Aoki nodded. All those old news clippings, their intriguing speculations, were now mainly incorrect footnotes to the facts. The police had searched this place, but mostly they’d been looking for a body in lakes or forests. Some of the ryokan’s old servants must have known, but they’d kept silent. He brooded on the room. Madam Ito and her desperate act had had to be protected, her insanity and her dishonorable life with those men covered up—for her sake and for the sake of family honor. Except they hadn’t been; the police and the media had spread the story in lurid detail across the nation.
His left hand rubbed over his cheekbone and found the mole. “The blood on the clothing in the locker was her blood group?”
“Two days before that, she cut her wrist for that purpose. She bandaged herself. That is what I believe. She never speaks of it. She must have nearly died. “
Aoki considered that piece of her madness, the second time she’d done that. “Why was she here now?”
“We bring her home once a year, at the anniversary. She is kept in this room, but sometimes at night when all are asleep she comes out to wander around, sometimes to cry out. My sister stays with her most of the time when she’s here.”
The screams, the pleading, the rambling tirade that had sent him running into the labyrinth, leaving Ito alone in his room— these were stark in Aoki’s mind. Madam Ito on the loose! A random factor! But for that—in his confusion after that mouthful of drugged tea, he’d probably have been slaughtered at the door of the Lily Room like Shoba.
“The nightingale floor—”
“As you see, there’s another way to this room. She used the gallery last night only because she was frightened and could get here more quickly. “
“Your father knew she was at the sanatorium, sometimes here?”
She hesitated. “Yes. But they never met. They hadn’t exchanged a single word since they parted.”
Aoki broke his gaze away and paced across the room. “Where have they gone?”
“To a new place.”
“Not back to the sanatorium?”
“No.”
There was a note of defiance, but also something else in the inclination of her head, the way her hands had moved. Entreaty? He thought so. She said, “It is an old, old case, which does not require solving. It is not connected with the murders here. It is our family business.” Her hands had become joined. He could see the white of the delicate knuckles shining like bare bone. “What will you do?” A husky whisper.
He stared at those hands. “I’ll have to think about it.” He couldn’t be sure what he would do yet. “Not connected? What about your father? What is his connection to Mr. Saito?”
She hesitated. “I can tell you nothing about that. My father is not a man who shares any part of himself.” Her lips had tightened. “He knew Saito. I could tell that, also that he was shocked the night Mr. Saito arrived, then furious—and worried.”
Aoki coughed. His chest hurt. They must’ve known each other in Osaka, but what hold did Saito have over the chef? If he knew the details of that, much would fall into place—especially as to how the yakuza fitted in. Osaka must be the link.
“When did Saito make his reservation?”
“The morning of the day he arrived.”
“Out of the blue,” Aoki muttered.
The story he was being told wasn’t totally complete; she was telling him what she thought he would unravel, gambling that he’d let the affair of Madam Ito continue to dwell in the realm of unsolved cases. “The Mountain Beauty Mystery,” as one paper had perpetuated it. She must’ve made a judgment on his humanity, on his character. Irritably, he reached for a cigarette.
Now there were more important matters that had to be dealt with,
~ * ~
Aoki went into the trench and emerged into full daylight. He stared at the white-covered mountains as though they’d just been created this morning, at the low clouds drifting past their peaks. The army of trees stood hip-deep in snow. A snowplow was clearing the forecourt, and the taxi driver stood nearby watching the work and smoking a small cigar.
Snow! But for the storm and the terrific dumping of it on these mountains imprisoning them all, events would’ve unfolded differently—though, was anything predictable in the convoluted situation he’d been sent into?
Two police cars and an ambulance drove cautiously down the slippery road, using sirens. The plaintive sounds went down the valley.
While he’d been waiting in the hall, he’d noticed an acrid, burned smell coming from downstairs. He’d gone down to the kitchen. Overnight, something had been burned to ashes in the big woodstove, and the kitchen maids could not account for it.
Aoki stood talking to the two respectful and curious detectives from the prefecture, who obviously knew of his celebrity. Tersely, he gave them the facts and provided more details of Saito and Hatano’s departure. One went to his car to radio headquarters; then they went inside to view the bodies and talk some more. Aoki smoked incessantly throughout this. He wished that he’d brought more chocolate; he seemed to’ve developed a craving for it as strong as pregnant women’s for ginger. An hour later, a message came through: No one resembling Saito had been seen at Hakodate. The chef and the two women had been sighted boarding a train for the south.
A van had arrived with the forensic team, who had sent for backup. The ryokan was now bustling with their activity. Three bodies in situ. Yamazaki’s corpse was provoking a lot of terse comment among them; so was Shoba’s. In contrast, Ito’s was relatively run-of-the-mill. Aoki had been right: Yamazaki’s corpse was minus its liver. When they told him that, Aoki nodded slowly, though he still didn’t understand it.
The detectives had begun to question Kazu Hatano in the office, and Aoki had to get moving. He went to his room and changed, then packed his suitcase. The cat was in the doorway. He bent down to give it a final stroking. “Good-bye, Cat,” he said. “Have a good life. “
Thirty minutes later he paced the hall, pale and thoughtful. He must have looked like another man in the suit, except for his bandaged wounds, for she blinked at his appearance when she excused herself and came out of the office.
