“I see. Well, to my knowledge there’s only one person who fits that description, but never mind that now. Your reasoning is exceptional. I wish I could say that I can’t find a single point to criticize. The truth is, there are two or three small details that don’t sit quite right with me. If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you about them.”
“Sure, go ahead.” Hisashi looked surprised.
“About the bloodstained saw that was found near the crime scene. According to your scenario, the second criminal got the idea of stealing Kinue’s torso on the spur of the moment, after discovering her dead body. In a case like that, the customary behavior would be to use whatever tools happened to be at hand. The maid testified that she had never laid eyes on that particular saw before. So where did it come from?”
“Well, the maid had been fired two or three days before. The saw must have come into Kinue’s hands during that interval.”
“That’s a possibility, I suppose.” Kyosuke sounded unconvinced. “In most households, though, there’s no need for two or three saws. The police report said Kinue already had a perfectly good one in the tool-shed. If she were going to buy another one, she would probably have bought a new one. I mean, what would be the point in buying an old saw?”
“Well, maybe a carpenter or some other workman left the saw behind.”
“A carpenter? The tools of his trade? Can you really imagine a Japanese carpenter going off and forgetting his precious saw? And it’s hardly likely that the secret lover would have taken a saw along for what he expected to be a romantic tête-à-tête. I suppose the saw could have been a gift from a visitor, although I haven’t heard of anything like that since the reign of Emperor Jimmu. People might take some fancy sweets or a box of rice crackers when they go calling, but not a rusty old saw.”
“You’re pretty sharp yourself, Mr. Kamizu.” Hisashi appeared disgruntled by Kyosuke’s line of questioning, but he had the grace to acknowledge his opponent’s skill.
“Moving on to my second question: Why did the mystery man leave the light on in the bathroom? If he went to all the trouble to create a locked room by some detective-novel trick, I can’t imagine that he would neglect to turn off the light.”
Hisashi thought for a minute before answering. “On that point, there may be a lie—or an inaccuracy, if you want to be charitable—in Ishikawa’s testimony. Don’t you think it’s possible that he unconsciously turned on the switch himself when he heard the sound of running water and went to investigate?”
“That seems like a reasonable explanation, but why weren’t his fingerprints found on that light switch?”
“That kind of switch is exceptionally easy to turn on and off. You just have to touch it lightly with one fingertip. It could be moved to the opposite position using only the palm of your hand.”
“All right, I’ll yield that point. Let’s say that Inazawa heard the sound of running water and thought it strange. So he turned on the light switch outside the bathroom. But why had the second man left the water running in the first place?”
“No matter how thorough the perpetrator is, he’s bound to blunder. That’s almost unavoidable. It’s why most crimes end up being solved. But I do think the water was probably left running on purpose, to wash away the blood.”
Kyosuke looked puzzled. “Why would he care about washing away the blood? It’s not as if the second man had any reason to try to conceal the whereabouts of the remains, or to make it appear that the murder took place at another location. So it wouldn’t have mattered to him if the bathroom was covered with blood. Why would a criminal who left the head and limbs thrown down any which way on the bathroom floor, have worried about a little blood? We’re talking about a man who went to the trouble of locking the door from the inside in order to avoid having the body discovered. I find it hard to believe he would have left the water running and the electric lights on, since noise and light were bound to draw attention to the bathroom eventually. The water might have been left on by mistake, but the light could have been turned on from inside or outside the room.”
“I believe we’ve been over this already.” Hisashi’s tone was polite but cool. “This is what they call a vicious circle, in debating terms.”
A chill descended upon the room. Hisashi Mogami went on smoking his cigarette, but he didn’t appear to be enjoying it very much.
“I’m sorry,” Kyosuke said with an embarrassed laugh. “I’m afraid that’s one of my more prominent character flaws. Ever since I was a boy people have made fun of me for being an advocate of Greek-style sophistry. Still, I have to ask one final question. Why did the mystery man go to all the trouble of lugging the torso off to another place to remove the skin? If he wanted the tattoos, why didn’t he do as he did in Tsunetaro’s case and remove the skin on the spot? It couldn’t have been easy to carry the torso. According to your scenario, he waited hidden in the garden, holding the torso wrapped in a cotton kimono. Why were no bloodstains found in the garden? Tell me, Mr. Mogami, how did the man dispose of that blood?”
