A month had passed without any progress. Whereas before the detectives had been spending their nights either on stakeouts or sleeping under desks, now they had started to go home, and Sasagaki went home for the first real bath he had taken in weeks. He was married, living in an apartment by Yao City Station, about an hour to the south-east of their current headquarters. His wife, Katsuko, was three years older than he was. They had no children.
Sasagaki was woken from sleep early the next morning by the sound of Katsuko hurriedly dressing. He looked at the clock. It was just after seven.
‘You going someplace?’ Sasagaki asked from the futon.
‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. I’m just going to the supermarket.’
‘You’re going shopping? This early?’
‘You have to line up now or you won’t get anything.’
‘Won’t get any what? What are you going to buy?’
‘Toilet paper, of course.’
‘Huh? Toilet paper?’
‘I went yesterday too. They’re limiting it to one bag per person, you know. You’re lucky I don’t make you go with me.’
‘Why do we need so much toilet paper?’
‘If you don’t know about the oil shortage, I don’t have time to explain. I’ll see you later,’ Katsuko said, slipping into her cardigan and snatching up her wallet as she ran out of the door.
Sasagaki’s head was a confused swirl. He’d been so full of the investigation lately he had very little notion of what was going on in the world outside. He’d heard about the oil shortage, but he didn’t see what that had to do with toilet paper, or why people were queueing up this early in the morning to get it.
He decided he would ask Katsuko when she got home and tried closing his eyes again.
The phone rang moments later. He twisted under the cover and reached for the black rotary phone squatting by his pillow. His head hurt a little and he hadn’t quite got his eyes all the way open yet.
‘Yeah? Sasagaki speaking.’
About ten seconds later he leapt from the futon, all thoughts of sleep having fled his mind. The phone call had been to tell him that Tadao Terasaki was dead.
Terasaki had died on one of the main expressways through Osaka. He hadn’t quite made it around a curve and had slammed into the divider, a classic case of falling asleep at the wheel.
His van had been stocked with a large quantity of soap and detergent. People were hoarding supplies and it came out later that Terasaki had run himself ragged trying to get as much stashed away for his customers as he could.
Sasagaki and a few other detectives searched Terasaki’s apartment for anything that might link him to the murder of Yosuke Kirihara, but no one could deny the feeling of futility that had come over the operation. Even if they did find something, their prime suspect was beyond prosecution.
Finally, one of the detectives found something in the van’s glove compartment: a Dunhill lighter. It was a tall model, with pointed corners. Everyone on the team remembered a similar lighter having gone missing from Kirihara’s possessions when he was found.
However, Kirihara’s fingerprints were not found on the lighter. In fact, no prints were found at all. It appeared to have been wiped with a cloth.
They showed the lighter to Yaeko, but she only shook her head. She said it did resemble her husband’s, but she couldn’t be absolutely sure.
They brought in Fumiyo Nishimoto for more questioning. The detectives were growing increasingly agitated and impatient for a confession, no matter what it took. The detective doing the questioning went so far as to make it sound like the lighter they’d found had belonged to Kirihara.
‘So, what?’ the detective pressed Fumiyo, waving the lighter in her face. ‘Did you take it out of the victim’s pocket and give it to Terasaki? Or did Terasaki take it out of the dead man’s pocket himself? Well, which was it? Hmm?’
Yet Fumiyo continued to deny any involvement. Nor did she flinch or show any sign of breaking. Though a certain amount of shock would have been natural after Terasaki’s sudden death, there was nothing in her attitude that suggested any bewilderment at all.
We made a mistake, Sasagaki thought, sitting in a side room where he could listen to the interrogation. Somewhere along the line we took a wrong turn and it’s leading us nowhere.
TWO
Toshio Tagawa took a look at the sports page and thought about the game, his foul mood of the night before coming back over him.
The Yomiuri Giants had lost; there was nothing he could do about that. What bugged him was how it had gone down.
At the critical moment, Nagashima had just choked. This was the hitter that had taken the Giants to victory so many times before, and now his batting was so weak it hurt to watch. It was always Shigeo Nagashima who came through in a pinch, always the man they called ‘Mister Giants’ who gave a swing the fans could get behind, even when he was struck out.
But something had clearly gone wrong. To be honest, the warning signs had already been there two or three years back. But Tagawa, a Nagashima fan since childhood, had just looked away, unable to accept the harsh reality of what he was seeing. Everybody gets older. The day comes when even the best players have to leave the field. He looked at the photo in the newspaper of Nagashima having just been struck out and realised he might be at a critical juncture this year. The season was just getting started, but there would be rumours of retirement by summer. If the Giants stopped winning, it was almost certain. Tagawa wasn’t too hopeful about their prospects, either. They had charged through nine years at the top of the Central League, but he couldn’t help thinking that the cracks were beginning to show in the team – cracks epitomised by Nagashima.
He glanced sideways at an article about the Chunichi Dragon’s latest win and closed the paper. The clock on the wall showed it was four. He doubted anyone else would come today. Not many people paid rent on the day before payday, anyway.
Tagawa was mid-yawn when he noticed someone standing outside the office. He could just see glimpses through the spaces between the apartment flyers he’d taped up on the window. He couldn’t see a face, but he could see their shoes – sneakers, a child. Maybe some kid on his way home from elementary school killing time by checking out the apartment listings, Tagawa thought.
However, several seconds later, the door opened. A girl wearing a cardigan over a blouse peeked in, almost fearfully. Her eyes were large, like a cat’s. Tagawa guessed she was in her last years of elementary school, maybe sixth grade.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked. His voice sounded soft even to his own ears. If this had been one of the typical area brats, the kind with scuffed-up knees and worn faces, he doubted he would have sounded half as nice.
‘My name’s Nishimoto,’ the girl said.
‘Nishimoto? Where from?’
‘Yoshida Heights.’
The girl’s crisp diction and bright voice was remarkably refreshing to Tagawa’s ears. All the kids he knew talked as brutishly as you’d expect from their muddled heads and bad upbringing.
‘Yoshida Heights…’ Tagawa pulled a file off the shelf.
Eight families lived in Yoshida Heights. The Nishimoto unit was in the middle on the ground floor, No 103. Tagawa noted that they were two months behind on the rent. It had been about time for him to give them a call, in fact.
‘So, um.’ He turned back to the girl. ‘You’re Mrs Nishimoto’s daughter?’
‘Yes,’ the girl said.
Tagawa glanced back down at the file. The Nishimotos’ unit only listed two residents: Fumiyo Nishimoto and her daughter, Yukiho. When they had moved in ten years earlier, Fumiyo’s husband, Hideo, had been on the rental agreement, but he had died soon afterwards.