Tattoo Murder Case

by Akimitsu Takagi

  “If that’s all you want to know, it’s a very simple matter. The truth is, there was a tattoo contest recently. This Kinue Nomura took first place, and even though she didn’t mind parading naked in front of a large crowd of people, she refused to give me her photograph. I was rather persistent, I must admit, but she was downright rude in her refusal. So rude, in fact, that I was very surprised when she called me yesterday morning, saying that she had changed her mind. She asked me to come here today at nine o’clock. She even said she would share some photos of her late brother and sister, who were both magnificently tattooed, of course. When I arrived I rang the bell at the gate, but there was no answer so I let myself in. Then I noticed that one of the rain shutters was open, and a young man had stuck his head inside. I thought it was a burglar, but when the man turned around I saw that it was young Kenzo here. I asked him what was going on, and he pointed to some bloodstains on the tatami. I peeked in and saw immediately that something was very much amiss. After searching the ransacked house and finding nothing, I noticed the sound of running water coming from the locked bathroom. When I peered through a crack in the door I saw a severed human arm. I realized then that it wouldn’t be wise for an amateur to fool around with the scene of a crime, so I asked Kenzo to call the police. I think that’s about it.”

  “Are you sure that’s all?” asked Daiyu Matsushita sharply. He seemed to have taken a dislike to the professor, perhaps because he wasn’t used to having potential suspects argue with him.

  “Well, my primary purpose in coming here was to get the photographs, but there was something else on my mind. I was hoping to be able to buy the Orochimaru skin.…”

  “Buy the skin?” It wasn’t that Daiyu Matsushita had no prior knowledge of the professor’s penchant for collecting tattooed skins. But in this particular situation, something about that phrase caused the chief’s already unfriendly feelings to explode.

  “Incidentally, Professor,” he went on in a chilly, magisterial tone, “I’d like to know what you were doing last night between six P.M. and midnight.”

  “Ho, so now you’re asking me for an alibi?” Professor Hayakawa’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. “What would happen if I were to refuse to answer that question?”

  “I can’t tell you exactly what would happen. What I can say is that if you’d be kind enough to answer the question it would be a lot more pleasant for everyone, yourself included.”

  “Yes, well, I think I’ll refuse to answer.” The professor’s tone was defiant. “I have no direct connection with this murder case, and I really don’t see why an upstanding citizen should have to tell a bunch of meddling cops every detail of his actions.”

  “An upstanding citizen, eh? I see. On the other hand, once a crime has been committed, it’s our duty as upstanding citizens to devote all our energies to solving that case.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to explain. If my actions last night had the slightest bearing on this case, I would be more than happy to share them with you. But since there is no connection whatsoever, I see no reason why I should be forced to divulge where I was or what I was doing.”

  “In that case, Professor, I’m going have to ask you to come along to the station.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “As a suspect in the murder of Kinue Nomura.”

  The professor didn’t seem at all perturbed. On the contrary, there was a self-confident sneer on his face as he lit a fresh Peace cigarette.

  “Detective,” he said, deliberately using the improper term of address, “you have a reputation for being one of the most distinguished cops in the nation. However, it looks to me as if you’re losing your touch. On exactly what evidence would you be arresting me? I have no possible motive and nothing whatsoever to gain from this murder, and there isn’t a scintilla of evidence against me. Now, Miss Nomura’s patron, Takezo Mogami, is the closest thing she has to a relative, so it wouldn’t be illogical for you to suspect him even without any concrete evidence. But to think that someone like me, however passionate I might be about collecting tattoos, would go so far as to murder someone just to steal her skin? That’s utterly ridiculous.”

  The professor took a long drag on his cigarette, obviously relishing the taste of the smoke. “In the first place, Officer,” he went on, demoting the detective chief inspector still further, “do you really think you can solve a case like this by checking out people’s alibis? If you do, you’re totally off base. I mean, don’t you think that the person who created this fiendish crime would have taken the trouble to create a sturdy alibi for himself while he was at it? I’ll bet the culprit is having a good laugh at your expense, at this very moment. Instead of wasting your resources interrogating an innocent person like myself, why don’t you and your cohorts spend your time doing something a little more productive, like learning about tattoos?”