When he’d changed and packed, the five bonsai in their small ceramic pots were gone from the chest in the Camellia Room, but now Mori stood behind the proprietor, the cardboard box in her arms.
She came forward. “Here you are, sir. They’ve been watered, and the sick one is recovered. “
Aoki nodded at her. “Thank you for looking after them— and me.”
Aoki took his leave of Kazu Hatano. Maybe I’ll be back. She walked with him to the police car. She bowed low, her bluish black hair shining against the snow-covered mountains. When her eyes met his, he detected the earlier question—entreaty—still there, but he couldn’t give her an answer yet. However, maybe he had decided; he’d kept silent about the famous seven-year-old case when he’d briefed the two detectives. It’d cause him trouble if that came out—and it probably would. The local cops would be asking about those women, and one of the ryokan’s staff in the know might inadvertently spill the beans. He shrugged. Of course, he could have been wrong about her look; really, he had no idea what it meant. Opening up like a flower? He shook his head at his earlier naïveté.
Saito and Superintendent Watanabe—he had a rendezvous with each of those dark and flawed guys, and nothing about that would be sure or certain. But it was ex-governor Tamaki who now dominated his future. Grim-faced, gazing across the mountains, Aoki swore to himself that the Fatman was going to be brought to justice. One way or another.
Journalists had arrived and were grouped near the entrance, corralled by two uniformed officers. They’d been watching Aoki and the ryokan’s proprietor. “Who are you?” a man called out to Aoki, raising a camera. Ignoring the question, Aoki turned away quickly and climbed in beside the police driver, and they started off. The reporters would soon work that out, and he’d be back again in the fucking limelight. He twisted his head to l
ook back at her, but they’d already gone around a bend, and there was nothing to see but the frozen landscape and the cloud-crowded, sliding sky.
~ * ~
Chapter Twenty-Two
AOKI ARRIVED AT AKITA ON the branch-line train just before midday, and fifteen minutes later boarded the bullet train for Tokyo. A soft rain fell as the train eased out of the small city. The detective caught the eye of a red-robed monk standing by the tracks beneath an umbrella and wondered at their different worlds. Soon the train reached high speed, and the poles beside the line were flicking past in a continuous blur.
A nationwide dragnet was out for Saito, Hatano, and the two women. He could hardly believe what had happened to him overnight, and now, as if by a stealthy hand, the ryokan was being drawn back into the past. In an hour’s time, would he be doubting that it’d existed? He shook his head, causing a man sitting opposite to glance at him. However, he’d agreed to send a full report to the prefecture chief within twenty-four hours, and writing it down should set it in concrete.
As he sped south, his mind made a solid and deliberate shift to the gray, glass-encased TMP building he was headed for. To Watanabe. Cold-bloodedly, the superintendent had sent him to the ryokan—into the killing zone of yakuza assigned to murder Ito and Yamazaki—a late addition to the program! Into the weird orbit of Saito and the crazy chef.
By now, Watanabe would’ve heard that he’d survived; would assume that he’d made the connections and reached disastrous conclusions—if they were brought out in the open. The superintendent would be sitting in his office waiting for Aoki, and he’d have a new plan.
Aoki moistened his lips and frowned at the swift-passing landscape. Should he bypass confronting the superintendent, take it straight to the director general? He recalled the DG’s demeanor the day the investigation had been shut down: pragmatic yet embarrassed. Aoki shook his head vehemently. Probably the first stop after that would be the head doctors, and back into Watanabe’s web. He had to personally deal with Watanabe. He could see no way around that. But how? He wiped moisture from his brow with a handkerchief. There was still too much he didn’t know about the ryokan murders, about the journalist Kimura’s. He stared along the carriage. It was vital that he put down what he did know, before Watanabe made his next move. Then, if he could get his revelations into the right hands, fast—maybe hands outside the department. . . Meanwhile, tonight, he’d have to play it as cool with Watanabe as the bastard had played it with him; keep the superintendent undecided about how much Hideo Aoki knew.
Carefully, he twisted his neck. The pain in his head had settled down to a dull ache. His left hand was bandaged and taped, the cut on his head smeared with ointment. At the station he’d inserted a coin in a vending machine, then sighed as an icy aluminum can dropped into his hand. He sipped the beer now and glanced at the paper he’d picked up at Akita: a gateway back into the real world. He read that the government was expected to announce the bank’s fate tomorrow; that today police were hopeful of contacting its missing chairman and the MOF official. Aoki grimaced. Tomorrow there’d be blazing headlines on their murders. Beyond that, the Fatman’s face cruised his mind, like a transparent moon in a noonday sky. His eye caught another item on the front page:
Prosecutor charged with taking bribes.
A senior prosecutor in the Osaka District Public Prosecutor’s Office was indicted Thursday on bribery charges. It is alleged that the official accepted bribes from gangsters for information on investigations.
Aoki glanced over it and discarded the paper.
