The Aosawa Murders

by Riku Onda

  At any rate, I’d never experienced anything like this before with fiction. While I was reading, I had a picture of the scene at the time in my mind, clear as anything.

  The book was about the murders but wasn’t written as a mystery and didn’t have any kind of conclusion, so the actual content didn’t leave much of an impression on me.

  But – there were a number of places where I felt something was wrong, you know, not quite right.

  I couldn’t put my finger on the reason, though. It was just a vague feeling, and I didn’t think too much about it at the time.

  But then a few days later – I think I was just walking along the street – it suddenly hit me.

  Immediately I rushed home and started reading the book again, very carefully.

  This time I marked all the pages where I noticed something odd.

  When I reached the end, I went back and checked all those pages.

  And there was no mistaking it.

  I was certain.

  The author’s descriptions of certain places differed from reality. Intentionally, it seemed. That’s what I realized.

  She’d written in such detail about the geography and physical appearance of the town – to an almost unnecessary degree – it was obvious when I looked that she’d deliberately falsified the descriptions in certain places.

  Can you guess what those were?

  The second-hand bookshops.

  Yes, there are a lot of them in this city. As might be expected in a place with many universities and a long cultural history. A real scholars’ town, it is.

  But the book doesn’t mention a single bookshop. Or rather, in places where they should be mentioned, she puts in another kind of shop. She goes into great detail describing the old established shops in the downtown area and records them with great accuracy in accordance with maps from the time, only the second-hand bookshops are not mentioned.

  What was the significance?

  I scratched my head over that one.

  The fact of her being so hair-splittingly precise in other parts made it clear it was deliberate. But why? Why would she do that? Was it some kind of game?

  It was very strange. Not many would notice it, either. Anyone who didn’t know the city, or what it was like at the time, wouldn’t have any idea. And if they did, then what of it?

  I thought about this a lot but couldn’t come up with any explanation. Maybe it was for her own personal reasons. I couldn’t make any sense of it, and in the end became so busy with other things I forgot about it.

  Several weeks went by.

  My son was leaving home to get married and I helped him move. In the process, I noticed a stack of books in the passageway bundled up with twine.

  When I asked what I should do with them he told me he’d called a second-hand book dealer to come and collect them. He was a bookworm who could never get rid of anything he’d read, but with moving to a smaller place he couldn’t very well take them all with him.

  And that’s how I got the idea.

  It hit me as I was staring at that pile of books on the floor. I realized something crucial.

  I realized that I’d overlooked something very important in the investigation.

  IX

  The young man who did it was very tidy.

  There was almost nothing in his flat. It was always clean, apparently, and he didn’t appear to have many clothes, but everybody testified that he always wore neat, clean shirts and his trousers were properly ironed.

  Which is why I didn’t pay much attention at the time, though his flat was empty and he had very few things lying around. We cleaned out the rubbish bins and drains looking for the memo.

  But if you think about it, there was no reason for him to throw away that memo.

  The boy who lived nearby testified that he was carrying it about very carefully, treating it like a precious object. To me, that suggests blind worship of the person who drove him to carry out the murders. That’s why he had held the memo in that manner.

  I reread the boy’s testimony.

  And I discovered something I’d overlooked, despite reading it over and over at the time.

  The boy said that the man was a good teacher. He also mentioned that sometimes the man got out his own science and maths textbooks to help explain theory and whatnot to the boy in terms he could easily understand.

  He’d graduated from a good university with a science degree majoring in chemistry.

  And he also worked at a place that made agricultural chemicals, so we should have found books on that subject in the flat too. Textbooks and academic books are expensive, not the kind of thing you throw away.

  But we didn’t find any books at all in his flat.

  Before taking his life he’d put his things in order.

  Yes, that’s right. It stands to reason he would have taken his books to a used bookshop.

  And – I’ll bet my life on it – that memo is stuck between the pages of one of those books.

  X

  Imagine my shock when I realized this.

  I bet you can’t.

  For a moment everything went black. I couldn’t breathe. Even thought I might be having another heart attack. Then straight away I calculated the statute of limitations.

  Why? Because I knew that Hisako Aosawa had married and gone overseas. She was legally an adult by then.

  If she was overseas, the statute of limitations would be suspended. We still had plenty of time.

  Of course, there was no guarantee those books were still in the bookshop.

  They could have been sold by now, or even destroyed.

  But second-hand bookshops operate on a different time-scale to other businesses. Time stands still in those places. The same book can occupy the same corner of the same shelf for years on end.

  The more I thought about it, the more on edge I became. The suspense nearly killed me.

  I dug out an old map and set about searching for bookshops that had been open back then and were still open.

  And what do you know, I discovered a shop not too far from where he lived that specialized in the natural sciences.

  It had to be where he would go to dispose of his books. I had a gut feeling.

