“I don’t really know,” Kenzo said evasively.
Hisashi shrugged. “I was trained as a chemist. I look at everything from that point of view. To me, the relationship between a man and a woman is just a matter of chemical reaction. If I understand what my uncle was trying to say, a tattoo was a necessary catalyst for him to feel sexually aroused. In fact, it was absolutely indispensable.”
“I see the logic of what you’re saying. But what does all that have to do with this murder case?”
“I’m not trying to imply that my uncle has any direct connection with the murder. I’m just saying that if there was something about his behavior that mystified you and the police, it was probably the product of this strange quirk of his. That’s all.”
While he was listening to Hisashi’s words, Kenzo’s mood was growing increasingly gloomy. He was fond of Professor Hayakawa, and he had a feeling that the cloud of suspicion hanging over the professor was growing darker by the minute. “What on earth has happened to your brother?” he asked, hoping to change the subject.
“I don’t have the foggiest,” Hisashi said, shaking his head. “Since I’ve been living alone, I don’t talk to my brother that often. The first I heard about this was yesterday afternoon. A policeman came knocking on the door asking whether my brother was at my house. At first I thought he might be in trouble for his black-market operations, but then the cop started asking about my alibi for the night before. I still thought it had to do with business, since I knew my brother was being investigated by the Office of Land Reclamation. Then I got a phone call from my aunt, who was in hysterics. You know me; I’m usually pretty easygoing, but I didn’t feel I could just sit around the house and do nothing, so I went to my brother’s house in Nakano to find out what was happening, and after that I went to my aunt’s house in Yotsuya. We discussed the situation, and then we ran around all over town, to the police station and the lawyer’s office, and we finally ended up here.”
“So who’s at the house in Yotsuya now?”
“Just the housekeeper.”
“Is your brother married?”
“No, he’s practically made a religion out of staying single, though certainly not in the sense of celibacy or abstinence. He’s just someone who vowed never to get formally married. His bachelorhood is a very feudal and opportunistic sort, strictly for convenience. That tattooed woman is the first mistress who’s made him think about making a commitment.”
“Your brother must have loved that woman a lot.”
“You know what they say: there’s no accounting for taste. But she’s the first woman I ever saw who could lead my brother around by a nose ring. He had even started the paperwork to make her his legal wife. He’s incredibly jealous, and she was a woman who liked men, so I guess he thought he might lose her if he didn’t bind her to him legally. I gather she didn’t see herself as the wife type, though. She was putting up a struggle.”
“I guess a woman like that must have had a lot of affairs,” Kenzo said guilelessly. “Putting the past aside, do you think she’s been fooling around lately?”
“I wouldn’t know. But even if she felt like cheating on my brother, I doubt that she would do anything so reckless. She was well aware of his jealous nature, and his violent temper.”
“But what about the manager of your brother’s company, Gifu Inazawa? I was amazed to hear that he had a major crush on that woman. He thought she liked him, too.”
Hisashi pursed his lips. “I find it hard to believe that she would invite that little weasel over for a midnight rendezvous. He wasn’t exactly a Don Juan, except in his imagination. If my brother had found out, Inazawa’s goose would have been cooked but good. I really can’t imagine that he would have risked my brother’s wrath. Dead women tell no tales, so we have no choice but to believe what Inazawa tells us about Kinue.”
“Are you saying you doubt his story?”
“I’m saying that I don’t trust a single human being on this earth, with the possible exception of myself.” A smile flitted across Hisashi’s face.
Kenzo said, “When I met your brother for the first time at that tattoo contest, I noticed something strange. You may laugh, but during the war I used to see a sort of death shadow on soldiers who were about to be killed in action. I saw the same look on your brother the other night.”
“Oh, so now you’re an aura reader?” The words sounded facetious, but Hisashi’s demeanor was totally serious. “What about that woman,” he said, leaning across the table and staring into Kenzo’s eyes. “Did you see the same look on Kinue?”
