If Masumura wanted his revenge, he was going to have to seize it right now and with both hands.

“Uh, yeah, sure you can. It’ll be cramped, though.”

“No problem. As long as there’s enough space to lie down.”

Hasunuma came by soon after. They hadn’t seen each other for a long time. Hasunuma’s face was as cruel and brutal as ever.

“This area’s not changed a bit,” said Hasunuma, kicking off his shoes and sitting down cross-legged on the floor. “The shopping district’s still a total shithole. God, what a dump.”

Hasunuma snickered quietly.

“What’s the joke?”

“Just that I popped in to pay my respects — to the victim’s family.”

“You what? The victim’s family? You mean—?”

“That Namiki-ya place. I went and put the screws to the owner. ‘You’re the reason I got arrested. It’s your fault no one trusts me anymore. I want compensation.’”

“What did he say about that?”

“Some bs. The guy’s a loser. I was like ‘screw you’ and I walked out.”

As he looked at the triumphant expression on Hasunuma’s face, Masumura tried to imagine how the Namiki family must be feeling. Gloom swallowed him up. This man isn’t even human; he’s a devil in human skin, he thought.

Nonetheless, Masumura donned the mask of an old friend and spent the evening drinking with Hasunuma to celebrate their reunion. Hasunuma, who was in high spirits, made endless gibes about the police and the prosecutor.

What did he plan to do if the indictment went ahead? Masumura asked.

“I’ll think about it, when the time comes,” Hasunuma said nonchalantly. “I’ll do the exact same thing I did before. It’ll mean spending a year or more in detention, which is a bummer, but then I’ll have the compensation payment to look forward to for my trouble. Overall, not a bad deal.”

“What if you’re found guilty?”

“Ain’t gonna happen,” Hasunuma fired back. “I was found not guilty in the previous case and there’s even less circumstantial evidence this time around. No, provided I keep my mouth shut, the prosecutor can’t do jack.”

“About the previous case...,” said Masumura. “Why did you kill the girl? You’ve got your not-guilty verdict, so there’s no danger in coming clean. Come on, tell me.”

Hasunuma’s drunken face contorted into the most hideous expression Masumura had ever seen: a smile charged with malevolence.

“I didn’t mean to kill her,” he said, holding his teacup full of shochu. “It’s like, there was this cute kitten; I tried to give it a stroke; it bit back; I taught it a lesson and the silly thing went and died on me. I couldn’t leave the thing like that, so I burned the body, said a few words, and buried what was left. End of story.”

Masumura could almost hear the blood draining out of his body. Hasunuma had come out and admitted to murdering Yuna Motohashi. And to add insult to injury, he had likened her to an animal.

“Humph. So that’s what happened, is it?” Masumura responded. His voice was flat and affectless. He wasn’t playacting. When the shock to the emotions is too great, he realized, people can no longer show their reactions.

That night, Masumura was unable to sleep. He could hear Hasunuma, wrapped up in his blanket, breathing in his sleep in the next room over. His breathing sounded unsuspecting, unguarded. I could easily kill the guy now, Masumura thought.

He got up and picked up the kitchen knife from inside the sink. He glared down disgustedly at Hasunuma’s sleeping face. He raised the knife high above his head.

But he didn’t deliver the fatal blow.

He had realized something: He wasn’t the only person who wanted revenge.

42

It was three days after Yutaro Namiki heard about Naoki Niikura confessing that a couple of detectives turned up at Namiki-ya and asked him to accompany them to the station for questioning. Namiki was busy cooking for that evening, but the detectives assured him that, if all went well, he would be back in time to open the restaurant. What exactly did “if all went well” mean? Presumably it meant them not finding any grounds to arrest him. In that case, maybe I won’t make it home tonight, he thought.

Machiko and Natsumi both looked on anxiously as he was escorted off the premises. He was expecting them to be summoned to the station at some point, too. He’d already told them the truth.

Nothing was going according to plan, Namiki thought. Things hadn’t just gone slightly awry, they had veered wildly off course — and destroyed Naoki Niikura’s life in the process. You could argue that it was Niikura who had made the fatal choice, but Namiki was the one who had put him in a position to do so.

It had all started that night. The night when Hasunuma suddenly showed up at Namiki-ya.

They were just starting to see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

When Kanichi Hasunuma was released, the Namiki family felt as though they had been plunged into a deep, dark abyss. Kusanagi, the detective heading up the investigation, came personally to explain the situation. It made no difference: They couldn’t accept what had happened.

The only scrap of hope that the Namiki family had to hold on to was what Kusanagi had said about his commitment to finding a decisive piece of evidence that would make it possible to take the case to trial.

After that, with every passing day, Namiki’s pessimism intensified. He was doing his utmost not to think about the case. Saori’s death was a horrific event, but the past was the past; nothing they could do was going to bring her back.

Namiki started to think that he had to get on with life. He never put the thought into words, but it somehow transmitted itself to his wife and daughter. He could see that by the way the smiles gradually began returning to their faces. It was a slow process, but the Namikis began to recover some of their old cheerfulness.

Kanichi Hasunuma’s appearance in the restaurant pitched them back into the deepest despair. Their hatred for the man, which had ebbed ever so slightly, flared up again, becoming even more intense than before.

That night, Namiki couldn’t sleep a wink. And it was the same for Machiko. Namiki could feel her tossing and turning until all hours. They didn’t speak to each other. Their grief was so raw it robbed them of the words to express their anger and hatred.

The following day, they decided not to open the restaurant. They simply didn’t have the energy. Natsumi managed to drag herself off to the university, but Machiko never even got out of bed.

Namiki went down to the restaurant and started drinking at lunchtime.

A little after five in the afternoon, he heard the sound of someone tapping on the slats of the front door. Looking up, he noticed someone standing on the street outside. That’s odd, he thought. I’m sure I put out the sign saying we’re closed for the day.

He unlocked the door and slid it open. A small, gray-haired man was standing there. He was wearing a face mask that concealed most of his face. He was dressed in a grubby jacket and trousers that bagged at the knees.

“We’re closed today.”

The man started waving his hand from side to side.

“I’ve got something important I need to talk to you about... It’s about Hasunuma.”

Namiki started. “Who the hell are you?”

“It will take a while to explain. Can I come in?”

There was stubbornness in the man’s eyes. Namiki nodded and motioned him into the restaurant.

Once inside, he took off his mask. The deep lines etched into his face testified to a life that had been far from easy.

The old man introduced himself. The name Eiji Masumura was new to Namiki, but it was what he said next that really took his breath away.

“You probably know that Hasunuma was found not guilty in a murder trial about twenty years ago. The victim, Yuna Motohashi — she was my niece.”

Namiki gestured for the old man to sit down. He deserved to be heard out.

What Masumura then went on to say was even more startling. In a calm and steady tone, he explained how revenge had been the sole purpose of his life for the past two decades; how he’d finally tracked down and befriended Hasunuma; how he’d managed to worm his way into his confidence.

“Hasunuma was here yesterday, wasn’t he? He was boasting about it when he got back to my place. He’s human scum, that guy! Last night, I almost killed him. I had the knife in my hand. I was ready to strike. The only reason I didn’t go through with it was because I thought of you. If I killed him, I’d be denying you the chance of becoming spiritually whole. I realized that just like me, you must want to take revenge.”

Masumura looked probingly at Namiki. “Well?”

“You’re right,” said Namiki. “I’d like to kill the man myself.”

Masumura gave an emphatic nod.

“Just as I thought. How about it, Mr. Namiki? Shall we join forces and give him the punishment he deserves? He’s living in a little fifty-square-foot room at the back of my place. It used to be a storeroom, so it’s got no windows and you can’t see in from the street. We could take our time killing him and no one could do a thing about it.”

Namiki found the offer appealing.

If the state won’t bring him to justice, then I’ll just have to do it myself. He had thought so countless times — but never progressed from thought to action.

When Namiki remained silent, Masumura asked if he was afraid of being sent to jail.

“No, I’m prepared for that...”

“But you’re also worried about your family,” Masumura said, putting his finger on Namiki’s biggest concern.

Namiki nodded feebly. “There’s my daughter’s future, too.”

“You’ve got nothing to worry about. If things don’t work out, I’ll turn myself in.” Masumura slapped his chest with one hand. “I’ll say that I did it.”

“You can’t do that. It’s not fair if I’m the only who gets away with it... Besides, there’s something I want to do before I avenge my daughter.”

“What’s that?”

“To find out the truth. Why did Hasunuma have to kill Saori? That’s what I want to know. They released Hasunuma because he kept his mouth shut. But even if they indict him and find him guilty, I still won’t feel any better until he comes clean about what happened. The first thing I want to do is to get him to tell the truth. I’ll decide whether to take my revenge after that.”

Masumura frowned and narrowed his eyes in sympathy. “I understand how you must feel.”

“Could you give me some more time?” Namiki said. “I need to think about this. Let’s talk again once I’ve thought things through.”

“Fine,” Masumura said. “Hasunuma will be at my place for a while. Take all the time you need.”

They exchanged contact details. “Look forward to hearing from you,” said Masumura and went on his way.

Namiki watched the small figure of the old man recede into the distance. Turning around, he was astonished to find Machiko right behind him.

“Oh... you decided to get up?”

“I felt like a cold drink.”

“Right.”

Namiki started tidying up the tables in the restaurant.

“So what do you plan to do?” Machiko asked.

“I’m sorry?” Namiki looked at his wife. Her eyes were hard, brooding.

“How are you going to get him to tell you the truth?”

Namiki ran his tongue nervously over his lips. “You were listening?”

“Yes, from the top of the stairs. I was curious.”

“He’s the uncle of Hasunuma’s previous victim.”

“I heard that. Anyway, what are you going to do?”

Namiki pulled out a chair and sat down. “I wonder...” He poured some sake from a big ishobin bottle into a cup that he had intended to tidy away.

Machiko fetched herself a cup and sat down across from him. She had apparently decided to have a drink, too. Namiki filled a cup for her.

Machiko tossed off her sake in one go, then let the breath out of her lungs loudly. She stared at the bottom of her empty cup. “You don’t need to worry about us,” she said. “You don’t need to worry about Natsumi and me.”

Namiki looked at Machiko in astonishment. Her bloodshot eyes had a glazed look. That’s about more than one little cup of sake, Namiki thought.

“We’ll go along with whatever you decide to do. Whatever it takes to avenge Saori. Natsumi would agree, I’m sure.”

Namiki shook his head, took a swig of sake, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I don’t want you two involved. Whatever has to be done, it’ll be me who does it.”

“Yutaro...”

“Except that, right now, I’ve got no idea what to do. You got any good ideas?”

“Of how to get Hasunuma to come clean?”

“Uh-huh.”

Machiko put down her cup and tilted her head to one side. “That’s a tough one.”

“Tell me about it. It’s something neither the police nor the prosecutor managed to do.”

“In the old days, they would have just tortured him. You can’t get away with that nowadays.”

It was just a throwaway comment, but it lodged in Namiki’s mind.

Torture?

Now that was something worth thinking about. When it came to interrogating suspects, there were strict new rules to prevent the police from being overly aggressive. But if they were the ones doing the interrogating, they could use all the unlawful techniques they wanted.

Intimidation alone wouldn’t be enough. If the best Namiki could do was to brandish a knife, Hasunuma would laugh in his face. And if it came to a hand-to-hand fight, he stood no chance of winning. He would probably be the one who ended up getting stabbed.

How about drugging him with sleeping medication, tying him up, and then threatening him with a knife or something? With Masumura’s help, that could be doable.

But when he ran the idea by Machiko, her reaction was less than positive. Hasunuma, she felt, was hardly the sort of person to be cowed by something like that.

“‘You want to stab me, go ahead and stab me; you want to kill me, go ahead and kill me.’ That’s probably how he’d come back at you,” she said.

Namiki agreed. She’s definitely right, he thought. He also knew in his bones that he wouldn’t be able to follow through and kill Hasunuma, no matter how much he taunted him.

He was checking the food in the restaurant freezer the next morning when he remembered something Shusaku Tojima had told him: an episode when one of his workers who’d been handling the liquid nitrogen in a small and badly ventilated room had almost suffocated.

According to the man’s own account of the experience, his head had started to hurt, he felt dizzy, and fell to the floor. But the real terror only came after that, when he found himself unable to move, despite knowing the danger he was in.

Sounds good to me, Namiki thought. Masumura had mentioned that Hasunuma lived in a small room with no windows. They could lock him in, then pump the liquid nitrogen in, little by little, through an aperture. As his discomfort increased, Hasunuma would realize that they were not making empty threats. Once he was in terror of his life, he would have to tell them the truth about Saori’s murder when they pressed him for it.

Namiki quickly contacted Masumura and shared his plan with him.

“I like it.” Masumura was enthusiastic. “Poison-gas torture. I think it could do it. Getting hold of liquid nitrogen isn’t that easy, though.”

