“To begin with, tell me your name.”
“Hiroshi Watanabe. You must already know this.”
“I want to hear your real name.”
“That’s it.”
“I thought you were going to tell me everything?” Kirishima creased his forehead in mock concern. “It looks as if I have to tell you what your real name is. Well, you’re Tadaaki Yasuda. You’re one of the three Tsukamoto brothers, only your family name has been changed by deed poll to Yasuda.”
“I’m overwhelmed,” the man said impudently. “You’re a genius—and I’m back where I started. But never mind. It was good fun while it lasted.”
“I’m not interested in your sense of fun. I want you to give me the facts.”
“Well, the grim facts are that at present I’ve got no money, no job, and no fixed address.”
“We’ll soon take care of that,” Kirishima said, casting Yoshioka a meaningful glance. “But first tell us what happened at the hot spring resort. Obviously, it wasn’t you who got burnt to death, as your brother claimed. Who was it?”
“I thought you would’ve guessed by now.”
“Was it Hiroshi Watanabe?”
“Touché!”
“That’s how you could assume his identity?”
“Touché!”
“What was your connection with Watanabe?”
“He was a mate of mine. We were about the same age, though he used to call me big brother.”
“Was he on the run, too?”
“No, but we kept in touch. So when I went down with pneumonia, I sent for him.”
“This was while you were in hiding after killing a man?”
“I killed a man all right, but let’s get one thing straight, Mr. Prosecutor. He too had a knife in his hand. It was a clear case of self-defense.”
“You can tell me that yarn later. Right now I want to know when you sent for Watanabe.”
“It was at the end of the year before last. I don’t remember the date, but it was about four days before his death.”
“So it was Watanabe who went to see Yoshihiro at your request?”
“Yeah. Being on the run, I’d just about used up all my dough, and then this pneumonia got me. I was really down . . . Watanabe was pretty hard up, too. Getting to Nagoya was all he could manage . . . Yoshihiro was my only hope. I’d given him plenty of trouble before, so he wasn’t very keen on me, I can tell you. And anyway, I didn’t fancy crawling to him. But you know how it is—pride must be sacrificed for the belly . . . Nobumasa was a hard bastard—it was no use crawling to him. But Yoshihiro was always a bit of a sucker, rather softhearted, so I figured I might be able to touch him.”
“What did you do?”
“I thought he’d come good if I sent word to him I was hovering between life and death. Mind, this time I didn’t have to exaggerate too much . . . Anyway, I got Watanabe to look him up.”
“Did you send him a letter?”
“First I wanted to write him a long one, describing all my aches and pains. But then I thought, how could anybody about to give up the ghost write a long letter? So I put down just a few lines, asking Yoshihiro to listen to Watanabe. Without that he would’ve never believed him.”
“And Watanabe followed your brother to the hot spring resort?”
“That’s right. He first went to Yoshihiro’s flat at Kyoto, where somebody told him where he was. He sent me a card from there, saying he was going after Yoshihiro up to Tottori. It was pretty decent of him not to let his mate down.”
“Did you hear from him again before he died?”
“No, not a word. I knew nothing about the fire either, so I started gritting my teeth in bed, thinking he might have shot through with the money he got from Yoshihiro . . . I had a terrific fever, too, just then. My yarn about being on the verge of death got that close to the truth, it didn’t matter . . .”
“But how was it you knew nothing of the fire? You must have seen it in the newspapers?”
“Ahh, come off it. If I’d enough money for a newspaper just then, I would’ve bought a piece of bread with it. Anyway, the hot spring resort was a long way from Nagoya. If the local paper had anything at all on it, it would’ve been a couple of lines in a corner. I would’ve missed it for sure.”
“And how did you eventually get out of your troubles?”
“Just by chance I was saved by a member of Gimeikai, a right-wing terrorist mob operating in Nagoya. This mob has some connection with a crazy old joker called Kumagaya, who was once being looked after by my late father. That’s how I was given help.”
“Did you meet Kumagaya?”