“I didn’t notice anything like that. Her body made a much stronger impression than the face… because of the tattoos,” Kenzo added hastily.
“This is really incredible. Matsushita the Soothsayer. So what about Inazawa?”
“He looks rather mousy, yet he gives the impression of being a complete hedonist. I could see that at a glance.”
“And my uncle, the professor?” Hisashi said.
“He’s obviously totally consumed by his interest. In medical terms, I’d call him a monomaniac.”
“What about me?” Hisashi’s tone was almost coy.
“You?” Taken by surprise, Kenzo blurted out the first thing that came into his head. “You have the mark of a genius. You’re highly intelligent. Also lazy. You don’t make any effort to do work that doesn’t appeal to you. But once something engages your interest, you apply yourself wholeheartedly to solving that problem. The trouble is that you rarely find an objective that seems worthy of your attention. In this postwar mess of a country, I would guess that you’re having a hard time finding a practical application for your genius. It’s a shame, but—“
“Thanks ever so much for the lovely eulogy,” Hisashi interrupted sardonically.
Kenzo said, “If only I had a fraction of your intellect. How about it, don’t you feel like playing detective?”
“Detective? Me? Why don’t you ask your brilliant friend, the Boy Genius?” It was clear from Hisashi’s sarcastic tone that he resented the fact that his own schoolboy nickname had been the Black Sheep, with no mention of the intellectual brilliance he took such pride in.
“Mainly because the last time I saw the Boy Genius, as you insist on calling him, was in Peking in 1944. I haven’t heard a word from, or about him, since. I just hope he’s all right. Anyway, never mind. It was just a thought.”
Hisashi said, “You were a big fan of detective novels back in middle school. Why don’t you solve the case?” Hisashi laughed, but not unpleasantly. “Actually, I wouldn’t mind playing Sherlock Holmes, but the problem with this murder is that it involves my relatives. I’m just too close to the whole thing. It wouldn’t be proper for me to meddle in it.”
“If there’s anything you can think of that would help my brother, please let me know.”
“I certainly will. I’ll do anything I can to help. Please feel free to ask any questions you like.”
“Well, about these photographs.…” Impulsively, Kenzo opened a drawer, took out the photographs he had received from Kinue, and passed them to Hisashi.
“The three tattooed siblings,” Hisashi muttered as the color drained horn his face. “How did you come to have these photos?”
“That woman, Miss Nomura, gave them to me at the tattoo contest. They were sealed in an envelope. She said that if something happened, I should open it and look at the contents.”
“I wonder what she was thinking of?”
“Have you ever seen these photographs before, Hisashi?”
“Yes, I have. She showed them to us one time when I was at her house in Kitazawa with my brother.”
“Were they pasted in an album?”
“Yeah, on the first page.”
“Did she say anything about the pictures? Or was there any sort of an explanation written on the page? According to what she told me, there was some sort of secret surrounding those three tattoos.”
“A secret about the tattoos? I hav
en’t heard anything about that. But wait a minute.…”
“What is it?”
“I remember now that she didn’t show us the back of that page. In fact, she was hiding it kind of nervously.” Hisashi was silent for a moment. “This really is a frightening case,” he mused. “The actual murder was remarkably brutal, right? People are saying it was like a scene from hell. Weird as this may sound, to me the single most terrifying thing you told us was about the slug that was crawling on the windowsill.”
Kenzo nodded. “I agree, absolutely. When I saw that awful slug, I got goosebumps all over.”
“This will probably sound strange too, but to me, the killing is reminiscent of those gory picture books from the Edo Period. It’s almost like a murder in old-fashioned clothing, and that just makes it more difficult to figure out. It’s just like a chess problem.”
“A chess problem?” Kenzo said.
“Right. If you play it perfectly, there should only be one order in which you can arrive at checkmate. If you do it any other way your opponent will end up escaping from you. However, the more complicated a problem becomes, the more you get tangled up in confusion. This criminal has obviously been very prudent and thorough in his preparation. He’s basically getting away with murder, and flaunting it. I would guess that the person who committed this crime is feeling pretty invincible right about now, and I doubt if he thinks he has much to fear from the people who are investigating the case.”