“Any idea how we could get some?”

The two men discussed the plan in great detail. They examined Hasunuma’s room while he was out. They initially thought they would need to drill a hole in the sliding door to pump in the liquid nitrogen, but when they removed the metal door handles, behind them they discovered a square hole that went right through the door.

“We’ll need a funnel that’s exactly the same size as this hole,” Masumura said. “A bit of nosing around and I should find one easily enough.”

They had settled on the method they were going to use. The next problem was getting hold of the liquid nitrogen.

Namiki got Tojima to join him for a drink at one of their favorite bars to discuss the problem. When Tojima asked what Namiki wanted the liquid nitrogen for, he didn’t believe Namiki’s explanation about “one of my nephews needing it for a home science experiment.”

“You may not know it yourself, Yutaro, but your eyes are all bloodshot and you look like a total wreck. I know you’re planning something.”

“No...”

“You can’t pull the wool over my eyes. We’re old friends.” Tojima lowered his voice. “Are you planning to bump off Hasunuma?”

Before Namiki could even formulate a reply, Tojima plowed ahead. “That’s what I thought. You’ve got to let me help you. I won’t do a thing unless you’re completely up front with me. Well?”

Namiki shook his head.

“I’m not planning to kill the guy. And I don’t want to involve anyone who’s not connected to Saori.”

“Not connected?” Tojima raised an eyebrow. “You want me to thump you, Yutaro?”

With a sigh, Namiki told his old friend about the plan that he and Masumura had devised together.

“Sounds rather complicated,” said Tojima, slightly dismayed. “Still, I think it’s basically a sound plan. You’ve got to do something pretty brutal to get a man like Hasunuma to confess.”

“Can you provide the liquid nitrogen?”

“Leave it to me. From what you’ve told me, twenty liters should be enough. With the right kind of container, you can transport it by car.” Tojima paused and a thoughtful expression came over his face. “There’s one thing I have to ask you. What are you going to do with the guy after you’ve got his confession? You said you weren’t going to kill him. What, so you’re going to terrorize him till he comes clean, then leave him with his life?”

“I... I really don’t know. We’ll just have to see how it goes on the day. It depends on what Hasunuma says, I suppose.”

Namiki was just being honest. He genuinely had no idea what he might do. If anger took over, then perhaps he would keep going until he’d killed Hasunuma. Perhaps reason would intervene and stop him from going too far. Either scenario was plausible.

“Listen, Yutaro,” said Tojima. “I’m quite happy to kill him. The thought of a scumbag like that simply being alive is enough to poison my life. I want to kill him. I do mind you doing it. I don’t want you to go to jail.”

“Believe me, I don’t want to go to jail. We need to be careful not to overreact, whatever Hasunuma says.”

Tojima looked angry.

“That’s not what I meant. Feel free to overreact and kill the guy. That’s not a problem. It’s natural. What I’m saying is that if you do end up doing that, then I don’t want you to go to jail for it. Oh, and one more thing: Hasunuma may well die even if you don’t intend to kill him.”

“What do you mean?”

“That liquid nitrogen is quite hard to handle.”

Tojima spelled out the risks: how a small amount of liquid nitrogen vaporizes into an enormous quantity of gas; that breathing it in directly causes rapid oxygen deficiency; that people who transport the stuff never travel in the same elevator with it, because it’s continuously vaporizing even when stored in a special container, and so on and so forth.

“What I’m trying to say is this: While you may plan to pump just enough liquid nitrogen into the room to scare the living daylights out of Hasunuma, the tiniest error in quantity could easily kill him.”

Namiki’s anxiety returned when he heard that.

“What’s wrong? Have you lost your nerve?” Tojima asked. “Do you want to pull out?”

“Absolutely not.” Namiki shook his head. “I’m more committed than ever. I intend to go through with this.”

“Now you’re talking.” Tojima grinned, before his expression relapsed into seriousness. “There’s something else I want to make clear. Regardless of whether we intentionally kill Hasunuma or just cause his death by mistake, the police will launch an investigation when they find his body. They may well figure out that liquid nitrogen was used, so we need to take steps to preempt that.”

“How?”

“When Hasunuma’s body is found, the first person that the police will suspect is you. You don’t have easy access to liquid nitrogen, so they’ll start sniffing around my factory. The factory has security cameras. If they find any footage of me driving out of the place, they’ll assume I’m transporting the liquid nitrogen cylinder.”

“That’s no good,” Namiki said. “I don’t want you getting in trouble, Shusaku. I’ll transport the liquid nitrogen myself.”

“Are you a total idiot?” Tojima spat out the words. “I’m the boss of the damn company. What’s the problem with me going to my own factory? There isn’t one. I can cook up a thousand reasons for being there. You do it and you might as well shout from the rooftops, ‘Hey, it’s me. I did it. Arrest me.’”

“Okay. But you can’t go directly from your factory to Hasunuma’s place, either. There are security cameras all over town. You only need to get caught on one of those and it’s all over for you.”

“You’re right. Security cameras are a major pain in the ass. The special twenty-liter container for the liquid nitrogen will be big and heavy. We’ll need a vehicle to transport it. We should expect the police to review all the local security-camera footage to find the vehicle we use. I’ve also heard rumors about this recent innovation — something called N-System. The police can use it to track vehicles in the most incredible detail — car type, the routes they take...”

“Then I should be the one who transports the stuff. I’ll take care not to kill Hasunuma; and if I do slip up and accidentally cause his death, I’ll do the right thing and turn myself in.”

Tojima clicked his tongue loudly.

“Didn’t you listen to a word I said? I don’t want you to go to jail. And regardless of how careful you are, whether or not he dies may be beyond your control.”

“Maybe...”

“We need to use our brains. Let’s assume that the police do figure out that we used liquid nitrogen. Okay. We need to anticipate their thought processes and outsmart them.”

“Outsmart them? How?”

“Give me a day.” Tojima held up a finger. “I’ll come up with something.”

The two men met the following day. Tojima was looking rather jaunty.

“The police are sure to think that whoever did it used a vehicle. We want to outsmart them, so—” Tojima paused for dramatic effect. “We need to transport the liquid nitrogen without using a vehicle.”

Namiki’s eyes widened.

“You said the container was big and heavy? So how are we supposed to move it? If we push it around on a handcart, every man and their dog will see it.”

“That’s why neither of us can do that particular job.”

Namiki swallowed. “You want to involve more people?”

“There are plenty of people who are more than happy to help. We need only ask. I’m sure you can think of a couple yourself.”

Namiki knew Tojima was right. The Niikuras and Tomoya Takagaki appeared in his mind’s eye.

“Provided we make it crystal clear that we don’t intend to kill the guy, they’ll be happy to help us. I’ll speak to them, Yutaro. You don’t need to do a thing. All you need to do is get yourself over to Hasunuma’s place on the actual day.”

“What are you going to do? What’s the plan?”

“The less you know, the better. All I’ll tell you is: We’ll do it on the day of the parade.”

Yutaro was stunned.

“The day of the parade? Why choose a day when there are so many people around...?”

“That’s what makes it such a good day for it. There’s one thing I need to ask you. This guy Masumura — what does he want to do?”

“He says he wants to be with me. Wants to be there when I interrogate Hasunuma.”

Tojima shook his head. “That’s not an option,” he said. “If Hasunuma dies, the police are sure to suspect foul play. And if they detect the sleeping medication in his system, they’ll start wondering who got Hasunuma to take the stuff and they’ll start looking into Masumura’s background. I know it’s unlikely, but if the investigation leads back to Masumura’s connection to Yuna Motohashi, the police will leave no stone unturned. We need to prevent that by creating an alibi for Masumura. I’m not talking about a false alibi. I mean a genuine, perfect one.”

Namiki saw that what Tojima was saying made sense. If the police made up their minds that Masumura had nothing at all to do with the crime, their investigation would never make any progress.

Despite feeling a little guilty about it, Tojima relayed their decision to Masumura. He was half expecting him to get angry, protest that it wasn’t fair, and say that if that was what they were planning, he’d have been better off acting alone.

Masumura, however, was very amenable.

“That’s fine with me,” he said. “I don’t care if they send me to jail, but that doesn’t give me the right to force the same thing on Mr. Namiki. I fully understand that preventing suspicion from falling on me is crucial to this plan. I’ll create an alibi by going somewhere public while you put the screws on Hasunuma.

“But I do have one condition,” continued Masumura.

“At present, you don’t plan to kill Hasunuma. If you still feel that way after going through with the plan, can you leave the sliding door latched shut when you leave the scene? I want to be free to do what I want to do after that.”

With the latch down, Hasunuma wouldn’t be able to open the door. Weakened by oxygen deficiency, he probably wouldn’t have the strength to break it down, either. He would be trapped inside.

Tojima didn’t need to ask what “doing what I want to do” meant.

“I’ll stab him to death. Then I’ll turn myself in to the police. The investigation won’t go anywhere near Mr. Namiki. The whole thing will be nice, neat, and wrapped up with a ribbon.” As Masumura said this, there was a fresh, eager look on his face.

That was how the plan came together. All that was left to do now was to wait for the day of the parade.

Namiki was ignorant of the plan’s ins and outs. Tojima was the only person with a grasp of the plan in its entirety. Namiki had some vague idea of who might be helping, but he couldn’t be sure.

He suspected that Tomoya Takagaki was one of their accomplices. There was little chance that Tojima hadn’t approached him.

When Namiki looked at the young man and saw his face, which still had all the simplicity and candor of a child, he felt guilty about getting him to participate in an act of cruelty. Takagaki probably felt that he had to help because of Saori. In his heart of hearts, though, he probably wanted nothing to do with the plan. It was that realization that prompted Namiki to tell Tomoya that it was okay for him to forget about Saori and that he wouldn’t regard him as coldhearted for doing so.

Namiki wanted to say something similar to the Niikuras, but he never got the chance.

The day of the parade arrived. Namiki was on edge from the moment he woke up. “I’m going to go to Hasunuma’s place this afternoon. I’m not going to kill him, just get him to tell me the truth,” he told Machiko. He didn’t go into any detail about the plan. He would tell her what he’d done when it was all over.

Tojima had told him that 4 P.M. would be the moment of truth.

“I’ll phone you when everything’s ready. Use the Yamabe Shoten’s minitruck. I’ve cleared it with them so it won’t be a problem. When you get to the hut where Hasunuma lives, you’ll find a cardboard box containing you-know-what outside the front door. Take it in with you, then do everything as we discussed.”

Tojima didn’t tell Namiki who would be delivering the cardboard box to the hut.

Despite his anxiety, Namiki went to work in the restaurant kitchen at Namiki-ya, as if it were a normal day.

The phone rang a little before two. It was Tojima.

Masumura had called. He had successfully slipped some sleeping medication into the beer can Hasunuma was drinking from. Hasunuma had already been looking very sleepy when he left the hut. He should be out cold for the next two or three hours, provided no one woke him.

Masumura went on to add something.

“Niikura wants to be there when you interrogate Hasunuma.”

“Niikura?”

“I can understand how the guy feels. I told him to talk to you directly. He’ll be waiting in the Yamabe Shoten parking lot. If you don’t want him there with you, just tell him no.”

“Okay.”

Namiki saw no reason to rebuff Niikura. If he was honest with himself, it would be good to have someone to consult if things went somehow awry.

Namiki’s anxiety ratcheted up a notch. Any minute now, I’ll have to make my decision and go through with what I decide, he thought.

But something unexpected got in the way. The restaurant was about to close for the afternoon, when a customer, who’d been shut up in the restroom for a long time, finally staggered out. She looked limp and was complaining about a stomachache.

They couldn’t just ignore her. Machiko didn’t have a driver’s license. Namiki had no choice; he’d have to take the woman to the hospital.

After dropping her off at the emergency room, Namiki called Tojima to explain what was going on.

“Everything’s ready and I was about to call you. God, why did this have to happen today of all days?” The disappointment in Tojima’s voice was palpable.

“I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“You don’t need to apologize. It’s okay. I’ll work something out. We’ll get another crack at the guy. I’ll contact the others.” Namiki was heartened by Tojima’s adaptability.

But once he got off the phone, all the strength seemed to drain out of his body. He could barely think straight. When Machiko arrived at the hospital, he was just standing around in the waiting room in a daze. When he explained the situation to her, the expression on her face was one of mingled disappointment and relief. Namiki realized that she’d been afraid of what he might do.

It turned out that there was nothing seriously wrong with their customer. She came out and apologized to them both for the trouble she had caused them. Since she was well enough to make her own way home, they parted just outside the hospital.

That should have been the end of it all. Nothing’s going to happen today, he was thinking — until he got a phone call from Tojima that plunged him into confusion.

“Things have taken an unexpected turn. I’ll call you tonight with the details. I’ll be dropping in at the restaurant a bit later. I want you to make out like nothing’s happened.”

