Tattoo Murder Case

by Akimitsu Takagi

  The photographic-plate fragments weren’t in any of his pockets. There was nothing unusual at all, just a wallet, a handkerchief, a packet of tissues, and a small plastic comb in a brocade case.

  “Where are the things you picked up, the pieces of photographic plate?”

  The professor didn’t reply. He just stood there in triumphant silence, dressed in nothing but a white dress shut and his underwear, calmly fanning himself with a beige fan patterned with delicate medieval calligraphy.

  “Wait here until I get back,” Officer Ishikawa called out over his shoulder, as he left. The police box had no telephone. Returning to the shop where he had used the phone before, he placed a call to the murder scene.

  “Check out the Chinese restaurant!” Matsushita’s order was short and sharp.

  Dripping with sweat, Ishikawa made his way back to the Golden Duck. At the top of the stairs he almost bumped into a Chinese-looking waitress, who was so startled that she nearly dropped the case of Tsingtao beer she was carrying.

  “I’m from the police,” Ishikawa said crisply. “The person who was just here is a suspect in a murder investigation.”

  “Yes,” said the woman, nervously adjusting her red apron. She didn’t appear to speak much Japanese, or perhaps she was just frightened.

  “Did that customer leave anything with you?”

  “Yes.” After a moment’s hesitation, the woman disappeared into the kitchen. She returned with a small bundle wrapped in a large paper napkin, which she handed wordlessly to the policeman. When he opened it, his heart gave a shout of joy. Nestled in the paper were several fragments of shiny black glass. At last, he’d gotten his hands on the elusive photographic plates!

  One by one, Officer Ishikawa held the fragments up to the light from the window. The plates showed the rear view of a naked woman, without a stitch of clothes. Because it was a negative, the pattern didn’t show up very clearly, but he could see that there was some sort of strange design dancing all over the woman’s body, completely covering her back, her arms, and her legs.

  “Thanks,” the policeman said.

  “Yes,” the Chinese woman replied, and her round face broke into a radiant smile. Officer Ishikawa went downstairs to place yet another call to his boss. The chief inspector instructed him to take the professor down to Metropolitan Police Headquarters right away, adding that the crew from the crime scene would join them as soon as possible.

  When he got back to the police box, Officer Ishikawa waved the fragments under Professor Hayakawa’s nose. “Hey, Professor, look what I found at the Chinese restaurant! You can’t play innocent anymore now, can you?”

  “Fascist,” the professor said under his breath, but he appeared quite calm. “I have a mania, you know, and I guess that makes me a maniac. A maniac doesn’t choose the means to the end, he just follows his appetites. When I saw a photograph of a tattoo, I couldn’t just leave it lying there. I had to have it.”

  To the policeman, those words sounded like the defiant song of a condemned man. “Professor, please accompany me to police headquarters.”

  “I don’t seem to have a choice.” The professor shrugged his shoulders and stood up. “By the way,” he said, “do you think I could have those fragments back when this is all over?”

  Cheeky bastard, Ishikawa thought, but he answered politely. “I really couldn’t say. You’ll have to ask the chief inspector. It’ll depend on whether the negatives turn out to have any direct connection with this case.”

  “There has to be some connection, doesn’t there? I mean, it’s hardly likely that this picture of a tattooed woman would turn out to have no relevance whatever to the murder of a tattooed woman,” The professor spoke in a patronizing tone. “If this weren’t a negative—if you could turn it into white on black—you could solve the mystery of this case in a minute, but because of the ungentlemanly way in which you people choose to conduct yourselves, I’m not going to help you out of this maze. Quite frankly.…”

  “Let’s get going, Professor,” Officer Ishikawa interrupted in an icy tone. “You’ll have plenty of time to express your learned opinions down at the station.”

  24

  By the time Kenzo Matsushita was allowed to leave the scene of the crime, it was nearly evening. A rodent-colored dusk had fallen over the troubled city of Tokyo. Kenzo was totally exhausted, and he nodded off several times on the crowded commuter tram. “Tadaima… I’m home,” he said to his sister-in-law Manko, a pretty woman in her mid-thirties. She greeted him at the entry of the modest two-story wooden house. Without even mentioning the murder case, Kenzo climbed the narrow stairs and flopped down on the tatami-matted floor of his bachelor room.

