Tattoo Murder Case

by Akimitsu Takagi

  “The professor is white, and Kyosuke is black. It was really thrilling, just watching it. Kyosuke executed his trademark endgame, and ultimately he beat the professor.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “A checkers match. Go.”

  Daiyu was clearly confused. “Stop joking around!” he thundered. “I’m trying to have a serious conversation here!”

  “There’s no need to get angry,” Kenzo said. “As I said, they were playing go, and Kyosuke had the black stones. In the end, it looked very much as if he had figured out Professor Hayakawa’s secret. He came right out and accused the professor of being in love with another woman besides his wife. He also said that if he had a little time he could ascertain the professor’s whereabouts on the night of the first murder, when he claimed to have been wandering around on the Ginza for three hours.”

  “If your friend Kamizu’s theories turn out to be for real, I’ll resign my post and recommend that he be appointed as my successor.” Daiyu Matsushita wore a wan smile, but Kenzo could sense the deep frustration behind the joke.

  51

  Everything I loved is lost/My house gone up in smoke.… Hisashi Mogami was singing a plaintive postwar ballad as he polished the blue-enameled surface of a large pressurized kettle that stood in the middle of his laboratory. Hisashi’s own house had been spared by the Allied bombing, but he had other problems on his mind.

  He had gone into debt to buy the vat, which he had hoped to use to manufacture amino acids and dextrose from such materials as wheat bran, soybeans, and salted fish guts. The process involved heating up undiluted sulfuric acid under pressure, so that the protein in the raw materials would become amino acids, and the starch would be converted to sugar. The debt had been fortuitously paid off by Hisashi’s inheritance. While the kettle might someday turn out to have been a good investment, at the moment he saw it as a gigantic white (or blue) elephant. The desperate food shortages in the center of Tokyo made raw materials difficult to obtain, and because he had no reliable sources for his supplies, Hisashi’s laboratory was depressingly idle most of the time.

  Hisashi left his empty, gleaming kettle and went to the window. He stared down at the garden and there, under the fallen leaves, he saw a ripple of movement as a small snake slithered through the grass. Hisashi gave a histrionic shudder, for like many of his countrymen he had an almost pathological fear of snakes. That aversion had not been lessened by a recent, bizarre experience.

  One morning when he had awakened with a particularly oppressive hangover, Hisashi had wandered into one of those dark, musty-smelling apothecary shops in the old-fashioned Asakusa district of Tokyo. Before leaving home he had tried Japan’s most popular hangover remedy, green tea with an umeboshi plum in it, but that potion had done nothing to relieve the infernal pounding in his head. Hisashi was due to speak at a meeting of the Chemists’ Society that day, and he was ready to try anything.

  “Give me the cure,” he said grimly, slapping down a banknote. The wizened Chinese woman behind the counter took a live snake from a cage, deftly slit its throat with a narrow, curved knife, and held the headless but still wriggling reptile over a smudged-looking water glass until it was half filled with dark burgundy-colored liquid. Hisashi felt a strong urge to cancel his order at that point, but he didn’t want to lose face in front of a woman, much less a foreign woman. He snatched the revolting-looking glass and hastily quaffed the fresh-squeezed blood.

  It tasted worse than he had imagined, warm and viscous and obscenely sweet, but he somehow managed to keep from throwing up on the spot. He did, however, vomit prodigiously two minutes later, in the alley behind the shop. When his dry heaves had subsided, the narrow street was sprayed with vermilion, as if it had been the scene of a convention of betel-nut chewers. Hisashi leaned against a soiled brick wall, panting and clutching his abdomen.

  After a moment he realized that his excruciating hangover headache had vanished completely, leaving him with two new symptoms: severe stomach cramps, and an unspeakable taste in his mouth. Never again, he vowed. He had no intention of giving up his long-running love affair with alcohol, but in the future he would stick with more conventional hangover remedies, or else grin and bear the discomfort like a man.

  The garden snake had apparently moved on. The dry leaves lay silent and still Hisashi shuddered again, involuntarily this time, and turned away from the window. His visitors were due soon.

