The Aosawa Murders

by Riku Onda

  Riku Onda, born in 1964, is the professional name of Nanae Kumagai. She has been writing fiction since 1991 and has published prolifically since. She has won the Yoshikawa Eiji Prize for New Writers, the Japan Booksellers’ Award, the Yamamoto Shugoro Prize and the Naoki Prize. Her work has been adapted for film and television.

  The Aosawa Murders won the prestigious Mystery Writers of Japan Award for Best Novel. It is Riku Onda’s first crime novel and her first work translated into English.

  THE AOSAWA MURDERS

  Riku Onda

  Translated from the Japanese by Alison Watts

  BITTER LEMON PRESS

  LONDON

  BITTER LEMON PRESS

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2020 by

  Bitter Lemon Press, 47 Wilmington Square, London WC1X 0ET

  www.bitterlemonpress.com

  © Riku Onda 2005

  First published in Japanese in 2005 as EUGENIA by

  KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo.

  English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo through Japan Uni Agency, Inc., Tokyo

  English translation by Alison Watts 2020

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher

  The moral rights of the author and the translator have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988

  All the characters and events described in this novel are imaginary and any similarity with real people or events is purely coincidental

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978–1–912242–245

  eBook ISBN 978–1–912242–252

  Text design and typesetting by Tetragon, London

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  For Michel Petrucciani,

  who never lived to see the twenty-first century.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  1 From the Sea

  2 Two Rivers and a Hill

  3 The Emissary from a Deep, Far Country

  4 The Telephone and a Toy

  5 The Dream Path: Part One

  6 Invisible People

  7 Portrait of a Ghost

  8 The Flower Voice

  9 Scenes from a Life

  10 An Afternoon in the Old Bookshop District

  11 The Dream Path: Part Two

  12 Extracts from the Friend’s File

  13 In a Town by the Sea

  14 Red Flowers, White Flowers

  Eugenia, my Eugenia. I journeyed alone all this time

  That I might meet you again.

  And I tell you this:

  That days of shivering in a long-ago dawn

  Also end today.

  From here on we will be together, forever.

  The song that rises to my lips,

  The insects of the woods crushed beneath my shoes in the morning,

  And this tiny heart of mine ceaselessly pumping blood,

  All this, I offer to you.

  PROLOGUE

  Transcript of a police interview with

  Hisako Aosawa. Interviewer: Detective T—.

  File: Aosawa Murders, City of K—, I— Prefecture

  What do you remember?

  Being outside an old, dark, blue room.

  Where was this room? Whose house was it?

  I don’t know.

  Why were you in the room?

  I don’t know. But someone – an adult – was holding my hand. That person must have taken me to the room.

  Who was it?

  I don’t know.

  Tell us about the room. Which part was blue?

  The walls were blue. A deep, cold blue. The room was Japanese-style, with tatami mats. Very small and compact. It was an unusual design, I think – two walls faced the corridor. Parts of it were a reddish-purple colour too. I remember thinking I would hate it to be my room and have to eat meals surrounded by those walls.

  Did you enter the room?

  No. At least, I don’t remember going in. We just looked in from outside.

  What happened next?

  I don’t remember.

  Can you remember anything else? Anything at all, no matter how trivial.

  The crepe myrtle.

  A crepe myrtle tree? With a smooth bark trunk?

  No, the flower. A white crepe myrtle flower.

  White? Are you sure? Not red?

  Yes. I remember a pure white crepe myrtle flower. In full bloom.

  Take your time and try to remember. What did you think as you looked at this white crepe myrtle flower? What did you feel?

  It was so beautiful. In full bloom, with not a blemish. It was so beautiful, I was frightened.

  You were frightened? Why?

  I don’t know. But for some reason I was very frightened by that white flower.

  1

  FROM THE SEA

  A conversation with Makiko Saiga, the author, thirty years after the murders

  I

  As always, the new season brings rain.

  No, I take that back; new is not the word I’m looking for, it’s next. The next season always brings rain. That’s what it feels like in this city.

  The change of season in this part of the world is never dramatic. It’s more like the gradual erosion of a boundary line every time a rain shower arrives to paint the old season over bit by bit, as the new one takes its time to turn gradually, in a vague, almost apologetic fashion.

  On this side of the country rain rolls in from the sea.

  I was always very aware of that as a child.

  These buildings block the view from here now, but almost anywhere in the city that was even slightly elevated used to have a view of the ocean. You’d see undulating waves of ominous rain clouds, weighed down with stifling heat, creep in from the sea and rise up over the land, threatening to dump their load over the city.

  When I moved to the Kanto region, I was astonished to discover that wind blew off the land there, and out into the Pacific Ocean. On the Kanto coastline you don’t get the same sense as you do here of the overbearing presence of the sea. You can be right up close to the water’s edge and still not feel it. Heat and smells that rise off the land escape out to sea. Towns throw themselves open to the ocean. And the horizon is always far in the distance, like a picture in a frame.

