The Mammoth Book Best International Crime

by Maxim Jakubowski

  “Yeah. But I don’t have any bright ideas on that. Shall we go over the list of those at the party one more time? It’s not unusual in a race in which the front-runner and its rival horse fall for a dark horse that no one had paid attention to to carry off the victory.”

  So saying, the Inspector drew lines through the names listed in his notebook.

  “Of the four remaining, can we exclude the two who have solid alibis for eleven-thirty pm – End Fumiaki and Sekiguchi Reiko? If so, we can look at the couple – Nozaki Tetsu and Nagashima Yurika. As you pointed out before, if these two had colluded and concocted a false alibi . . . Huh? What is it, Rintar?”

  While the Inspector was speaking, Rintar suddenly looked up at the ceiling, his jaw dropping open. From his lips escaped the whisper, “. . . a solid alibi.”

  He did not stir at all for a time, until eventually his eyes began to shine brightly. All of a sudden, he slammed both of his hands on the table.

  “That’s it! That’s the only possibility! I’ve been blind!”

  Inspector Norizuki was dumbfounded at this turnaround. “Hey, are you all right?”

  “Sure I am, Father. Actually I should say I’ve finally come to my senses. The answer has been right in front of our noses all along, and I didn’t even notice it.”

  “In front of our noses?”

  “Yes. The clue to the truth was something I said when we were discussing the Miyoshi-as-killer theory. Didn’t I say that if there had been no message in blood, it would have been impossible to pin down the time the crime was committed?”

  “Yeah, I remember hearing something like that.”

  “That’s exactly the advantage gained by leaving the message in blood. It’s a simple but extremely effective alibi trick. Can I explain? The medical examiner estimated the victim’s time of death to be between eleven pm on Monday and one am the following day at its broadest. This means that the actual crime could have been committed before eleven-thirty or after that time. But the murderer used Aki’s statement and left the message ‘Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?’ to plant the impression that the crime was committed at eleven-thirty – despite the fact that the murderer was not in Matsunaga’s room at that time. To put it another way, the person who benefited from the existence of this message, that is, the real killer of Matsunaga, had to be someone who had a solid alibi for eleven-thirty pm.”

  Rintar had rushed on without pausing for breath. As if his son’s excitement had transferred to him, Inspector Norizuki was now on the edge of his seat. “I see. The trick of using preconception as a counterattack. In that case, the couple Nozaki Tetsu and Nagashima Yurika, whose alibi isn’t limited to eleven-thirty don’t fit the criterion. The ones who have a solid alibi for eleven-thirty pm are End Fumiaki and Sekiguchi Reiko, but—”

  “End isn’t the killer. I can say that because he doesn’t meet the other criterion necessary for leaving the message in blood.”

  “What other criterion?”

  “In order to leave that message in blood, the person had to know not only that Aki went back to Matsunaga’s apartment to retrieve what she had forgotten, but also the fact that she left the room without ever having turned on the light. Without knowing that, it would be meaningless, impossible, really, to leave the message ‘Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?’ End was not in a position to have known in advance about the details of Aki’s actions. Therefore, he is not the killer.”

  Solemn-faced, Inspector Norizuki said, “That leaves one person . . .”

  “Sekiguchi Reiko. She meets both criteria that I just set out. One: At eleven-thirty pm Reiko was at the donut shop at Umegaoka Station and had a solid alibi. Two: Reiko met up at the donut shop with Aki, who had returned from Matsunaga’s apartment, and had the chance to hear from her the details of what happened in his room.”

  “Hmm. Most likely Aki told her about it right off. The two of them left the donut shop around twelve twenty-five am. That means that after parting with Aki at the station’s ticket gate, Reiko went back to Belle Maison Matsubara. What was her reason for that?”

  “This is just my supposition, but I think it involves the Prozac that Matsunaga had. Let’s say Reiko purchased the drug periodically from Matsunaga. He may have charged more than the normal rate, and Reiko may have had difficulty paying up. But that night, Reiko heard from Aki about Matsunaga’s room – that he was fast asleep with the door unlocked.”

