“I’m not planning to reveal everything. Putting aside how many years I’d get, I’m thinking about turning myself in for Yajima. I want to take my time to think it over, decide what to do, the best course of action. I don’t feel much of anything about him, but apparently I’m having nightmares about it. Sometimes I wake up covered in sweat and think, ah, I must’ve had another one. My weird dream with those chairs lined up in front of me, that’s caused by what I did to Yajima, too. My body is blaming me for killing him. It’s a tough burden to carry. If there are other people who are thinking of doing what I’ve done, I want to tell them not to. It ruins your life, and they should think of a better way. The only reason I managed to do it was because back then I felt I was already a dead man walking. If you think about wartime, hundreds of thousands of people end up living with that feeling.”
“Haven’t you worked it out yet?” interrupted the detective. “It may not have been one hundred percent certain, but there was one way you could have protected Ms. Kaori from Yajima that would probably have succeeded. That was if you’d become her boyfriend. All his skill at seduction would have been useless, because con men like that don’t target women who already have a partner. In fact she was single, and even though she’d been warned about dating customers, she quite liked him already. But if you were going out with her, she’d have ignored him, and he could never have gotten close to her in the first place. Right? I guess with Mikihiko Kuki behind him he might still have tried to muscle in, but he probably wouldn’t have got anywhere. Still, you didn’t do it.”
I said nothing.
“I think you did really well. The only thing that didn’t go smoothly was your love life.”
A truck loaded with timber raced past us. Cars were streaming by on the other side of the median strip, heading towards their various destinations. The radio started playing a gentle guitar melody.
“But you look a bit more solid now than you did before. When I met you earlier I had this rude thought. I imagined you were an old man on the verge of death, mumbling to God that at least you hadn’t killed yourself.”
He grinned. I smiled back faintly.
“You’ve really helped me a lot,” I said. “You don’t know how much.”
“It looks like Azusa has genuinely made friends with Ms. Kaori. I’ll keep an eye on her a bit too, but Azusa being her friend, that’s got to be good for her, doesn’t it?”
He hesitated for a second before continuing.
“The first time I met you, you asked me about the investigations I did for Shozo Kuki, as a test. Of course one reason I didn’t hand them over was my sense of professional ethics, but I also thought about the enormity of the consequences if they came to light, and I couldn’t give them to you. Actually there are still more. But I guess you’ve had enough of the Kukis, haven’t you?”
We left the expressway and came out on a wide road. For some reason the passing cars and the houses, the traffic lights and the pedestrians, all seemed dazzling. When we reached Narita the detective lifted my suitcase out of the car for me, and I thanked him. Then he looked me in the eye and spoke.
“I saw you once, at the estate.”
We walked past a row of waiting taxis. I noticed for the first time that he was a little taller than me. I looked straight back at him to show that I understood the significance of his words.
“You were about six or seven. I visited the house in Nagoya to report the results of an investigation to Shozo, and I saw you in the corridor, really skinny, with some toy blocks in your hand. I’m sure you don’t remember it, but at that moment our eyes met. Your eyes looked like they were starved of love, like you were longing for some warmth, some affection, from the bottom of your heart. The same eyes I had when I was a child.”
I watched his weary face for a few seconds. It was deeply lined but it was resolute. Several people walked past us on the way to the terminal. I stuck out my right hand and he shook it.
“Thanks for everything,” I said.
“Let’s go for a drink together sometime, nothing to do with work.”
AFTER I’D COMPLETED the ticketing formalities, I buttoned up my coat and walked off, pulling my suitcase behind me. Even though I had plenty of time, I went through the baggage inspection, checked in my luggage, passed through passport control and headed towards Boarding Gate Twelve. The waiting room was still almost empty. I went to the smoking area, had a cigarette and then returned to the gate, thinking that I should have checked in my carry-on bag as well.
And there was Aida. He rose slowly from his seat, looking at me.
HE WALKED SLOWLY towards me. I ignored him and sat in a nearby chair, but he lowered himself into the seat next to me. We sat there side by side in the departure lounge in front of Gate 12. I stared blankly at the bag in my lap.
“Obviously,” he said softly, “this isn’t a coincidence. I’ve been waiting for you.”
I kept my eyes forward, not looking at him. For some reason he adopted the same pose.
“You know about the cult Rahmla, that took over a nuclear power plant twenty-four years ago.”
His voice was still low, his face averted. The empty, sterile waiting area seemed to spread out before us.
“They’d caused quite a bit of trouble before then. As a detective, I was involved several times when there were problems with people who’d left the group. When they seized the power plant, failed to blow it up, and committed mass suicide, one man left behind a posthumous statement, you could call it a suicide note. ‘The seeds of evil, the mud that never dries, will squirm and grow at every corner of the globe, through humans’ unconscious mind and karmic echoes.’ Judging from the handwriting, it was written by Ryokai Ito, a highly placed member of Rahmla who was enrolled as a grad student at Tokyo University. Of course at the time the media didn’t mention the fact that he was related to the family that controlled the Kuki Group. But those words have always fascinated me, so much so that whenever I caught a criminal I started investigating his links to Rahmla. Why? I don’t understand it myself. I guess I was hoping for something. Naturally it would be terrible if a nuclear plant was really blown up, but still, I wanted something to happen. I wanted to know the answer. Looking at the media frenzy back then, there were probably lots of people who thought the same way. When Rahmla all killed themselves, I felt a bit let down. It’s probably similar to the feeling I get when I arrest someone. Of course I’ve got a strong sense of justice, so I can’t stand criminals, but at the same time I know there’s another side of me that feels most at ease dealing with them, when I’m close to them. Maybe I’ve even hoping for something from them.”