“What has happened?” Namiki asked.

“Haven’t the time to go into it,” Tojima said. The phone went dead.

At five thirty, Namiki opened the restaurant just the same as usual. The regular customers started showing up. Tojima came in with the Niikuras. Tojima’s behavior was the same as usual. Thinking back on it later, Namiki could only marvel at his friend’s acting skills. He didn’t get a good look at the faces of the Niikuras. Had he done so, he might have detected something out of the ordinary there.

Namiki heard the news of Hasunuma’s death via one of the members of Team Kikuno. He glanced at Tojima, and their eyes locked just for an instant.

This, he realized, was the “unexpected turn of events.”

Tojima called him later that night. “Who did it?” Namiki asked.

“Well, I didn’t do it. Nor did Tomoya Takagaki. So, go figure.”

“Was it Niikura?”

“It was,” Tojima replied.

43

Shusaku Tojima called me one week before the parade. “There’s something I want to discuss with you, Mr. Niikura,” he said. He went on to tell me that Hasunuma was back in Kikuno and had even shown up at Namiki-ya. I was incredulous.

Tojima drove me to have a look at the hut where Hasunuma was living.

Then he made a proposal — something completely unexpected — to me at a diner nearby.

“We’ve got a plan to punish Kanichi Hasunuma and we’d like you to lend a hand,” he said. That was when I discovered that the plan had originated with Yutaro Namiki.

I was taken aback. On the one hand, I loathed Hasunuma enough to want to kill him; on the other, I had never imagined actually doing it. I knew that if I did the police would swing into action. There’s no such thing as the perfect crime — a crime that’s undetectable.

I wondered if Namiki was willing to get arrested. Was he prepared to shoulder all the blame himself, even if some of us helped him?

Apparently not. “I won’t let my dear childhood friend go to jail,” Tojima told me. “We can find a way to deliver a hammerblow to Hasunuma without anyone getting arrested.”

Was it possible to do both those things? I had my doubts, but I changed my mind after Tojima explained the ingenious method they were planning to use. Locking Hasunuma in his room and terrorizing him with liquid nitrogen until he told the truth struck me as startlingly original. In terms of the penal code, Tojima said it would count as “aggravated assault with intent to cause bodily harm.” The idea, however, was that Hasunuma wouldn’t file a complaint, meaning that no one would get arrested.

What Tojima asked me to do was to hide the container of liquid nitrogen inside one of the Team Kikuno treasure chests. To be honest, it was a bit of a letdown. I was hoping to be assigned a more important role. Still, I agreed on the spot.

I didn’t breathe a word about the plan to my wife, Rumi. Knowing that her husband was going to do something borderline criminal would have upset her. She is not the most robust person, either mentally or physically. And I didn’t want to burden her with an important secret, either.

As the big day came closer, I was increasingly on edge. Just imagining what Hasunuma would say was exciting.

Eventually, I realized that I needed to be there myself. I wanted to see Hasunuma suffer.

I decided to ask Tojima if that would be okay. He said he would propose it to Yutaro on the day based on his assessment of the situation.

Come the day of the parade, Rumi and I left our house a little after midday. We watched most of the parade, bumping into people we knew from time to time, then headed over to say hello to Maya Miyazawa before Team Kikuno got started. I had to confirm a few details about the music with her, but Tojima had also advised me that I needed to establish my alibi, just in case.

After chatting with Miyazawa, I told Rumi that I’d just got an urgent text from a colleague and told her to go and watch the parade by herself for a while. I let her get a certain distance away, then hurried toward the municipal sports ground. A Tojima-ya Foods minivan was parked in one of the nearby streets with Mr. Tojima sitting in the driver’s seat. When he saw me, he got out of the van and unloaded a trolley and a large cardboard box from the van’s flatbed. He handed me a parade staff jacket.

I put the jacket on, lifted the cardboard box onto the trolley, and headed for the municipal sports ground. It didn’t take me long to locate the silver treasure chest. There were two cardboard boxes inside it. One contained six plastic bottles of water, the other the same number of bottles of oolong tea. I took both boxes out and replaced them with the one big cardboard box I had brought with me, which I fixed in place with the straps. The whole operation took me less than ten minutes. Then I pushed the trolley loaded with the two boxes of drinks back to where Tojima was waiting and returned the staff jacket to him.

Mr. Tojima told me that if I wanted to be present at Hasunuma’s interrogation, I should wait in the parking lot of Yamabe Shoten. Apparently, he’d already communicated my request to Mr. Namiki.

For the time being, I went to rejoin my wife and resumed watching the parade.

It wasn’t long before Team Kikuno stepped off. We walked alongside their float.

When they eventually got to the end of the parade route, I told Rumi to go on to the singing contest venue by herself, because there was something I needed to take care of. She set off. I don’t think she suspected anything.

I went to Yamabe Shoten and waited for Namiki in the parking lot. Four o’clock came and went with no sign of him. That’s odd, I was thinking, when I got a call from Tojima. There had been an accident, he said, and the plan was called off. He told me to get into the minitruck and go and retrieve the cardboard box from where it was in front of the hut.

Having been raring to go, all of a sudden I felt quite deflated. The whole plan was a nonstarter and I just had to let it go. I did what I was told and drove the minitruck to the hut where Hasunuma was.

Sure enough, there was the cardboard box just outside the front door, where someone had put it. I thought I’d try the door to the hut before loading the box back onto the truck. It was unlocked.

I looked to the far end of the hut where the little room was. The sliding door was pulled shut and the latch was down. The metal door handle had been removed, as I’d been told it would be, and where it had been there was a square hole that went right through to the other side.

I took my shoes off and walked over to the sliding door, taking care to be as quiet as I could. I was halfway there, when the sound of a loud snore made me start. I froze.

Hasunuma didn’t wake up. I went right up to the sliding door and peered through the square hole into the room.

I could see Hasunuma’s face. He lay sprawled out on his mattress, drooling and grunting. The sight of that face ignited a fierce surge of rage in me.

That was the man who had killed our darling Saori? Why, for God’s sake? What happened between the two of them? How had she died?

I had to have answers, right then and there. This was our only chance to get Hasunuma to tell the truth. What if I stepped in and took over Namiki’s role in the plan?

I lugged the cardboard box into the hut and unpacked it. One of the things inside the box was a special funnel and the first thing I did was stick it into the hole in the door. I then removed the cover plug from the liquid nitrogen container. After that, I started thumping the sliding door and shouting Hasunuma’s name.

He woke up. “Who’s that?” he yelled. He must have got to his feet, because he tried to open the sliding door. Since it was on the latch, it remained firmly shut.

I lifted up the container, carried it over to the door and started tipping the liquid nitrogen into the mouth of the funnel. Hasunuma was quite taken aback. “What is this stuff?” he shouted.

“Liquid nitrogen,” I said. “The more I pour in, the thinner the oxygen in there will get — and you will die.”

Hasunuma started yelling wildly: “Stop it”; “I’ll kill you”; stuff like that. Worried he might try to break the door down, I leaned against it with my full weight, still holding the container. Nothing like that happened. I can only assume that he was trying to keep his distance from the liquid nitrogen as it poured out of the spout of the funnel and into the room.

It wasn’t long before Hasunuma started complaining about the physical effects of the gas: his head hurt, he was feeling nauseous. “Tell me the truth, if you want to get out of there alive. Tell me what you did to Saori Namiki,” I told him.

“Just open the door,” Hasunuma said. “Let me out of here and I’ll tell you.” It was obvious he was lying. “First, tell me everything and then I’ll let you out,” I replied. I continued pouring the liquid nitrogen.

A little later, I heard screaming from inside the room. “Okay, okay, I’ll talk. Please just stop!” I stopped pouring the liquid nitrogen.

“I always fancied having a go at the girl from Namiki-ya,” Hasunuma began. Basically, what he said was that he had had his eye on Saori for quite a while. He was furious when the restaurant banned him and he resolved to get back at them by assaulting the girl. One evening, he spotted her from his car. She was alone. He followed her to a small park and assaulted her there. The park was being refurbished, so there was nobody around. He tried to drag her back to his car. She resisted. He shoved her to the ground. She suddenly went all quiet on him. Wondering what was going on, he knelt down for a closer look. For whatever reason, the girl was dead. This is a disaster, he thought to himself. In a panic, he stuffed the body into his car. As he was wondering where he could get rid of the girl, he remembered the house with his mother’s undiscovered corpse inside. This was what Hasunuma told me, gasping for breath the whole time.

I felt a renewed surge of fury. Why didn’t you hand yourself in to the police? I asked him.

What do you think the bastard said to that? “Why would I do anything dumb like that? If I hide her corpse, then I have the advantage.” That’s what he said.

I resumed pouring the liquid nitrogen into the room and I commanded him to make an apology. “Say you’re sorry to the dead Saori. Beg for her forgiveness! Beg from the bottom of your heart!” He did say something, but it didn’t sound much like an apology to me, so I just kept on pouring.

At a certain point, I realized that the room had gone silent. The liquid nitrogen container was almost empty. I plucked the funnel out of the hole and peered into the room.

Hasunuma had fallen to the floor. He was lying there, completely motionless. I’ve screwed up! I thought to myself. I unhooked the latch and slid open the door. I knew it was dangerous to go in right away, so I waited a minute or two before stepping inside.

Hasunuma’s heart had stopped and he wasn’t breathing. I tried CPR, but he showed no sign of coming back to life. I placed the funnel and the liquid nitrogen container in the cardboard box and carried it out of the hut.

I loaded the box on the bed of the minitruck and drove back to Yamabe Shoten. On my way, I called Tojima to tell him what had happened.

For a few moments, Tojima was dumbstruck. Then he really showed his mettle. “You just stick to the plan,” he said. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

I did what he said. I parked the minitruck in its original spot, then went to the park to rejoin Rumi. I was hardly in the mood for a singing contest; having to be all cheerful and upbeat as a member of the judging panel was a struggle.

After the singing contest was over, I bumped into Tojima. Since Rumi was there, he kept his mouth shut.

The three of us went to Namiki-ya. It was there that we heard the news of Hasunuma’s death, together with all the other customers. Maintaining the pretense of calm until then hadn’t been easy.

Tojima called me later that night. He had already told Masumura and Namiki what had happened, he said.

“Yutaro feels terrible about having put you in such a difficult position,” Tojima said. “‘I was the one who had this crazy idea in the first place — then I went and off-loaded all the responsibility onto his shoulders.’” Those, apparently, were Namiki’s exact words.

Tojima promised to take care of things. “Relax,” he went on. “As long as we all keep our mouths shut, the police won’t be able to figure out what happened.”

But the police zeroed in on the truth much faster than we’d imagined. When Tojima told me that they had worked out that the helium tank was only a decoy and that liquid nitrogen had been used in the actual crime — that was the worst. Everything went black for me. I was pretty sure that Professor Yukawa must have had a hand in it. I’d never expected him to get involved.

When I heard that you’d discovered Masumura’s true identity and that Tomoya Takagaki had confessed to his role, I knew in my bones that it was just a matter of time. When the police asked me and my wife to come down to the station for questioning, I was already prepared for the worst.

We were interviewed separately. I stuck to my story of knowing nothing and having nothing to do with the murder. For all my stonewalling, though, inside I was worried sick about Rumi. Although she had no knowledge of the plan, I think she had guessed quite early on that I was involved. Her anxiety came to a head when the police called us in.

When they told me that Rumi had collapsed in the middle of her interview and been taken to the hospital, I wasn’t surprised. I rushed to her bedside.

She had hyperventilation syndrome. The doctor asked me if she’d ever had such an attack before and I told him that she’d shown mild symptoms many times.

The doctor had given Rumi something and she was sleeping in her room. I sat down by her bed and squeezed her hand. As I looked at her peaceful, sleeping face, I knew that I had to get her out of the situation I had put her in.

44

The door at the far end of the corridor was wide open. A man in work overalls came out just as Utsumi reached it. He was pushing a large cardboard box on a handcart. Utsumi had a flashback to Tomoya Takagaki’s statement: the part where he talked about transporting the liquid nitrogen.

Utsumi popped her head into the room. Yukawa was standing there with his hands on his hips, his jacket off, and his sleeves rolled up. When he noticed Utsumi, he jerked his chin in her direction.

Utsumi watched the man in overalls move off down the corridor, then she went into Yukawa’s office. She looked around. The room was quite different from her previous visit. The bookshelves were empty of files and the top of the desk free of clutter.

“My research has reached the stage where I no longer need to be here,” Yukawa said, making for his desk. The hot water dispenser, jar of instant coffee, and paper cups were still there.

“That’s good timing.”

“What do you mean?”

“The case has also got to a decisive point. There are only a few odds and ends that still need to be taken care of — tracking down corroborative evidence, stuff like that.”

Yukawa was quietly making instant coffee. Despite him having his back to her, Utsumi sensed that he had something important to tell her.