“No, but because I used him as a reference, Gimeikai asked him about me, and he wrote back, giving them the dope on me.”
“So you settled down in the care of Gimeikai?”
“Yeah . . . And after I got better, I couldn’t just run out on them, so I worked for them on and off till the following spring.”
“And how did you come to assume Watanabe’s identity?”
“I’m about to tell you that . . . While I was in Nagoya, the one thing that kept bothering me was Watanabe’s whereabouts. I wondered what happened to him and whether he had managed to touch Yoshihiro for the dough. Well, just around that time the police grabbed a heap of firearms, and the president of Gimeikai was arrested, so things were getting a bit hot for me there. Anyway, I couldn’t have gone on sponging off them forever, though as I said, I was doing some work for them.” Tadaaki quickly looked up at Kirishima. “No, it’s not what you think, Mr. Prosecutor—it wasn’t anything crooked.”
“Never mind that. You can tell me about that later.”
“Okay . . . So I made up my mind to see Yoshihiro in Kyoto. It was the middle of last April, I think. When I got there I was told he’d already shifted to Tokyo and also that he’d lost his younger brother in a fire. Well, when I heard that, I was winded, I can tell you. Then I checked around for a bit. Sure enough, I was supposed to be dead.”
“And that’s when you guessed what happened?”
“I only had a rough idea then. I knew Watanabe would’ve given a false name and address at the inn. He never was a great one for law and order.”
“And then you saw your big chance, huh? With you officially dead, you’d have no more worries about the police, but you’d be nicely set up to extort money from your brother?”
“I don’t like that word, Mr. Prosecutor,” Tadaaki said indignantly. “I only went to see Yoshihiro to find out what it was all about.”
“And what did he tell you?”
“He’d been naturally flustered when Watanabe turned up. But since that hot spring resort was in such a remote place up in the mountains, with only one bus a day, he couldn’t have sent him on his way, even if he wanted to. So he got the next room for him and said he’d think about my message during the night.”
“I see. And that was the night of the fire?”
“That’s right. I wouldn’t be surprised if Watanabe got sozzled during the evening. For once he didn’t have to worry about his own pocket. He could put it all on Yoshihiro’s slate. Being blind drunk—that’s probably why he couldn’t get out when the fire broke out. If it had been me instead of him, my brother would’ve at least tried to do something, I should hope . . .”
“But why did your brother tell a lie?”
“Well, he said he’d been a bit crazy with pain at the time, being so badly burnt, so he just told that yarn to the police on a sudden impulse, thinking it might be a good thing for me. But I reckon he must have thought it’d be pretty convenient for him, too . . .”
That was understandable, Kirishima thought, following all the heartbreak Yoshihiro had to suffer, and all the things he had to miss because of Tadaaki. Whenever a man’s family background was being investigated, his dead relatives wouldn
’t be looked at so closely as the ones still alive. For years Yoshihiro must have been longing to shake off the shackles of his past. That was why this spontaneous lie had popped out. But he hadn’t told a lie under oath, so he hadn’t committed perjury. At worst, what he had done was an offense under Clause 103 of the Criminal Code, referring to the sheltering of wanted criminals. But he would’ve been exempted from punishment under Clause 105 because Tadaaki was his blood relation.
Then so far as the law was concerned, there had been nothing for Yoshihiro to worry about, Kirishima thought. Nevertheless, if his deceit had ever come to light, it would have ruined his reputation and put an end to his university career. Now it wasn’t difficult to understand why Nobumasa had been so concerned about this, even after Yoshihiro’s death, or why he had wanted to explain it all to Etsuko before revealing it to anyone else, especially since he had been so fond of her.
“And did you pretend you didn’t like the idea, or that you thought he’d done something unfair to you?”
“Not really, but he offered anyway to take care of my troubles for a while. He said when he heard I was seriously ill, he was worried about me, but all Watanabe had told him was that I was in Nagoya, so he couldn’t locate me.”
“Did Nobumasa know all about this?”
“Ah, yes.”
“You must have gone to see him, too, for a little handout?”
