‘Sorry to trouble you after the day you’ve had,’ Sasagaki said.
She shook her head. ‘Have you found anything out?’
‘We’re still gathering information. Actually, we came across something I wanted to check with you. Although’ – Sasagaki pointed towards the door behind her – ‘if you don’t mind, I’d like to offer some incense. Always good to give the Buddha his due.’
Yaeko looked startled for a moment and glanced at Matsuura before saying, ‘Of course, I don’t mind at all.’
‘Thank you, I’ll only be a moment.’
Sasagaki took off his shoes and stepped up to the raised floor behind the counter. His eyes darted towards the door off to the side, the one that hid the stairs going up to the first floor. There was a small bolt lock on the door and it was pulled shut, making it impossible to open from the other side.
‘Excuse the odd question,’ Sasagaki said, ‘but what’s that locked for?’
‘Oh,’ Yaeko said, ‘that’s to stop thieves from coming in through the top floor at night.’
‘Pardon, the top floor?’
‘The houses in this part of town are so close together, they jump from roof to roof. A watch-seller nearby us had it happen to him not so long ago. My husband put the lock on.’
‘I take it there’s nothing of value upstairs, then?’
‘The safe is down here,’ Matsuura said from behind him. ‘And we keep everything from our customers down here, too.’
‘Does that mean no one is upstairs at night?’
‘No, we sleep downstairs,’ Yaeko said.
‘I see,’ Sasagaki said, scratching his chin. ‘And you always lock it this early in the evening?’
‘Oh, no,’ Yaeko said, coming up beside him and unlocking the door. ‘I just locked it out of habit earlier.’
Which means no one’s upstairs, Sasagaki thought.
He opened the sliding door in front of him to find a small room with a tatami-matted floor. There seemed to be another room behind that, hidden behind another sliding door. The downstairs bedroom, Sasagaki thought. He didn’t imagine much happened in there other than sleeping, especially with Ryo sharing the same room.
The family altar was up against the western wall. Yosuke Kirihara smiled out of a small frame set to one side. The photo was of him at a younger age, wearing a suit. Sasagaki lit a stick of incense and placed it in the tray on the altar. He pressed his hands together and sat with his eyes closed for a full ten seconds.
Yaeko came with tea. Still on his knees, Sasagaki bowed his head and thanked her for the tea. Next to him, Koga took his own cup.
Sasagaki asked Yaeko if anything had occurred to her about the case or the events of the day her husband died. She shook her head immediately. Seated out in the shop, Matsuura was quiet, too.
Gradually, Sasagaki swung the conversation around to the topic of the million yen Kirihara had taken out of the bank. Yaeko and Matsuura both looked surprised at this.
‘He didn’t say anything to me about one million yen,’ Yaeko said.
‘I didn’t hear anything about that either,’ Matsuura said. ‘The boss took care of most of the business side of things, but if he was dealing with something that big, I think he would’ve at least mentioned it.’
‘Did your husband spend any money on entertainment? Anything potentially expensive, like gambling?’
‘No,’ Yaeko said, ‘he never gambled. He didn’t really have any hobbies to speak of.’
‘Work was his hobby,’ Matsuura added from the side.
‘Right, well then…’ Sasagaki hesitated a moment before asking, ‘How about any… other kinds of… entertainment.’
‘I’m sorry?’ Yaeko frowned.
‘Basically, what I mean is, women. Did he go out to clubs, anything like that?’
Yaeko nodded, understanding. Sasagaki had feared he might be touching a nerve, but that didn’t seem to be the case at all.
‘I don’t think he had a woman on the side, if that’s what you mean. He wasn’t the kind to be able to do that sort of thing.’ She sounded very sure of herself.
‘So you trusted him, in other words?’
‘I wouldn’t call it that…’ Yaeko said, her words trailing off as she looked down at the floor.
Sasagaki asked a few other questions before standing to go. He hated to leave empty-handed, but there didn’t seem to be much else here for them at present.
As he was putting on his shoes, he noticed a pair of scuffed sneakers off to one side of the door. They must belong to Ryo, which means he’s home…
Sasagaki glanced at the door with its sliding lock, and wondered what the boy was doing upstairs, all alone.
The continuing investigation gradually revealed the path Yosuke Kirihara had taken on the afternoon of his death. Already established was his departure from home at two-thirty, followed by a trip to Sankyo Bank near the station to withdraw the one million yen, then a late lunch at Saganoya where he ate the herring noodles. He’d left Saganoya just after four.
At issue was what happened next. An employee at the shop was under the impression that Kirihara had walked, not towards, but away from the station when he left. If he hadn’t come to the vicinity of the station to get on a train, then his only other reason for being there would have been to get the money.
The investigation team began questioning people in two areas: around the station, and near the building where the body had been found. The station team was the first to find anything.
A customer matching Kirihara’s description had visited a local cake shop called Harmony. There he had asked for ‘that pudding with lots of fruit on it,’ the employee reported, by which he’d meant Pudding à la Mode, a speciality of the chain. However, as it happened, they were all out of Pudding à la Mode that day. The customer had asked if there were any other shops where he might get something similar nearby.
The employee had directed him to another branch of the same shop in town, showing him the location on a map.
‘That’s right next to where I’m headed,’ Kirihara was reported to have said. ‘I wish I’d asked sooner.’
The other Harmony in question was located in West Ōe 6. A visit confirmed that someone matching Kirihara’s description had come to the shop in the early evening on Friday. He’d purchased three Puddings à la Mode, but the employee wasn’t sure what for, or where he’d gone after that.
The purchase revealed two things to the investigation team: one, Kirihara was going to meet someone, and two, that someone was most likely a woman. Finally, a name surfaced: Fumiyo Nishimoto – the only female customer on the ledger at Kirihara Pawnshop with an address near the cake shop.
Sasagaki and Koga went to pay Fumiyo a visit.
Her apartment building, a squat two-storey affair with a sign that read YOSHIDA HEIGHTS, stood in a cluster of small houses that looked as if they had been thrown together from corrugated tin siding and whatever lumber happened to be lying around at the time. Black splotches marked the building’s sooty grey walls and serpentine lines of concrete had been plastered over the many cracks.
Fumiyo’s unit was listed in the ledger as No 103. The walkway leading down the line of ground floor apartments was dim and dank – open on one side to the air, but too close to the neighbours to get any sunlight. A rusted bicycle was parked at the corner of the building, half-blocking the entrance.
Avoiding the washing machines that squatted outside each doorway, Sasagaki looked for Fumiyo’s unit. He found a piece of paper tacked to the wall beside the third door down, on which ‘Nishimoto’ had been written in permanent marker. He knocked.
‘Yes,’ came a girl’s voice from inside. The door didn’t open. ‘Who is it?’