“Did Chief Kusanagi fill you in on the developments?”

Yukawa turned and walked back toward her, holding two paper cups.

“Yes, he gave me a rundown on the phone. Turns out a lot of people were involved, which is what I expected.”

“Director Mamiya was singing your praises, too. ‘All Detective Galileo’s theories were right. That man has extraordinary powers of insight.’”

Not happy at Utsumi’s use of his Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department nickname, Yukawa arched one eyebrow and shot her a grumpy look. He placed the two paper cups on the table and sat on an armchair. Utsumi also sat down.

Yukawa crossed his legs and reached for one of the cups. “Can I get the full story from you?”

“That’s why I’m here.” Utsumi took a file out of her bag. “First, though, I’ve got to give you a message from the chief. He wants to thank you in person at your earliest convenience, so if there’s any particular restaurant or bar you fancy going to, do please let him know.”

“I’ll give it a think.”

Utsumi nodded and flipped the file open. She had edited together statements from multiple people to make a summary of the case. After hearing that Naoki Niikura had confessed, even Tojima, who had refused to cooperate for so long, had finally and reluctantly provided a statement.

As she slowly leafed through the file, Utsumi reviewed the case in her own mind.

It had been a genuinely complex case. The whole thing had been motivated by the failure of the legal system to bring Hasunuma — a vile and diabolical man — to justice. It was all too easy to sympathize with Naoki Niikura, who did the deed; Yutaro Namiki, who devised the plan; and Shusaku Tojima, who managed it. But feeling sympathetic didn’t alter the fact that no human being has the right to take the life of another human being, despicable or not. Under Kusanagi’s guidance, their next task was to prove that the crime had been reprehensible and unjustifiable. The thought of that final task was enough to make Utsumi depressed.

“Naoki Niikura called Shusaku Tojima to let him know that Hasunuma was dead. The first thing Tojima then did was to call Masumura to tell him what had happened. He also directed him to pluck a few strands of hair from Hasunuma’s head. The next day, Tojima collected the strands of hair from Masumura and stuffed them, along with the helium tank, into a garbage bag. (He’d hidden the stolen tank in the park where the singing contest was held.) He then dumped the bag in a clump of weeds about sixty-five feet from the crime scene.”

“Was it Tojima who stole the tank of helium?”

“When the man handing out the free balloons vacated his post briefly, no one thought twice about it when Shusaku Tojima took his place. Tojima wrapped the helium tank in a piece of green cloth and hid it in the undergrowth behind the public restroom. The color made for good camouflage, which is why no one noticed it.”

“Was Shusaku Tojima expecting Namiki to kill Hasunuma?”

“He thought he might do so. His position was that Namiki had every right to kill him and that he would do his best to get him off the hook if he did. That was what inspired him to come up with the whole helium tank decoy strategy.”

Yukawa shrugged. “That’s what friends are for,” he murmured.

“Moving on,” said Utsumi, consulting her file again. “Maya Miyazawa, the owner of Miyazawa Books, continues to deny any involvement in the plot. For his part, Shusaku Tojima claims not to have spoken to her about it. Working against that is something we heard from Team Kikuno’s props team, who were responsible for the treasure chests among other things. Apparently, Miyazawa summoned them for confabs both before and after the parade, even though she had nothing important to say to them. Our theory is that she just wanted to draw them away from the treasure chests. All that notwithstanding, it’s debatable how much she knew about the plan. Tojima could well have asked her to help in the most vague and roundabout terms. When you think of the vigor with which the pirates manhandled the treasure chests in the parade, it seems likely that she didn’t know that one of them contained liquid nitrogen.” Having reached the end of the file, Utsumi dropped it on the table and reached for her cup. “That’s everything. What do you think?”

Yukawa only spoke after staring silently into the bottom of his paper cup for a while. “I don’t see any glaring contradictions. Everything seems to line up quite nicely.”

“That’s what we think, too. There’s probably the occasional small lapse of memory, but we don’t see any major or deliberate falsehoods.”

“Is that the story you’ll be sending to the prosecutor?”

“That’s what we mean to do, yes...”

Yukawa’s use of the word story bothered Utsumi.

“If you don’t mind my asking, on what charges will the prosecutor indict the different individuals involved?”

“That’s rather complicated.” Utsumi picked up the file again. “If we take Naoki Niikura’s statement at face value, he didn’t intend to kill Hasunuma. That means we will have to go with a charge of manslaughter for him. Meanwhile, at the end of the day, Yutaro Namiki didn’t participate in the crime at all. Since he originated the idea, we could charge him as an accomplice, though the charge would only be one of bodily harm. As for Tomoya Takagaki, he’d only been told that they were going to ‘punish’ Hasunuma and didn’t know how the liquid nitrogen was going to be used. If we try to charge him as an accomplice, the chances are the case against him won’t stick. The problem is Shusaku Tojima. In his case, the charge of accomplice in bodily harm would definitely stand up; in addition, he took measures in anticipation of Hasunuma’s death by devising the helium tank alibi. There are issues of legal interpretation, but willful negligence leading to murder might be the most suitable charge to bring against him. At the same time, that charge seems unlikely to stick since it wasn’t Tojima, but Niikura, who took the final decision about whether Hasunuma should live or die. As for Rumi Niikura, we suspect that she was aware of the plan, but whether that constitutes grounds for charging her is another matter.”

Utsumi looked at Yukawa. “And that’s everything.”

“What about Hasunuma?”

“Huh?”

“How will you deal with Hasunuma? Is it a case of ‘suspect deceased, prosecution abandoned’?”

“Ah...” Utsumi had been caught off guard. She hadn’t thought about that. “I suppose so.”

“What’s Kusanagi’s take on that? The reality is that it was Masumura who uncovered the truth of Yuna Motohashi’s murder and Niikura who did the same for Saori’s death.”

“Kusanagi says it’s complicated. On the one hand, it’s a good thing that the truth came to light. On the other hand, he’d prefer it if we had solved both cases ourselves.”

“That’s more or less what I was expecting...,” murmured Yukawa, gulping down the last of his coffee. He replaced the now-empty cup on the table.

“Have you located the park?”

“What park?”

“You know, the one that appears in Niikura’s statement. He says that Hasunuma assaulted Saori in a little park.”

“Ah-ah,” gurgled Utsumi vaguely, as she nodded and reached for her notebook.

“We did locate it, yes. Niikura mentioned something about construction work being underway. That proved a useful clue. We think it was probably West Kikuno Children’s Park. It’s about a ten minutes’ walk from Namiki-ya. It was undergoing refurbishment three years ago, when Saori was murdered. Anyway, what about it?”

Yukawa, who was plunged in thought, didn’t answer the question. Utsumi knew better than to press him at a time like this. What was on his mind? she wondered.

“Utsumi.” Yukawa looked at her intently. “There are a couple of things I need you to look into for me. Do you mind?”

Utsumi took a ball pen out of her bag, opened her notebook, and hunched forward. “Fire away.”

“A word of warning before I start. I need you to keep this secret from Kusanagi. I also would appreciate if you don’t ask me why I am getting you to make these inquiries. Unless you’re willing to accept these two conditions, I won’t go on.”

Utsumi looked at her old friend the physicist. The brooding expression on his face was atypical.

“Could I ask you one thing?”

“What?”

“Do you accept the version of events that I presented as true and correct? Or do you still have some doubts?”

Yukawa breathed out loudly, crossed his arms, then put his left hand to his chin with the thumb, index finger, and middle finger extended. His face was pensive, but when Utsumi saw the position of his fingers, she was reminded of something — something she thought she had learned in physics class.

By the time she finally remembered what it was — Fleming’s left-hand rule for motors — Yukawa had relaxed somewhat.

“Do I accept your version of events? I can’t yet answer that question. Which is why I’m asking you this favor.”

“Fine,” Utsumi replied promptly. “Tell me what you want me to do. I won’t ask you why.”

45

When she opened the front door and went outside, her neck and shoulders shuddered as the chilly air enveloped them. It was already November. Winter was definitely on its way.

Rumi walked around the house and into the back garden. She’d taken up gardening and tending to her flowers as one of her daily tasks.

She contemplated her flowers before getting down to work.

The youth-and-old-age zinnias — as the name suggests — stayed in flower for a long time. They were in full bloom, but probably didn’t have long to go. The pale pink salvia was still in flower and looked to have plenty of life in it yet. Although it was a perennial, it couldn’t make it through the winter unless it was pruned and brought indoors.

How will the garden fare this year? Rumi wondered. Maybe it was hopeless. It wasn’t just the salvia, but the other flowers, too: Unless someone took care of them, they would wither and die.

The sasanqua camellia hedge wasn’t yet in bloom. It shouldn’t be long now, but would she get the chance to enjoy its beauty?

As she examined the buds, she could see the street through gaps in the hedge. A black car was parked on the side of the road. Recently, it was there all the time. The back windows were tinted, so she couldn’t see inside.

One time, when Rumi was collecting her mail from the mailbox, she caught sight of a man in a dark suit leaning against the car having a smoke. He’d quickly clambered back inside, looking rather agitated.

The memory depressed her. They were police and were keeping an eye on her. That much was obvious.

She suddenly lost all interest in tending her flowers. While none of the nearby houses overlooked the garden, there were several big apartment blocks a certain way away. For all she knew, they could be spying on her from a high floor using a telephoto lens.

Pulling off her gardening gloves, she went back around to the front of the house. She had just reached the path leading to the front door, when she noticed someone standing on the far side of the garden gate. Not another damn detective, she thought. But it wasn’t. The instant she saw the man’s face, her heart started racing. It was someone she knew; someone she had often seen at Namiki-ya: Yukawa, the university professor.

Yukawa seemed to have noticed her, too. He smiled and bowed.

Feeling very wary, Rumi walked up to the gate. She remembered what her husband had told her. He’s not just your regular academic; he’s chummy with the lead detectives and closely connected to the police.

She pushed the gate open. “What do you want here?” she asked.

“I’d very much like to talk to you,” said Yukawa, a kindly expression on his face. “It’s about the case.”

Rumi was too unsettled to know how to respond.

“Nothing I tell you is supposed to work to your disadvantage,” went on Yukawa, who seemed to have anticipated Rumi’s discomfiture. “I’m just here to tell you that you have a choice.”

“A choice?”

“Yes.” Yukawa nodded, looking straight at her.

Those eyes! Rumi got the impression they could see right through her.

She didn’t know what to do. The only reason she invited him into the house was to get away from the scrutiny of the police she knew were watching them.

Rumi ushered Yukawa into the living room, then made some tea in the kitchen. She chose Earl Grey, her favorite. She had the vague sense that this might be her last chance to enjoy a nice cup of tea for a while.

When she returned to the living room, carrying a tray with teacups and a little jug of milk, Yukawa was standing near the row of acoustic guitars hanging on the wall.

“Are you interested in guitars?” Rumi asked, as she put the tray down on the coffee table.

“I dabbled as a student. This one’s a Gibson; a vintage Gibson, if I’m not mistaken.”

“I don’t know much about guitars. My husband collects them.”

“Would you mind if I had a little play?”

Bemused at the academic’s request, Rumi agreed. “Sure, go ahead.”

Yukawa took the Gibson down off the wall, pulling out a nearby chair and sitting down. He picked out a few notes, then started to play a slow tune.

Rumi gave a start. It was a song Niikura had composed many years ago. It was one of her favorites. A pastiche of the folk songs of the 1970s, it had been a complete commercial flop.

Yukawa stopped in the middle of the song. “It’s a nice-sounding instrument,” he said as he put the guitar back on the wall.

“You’re good. Keep playing, if you want to.”

“No, I think that’s enough for today. Any more and my lack of practice will start shining through,” said Yukawa, grinning as he made his way back to the sofa.

Lack of practice? Had he been rehearsing for today’s little performance? Had her husband told him they had acoustic guitars in the house?

“Please, help yourself,” said Rumi, gesturing at the tea tray. Yukawa sat down on the sofa, thanked her, picked up one of the teacups, brought the cup to his nose to savor the aroma, then added a dash of milk from the jug.

“Did Saori Namiki used to practice in this room?”

“Oh, no. Never.” Rumi smiled. “The neighbors would complain. We have a soundproof room. She used to practice there.”

“You got complaints? But I heard that her voice was beautiful.”

“It was, when she was performing. When she was rehearsing, it was more like noise.”

“That’s a little harsh.” Yukawa sipped his tea. “I wish I could hear it — the voice of your brilliant diva. I did a search in YouTube, but I couldn’t find her.”

“Would you like to hear one of her songs?”

Yukawa blinked. “Can I?”

“Of course,” said Rumi. She pulled out a remote-control unit from a rack by her feet and switched on a high-tech sound system, which ran along one side of the room. She then picked up her phone and opened up a music app. She had hundreds of her favorite tracks on her phone.