“That would’ve been a bloody waste of time. In fact, he warned me through Yoshihiro to keep out of his way if I knew what was good for me. So I made myself scarce, as far as he was concerned. It was no good playing around with that bastard—he was too dangerous. I never met him once after coming up to Tokyo.”
“You were quite happy to concentrate on Yoshihiro, hey? But why did you move out of your apartment shortly before the wedding?”
“That was because . . .” Tadaaki began to bite the corner of his lower lip where the knife scar ran into it. “Well, ever since Yoshihiro had started going out with this Etsuko dame, he was getting more and more sour toward me . . . I suppose it was partly my fault—being too dependent on him.”
“I can sympathize with him,” Kirishima said. “Anyone trying to win the affection of a decent girl would feel awkward about a man like you hanging around all the time.”
“You don’t seem to have a very high opinion of me, Mr. Prosecutor. You make my heart bleed . . . But anyway, Yoshihiro was gradually getting real mad with me. He started to say stupid things like ‘How long are you going to keep on ruining my life?’ What crap! But finally I thought I’d better give him a break.”
“Now, wasn’t that really decent of you? I knew there was some goodness left in you somewhere. Or did you think he might get mad enough to cut your money off altogether, even tell the police about you?”
“He wouldn’t have had the guts to do that, don’t worry . . . But as I was saying, I’d made up my mind to go away somewhere anyway, and then out of the blue came this chance to go to Hong Kong as a stowaway. I asked Yoshihiro about it, and he said he’d cough up the dough for the passage.”
“Who helped to arrange your trip to Hong Kong?”
“Sorry, I can’t tell you that. If I do that now, I might get snicked when I come out of jail. For the same reason, I can’t even tell you what I was going to do in Hong Kong.”
“What makes you think you’ll ever come out of jail?”
Tadaaki nearly jumped to his feet. “Now, Mr. Prosecutor, you’re making it a bit hot, aren’t you? You know I wouldn’t get more than five years at the outside for doing in somebody in a fight, even if I couldn’t prove he started it, which he did . . . Or are you thinking that I might have killed my brothers?”
“That I can’t tell you at this stage.”
“Aah, come off it—you can’t be serious.”
“When were you due to leave for Hong Kong?”
“It was supposed to be the thirteenth or fourteenth of this month. But since it wasn’t a regular trip, there was every chance the date would be changed at the last moment. So to make sure, I checked out of the apartment about a week in advance and was standing by, staying at a mate’s place.”
“And how’s it you’re still in Tokyo, after all this elaborate preparation?”
“That’s a sad story, Mr. Prosecutor,” Tadaaki said, running his fingers through his dirty hair. “You see, Yoshihiro only gave me 400,000 yen, and the ticket itself was about 300,000, leaving just enough for spending on the trip. But I would’ve liked to have a little fling in Hong Kong before getting down to business, so I tried to swell my dough with a couple of flutters at the cycle races . . .”
“And you lost all the money?”
Tadaaki gave a painful sigh. “I’m usually pretty lucky that way, so it wasn’t an unreasonable proposition at all. But somehow, that bloody day I was just out of luck . . . And to make things worse, the departure date got put off, and that made me pretty nervous, and that’s no good when you’re going for a flutter . . . To cut a long story short, I’ll just have to start this stowaway stunt all over again.”
“I don’t think you ever intended to go in the first place. Wasn’t it just a gimmick to squeeze a nice fat sum out of your brother?”
“Oh, rubbish! I wouldn’t do a thing like that.”
“And what were you doing on the night of February 15?”
“That evening I still had enough dough left to pay for the ticket. I met the man who’d arranged the trip—that was around seven o’clock—and he told me the ship now wouldn’t leave till the twentieth because of some unexpected trouble. That made me real browned off, so I went to watch a picture at Shinjuku, just to do something. I thought, once I was in Hong Kong I wouldn’t be able to see any more blue movies, so I might as well make the best of it while I was here.”
“And where did you stay that night?”