  The name of the bookshop was somehow familiar, though. I had a feeling I’d heard it very recently.

  I told myself it was only imagination, but the nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach wouldn’t go away.

  So next morning I set out for that bookshop first thing.

  And when I got there, I realized immediately why the name seemed familiar.

  Not two months earlier it had burned down. I’d heard the news on TV and radio, that’s why I knew the name.

  I shook when I saw sheeting over the burned-out remains.

  It meant that someone else besides me had read that book and thought the same thing.

  And whoever it was had no compunction about tying up loose ends. Resorting to destroying evidence without even knowing for sure if the books were in there or not.

  The calculation and daring of it was chilling.

  I looked into the incident. Apparently the fire had started in the house of an elderly person behind the shop and spread from there. This neighbour lived alone and had been in and out of hospital the last few years. He had died in the fire, so it wasn’t possible to determine the cause.

  That news also made my blood run cold.

  It was an all too believable scenario for a house fire. And on the surface of it, it didn’t look at all like the bookshop was the actual target.

  It was nothing to her to burn down the house of an elderly person in order to destroy the bookshop.

  This got me all riled up again, and I decided to find out where she had been at the time of the fire.

  Turns out she was out of the country that day, but I learned she’d been here for six months not long before that.

  I can guess why she came back.

  She probably heard rumours about the book. Maybe she c
ame back to get hold of it, or maybe she read it overseas and decided to come back. Either way, I have no doubt she came to the same conclusion I did.

  It felt like a punch in the gut when I realized that. She’d beaten me again.

  XI

  So then I began wondering about the author’s intentions. Why had she written the book?

  It looked to me as though the author had reached the same conclusion I had, and was hinting at that by writing this book. I started to wonder if maybe she knew something, or maybe had further proof.

  So I sent her a letter.

  I started off with telling her that I’d been connected with the investigation and that reading her book had brought back memories, et cetera. Then I asked directly why she had altered the information about the bookshops.

  When I got a reply sometime later, it wasn’t what I expected.

  She wrote that she’d gone to many second-hand bookshops as part of her background research on the period, and the owners had been kind to her, so she had felt awkward about writing about them directly in her novel. That’s why she had made those alterations. It was for personal, sentimental reasons. There was no deeper meaning.

  Well, there was nothing I could say to that. And anyway, if she had been in possession of some kind of proof, it would have been quicker to write about it. I didn’t think she was lying, because there was no reason for her to cover for the perpetrator.

  She was a bit of an enigma, though. Did she really change the details of the bookshop for sentimental reasons? And why had she written the book in the first place? I still didn’t understand.

  But in hindsight, I suspect she herself didn’t really understand either, that’s my bet. She was witness to a shocking incident as a young girl but couldn’t take in its significance at the time. And because she couldn’t process it, the shock stayed with her as she grew up. Then the only way she could find to express that was through this book. That’s my take.

  XII

  That’s how she beat me again.

  The second time was a real kick in the teeth.

  Only the two of us know about it. Just me and her. I don’t know where she lives now, but in this big, wide world, she and I are the only two who know the truth. It gives me a strange feeling to think that.

  But that defeat changed me.

  Up until then it was in the past, over and done with. Something I wished I could forget about but couldn’t. That was my position.

  The second time she licked me I got wise.

  I still didn’t know.

  It was still going on.

  After all this time she’d read that book and taken steps to deal with it quick smart. That told me something. It told me that for her, too, it still wasn’t over. It was a sign that she knew if any new facts came to light, the rope could tighten around her wrists.

  Which meant there could be a third chance.

  As long as the statute of limitations was suspended, it was still possible to apprehend her.

  That gave me hope. Maybe I would see the day when she was caught.

  Heaven’s vengeance is slow but sure. Lately that saying often pops into my head. I don’t doubt there will be a third time, and when it happens I won’t see it coming. But there will be a moment when, quite by chance, her guilt will be exposed. I feel sure of it.

  I’ll stake my reputation on it.

  I believe what she said the last time we met. That we’re like those two origami cranes.

  It’s true, we are alike. The way we think and see things. Our actions mirror each other’s, like the two cranes facing one another.

  In a sense, we think of each other more than anyone else in the world.

  There’s a part of her that I understand better than anyone else in the world.

  That’s why we connect in our dreams. Maybe her dreams told me the truth about the second-hand bookshops.

  That’s why there will be a next time.

  And when it comes, again her dreams will tell me.

  One day I’ll see her again. I know it. I can feel it in my bones.

  XIII

  Sometime later I received a phone call.

  From the other survivor. The woman who helped out with housework.

  I think it was just before I retired.

  I knew from reading the book that she’d cooperated with the author. She told me on the phone that after the interviews were over, she had remembered several things.

  So I went to meet her, near the house where she’d been brought up.