He still didn’t look at me.
“When JL became active, I immediately thought of Rahmla. I thought there must be some kind of connection there. Some kind of echo. I had another look at Ryokai Ito, but I got the same result. His wife was dead, and there was no record of any kids.”
I remembered that Ryosuke Ito’s birth had never been registered. Ryokai had kept his son’s existence so secret that I didn’t know of it until I looked through Father’s papers.
“At the time of the Rahmla case, the police and Public Security were secretly checking up on the Kukis. That is one weird family. They’ve got this custom of breeding children for specific purposes. I also looked at Ryokai’s father, who was born as a result of this custom. But then I got interested in this one man. His name was Fumihiro. Shozo Kuki’s son, born when the old man was sixty. He’d disappeared and I thought he might have become a member of JL. I talked to my superiors, but of course they took no notice. Well, there was nothing I could do about that, and of course it was simply my imagination anyway. Also, the police weren’t too keen on crossing swords with the Kuki family—they were too powerful, and they ran a really big corporation that guaranteed cushy jobs for lots of retired cops and prosecutors.”
I stared straight ahead. I don’t know why, but a sense of tranquility came over me, and I didn’t need to pretend to be c
alm.
“I couldn’t track down Fumihiro, though, no matter how hard I looked. I gave up and concentrated on the relatives of the other leaders of Rahmla. Then the investigation stalled. Their stunts got bigger and the case was more or less taken over by Public Security. We were relegated to deskwork. Then one of my men asked my opinion about a case he was working on, and that’s when I saw you. Takayuki Yajima’s death. It brought back memories. I got in touch with Yaeko and found out that she was really sick. That’s when I realized that I’m better at handling smaller cases, dealing with ordinary people’s lives. I can tell you now, I wished you really had killed Yajima. With that faint hope, I visited your apartment. I thought if I could tell Yaeko that you’d been arrested for murder, that might give her some solace. But it was a difficult investigation. After it came out that Yajima shot up before he died, the regulars at the bar had probably all vanished, and even the staff had changed. No matter how many people we interviewed, no one admitted to having seen him. Still, I thought I’d stick with it. But when we found out that there was a member of JL in our precinct, we got really busy, and we didn’t even set up an incident room for the Yajima case. For one thing, it was hard to identify the murderer because of how Yajima was killed. Then we found the room the JL guy on the run was renting, and we discovered your photo. I didn’t know what to make of it. I thought that if you were connected to JL and were arrested, that would be good news for Yaeko, but she died first. More than that, though, you weren’t the kind of guy who’d join JL in the first place. All my instincts as a detective cried out against it. And while I was puzzling over that, Mikihiko Kuki’s death was splashed all over the headlines.”
As he told his story, Aida remained completely immobile. In the distance a loudspeaker announced a plane’s departure, but it wasn’t mine.
“It looks like he was covertly funding JL, using hidden channels. He owned several security firms, and they were profiting from the scare. We still don’t have any definite proof, but it’s starting to look that way. But I didn’t understand why the information about him had leaked just then, nor why he had been killed by a JL bomb when he was one of their secret financiers. Then something even more surprising happened—your picture turned up in Mikihiko’s room too. What’s more, there was a link between him and Yajima. Just before Yajima’s death, you also went to the d’Alfaro. And someone else came out of the woodwork as well. Kaori Kuki.”
I didn’t turn around.
“I knew her name from the time I was looking into the Kuki family. I had this preconceived idea, though, that anyone who was actively involved in JL had to be a man, and I hardly paid her any attention. But we found hundreds of photos of her at Mikihiko’s place. Yajima had pictures of lots of women, but Kaori was among them too. And finally, the JL guy who was on the run also had photos of her, and one of the sightings of him was on the street right next to her condo. We also learned that Yajima had been getting close to her.”
He moved one arm slightly.
“That means I ended up putting the importance of the fact that Mikihiko had channeled money to JL, and how he’d done it, to one side and followed just one train of thought. That was that every single person who’d been planning to harm Kaori was dead—and all of them were somehow connected to you. Both Mikihiko and the JL guy had your photo, and you went to the same bar as Yajima. Then after Mikihiko’s death, his secretary told us that he called you once to the hotel where he was staying. However, there was no connection between your life and his, and I couldn’t find any link between you and Kaori either. I really didn’t understand what was going on. But then I came up with a theory.”
He took a deep breath.