“I see what you mean. So our job is to get rid of the confusion he’s created, to clear the board of the extraneous pieces, so to speak. The problem is, how do we tell which are the irrelevant elements?”
“I have no idea. As you know, I’m a dreamer. I enjoy playing around with theories. Putting them into practice isn’t really my forte.” With a sad little laugh, Hisashi stood up and said good-bye.
Kenzo took a long hot bath, then threw his bedding on the floor and climbed between the rough muslin sheets. He fell asleep immediately. A few minutes later he was wide awake, heart pounding. His eyes were wet with tears. He had dreamed he was making love to Kinue. It was blissful at first, but when he took Kinue’s hands and stretched her arms above her head, his lover’s tattooed limbs came off at the shoulders.
26
Detective Chief Inspector Daiyu Matsushita didn’t get home until well after ten P.M., but it was still nearly as warm as it had been at noon.
“God, it’s hot out there. You could fry an omelet on the sidewalk,” Daiyu said as he handed his briefcase to his wife in the entry hall. He headed straight for the bathroom and Mariko followed a minute later.
“Were you working on a case, dear?” she asked her husband, who was standing under a cold shower. There was a worried look on her sweet face.
“Did Kenzo say something about it?” Daiyu said, over the sound of the water.
“No.” Manko unfolded a bath towel and stood ready to hand it to her husband.
“That’s strange,” Daiyu said, emerging from the shower and shaking his wet head like a hunting dog emerging from a river. Mariko wiped the drops of water from her face and handed her husband the towel. “Is Kenzo in some kind of trouble?” she asked.
“You might say he’s involved in the case. He discovered the body. Fortunately he was drinking with me last night, and there’s no better alibi than, ‘I was having a few drinks with a police chief,’ right?” Laughing heartily, Daiyu allowed his wife to help him into a crisply starched Yukata. He wound the striped-rayon sash around his big-boned body and pushed it into place, low on his hips.
“Please tell Kenzo to come down here,” he said as he sauntered into his study. “And bring me a cold beer while you’re at it,” he added, over his shoulder.
After receiving his brother’s summons, Kenzo dragged himself out of bed, splashed some cold water on his sleep-swollen face, and shuffled down to his brother’s study. Not knowing what to say, he stood rooted to the spot, staring at his feet.
“No need to be so formal,” Daiyu said casually, taking a swig from a frosty brown bottle of Sapporo beer. “Go ahead, have a seat. By the way, thanks for your help today.”
“I didn’t really do much, but you’re very welcome.”
“So, what do you think about this case so far?”
Timidly, Kenzo produced the envelope he had been hiding behind his back and laid it on his brother’s desk. “I’m not sure, but I think this might be relevant,” he said.
“What’s in here?”
“Photographs. It’s pictures of the tattoos of the murdered woman, Kinue Nomura, and her older brother Tsunetaro, and her younger sister Tamae.”
Daiyu spread the photographs out on the desk, then picked up the photo of the Tsunedahime tattoo and stared at it intently. “This is it!” he said. He nodded vigorously, then caught Kenzo’s eye and said, “How did you come to have these in your possession?”
Kenzo tried to sound nonchalant. “It’s really nothing, which is why I had forgotten about them until now. What happened was, when Hisashi Mogami introduced me to that woman at the tattoo contest, I mentioned casually that I wouldn’t mind having a picture of her tattoos. I thought for sure she would refuse because the newspaper photographers were pestering her for the same thing, and she gave them the brush-off. To my surprise, she took this envelope out of a silk furoshiki cloth and handed it to me. She said she had a feeling that someone might try to kill her, and she would feel safer if these photographs were in the hands of a person she could trust.” Kenzo had broken out in a cold sweat while he was spewing forth this stream of lies. He was just about ready to drop the charade and make a clean breast of things, but Daiyu seemed to take his wild story at face value.
