“Would you prefer to have more privacy? We could move to a different location,” Kiyoshi suggested.
“No, it doesn’t matter. I’m in no position to make demands. All of these people have been living in fear because of me. They have a right to hear what I have to say. Could you just allow me one selfish request? Make sure my daughter…”
He faltered for a moment.
“We wouldn’t be able to wake Ms Hamamoto even if we wanted to,” said Kiyoshi. “The sleeping drugs she took are incredibly strong.”
“I get it now! It was you who drugged her, and you who set fire to her bed. How did you manage it? You were with us the whole time.”
“All in good time. I’m going to start at the beginning,” said Kiyoshi. “If I go wrong or leave anything out, let me know.”
Everyone began to gather at the table, hoping that the string of murders had finally come to an end and the case had been solved.
“Understood. I doubt, though, that it’ll be necessary.”
“I had a really hard time figuring out your motive for killing Ueda,” began Kiyoshi almost impatiently. He seemed to be in a hurry to get the story out.
“Well, actually that’s not quite accurate. To tell the truth I had a hard time figuring out the motive for the whole thing. But with Ueda in particular, you don’t seem to have any reason for killing him.
“However, I got it right away with the murder of Kikuoka. I realized the only person you actually wanted to kill was Kikuoka, at least at the beginning. For that reason you spent so much time and money building this eccentric mansion. Its sole purpose was for murdering Eikichi Kikuoka. But in the end you had the desire to kill both Ueda and Kikuoka. You’d refined and polished your plan, but Ueda got in the way. That was it, wasn’t it?”
“It was important that I was the one to kill Kikuoka. If I didn’t, I would have failed in my duty,” said Kozaburo. “The other day, I noticed something strange about Kohei and Chikako when they returned from their daughter’s funeral. I questioned them about it and they eventually broke down and confessed that they had hired Ueda to kill Kikuoka.
“I panicked. I told them I would pay them back the money they’d used, but they had to withdraw their request. I trusted them, and I’m sure Kohei did as I asked. But Ueda refused to stand down. He was stubborn but also had a streak of chivalry in him. He had his own intense personal hatred of Kikuoka. It seems that he had had some kind of run-in with the man too.”
It turned out that Kikuoka was almost universally despised.
“What kind of run-in?”
“To us, it may seem insignificant. Ueda took something that Kikuoka said as an insult to his mother. It seems there was a dispute between his mother and her neighbour over land. The neighbouring house had suffered a fire and the fence that divided the properties had been burnt. Ever since, the exact location of the boundary between the two properties had been unclear. Ueda’s mother let neighbourhood cars park on the disputed land for a fee, and her neighbour had taken her to court over it. His mother was obstinate too. She was involved in a fight that could only end by one side or the other moving out, and needed money for that. Kikuoka called her a ‘stubborn old bag’ and other pretty awful things, which really awoke Ueda’s fury. But I don’t suppose it’d have come to murder until Kohei Hayakawa offered to pay him to do it. Well, whatever, it’s not my place to make judgements on the motives of others…”
“And so you decided to kill Ueda. You thought if you were going to kill him anyway, why not use his murder as a kind of foreshadowing of the carefully prepared murder of Kikuoka? In a way that would cause so much confusion in the investigation. That’s what the string tied to the handle of the knife was about, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was.”
I glanced at the Hayakawa couple. Chikako was staring down at the floor, and Kohei hadn’t taken his eyes off his employer.
“That’s because in the subsequent murder of Mr Kikuoka, you were planning to use a knife with string attached, or rather you needed to attach string to the handle of that second knife to accomplish the crime. So you decided to foreshadow the crime by tying string to the knife used to murder Mr Ueda, when in fact there was no need for any string on it at all. But there’s one thing I still don’t understand. Why did you tie Ueda’s wrist to the bed with that piece of cord?”
“I’m not really sure myself. I was in quite a state and not thinking properly. I’d never killed anyone with a knife before. I couldn’t imagine what would happen. I suppose I was afraid that he might go wandering outside half dead or something.”
“How did you manage to take down a great big ex-military type like that all by yourself?” said Okuma.
“Yes, well, I had to employ some shameful tactics. I talked to him numerous times about the Self-Defence Forces so that he came to trust me, but still, no matter how much his guard might be down, there was no chance I’d overpower him in a fight. I’m sure he’d even had training to deal with that kind of sneak attack.
“There was a chance that I might bump into someone so I wore a jacket to hide any blood spatter. Part of my plan was to take it off to kill him and then put it back on to hide any blood that might have got on my sweater. The jacket had one more use too. When I went to his room—”
“How did you get in?” Ushikoshi asked.
“I just knocked on his door, announced myself, and he let me in. It was as simple as that. He had no reason to believe that I was going to murder him or Kikuoka. Kohei had never told him I had anything to do with his request not to kill Kikuoka after all.”
“Hmm. Go on.”
“I entered his room, took off my jacket and observed Ueda. If I could have done it, I would have stabbed him right there and then, but it wasn’t possible. He was too big, and I was particularly afraid of how strong his right arm looked. I really wasn’t thinking straight. I had the knife in my jacket pocket and all I could think was if I could just get his right wrist tied to the bed, it would be so much easier to do the job. And then after thinking about it for a while, I executed my plan.
“I held out my jacket telling him it was a little too big for me and if it happened to fit him I would let him have it. I told him to try it on. He put it on and fastened the buttons, but of course it was too small for him. While I was pretending to check the fit, I took the knife from the pocket and concealed it in the sleeve of my sweater, then announced that the jacket seemed too small for him after all. I undid the buttons and took hold of both sides of the collar, pulling it simultaneously downwards on both sides, as if to take it off for him. He stood quietly and let me do it. After getting the collar past his shoulders, I suddenly tugged downwards as hard as I could, and because the jacket was so small on him, it got stuck tight, temporarily disabling both his arms. Even then, he had no idea what I was up to. I pulled the knife out from my sleeve and plunged it as hard as I could into the left side of his chest. He must have thought the knife was going to come out through his back. Even now I can’t get his bewildered expression out of my head.
“Then I took my jacket off him and put it back on myself. My sweater was a dark colour so the blood spatter didn’t show up at all. I was lucky too that there wasn’t too much blood on my hands. I hid the sweater in the bottom of the wardrobe in my room. You detectives were very polite when you went through my room, and you stopped at digging through all my clothing. That saved me, but in fact, when I look at it now, there aren’t really any obvious traces of blood.
“After I’d committed the murder, my mind was a bit crazy, and when I came to, I realized that I was tying Ueda’s right wrist to the bed frame, even though he was already dead.”