“If you were Fumihiro Kuki, it would all fit together. Fumihiro and Kaori grew up together on the Kuki property, and since they weren’t blood relations there was a good chance that they were intimate, and we received information confirming that. There were various unsavory rumors about Shozo Kuki and women, and he disappeared in mysterious circumstances about the time that Kaori entered adolescence. I’ll say it one more time. Everyone who plans to hurt Kaori Kuki winds up dead. Someone like Fumihiro might also be interested in JL. And it would explain why you seemed so different when we met after all these years. But even though I had this theory, I couldn’t be all that confident about it, because you look completely different from him—even down to the shape of your ears.”
He turned to me, but I still didn’t look at him. Various memories floated quietly though my mind, then vanished again. I laughed disbelievingly.
“It’s all in your head,” I said. “You’ve got no proof, and just saying it doesn’t make it true. Maybe you’re spot on, maybe you’re partly right, maybe you’re way off target. You can say whatever you want. They’re just wild guesses.”
I saw him stiffen.
“Maybe you’re thinking of grabbing me and pulling out a few of my hairs. Since my apartment has already been swept clean and re-let, that’s the only way you can get my DNA.”
Aida didn’t move, but continued to watch me intently. I remembered Ito’s gray knit cap, stowed in the suitcase I’d checked in earlier.
“But you’re wasting your time,” I said. “Because if you don’t know where Fumihiro is, you can’t check my DNA against his, so you’ve got to check it against someone else in the Kuki family. But even if you get lucky, if you get a match, all that proves is that Koichi Shintani is half-brother to one of the Kukis. In other words, all you’d be left with is the fact that the Shintani who was dumped outside an orphanage when he was a baby was the child of Shozo Kuki’s mistress. All that would get you is a few raised eyebrows. You’ve got no evidence pointing to any suspects in the Yajima case, and both Mikihiko’s death and the JL guy’s death are being treated as suicide, so the grounds for your theory are really flimsy. And one more thing.”
I took a breath.
“At the time of Sae Suzuki’s accident, your suspicions of me bordered on obsession. You were friends with her mother and with Sae herself, and people on the force know that, right? So they’d think you were trying desperately to pin these murders on me because of your own personal vendetta, just like you were determined to pin it on me last time as well. No one would take your nonsense seriously. Your fantasies would come up against a brick wall.”
“There’s always your confession.”
“I’m not going to confess.”
People were starting to straggle into the departure lounge, but it didn’t look like there were going to be many passengers. There were still no more than a couple dozen or so. I got slowly to my feet.
“We’ve known each other for so long, and we’ll never meet again, so I’m only listening out of politeness.”
Aida remained seated, looking up at me.
“I don’t know how to put this,” I went on. “You’ve been a real pain in the ass, and you’ve really pissed me off, but I never disliked you as a person. Look after yourself.”
“What will you do now?” he asked softly.
For some reason the harshness seemed to have faded from his eyes. People were trickling towards the gate.
“I’ll go on living.”
With this I picked up my bag and followed the others towards the entrance. I could feel him staring at my back, but I put my boarding pass in the machine and went into the gangway leading to the plane. Little by little the feeling faded.
Halfway down the passage I stopped, thinking I’d like another cigarette before boarding, but in the end I gave up on the idea because Aida was probably still there. A few other passengers overtook me. When I adjusted my grip on my bag and turned around to start walking again, Kyoko Yoshioka was standing in front of me.
“Huh?”
She looked at my face and laughed quietly. She was wearing a denim jacket and a tight black skirt, with a small bag in her hand.
“You were talking to that strange guy for ages. I thought maybe you were in trouble, but I guess it was okay.”
“What
are you doing here?”
“Another weirdo in a shabby suit came and told me you were leaving, handed me a ticket. He had the most penetrating eyes, and I was really suspicious, but it turns out it was true.”
The detective, I thought. His saying about breaking the rules flashed through my mind.
“It’s lonely, isn’t it, going on a long journey by yourself? I also thought, how dare you just take off without telling me!”
“I was planning to email you after I arrived.”
The white corridor was almost deserted.
“Hey, look, maybe I wouldn’t be your first choice, but I’m not that bad, am I? And number two becoming number one, that’s how life goes. Always demanding the best, that’s a strange way of living.”
“I don’t deserve you.”
I looked at her.
“I’ve got nothing, see? Even my money, I’m planning on setting up a charity. I’ve changed my face, I’ve even killed people.”
“But you’re here, aren’t you?”
She stared into my eyes.
“And you’ll keep on going, won’t you?”
A boarding call came over the speakers. She walked off towards the plane, and I followed. When I caught up with her she started talking again.
“My life wasn’t going anywhere, so I thought I should listen to my heart for a change.”
“I might come back to Japan and turn myself in.”
“You’d get a few years, right? That’s what the other guy said. If that happens, well, I’ll make sure I don’t cheat on you.”
After we took our seats, she said she was going to tell me her life story.
“Even if you’re shocked,” she said with a laugh, “we’re on a plane so you can’t escape.”
We fastened our seatbelts and got ready for take-off. Then she glanced sideways at me.
“Before that, though, I’d like to hear yours.”
Evil and the Mask Page 24