  52

  Kyosuke and Kenzo returned to Hisashi Mogami’s house in East Ogikubo. This time the maid showed them into the drawing room, and Hisashi was there to greet them. “I’m terribly sorry for my rudeness in not being here yesterday,” he said effusively. “I didn’t get back until early this morning.”

  The sunlight lent Hisashi’s strikingly handsome face a golden cast, and Kenzo was startled by the change in his old schoolmate’s appearance and demeanor Perhaps it was because of the fortune he had inherited from his brother, but Hisashi looked plumper and more prosperous. He even seemed to have an easy new dignity, a relaxed gravitas that had been absent the last time they met. He was considerably better dressed, too, in an elegantly cut suit of fawn-colored wool, with a white silk ascot around his neck. In a sartorial sense, he outshone even Kyosuke, who was wearing a conservative double-breasted suit of midnight blue with a white pinstripe. Kenzo, in his worn, baggy brown rayon suit, wasn’t even in the running.

  Hisashi Mogami’s tone was warmly cordial as he bowed to Kyosuke and said politely, “Welcome to my humble abode. I’m Hisashi Mogami.”

  “I am Kyosuke Kamizu.” Kyosuke returned the bow.

  “Your stellar reputation precedes you,” Hisashi said, bowing still deeper. “It’s truly a pleasure to meet the famous Boy Genius at last.”

  Ignoring the obvious sarcasm, Kyosuke bowed again, then upped the verbal-politeness level a notch. “I’ve heard a great deal about you, too. Please allow me to offer my sincerest condolences on the unforeseen misfortune that befell your brother. I’m truly sorry for this tragic turn of events.”

  “Thank you,” Hisashi said, his face suddenly solemn. “Considering that the victims were my brother and his mistress, there’s probably no one whose life was more closely affected by the crimes than mine. It’s only natural that I would try to figure out this case by myself, especially since the police have proved so inept. I even went once to consult with Kenzo, just after the first murder, before my brother’s body was found. This is a splendid chance to try out all my current theories, so by all means let’s discuss the case. Of course, unlike Kenzo, I didn’t happen to be present when the bodies were discovered, so my deductions are based entirely on hearsay, and I can’t guarantee that there won’t be some factual errors.”

  The maid reentered the room and silently set a covered cup of hot green tea and a plate of miniature, steamed, beanpaste-filled manju dumplings in front of each of the three men.

  Hisashi moistened his throat with a sip of tea and began to speak. “The first thing that strikes me as odd is that there seems to be a strong intellectual element, as well as a bizarreness verging on the grotesque. These are inextricably intertwined. If you assume that the crimes were all committed by one person acting alone, that apparent dichotomy is incomprehensible. However, if the crimes were committed by two different people, the schizophrenic nature of the murders would begin to make sense. I’m sure Mr. Kamizu is aware of this fact from his research, but there are many instances in criminology where complicated crimes have gone unsolved because two separate acts were mistakenly viewed as a single crime.”

  “I see,” Kyosuke said in a voice that seemed to be filled with admiration. “I hadn’t thought of that possibility.”

  Hisashi looked pleased. “If you separate the case into its two different elements,” he said, “then you begin to get some inkling of the truth. The first thing that struck me as weird was that Kinue fired her maid at a time like that, when someone was threatening to kill her and strip off her skin. S
he was so concerned that she told not only me but also Kenzo, whom she had just met. It doesn’t make sense that she would have fired her only servant at a time when most people would want to surround themselves with protection.”

  “I’ve had trouble making sense of that as well,” Kyosuke said hesitantly. He speared a dumpling with a bamboo skewer and brought it slowly to his mouth.

