“Who knows?” said Naho, picking up her teacup. “I didn’t get the impression that he was very fired up about the case. And then, him talking so openly about the investigation to me — that doesn’t seem very professional.”
“You were the one who asked him.”
“Well, asking’s one thing, and telling’s another. I don’t think it’s quite normal, eh, Dad?” Naho looked at her father for his support.
“What?... Oh, yes, I guess not.”
Fumitaka got to his feet.
“Time for me to have my bath. That was a very nice dinner.”
Naho cocked her head. She was puzzled. Why was her father so distracted?
5
In the late afternoon, Fumitaka went out front and closed the awning. He did this every day. It was cooler than it had been at lunchtime, but the sun was getting stronger by the day. He was thinking that before the summer got under way in earnest, he should change the shelf displays. Some rice crackers and snacks went better with beer than others.
A shadow floating across the sidewalk alerted him that there someone was behind him. He was about to greet the person as a customer, when he recognized him. It was someone who was on his mind.
“Another scorcher today, eh?” Kaga spoke first.
“Tell me about it. If it’s my daughter you want, she’s not back yet.”
Kaga waved away the idea.
“It’s you I want to talk to. Have you got a few minutes to spare?”
Startled, Fumitaka drew in his breath. He looked at Kaga. Kaga stared right back at him until Fumitaka had to look away.
“All right. Well, come on in, then,” Fumitaka said, pushing the glass door.
“Where’s your mother today?”
“She’s here. Do you want me to call her?”
“No, if she’s here, we’ll need to go and talk somewhere else,” Kaga said.
Although the detective was considerably younger than he was, Fumitaka still found him intimidating. The man definitely hadn’t come just to double-check his facts this time.
Fumitaka sighed and nodded.
The two men went into the store. “Hey, Mom,” Fumitaka yelled in the direction of the back room. “Are you awake?”
“Why, what’s up?” came Satoko’s voice from the living room.
“I have to go out for a minute. Will you mind the store?”
“Off to play pachinko again, are you? You’re a lost cause.” As Satoko shuffled into her sandals, she spotted Kaga behind her son. “Oh, if it isn’t our local debonair detective. Is Mr. Takura still a suspect?”
“We’re still looking into him.”
“Well, I’m relying on you. He’s a good man. Not murderer material. I guarantee that personally.”
“Very good. I heard that you got out of the hospital quite recently. How are you feeling?”
“Fit as a fiddle from the minute I got home, thank you very much. Going into the hospital in the first place was probably a mistake.” Satoko looked at Fumitaka. “Are you going to have a talk with Detective Kaga? You be sure to tell him what a good fellow Mr. Takura is.”
“Yeah, yeah, Mom. I know.” Fumitaka turned to Kaga. “Shall we get going?”
“Take good care of yourself,” Kaga said to Satoko.
“It’s great to see your mother looking so well,” Kaga said as they emerged from the shop.
“She can still talk the hind legs off a donkey.”
They walked over to the café on the far side of the street. Fumitaka remembered what Naho had told them about her conversation with Kaga there the night before. Both men ordered iced coffee. When Fumitaka pulled out a pack of cigarettes, Kaga pushed the ashtray across.
“I had a chat with your daughter here yesterday.”
“I know.”
“So she told you? No surprise, I suppose. Anyway, that should simplify things.”
“She was telling us that you’d noticed something quite funny, if funny’s the right word for it. That business about the difference in the way the men walking in the street are dressed — I’d not noticed it, either.”
“I notice details. That’s the sort of person I am. I couldn’t stop thinking about how Mr. Takura was dressed. What was he doing with his suit jacket on after pounding the streets all day?”
Their iced coffees arrived. Fumitaka lit a cigarette.
“Have you figured that out yet?”
“Pretty much, yes.”
“Yes?”
“You don’t sound surprised. Aren’t you interested?”
“It’s not that.”
“Well, perhaps what I’ve got to say isn’t something all that interesting to you. After all, I’ll only be telling you something you already know, Mr. Kamikawa.”
The glass of coffee Fumitaka was carrying to his lips stopped in midair. “What do you mean?”
“Why did Mr. Takura have his jacket on when he went to your store? The answer’s simple enough. It’s because he didn’t drop in at your place after having been outside all day. No, before going to your place, he swung by his office, finished off all his work, and only then did he go to see your mother and daughter. That’s why he wasn’t hot and bothered and was quite comfortable keeping his jacket on.”
Fumitaka was looking resolutely at the floor.
“Takura left Kodenmacho at five thirty and got back to his office before six,” continued the detective. “He gave all the documents related to Satoko Kamikawa’s hospitalization claim to a female colleague to process, then put on his jacket and headed back out. He dropped in at your place, then went to meet his friend for a drink and headed home for the day. In this account of things, his movements tally perfectly with all the different testimony we have. There are no missing thirty minutes. We can suppose that the missing half hour was taken up getting from his office to your place and then chatting with your mother, Satoko Kamikawa, and your daughter, Naho Kamikawa. However, this leaves us with just one discrepancy to explain: Mr. Takura needed to have a medical certificate in order to submit your mother’s insurance claim. That means he couldn’t have handed the paperwork over for processing unless he’d visited your family before returning to the head office. And that brings us to a second question: if this really is what Takura did that afternoon, why didn’t he just come out and tell us?”
Fumitaka looked up to find the detective staring right at him.
“You... you know everything, then,” said Fumitaka.
Kaga broke into a smile.
“I went to Shin-Ohashi Hospital and spoke to the doctor in charge. He told me everything, except for the nature of your mother’s illness, that is.”
Fumitaka sighed, took a sip of his iced coffee, and gave a slight shake of the head.
“It looks like the Nihonbashi Precinct has got a very smart new detective...”
“The doctor admitted to issuing two different medical certificates, one listing your mother’s actual condition, the other listing a false one. Why should he do that? According to him, it’s because you asked him to.”
“You’re right. I made him do it. It was the only solution I could come up with. My mom’s so pigheaded that she insisted on handling the insurance claim herself. You’ve got to have a medical certificate to submit a claim, but I was determined not to let my mom see what was on the certificate. I was in a jam.”
“So you asked the doctor to give your mother a fake certificate when she went to the hospital to collect it.”
Fumitaka nodded.
“At first the doctor told me that it was against the rules and he couldn’t do it. But he’s a nice guy, so he agreed to make an exception. The only condition was that I mustn’t show the fake one to anyone other than my mom. After my mom was safely back home, I went to the hospital myself to pick up the real medical certificate.”