by Kono Abe
“I certainly don’t want to give it up.”
A report came from Tomoyasu that the girl had already left the police station. But if she had not yet arrived at the hospital, there was really cause for worry.
Tanomogi was apparently anxious too, looking back and forth over the control windows and talking away at the same time.
“The problem is in setting up the program. If social data are not admissible then they’re not, that’s O.K. I think our blind spot is our preoccupation with social data. If our horizons were larger, we could definitely make excellent forecasts on natural phenomena that wouldn’t be a bit inferior to those of Moscow II. In short, we need to work and keep at it.”
The telephone rang. Tanomogi snatched up the receiver and put it to his ear. He thrust out hrs chin; his eyes were set.
Obviously bad news.
“What’s happened?”
“She’s dead.” He shook his head slightly left and right.
“Dead? Why?”
“I don’t know. Apparently a suicide.”
“Is it certain?”
“Suicide by poison.”
“Connect up with the machine at Yamamoto’s place immediately. If we analyze her essentially the way we did the man, we’ll know right away the motive for the suicide and how she got the drug.”
“It can’t be done, I’m afraid,” he replied, his hand still resting on the receiver that he had replaced. “She evidently died of a very potent nerve poison. The nervous system has completely collapsed. There seems to be absolutely no hope of any normal response.”
“What a mess,” I muttered, pinching out the tip of my cigarette that had scorched my fingers. I didn’t even feel the heat. Although I was under the impression I was calm, my kneecap was twitching in the most alarming way.
“Let’s try and get ahold of Dr. Yamamoto anyway.”
The call simply confirmed that there was no hope. He said it was exceptional to have a corpse whose nerves had been so completely destroyed. In suicides by poison there is an optimum dosage. If exceeded, vomiting occurs, and the quantity of poison absorbed is diminished. In the girl’s body the dose was so large as to have been ineffectual if something like a hypodermic had not been used. The poison had completely permeated her body, yet there was no sign of injection. As she had been continuously under guard all the way from the detention cell, there had not been a moment when she could have administered an injection to herself. There was but one conceivable possibility: She had taken orally, beforehand, some drug, an opium derivative perhaps, and after paralyzing the vomiting center, gulped down the overdose. But that was too complicated.
He suggested that if we were looking for some plausible explanation, naturally we came to murder. I realized that Dr. Yamamoto was trying to draw me out, but I was noncommittal. It wouldn’t do to act as if I knew something others didn’t. Until I could ascertain who my opponents were, I should have to play it safe.
The moment I hung up, the bell rang again. Abruptly a hard, pinched voice struck my ear.
“Professor Katsumi? I specifically warned you. . . . That wasn’t nice. As you’ve gone too far, another—”
I didn’t wait to hear the end but handed the phone to Tanomogi: “The intimidator.”
“Look here. Who is this? What’s your name?” shouted Tanomogi, but the phone went silent almost at once.
“What did he say?”
“That the police were starting in earnest.”
“Don’t you seem to remember having heard the voice?”
“Oh?”
“Not the voice so much as the accent.” There was a flash in my memory, but at once it was gone.
“I might if he calls again.”
“I really don’t think he’s a complete stranger. He had the news too quickly. It’s somebody on the inside.”
“What are we going to do?”
Tanomogi, flexing his fingers, looked around himself as if searching for a hatrack. “It looks pretty much as if the encircling net is closing in. If we don’t find a hole in it someplace, we’re caught.”
“How would it be if we dared put the whole business to the police just as it happened?”
“Put it to the police?” Tanomogi screwed up his lips. “Can we produce evidence that our version is really what happened?”
“Isn’t the girl’s murder evidence enough that there’s some criminal other than us?”
“That won’t do. Even though we assume for the time being that the girl was killed, both Tsuda and Kimura frequented the police station freely, so somewhere they must have had the opportunity to get close to her. Since we now have the O.K. of the men on top, we are ruled out for the time being as suspects in the accountant’s murder. But if we’re suspected, Tsuda and Kimura will be too. After all, it rather sounds as if we’re running a murder institute. A good catch phrase. Academy for murder, world-wide coverage.”
“Mere conjecture. Everything you’ve been saying’s mere conjecture.”
“True. It is.”
“The police nowadays think more highly of factual evidence. For example, when the girl got the poison she took . . ."
“Sir, the reason the committee has been co-operative is because they thought our machine would be helpful in finding a solution to this business, isn’t it? And we thought the same thing. We were absolutely confident in its abilities. But our opponents are unexpectedly strong. Did you think that the police could break an enemy that even the machine couldn’t?”
“An enemy?”
“Yes. It’s clearly a question of an enemy.”
I lowered my eyes and held my breath. I must not get emotional. There was no law that I shouldn’t listen to what Tanomogi had to say. If there really was some enemy, then everything hadn’t been simply involved happenstance.
Tsuda checked in. A suspect had been arrested, but immediately released. It was a case of mistaken identity, for the tobacconist had failed to recognize him in the line-up. One of the criminals was a short man of seemingly gentlemanly mien, he said, with close-set eyes that had a cruel glint. I decided not to tell Tanomogi what Tsuda had reported. I could not suppress a bitter smile.
