She hadn’t discussed the matter with anybody else; nor had she introduced herself to the girlfriend. She was probably worried that Koki would get annoyed, or maybe she was frightened that Naohiro would try to stick his oar in and influence things.
“Personally, I think that your mother enjoyed every minute of her new life in Kodenmacho. The pleasure of silently watching over someone, anticipating the future, probably meant a lot to her.”
Those were the slightly cryptic words Detective Kaga had used. At the time, Koki didn’t understand; now he understood so well that it almost caused him physical pain.
Kaga had given Koki the address of the pastry shop. The one his mother had mistaken for the café Ami worked at. He and Ami went there, and both broke down in tears at the sight of the pregnant clerk. Despite never having met Koki’s mother, Ami wailed. “I wish it wasn’t a case of mistaken identity. I wish I really was her. Wouldn’t that have been lovely?”
Koki’s chest hurt whenever he thought of Mineko. Finally realizing how precious a mother’s love is, he now knew how foolish he was to have turned his back on it. He felt partly to blame for what had happened: if they had been in regular contact, maybe she wouldn’t have been murdered.
Shinozuka was definitely right: Koki couldn’t focus on acting now. Perhaps, though, there was something else he could do: find out about his mother.
The trouble was, he had no idea where to start. The police had cordoned off her Kodenmacho apartment, so, son or not, he had no hope of examining anything that might give him an insight into her new life.
Racking his brains, he remembered something Kaga said about his mother having hired a lawyer to negotiate her divorce and that the two women were still in contact. Maybe the lawyer would be able to tell him about her recent life.
The next question was how to locate the lawyer. Koki could think of only one way: it was the last thing he wanted to do, but he called up his father, Naohiro, and asked him for the lawyer’s contact details.
“Why the hell do you want to know?” snarled Naohiro. “What business have you got with some damn lawyer?”
“Nothing to do with you. Just tell me.”
“No way will I tell you. If you start dicking around and screw up the investigation, that’ll be a huge problem.”
“That’s not going to happen. I just want to find out more about Mom.”
“That’s exactly what I mean by dicking around. The cops will get to the bottom of your mother’s murder. Until then, sit tight and wait. You’re an amateur, so butt out.”
“You’ve got it all wrong. I’m not trying to solve the case. I just want to learn about Mom.”
“Learn what, exactly?”
“Any damn thing. It’s like I know nothing about her. And I bet you don’t know the first thing about her either, do you, Dad? Do you know what was on her mind just before she was killed? Do you have any idea why she was renting an apartment near me? No, of course you don’t.”
A moment of silence.
“You’re saying that you do?” Naohiro asked.
“Yeah, I do. But don’t worry about it. It’s got nothing to do with you, and it wouldn’t mean anything to you. You’d probably just say Mom’s an idiot. You’re fine not knowing anything, Dad, but me — me, I’m different. I want to know all about Mom. But I won’t make trouble for you, I promise you that.”
Koki delivered this rant without pausing for breath. Another silence followed. Finally, there was a heavy sigh, then Naohiro said, “Okay, just wait a minute.”
Naohiro gave him the name and contact details of the lawyer, Shizuko Takamachi.
“There’s probably not much point in telling you this now,” continued Naohiro, “but our divorce was a mutual thing. Mineko was the one who initiated it; she said that she wanted to ‘start a new life.’ I thought she was being selfish, but I went along with it. The lawyer negotiated things between us, sure, but there weren’t any ugly fights about dividing up our assets.”
“Then why bother telling me? The lawyer will tell me the same thing — if it’s true, of course.”
“Everyone sees things differently. The lawyer will probably say that she did a good job working out the settlement. The truth is, we never needed a lawyer. There was no dispute. I just wanted to let you know.”
“All that crap about ‘settlements’ and ‘dividing up assets’ means nothing to me. I couldn’t care less about stuff like that.”
Having got the lawyer’s contact information, Koki had no further use for his father, and he hung up.
A plump woman with a round, amiable face, Shizuko Takamachi looked around forty. Koki imagined that clients like his mom would find her very reassuring.
Getting to his feet, he introduced himself and thanked her for seeing him. With a nod, Shizuko Takamachi gestured for him to sit back down.
“Please accept my condolences. It must have been a dreadful shock.”
“Very much so,” replied Koki.
“I was shocked, too. As you may be aware, your mother came to see me a number of times recently. I never picked up the slightest hint that she was in danger. If anything, she seemed happy to have regained her independence.”
“You have no idea why she was murdered, then?”
“No. I can’t think of anything significant enough to have any bearing on the crime.”
“When did you and my mother first meet?”
“When your mother decided to file for divorce. A friend of hers introduced our practice to her, and she made an appointment with me.”
“But the two of you stayed in touch even after the divorce was finalized. Were you friends?”
The lawyer frowned. Despite her rather ordinary, roly-poly appearance, she obviously picked her words with care.
“Friends? You could safely characterize it in those terms, yes. Ms. Mitsui sent along news via email, and I replied, when I had the time. That was our relationship. Life can be challenging for a newly divorced woman, so I was there for her, if she needed someone to talk to. It was like a follow-up service: if we ended up discussing legal matters, I could hardly do it free of charge, of course.”
“Just now you said you couldn’t think of anything significant enough to have any bearing on her murder. Can you think of anything less significant but that might still be relevant?”
A faint smile appeared on Shizuko Takamachi’s lips.
“Your mother and I are both grown women. We didn’t email about trivialities.”
“What did you email about, then?”
“Things that I cannot reveal to you, even though you are her son. Lawyers have a duty of confidentiality toward their clients, and your late mother is still my client, as far as I am concerned.”
The lawyer’s voice was gentle, but Koki was intimidated by her crisp enunciation and the professional pride and strength of will it implied. Bet she’s good at playing mind games in court, he thought.
Rather unexpectedly, the lawyer smiled.
“As I said, your mother seemed happy to me. That came through in her emails. She was considering a range of options with regard to her future, but I doubt that there was any link to her murder.”
Koki again felt the heat of emotion in his chest. He knew that the optimistic tone the lawyer had detected in his mother’s emails came from her excitement about the birth of her first grandchild.
Still, as the lawyer had said, they were both grown women, with no interest in exchanging frivolous emails. What had Mineko been consulting her about?
Koki realized that he wasn’t going to get that information out of this lawyer. He wondered what to do.