  Kenzo was startled by the caustic tone of Professor Hayakawa’s voice. He could sense the professor’s determination to flout authority, and it struck him as a strange and foolhardy thing to do. Daiyu Matsushita’s face was flashed with the heat of battle as he and the professor glared at each other. The room was filled with tension, as if the two men might be about to leap up and unsheathe their swords.

  “Hahaha.…” Daiyu let out a sudden, hearty laugh, and in that instant the tension vanished completely. “No, seriously, Professor, I’m afraid I’ve been terribly rude. You probably figured this out already, but we think you might know more about the circumstances surrounding this case than you’re letting on. We were just hoping you might spill a few beans under pressure, so to speak. Of course I never thought for a moment that you were the murderer. You’re free to leave any time you like.”

  Wearing a triumphant smile, Professor Hayakawa got to his feet. He gave a small, satirical bow to the still-seated chief inspector, then turned on his heel and left.

  20

  “Ishikawa!” Even as he called “Black Belt” Ishikawa’s name, Detective Chief Inspector Daiyu Matsushita was signaling with his eyes that the officer should follow Professor Hayakawa. “What a dreadful man,” Daiyu mused a moment later, exhaling a string of miniature smoke rings. “There’s a thin line between obsession and derangement, and I’m not at all sure the professor hasn’t crossed it. I’m positive that he knows something about this case, but he didn’t let anything slip at all.” The chief inspector addressed these remarks to a nearby police officer, but he seemed to be talking to himself.

  Just then Kenzo called from outside Daiyu went into the garden, where he found his younger brother in a state of extreme agitation. “Look’” Kenzo said, pointing at the dirt. “The plate! The broken fragments!”

  “What? What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Just before you and the other officers arrived, we were walking around in the garden and the professor found a broken scrap of a photographic plate. There were some other pieces in the dirt.”

  “A photographic plate? What kind of photograph?”

  “I don’t know, because the phone rang and I went to answer it. Right after that a policeman came along, and it slipped my mind until just now.”

  “I see, and what was the professor doing during that time?”

  “He was standing outside the whole time.”

  “So it looks as if the professor must have concealed those fragments somewhere while you were gone, because after we arrived on the scene neither he nor anyone else would have been able to do something so risky. And if the shards had been left in the garden, one of my subordinates would surely have found them.”

  “Are you just going to let him get away with stealing evidence?”

  “No, I’m having the professor followed right now. If he did make off with something that could be considered evidence in this case, it may be that bad luck will turn to good,” said Daiyu Matsushita, quoting an old proverb. He wore a faint smile, as if to say, We’ll see who gets the last laugh, Professor. Immediately resuming his normal serious expression, Daiy
u began barking out orders to his subordinates.

  “Telephone Kitazawa Station, also Shibuya and Shinjuku. Inform them that if they see Officer Ishikawa, they should tell him to get in touch with me immediately. It looks as if Professor Hayakawa left this house with pieces of a photographic plate concealed on his person. Those fragments should be seized as evidence in this case, and I want the professor taken to the station for questioning.”

  “Chief, look at this album.” A detective came up carrying a well-worn photograph album, bound in handmade paper patterned with pine boughs. Peering curiously over his brother’s shoulder, Kenzo noticed that the first page of the album had been torn out. The remaining pages were covered with a large number of priceless photographs of a sort that would have made Professor Hayakawa’s mouth water. The photos recorded the process of creating several superlative tattoos, in sequence. First there was the plain, undecorated nude body, without a single mark on it. Next came the body with arms tattooed, then the thighs, the back, and so on until the entire body was covered with intricate designs.

  As they were turning the pages, a letter fell out of the album. The stamp on the cheap brown-paper envelope had been postmarked five days earlier. Inside was a flimsy piece of paper torn from a notebook. The message was written in the crude hand of an uneducated male.