“Look, just what do you imagine this criminal is like?”
“I’m gradually coming round to thinking that it’s not some individual but an organization.”
“Why?”
“I can’t say exactly. It’s just a feeling.”
The rain had stopped, and unperceived, night had fallen. “It’s after seven. I wonder if it wouldn’t be wise to send the others home now.”
“I’ll contact them.”
By chance I glanced out the window; by the front gate I could see a man smoking a cigarette. It was dark, and his features were indistinct. Suddenly he raised his face, and noticing me, hastily departed.
“Do you mean that this organization is the one that buys fetuses under three weeks?”
“Well, I wonder.” As he spun the dial on the telephone, Tanomogi replied as if at a loss. “Incidentally, studies on developing mammals outside the womb are world-wide now.”
“Development outside the womb?”
“Yes.”
“Mm . . . Did you just think of that? Or were you waiting for the opportunity to bring it up?”
“No, I’ve had it on my mind, but I haven’t had the chance to.”
“That’s true, you haven’t. Logically, there would have to be such organizations. But let me tell you, it’s all fantasy. Forget it.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re obfuscating the truth.”
“I wonder . . . I wonder . . .”
“All right. Go ahead, finish with the telephone.”
“But,” said Tanomogi without even turning toward it, ‘‘I’ve seen rats with gills living in the water. Absolutely aquatic, but mammals nonetheless.”
“Absurd!”
“It’s true. They say that by developing a fetus outside the womb, they deliberately take the development of the indi
vidual creature out of its phylogenetic frame of reference, in other words, out of the normal development that governs its particular species. I have never seen the aquatic dogs, but apparently they actually exist. The difficult ones to raise are the grass-eating animals, the herbivora; carnivorous and omnivorous mammals are relatively easy.”
“Where are there such things?”
“Not far from Tokyo. In a laboratory that belongs to a brother of someone you know, sir.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Yamamoto at Central Welfare Hospital ... his elder brother. You know him, don’t you? It’s already pretty late today, but I was thinking of inviting you over tomorrow. Of course, I don’t think they’ve been doing any research on human fetuses yet. But we might get some kind of clue. It’s sort of roundabout, but now that we’ve lost all sources of real information because of the two murders, what do we have to lose?”
“Stop it. I’ve had my fill of this detective game. There’s a suspicious fellow keeping watch on us out in front. If he’s not from the police, he’s probably an assassin.”
“Is there, really?”
“Look for yourself.”
“I’ll phone the guard and have him check on it.”
“You might as well phone the police while you’re about it.”
“Shall I say some assassin’s waiting for you?”
“Say what you will,” I said, rising from my seat. I changed shoes and took up my briefcase. “I’m going home. When you’ve contacted the others, you’d better go too.”
18
I was unduly irked. But it was irritation at an unspecified opponent; and though I wanted to settle matters, I had no idea where to begin. It was not that there were no clues; there were in fact too many. They contradicted each other, and I didn’t even know which one to follow up.
As I went my way, there was no indication I was being shadowed. At the noise of the outer door being opened, my wife at once thrust wide the inner one to the vestibule. For some reason she had been looking forward to my return. Without waiting for me to remove my shoes, she addressed me abruptly in a low, rasping voice.
“What happened at the hospital today?”
She was dressed in street clothes; either she herself had just returned or she was about ready to go out. And yet, standing there, her hair against the light, she was terribly agitated about something. I could thus make nothing of what she said. As far as hospitals were concerned, the only one on my mind was the room for electronic diagnoses at Central Welfare that had become the setting for my difficulties. But how had my wife known about this? And supposing she did, how did it get to be the object of her concern?
“What do you mean what happened? Did something?”
“Oh dear . . .”
She spoke in such a cowering voice and in such a pathetically reproachful tone that I involuntarily stopped in my tracks. In an inner room I could hear my eldest son Yoshio laughing intermittently and irritatingly along with the music on the television. I awaited my wife’s next words. I even anticipated that she had caught a slip I might have made, however improbable that was. I had been unaware of having mentioned anything about the Yamamoto laboratory for electronic diagnosis. But apparently she was waiting for me to speak.
After a short, unnatural silence, she at length spoke out.
“I did as I was told. You’re really irresponsible, forgetting even that you telephoned. Even if you did, it’s still disgraceful you didn’t come and get me.”
“Telephoned? I . . . telephoned?”
My wife looked up in surprise.
“But you did, didn’t you?”
“I’m asking you. What telephone call are you talking about?” Her slender throat swelled before my eyes. “But you did call. They said so at the hospital. You did, didn’t you?”