When Hisashi made no reply, Kyosuke continued in an apologetic tone. “I realize it probably seems as if I’ve been doing nothing but picking holes in your reasoning. But you know the old saying, ‘The more one has the more one wants.’ The basic principles of your theory are so brilliant, and I just thought that if it were possible to iron out a couple of small discrepancies here and there, then the truth would immediately become clear.”
“Hmm,” Hisashi mumbled through closed lips. “No matter how perfect a theory we might cook up, it’s still just academic, and abstract. I simply don’t expect to understand this case any further than I do right now.” Hisashi took a long drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke toward the ceiling. “According to Kenzo,” he said, “you compared this case to an endgame in Japanese chess. Do you have some special interest in chess?”
“Just enough so I can create an endgame myself,” Kyosuke said.
Hisashi opened the drawer of a nearby desk, took out a notebook, opened it to a page containing a complex diagram, and handed it to Kyosuke. Kyosuke stared at the diagram for several minutes. Then he said, “Ah, I get it. This is an incredible plan. You throw away five major chess pieces, and then you attack with two bodyguards. Knight takes knight, and then you promote the rook.…” He went on reading the moves all the way to checkmate, with a rapid fluency that left Hisashi gazing at him in amazement.
“Mr. Kamizu, how much chess do you play? There’s no way an amateur could unravel this checkmate so easily.”
“I played a fair amount when I was in college,” Kyosuke replied casually.
“How about a quick game?”
“I’d be delighted.”
The two men shifted position so that they were facing each other across the table, and set up the pieces on Hisashi’s antique Japanese-chess board. From the first move there was a sense of wildly competitive excitement, and as the pace increased, Kenzo watched in amazement. Kyosuke’s fingertips were trembling as he moved his chess pieces, while Hisashi plunked each piece down on the board with a resounding thump.
The pace of the battle was fast, and improvisational. Toward the end, it appeared to have come down to one move, but Hisashi forcibly promoted his rook to a bishop, and staged a wicked attack. Kyosuke had fortified his camp with three gold and silver bodyguards, but they were suddenly stripped away, and his king was left exposed. Even so, Kyosuke made a typically gutsy move, marshaling his forces for one last desperate advance on Hisashi’s well-protected king. It was in vain. Kyosuke’s king fell to Hisashi’s next move.
Throwing all the pieces he had captured earlier onto the chessboard, Kyosuke chuckled quietly to himself. Hisashi seemed to be relieved that the game was over. As he wiped the sweat from his face, he began to laugh. “I’m impressed, Mr. Kamizu,” he said. “You really are strong! I’ve been playing professionally for years, but this is the first time I’ve ever met such a formidable opponent who was an amateur. If you had moved your bishop eight-
to-two instead of seven-to-three, who knows how the match might have turned out?”
Kyosuke laughed and gave a mock-courtly bow. “What’s that old saying: ‘The defeated general shouldn’t talk about tactics’?” he said ruefully. “I’m happy to have met such a challenging opponent. There’s another saying, too: ‘One game of chess is worth a hundred years of friendship.’”
After that, the conversation lapsed into meaningless chitchat, and then Kyosuke casually inserted a question into the lighthearted banter. “Mr. Mogami, are you by any chance a painter?”
“Why do you ask, Mr. Kamizu?” There was something sardonic in the way Hisashi emphasized the respectful “Mister.”
“It’s just that as we came in, I noticed what appeared to be an artist’s studio.”
“Oh, that. The previous occupant of this house was a painter, but I’ve remodeled it and turned it into an experimental-chemistry lab.”
“That’s right, I remember hearing that you had a degree in applied chemistry. What are you researching now? I’d be very interested in seeing your experiments sometime.”
“Before the war I was making amino acids and grape sugar—dextrose—and so on, but the times being what they are, there really isn’t much to show you now.”