  Kinue, it began abruptly, Long time no see. I haven’t forgotten what you did to me, and I intend to repay you as you deserve. Just remember one thing: one of these days I’m going to kill you and take the tattoo off your back. The note was unsigned.

  “This is evidence!” Daiyu Matsushita was handing the album back to the detective who had found it, when the telephone rang. It was Detective Akita, reporting on the results of his surprise raid on the headquarters of the Mogami Group in Ogikubo.

  “Chief, Takezo Mogami left on a trip yesterday just after one P.M. and hasn’t been seen since. We found a second-class ticket to Osaka and an express-train upgrade in his wastebasket, torn to shreds.”

  “What about Inazawa?”

  “There’s definitely something suspicious about his behavior. I’m certain that he’s keeping some sort of a secret. Shall we take him to the station for questioning?”

  “No, bring him here. We’ll show him the corpse and see how that grabs him.” Replacing the receiver, Daiyu left the room. Information seemed to be bombarding him from all sides, and he wanted to get it all arranged in a straight line. To separate the useless data from that which was relevant to the case, and then to decide upon the main thrust of the investigation: those were the official duties of the detective chief inspector.

  At first glance, the case appeared to be chaotic. Daiyu tried to calm himself down by telling himself that stranger, more complicated cases had been solved in the past, but it didn’t do any good. Chain-smoking one cigarette after another, he stomped around the garden in slow circles, his thoughts focused on one single point—whether the net he had thrown out would ensnare Professor Hayakawa, and if so, where. There had been no word from Kitazawa Station. No reports had come in from Shibuya or Shinjuku, either, and the chief inspector was beginning to worry.

  Daiyu looked at his watch and sighed. No, he told himself, it’s going to be all right. Officer Ishikawa is following the professor, and he’s as tenacious as a hunting dog. He’ll catch up with him for sure. For sure, for sure, for sure. He chanted the words like a mantra. Daiyu Matsushita lit another cigarette and gazed up at the pale blue sky, which was teeming with soft summer clouds, like smoke rings with the centers filled in.

  21

  “What’s this all about? Why have you brought me here?” Led by Detective Akita, a protesting, white-faced Gifu Inazawa entered Kinue Nomura’s house in Kitazawa. His body was shaking with nervousness, and his eyes darted around uneasily. As Inazawa was removing his shoes in the entry hall he looked up and made eye contact with Kenzo Matsushita for a moment, then quickly looked away.

  Detective Chief Inspector Daiyu Matsushita took his brother aside. “Kenzo, you’re absolutely certain this is the man you brushed by a while ago?” he asked in a low voice.

  “I’m positive,” Kenzo replied.

  In the Irving room, the interrogation of Gifu Inazawa had already begun. “You understand why we’ve asked you to come here, don’t you?” a police officer was saying.

  “Uh, yes, no, I mean.…”

  “State your name and age.”

  “Gifu Inazawa. I’m forty-five.”

  “Where are you employed?”

  “I’m the manager of the Mogami Company. We do engineering and construction.”

  “I see. We’d like to take your fingerprints now, if you don’t mind.” Inazawa couldn’t hide his distress. He didn’t say anything, but the nicotine-stained hands he held out for fingerprinting were shaking perceptibly.

  The fingerprint technician took the stamp pad and stencil paper and went into another room, returning a moment later to whisper something in Daiyu Matsushita’s ear. “Since this is the house of your boss’s mistress, there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t have come here, is there?” the chief inspector asked the trembling Inazawa.

  “That’s right, I sometimes came here to deliver money.…”

  “Is that why you came here late last night, to deliver money?”

  “No, ah, last night.…” Gifu Inazawa looked down at the floor, and blushed.

  “So this morning you were on your way home after spending the night here?”

  “God, no!” Inazawa shouted. He patted his pockets frantically, clearly looking for a cigarette, but when he came up empty no one made a move to offer him one.

