“Needless to say,” Kyosuke went on, “that photograph vindicated my theory. It also raised the question of why Tamae would have had such a large tattoo painted on her body, and then had a photograph taken. That woman I mentioned just now told me her own strange story, and after that I finally understood everything. Apparently there are some men who simply cannot feel sexual desire for a woman with undecorated skin. As Hisashi Mogami put it, for that sort of man a tattoo is an indispensable erotic catalyst. However, a full-body art tattoo isn’t something you can acquire in a day or two. So in cases of erotic emergency, I suppose a temporary tattoo might bridge the gap.”
The mystical abyss of sex it was small comfort to Kenzo to realize that even Kyosuke Kamizu’s incisive intellect had a hard time fathoming that ancient conundrum.
Knitting his eyebrows, Kyosuke pursued his line of thought. “As you know, all the men and women who passed through the Nomura household were lavishly tattooed. Kinue’s first lover was a tattooed photographer, and it seems likely that Tamae, too, might have fallen in love with one of the tattooed men she met. If her original motive for getting tattooed was to please this lover, then it’s conceivable that she had the picture of Tsunedahime painted on her skin as a sort of unrealized dream, or a sneak preview, while she was trying to persuade her reluctant father to tattoo her. Or perhaps she just wanted to give her lover the illusion that he was making love to a tattooed virgin, as a way of keeping his interest until she could get a real tattoo. Who could have dreamed that while the fake tattoo would have faded away after one night of pleasure, its recorded image would come down through the years and end up being the basis for a series of truly horrific murders?”
Kenzo nodded. “Then it was natural that Professor Hayakawa would have suspected something just by glancing at the negative of the photograph,” he said. “But Kyosuke, I’ve been meaning to ask what you meant that night when you said that Professor Hayakawa loved a woman who was not his wife, but also despised her. Who were you talking about?”
“Kinue Nomura, of course. Or maybe he was just in love with her Orochimaru tattoo. The way I imagine it, the professor might have had an inkling that Kinue was still alive even before he saw the actual photographs. I think Professor Hayakawa was filled with contradictory emotions. He despised Kinue for being involved in a murder, yet he wanted her (and her remarkable tattoo) to be safe, and to go on living. The love of skin, the love of tattoos there are things in that shadowy, sensual world that are impossible for an uninitiated person to understand.” He turned and looked at Kenzo, and for a moment Kenzo thought he could see the reflection of that mysterious realm in Kyosuke’s lucent amber eyes.
Epilogue
Several months sped by. Winter turned to spring, the cherry trees burst into joyous bloom, and the residents of the slowly recovering city of Tokyo began to feel that there might be hope for the future, after all. Hisashi Mogami was tried in the First Court of the District of Tokyo, convicted of multiple charges of first-degree murder, and sentenced to death by hanging.
That same week, a new exhibit was installed in the Specimen Room of the medical school of Tokyo University. It was Horiyasu’s masterpiece, Orochimaru, the great sorcerer-and-serpent tattoo that had once adorned the body of Kinue Nomura. Now it hung from the ceiling of that vast chamber of history, beauty, and horror, like a macabre mobile.
“Good God, they’ve turned her into a torso!” Detective Chief Inspector Daiyu Matsushita caught the eye of Kyosuke Kamizu and they both laughed, without mirth. “There seems to be a strange sort of symmetry, though, don’t you think?” Daiyu added in a serious tone. “The initial murder case featured four limbs and a head without a torso, and now we have a torso minus the limbs and the head.”
“’Fearful symmetry,’” Kyosuke said, quoting William Blake.
Kenzo Matsushita was standing on the other side of the sensational new exhibit, lost in bittersweet reverie. Once upon a time, this tattoo was alive. It danced on the skin of a beautiful woman while I held her in my arms. Kenzo took a deep breath as he recalled that magical night in the darkened gambling room of the Serpent Bar. In his rational mind he knew it had all been a calculating charade on Kinue Nomura’s part, one small strategic move before her headlong descent into hell. For Kinue, their evening of passionate lovemaking had just been a meaningless flirtation, the means to an unspeakably loathsome end. But for Kenzo, the night he had spent with the exquisite snake-woman was an unforgettable memory: the sweetest of dreams, the most delicious of delusions.
“She was a frightening woman,” mused Professor Hayakawa, half to himself. “But I still find it difficult to despise her entirely. And even though I didn’t get to add it to my collection, at least I’ll be able to visit her tattoo like a shrine, whenever I feel the urge.”
Kenzo nodded in silent agreement. Some secret part of his heart, too, would always have deeply romantic feelings toward the doomed woman who had once inhabited this brightly patterned skin with so much passion and verve. He walked slowly around the torso, which was swaying in the April breeze like a ghoulish kite. The giant serpent that raised its long neck on the right shoulder still looked as if it were alive, and Orochimaru himself, wrapped in his chain mail and sorcerer’s robes, seemed to be gazing down at the people gathered below with a superior smile, as if to say, “Puny mortals, I’ll outlast you all.”
The four men stood silently in front of the torso, each lost in his own thoughts. The orchid-colored smoke from the cigarettes of Daiyu Matsushita and Professor Hayakawa rose to the ceiling and formed an eerie nimbus around the disembodied tattoo, like a ring of clouds around a troubled moon.
Kenzo stared at the smoke. It’s as if the sorcerer Orochimaru had conjured up an ominous stormcloud, he thought, but that didn’t seem quite right.
And then it hit him. That lavender cloud was like the smoke from funeral incense, a final offering to the souls of the victims in this terrible case: Takezo Mogami, Tamae Nomura, Tsunetaro Nomura, and Kinue Nomura, the love of Kenzo’s life so far.
While his companions moved on to another part of the room, Kenzo stepped up to the tattooed torso and furtively placed his lips on the sneering mouth of the sorcerer. “My wonderful, beautiful lover,” he whispered to Kinue’s disembodied skin. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.” Kenzo’s eyes felt suddenly wet, and he bit his lip and turned away.
Tattoo Murder Case Page 33