From the speakers came the sound of the overture. Yukawa, who must have recognized the song, was nodding his head approvingly. It was “Time to Say Goodbye,” the song made famous by Sarah Brightman.

A voice slid in on top of the music. Although little above a whisper, it was by no means weak. It was extraordinary: It seemed not so much to enter through the ears as to resonate throughout one’s body. Yukawa’s eyes suddenly widened. The music was affecting him.

As the song neared its climax, Saori’s astonishing talents came even more strikingly to the fore. The sustained high notes seemed to penetrate the heart and the brain, while the heavier low notes lodged in the pit of the stomach. This wasn’t a talented teenage girl self-consciously performing an exercise; it was more like a gift straight from the laps of the music gods.

The song ended, leaving a sweet afterglow in its wake.

Yukawa shook his head appreciatively from side to side and clapped his hands. “That was magnificent. I wouldn’t have imagined.”

“Would you like to hear another?”

“Thank you. I think that’s enough for now. Much as I’d like to, it will only make it harder for me to broach the matter at hand.”

Rumi breathed in deeply, then took a sip of tea. “You said you wanted to talk about the case?”

“Yes,” said Yukawa, “but before I talk about the death of Kanichi Hasunuma, I’d like to go back to when this all began.”

“When is that?”

“About six months ago. When Kanichi Hasunuma was arrested on suspicion of Saori’s murder. Are you familiar with the details?”

“Shizuoka prefecture, wasn’t it?” Rumi put a hand to her cheek. “They discovered Saori’s body in an old house there... I think that’s how it started.”

“That’s right. To be precise, two bodies were found in the burned-out remains of a private residence that had degenerated into what’s popularly called a trash house. One of the bodies belonged to the occupant of the house — she’s believed to have died several years earlier — while DNA analysis showed the other body to be Saori Namiki. Among the female occupant’s family, friends, and associates, the name Kanichi Hasunuma jumped out at the investigators. Which brings me to my first question.” Yukawa raised one finger. “Why should this trash house, which had been abandoned for years, all of a sudden go up in flames? I asked someone I know in the police to look into this for me, but they have yet to pinpoint the cause of the fire. They suspect arson, but they can’t find any evidence of who the arsonist was.”

This wasn’t what Rumi had been expecting and she felt perplexed. She genuinely had no idea where Yukawa was going with this.

“The investigation team had its suspicions about Hasunuma, so they started looking for links between him and Saori Namiki. Those links didn’t take long to find. Hasunuma had been a regular customer at her family’s restaurant, Namiki-ya, three years earlier. They also heard that his feelings for Saori were less than wholesome. They concluded that there was a high probability of Saori having been murdered by Hasunuma. They needed to find physical evidence to back that up. They looked everywhere until they did. They found Hasunuma’s company overalls from his former employer. The overalls had bloodstains — very small bloodstains, admittedly — on them. Analysis showed the blood to be Saori’s. As far as the investigation team was concerned, this constituted decisive evidence and they proceeded to arrest Hasunuma.

“Now that brings me to my second question,” said Yukawa, unfurling a second finger.

“Something about this version of events puzzled me from the first time I heard it. Why should Kanichi Hasunuma have hung on to those old overalls so fanatically? Don’t you think that any normal person would have chucked them out after quitting their job and moving to a new part of town? Perhaps you could argue he forgot or just never got around to it, but I still don’t get it.”

“Why are you telling me all this, Professor?” Rumi interrupted. “I’m sure it all makes very good sense, but I’m not competent to answer questions like this.”

Yukawa leaned forward and looked at Rumi as if he could see right into her soul. “Are you quite sure about that?”

“Sure? Why should...?”

“Are you really sure? What if you really do know the answers but you just don’t know that you do?”

Rumi was thoroughly discombobulated. She had no idea what Yukawa was getting at.

“Let’s push on,” said Yukawa. He drew back so he was sitting normally again and raised a third finger.

“The third question. This is the most important one. After Kanichi Hasunuma was arrested for Saori’s murder, he never wavered. He resolutely maintained his silence, exactly as he had done nineteen years earlier. He’d pulled off something similar before so was probably confident that staying silent would be enough for him to avoid being charged. But the police and the prosecutor certainly weren’t going to give up without a fight. There was always the possibility of them coming up with some very powerful piece of evidence. So how did Hasunuma manage to be so laid-back the whole time he was in custody? We know that after his release he bragged to a friend of his that ‘a police confession was the king of evidence and that he’d be fine as long as the king wasn’t around.’ In other words, he was one hundred percent certain that no evidence would be found to prove his guilt. Why was that?”

Lowering the hand with the three raised fingers, Yukawa picked up his teacup, took a sip of tea, and looked at Rumi.

“Well? You’re not going to tell me that you can’t answer my third question, either, are you?”

Rumi felt something give way inside her. It was as if some key part of a foundation had given way. With that having crumbled, the whole superstructure was destined to come crashing down. Yukawa had seen through everything.

“How could Hasunuma be so confident that he would never be charged? Deduction has led me to the only possible answer: It’s because he didn’t kill Saori. More than that, Hasunuma knew who had killed her. Knowing that meant he had the option to make that information public, if he ever found himself well and truly cornered. That’s why he was able to remain silent the whole time.”

Rumi could feel the blood draining from her cheeks. Her whole body went limp. It was a struggle to remain upright in her chair.

“May I continue?” Yukawa asked, sounding rather anxious.

“Yes, go ahead.” Rumi could barely form the words. Her heart was racing, and she was out of breath.

“The question now becomes why Hasunuma did what he did,” Yukawa went on. “I don’t just mean him knowing who really killed Saori and keeping quiet about it. He did something else that is very hard to explain before that. He concealed Saori’s body in a trash house in Shizuoka prefecture. Taken together, these actions make him an accomplice to the actual killer — and a very loyal one at that. But who would Hasunuma be so loyal to?” Yukawa slowly shook his head. “So far, the investigation has failed to find any such person. If it wasn’t loyalty, then what was Hasunuma’s motivation? Only one thing comes to mind: money. He helped the actual killer for the sake of money.”

“No, no, you’re wrong,” Rumi spluttered. “There’s no way you can call anything he did ‘help.’”

“I know what you’re trying to say,” Yukawa said. He restrained Rumi by raising his right hand.

“The actual killer didn’t ask Hasunuma for his help. My theory is that Hasunuma stepped in without being asked. What do I mean by that? I mean that he took Saori’s body and concealed it in the trash house after the actual killer had left the crime scene. Saori’s disappearance caused a lot of pain to a lot of people, but it was no less disturbing to the killer. They had no idea what had happened to the body. Hasunuma subsequently left Kikuno. He kept a watchful eye on the progress of the police investigation to make sure that he wasn’t a suspect. Then he kept a low profile and just waited. For three years — until the statute of limitations for the crime of illegal disposal of a dead body was up.”

Rumi was unable to speak. She needed all her energy simply to breathe. She wanted to run away but her body seemed to be frozen in place.

“Only one person in the whole world knew that the young girl’s corpse was hidden in an eyesore trash house in rural Shizuoka, along with the dead body of the house’s former occupant, an old woman. That person was Hasunuma. The actual killer had no idea. Maybe as time passes, the killer started to forget about Saori—” Having got that far, Yukawa paused and shook his head. “No, that’s not what happened, is it? Let me rephrase that. Her memory never stopped weighing on them.”

You’re right about that, Rumi thought to herself. She hadn’t forgotten about Saori once, even for a minute.

“Once three years had passed, Hasunuma swung into action. The first thing he did was to expose the fact that Saori Namiki had been murdered. How did he do that? You know how. Think of my first question: Why did the trash house burn down? Because Hasunuma deliberately set it on fire. That’s the only possible answer.”

Yukawa’s soft voice resonated deep inside Rumi’s head. She experienced a moment of revelation. So that’s what happened! She had never given it a moment’s thought before now.

“If Hasunuma had killed Saori, would he ever have done anything that resulted in her body being found? By that logic, he wasn’t the arsonist if he was the killer. The Shizuoka Prefectural Police never moved beyond that interpretation of events. However, if instead you posit that Hasunuma set the fire specifically so that the body would be found, you get an answer to the second question: Why did he hang on to the clothing that was stained with Saori’s blood? That, too, was something that he did intentionally. What I am trying to say is that Hasunuma arranged everything in order to be arrested. What does that tell us? Personally, I see the whole series of actions he took as a message to the real killer, that message being: ‘I know what really happened to Saori.’ But if he did know, then why didn’t he come out and say so? Presumably, because he knew that his unusual way of behaving would pile enormous psychological pressure on the actual killer. He was as cunning as he was bold, but he wouldn’t have acted as he did unless he knew that he couldn’t be charged for the crime. He had an ace up his sleeve: He knew the real killer’s identity. Plus, he was emboldened by his successful use of the tactic of silence two decades ago.”

Every word Yukawa uttered in his matter-of-fact way was like an individual piece in a jigsaw puzzle. One after another, he was slotting the pieces into place and they all fit perfectly. Even the gaps, which Rumi herself had never fully understood, were now being filled in.

“I don’t think that Hasunuma was expected to be released under deferment of dispensation. I think he was ready to spend two years in custody until the courts handed him another not-guilty verdict. He wouldn’t have minded. When he got out, he could have demanded compensation, like he did the last time. That could well have been part of his motivation for getting himself arrested. When, rather to his own surprise, he was released, Hasunuma decided to accelerate his plan. How, I am not quite sure, but he contacted the real killer to propose a deal, demanding money in return for not revealing the truth. Deal’s the wrong word; it was more like blackmail.”

Yukawa paused, took a sip of his tea, then returned his cup on its saucer. His cup was empty.

Would you like another? The phrase drifted across Rumi’s mind, but she couldn’t articulate it.

“I don’t know how or why the real killer killed Saori. I imagine that the whole thing was a sudden and unlucky accident, almost as much for the killer as for the victim. If the killer had contacted the police at the time, the problem could have been sorted out without ballooning to its current dimensions. There must, I suppose, have been a reason why the killer couldn’t do that. That would also explain why the killer couldn’t hold out against Hasunuma’s blackmail efforts. It was pretty clear that his demands for money were never going to be a one-off. The awareness that he was going to be hounding them forever provoked the most profound feelings of despair in the killer. It’s heart-wrenching just to imagine their psychological state.”

At some point, Yukawa’s manner had changed. He had gone from pontificating like an academic in a lecture theater to speaking directly to Rumi in a gentler and kindlier tone.

“At that point, the killer got wind of something extraordinary — Yutaro Namiki’s plan to imprison Hasunuma in his room and force the truth out of him. That must have come as a big shock. If the plan succeeded, Hasunuma would reveal the truth. The killers were prepared to do whatever was necessary to prevent that outcome. They devised their own counterplan; they thought it was a silver bullet. The idea was to tie Namiki down with something, then step in and kill Hasunuma themselves. The woman customer who was suddenly taken ill at Namiki-ya — her name was Yamada, wasn’t it?” Yukawa looked hard at Rumi. “Who was she?”

The question, which seemed to have come from nowhere, pierced Rumi like a sharp arrow. It was the final blow. The equilibrium she had only managed to maintain with such difficulty finally broke, and such support mechanisms as she had came crashing down.

“Mrs. Niikura! Mrs. Niikura!” A voice was calling her name. Her eyes snapped open. She had no idea what had happened.

She had slipped off the armchair down onto the floor. She realized that she must have momentarily lost consciousness. Yukawa was down on one knee beside her, looking anxiously into her face. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, yes...” Rumi pulled herself upright and placed a hand on her chest. Her heart was pounding.

“I’m sorry,” Yukawa said. “I got carried away. I talked too much. You need a little rest.”

“No, I’m fine. I need to go to the next room for a moment. I should take my pills.”

“Of course. Take your time.”

Rumi grabbed hold of the armchair and pulled herself to her feet. Tottering slightly, she left the living room and made for the bathroom. The pills the doctor had prescribed were in her sponge bag.

She swallowed a pill and gazed into the mirror above the sink. What she saw was the face of an utterly worn-out middle-aged woman. Her complexion was bad and her skin was sagging.

He wouldn’t like other people to see me looking like this— The thought rekindled her anxiety and she reached again for her toiletry bag.

When Rumi got back to the living room, Yukawa was standing in front of something that was hanging in a frame on the wall. It was a single page of sheet music.

“That’s our debut song,” Rumi said, “from ages ago. We released it just after I became the singer in Niikura’s band. It was our first single after we got picked up by a major label. Sadly, it didn’t sell at all.”

“An important first step in your career,” said Yukawa. He turned to Rumi and his eyes widened in surprise. “I don’t know what medicine you took, but it certainly works fast! All the color’s come back to your face. You look quite different.”

Rumi managed a rueful smile.

“All I did was fix my makeup. When you’re looking in the mirror to do your face, your mind goes completely blank. It’s good therapy. Probably works better than any stupid drug.”