“I see,” Kyosuke said. He took a monogrammed, steam-pressed handkerchief from his pocket and wiped some invisible crumbs from his mouth, then stood up. “Thank you very much for your hospitality,” he said as Hisashi escorted them to the door. “I hope to see you again sometime soon.”
“Please come again, any time,” Hisashi replied cordially.
“Gardez la foi,” Kyosuke said with a mock salute, to which Hisashi replied without missing a beat, “Et vous aussi, mon général.”
The air seemed to be chilled by the promise of winter as Kenzo and Kyosuke walked along in thoughtful silence. Kyosuke’s hands were stuffed deep in the pockets of his overcoat, his head was sunk in the collar. His eyes, peering out from the folds of his muffler, seemed to be looking into another dimension. As they approached Ogikubo Station, Kenzo couldn’t restrain himself any longer. “Kyosuke, have you figured out who the murderer is yet?”
Kyosuke raised his head. “Yes, I have. Meet me at the police station tomorrow at one P.M. We’ll go to your brother’s office and I’ll tell you who committed the murders. Right now I’m late for a rather crucial appointment with a certain lady, so I’m going to say good-bye. Keep the faith, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
With that, Kyosuke flagged down an old black taxicab and climbed in, leaving Kenzo on the curb, staring after his enigmatic friend in wonder.
54
“Maybe the serial killer has struck again,” Daiyu Matsushita said in an ominous tone of voice, tapping the glass cover of his wristwatch in an exaggerated manner. “I certainly hope nothing dire has happened to your friend, Mr. Kamizu.”
They were sitting in the detective chief inspector’s large but sparsely-furnished office at police headquarters, waiting for Kyosuke Kamizu. Daiyu Matsushita sat behind a battered-looking metal desk, while Kenzo perched nervously on the edge of a creaky folding chair. The seat of honor, a well-worn brown armchair adorned with incongruous white lace doilies, was reserved for the young genius. Outside the narrow rectangular window lay another gray, chilly day, but the otherwise austere office was brightened by a huge bunch of hothouse lilies in a green glass vase, brought in earlier that morning by a grateful family whose stolen bicycles had been recovered by the police.
Kenzo made a childish face at his brother. “Well, fortunately my friend Mr. Kamizu doesn’t have any tattoos, so there’s no reason for anyone to kill him and strip off his skin. And besides, it’s only five of one and he said one o’clock.” Nevertheless, he couldn’t help stealing a surreptitious glance at his own watch to make sure it was synchronized with the black clock on the wall.
“There you go again, mouthing off to your elders!” Daiyu joked. “I can’t help thinking that Mr. Kamizu may be stumped by this case. Maybe that’s why he’s late.”
“I told you, he isn’t late! He’s never late!” Kenzo snapped, falling into his brother’s trap. Daiyu made a “gotcha” gesture, and Kenzo smiled sheepishly. “All right, why do you think he’d be stumped?”
“Because Mogami’s theory is such a splendid one. I’ll be the first to admit, it’s much better than any hypothesis the department has come up with. Maybe we should hire civilians and soothsayers. I really doubt whether Mr. Kamizu will be able to produce anything half as good. He probably feels he’ll lose face because of that, and that’s why he isn’t going to show up today.”
“Not a chance!”
“Look, I don’t care who gets the glory for solving this case, but we do need some sort of concrete proof. The reasoning is all in place. I just wonder if your Mr. Kamizu can conjure up some conclusive evidence to make it all come together.” Daiyu spoke in a bluff, joking tone, but he couldn’t conceal the fact that he was feeling very anxious. He took a deep drag on his cigarette. Then, carefully contorting his lips, he exhaled in the approximate shape of a hangman’s noose.
Kyosuke appeared at precisely one o’clock, looking markedly different from his usual dapper, well-groomed self. His eyes were bloodshot, his long hair unkempt. His clothes were rumpled, too, and his face, which wore a somber expression, was abnormally pale. Kenzo was startled to realize that Kyosuke was wearing the same double-breasted blue-and-white pinstriped suit he had worn the day before, and he wondered whether his enigmatic friend had been out all night with the “certain woman” he had mentioned.
“Thanks for coming,” said Daiyu Matsushita. “Please, have a seat.” Kyosuke settled back into the thickly upholstered chair, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath, like someone getting ready to meditate.