  But the ocean here isn’t refreshing at all. Gazing at it doesn’t give you any sense of freedom or relief. And the horizon is always close, as if waiting for an opportunity to force its way onto land. It feels like you’re being watched, and if you dare look away for just a moment the sea might descend upon you. Do you see what I mean?

  It’s so hot, isn’t it?

  This heat is so heavy. It’s like the city is sealed up inside a steamer. Heat like this is cruel, it robs you of energy, far more than you expect.

  As a child I found summer unbearable. I’d lose my appetite and barely eat. By the end of the summer holidays my diet would consist of somen noodles and barley tea, that’s about all. In photos I look thin and goggle-eyed. Have you noticed how walking over this hot asphalt makes your legs feel shaky? Now everyone has air conditioning, it’s not the summer heat that takes its toll so much as the shock of the difference between the temperature indoors and outdoors. It’s getting hotter and hotter every year, don’t you think? Climate change, I expect.

  It’s been a long time.

  You do realize we only lived here for four years, when I was in primary school? We came here in the spring of grade two, when I was seven, and moved to Nagano in the spring of grade six.

  Yes, I spent a year going back and forth between here and Tokyo in t
hat period.

  Did you bring an umbrella? The guidebook recommends you do. The sky’s clear now, but you can’t be sure how long that will last.

  As I was saying, this humidity is lethal. It saps you of all energy. Notice how the sky is a murky blue colour and the clouds have a dull glowing outline? They seem so close you feel you could reach out and touch them. That’s when you get heavy showers. Before you know it low clouds fill the sky and dump rain mercilessly on the city. An umbrella is hardly enough protection to stop ankles and shoulders getting wet – it’s enough to make you miserable and fed up.

  Nobody seems to wear wellies any more, do they? I loved wearing them as a child to play in puddles, skipping through them or deliberately jumping in with both feet to make a big splash.

  It doesn’t snow so much in this area. We lived in Toyama for a while before moving here, which isn’t far geographically, but the snow there was something else. It was a heavy, wet snow. The kind that would hurt if someone threw a snowball at you. The sliding paper screens in the house used to swell up with moisture and stick shut. You don’t get that kind of snow in this city.

  Human beings are strange creatures, though. We soon forget. When the weather gets this humid it’s hard to believe that just a few months earlier it was wintry and cold, and we miss it.

  Oh, it’s so hot.

  II

  Doesn’t the layout of this city strike you as odd?

  It hadn’t occurred to you? Well, most cities have some kind of commercial district near the train station. That is, if a station wasn’t added later for a new bullet train line or to provide airport access. Typically, old regional cities like this one develop outwards from the station. But that’s not the case here. All you find around the station in this city is a few hotels, while the centre and main shopping area are further off.

  In my experience prefectural capitals all tend to look alike. At the front of the station you’ll find a traffic circle surrounded by department stores and hotels. Then, leading from the station, a main road lined with shops, and an entertainment district in an area parallel – not quite connected, but not exactly separate – to the zone for offices and local or regional government buildings. There’s also usually some kind of redevelopment on the other side of the station, with rows of sterile new buildings. Do you see what I mean?

  As a child I had trouble grasping the layout of this city. I knew where the bus stops were, and the area around each one, but I didn’t know where they were in relation to each other.

  Do you mind if we just wander about?

  As I was saying, other cities have visible boundaries where the centre ends. It’s clear that beyond a certain point the land is either for residential or agricultural use. The divisions are obvious.

  Here, though, there’s nothing to show where the city centre ends. You can walk one way and find yourself in a teahouse district. Or if you go in another direction it’s all temples and shrines. Walk a bit further and you find old samurai houses, then the prefectural offices, then the entertainment quarter. Wherever you go, there are loosely grouped small communities that seem to go on forever. Walking around the city, as we are now, is like a synaptic experience – it’s all connected but separate. There’s no centre anywhere, only a series of loosely linked neighbourhoods. You could walk and walk and never feel like there’s any end to it. It’s like moving pieces on a Chinese chequers board.

  I enjoy rambling about old towns. Going to an unknown place and glimpsing the lives of strangers. Walking around an old city is like a journey through time. I get a lot of pleasure from discovering remnants of times past, like a milk box outside an old house or a retro enamel sign tacked to the wall of a tiny shop.

  I like this city in particular because you can take a winding route through it. In a big city like Kyoto, for example, the streets are laid out systematically like squares in a computer game, and having to follow them makes you feel overwhelmed and powerless. Or maybe it’s the flatness of the downtown district that does it. It can be surprisingly tiring to walk only on flat ground, with no change in your pace or breathing.

  Oh yes, I’m sure that military and historical circumstances greatly influenced the development of this city’s layout.

  See on the map how this hill is at the centre of the city and flanked on two sides by rivers. The city is a natural fortress, you see, surrounded by hills on three sides and sea on the other. It would be difficult to invade with a hilltop castle and the town on the slopes below, built around a network of narrow roads and slopes. Another thing about this city is that it has never been destroyed by fire, so the old layout remains to this day.