  “When I first met Kinue Nomura,” Hisashi continued, “I felt very sympathetic toward her for all she’d been through. As I got to know her better, though, I began to feel that she had gotten exactly what she deserved. I really can’t imagine what she was thinking of, inviting that creep Inazawa to visit her at home that night. It’s not as if she were lacking for male company, my brother was absolutely mad about her. There was no reason for her to pursue a worm like Inazawa. It’s possible that he might have known the identity of Kinue’s secret lover and used the information to blackmail her into setting up their rendezvous that night. That would explain the mystery of what she could have seen in a nonentity like Inazawa. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but she really was a terrible woman. Not an hour goes by that I don’t curse the day my poor brother fell into the clutches of that dreadful siren. Perhaps it was heredity, I’m sure you’ve heard about her criminal mother. Someone who would gladly defile her entire body with hideous tattoos could be capable of anything. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if she had had a secret lover. That might explain why she fired the maid, too; to be alone.”

  “So you think tattooing is barbaric? I must say, it’s refreshing to meet someone who has a normal point of view about that!” Kyosuke was looking at Hisashi Mogami as he spoke, and he didn’t see Kenzo glaring at him.

  Hisashi nodded. “To a person with a shred of common sense, the tattoo manias of my uncle, Professor Hayakawa, or my brother, or Inazawa, wouldn’t make any sense at all. Personally, rather than that sort of grotesque decoration, I find a woman with large breasts infinitely more appealing.” Seeming to realize the tastelessness of his remark, Hisashi quickly returned to the subject at hand. “However, such recklessly immoral behavior couldn’t have gone on for long without my brother getting wind of it. Most of the time he was extremely kind and mild-tempered, but his personality had a dark side, too, and he could be suspicious to the point of paranoia. From the beginning he was wildly jealous and possessive of that woman. He suspected anyone who came along of trying to steal her away, even the rag collector and the delivery boys from the neighborhood noodle shop. I should mention that there was a time when he rashly suspected me of having an affair with her, although I soon convinced him that nothing was farther from my mind. Anyway, while that woman was carrying on her dissolute life, my brother was watching her. When he finally secured irrefutable proof that she was cheating on him with another man, he set out in a jealous rage to punish the adulterers. Kinue would probably have been dimly aware of my brother’s suspicions. She might also have realized that her secret lover had a monomaniacal passion for her tattoos. She might have gotten scared. Those two elements intermingled, and that’s why she ended up making that melodramatic plea to Kenzo for protection.”

  “Yes, I see what you’re getting at,” Kyosuke said, nodding his approval. “That seems like a definite possibility.”

  “So now it’s that night, the night of that horrible crime. The secret lover came to Kinue’s house while she was away at the bathhouse, and let himself in. A moment later my brother came barging in. The visitor panicked and looked for somewhere to hide. Of course, in that house the only door that could be locked was the bathroom, so Lover Boy ended up hiding in there. Meanwhile, my brother hadn’t noticed that there was anyone else in the house. Still in a jealous fury, he fixed himself a drink, then put some prussic acid in the other glass. When Kinue came back she drank from that glass and died almost instantly, poisoned. My brother had also brought a gun, but he probably didn’t use it for fear the noise would be heard by the neighbors. When he saw Kinue lying dead he was suddenly overcome with regret, because he was still deeply, irrationally in love with that terrible woman. My brother lost his desire to take the other man’s life as well and left the house as fast as he could. There’s about a thirty-minute gap at this point, which may be explained by discrepancies among people’s watches and clocks, and the tricks that memory plays. In any case, my brother fled from the murder scene and went out to Mitaka, where he hid in the abandoned storehouse. Sitting there alone in the dark, he became increasingly horrified at what he had done and finally, half-mad with grief and remorse, he killed himself with his own gun.”

  Hisashi finally paused. “I see,” Kyosuke said. “So that explains one of the killers, but what about the second one? Who was that?”

  “I’m not in a position to say who it was. But I can tell you what must have happened. The secret lover was cowering in the bathroom, fearing for his life. When he realized that Takezo had left, he was relieved. He came creeping out of his hidey-hole, only to discover the dead body of Kinue Nomura. He must have been shocked and appalled, and his first instinct was to run away as fast as possible. Given his position, he couldn’t very well notify the police. But when he tried to make his escape he noticed that there were people next door, looking directly down on him from the second floor, so he went back into the house. He sat there in the living room for a while, staring at the corpse. The cold fact was that he wasn’t in love with Kinue the person; he was obsessively attached to the tattoos on her flesh. As he weighed his options, back and forth, he came up with that fiendish idea.