  It was a small rectangular room, with a single frosted-glass window that looked out on what had once been an apartment building but was now a pile of charred rubble inhabited by a pack of stray dogs. It was strange, Kenzo often thought, how the firebombs could destroy one house and leave the next one untouched.

  The room’s only furnishings were a low table and some square, flat zabuton cushions, the bedding was folded up in a closet, behind sliding doors. There were no bookshelves, and Kenzo had medical texts and mystery novels piled everywhere, even (to his sister-in-law’s consternation) in the tokonoma alcove that would traditionally have contained an elegant scroll and a simple but striking flower arrangement. The walls were unadorned except for a tattered calendar that stopped at December 1941, when the world changed forever. The picture on the calendar showed a maiden wearing the indigo-dyed costume typical of the Ohara area outside of Kyoto, against a backdrop of autumn foliage.

  Kenzo was wide awake now. He felt numb yet agitated. After several cigarettes he could feel himself calm down. Dead, he thought. Kinue was really dead. He would never hold her close or talk to her again. The idea was like a room full of monsters; he was afraid to go in, so he tried to pretend it wasn’t there.

  To distract himself from the nightmarish murder, Kenzo picked up the evening paper he had bought at the station. He hadn’t expected to see any news about Kinue’s death so soon, but on one inside page, at the top of the city news, a headline in large-point type caught his eye: TATTOO MURDER CASE. A brief story followed, no more than five paragraphs. The blunt headline was a perfect expression of the essence of the case. Whoever composed it had a journalist’s instincts for going to the heart of a matter. They had stripped away the embellishments and with, almost uncanny prescience, had identified the underlying reason behind the murder: the tattoos.

  Kenzo wasn’t thinking that coherently, though. No matter how hard he tried to concentrate on the printed page, he couldn’t stop visualizing that naked, dismembered body—the woman he was so desperately in love with. Closing his eyes just made the image grow more vivid. Even as he grieved, he couldn’t help wondering what had happened to the torso. Who had run off with the Orochimaru tattoo, and why?

  He didn’t have any appetite, and when his sister-in-law Mariko came upstairs to call him to dinner, he told her that he didn’t feel like eating. His brother would probably have made some joke about Kenzo’s famously prodigious appetite, but Mariko was always impeccably tactful and kind.

  “You probably have a touch of the summer malaise,” she said in her soft Kyoto accent. “You’re looking rather pale, too. The best thing for you is to go to bed early tonight.” Mariko had no idea what Kenzo was enduring, and her solicitous words only made him feel worse.

  Shortly before sunset, the doorbell rang. Praying that nobody had come to call on him, Kenzo sat motionless in his darkened room. After a moment Mariko came up the stairs and said in a worried-sounding voice, “Kenzo, dear, what are you doing in there with the lights off?”

  “I have some things on my mind, and I like it this way. I find it easier to concentrate in the dark,” Kenzo replied.

  “There’s someone here to see you.”

  “Who is it?” Kenzo hadn’t had a visitor since the war ended.

  “Two people. They said their
names were Hayakawa and Mogami.”

  “Hayakawa and Mogami!” Kenzo exclaimed in disbelief, thinking it must be the professor and his missing nephew, Takezo. Without even thanking his sister-in-law, he charged down the stairs to the entryway.

  Hisashi Mogami was standing there, looking like an accident victim One of his arms was bandaged, he had the beginnings of a spectacular black eye, and there were sticking plasters attached to his temple in two or three places. Next to him was a woman Kenzo had never seen before, long-faced, slender, about thirty-five, dressed in a tasteful copper-colored kimono. She was obviously a married woman from a good family, but her lovely face was swollen from crying, and there seemed to be an aura of distress about her.

  “Ah, Hisashi. And who is this’” Forgetting his manners, Kenzo stared at the beautiful stranger.

  “This is Professor Hayakawa’s wife.”

  “Mrs. Hayakawa? To see me?” Kenzo felt a stab in his heart. He knew that the professor had been picked up in Shibuya and taken to police headquarters. Since it was he who had told the police about the photographic plates, Kenzo couldn’t help feeling that he was the cause of this woman’s suffering. He knew he had done the right thing but, even so, he felt guilty.