  None of her family lived there any more, but it was near the sea, as was the school she’d gone to, and she’d grown up with the sound of the sea.

  We took a walk along the seashore.

  She’d aged, but she looked much calmer than the last time I’d seen her. I got the feeling that passing her last years in peace had been a saving grace for her.

  She told me she’d been thinking about her childhood a lot recently. Looking at the sea through the classroom window and hearing its roar in the background. She remembered playing games with her friends on the beach. How they’d throw a ball into the sea and compete to see who could be the first to grab it as the waves washed it back.

  She got quite misty-eyed talking about it. Told me with a laugh that she’d asked her daughter to scatter her ashes in the sea there.

  Then she started talking about a phone call that came on the day of the murders. Said it was from a young girl who seemed to be confirming if the murders had taken place.

  Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather.

  Vital testimony like that surfacing so late in the game. Who’d have imagined?

  Who in blazes had made that call? Was there another accomplice?

  You can imagine how my mind was in a whirl, but I kept calm and noted down what she remembered of the telephone call.

  It wasn’t much to go on.

  She was apologetic. Said she’d not realized at the time, but she had a feeling she knew the voice, though she couldn’t put a name to it. Looking through photo albums and lists of names from the period didn’t jog her memory.

  I gave her my home phone number and told her to ring me if she remembered anything else. If she did, I was likely to be retired by then.

  She pointed out a small church nearby, on the other side of a pine grove, where apparently Mrs Aosawa used to go and lend a hand several times a year. She used to go there with Mrs Aosawa at Christmas and New Year to deliver sweets and toys for orphan children that the church cared for. Mrs Aosawa also took small gifts to the residents of a nearby nursing home who attended the church, and helped with making cards and cleaning.

  She had quite a spark in her eye as she told me all this.

  It was heartbreaking to hear her reminisce about the past like that, but I was glad she could manage to talk about it.

  She said that she’d been to that place with Hisako.

  Hisako liked listening to the sound of the sea, apparently. Sometimes she begged to be taken to hear “Kimi’s sea”. When told the sea didn’t belong to anybody, Hisako would only laugh and repeat, “It’s Kimi’s sea.”

  There was a small park surrounded by pine trees next to that walkway, where it seems Hisako had a favourite bench. She used to sit there and listen to the sea for long stretches.

  We went and saw it. A very interesting bench it was, what you call a love seat. Made of stone, but in an S-shape so two people can sit and face each other. The only difference from an ordinary love seat was the backrest was so high you couldn’t actually see the other person.

  The upper part of the backrest had a thick coloured glass inset – a bit like a stained-glass window. I remember it had a red flower pattern. When somebody was sitting on the other side, you could see the blur of their head through the glass.

  Sounds interesting, doesn’t it?

  Hisako was proud as punch of it, apparently. As if she owned it.

  Kimi told me she used to sit there with Hisako and chat. It seems Hisak
o used to get very irritated because she could never be on her own. Somebody always had to be with her whenever she went somewhere, because of her blindness. But sitting on that bench she could feel as if she were by herself. Kimi used to let her be as much as possible. She told me she’d do her knitting or read a book, to try and give Hisako some space.

  I had no wish to sit in the spot she used to.

  I was afraid I’d lose myself somehow, became part of her.

  Kimi didn’t sit on the bench either.

  The two of us just stood there for a while, listening to the sound of the waves.

  Waves that she used to listen to. The same ocean that she might be listening to even now, way across the other side of the world.

  When you think about it, the world is connected by the sea. It literally connects me to the place she is now.

  I think Kimi had much the same thought. “I wonder what Hisako’s doing now?” she said. “I didn’t like her going overseas after marrying, but looking back now, it might have been for the best.”

  I didn’t say anything, just agreed with her.

  Deep down, though, I was thinking I didn’t know if it really was for the best or not.

  I thought it would be a long way off in the future before either of us knew the answer to that.

  “I still have the origami cranes you gave me,” she told me when we parted.

  Which set me wondering if Hisako Aosawa still had the cranes I’d given her.

  In the end I never heard from Kimi again.

  The next phone call I received was from her daughter. To inform me her mother had died and to tell me the date and time of the funeral.

  12

  EXTRACTS FROM THE FRIEND’S FILE

  I

  SUSPECTED HEATSTROKE FATALITY

  On the evening of the 26th a woman was found collapsed on a bench by staff at K— Park. She was taken to hospital with cardiac arrest and confirmed dead.

  The woman was identified as Makiko Yoshimizu, 42, a housewife from Hino in Tokyo. She was on her way back to Tokyo after visiting her husband in his current posting in Fukui. The weather on the 26th was particularly hot, with the temperature in the city reaching a record 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The cause of death is believed to be heatstroke brought on while she was sightseeing in the city.