  Stroking his chin, Inspector Norizuki said, deep in thought, “I get it. And I wouldn’t be surprised, from the impression I got talking to her, if she were taking Prozac. She seemed to be kind of a highly-strung type, one of the best students from the countryside. That’s the type who sometimes do bad things on the spur of the moment, though they don’t look like they would. On your supposition, then, Reiko crept into Matsunaga’s apartment while he was asleep and tried to steal some Prozac, which was put away somewhere.”

  “When we look at it that way, everything fits into place. It took five minutes for her to return to Belle Maison Matsubara from the station on her own bicycle. She entered Room 206 just after twelve-thirty. Leaving the room dark so she wouldn’t wake the sleeping Matsunaga, Reiko began to search the apartment, feeling around with her hands. But she must have tripped on something in the dark, making a loud noise. Woken up by the noise, Matsunaga noticed Reiko’s presence. He must have realized right away that she had come for the Prozac. Angered, Matsunaga hurled himself onto Reiko and grappled with her. Here our familiar ice pick comes into play and Reiko stabs Matsunaga dead. . . At the least, this all happened before twelve forty-five.”

  “That’s just barely within the range of the estimated time of death. Then what?”

  “With Matsunaga’s body in front of her, Reiko probably couldn’t think of anything for a while. Her initial aim of stealing the Prozac must have flown out of her mind. But she had plenty of time to come to her senses and devise a cover-up. She could bicycle back to her place in Umegaoka, so she didn’t need to be concerned about the time of the last train. As her breathing returned to normal in the dark, while she gazed at Matsunaga’s dead body, Reiko remembered that Aki had returned to Matsunaga’s apartment to retrieve what she had forgotten. That led quite naturally to her recalling the rumor of the message in blood that she had heard from someone. If she set it up so that it seemed Aki had narrowly avoided bumping into the murderer . . . Of course, at the time that Aki actually went back to Matsunaga’s apartment, he was still alive, fast asleep, unaware of her presence. But, if Reiko created conditions in which it would appear that Matsunaga had already been killed and the killer was hiding in the room, her alibi of being at the donut shop in front of the station at that time would clear her of suspicion. Reiko must have smiled slightly at her idea. She stood up and found Matsunaga’s cigarette lighter to use for a light. Then, picking up a cigarette butt, she dipped it into the blood flowing from the victim’s wound. Holding this in her non-dominant hand, she wrote the message on the wall – ‘Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?’ ”

  A while later, postcards, always with the same message, began arriving once a week for Ms A. They were sent by Ms C, who had been her best friend and a member of the same club. The sender’s address was the medical correctional institution in Hachiji. When Ms A moved, the deliveries would stop for a while, but someone must have been secretly looking up her address, for soon the postcards, with the same message, would start arriving at the new address. Written on the back of the postcard, always in red pencil, in an unsteady scrawl, were the words, “Why didn’t you turn on the light?”

  Every time she read these words, Ms A felt a chill go up her spine. She also felt that she could never get rid of her regret – if, that night when she had returned to his room, she had turned on the light and woken B, then he would not have been killed! And her best friend, Ms C, would not have been so burdened by her guilt that she went insane.

  Translation by Beth Cary

 
; The Duel

  Jacob Vis

  My wife sleeps with open eyes. She lies on her back and stares at the ceiling with half-open eyes. She seems to be dead. I bring my mouth to her ear and whisper: “I am going to kill you.”

  She stays motionless. She breathes lightly, with long, irregular pauses. I whisper again, a little louder: “Elaine, I am going to kill you.”

  She moves her lips. Suddenly she closes her eyes. She sits straight, clings to me and screams: “He wants to kill me! He wants to kill me!” She shrieks her night breath in my face. I pull her head against my shoulder and say: “Relax! Nothing happened. It was only a dream.”

  She shocks as if she is being electrocuted. She slowly relaxes, but she holds me tight. “He wanted to kill me,” she says in a childish little voice. “The bastard wanted to kill me.”