  The woman said, “I wonder if it would be all right if we disturbed you for a few minutes?”

  “Oh, please, do come in. The place is a mess, but.…” Kenzo had recovered his manners sufficiently to utter the customary disclaimers. In fact, the house was always spotlessly clean. Kenzo led the way upstairs to his room, which was reasonably tidy aside from the books piled everywhere. He turned on the switch. A large yellow moth was resting on the lampshade. He watched the moth flutter around the lamp, leaving a trail of fine dust. A sudden chill passed though him at the thought that the moth might be a reincarnated human soul.

  “Please forgive us for barging in on you at such an inconvenient time.…” As she entered the room, Mrs. Hayakawa knelt politely on the tatami and bowed so deeply that her forehead touched the floor. Kenzo was moved by the vulnerability of the pale nape of her neck, but then the cloth of her kimono shifted and he caught a glimpse of skin tattooed in a pattern of dark and light, color and shadow. He was so startled that he momentarily forgot the proper response.

  “Oh,” he finally blurted out, “please make yourselves at home. As you can see, it’s a miserable hovel.”

  Kenzo busied himself with setting out cushions for his guests, while his sister-in-law Manko served green tea and crisp, seaweed-wrapped rice cakes. Apologizing for the absence of proper refreshments, Mariko closed the door behind her and went downstairs. A few minutes later she began to play a Chopin prelude on the piano, very quietly, with her foot resting firmly on the mute pedal.

  “The truth is,” Hisashi explained as they settled in around the table, “I got a sudden phone call from my aunt here. When she told me what had happened I naturally thought of you because of your connections with the police department. I mentioned that to my aunt, and she said she would like very much to talk with you. I thought I had better come along, so here we are.” An unlit Peace cigarette hung jauntily from his lips, but Hisashi looked troubled.

  “I see,” Kenzo said. “So I gather you already know about the murder?”

  “We have a general idea, but we haven’t heard any details,” said Hisashi, sipping his green tea.

  Mrs. Hayakawa nodded in agreement. “This afternoon some people from the police barged into my house, saying they had a warrant to search. Of course, I was shocked. I asked if they would mind explaining what was going on. They said there had been a murder, and my husband was a suspect. My response was that there was no way my husband could possibly be involved in such a thing, but when I heard that the victim’s tattooed torso had vanished, the world went black before my eyes.”

  “It’s hardly surprising that the police wanted to ask him some questions and search the house,” said Kenzo, feeling obliged to explain his brother’s behavior.

  “Anyway,” Mrs. Hayakawa went on, “I was terribly upset, and I called Hisashi for advice. He mentioned knowing you, and I thought we might be able to get details of this terrible situation if we came to see you.” Tears were glistening in the corners of her eyes.

  “I’ll be glad to tell you what I know about the case,” Kenzo said. “But first I’d like to ask you something. Was the professor at home last night?”

  “No.…”

  “What time did he come home?”

  “It was around midnight, just as the last streetcar was passing by.”

  Kenzo had a sick feeling in his stomach. “Do you know where he went last night?”

  “I have no idea. He never tells me where he’s going.”

  “That isn’t good. The police are estimating that the crime was committed between eight thirty and midnight last night. I don’t believe the professor is the killer, but—“ Kenzo proceeded to relate the facts of the case as he understood them.

  “Now I understand,” said Mrs. Hayakawa when Kenzo had finished. “Where tattoos are involved, he always behaves like a demented person.” She spoke fondly, almost as if she approved of her husband’s actions.

  “If it were just a matter of his having walked off with the photographic plates, I don’t think it would be a major offense,” Kenzo said. “In fact, I don’t even know whether the photographs were of a tattoo or not.”

  “They must have been. I’m positive of that.” Mrs. Hayakawa seemed more resolute than she had at first. “It’s very kind of you to take the time to talk to us when you are so tired,” she said. “We’d better take our leave now, before we impose any further.”

  Hisashi exchanged a glance with Kenzo, then said easily, “If you don’t mind, Auntie, I’d like to stay a while longer.”

  “That’s perfectly all right. I’ll be on my way, then.”

