“My brother lost everything because of what happened to Yuna. He lived a lonely life for years and years, all by himself in this big house. When he got to sixty, he retired from managing the firm and moved into an apartment complex for seniors. He couldn’t bear to sell off this piece of land — it’s been in our family for generations — so he asked me and my husband to live here. That’s why we moved in. We had always lived in a rented apartment before; my husband prefers that. Our only child, a boy, had just left home and we had been talking about moving out of Tokyo and out into the country, anyway. My husband passed away two years ago, so I’m alone here now. It makes me realize just how lonely my poor brother must have been, though. Of course, he suffered in ways I can’t even imagine.”
“Your brother... did you ever talk to him about the case?”
“We discussed it right after the not-guilty verdict came out. We were thinking about gathering signatures for a petition and demanding a retrial. It never happened. Our supporters gradually drifted away. My brother had his company to run and I started getting the sense that he didn’t want me bringing it up. He’d certainly never broach the subject himself.”
“How about when he was dying?”
“I don’t know.” Sachie Sawauchi tilted her head to one side. “He must have looked back over his life, I suppose. My guess is that he thought about Yuna’s death every day. He never spoke about it in front of us, though. He probably thought it would only make us even more unhappy.”
Listening to her, Kusanagi felt a weight in his belly if he had ingested a lump of lead. He couldn’t imagine how Seiji Motohashi must have felt. Not only had he lost his whole family but no one had been punished and the truth never brought to light.
“I’m just going to ask you this straight.” Kusanagi looked the old woman in the eye. “Did your brother ever think of taking the law into his own hands?”
Sachie Sawauchi’s eyes opened wide behind her spectacles. The question had taken her by surprise. She blinked, then said, “You mean avenge Yuna by killing that Hasunuma fellow?”
“Yes.”
Sachie Sawauchi cocked her head and looked slantwise down at the floor. After a moment or two, she lifted her face and looked at Kusanagi. “‘I’d like to kill the guy’ — I certainly heard him say that on a number of occasions. I don’t think he actually meant to do it. You only say you want to kill someone when you know you can’t really do it.”
“That makes sense. Can you think of someone who’s the opposite? Someone who wouldn’t say anything but might actually do something?”
“Someone who would actually take revenge? Oh no, I really don’t know.” Sachie Sawauchi tilted her head even farther to one side, then began shaking it from side to side. “I can’t think of anybody, no. People were angry, but why would anyone who wasn’t directly involved go so far?”
She’s got a point, thought Kusanagi. No one would avenge the death of someone else’s child.
“May I?” Utsumi piped up from where she was sitting on the sofa next to Kusanagi. Apparently, she was asking permission to ask a question. He grunted his agreement.
Utsumi turned to Sachie Sawauchi.
“Have you had any reason to think about the Yuna case recently? Has somebody said something to you about it? Asked you something about it?”
Sachie Sawauchi was waving her hand from side to side in a deprecating gesture before Utsumi had even got to the end of her question.
“As I told you, yesterday one of my neighbors told me that Hasunuma was dead. That brought back all sorts of horrible old memories. That aside, no, no one’s mentioned it to me for years.”
“Do you ever talk about it with your relatives?”
“It happened twenty years ago. There aren’t that many people around who still remember those days. My son was still very young then. He doesn’t even remember his cousin Yuna.”
“Is there anyone who was particularly fond of Yuna who is still alive?”
“I think that would be me,” said Sachie Sawauchi, breaking into a grin. “I lived here with the family until Yuna was two. As far as my brother’s wife Yumiko was concerned, I was the annoying sister-in-law who was taking far too long to get married! I’m sorry, I really can’t think of anyone else. After all, her father and mother are both dead.”
“Of course,” Utsumi said, then she nodded at Kusanagi.
“What about Yumiko’s family?” Kusanagi asked. “They must have adored Yuna.”
“No.” Sachie Sawauchi was waving her hand again. “Yumiko didn’t have any family.”
His phone vibrated inside his jacket. He pulled out the cell and saw that it was Kishitani. “Excuse me,” he said, turning away from Sachie Sawauchi to take the call. “Yes, what is it?”
“I looked through all the old case files. I couldn’t find anyone who looks as though they could be involved in our current case,” Kishitani said.
“Okay. Well, thank the guys at the Adachi Police Station and get back to Kikuno,” said Kusanagi and hung up. He’d ordered Kishitani to go and review the documentation of the Yuna Motohashi case at the Adachi Police Station. It had apparently been another dead end.
“Would you like another cup of tea?” Sachie Sawauchi gestured toward Kusanagi’s teacup with her open hand. His cup was empty, though he had no recollection of drinking anything.
“Thank you, I’m fine. Could you tell me what you did with your brother Seiji’s effects?”
“I threw most of them away. There are a few things I didn’t know what to do with. They’re still stored here.”
“Could we see them?”
“Certainly, but I’ll need your help. They’re a bit on the heavy side.”
“Of course,” Utsumi said, springing to her feet.
The cardboard box the two detectives carried back into the living room was jam-packed with old photo albums and letters. They pulled on latex gloves, determined to look through everything.
Kusanagi dealt with the photo albums. Whenever he came across a photograph of Yuna with another person, he would ask Sachie Sawauchi who the other person was. The Motohashis had obviously been over the moon when their daughter was born. There were reams and reams of pictures of her.
Once Yuna started going to school, there were more and more people Sachie Sawauchi didn’t know in the photographs. Some of them were Yuna’s friends, some were the friends’ parents, and others looked like teachers. Kusanagi found it hard to believe that any of Yuna’s classmates — no matter how close they had been as children — would wait twenty years to plot revenge after a twenty-year interval. Anyone prepared to do something like that would have to be more intimately connected to her.
It took Kusanagi almost two hours to go through all the photographs. Utsumi had finished reviewing all the letters. Neither of them found any leads.
Sachie Sawauchi, who had popped out of the room, reappeared, this time with coffee.
“Oh, that’s too kind. Here we are, already taking up so much of your precious time.” Kusanagi felt embarrassed.
“Please, don’t worry about it. Looking through all those old photos for the first time in years was fun,” she said, before adding, “though it had its painful side.”
“What about this album?” Utsumi picked up an old photo album with an expensive-looking leather cover that lay in the bottom of the cardboard box.
“Mrs. Sawauchi says that all the pictures in it are from before Yuna was born,” answered Kusanagi.
“Oh, yes?” said Utsumi. She flipped the album over and started leafing through it backward. She apparently wanted to see the pictures with the chronology reversed.