“It certainly looks like that,” Yukawa agreed.

“How about some more tea? I’ll make a fresh pot.”

“I’d love some.”

“When I bring the tea” — Rumi looked straight into Yukawa’s eyes — “it’s your turn to listen to me, okay?”

Yukawa blinked with embarrassment, then smiled broadly. “If you’re happy with me as your audience.”

Rumi grinned back at him, then headed for the kitchen. Halfway across the room, she stopped and turned around.

“Are you interested in the language of flowers? Tea is a flowering plant, so it has its own meaning.”

“Really? No, I didn’t know. What does it mean?”

“Tea signifies remembrance and also pure love.”

Yukawa looked slightly nonplussed.

“I’ll just be a couple of minutes,” Rumi said. She went out to the kitchen.

46

Everything was going well. Their darling — the treasure that the gods of music had bestowed upon them — was about to set the world alight. As the moment came ever closer, Rumi was savoring every minute of every day. Contemplating her husband — his eyes shining like an enthusiastic teenager’s whenever he spoke about Saori — she felt a happiness that was almost tangible.

There was just one shadow on her life: Tomoya Takagaki.

She had seen him a few times at Namiki-ya, where he seemed to be one of the regulars. Eventually, they had exchanged a few words of chitchat. He was a polite and handsome young man.

What bothered Rumi was the way he looked at Saori. On second thought, no, perhaps that wasn’t the problem. Given Saori’s looks, men couldn’t help finding her attractive.

The problem was more on Saori’s side. She gave every indication of being in love with Tomoya Takagaki. Even if no one else had noticed, Rumi was certain of it. She couldn’t pinpoint why she was so sure; perhaps it was just women’s intuition.

Now of all times, she thought bitterly. Plenty of people in the creative arts like to maintain that there’s nothing like falling in love for boosting one’s powers of expression. The reality is rather more nuanced than that. As often as not, infatuation means a much-reduced level of commitment. Because Saori’s talent was still a work in progress, the Niikuras had always managed her life quite strictly. They wanted to keep her focused on her training and stop her attention being diverted into other channels.

Things now seemed to be moving in the direction that Rumi most dreaded. Something had changed in Saori soon after her high school graduation. Rumi had guessed that Saori was going out with Tomoya Takagaki, even though Saori hadn’t said a word to anybody.

Rumi couldn’t bring herself to tell her husband. He had no idea what was going on, and finding out would be a shock. As far as he was concerned, his darling pupil’s sole interest was singing — and absolutely nothing outside that.

For a long time, she was uncertain what to do. Eventually, she decided to put Saori on the spot. When Rumi asked her if she was in a relationship with Tomoya Takagaki, the girl admitted it immediately. “Oh, you could tell, could you?” Sticking out her tongue playfully, Saori failed to show any sign of guilt.

“This is a crucial moment in your life. I need you to show a little self-restraint,” Rumi said. “I’m not ordering you to break up with him. Make your professional debut and develop some momentum. Once that’s safely out of the way, then whatever happens afterward— Well, it’s your life and you can do as you please. For the time being at least, focus on your singing lessons. You want to make it as a pro, don’t you?”

Saori nodded miserably and said that yes, she did. Rumi was worried: She didn’t believe Saori was being sincere. For all she knew, Saori was just kicking herself for not concealing the relationship better.

Rumi’s guess proved right. One day, when an errand took her to Shibuya, she spotted Saori walking happily arm in arm with Tomoya Takagaki. The problem was that Saori had canceled her voice lesson that day, on the pretext of having to visit a friend in the hospital.

Rumi confronted Saori the very next day. Was she serious about wanting to become a pro?

The response Rumi got wasn’t what she had been expecting. “As far I’m concerned, the time I spend with Tomoya matters every bit as much as my dreams of becoming a singer,” Saori said. “Why do we all work so hard to realize our dreams? Because we think our dreams are going to make us happy. For me, though, right now, all I need to be happy is to be with Tomoya. What’s the point of me sacrificing my happiness now just to get my hands on some other form of happiness in the future?”

Rumi was blindsided. She felt dizzy. Saori’s relationship was nothing more than a silly little fling with an immature boy. How could she compare anything so trivial to their grand project of achieving global success? It was a dream that meant everything to Naoki. Rumi felt that Saori was trampling his feelings underfoot.

She and Naoki had the highest opinion of Saori’s talents, Rumi said. All they wanted was for Saori to fulfill her own natural potential. She was almost begging now.

Saori said that she’d gotten the message. But had she?

After that, Rumi was more worried than ever about what was going on in Saori’s private life. She would interrogate her when she failed to show up for practice. She would ask her where she was going whenever she went out.

Soon after the turn of the year, Niikura remarked that there was something “not quite right” about Saori. She didn’t seem completely serious about her lessons.

“We’re almost ready to launch Saori’s career, but I don’t think that her heart’s in it like before. Still, I always thought she’d go through a phase like this. I should probably give her a good talking to.”

Rumi felt a surge of irritation. What was he saying? Managing Saori’s personal life was her responsibility.

And then that day—

It was late in the afternoon when she called Saori to arrange a meeting. She only said that “there was something important they needed to discuss,” but Saori seemed to know instinctively what it was about. From the tone of her voice, Rumi could imagine the sulky look on her face.

Rumi wasn’t sure where the best place for their heart-to-heart would be. She didn’t want anyone eavesdropping on them. Saori said that she’d rather meet outdoors than indoors, so they settled on a little out-of-the-way park.

When Rumi got there, the park was deserted, perhaps because of the ongoing construction work. There were no houses in the vicinity. The whole area was silent, lifeless.

The two women sat down side by side on a bench and Rumi got straight to business. Niikura had finally twigged that something was going on. Saori needed to start seeing less of her boyfriend.

Saori said nothing and just stared at the ground for a while. Then she raised her head and looked at Rumi. The intensity of her gaze made Rumi almost flinch. She felt a heavy sense of foreboding.

“I just... I’m going to give it up,” Saori said.

Niikura didn’t understand what she meant. “Give it up?... Give what up?”

“Trying to be a singer.” Saori moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “I give up. I quit.”

It took a while to register. Although she had heard the words, on an intuitive level she refused to understanding their meaning.

“What are you talking about?” Rumi’s voice was shaking. Her whole world had been turned upside down. “Quit? You’ve got to be joking.”

Saori shook her head. Her face was serene.

“I mean it. I’ve had enough. I want to take another path.”

“Another path? Apart from singing, what other path is there for you?”

Saori smiled tenderly. What she said next was a complete bolt from the blue.

“I’m going to be a mother. I’m going to have a baby and start a beautiful family.”

“A baby?” Rumi looked at Saori’s belly. “You’re not saying...?”

“Yes, I did a test this morning. It was positive. I haven’t told Tomoya yet. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled; he’s been after me to marry him.”

Saori spoke with vivacity, but what Rumi saw was a demented person. What was the stupid little girl saying?

“Hang on a minute, Saori. You need to think this through. Do you know what you’re saying? A baby... at a time like this... Why? You’re about to make your professional debut. This is the most important moment of your career...”

“Don’t you get it? I won’t be making any debut. You’re the one who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

Saori giggled. Being laughed at only made Rumi angrier.

“Do you seriously... do you seriously think we’ll let you do that? Have you no idea of what we’ve done for you? Everything humanly possible to turn you into a top-level singer — that’s what we’ve done. My husband sacrificed everything for you... Do you really think he’ll just roll over and abandon his dreams? Have you no respect for our hard work?”

Seeing that Rumi was genuinely angry, Saori apologized.

“I’m sorry. And thank you. I am grateful to both of you. I’m sure I can put this experience to use in other aspects of my life in the future.”

“I don’t care about your life or your future. What’s going to happen to our dreams? We’re the ones who took a chance on you...”

Saori frowned. “Isn’t that a bit weird?” she asked, tilting her head to one side.

“Weird? What is?”

“Why am I supposed to realize your dreams for you? Mr. Niikura is always telling me that I’ll succeed where you couldn’t. But I never signed up to provide a happy ending for your life story. I just wanted to sing, in my way and without any baggage. I think I’ve got every right to change course, if my own dreams change.”

Rumi glared at Saori. “You ungrateful little bitch, how could you...?”

“Fine,” said Saori, an icy expression on her face. “I’ll have a frank talk with Mr. Niikura. I’ll apologize to him. Or are you going to tell me to have an abortion? I’m warning you, that’s something I’ll never do.”

Rumi panicked when she saw Saori pulling out her phone. “What are you doing?”

“Like I said, I’m going to call Mr. Niikura. I’ll be completely up-front. I’ll tell him everything.”

“Wait, just hang on a minute.”

She made a grab for Saori’s phone. She didn’t want Niikura to have to hear this. She had to do something—

“Don’t do this. Please, let’s work something out. There’s got to be a way. Go ahead. Have the baby. Enjoy motherhood. Just, please, please, don’t give up singing.”

“Please, shut up! I’m not quitting singing because I have to. I’m quitting to follow another path that will make me happy. Stop shoving your dreams down my throat. Why should I have to work through your hang-ups for you? It creeps me out.”

They had both risen to their feet as they fought for the phone.

“Creeps you out?” Rumi’s eyes were wide open. “What do you mean...?”

“Exactly what I said. I feel like I can’t breathe. It’s like having a couple of stalkers watching every move I make.”

It was at this point that Rumi lost her capacity for rational thought. All the work that the two of them had put into the girl and she compared them to — of all things — stalkers!

“How dare you!” She shoved Saori backward as hard as she could. The girl’s heel must have snagged on something, because she just keeled over. Rumi heard a muffled thunk.

Expecting Saori to get back up, Rumi drew her hand back in readiness to fetch her an almighty slap on the cheek. That was how angry she was.

But Saori didn’t move. She just stayed on the ground, flat on her back, arms and legs splayed. Rumi called her name, peered into her face. Her eyes were half-open, but she didn’t respond, even when Rumi shook her. Oh God, no! she thought. She held her hand a little above Saori’s mouth. She wasn’t breathing.

At that moment, she realized what she had done.

She had caused Saori’s death. She had killed her—

Her mind went blank, then plunged into violent confusion. Barely aware of what she was doing, she ran away from the park. Her capacity for rational thought had deserted her; the only thing she could think about was how on earth she was going to explain what had happened to her husband.

Her despair only deepened, as she wandered aimlessly around. The police would probably arrest her. Niikura’s life would be thrown into disruption. Worst of all, she could never justify having taken the life of his protégée, the girl who made his life worth living.

I should kill myself. It’s the only way to make amends. How shall I do it? Where? Jumping off a building is probably easiest.

She was just wondering if there were any tall buildings nearby, when she heard the sound of an ambulance siren in the distance. Had someone found Saori’s body? Were they taking her to the hospital? The park was probably crawling with people by now.

Next thing she knew, she was walking back toward the park. In her mind’s eye, she pictured a cluster of parked police cars. The police would have no trouble identifying her as the killer. I must kill myself before they get around to it, Rumi thought.

When she got close to the park, there was no commotion of any kind, nor were there any police cars. The ambulance she had heard, she realized, had nothing to do with her.

Full of apprehension, she made her way to where she had pushed Saori to the ground. Her legs were trembling uncontrollably. Awareness of the enormity of what she had done made it hard to breathe.

However—

Saori’s body was no longer there. Had she got the place wrong? She looked around. It was nowhere to be seen.

Rumi was mystified. What the hell was going on? Where had Saori’s body got to?

She was looking down when she noticed something glinting on the ground. She picked it up. It was a gold hair slide in the shape of a butterfly. She remembered that Saori had been wearing it. It must have come off when she fell over.

What if I was too quick to decide Saori was dead? Perhaps she was just unconscious. Perhaps she came to, got up, and has walked off somewhere. If anyone had found her, the police would definitely be here.

The more Rumi thought about it, the more plausible it felt. She called Saori on her cell. She had to apologize for lashing out like that. But she couldn’t get through. She wondered if Saori had switched off her phone on purpose.

Unsure what to think, Rumi started walking home. Saori had a singing lesson scheduled for the next day. Maybe she wouldn’t show. Maybe Niikura would get annoyed. That was the last thing she cared about now. All that mattered was to establish that Saori was safe and well as fast as possible.

Niikura got back home late that night. A good meeting about Saori’s imminent debut had left him in high spirits. Rumi’s heart ached at the sight of him. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him that Saori had decided to abandon her dreams of becoming a singer.

Her anguish then was nothing compared to what came later. She shuddered with horror when her husband got a call from Yutaro Namiki late that night. “Saori went out this evening and isn’t back yet,” Niikura told her after hanging up.

Rumi fell into a full-blown panic. She was completely bewildered. Seeing the state she was in, Niikura thought that concern for Saori’s welfare was behind it. “There’s no need to worry,” he said to comfort her. “She’ll turn up right as rain, I’m sure.”