  As Mrs. Hayakawa bowed her gracious good-byes, Kenzo caught a glimpse of tattooed cherry blossoms in the secret recesses of her sleeve.

  25

  “This is terrible! This is really, really terrible!” Hisashi spoke in a voice that was close to a wail. His hands were trembling so violently that when he tried to take a cigarette out of the pack he ended up accidentally crushing it between his fingers.

  “Why is that?” Kenzo asked rhetorically. The two men were upstairs again, facing each other across the low table.

  “Why?” Hisashi sounded incredulous. “Because my brother Takezo has disappeared, and my uncle is a suspect in a murder! How could I not be upset? I always knew something awful would result when my brother got involved with that woman.”

  “Your arm is bandaged—what happened?”

  “Nothing, really. Last night I stopped for a drink on the Ginza, got sloshed, and ended up staging a martial arts display on a couple of uncouth buffoons. I spent the night in jail. When I got out, I found everything in an uproar. All in all, it hasn’t been what you’d call a really tiptop day.”

  “Where were you before?”

  “At the Togeki Theater. The show ended around eight.”

  “And you got in the argument right after that?”

  “No, I think that was closer to nine. I was drinking pretty heavily, so my memory isn’t too sharp.”

  “A barroom brawl, huh. Thanks to that fight, you have a perfect alibi.”

  The two men’s eyes met, and they shared a mordant chuckle.

  “By the way,” Kenzo said, “you may not understand this any more than I do, but I was wondering why your uncle, the professor, was behaving so strangely.”

  “Oh, the business with the photographic plates? Probably just as my aunt said: the images had to do with tattoos. If he found something he could use in his research or add to his collection, there’s no way he would just leave it lying there.”

  “But to steal a piece of evidence from the scene of a murder.…”

  “What’s so strange about that? An ordinary person can’t begin to understand what it means to be in the thrall of an obsession. Actua
lly, even my aunt.…”

  “What about your aunt?”

  “Well, she made a bad marriage, if you ask me. She was the daughter of a good family, a family that also happens to be very wealthy. As a condition of marriage my uncle insisted that she get tattooed.”

  Kenzo was shocked. “You aren’t serious!” he said.

  “Completely. It was a love marriage, not arranged. My aunt had quite a thing for my uncle and he didn’t exactly dislike her, either. But after they got engaged, this is what he said: ‘I’m sorry, but for a man like me, a woman without a tattoo has no appeal at all. If we get married with you in your present state, I’m afraid our married life would be a failure. So I want to ask you to promise me one small thing.’ That was how he first broached the subject. The woman he was talking to was an inexperienced girl, the daughter of an attorney father and an aristocratic mother who had inherited a great deal of property. Naturally she was flabbergasted to hear such a thing before her wedding.”

  “Then what happened?” Kenzo said.

  “My aunt asked for two or three days to think about her fiancé’s request. She went into seclusion and discussed the matter with her parents. Needless to say, they were as surprised as she was. But her father seemed to have confidence in my uncle. He said, ‘Now that the betrothal gifts have been exchanged, your body belongs to the House of Hayakawa. When a woman becomes a bride she must subjugate herself to her husband.’ So my aunt made up her mind to do whatever it took to satisfy her husband-to-be. She really did love him.”

  “And she got tattooed—all over?” Kenzo was thrilled, and horrified.

  “No. At first she just had a single peony tattooed on the inside of each of her upper arms, hidden away where only her husband would see them. The wedding took place. By all accounts, their married life got off to a splendid start. But after a while my uncle said, ‘A tattoo is the embodiment of carnal desire and, once she’s had a taste of the needle, a woman—much more than a man—will feel herself aroused and wanting more. At first the process may seem frightening, but that’s just the same as the fear a maiden will feel on her wedding night. It’s soon forgotten in the discovery of pleasure.’ He kept harping on this theme, and finally my aunt went back to get some more tattoos. Just as my uncle predicted, the more time she spent in the world of sharp needles and vermilion ink, the more tattooing she wanted. She now has tattoos all over her back and arms, and I gather she’s in the process of getting them on her thighs as well. Have you ever heard of anything so stupid?” Hisashi’s voice was filled with scorn.