“Take a look at this,” the chief inspector said. He took a photograph out of his briefcase and laid it on the desk. The photo showed the rear view of a totally naked woman, and although the surface of the print was disfigured with tiny cracks, it was clearly a picture of the tattoo known as Tsunedahime. In fact, the photo was an exact duplicate of the one Kenzo had just showed to his brother.
“Where did this picture come from?” Kenzo was bewildered.
“This is a print made from those fragments of photographic plate. The original was evidently made many years ago, but we were able to make this print by piecing together the fragments that the professor made off with.”
“And what is the professor saying about this?”
“He’s saying that after you went to answer the telephone, he wrapped his hand in a handkerchief to avoid destroying any fingerprints and picked up the pieces of the photographic plate that were lying on the ground in the garden. When he saw that it was a picture of a tattoo, his collector’s mania kicked in and he furtively stuck it in his pocket. We needled him a little, saying, ‘So, is stealing a potentially important piece of evidence from the scene of a murder your idea of doing your duty as a virtuous citizen?’ He apologized, in his sarcastic way, but he still refuses to tell us anything at all about his activities on the night of the murder. He just keeps saying that his movements have absolutely nothing to do with the crime. We’re just going to let him sit in jail and stew in his own juices for two or three days. That goes against my usual policy, but with an adversary like Professor Hayakawa, there’s no other way to handle it.”
“Did you check out the professor’s house?”
“Yes. Both his wife and the maid said that he went out around six and came back around midnight. Those times correspond exactly to the hours for the murder, so we really would like to know what he was up to during that time block.”
“What about Inazawa, what’s going on with him?”
“Nothing new to report. After being taken to police headquarters he got more and more excited and finally refused to talk at all, so we decided to leave him alone for the time being. The serious investigation will begin tomorrow.”
“Did you manage to locate Takezo Mogami?”
“Not yet. We’ve staked out his house and his office, and we�
�ve got the dragnet spread as far as Osaka. So far no word. It’s possible that he’s flown the coop, maybe even gone abroad. I mean, if he is the murderer, he wouldn’t have any reason to hang around here, waiting to be captured.”
“What about you? Do you think Mogami’s the murderer? The newspapers seemed to be leaning toward that theory.”
“I really don’t know yet. He seems the most likely suspect. The thing I can’t fathom is why the torso disappeared. What on earth was the point of that? This is the strangest case I’ve ever seen, in all my days as a cop.”
“Were you able to identify the fingerprints?”
“Yes, thanks to the fingerprints, we’ve been able to cast a little bit of light on this mystery. Of the three sets of male prints, one belongs to Takezo Mogami, as we thought. We were able to match them to prints at his home and his office. Another set belongs to Inazawa. Our search turned up his prints on the outside of the bathroom doorknob and in several other places as well. The third man we figured out much more quickly than we expected. While going through the files at the station, we discovered that the third set of prints from the scene matched those of a convicted felon named Ryokichi Usui. He’s your basic lower-echelon yakuza, with a police record as long as your arm. He did hard time for killing a man during an argument. When he got out of prison a couple of years ago, he ended up in Yokohama. He ran into Kinue Nomura there. Apparently they had been lovers before, when she was younger, but in Yokohama she wouldn’t give him the time of day. After a while Takezo Mogami appeared on the scene and a rivalry ensued. I imagine it was like a sumo champion and a very small grasshopper. Mogami was rolling in money and had a certain amount of social status. The way we see it, Usui wasn’t about to stand by and watch another man horn in on what he still considered his territory, even though Kinue had made it clear he didn’t have a chance. Maybe it was a matter of yakuza’s honor or fear of losing face, or maybe it was just stubborn male pride. Usui followed Kinue and Takezo around, harassing them incessantly. Kinue finally reported him to the police, and he ended up back in prison. So Ryokichi Usui has plenty of motive for murder.”
Tattoo Murder Case Page 13