“Yumiko, you said her name was? Yuna’s mother was beautiful.”
“She was young and bursting with energy,” said Sachie Sawauchi. “The whole house was so bright and cheerful after she became part of the family. Our mother was still alive back then. You hear a lot about young wives always being at daggers drawn with their mothers-in-law, but there was none of that here. Yumiko was a great daughter-in-law and a fabulous mother for Yuna, too... That’s why she was so hard on herself when Yuna went missing. It was painful to see. She killed herself by jumping off a building not far from here. My brother said she’d been behaving a bit strangely.”
Kusanagi felt even more gloomy. He found himself thinking about “cycles of misfortune.”
He heard a little gasp of appreciation. Peering across at the album that Utsumi was examining, Kusanagi saw a picture of Yumiko in her wedding dress and Seiji Motohashi in his tuxedo. They were both beaming with happiness.
“Seiji was always going to take over running the family firm from our father, but as a young man he spent a couple of years working for this big manufacturer. That was when he met Yumiko. My brother was thirty-three when they got married. Yumiko must have been twenty-three or twenty-four.”
Kusanagi looked at the wedding photograph again. Yumiko was all alone in the world with no family at the time...
“When did Yumiko lose her parents?”
“Her father died in an accident when she was little more than a baby. As for her mother, she died just after Yumiko started high school.”
“Was she sent to an orphanage?”
“She never mentioned anything like that. She said something about boarding school.”
“With both her parents dead, who was her legal guardian?”
Sachie Sawauchi looked perplexed.
“I don’t know much about it. I didn’t want to pry.”
“I can understand that...”
Utsumi, who was now sitting next to Sachie Sawauchi, was leafing through the album. As she went further back into the past, the pictures became all of Seiji Motohashi by himself, and there were none of Yumiko. By the time she had gone from his university days all the way to his primary school years, the pictures were all in black and white.
Kusanagi checked the inside of the cardboard box. There were no more albums in it.
“Yumiko didn’t bring along any photographs of her own when she married your brother?” he asked Sachie Sawauchi.
“Apparently not. I was struck by that, when I was tidying her things...”
Kusanagi turned his attention back to the album. Utsumi was flicking through the pages faster now. The picture on the frontispiece was of a baby: presumably, the infant Seiji Motohashi.
“That’s odd,” Kusanagi muttered. “Yumiko’s mother only passed away when her daughter was already at high school. It’s hard to believe she never took any pictures of her daughter at all. If there were any family photos, she would have brought them with her here, when she got married. So, where have those photos gotten to? Do you think Seiji threw them out?”
“Strikes me as unlikely,” said Utsumi.
“Me, too.”
Kusanagi pondered for a moment. Yuna Motohashi wasn’t the only victim in the crime from twenty-three years ago. Yumiko Motohashi was a victim, too. The idea that someone would want to avenge her was by no means unthinkable. Could that be the missing piece of the puzzle Yukawa had mentioned?
“Detective Utsumi,” he called peremptorily. “I want you to check the family register for Yumiko Motohashi— No, check for Yumiko Fujiwara, her maiden name. Draw up a comprehensive list of her immediate family and her relatives.”
“Yes, sir,” Utsumi promptly replied.
31
The man sitting opposite him in the interview room looked like a completely different person compared to the last time they met. There was nothing ingratiating in his attitude, and his face was as expressionless as a mask. He’s ready for the worst, Kusanagi thought. He’s probably just starting to figure out why he’s been asked to come in for questioning. I mustn’t make any mistakes.
“What’s your name?”
The man only smiled faintly. “You know my name.”
“I need you to state your name.”
The man’s face went blank again. “My name is Eiji Masumura.”
“And what about the name of your father?”
At the word father, Masumura caught his breath. Then he said, “I don’t have a father.”
“I don’t think so.” Kusanagi looked down at a sheet of paper he had in his hand, then looked back at Masumura’s expressionless face. “Your parents were properly married. You should know your own father’s name.”
“It was Isamu. Or was it Osamu? I don’t remember much about my old man. He walked out on us when I was a kid.”
“His name was Isamu Okano. Your parents got divorced when you were six.”
Masumura snorted. “Why bother asking, if you know already?”
“I told you. Because I want to hear you say it. What was your mother’s name?”
“Kimiko.”
“And her family name?”
“Masumura.”
“That’s not true.” Kusanagi jabbed his finger at the sheet of paper he was holding. “Tell me the truth.”
“I’ve forgotten her name,” Masumura said morosely. “It’s all so long ago. Besides, it’s got nothing to do with anything.”
“Your mother’s family name was Fujiwara. She remarried when you were eight. Her second husband was a man called Yasuaki Fujiwara, but you were never enrolled in his family register.”
The name Fujiwara elicited a wan smile from Masumura.
“That’s it. Fujiwara. God, I’ve not heard that name for years.”
“You never used the Fujiwara name?”
“Not that I recall.”
“You can still use your father’s family name, even if you’re not officially adopted. I know you were born in Yamanashi prefecture. If I want to, I can easily find out which schools you went to and the name you used there.”
Masumura sank into a sullen silence. His body language seemed to say: Go on. Do your worst.
“Yasuaki Fujiwara died five years after he married your mother,” Kusanagi said, looking down at the piece of paper, before returning his gaze to Masumura. “That’s very tragic. Your mother — Kimiko Fujiwara — she must have been crushed by that.”
Masumura frowned and looked uncomfortable.
“What’s the point of digging up the past like this? If there’s something you want to say, Detective, just come out and say it.”
“You’re in a better position than anyone to know what we should really be talking about today. I don’t want to tell you anything; I want to ask you something — and please, don’t make me repeat myself. How did your widowed mother make a living?”
Averting his eyes, Masumura scratched one of his eyebrows with the tip of a finger.
“Don’t remember. A bit of this and a bit of that, I guess.”
“Like working in bars and nightclubs?”
“Yeah, that’s about right.”
“It must have been hard for her. I mean, she had two children. And her second child was only four years old when her husband died.”
Kusanagi noticed that Masumura’s cheek was twitching.
“Ms. Yumiko Fujiwara. Yumiko is your little sister’s name, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, something like that. Sure.”
“Your fathers were different. That’s why your baby sister was nine years younger than you. I bet she was adorable. I bet you doted on her.”
Masumura exhaled loudly and tilted his head to one side. “There was a big age gap between us. Like you say, we had different dads. My parents told me Yumiko was my baby sister, but I never really believed them. To me she felt more like, I don’t know, the neighbors’ kid. She wasn’t especially attached to me and I didn’t have much to do with her. I stayed away.”