  “Well, according to what we’ve heard, a witness saw you leaving this house this morning, carrying a small bundle wrapped in a furoshiki cloth. The furoshiki was purple, and you were supposedly clutching it nervously in both hands. How do you explain that?”

  Ishikawa was obviously struggling to appear calm, but the contorted expression on his face betrayed his growing panic. After a prolonged search, he had finally found a single, slightly bent cigarette in one of his pants pockets, but his hands were shaking so much that he couldn’t get the end to catch fire.

  “How about it,” growled Daiyu Matsushita, “why don’t you just admit it? You’re the one who killed Kinue Nomura, right? What did you do with the rest of the body?”

  Inazawa dropped his unlit cigarette on the tatami and, holding out his hands in supplication, looked up at the chief inspector’s fearsome face. “No, no, it wasn’t me!” he shouted in an anguished voice. “When I got here Kinue was already dead!”

  “Okay, tell us your story,” the chief inspector said, in a gentler tone.

  Inazawa took a deep breath, stuck his damaged cigarette in the corner of his mouth, and accepted a light from the chief inspector himself. “The truth is,” he said, blowing out a blue-gray ribbon of smoke, “I was in love with Kinue Nomura. You may laugh at such folly in a man my age, but I used to be sent here frequently on errands for my boss, and before I knew it I was head over heels, like some adolescent schoolboy. Then, one time I happened to catch a glimpse of the tattoo on her back, and something about that unearthly beauty made me lose my grip on reality. I mean, here I am, over forty, with a wife and kids, and on top of that the object of my affections is the mistress of my boss, of all people. I knew it was dangerous, and wrong, but no matter how sternly I scolded myself, all I could think about was how much I wanted to touch her. I really think I was a little off my rocker, it was as if my reason had flown out the window. Anyway, I began to court Kinue in earnest. At first, she just laughed in my face. ‘What are you talking about?’ she would say. ’You’re an awful lech. I’m going to tell my old man!’ Of course, her ‘old man’ was my boss, Takezo Mogami. She rebuffed me time and time again, but I didn’t give up. I realize this may sound like bragging, but based on my past experience with women, I felt there might be some hope. I just kept plodding along, one step at a time, and I noticed that her feelings toward me s
eemed to be thawing a bit. Yesterday I finally got a favorable answer to my pleas. My boss was supposed to leave last night by train for a business trip. ‘Come by tomorrow night at midnight,’ Kinue said to me. ‘My old man will be safely off on his business trip by then, and I’ve fired the maid, so we’ll be all alone.’ Needless to say, I was overjoyed. To think that at last I was going to be allowed to touch that beautiful tattooed body with these hands.…” He spread his trembling fingers and stared down at them wonderingly, as if they belonged to someone else.

  Daiyu Matsushita and his colleagues exchanged a bemused glance which seemed to say, Are we conducting a serious criminal interrogation or listening to a soap opera? Still, Ishikawa didn’t appear to be lying, and everyone listened attentively as the nervous, unprepossessing little man resumed his story.

  “So last night I was at the restaurant of an acquaintance of mine in Shinjuku, having a few drinks. I know it’s childish, but I started to worry that Kinue might lose interest if I showed up drunk, so I left that place a little after eight. When I got to Kitazawa Station around eight thirty, I went into a coffee shop and ordered an iced coffee, thinking it would help sober me up and also cool me off, because it was still very hot outside. I left that place after about fifteen minutes. When I got here all the lights were off, and the house was completely silent. I was several hours early for our appointment, and there were still a few people on the streets, so I decided to pretend that I was just out taking a walk. I wandered around the neighborhood, and at about ten thirty I came back to the front gate. It was still early, but I didn’t feel I could wait any longer. I was just about to go into the house when I noticed some university students on the second floor of the house next door, playing the guitar and looking in my direction. I thought things might get complicated if they started asking me questions, so I decided to wait a while longer. When the lights next door finally went off, around eleven, I opened the garden gate and sneaked in.”