When the next day came and Saori was still missing, the police launched a proper investigation into her whereabouts. Rumi knew that she ought to tell the police about what had happened, but she couldn’t bring herself to do so. It was just too painful to have to tell Niikura about Saori’s change of heart — and she wanted to keep her own bad behavior secret. She kept assuring herself that there was no link between what she’d done and Saori’s disappearance.

That was how Saori vanished. Rumi never knew what had happened to her. The sight of her husband — who had lost the great dream and purpose of his life — was a torment to her, but she kept her mouth shut. She persuaded herself that saying nothing about what had happened that night was better.

More than three years went by. With the passing of time, Rumi’s memories of the event became hazier. While she never forgot what had happened between her and Saori, she began to feel that it wasn’t quite real; that something from a dream had got mixed up with reality.

About six months ago, her worst nightmare was proven to be true. Saori was indeed dead. Her body had been found — and in a most unlikely place: a burned-out trash house in a small town in Shizuoka.

With no idea what was going on, Rumi and her husband just looked on as events unfolded. The police soon arrested a man by the name of Hasunuma. They were almost certain that he was the killer.

Rumi cast her mind back to that. What on earth had happened after she pushed Saori to the ground and left the park?

No further information came to light. Throughout his time in custody, Hasunuma remained doggedly silent. In the end, the police just let him go. At the news of his release, Niikura exploded with rage. “I want to kill the guy myself,” became a verbal tic with him.

Rumi found the whole thing baffling. If the police had bothered to arrest Hasunuma in the first place, they must have had evidence. So why had they subsequently let him go?

A phone call Rumi received not long after rendered all those questions moot. The caller was a man who introduced himself as her “savior.”

He sounded like a creep. Rumi was about to hang up, but the caller must have sensed that. “Cut me off and things could get very awkward for you. I know what you did to Saori Namiki on that night three years ago,” he said.

“You’ve probably heard my name, if nothing else,” he continued. “I’m Kanichi Hasunuma. I was accused of murder. My reputation was destroyed. And I almost got sent to jail. When it should have been you.”

Rumi was dumbstruck. Hasunuma snickered under his breath.

“Shocked? I know. I bet you thought the whole business was over and you were done with it. You thought it had all been laid to rest. Well, that’s not how it is. You’re still the star of this show. Or maybe it’s more like your star turn is only just getting started: your performance in the role of Saori Namiki’s murderer. Don’t tell me that it slipped your mind. You knocked the girl down and killed her right there. I was — ha, ha, ha — watching. The whole thing. Including the bit where you ran away. I didn’t report you to the police. What do you think I did? I took the body away. I took it and I stashed it some place where no one was ever going to find it. It’s thanks to me that the police haven’t come knocking on your door. They never suspected you — because I kept my mouth shut. I think I’ve said enough for you to get what happened.”

“But why?... Why did you hide the body?”

“Huh? You’d have preferred if I didn’t? You’d have liked it better if the body had been found, and you’d been arrested for murder? You think I should have minded my own business? What I saw that night was a business opportunity that I wasn’t willing to let pass by.”

“A business opportunity?”

“That’s right, business. Come on. Don’t tell me you thought I got rid of the body and kept my mouth shut out of the pure goodness of my heart? No one’s that stupid. I did what I did because I saw money in it.”

Every word he uttered was like a fragment of darkness that stuck to her body. If it went on, she’d be reduced to a black lump.

“Which is why you’ll be fine,” said Hasunuma in a chirpy tone that was the antithesis of Rumi’s own despair. “The police aren’t going to arrest you. No one knows the truth. The girl’s family, the general public — they’ll all keep right on thinking that I’m the one who offed her. As long as you accept my deal, that is. Still, I’m hardly expecting you to turn me down.”

As Hasunuma went on, Rumi finally realized what he was after.

“Me... uh... what do you want me to do?”

Hasunuma snickered quietly. “Something ever so easy. For you, at least.”

Rumi had chosen Darjeeling for their second cup of tea. Its strong aroma would give her a psychological boost, she felt. She took it straight with no milk or lemon. She emptied her cup to the last drop and returned it to the saucer.

“He demanded a payment of one million yen,” Rumi said. “He instructed me to open a new account under my own name, transfer the money to it, then post him the ATM card and the PIN code.”

“One million yen,” echoed Yukawa. “It’s an odd sum to ask for. I feel bad saying this, but wasn’t it rather less than you’d expected?”

“Yes, it was. I’d been expecting a demand of ten or twenty million, perhaps even in the hundreds of millions.”

“If he’d come straight out and demanded one hundred million, what would you have done?”

Rumi cocked her head to one side. “I couldn’t have paid.”

“Would you have told your husband?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps I’d have just thrown in the towel and turned myself in to the police. No, that’s wrong. Most likely—” Rumi drew in a breath, then went on. “Most likely, I’d have killed myself.”

“I believe you. Either way, there was no advantage there for Hasunuma. A million yen was a different story, though. He probably thought that a million was the kind of sum that a woman who belonged to a wealthy family could raise with relative ease. He saw it as a sum you’d be happy to pay as a stopgap, even if the whole blackmail thing was unsettling.”

Yukawa had guessed right. Not knowing how to respond to him, Rumi just hung her head in silence.

“So you gave him what he wanted?”

“Yes.” Her voice was weak and hoarse.

“Did he make a second demand?”

“He did. About one month later. And for the same amount: one million yen.”

“And you paid that, too?”

“Yes. I was too much of a coward to go to the police or to talk to my husband. I just kept procrastinating, even though I knew I couldn’t keep that up indefinitely. I felt more dead than alive — particularly after Hasunuma moved back to Kikuno.”

“Did Hasunuma contact you by phone? Or did you sometimes meet face-to-face?”

Rumi hesitated. “Just the one time. When he asked me for something else. Not cash.”

“Something other than cash?” Her meaning dawned on Yukawa as he repeated what she had said. “Oh, I see. Well, we don’t need to go into that.”

“Thank you,” Rumi replied.

It had happened shortly before Hasunuma moved back to Kikuno. He told Rumi that he needed to talk to her in person, so they arranged a meeting in central Tokyo.

“You and me, we’re coconspirators. It’s a bond we have in common. I really think we should get to know each other better.” As Hasunuma said this, there was something vile and clammy not just in his voice but in his eyes, which ran over Rumi’s body as if licking her all over. “You’re not going to say no, are you?”

About one hour later, in a cheap hotel room, Rumi surrendered herself to the vilest man in the world. She did her utmost to keep her mind a blank and just waited for the experience to end.

When they finally parted, as she fled from Hasunuma as fast as she could, his words still rang in her ears: Not bad for a woman on the wrong side of forty. She seriously started thinking about killing herself again.

“I was desperate when — just as you described, Professor — my husband came to me with that unexpected proposal. I got goose bumps when he told me about Tojima’s plan. My whole life would be destroyed if Hasunuma ever told the truth. And it wasn’t just my life — my husband’s life would be wrecked, too. He must have noticed I was behaving strangely, because he asked me what was wrong. I was in two minds, but eventually I realized I couldn’t keep my secret to myself anymore. I told him everything.”

47

He’d found no mention of what he was looking for despite having read through the entire newspaper. The incident had taken place in Kikuno, an insignificant place that most people had never even heard of. The headline MURDER SUSPECT IS HIMSELF MURDERED had briefly trended on the internet, but public attention was fickle and quick to move on.

That’s something to be grateful for, thought Naoki Niikura. He didn’t want anyone to be interested in his case. Anyway, he could sum the whole thing up more succinctly: Musician manqué targets suspect in killing of protégée — and ends up killing him.

He neatly folded the newspaper he had finished reading and laid it on the carpeted floor. The free newspapers were one nice thing about the detention center.

He sat down, leaned his back against the wall, and reached for the digital music player beside him. It was a present from Rumi. He slipped on the headphones and switched the player on. He looked over toward the door. When he was sitting, he could avoid making eye contact with anyone else thanks to the opaque cover on the little window by the cell door. His room was eighty square feet in size, and, fortunately for him, he was the only detainee in it. He had expected to have to share his cell with several other people. Finding himself alone like this had been a great relief.

He knew the song he was listening to well: “I Will Always Love You.” It had started as a country song and gone on to become a worldwide megahit for Whitney Houston.

But it was Rumi who was singing the version in Niikura’s headphones. She had recorded it when she was still in her twenties.

Her voice had a wonderful purity and she knew how to sustain a note. Even if Saori had been a musical genius, Rumi’s talents were hardly inferior. It was his lack of ability that had been the problem; he had failed to foster her talent to its full potential.

Closing his eyes, he tried to remember the days when he and Rumi had been battling to make their names in the music world. Instead, all that came back to him was that one episode on that one particular day: the time when Rumi told him the truth about Saori’s death.

As he listened to Rumi’s tearful account, Niikura experienced a strange sensation. He felt that somewhere off to one side, a second self was watching the scene — of an oblivious, carefree husband absorbing his wife’s shocking confession — with complete detachment. This must be what depersonalization disorder is all about, he was thinking in one corner of his mind.

Reflecting on it later, he understood that the whole situation had been so brutal that he had been psychologically incapable of accepting it.

Rumi’s story was hard to believe and hard to come to terms with. He could feel himself blinking incredulously throughout her account. He wanted to believe that the whole story was no more than a fantasy that his wife had invented to give him a nasty shock, but her racking sobs showed that she wasn’t playacting.

After she finished, he was unable to speak for a while. He had the sensation that the whole world had been turned on its head, pitching him into some deep, dark hole.

“I’m so sorry, so sorry,” Rumi kept repeating, her voice weak through her tears. Niikura stared at her in blank amazement — while his second self calmly looked on.

“Why did you do it?”

That idiotic question was the first thing that came out of his mouth when he finally recovered the power of speech. But hadn’t Rumi just painstakingly explained the reason why? She had done it because she wanted to keep Saori on her current career path. Why did she want that? Because she believed that making a global singing sensation of Saori was their — no, was her beloved husband’s dearest wish and the whole goal of his life.

“Darling?” Rumi raised her head. Her eyes were bloodshot, their rims red and puffy. Her cheeks were damp with tears. “What should I do? Should I turn myself in?”

Although that was exactly what he thought she should do, Niikura couldn’t bring himself to say it. Besides, he could never accept his wife being arrested for Saori’s murder. Kanichi Hasunuma was the sole culprit. That was what everyone else believed. And that was why they had all banded together to give him the punishment he deserved.

That was when Niikura had an idea.

He knew that Yutaro Namiki was planning to extract the truth from Hasunuma. What if he stymied that plan and killed Hasunuma instead? Namiki and the others would all be surprised and shocked. That was unavoidable. Still, thought Niikura, if he said that he had felt compelled to avenge Saori, they would probably come around to his side.

On the other hand, if Hasunuma managed to make it through the whole ordeal — standing firm against Namiki’s threats and not revealing the truth about Saori — then he would just go back to blackmailing Rumi. Whichever way you looked at it, Hasunuma was a problem he had to deal with once and for all.

If the police found out that he’d killed Hasunuma — then so be it. It was highly unlikely and besides, this was a crime he wouldn’t really mind being arrested for. Public opinion would probably be with him. No, the only thing that mattered was concealing the fact that Rumi had caused Saori’s death.

Deep inside his eardrums, Rumi was singing “I Will Always Love You.” I will always love you: That was how he felt about her, too.

His mind was made up. He would protect Rumi, come what may.

48

“Tojima talked my husband through his plan. It was complicated, with a large number of people each playing a small part in the crime. Yutaro Namiki was supposed to be on his own when he interrogated Hasunuma, trapped in his little room. My husband’s idea was to engineer a situation where he got to take over from Namiki.” Noticing that Yukawa’s cup was empty, Rumi paused. “Would you like some more tea?” Yukawa guessed that she could be calm and rational now because, having made up her mind what to do, she was under less psychological pressure than before.

“No, thanks. I’m okay.” Yukawa waved his hand over his cup. “Please, go on.”

“A few minutes ago, you mentioned the trick he came up with. He was quite sure that Namiki wouldn’t be able to turn down a sick customer who begged to be taken to the hospital.”

“Which is where Mrs. Yamada comes in.” There was a glint in Yukawa’s eyes. “Who was she?”

“To be honest,” Rumi said, “we don’t know her real name.”

“I’m sorry?” Yukawa’s eyes widened behind his spectacles.

“We got her through one of those rent-a-family agencies.”

Yukawa knitted his brows. “What on earth’s that?”

“They’re sometimes called family rental or proxy family agencies. What they do, basically, is to provide actors to perform whatever family roles a client might need. Like, if for some reason you can’t take get your real parents to meet your girlfriend or boyfriend, they’ll arrange for a couple of actors to play the part of your mom and dad.”

“What a business model... Amazing!”

“They don’t just supply family members. They can provide people who perform all sorts of roles: posing as your boss when you have to visit a client to formally apologize for some work-related mistake; phony audience members for an author’s book signing. The list goes on.”

