‘You’re asking me if another woman came to see him while his wife was away?’
‘That’s one possibility, yes.’
Ikai uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. ‘Let’s be frank, Detective. I understand that you have to keep some aspects of your investigation a secret – I’m not new to criminal inquiries. So I assure you, anything you say stays here. In return, I won’t hold anything back.’
Kusanagi raised an eybrow and remained silent.
Ikai leaned back on the sofa. ‘You’ve found out that Mashiba had a lover.’
The detective kept his expression neutral. ‘How much do you know?’ he asked.
‘He confessed to me about a month ago. Said he was thinking about making a “change in partners”. It occurred to me he might already have someone on the side.’ A gleam came into the man’s eyes. ‘Surely you have the resources to figure out something as obvious as that. Which you have, which is why you’re here talking to me. Isn’t it?’
Kusanagi chuckled. ‘Well, yes. Mr Mashiba was seeing someone.’
‘I won’t ask who it was, though one obvious candidate comes to mind.’
‘You noticed something?’
‘It was simply a process of elimination. Mashiba wasn’t the type to hit on girls at a bar. And he was a firm believer in keeping business and romance separate. Which would leave only one woman conveniently available.’ Ikai shook his head. ‘I still have trouble believing it. Better not tell my wife!’
‘We have it from the woman in question that she visited the Mashibas’ house on the weekend he died. What we need to determine is whether he was seeing anyone else.’
‘You mean you’re wondering if he took advantage of his wife’s absence to invite over multiple lovers? What a Casanova!’ Ikai slapped his knee. ‘But I’d have to say, I really doubt it. Mashiba might’ve been a chain-smoker, but he wasn’t the type to smoke two cigarettes at once.’
‘By which you mean?’
‘He might’ve gone from one woman to the next, but he wasn’t a two-timer. I’m willing to bet that once he started seeing this new woman, he even neglected his “nightly duties” with his wife. In fact, I recall him once saying that sex “for pleasure’s sake” could wait until later.’
‘So he was mainly interested in procreation?’
‘Dedicated to it, you might say,’ Ikai said, his lips curling upward into a smile.
Sounds like his dedication paid off, Kusanagi thought. ‘Would you say having children was his primary reason for getting married?’
Ikai stretched out expansively. ‘Not even primary. It was his only reason. He’s been talking about having kids – and the sooner the better – since his bachelor days. It was all about finding the perfect mother for his children. And he did his research, earning a bit of a reputation as a playboy in the process, too. But believe me, he wasn’t playing around. He just wanted to be sure he got the right one.’
‘What about finding the perfect wife? Doesn’t that come first?’
Ikai shrugged. ‘I’m pretty sure he wasn’t actually that interested in a wife at all. “I need a woman who can bear me children,” he told me, “not some household manager or expensive trophy”.’
Kusanagi’s eyes widened. ‘Trophy …? I can imagine how most women would react to that.’
‘No kidding. Actually, that was what he said to me when I praised Ayane’s devotion to him. She was the perfect wife, you know. Utterly dedicated to him. Whenever he was home, she would sit there on the living room sofa, doing her patchwork, ready to serve if he needed anything. Not that he ever appreciated her. To him, a woman who couldn’t bear children was no more useful than a trophy on the wall – just taking up space.’
‘Nice. I take it Mr Mashiba wasn’t much of a feminist. Why was he so obsessed with having kids?’
‘I can’t say. I mean, I wanted kids, too, but I wasn’t pathological about it. Of course, once you actually have a kid, you can’t think of much else.’ Ikai allowed himself the warm smile of a new father; then his mouth straightened and he continued. ‘I would guess it had something to do with his upbringing.’
‘Really? What about it?’
‘Did you know that Mashiba didn’t have any family growing up?’
‘I heard. But tell me what you know.’
Ikai nodded. ‘Well, Mashiba’s parents divorced when he was an infant. The father got custody, but he was a real workaholic who was hardly ever home. So Mashiba was mostly raised by his grandmother. Then, tragedy struck. His grandmother died, followed by his father a short time later. His father was still in his twenties, but he developed something called a subarachnoid haemorrhage, and was gone in the blink of an eye. Mashiba was left all by himself. He got a decent inheritance, and he started working in his teens, so he didn’t want for much – but he pretty much missed out on what you’d call familial love.’
‘And he wanted to make up for that with kids of his own?’
‘He probably wanted someone close to him by blood – true kin. After all,’ Ikai added coldly, ‘no matter how much you love your girlfriend or your wife, genetically she’s a total stranger.’
It occurred to Kusanagi that Ikai might share Mashiba’s outlook to some degree. Which made his take on the deceased’s psychology all the more convincing.
‘I heard the other day that you were there when Mr Mashiba met Ayane. At a party, was it?’
‘Yes. It was a social gathering for people from various different industries – a matchmaking shindig for successful professionals, really. I was already married, but Mashiba invited me along so I went with him. He said he was obliged to go because of a client. Of course, he ended up meeting his wife there. It just goes to show that you never know what life will bring. I suppose the timing was good, too.’
‘How’s that?’ Kusanagi asked.
A slight shadow passed over Ikai’s face. He said more than he intended, Kusagani thought.
‘He was seeing someone before he met Ayane,’ the lawyer said after a moment. ‘The party was right after they split up. I think having just hit a dead end gave him a sense of urgency. Maybe that’s what pushed him to actually seal the deal.’ He laid a finger to his lips. ‘Please don’t tell Ayane. Mashiba made me swear not to say anything.’
‘Do you know why he broke up with the other woman?’
Ikai shrugged. ‘We had an unspoken agreement not to get too involved in that sort of personal matter. If I had to guess, though, I’d say he probably found out the other girl didn’t want children, or couldn’t have them.’
‘But they weren’t married yet.’
‘At the risk of repeating myself, children were literally the most important thing to him. In fact, marriage after conception – the classic shotgun wedding – would probably have been preferable.’
So he switched to Ayane and then to Hiromi …
Kusanagi considered himself a good judge of people in all their varieties, but he was having trouble understanding Yoshitaka Mashiba. Ayane seemed like a loving woman, and certainly not a bad match for a man like Mashiba. Why couldn’t he have been happy just with her?
‘What sort of person was she, the girl Mashiba was seeing before?’
Ikai shrugged again. ‘I don’t really know. I never met her. Mashiba was a man who liked to keep secrets. He might have decided not to introduce her until he was sure he was going to marry her.’
‘Did the breakup go smoothly?’ Kusanagi asked.
‘Smoothly enough. Though we never talked about it at any length.’ Ikai looked at the detective quizzically. ‘You don’t think she might somehow be involved in his death?’