  “What bastard?”

  “That man.” Suddenly she looks at me, wide-awake. “He looked like you.”

  “Freudian,” I say. “Let’s go back to sleep. Do you want to lay with me?”

  She nods. I move over a bit and Elaine nestles her warm body against mine. Her head fits into the little hole of my shoulder. She sighs and puts her thigh on my crotch. This is the way we have been laying for twenty-three years. Every night she wakes up from some kind of dead sleep and every night I soothe her back to sleep.

  She licks my nipple. My cock swells, despite my intention to stop sex with Elaine. She feels it too. She lifts her leg and puts my cock straight ahead. “Sleep,” she murmurs, but she goes on licking, pushing her soft thigh against me and my lust grows. She puts out her nightgown, catches my trousers with her toes and pulls it down. The elastic sticks. Elaine giggles. She releases my cock and leads it with a thousand-fold repeated routine to the place where it belongs in her opinion. Afterwards she lies with me.

  “Wester?”

  “Yes?”

  “He really looked like you.”

  “Then who was it?”

  “Don’t know. Some guy. He could be your brother.”

  “I have no brother.”

  She giggles. “Imagine me thinking that your brother is visiting me at night.”

  I do not answer. She is a good fuck, but that moaning afterwards is getting boring. “Let us go back to sleep. I have to rise early.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have a seminar in Driebergen.”

  “Do you have to do something there yourself?”

  “No, this time I only have to listen.”

  “Who is coming there?”

  “The usual. Specialists, hospital directors, people from the government.”

  “Will Stan be there?”

  I laugh. “Stan is where the food is.”

  Elaine laughs too. “Give him my love. What is it about?”

  “Cutback in ophthalmology.”

  “The best cutback is to drop the seminar.”

  I grin in the dark. “I’ll suggest it tomorrow.”

  “Good. Kiss.”

  I kiss her. She nestles in my arms. After a while her head becomes heavy. My shoulder goes tense. I pull her to her place. She murmurs: “He really looked like you,” and falls asleep.

  The seminar is boring, as I expected. A Japanese professor tells an inarticulate story. When he is finished Lord Curr asks with stiff upper lip: “Who ever understood this lecture may now ask questions.” and after some seconds the laughter bursts out. The Japanese bows and disappears. His face is motionless.

  Halfway through the question hour Stan Smits and I do a bunk for a sandwich. He is a fellow student from Utrecht. We spent a year together with Hagen in Gottingen and have been friends ever since. Stan is in employment with the hospital, just as I am. We do not earn as much as the free specialists, but we don’t have to work like hell for our pension. And a seminar is a not an expensive trip, it is simply part of our job.

  Stan stuffs his mouth. Since my years as a student I never saw someone eat a ham sandwich so greedily.

  “How are you doing?” he asks with his mouth full.

  “Fine,” I say.

  “Elaine too?”

  “Fine, fine.”

  He rinses the last bite with a glass of milk and gives me an inquisitive look. “You have grown thin.”

  “Right.” I pat my belly which sounds unpleasantly hollow. “I lost ten kilos.”

  “Good boy. Advice of your doctor?”

  “No, my own advice. I looked down and missed my cock.”

  He laughs. “That is a good reason.”

  “Would be good for you too.”

  “I haven’t seen it in years. Only use it to piss. What should I care?”

  “We are not that old, Stan.”

  “Fifty-four. Another six years. What are you going to do then?”

  “I’ll buy a camper and go traveling.”

  “I thought Elaine does not like camping.”

  “Who says that I will go traveling with Elaine?”

  He gives me another look. “I thought the two of you were good friends.”

  “We are, but Elaine hates my way of traveling. She only wants to stay in a hotel.”

  “Maybe you could try it her way.”

  “Not with my pension. If I buy that camper, nothing else will be possible for a long time.”

  Stan shakes his head. “What are you going to do? Shall we have another sandwich?”

  “Not me, but please, go ahead.”