~ * ~
To Inspector Aoki, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police building housing his division of the CIB now presented itself as enemy territory, deadly dangerous for street criminals and rogue cops alike. He was sweating inside his overcoat as he rode the elevator to the superintendent’s floor. It stopped briefly at his old floor, and across an acre of desks and heads he saw the glassed-in cubicle that had been his. Empty. He glimpsed detectives he knew; their faces looked older. He’d been vegetating nearly four months in his suspension, his troubles, but it seemed like a lifetime, and now, each passing moment, he was feeling lonelier and more exposed.
The elevator doors sprang open again as though challenging him to step out. His heart thudded as he did. A minute later he paused outside a door, steadying himself, sinking the anger, the hate, into deep concealment. He knocked, and the familiar voice bade him enter.
Aoki stepped into the room. Watanabe shot up behind his desk. “My dear colleague, welcome back. What a recuperation you’ve been having!” He came around the desk, his eyes staring into Aoki’s. “Chairman Ito and Mr. Yamazaki—both dead! And you in the middle of it all!” He shook his head in wonder and smiled—a fleeting grimace. He took in Aoki’s wounded head, the cracked lips dotted with dried blood, the bandaged left hand. “Well, well.”
He must know I’ve worked it out, Aoki thought, eyeing the yellow silk tie like familiar scenery. But maybe there’s still a doubt in his mind that I’ve connected him to the Fatman. For sure, he’ll be thinking: With the others dead, how am I still alive? The superintendent had always been terse and aloof, even as he dispatched Aoki for the health cure; now he was absolutely comradely. Aoki nodded. “Yes, and the killer’s still on the loose.”
“Take your overcoat coat off and tell me all about it. The prefecture hasn’t sent us much yet. What a case! By the way, congratulations. Your suspension’s been lifted. You’re back on duty, Inspector. “
Aoki looked into the calculating eyes. The counterfeit concern for his health and future had fallen into the abyss, replaced by this false bonhomie. Eyes wide open, but otherwise expressionless, Aoki gazed at his boss. Here was the man who’d sent him to the ryokan like a lamb to the slaughter; to protect the Fatman. Luckily, he’d been out of sight, unconscious on the floor of that secret room, when Saito and Hatano had had to get out in a hurry to beat the local cops.
Face-to-face, instinctively he confirmed that the superintendent knew he’d been sprung. It was as certain as the next rice crop. The guy had no doubts. The mountain-ryokan plan to eliminate Aoki had failed, and Watanabe had to find another way. And it was really urgent now. The machinations that had caused Tokie’s death had been at the behest of the Fatman and this bastard. Hatred burned in Aoki’s heart, and fear, but he nodded and sat down like a reasonable man, a dutiful subordinate, back from the wars—in reality, a man who was buying time.
He lit a cigarette and looked across the desk at his boss as he described the three murders, sketched in Saito and Chef Hatano, and gave an abbreviated report of Ito’s claims about the yakuza. He left out any mention of ex-governor Tamaki. He said nothing at all about the Madam Ito case. The lowdown on what had been his nemesis for seven years would’ve sent the superintendent into orbit! Even in the midst of whatever scheme he now had to dispose of Hideo Aoki.
The superintendent was sitting forward, his eyes sharp. “This Saito—have you a theory on his motive, on whether he acted for himself or for others? The yakuza?”
Aoki inspected the cigarette in his fingers and for a moment pondered his boss’s disingenuousness. “Not at this stage. He’s some kind of criminal, a very experienced type, very confident.” He hadn’t mentioned, either, the pile of news clippings he’d found in Saito’s room—provided by the superintendent? Maybe not. He considered whether to say what had jumped into his mind, then did. “He’s a skilled Go-player, some kind of master. It’d be surprising if he doesn’t attend those big national competitions, isn’t a member of one of the associations. Not under the name of Saito, of course.” He paused. “Probably he’s yakuza.”
And probably the superintendent had no details on him, or on Hatano—their identities or anything else. That was yakuza business. Watanabe would just know that the job had been set up, and his part in it.
The superintendent hadn’t moved his eyes from Aoki’s. Calculating the odds, Aoki figured, reassessing where a guy with a damaged mind, who’d been in a me
ntal institution, could take what he had. Whether he’d even get a hearing. Whether it was a risk that could be taken.
Aoki stubbed out his cigarette.
Watanabe was nodding slowly as if he’d decided something. He slid open a drawer. “I think the DG will want you to stay on the case. Here’s your badge.” He slid it across the desk. “And here’s your gun.” He weighed the holstered weapon in his hand, then pushed it toward Aoki.
Aoki pocketed the badge, slipped the pistol from the holster, and automatically checked its status. He removed the seven-shot magazine. It held no bullets.
The phone was in the superintendent’s hand. “I’ll find out when the DG can see us.” He spoke and listened briefly. “Half an hour,” he said, putting the phone back in the cradle as expertly as Aoki had handled the pistol.
The superintendent nodded at the weapon. “It’s been too long. We’ve got time to go downstairs to the range. I’ll check you out and sign you off.” He was hissing softly through his teeth.
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