When I returned with the clothes, he gleefully dressed the doll in the jeans and the sweater. By the time he put the jeans jacket over the top, he was humming a cheerful tune. By contrast, the graduates of the police academy looked as if they were sucking on lemons as they watched my friend at work. With admirable patience, they managed not to utter a word.
“So is he the murderer?”
It was Sasaki who addressed Kiyoshi.
“No doubt about it. He’s a brute.”
Kiyoshi was about done dressing Golem at this point. With clothes, the doll was even creepier looking. It looked as if some kind of vagrant had sneaked into the house.
“So you’re telling me,” said Kozaburo, “that this doll murdered two people because I left it lying here naked?”
“We’ll be lucky if we end up with only two dead,” said Kiyoshi. Then he quickly added, “This won’t do. There’s something missing.”
He folded his arms.
“He’s got a jacket and a sweater, but I still don’t think it’s enough… A hat! He needs a hat. He needs to cover that head. It really shouldn’t be left exposed. But I didn’t bring a hat with me… Has anyone here got a hat? Any kind’ll be fine. I’d like to borrow one. I promise I’ll return it.”
Kiyoshi looked over at the assembled guests. It was the chef, Haruo Kajiwara, who responded.
“Er… I’ve got one,” he said haltingly. “It’s a ten-gallon cowboy hat. Like you see in Westerns.”
“A cowboy hat!?”
Kiyoshi practically screamed it. The guests had absolutely no idea what had set off the lunatic this time. They waited on tenterhooks for his next words.
“There’s nothing better to protect us from violence. It’s like a blessing from the gods. Quick! Go fetch it!”
“Okay, then…”
Shaking his head in wonder, Kajiwara left the room and headed down the stairs. A short while later he returned with the cowboy hat.
Kiyoshi positively radiated joy from head to toe. Taking the hat, he placed it with a flourish on the doll’s head.
“Perfect! Now we’ll be safe. Thank you, Mr Kajiwara. You have done great service to this case. I can’t imagine a better hat than this for the job.”
Kiyoshi was rubbing his hands together in glee, but to me Golem looked more ghoulish than ever. Now it looked as if a real person were sitting there on the floor.
There was still a piece of string tied around his wrist. Kiyoshi examined it, announced that they ought to remove it, and immediately snapped it off. I overheard Chief Inspector Ushikoshi mutter “Stop” but it was too late.
Everyone returned to the salon and Kiyoshi chatted with Kozaburo and the rest of the guests. He seemed to get along best with Sasaki, and they talked together late into the night on the topic of mental disorders. Viewed from afar, the two men seemed to be having a friendly heart-to-heart, but I couldn’t help feeling that the medical student was interested in Kiyoshi more as a patient than a conversation partner. Still, the discussion between the psychiatrist and his patient was very calm.
The room allocated to Kiyoshi and me was the room in which Kazuya Ueda had been murdered—Room 10. I felt this made it very clear how our female host felt about us. Kohei Hayakawa was told to bring us an extra folding bed (the one in Room 10 was only a single). There was no toilet or bathroom in that room, so I used the shower in the detectives’ room to try to relax after the long day’s journey.
Still, to sleep in a room where a murder had been committed was a uniquely valuable experience. It wasn’t something you could get on your average sightseeing tour.
I was still trying to get to sleep in that uncomfortable bed when Kiyoshi came in, just after midnight.
SCENE 3
Room 15, The Detectives’ Bedroom
“What kind of mental hospital did that one escape from?”
The young Sergeant Ozaki was unable to control his anger any longer.
“I mean, what could have possessed them to send that complete idiot for us to babysit?”
That night, the detectives had assembled in Room 15. Constable Anan was there too.
“Never mind, Ozaki,” said Ushikoshi soothingly. “The man is definitely not normal, but that is who Superintendent Nakamura at Tokyo HQ trusted enough to send. Let’s take this opportunity to observe his skills a while.”
“His skills? We’ve seen them already. The ability to put a pair of trousers on a doll!”
“Our job’d be a whole lot easier if we could catch a suspect by dressing up a doll,” Okuma remarked.
“I’ve never seen such a complete and utter moron in my whole life,” said Ozaki. “Letting that one loose on this case is not going to help the investigation one iota. He’s going to screw the whole thing up.”
“But you can’t claim that putting trousers on the doll has hindered the investigation in any way, can you?”
“Right now he is so pleased with himself playing around with that doll that if there’s another murder, he’ll probably start spraying ketchup on the body.”
Ushikoshi sat there lost in thought. Privately he also believed that Mitarai was capable of doing something that crazy.
“Anan, what do you think about that man?” he asked.
“Hmm… I don’t really…”
“Have you given up billiards already?” said Ozaki.
“That other man he brought with him, what’s he up to right now?”
“Taking a shower in Room 12.”
“He seems like a normal bloke.”
“He’s some kind of chaperon for the lunatic, I reckon.”
“Anyway, don’t you think we should probably ask them to leave?” said Okuma.
“Yes. But let’s wait and see how it goes for now. If they start getting in the way of our work, I’ll ask them.”
“An old man with divining sticks would have been a whole lot better than this. With his bad back he’d just have been forced to sit there quietly. It’s hard to handle someone so young. That was like some kind of rain dance he was doing—taking that doll and performing his little psychic dance to proclaim it the killer. Next he’s going to try and get us to light the fire for him to dance around.”
SCENE 4
The Salon
The next morning was relatively clear and sunny. There was the sound of hammering coming from somewhere. The three detectives were back in their sofa cluster.
“What’s that hammering noise?”
“The two women guests asked to have the ventilation holes in their rooms blocked up. They said they made them too nervous, so Togai and Sasaki are playing the knights in shining armour with hammers. Sasaki said he was going to block up the one in his own room while he was at it.”
“Well, I agree it would make you feel safer. But that damned hammering is driving me crazy. Not exactly a New Year’s Eve atmosphere.”
“It’s frantic around here.”
But at that moment an even more frantic man came rushing in. Kiyoshi Mitarai was babbling something that sounded vaguely like a children’s comic-book character.
“Mr Banana!”
An uncomfortable silence fell over the salon, as nobody quite knew how to respond. Kiyoshi looked puzzled, but then the young police constable stood up, sensing that the man might be trying to say his name. I was impressed that he could work that out.
“The name’s Anan…”
“Sorry. Could you tell me the way to Wakkanai Police Station?”
“Yes, of course.”
Kiyoshi was the kind of man who always recalled someone’s date of birth, but never really made an effort to learn anyone’s name. He just used whatever name occurred to him at the time. And then, he would just keep using that made-up name forever.