Aghast, Natsumi listened to Yukawa’s fluent little speech. Had all this been happening on the day of the parade without her knowledge?
“That’s a complete and utter fairy tale. I don’t know what else to say,” Yutaro replied, his voice a lifeless monotone. “And even if it were true, I’d never have agreed to it.”
“I think you’re telling me the truth. Which means that, as I suspected, Mr. Tojima acted of his own volition and without your permission. When the police and the prosecutor have a clearer idea of how the murder was committed, they’ll have to assemble a narrative of the crime in which has Shusaku Tojima as the mastermind and you having nothing to do with it. However, unnatural that particular version of events may feel, that’s what they’ll have to do. Because that’s the way trials work. Will you be able to live with that, Mr. Namiki?”
Yutaro lowered his eyes. Machiko anxiously scrutinized his profile.
“Personally, I think that an accident occurred,” Yukawa said. “On the day of the parade, a customer became sick. That threw everything out of whack. Not just for you but for Tojima and his associates, too. The police suspected that the whole indigestion episode might be an exercise in alibi creation, but it wasn’t. After all, if you needed an alibi, you could have easily gotten your wife here to pretend to be sick and taken her to the hospital. What happened with the customer really was something that came out of left field. Someone who’d eaten at your restaurant was feeling unwell. You couldn’t just ignore the woman. Taking what must have been a very difficult decision, you drove her to the hospital. But what would have happened if that accident hadn’t occurred? What role were you assigned in the original plan?”
Yukawa, who had delivered this speech with great energy, paused and sighed.
“I believe that you will regret it for the rest of your life if you have to sit by and watch Tojima and his associates being punished while that particular question remains unanswered. I believe you will end up blaming yourself for what happens to them. That’s what I came here to say.”
“Is it true, Dad?” Natsumi broke in. “What’s going on, Mom? Tell me.”
“Keep your mouth shut,” Yutaro bellowed.
“I’m not going to—”
Yutaro gave the table a resounding smack before Natsumi could finish.
The silence lasted for a few seconds. Yutaro cleared his throat and looked at Yukawa.
“I appreciate your tact, Professor. What you say is right. Speaking as one man to another, you’re right. Assuming your theory is correct, of course.”
“But there’s nothing you want to say?”
“I’m sorry,” Yutaro said gloomily. “Now is not the right time for me to say anything. The others are all sticking to their guns and staying silent. How could I face them, if I talked?”
“Is that how you feel?” Yukawa broke into a smile. “Then there’s nothing I can do. I’ll stop interfering.”
Yutaro bowed his head in silence.
“I’ll be on my way,” Yukawa said. As he got to his feet, his phone started buzzing in his inside jacket pocket. He pulled it out and looked at the display. “Excuse me a second,” he said, turning away. Lifting the phone to his ear, he opened the sliding door and went out into the street.
Natsumi looked at her parents. Yutaro got up and made for the kitchen in a bid to avoid his daughter’s gaze. Machiko stared broodily down at the floor.
“Mom—” Natsumi began. The sliding door opened, cutting her off. Yukawa stepped back inside, his face slightly flushed.
“There’s been an important development. I may be divulging more of the investigation’s secrets, but this is something I feel I absolutely I must tell you.”
Yutaro came out of the kitchen. “Why? What’s happened?”
“Naoki Niikura has confessed. He’s saying that he was responsible for the death of Kanichi Hasunuma.”
41
Chief Inspector Kusanagi and Eiji Masumura were once again facing each other in the interview room. When Kusanagi told Masumura that Niikura had confessed, the old man’s shoulders slumped and he sighed loudly.
“He confessed, did he? Well, if he’s admitted it, then that’s that, I guess. That guy was probably in the tightest corner of all of us.”
“That guy?” Kusanagi repeated. The phrase struck him as odd.
“Yeah, I’ve never met him. This Niikura guy. I’d never even heard his name before today.”
Kusanagi exchanged a glance with Utsumi, who was sitting beside him taking notes on her laptop, then turned his attention back to Masumura.
“What do you mean? I need the full story.”
Masumura groaned feebly. “Where should I start?”
“How about twenty-three years ago — with the Yuna Motohashi case?”
“No,” said Masumura, tilting his head to one side. “I’ll need to go further back than that for you to really understand things.”
“Further back is fine.”
“This’ll be a long story. Very long.”
“That’s not a problem,” Kusanagi said. He spread his arms in a gesture of invitation. “Please. Go ahead.”
Masumura resettled himself in his chair and cleared his throat.
He started to talk.
And his story really was a long story.
Masumura’s main concern after his arrest for manslaughter was the negative impact it was likely to have on Yumiko’s future.
Masumura adored his little stepsister, who was nine years younger than him. It was his determination to save her from the sort of hardships he had experienced that inspired him to work so hard, to send her money, and to then keep looking after every aspect of her life after their mother’s sudden death, including arranging for her to attend an all-girls boarding school.
Masumura was keen for Yumiko to go to university. She had excellent grades. But after finishing high school, Yumiko, who was adamant that her brother had already done more than enough for her, got a job at a car manufacturer. She worked in a factory in Chiba and lived in an employee dormitory.
Convinced that he could at last put a difficult period of his life behind him, Masumura moved into a new apartment. The manslaughter incident occurred almost immediately after the move. When Yumiko came to visit him in the detention center, Masumura told her to stop visiting him.
“We should break off all contact. We’re lucky. We’ve got different names. Even if people check your family register, they won’t find out that we’re related.”
“Do you honestly think I could do that?” Yumiko protested through her tears.
She appeared as a character witness at his trial. Masumura couldn’t hold back the tears when he listened to her heartfelt testimony about how much she owed her big brother and what a compassionate person he was.
She wrote to him often while he was serving his sentence. Her letters were a source of both comfort and concern to Masumura. He couldn’t stop worrying that his life might have a baneful influence on her future.
A little before he was due to be released, a letter came from Yumiko in which she revealed that she had a new boyfriend. The man in question worked at the same firm as her and was on the management fast track. He was the son of the head of one of the company’s subsidiaries and had been sent to Yumiko’s factory for training.
Masumura lost no time in replying. She must never tell her boyfriend that she had a brother who’d been in jail and they should stop writing to each other immediately, he told her.