  “Like a man possessed, he dragged the body into the bathroom, leaving a trail of blood. Using a saw he happened to find, he dismembered the body, cutting off all the tattooed portions. Then he wrapped the trunk in the kimono that Kinue had been wearing, and concealed the limbs and head in the bathroom. He locked it from the inside, and somehow managed to get out. I don’t know exactly how he did that, but when you read detective novels, there seem to be all sorts of methods for doing such things, so I’m sure it wouldn’t be impossible. At any rate, as he was about to carry off the torso, Inazawa came through the gate. The secret lover hid in the trees beside the entryway, or someplace like that, and waited for Inazawa to enter the house. The man wasn’t worried that Inazawa would discover the body, or what was left of it, since he had left the bathroom door locked. But when he made a careful survey of the area, he noticed that a man—whom we now know was the vengeful yakuza, Ryokichi Usui—was watching the house. The torsostealer couldn’t very well leave under those circumstances, so he continued to bide his time, no doubt sweating bullets. Inazawa came flying out of the house, obviously upset, and didn’t notice our friend hiding in the garden. Then Usui entered the house, which meant that the house was no longer under surveillance, and the tattoo-maniac seized that chance to make his escape. He smuggled the body to a safe place, removed the skin, and disposed of the remains.”

  Kyosuke was listening intently, watching the expression on Hisashi Mogami’s face. His eyes shone with intelligence. Hisashi took a sip from his teacup before continuing his monologue. “That brings us to the third murder, or rather the third death, since my brother committed suicide. This is how I think that one came about. When Kenzo told the brother, Tsunetaro Nomura, about the murder of his sister Kinue, and the disappearance of her torso, Tsunetaro must have had some inkling of who had been involved. He searched all over Tokyo until he found the man he suspected, then launched a vicious plan of blackmail. He told the man that if he didn’t come up with a certain amount of money, he— Tsunetaro—would go to the police and tell them everything. The lover was terrified. He knew that he hadn’t killed Kinue, but he wasn’t at all certain that he would be able to persuade the police. And of course cutting up the body and making off with the tattoo was clearly a crime in itself. He ran all over town trying to scrape up the enormous sum of money Tsunetaro had demanded, but to no avail. In a panic, he made his fateful decision. He invited Tsunetaro to meet him at that lonely warehouse, ostensi
bly to hand over the blackmail money. Then he poisoned him, stripped off his tattoos, and left the body where it lay. That’s the way I think it happened.”

  Hisashi clapped his hands. The maid appeared in the doorway and he pantomimed a sipping motion. “Yes, sir,” she said. “Right away.”

  53

  “That truly is a splendid feat of reasoning, Mr. Mogami,” Kyosuke said, as the maid refilled the lidded cups with freshly-brewed green tea. “It never even occurred to me that the two crimes might have been intertwined in such a strange, labyrinthine way.” Knowing how competitive Kyosuke was, Kenzo was astonished to hear his friend lavishing so much praise on the equally competitive Hisashi Mogami.

  “Nah,” said Hisashi modestly, “this theory is just a product of my imagination. You’re very kind, but it really doesn’t warrant that sort of extravagant praise.”

  “The odd thing is,” Kyosuke said in a light, teasing tone, “your reasoning is so brilliant that it’s almost as if you had planned the crimes. It’s a good thing you have such a strong alibi!”

  “Tell me about it! I swear, my guardian angel must have made me get into a fight on the Ginza that night. Getting thrown in jail was an unexpected blessing.”

  “True. You strike me as unusually lucky, the sort of person who always manages to turn calamity into good fortune.” Kyosuke and Hisashi looked at each other and began to laugh.

  Kyosuke said, still smiling, “You never mentioned the name of the second man, the one you called the secret lover, the man who cut up

  Kinue’s body and stole the tattoo. Who in the world was he?”

  “All I can tell you is that he is a person of superior intelligence who also has an abnormal attachment to tattoos. I’m certain of that much.”