Uesugi clambered in, a sour look on his face.
As the taxi sped toward the apartment, Kaga briefed Uesugi on the son and his wife. Katsuya Kishida worked for a construction consulting company; he and his wife were both twenty-nine years old; they had one child, a five-year-old boy.
“If you know that much already, why not go ahead and finish without me? I won’t get pissed off or anything.”
Kaga didn’t reply. “There it is. It’s that building there,” he exclaimed, pointing with his finger. Apparently he’d scoped out the location in advance as well.
Katsuya Kishida was not yet back. According to his wife, he did a lot of corporate entertaining and was back late most nights.
Without mentioning anything about a homicide investigation, Uesugi asked the wife to confirm that Yosaku Kishida had dropped by on the evening of June 10. Reiko stated that he had indeed come by at eight o’clock. Apparently he’d called earlier that day to say that he’d be coming around that night to discuss the ceremony for his wife’s death anniversary. When Uesugi inquired about Kishida’s appearance, Reiko insisted that he was very much his usual self. She didn’t seem to be taking the interview too seriously.
Unable to think of any more questions, Uesugi let his eye drift around the living room. A number of things immediately caught his eye: the oversized TV; the bottles of expensive liquor on the sideboard; a glossy handbag — stamped with a logo that even he recognized — tossed carelessly onto the sofa.
The five-year-old son was playing with a spinning top on the floor. Kaga seemed interested and asked the mother where she’d bought it. Her answer was that Yosaku Kishida, her father-in-law, had brought it with him on the evening of June 12.
“You’re quite sure it was the twelfth?”
“Sure I’m sure. Why should you care, anyway?”
“Oh, no particular reason,” murmured Kaga indifferently. Uesugi, however, detected a sharp new gleam in his eye.
“Well, that was a total waste of time,” declared Uesugi as soon as they were outside the building. “I think she’s telling the truth about Kishida arriving at eight. Nonetheless, that doesn’t provide him a full alibi. I wonder why he made a point of coming here that night?”
“We don’t yet know. But did you see how that young couple lives? Didn’t that bother you?” Kaga asked.
“They’re certainly living large, but I wouldn’t say it bothered me. Bad times or good, people with money always have money!”
“That’s what I mean. The woman said that her husband was out wining and dining clients every night. But I called the company to check. Katsuya Kishida is in the accounts payable department. Correct me if I’m wrong, but normally accountants don’t do a whole lot of corporate entertaining.”
Uesugi stopped midstride and turned to Kaga.
“What are you getting at?”
“I don’t really know myself yet,” said Kaga, raising his arm. A taxi pulled up to the curb beside them.
4
Uesugi spent the next day making inquiries on a completely different case. When he got back to the task force headquarters, the captain called him over. As Uesugi walked across the room, the captain glanced around suspiciously, then extracted something from inside his desk. Uesugi caught his breath when he saw what it was.
“Ha. So you have seen it before, then?” The captain peered up at him.
He was holding a top: a wooden top decorated with concentric green and yellow lines. The same top that Katsuya Kishida’s son had been playing with.
“What’s that thing doing here?” asked Uesugi weakly.
“Kaga came across it in a toy shop in Ningyocho. This top is sold together with a length of string. He sent the string down to forensics. They’re comparing it against the ligature marks.”
Ligature marks? That meant the strangulation marks on the victim’s neck.
The murder weapon had yet to be discovered. Despite knowing that twisted string with a diameter of three to four millimeters had been used to commit the crime, they hadn’t yet found an object that matched the description.
“Oh, and he asked me to give this to you.”
The captain handed Uesugi a handwritten note.
The hastily scribbled note read: “A top like this one was stolen from a toy shop in Ningyocho on the evening of June 10. Kaga.”
Stolen on the day of the murder!
“Kaga wanted you to fill me in on this spinning top. What’s the man talking about?” The irritation was audible in the captain’s voice.
Uesugi simply ignored the question. “What did forensics have to say?” he asked.
The captain must have sensed that Uesugi wasn’t in the mood to play games. He picked up a document from the corner of his desk.
“The string’s thickness and the width of the fibers were a perfect match for the strangulation marks on the neck.”
Uesugi inhaled noisily. The blood was pumping furiously through his veins.
The captain started to ask a question. Uesugi raised a hand to cut him off.
“Where’s Kaga?”
“No idea. Gone out somewhere. Said he needed to make some follow-up inquiries on this.”
“Okay. I’ll give you my report after I’ve spoken to him. You’re going to have to wait.”
“What the hell?”
In response to the captain’s sour glare, Uesugi bowed and walked away. When he consulted his watch, it was a little after seven.
It was nearly eight by the time Kaga returned. Uesugi grabbed him by the arm and dragged him out into the passageway.
“What the hell’s going on? You want to play to the crowd, be my guest. But don’t try and suck me into it.”
Kaga gently prized Uesugi’s hand off.
“Precinct detectives never get to solve cases all on their lonesome. The important thing is the news about the top. Did you hear?”
“Yeah, the captain filled me in. Why’d you zero in on it?”
“I don’t know, really. Tops are more of a New Year’s present, so it seemed funny for the kid to have gotten one at this time of year. Plus it’s not like there’s a whole load of shops that stock them. Who sells the things? I could only think of one place.”
“That Ningyocho toy shop? Well remembered.”
Kaga gave a nod.
“I’ve been walking around the precinct pretty much every day since I got posted here. I’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s sold where.”
“Don’t imagine the shopkeepers are too thrilled to have a cop swinging by all the time.”
“I thought so, too. That’s why I do my best not to look like one,” said Kaga, giving his shirt a discreet tug forward.
So that’s it! Uesugi suddenly understood why Kaga had been dressing like a slob.
“You said the top was stolen?”
“On the evening of June tenth. Just before the murder.”
“Procuring the murder weapon from a shop along the way to the crime scene? Would anyone actually do that?”
“God knows. Takes all sorts to make a world.”
“The string matches the strangulation marks, but we can’t definitively prove that that particular string was used in the murder.”
“I know. What we can be sure of is that Yosaku Kishida disposed of the string from that top.”
Uesugi frowned. He didn’t understand what Kaga was getting at.
“Kishida gave his grandson a spinning top and a length of string. The string, though, wasn’t the original string that came with the top. It was braided, rather than twisted string. Kishida must have picked up a second length of string somewhere else and put it together with the original top.”
“You think he threw away the original twisted string after the murder?”