My wife was utterly confused. That was to be expected. She was angered and excited over something of which I was completely ignorant, but her agitation became entirely groundless in view of the fact that I had no idea what it was all about. I pieced together her overwrought, garbled words, the gist of which was this:
Around three o’clock, soon after Yoshio returned from school, my wife had received a telephone call from the family gynecologist. He practiced in a modest general hospital about five minutes away by bus. The director was a friend of mine. (When she told me this, I remembered: Just a few days ago, my wife had received a positive diagnosis of pregnancy-having experienced one extrauterine pregnancy, she was very nervous about her condition-and we had discussed what to do. She had asked whether to go ahead and have the child or to have an abortion. However, I had given no real answer. I was right in the midst of the crisis over the machine.) The purport of the call was that I had left a message that she was at once, that very day, to have a D and C. She had hesitated. Evidently she had even thought of refusing. She immediately called me at my office, but I was not in. (Around three I was doubtless at Tomoyasu’s office negotiating the take-over of the body. Whoever took the call was so taken up with the business at hand that he had surely forgotten to give me the message. ) Despite her reluctance, she had gone.
“Then did you have the abortion after all?” Doubtless my involuntarily reproachful tone was meant to cover up my inner worry.
“Yes, I did. I couldn’t help myself,” she continued defiantly, following me up to my study on the second floor. Yoshio called a disinterested greeting down the corridor. “I intended to discuss it with the doctor one way or the other, but he wasn’t in. Even though he himself had asked me to come. I was provoked and decided to come right home. Then, just as I was leaving, someone who looked like a nurse with a mole on her right cheek came after me. She said that the doctor would be back soon and would I please take this medicine and wait in the waiting-room a while. It was a bitter powder wrapped in red paper. I wondered if the red paper meant it was some poison. Anyway it was something strong like that, I think. After a while I felt very funny, as if my whole body was asleep except for my eyes and my ears. After that ... I don’t remember. It’s all unclear, as if I hadn’t seen things with my own eyes. But I think I was supported on both sides and put into a car and driven to another hospital. One with a long, black corridor. The doctor was a different one, but he said my own doctor knew all about it and so they performed the operation then and there. I didn’t even have time to think. And then, I don’t know why, but when I left to come home I was handed a lot of small change.”
“Small change?”
“Yes. Didn’t you leave it?”
“How much was it?” I said, involuntarily rising to my feet.
“Seven thousand yen. Though I don’t know how they got that sum.”
“If I remember, you were less than three weeks pregnant, weren’t you?” As I tried to pick up my pack of cigarettes, I knocked over a glass of water that had been left undrunk from the night before.
“Yes, apparently it was just about three weeks.”
The spilled water ran under some books I had piled up. “Get something to wipe this up with.” Seven thousand yen ... the three-week pregnancy. A stiffness spread all the way from the nape of my neck over my back, as if I had been mountain climbing with a hundred-pound rucksack. I avoided my wife’s eyes as she looked suspiciously up at me while she sopped up the spilled water with old newspaper. “Now this hospital, just which one was it?”
“I really don’t know. I took the car they called for me and came right home.”
“But you remember the place at least, don’t you?”
“Well, let me see. ... It was rather far away, I know. I think it was quite far to the south, near the ocean. I dozed on the way.” And then she added inquiringly: “But then, of course, I suppose you have an idea, don’t you?”
I neither affirmed nor denied. I did have a special clue although not in the sense my wife thought. In any case, saying something at this point would incite her to even more questions, and I would have to continue answering them. When I regained my composure, I thought
I had grasped the situation in part if not completely; but in reality I had not understood anything at all. I was, in fact, gradually getting so confused that I could comprehend nothing. Suddenly I was so angry at the unpermissible insult of having my own wife caught in the trap in which I myself was entangled that my field of vision became severely constricted.
19
I went downstairs and telephoned. My wife tried to make Yoshio turn off the television, but I purposely let him go on listening as he was. What a mess if I had got my wife mixed up in this fantastic business.
First I telephoned to my friend’s hospital and asked them to find out for me where our regular gynecologist lived. They gave me his home number. He was in. He appeared quite confused by my questions and said that of course he knew nothing about any message from me and that furthermore he had not summoned my wife. Besides, he had arranged to make a house call at precisely that time yesterday, he said. To be on the safe side, I asked him if he knew anything about a woman, apparently a nurse, who my wife said had given her medicine. He replied that he knew of no nurse with any mole on her cheek. Apparently the worst had materialized, just as I had secretly feared it would.
As I dialed the Institute number, I felt a pain in my breast as if my fluttering heart had fallen into my stomach. Clearly the origin of this pain lay in the fact that the train of events that had suddenly occurred seemed quite to ignore the general rule that events always develop in the direction of the greatest probability.
Seven thousand yen . . . three-week-old fetuses . . . development outside the mother’s womb . . . mice with gills . . . aquatic mammals.
Happenstance is always fortuitous by the very fact that it occurs apparently without a cause-outside of soap opera. The man’s death, suspicion, the girl’s death, the strange telephone calls, buying and selling fetuses, the trap in which my wife had been caught-the chain reaction that had started from pure happenstance proceeded from one event to the other and had pre-emptorily become a single chain coiling round my neck. I was being pursued, as it were, by a madman with neither purpose nor motive. It was intolerable to my rational sense.