Once they were gone, Sasagaki walked up to the counter. ‘And I have a question for you, Mr Matsuura.’
‘Yes?’ he said, smiling pleasantly even as his back stiffened.
‘It’s about the day of the murder. In our investigation we found something that contradicted one of your earlier statements,’ Sasagaki said, his words deliberately measured.
‘What sort of a contradiction?’ Matsuura asked, the smile tightening on his face.
Sasagaki told them what they’d heard from the woman in Tatsumi. Matsuura’s smile faded as he spoke.
‘What are we to make of this? You said that the shop was open until seven that day. But now we have someone saying that the door was locked between five-thirty and six-thirty. Doesn’t that seem strange to you?’ Sasagaki stared the man in the eye.
Matsuura looked away, his gaze drifting up towards the ceiling. ‘Well now, let’s see…’ He moved as if to cross his arms, then clapped his hands together with sudden realisation. ‘I know! I was in the safe.’
‘The safe?’
‘Yeah, it’s at the back. We keep all the things from the customers there, anything of value. You can come take a look later if you want, but it’s quite large. Like a bank vault. Anyway, I had to check on some things, so I was in there. You can’t hear the door buzzer from inside, see.’
‘And no one was watching the store while you were inside?’
‘Well, usually the boss is here but since I was alone I’d locked the door.’
‘And what about the wife and son?’
‘They were both in the living room,’ Matsuura said.
‘Wouldn’t they have heard the doorbell ringing?’
‘Right, well,’ Matsuura’s mouth hung open for several seconds before he said, ‘they could’ve been watching television in the back and not heard it.’
Sasagaki looked at Matsuura’s bony-cheeked face for a moment before saying to Koga, ‘Try ringing the doorbell.’
‘Right,’ Koga said, stepping outside. The buzzer went off above Sasagaki’s head. The noise was almost painful.
‘That’s quite loud,’ Sasagaki said. ‘They would’ve had to be pretty engrossed in whatever show they were watching to have missed that.’
Matsuura’s face twisted, eventually ending up in a wry smile. ‘Well, Mrs Kirihara’s never been that interested in the business here. She usually doesn’t even greet customers when they come in. Ryo’s never been one for helping out, either. They probably heard the buzzer but just ignored it.’
‘Ignored it, right,’ Sasagaki said, but what Matsuura was saying did have a ring of truth to it; neither Yaeko nor her son seemed very enthusiastic about the business.
‘Am I a suspect, detective? I mean, do you think I killed the boss?’
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,’ Sasagaki said, waving his hand. ‘We hit a contradiction in our investigation so we had to look into it. That’s standard procedure.’
‘I see, I guess. Not that being a suspect would bother me much,’ Matsuura added, showing yellowed teeth. ‘I got nothing to hide.’
‘Not that we suspect you, but it always helps us to have something a little more concrete for an alibi. I don’t suppose you have anything that can prove you were here on that day between six and seven?’
‘Well you could ask Mrs Kirihara or the kid… but that’s not enough, is it?’
‘A witness who has nothing to do with the case would be preferable.’
‘So now we’re conspirators, is that it?’ Matsuura said, his eyes narrowing.
‘We’re just considering all the possibilities here,’ Sasagaki said with a shrug.
‘Well, that’s messed up. What do I have to gain by killing the boss? He might have talked like he was a high roller, but I know there’s not much money here.’
Sasagaki didn’t answer. He was happy to have Matsuura get angry and maybe say more than he should. But the man had already calmed down. ‘Between six and seven, right?’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t suppose talking on the phone counts?’
‘You talked to someone on the phone? Who?’
‘Someone from the union, about our meeting coming up next month.’
‘Did you call him?’
‘Erm, no, he called me.’
‘Around what time?’
‘Once at six. Then again about a half-hour later.’
‘He called twice?’
‘That’s right.’
Sasagaki arranged the timeline in his head. If Matsuura was telling the truth, that would give him an alibi between six and six-thirty, which made it unlikely he had been the murderer.
Sasagaki asked for the name and phone number of the union man who had called. Matsuura pulled out a box of business cards and had begun looking through them when the door to the stairs opened. A boy’s face appeared in the gap. His eyes met with Sasagaki’s and he quickly shut the door. The detectives could hear his footsteps hurrying back up the stairs.
‘It looks like the Kirihara boy is in.’
‘What? Oh, yeah, he just got home from school.’
‘Would you mind if I took a look?’ Sasagaki said, indicating the stairs.
‘You want to see upstairs?’
‘If you don’t mind.’
‘No, yeah, sure, no problem.’
Sasagaki told Koga to take down the number of the man who’d called, then take a look at the safe. He leaned down to take off his shoes and stepped up behind the counter.
Opening the door, he took a look up the stairs. They were dimly lit and smelled of plaster dust from the walls. Years of sock traffic had polished the wooden stairs to a shiny black. Placing a hand on the wall for balance, Sasagaki cautiously climbed the steps.
At the top he found a narrow hallway running between two rooms. One side was closed with a sliding door, the other with a shoji screen. There was a small door at the end of the hallway that was either a closet or a toilet, Sasagaki decided.
‘Ryo? It’s Detective Sasagaki. I was hoping to have a word.’ Sasagaki stepped into the hallway.
For a while no answer came. Sasagaki had just taken a breath to call out again when he heard something clatter from behind the sliding door. Moving quickly, he took a step forward and opened the door. Ryo was inside, sitting at his desk, his back facing the detective.
‘Mind if I come in?’
Sasagaki stepped into the small tatami-matted room. This was the south-west corner of the house and sunlight came streaming in through the windows.
‘I don’t know anything, OK?’ Ryo said, his back still turned.
‘That’s fine. It’s all helpful. Mind if I sit down?’ Sasagaki asked, pointing towards a cushion on the floor. Ryo looked over his shoulder and nodded.
Sasagaki sat and looked up at the boy. ‘Sorry about your dad.’
Ryo said nothing. He didn’t even turn around.
Sasagaki looked around the room. It was clean to the point where it felt a little barren for a kid’s room. There were no posters of girls in bathing suits on the walls, no model racing cars. There was no manga on the bookshelf, either, just an encyclopedia and two science books for kids: How Cars Work, and How Televisions Work.
Sasagaki’s eyes lit on a frame on the wall. It contained a piece of white paper cut in the shape of a sailboat. The paper had been cut so deftly that even the rigging was reproduced perfectly. Sasagaki had seen some cut-paper pictures at an art show once and this seemed far more intricate.
‘That’s pretty impressive. You make that?’
Ryo glanced at the frame and nodded his head slightly.
‘Wow,’ Sasagaki said. His surprise was genuine. ‘That takes some skill. You could sell those if you wanted to, you know.’
‘What did you want to ask me?’