  He smiles. “You became ascetic, Wester. I don’t recognize you. What happened to the man of the double rice table?”

  “Suffocated in his cholesterol.”

  “Nonsense.”

  The question time is over and everyone rushes to the sandwiches. Stan presses his fat body through the crowd. Colleagues hold him and start small talk. I am a bit lost aside. Stan is popular. I am not. Normally I don’t care, but at a seminar it is disturbing. People stare at me, wondering who that long fellow is with the scar on his chin and why he does not have it removed. After a while the hungry crowd subsides. I grip Stan’s arm and lead him to the half-open garden doors. It is unusually mild for the end of February.

  “Stan, did you ever kill someone?”

  He is flabbergasted. “What!”

  “I ask if you ever killed someone.” I shake my head. “Oh no, not you, of course. I should not have asked you.”

  “You can’t ask anyone that question,” he says. “Are you mad? People will think you are insane.”

  “I am insane.”

  Again the searching look. “Let us go for a walk. The start of the afternoon program is bullshit anyway.”

  We walk through the park around the Congress Center. Old trees, shaven greens, raked little footpaths. Congress people are walking everywhere. Stan greets, nods, shakes hands, but as soon as we are together again his face gets an unusually serious look. “What is going on, Wester?” he asks when we are alone in the park forest.

  “I am in love.”

  He looks at me. “Is that all?”

  “It is fucking more than enough.”

  “Calm down, man. When you are in love you only want to make love as I remember well. I do not understand what murder has to do with love.”

  “Everything,” I say. “Elaine does not want this, so she has to die.”

  “Okay, that makes sense. You are in love, not with Elaine, so she is an obstacle that has to be removed.”

  “I am glad you understand.”

  “Asshole!”

  I look at him. Stan has a round face that normally shines with kindness, but now his eyes are hard and gloomy. “This is outrageous, Wester. The mere thought of it makes you a bastard. I don’t recognize you.”

  I shrug my shoulders. “Spare me the morality, please. All this guilt, useless.”

  Stan sits on a fallen tree and taps on the stem. I sit down beside him.

  “Who is the lucky woman?”

  “Someone from the hospital.”

  “Colleague?”

  “She is a co-as
sistant. Does her examinations as a doctor next year.”

  “Straight from the cradle? How old is she anyway?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “Twenty-five,” he repeats. “You could have been her father and if you had done very well her grandfather. It is almost pedophilia.”

  “Stan, stop moralizing and give me advice. I am desperate.”

  “Does Elaine know?”

  “No. You know how emotional she is. I told her nothing.”

  “Women guess these things,” he says, gloomy. “And Elaine will for sure. You can’t fool her.”

  “You know her,” I mock.

  “Not as well as you do,” he says quietly. “But as far as I know her it would surprise me if she had not guessed.”

  “Tonight she dreamt of my look-alike wanting to kill her.”

  “Freud,” Stan says. “What did the old jerk tell us about those kind of dreams?”

  “They predict reality.”

  “Yes, I remember.” He looks me straight in the eyes. “Why bother Elaine? Why don’t you make love to that child, if necessary, on a holiday? You make up something, a burn out or something like that and then you return to your beloved Elaine.”

  “Elaine is not my beloved anymore.”

  “Come on. We all fall in love from time to time, even you. Nothing special. Hard, all those unusual hormones, but if you take care with your diet it will all be all right. Well,” he points at my belly. “At least you lost your paunch.”

  “Stan, the problem is that Elaine must not know because that would mean disaster.”

  “Is a murder not a disaster?”

  “Yes, that too,” I admit.

  “Tell me about the girl.”

  “Ellen is twenty-five as I said. Ash blond hair, deep blue eyes, great figure. Intelligent, nice, surprisingly mature for such a young person.”

  “Kill her,” Stan murmurs. “Kill her immediately.”

  Now it is my turn to be surprised. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Ideal people should be killed immediately. They are a threat to society. Is she married?”

  “No. Not engaged either. I am the only man in her life.”