“You mean you’ve all got alibis?” blurted out Tomoya.
“Well, my parents do, at least. They were in the restaurant until the end of lunch service and then they went to the hospital.”
“To the hospital?”
“That’s right. One of the customers got sick while she was here—”
Natsumi told Tomoya about the woman and the oysters.
“Wow. I didn’t know.”
“When you think about it, it was a stroke of good luck. Normally, once they stop serving lunch, my parents are here by themselves until we reopen for dinner. If any of us has a problem with their alibi, it’s me, because I was here minding the fort alone.”
“I don’t think anyone would seriously suspect you.”
“Anyway, that’s about all I’ve got to report. I’ve no idea what’s going to happen next.”
“No, I know. As the boss said, all we can do is sit tight and wait.”
“I’ll let you know if I hear anything. Thanks for your concern.”
“It bothers me, too, you know...” Tomoya was mumbling and Natsumi couldn’t make out what he was saying.
“What?”
“I’m just saying that, I can’t stop thinking about who killed Hasunuma, if he was murdered.”
Natsumi didn’t know how to respond. She felt vaguely uncomfortable.
“As far as I know, the police don’t yet know if he was killed or just died suddenly.”
“Hmm.” Tomoya grunted ambiguously. “Still, to keel over and die suddenly like that isn’t exactly normal, is it?”
Natsumi could only respond with a noncommittal grunt of her own.
“No point in agonizing about it, I guess. Good night.”
“Good night.”
Natsumi pressed the button to end the call and plugged her phone into the charger. She was just about to change into her pajamas, when she remembered something.
If he was murdered, Tomoya had said. Who killed Hasunuma, if he was murdered?
Did that mean he thought someone in her family had murdered him?
Well, I think we all know it’s not such an unreasonable idea, is it?
Natsumi sighed to herself.
17
Kusanagi woke up, got out of bed, and went to brush his teeth. Kusanagi looked at his face in the mirror. No two ways about it. You’re getting older. The sagginess of his face couldn’t all be blamed on the stark white lighting.
He took a shower to clear his head and emerged from the bathroom rubbing his wet hair with a towel.
The hotel room was small and smelled, faintly, of disinfectant. The only places you could relax were the bed or a small chair and you had to twist your body into an acrobatic pose to open the closet door. Kusanagi suspected that a cabin on the Orient Express, the train from Agatha Christie’s famous novel, would probably be more comfortable than his room. Nonetheless, the hotel had been full on Saturday night because of all the people in Kikuno for the parade.
Kusanagi had opted to spend the night in Kikuno to be closer to the precinct as information came in. Detective Sergeant Utsumi had wanted to stay, too, but he persuaded her to go home instead. She’d be there soon enough if they were brought in officially.
Eiji Masumura was being put up at the same hotel. While his place was potentially a crime scene, Masumura would be living in the hotel. Maybe he was happy that he got to stay at a business hotel, albeit a modest one, at the police’s expense. In their interview, Kusanagi didn’t get the impression that Masumura was unduly upset by Hasunuma’s death. That probably showed how close the two men had — or hadn’t — been.
Kusanagi tugged his notebook out of his jacket pocket, sat down on the bed, and started working through what Masumura had told him the night before.
He had first met Hasunuma around four years ago, when Masumura started working at the recycling plant where he was still employed. They had ended up becoming friends.
“He approached me first. Someone had told him I’d been in prison, and he started pestering me, asking me what I’d done.”
Hasunuma vanished about a year later. It wasn’t long, though, that Hasunuma got back in touch. That’s when he started calling Masumura to see if the police had shown up.
“I asked him if he’d done something wrong, but he would just hem and haw. He never gave me a straight answer. Then, about a year ago, he stopped calling completely.”
This wasn’t the first time Kusanagi had heard this story. Inspector Kishitani had told him the same thing.
Around two weeks ago, Hasunuma got back in touch. Hasunuma explained that he was being forced to vacate his present apartment and asked if could he stay with Masumura until he found a new place.
“He offered to pay half the rent, so it wasn’t a bad deal for me. ‘You don’t mind the room being so tiny?’ I asked and he said, ‘No,’ all he needed was a place to crash. Two men living together has its downsides, but it’s always good to have a drinking buddy close by.”
Inspector Muto had told Kusanagi about Hasunuma’s first night as Masumura’s lodger. According to the cop who’d been on surveillance duty that night, the two of them had been boozing it up until the small hours.
Kusanagi asked how Hasunuma spent his time.
“Search me.” Masumura cocked his head to one side. “He would drink with me in the evenings, but I’ve no idea what he got up to in the daytime. Probably just hung around here or went out and played pachinko — you know, stuff like that.”
Had Hasunuma been trying to find a new job? Once again, a rather bored-sounding “Search me” was all the response he got. Did Hasunuma ever have any visitors? “How should I know?” Masumura replied.
Then it was time for the crucial questions. Kusanagi asked Masumura to run through his movements for the day. “I’ve already gone through this hundreds of times at the police station,” Masumura said. He looked rather grumpy as he gave his explanation.
“I was at home all morning, then I went out a bit after midday to get a bite to eat. But that thing was on — you know what I’m talking about — that parade thing. Because of the parade, all the restaurants were jam-packed so I walked over to the next ward. I signed up for this internet café there recently. It’s nine hundred yen for three hours, with free manga to read and free showers, too. I picked up a bento-box lunch at the convenience store and then I went there to read manga and watch TV. I left at five.”
Masumura got home around five thirty. Finding the door to the back room open, he had peered in and saw Hasunuma lying on his futon. Sleeping like a baby, he initially thought, but then, when he saw how motionless he was, he put his hand over his mouth and found that he wasn’t breathing. At that point, he got scared and called the emergency number.
When Masumura left the apartment, Hasunuma had been watching television. Masumura had asked him if he wanted to go out to lunch with him, but Hasunuma had said he wasn’t hungry yet.
No, said Masumura, he didn’t think he’d locked the front door behind him.
Kusanagi snapped his notebook shut. He didn’t think that Masumura was lying. What he’d said about going to the internet café was probably true. Anyway, places like that always had CCTV. If Masumura was lying, it wouldn’t take long to find out.
Kusanagi picked up his phone. He was about to send a text to Inspector Muto when he noticed that he’d gotten one. It was from an unlikely sender: Manabu Yukawa.
He was even more surprised when he read the text. I want to talk to you about Hasunuma’s death. Get in touch when you have time, it said. The text had been sent a bit just after seven that morning, or a little more than an hour ago.