“After I came out of the theatre, I picked up a bird. I knew she was a professional—just judging by her manner—but still, I thought she’d be good enough to give me a memory of my last days in Japan . . .”
“You don’t have to find excuses for everything . . . And did you stay in an inn overnight?”
“Yes. It’s around Shinjuku Sankocho, that former blue-light district. It’s all set up with a number of small rooms above the bar. Very hush-hush . . .” Tadaaki bared his yellow teeth in a lewd grin. “D’you want to take a look at the place, Mr. Prosecutor? I’ll show it to you, if you like.”
“What’s the woman’s name?”
“You don’t expect me to remember that, do you? She wouldn’t be using her real name anyway. But somebody in the bar might be able to tell you who she is.”
“When did you learn about Yoshihiro’s murder?”
“I couldn’t be bothered reading the papers just then—I was too depressed because I was losing dough all the time. On the afternoon of the seventeenth—I’d just lost another 10,000 on the cycles and was kicking myself—that’s when a mate of mine told me he’d read it in the paper.”
“And what did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything. There was nothing I could do, was there? I couldn’t have gone to Yoshihiro’s funeral—that was out. And my dough was dwindling so fast . . . I did everything I could think of, trying to recover it somehow by the twentieth, but it was no good . . .”
“And since then you’ve been hanging around Tokyo?”
“Yeah.”
“Didn’t you go to see Nobumasa and ask him for help?”
“As I told you before, I valued my nut too much for that.”
“Then what did you do on the evening of February 20?”
“By that day my finances were in terrible shape, so I thought I might be able to make something on pachinko. I went from one parlour to another and was game enough to stick it out till closing time, but once again—no luck.”
“Is that why you wen
t to see Mrs. Tsukamoto today? To ask her for some money?”
Tadaaki stuck out his chest and looked at Kirishima with hurt dignity. “It was nothing like that, Mr. Prosecutor, I can assure you. The fact is—my death certificate was registered without my knowledge, or permission, and I’m still very much alive, as you can see. So naturally, I too have certain succession rights to my brothers’ estates. Of course, it’d be a different story if I had murdered them. But I’m the one who knows best I didn’t.”
“Then did you go to see Mrs. Tsukamoto to demand a share of the property left by your brothers?”
“Well, since I had a false identity I wasn’t really in a position to make an open claim. Actually, I was prepared to call it quits if she coughed up just enough dough for another passage to Hong Kong. Because of my brothers’ deaths, it was becoming hard for me in any case to carry on in Japan, and I was told there’d be another chance to slip off to that Chinatown at the end of this month . . . Then suddenly this queer bastard jumped on me out of nowhere, and I’ve finished up here. Well, of all the unlucky days I’ve had in the past three weeks, this is the worst, I must say.” Tadaaki gave a sigh that almost whistled. “Now that things have come to this, I just don’t feel like battling on, to tell you the truth. I might as well sit it out in jail for a few years . . . But could you give me an idea, Mr. Prosecutor, how to re-establish my true identity? I’m sure even you’d find it inconvenient to prosecute a dead man.”
Now it was Kirishima’s turn to sigh. Throughout the questioning Tadaaki had acted like a lame duck that reached the end of its tether, but he was nothing of the sort. He had a purpose in disclosing everything so candidly. The punishment for killing somebody in a knife duel certainly wouldn’t be more than a few years in jail. It was hardly something he would worry about unduly when he knew very well that, on completing his sentence, he would inherit a large property left behind by his two brothers.
“By the way,” Kirishima said, “why did you insist on telling me all this, instead of the police?”
Tadaaki laughed insolently, and said, “Obviously, once it comes to a legal problem like the recovery of my identity, it’s much better to consult a prosecutor than a dumb detective. Besides, there’s always a rough one in any bunch of cops. I might have collected a punch or two if I’d told them a story like this. They’re pretty excitable, you know, these cops. On the other hand, a prosecutor is usually a gentleman who’s prepared to listen to a tale quietly, without fuss, as you did.”
Honeymoon to Nowhere Page 24