  It’s a long time since I’ve heard the phrase destroyed by fire. As a child I often heard adults use it. Was that place ever destroyed by fire, they’d ask, or say in reference to such-and-such a place that it never burned. Of course I didn’t understand at the time, but what they were really asking was whether or not somewhere had been firebombed in the Second World War. Isn’t it horrifying to think it happened so many times that destroyed by fire and never burned became part of everyday speech?

  III

  I haven’t been here in a very long time. Not since I came on a school excursion. When you live near a famous sight-seeing spot, you hardly ever actually go there. Look how few people are here today. It’s too hot and humid even for tour groups. That’s good for us, though, we can take our time looking around. A lot of tourists come in winter, of course, to see the trees and shrubs all wrapped up to protect them against the snow. You must have seen it on the news.

  But it’s obvious why this garden is known as one of the three great gardens of Japan. Just look at the size and scale of it, the variety of landscapes, and how meticulously it’s kept. The greenery here is also very striking, almost defiantly so, I always think.

  Authority is an interesting phenomenon, isn’t it? Who would be able to create such an awe-inspiring place as this garden nowadays? Of course this is a wonderful achievement. It’s beautiful, a piece of cultural heritage to be proud of and necessary as a bastion of the Japanese spirit. But at the end of the day, it’s a garden, not something essential in the way that farms, or schools, or irrigation systems are. The powers that be who created this garden and maintained it for hundreds of years are beyond the understanding of ordinary people like us.

  That’s right. Sometimes people get caught up in events beyond their understanding. They get ambushed under the guise of chance. Things happen and it seems as if they’re in another world or dimension. When something like that occurs, nobody can explain what’s really going on… Well, of course they can’t.

  What do you think a person should do when they come across something they don’t understand? Should they reject it, pretend they never saw it? Be angry or resentful? Grieve or simply be confused? Those would be natural reactions, I suppose.

  In my case, I moved to Nagano not long afterwards and apparently that was enough for me to get over it, being a child. I did in fact forget about the whole affair rather quickly.

  Or so I thought, but in fact it was still with me, like a sediment that had settled deep down inside.

  Recalling the events didn’t make me feel uncomfortable. I hadn’t been directly involved. But as I grew older, every time I saw an injustice or something I couldn’t understand, I felt something surreptitiously stirring deep down inside, slowly working its way up from the depths. Over time this sense of unease built up and felt more solid.

  I don’t remember what the trigger was, but one day I realized I had to do something about it. I knew I couldn’t go on with life as usual until I’d removed that accumulation of uneasiness. If I didn’t, I knew I’d suffocate.

  I thought a great deal about it, about what I could do to bring everything to the surface.

  Given how much I didn’t understand, I knew that realistically it could only be within the limits of my ability to comprehend.

  Then I set about researching the subject, which I also did to the be
st of my ability and within the limits of my understanding.

  That was how I chose to deal with it. I felt I had no other choice.

  The result was The Forgotten Festival, which I wrote eleven years after the murders.

  IV

  This far in you can’t hear the traffic any more.

  Cars, cars, cars, everywhere you go there are cars. Why are there so many cars on the road? Where’s everyone going? Sometimes I stop and think about it. Why is there so much traffic? See, as I said before, the roads in an old city like this are narrow. The traffic jam around the prefectural office here is always horrendous.

  These cedars are magnificent, aren’t they? And the pines. Such a deep, dark green. More black than green, really. Green that verges on darkness.

  Even the pond water looks heavy and stagnant in this heat.

  Note how high above sea level it is. Piping water up here used to be a terrible struggle. Everybody knows the story of the local lord who had water diverted uphill from the river by an inverted siphoning technique, but every time I see this pond I remember the legend of artisans who were killed to protect the secret of that technology. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but that’s the beauty of it – the fact that it seems likely.

  Fear is a spice that lends credibility. Just the right amount sprinkled in any story makes it plausible.

  That’s the kind of thing I remember.

  An odd craze swept through my class afterwards. All the girls were doing it. Can you guess what it was?

  Well, I’ll tell you. It was making pressed flowers. Yes, everybody was pressing Asiatic day flowers.

  Apparently the glass used to weigh down the letter found at the crime scene had a day flower in it. I don’t know why, but for some reason everybody started to believe that day flowers were a charm against evil. Rumour had it that carrying a bookmark made from a pressed day flower would protect the carrier from being targeted by a homicidal maniac. So everybody went looking for day flowers to press. There was absolutely no basis to it, but a lot of strange rumours floated around at the time. The flowers had to be pressed in a telephone book, or a science textbook, or inserted into folded newspaper and placed under somebody’s futon, and if that person didn’t notice it was good luck – things like that. One girl I was friendly with gave me a bookmark and told me in all seriousness that I’d be safe if I kept it on me at all times.