Hiromi looked surprised to see her. As surprised as Utsumi was. Ayane gave her apprentice a consoling look; then she noticed Utsumi running over and her face hardened. Hiromi turned around and frowned.
‘Is there something else?’ she asked the detective as Ayane came out to join them.
‘I just saw Mrs Mashiba there and thought I should say hello,’ Utsumi said. ‘I’m sorry to have kept Hiromi at the station for so long.’ She bowed apologetically.
‘I take it Hiromi is no longer a suspect?’
‘She was very forthcoming with details. And I hear you provided very valuable information to Detective Kusanagi as well. Thank you.’
‘I hope it was helpful,’ Ayane said. ‘But I should think you have enough to go on without questioning her any further. Hiromi is innocent.’
‘I’m afraid that’s a decision for us to make, Mrs Mashiba. I hope we can count on your continued cooperation.’
‘I’ll be happy to cooperate, but please leave the poor girl out of this.’
Utsumi looked up, flustered by the harsh tone in the older woman’s voice. This was not the Mrs Mashiba she had seen first after her husband’s body was discovered.
Ayane turned to Hiromi. ‘You have to tell them the truth. You know that, right? If you keep things to yourself, no one will be able to protect you. You understand what I’m saying? It’s not good for you to be holed up in that interrogation room for so long.’
Utsumi noticed Hiromi’s face tense at those words. That hit a sore spot. Suddenly, a light went on in her head. She stared at the younger woman. ‘Wait, you’re not—’
‘You might as well come clean now,’ Ayane broke in. ‘It looks like the lady detective has figured it out anyway, and if even I know—’
‘Did … Mr Mashiba tell you?’ Hiromi asked.
‘Not a word. But I am a woman, and I’m not blind.’
The situation was now clear to all three, but Utsumi still had to hear it in words.
‘Ms Wakayama, are you pregnant?’
There was a pause, then Hiromi gave a slight nod. ‘Two months.’
At the edge of Utsumi’s vision, she saw Ayane twitch. She really is hearing this for the first time. I guess woman’s intuition does count for something.
A moment later Ayane turned to Utsumi with an implacable look on her face. ‘I hope you’re satisfied? Hiromi has to take care of herself. She can’t be hanging out at the Police Station for hours on end. You’re a woman. You understand.’
Utsumi had no choice but to nod. The list of required precautions detectives had to observe when interrogating a pregnant suspect was long and detailed.
‘I’ll let my superiors know. I’m sure they’ll be able to arrange something.’
‘I certainly hope so,’ Ayane said. She turned to Hiromi. ‘This is all for the best. If you had kept it hidden, you wouldn’t even be able to go to the hospital.’
Hiromi leaned towards Ayane, her lips trembling as though she were about to cry. Utsumi couldn’t clearly make out what she said, but it sounded like ‘Thank you.’
‘There’s another thing worth mentioning.’ Ayane squared off against the detective again. ‘The child’s father is Yoshitaka Mashiba. There’s no question of that. That was why he decided to separate from me and go to her. Now, let me ask you: what possible reason could she have to kill the father of her own child?’
Utsumi agreed, but she held her tongue. She wondered how the woman would take her lack of response.
Ayane shook her head. ‘It’s a complete mystery to me what you detectives are thinking. She has no motive. If anyone has a motive here, it’s me.’
Utsumi returned to headquarters to find Kusanagi and Mamiya still there, sipping vending-machine coffee, frowns on their faces.
‘What did Ms Wakayama have to say about the water she used when she made the coffee?’ Kusanagi asked Utsumi when he saw her. ‘You asked her, right?’
‘She said she used tap water.’
Utsumi related everything Hiromi had told her about that morning in the kitchen.
‘Which is why nothing happened when they drank their morning coffee together,’ Mamiya concluded. ‘The poison still could’ve been in one of the bottles in the fridge.’
‘We can’t know for sure she’s telling the truth,’ Kusanagi put in.
‘True, but as long as there aren’t any glaring contradictions in what she’s told us, we don’t have much to follow up on. We’ll just have to wait for Forensics to give us a little more dirt.’
‘Did you ask Forensics about the plastic bottles?’ Utsumi asked.
Kusanagi picked up a report from his desk and scanned it. ‘They found only one bottle of water in the Mashibas’ fridge. The seal on the cap was broken. The water inside was clean.’
‘Okay,’ Utsumi said. ‘What did you mean about waiting for more dirt?’
‘The situation isn’t quite so simple.’ Mamiya’s lips curled into a frown.
‘Oh?’
‘They found a one-litre bottle in the fridge,’ Kusanagi continued with a glance at the papers in his hand. ‘But there were nine hundred millilitres of water left in it – only one hundred millilitres were gone. That’s not enough to make even one cup of coffee, and there were enough grounds in the dripper for two.’
‘So there was another bottle of water in the fridge that’s gone missing?’ Utsumi asked.
Kusanagi nodded. ‘That’s what it looks like.’
‘And it might’ve been poisoned?’
‘Seems likely,’ Mamiya said. ‘Here’s the scenario: The killer opens the refrigerator. They find two bottles – one open, one sealed. If they put poison in the brand-new one, they’d have to break the seal, which might alert the victim. So they poison the one that’s already open. Now, when Mashiba goes to make his coffee, he takes the open bottle, uses it up, and tosses it. But that’s not enough water for two cups of coffee, so he opens the other bottle and adds a little to the dripper, then puts it back in the fridge.’
‘So we need to look in the rubbish – check the empties.’
‘Forensics did,’ Kusanagi said, shaking the report in his hand. ‘You’d think that’d be enough.’
‘It wasn’t?’
‘They went over every empty bottle they could find. No poison anywhere. But, they also couldn’t prove that any of the bottles weren’t used in the crime.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘What it means is we’re not really sure about anything yet,’ Mamiya said. ‘The trace amounts of water they got from the bottles didn’t give them enough to test properly. Which I guess makes sense; they were empties, after all. They’ve sent them all to a different lab for further testing.’
Utsumi nodded, finally understanding the frowns she’d seen when she walked into the room.
‘Not that finding poison in one of the bottles would change our case much at this point,’ Kusanagi said, replacing the papers on his desk.
‘It would widen the range of possible suspects,’ Utsumi said.
Kusanagi raised an eyebrow. ‘Were you listening to what the chief just said? If our killer put the poison in one of the plastic bottles, he or she would have put it in one that was already open. Which means there was an open bottle of water in the fridge that the victim didn’t drink from until he made that final cup of coffee. Which means that not a lot of time passed between the poisoning of the water and the victim’s death.’
‘I don’t see why the victim not drinking from the water should indicate that not much time had passed. There were other things for him to drink besides bottled water if he got thirsty.’