“I gather that you’ve figured out who committed the murders?” Daiyu said.
“I have,” Kyosuke answered, without opening his eyes.
“Well, don’t keep us in suspense. Who on earth did it?”
Kyosuke opened his remarkable eyes. Looking from Kenzo to Daiyu and back again, he said softly, “The murderer is Hisashi Mogami.”
55
Detective Chief Inspector Daiyu Matsushita sat in silence for a moment, looking as if he had just received a high-voltage electric shock. Slowly, his expression of surprise was overtaken by contempt mixed with anger. “Mr. Kamizu,” he said, in a tone that was crisply businesslike. “I have great respect for your brains. But in this instance, I am afraid that you have arrived at an erroneous conclusion. We know for certain that Kinue was alive until around nine o’clock that night, and Hisashi Mogami was confined to a jail cell from that time until nine the next morning. Have you forgotten this simple, irrefutable fact? Or are you just determined to insult the Japanese police force any way you can?”
“No,” Kyosuke said calmly. “My conclusion is not erroneous in any way.” His voice was cold as a glacier.
“In that case, give us a way to break his alibi. If you can do that, I’ll gladly arrest Hisashi Mogami and send him to the gallows.” Daiyu stubbed out his cigarette.
“That suits me fine,” Kyosuke said. “Let’s get started. First, I’ll need you to bring in the proprietor of the Ginza boutique, Kyoko Kawabata, for questioning.”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to refuse that request. Mogami was only with Kyoko from three P.M. until eight, you know. Even if there were a flaw in his alibi for that period, that wouldn’t bring us any closer to proving that he killed Kinue Nomura.” Daiyu’s voice had an undertone of barely controlled impatience, as if he were being called upon to explain something for the tenth time to an inattentive subordinate.
“Yes, yes, I know all that.” Kyosuke’s patience, too, was evidently wearing thin. “None of it makes any difference. Please just get her in here as quickly as possible.”
Daiyu pushed a buzzer on his desk and Officer Ishikawa appeared, filling the door frame with his imposing martial artist’s body. He was carrying a bulky wo
rkout bag. Saluting with his free hand, he said, “What is it, Chief?”
“Ah, Ishikawa. Sorry to bother you when you’re on your way to the dojo, but this is rather urgent. Would you please get over to the Ginza as quickly as possible and bring Kyoko Kawabata back here with you?” Officer Ishikawa saluted and left.
Daiyu swiveled his black leather chair to face Kyosuke again. “In the meantime, why don’t you tell me exactly why you think that Hisashi Mogami is the guilty party.” He leaned back in his chair and laced his big-boned hands behind his crewcut head.
“Fine,” said Kyosuke. He pushed his disheveled hair away from his face. “Let me tell you briefly how I eliminated the other suspects.” Speaking with his trademark self-confidence, he proceeded to present his conjectures as if they were corroborated facts.
He began by stating flatly that Ryokichi Usui—who had a foolproof alibi for the second murder—couldn’t have committed the first and second murders, either. Usui did corroborate Inazawa’s story, and he also provided a valuable clue when he mentioned having spotted a woman who looked like Kinue in Yurakucho. It was highly unlikely that the woman could have been Kinue, so the obvious conclusion was that it was either a doppelgänger or her sister Tamae, who had survived the atom bomb and returned to Tokyo.
As for Inazawa, he appeared to be a man of ordinary intelligence at best, with no imagination to speak of. His lack of common sense was borne out by his behavior around the time of the first murder. During that brief period he (1) took Kinue’s unlikely invitation at face value and brazenly went to pay a late-night call on the mistress of his jealous, pistol-packing boss; (2) left a furoshiki-wrapped bundle with his name emblazoned on it at the scene of an apparent murder; and (3) went back to fetch the bundle the next morning, leaving his fingerprints all over the place. Such a bumbler, Kyosuke argued, would be unlikely to have a clever idea like that of the locked room, much less be able to carry it out. Inazawa had no compelling motive and was in Kinue’s house for less than an hour. There was no problem with his alibi up until nine o’clock.
Tattoo Murder Case Page 27