“And Mrs. Yamada was an actor from an agency like that?”

“Yes. The story we fed her was that we were doing a surprise inspection of the crisis-management capacity of restaurants in the Kikuno shopping district.”

“That’s pretty plausible. Good thinking on your part.”

“The plan went off even better than we expected. Hasunuma was asleep by the time my husband got to the hut. What he said about making a racket and shouting to wake him up — that was just a lie. He just went straight ahead and started tipping the liquid nitrogen into the room. The liquid nitrogen turned out to be a far deadlier weapon than he thought. He didn’t hear a sound from inside the room; no groans, no cries, nothing. When he had tipped the whole container into the room, he opened the door. Hasunuma was already in a state of cardiac arrest.”

“If he was already asleep when the liquid nitrogen started coming into the room, he probably never woke up.”

Rumi took a deep breath. She seemed quite reinvigorated.

“That’s all I can tell you. Sorry, my explanation was probably all over the place.”

“Not at all. You’ve been a model of clarity.”

“I hope I can do a better job,” Rumi said, “when I go to the police. I want to be clear about a few points — like how everything my husband did, he did for me.”

Yukawa’s face clouded. “Are you planning to turn yourself in?”

“Isn’t that why you’re here? To make me?”

“Far from it,” said Yukawa, with a shake of his head. He spoke with startling emphasis.

“I’m not a detective. I’ve got no legal authority to take a statement from you. I made that clear right from the start: that I didn’t want you to say anything that works to your disadvantage. I told you that you had a choice.”

“Will you tell the police what I...?”

“I have no intention of telling the police anything. My sense is that, as long as I don’t say anything, they’ll struggle to work out the truth. Perhaps, though, I’m just being conceited.”

Rumi ran her tongue over her lips. “You mean you’ll keep quiet about me?” she said.

“The idea of people I like all being sent to jail doesn’t appeal to me. As things stand, Mr. Niikura will get a sentence of at least three years for manslaughter. Considering who the victim was, that seems reasonable to me.”

Yukawa looked away for a moment. Then he went on: “Something like this happened to me once before and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. There was this man who took on the responsibility for a murder committed by the woman he was in love with. When I revealed the truth of what he’d done, the woman’s conscience got the better of her, which undermined the man’s acts of self-sacrifice. Frankly, I have no desire to go through anything like that again.”

Yukawa’s expression, as he delivered this explanation, was grave. Abruptly, he broke into a self-deprecating laugh and began to shake his head.

“You’re probably wondering why I bothered coming. If I’m not here to encourage you to turn yourself in, then what need do I have to ascertain the truth? I should just keep my thoughts to myself. That’s fine, but there is something I absolutely have to share with you — a crucial piece of information that I’m aware of and you’re not.”

Uncertain what the professor was going to say next, Rumi frowned and tilted her head quizzically to one side. “What might that be?”

“I need to ask you a question first,” said Yukawa. “In your account, you mentioned that Saori had a hair clip, a hair clip in the shape of a golden butterfly...”

“You mean the hair slide?”

“Yes. You said you found it on the ground near where Saori fell. Have you got it here in the house?”

“I do, but...”

“Could I see it?”

“The hair slide?”

“Yes,” replied Yukawa.

Rumi got to her feet. She had no idea where this line of inquiry was going. “Wait a minute,” she said.

She went into the master bedroom and walked over to the dresser. She opened the bottommost drawer and extracted a small box that was shoved right to the back. She hadn’t opened the box even once in the past three years. She had no idea what to do with the thing, but she couldn’t even think of getting rid of it.

She took it back to the living room. “Here it is,” she said. When she handed it to Yukawa, she was startled to see that he had put on white gloves.

“Let’s have a good look.” Yukawa took off the lid and plucked the hair slide out of the box. The gold had lost none of its shine over the past three years.

Yukawa inspected the hair slide with great care. He then put it back in the box and replaced the lid on the box. As he pulled off his gloves, he turned to Rumi with a satisfied look on his face. “I was right.”

“Right about what?”

“Your account of events was one hundred percent true. Not a single falsehood in it.”

“Of course there wasn’t. Why would I be lying at this stage?”

“The important thing is this: What you believe to be the truth and the actual truth are not necessarily the same thing. Until you know the difference, you can’t make the choice that will decide your fate.” Laying his white gloves on the table, Yukawa used the tip of one finger to adjust the position of his glasses on his nose, then looked directly at Rumi. “I will tell you the real truth: the truth as I deduced it.”

49

When he opened the door, Yukawa was sitting at the far end of the counter, chatting with the gray-haired bartender. Both men turned to look at Kusanagi. “Good evening, sir,” the bartender said.

Apart from a couple seated at a table, there were no other customers. Kusanagi walked over, sat down next to Yukawa, and ordered a Wild Turkey on the rocks.

“Got something to celebrate?” Yukawa asked. “Well, as long as you’re not drinking to drown your sorrows, it’s all good.”

“I’m somewhere between the two poles.” Kusanagi took a long rectangular package out of his bag and put it on the counter in front of Yukawa. “First things first. I want to give you this.”

“What’s this? From the shape, I’d have to say a bottle of wine.”

“It’s one I’ve been meaning — and failing — to give you for years now.”

“Opus One? Oh, very nice. Received with thanks.” Yukawa took the box and put it into the bag on the seat beside him.

A lowball glass arrived in front of Kusanagi. He picked it up and Yukawa lifted his tumbler. The two men gently clinked glasses.

Kusanagi took a sip of his bourbon on the rocks. He felt it burn his tongue, then his throat before the aroma burst in his nose. “Naoki Niikura retracted his statement.”

“Really? How did that happen?”

“You don’t sound very surprised.”

“Should I be?”

Kusanagi snorted. “I got a report yesterday from the investigators who are surveilling the Niikuras’ place. A guest showed up there. The investigators sent me a photo. It was you. You were in there, talking to the wife, for over an hour, they said. This morning, Rumi Niikura came to the Kikuno Police Station to see her husband. ‘Five minutes is all I need. Just let me speak to my husband alone,’ she said. Normally the custodial officer has to be in the room during visits, but given that Niikura had already made a full and frank confession, he went to have a word with the station commander who agreed to bend the rules. Because of that, we have no idea what passed between the two of them in that room. The upshot was that at his next interview, Naoki Niikura came out and said that all the testimony he had provided us with so far was false. He hadn’t killed Hasunuma accidentally; he had murdered him, and he had done so intentionally. Cue general consternation. It’s common enough for a suspect who’s admitted to murder to deny having the intent to kill, but the opposite — that’s something I’ve never encountered before.”

“His motive for the murder?”

“To protect his wife. ‘Ask her, if you want to know more,’ he said.”

“And did you?”

“You bet we did. We summoned Rumi Niikura to the station immediately. She was quite calm. When we informed her that her husband had changed his statement, she briefly appeared saddened, but she soon started talking, very much as if she’d made up her mind to do so. I was surprised at how coherent her explanation was. As for the content, I found it downright astonishing.”

Rumi Niikura’s account completely upended the police’s previous understanding of the case. From Saori Namiki’s unnatural death onward, the truth was very far from anything that Kusanagi and his team had imagined.

Rumi Niikura’s story contained no contradictions or inconsistencies. If anything, her account actually helped clear up many trivial questions the investigation team had.

“What a disaster!” said Kusanagi, raising his glass. “We all started wondering ourselves what the hell we’d been doing these last few months. That’s why I said I was halfway between celebrating and drowning my sorrows. I believe we’ve now solved the case. I have absolutely no sense of victory. Our strategy was completely off target. We won only because our opponent gifted us a goal.”

“Who cares? A win’s a win.”

“It’s not quite that simple. There are still a few loose ends we need to tidy up. The thing I find puzzling is why the Niikuras decided to tell the truth at this particular moment. It’s obvious enough that their meeting at the police station this morning was extremely significant. Unfortunately, neither the husband nor the wife are willing to tell us what they discussed, citing their right to privacy.

“That was when I realized that my only option was to ask you.” Kusanagi twisted around to look at Yukawa. “What was it that Rumi Niikura went to tell her husband? What did she say to him that made him decide to retract his statement? I know you know. No, let me rephrase that. You masterminded this whole thing. It’s you who got the two of them to change their minds. Am I right?”

Yukawa took a sip of whiskey and shook his head. “I did no such thing.”

“Liar.”

“I’m not lying. It’s certainly true that yesterday I told Mrs. Niikura my theories about the truth of the case. My goal was neither to condemn them nor to inspire them to turn themselves in. I just wanted to let them know the truth about something that I was pretty sure they didn’t know.”

“And what particular truth was that?”

Yukawa took a couple of deep breaths to settle himself. “It was something to do with Saori Namiki’s death.”

Kusanagi pulled a sour face. “You’re not going to tell me that Rumi Niikura’s statement was false, are you?”

“Her testimony covered only what she knew. That doesn’t necessarily imply that it was all true.”

It was a comment that Kusanagi had to take seriously. He looked around the bar. “Shall we go somewhere else?”

“Here’ll be fine. No one’s listening.”

Kusanagi moved his face closer to Yukawa’s. “Go on, then. Tell me.”

“The question is,” Yukawa began, “when did the bleeding occur?”

“The bleeding?”

“You decided to arrest Hasunuma after finding traces of Saori’s blood on his old work overalls. Now, in a bad case of a depressed skull fracture like this, significant blood loss is par for the course. Okay then, shouldn’t blood have been found at the crime scene? The day after Saori disappeared, the local police conducted a search over a wide area. They would have taken the discovery of any blood on the ground very seriously indeed. I got Utsumi to check the records. The police did examine the little park, but in the record there was no mention of them finding any bloodstains. Then there’s Rumi’s own testimony to consider. In a state of shock from having caused Saori’s death, she absconded from the crime scene for a period. After going back there, she was unsure where the body had been until she came across the hair slide. Both these pieces of information tend to suggest that there was no blood on the ground, don’t they?”

“There was no blood — which means that...” Kusanagi had seen what Yukawa was trying to suggest. “Which means that Saori’s body wasn’t bleeding when Hasunuma removed it from the park.”

“You said ‘body.’ I wonder if that’s the appropriate word.”

“Saori wasn’t yet dead; she was still breathing — you think that’s a possibility?”

“No, I think it’s an extremely high possibility. People can die instantly when they’re shoved to the ground — but it’s not very likely. The same is true for a depressed skull fracture — is the human skull really quite so fragile? Is such an injury likely from merely being pushed over? Rumi Niikura told us that Saori wasn’t breathing. I think it’s highly probable that in her distress she just imagined that she wasn’t.”

“Which would mean that the person who really killed Saori...”

“Hasunuma may well have thought that she was dead, too. To start with, at least. But what if Saori regained consciousness while Hasunuma had her in his car? His whole ingenious plan would be wrecked. And he wouldn’t want her making a noise and attracting attention, either.”

“So he finishes her off by striking her on the back of her head,” said Kusanagi. “And you think that’s when the bleeding occurred?”

“As a theory, it’s not inconceivable”

“It’s not inconceivable at all... God, this is just too horrible.” Kusanagi felt the heat surging through his body in a wave.

“If I were Rumi Niikura’s lawyer, I’d definitely produce the hair slide as evidence in her favor,” Yukawa said.

“Sorry, what hair slide?”

“There was a gold hair slide at the crime scene. If Saori was bleeding after she hit the ground, the hair slide ought to have traces of blood on it. If analysis failed to detect any blood, then the lawyer could argue that someone else must have dealt the fatal blow.”

“Right, I see...”

Kusanagi consulted his watch. It wasn’t yet midnight. Reaching into his jacket pocket for his phone, he started to get to his feet. Yukawa grabbed Kusanagi’s arm to stop him.

“Not at this time of night! Come on, let your people have a decent night’s sleep. The hair slide isn’t going anywhere. Rumi’s got it safe.”

“I guess you’re right,” conceded Kusanagi, lowering himself back into his chair. He knocked back what remained of his bourbon and ordered another from the bartender.

“What you mentioned earlier — the truth that even the Niikuras didn’t know. Was that it?”

“Yes,” Yukawa said. “Whether or not they come clean about their actions is their choice to make. But that choice is meaningless unless they know the real truth. That’s why I went to tell Rumi Niikura.”

“And you guessed that Rumi Niikura would want to talk to her husband about it. Sure enough, off she goes to see him this morning...”

“Rumi was conflicted. As things stood, her husband was only going to be charged with manslaughter. Telling the truth results in that charge being bumped up to murder and in Rumi being charged, too. But if they both kept quiet, then no one would ever know what Hasunuma did. My impression is that they’re actually willing to pay the price for the crimes they’ve committed. That’s what matters to them right now.”

A fresh glass appeared in front of Kusanagi. He jabbed a finger at the ice. It made a tinkling sound.