Lowering the hand with the three raised fingers, Yukawa picked up his teacup, took a sip of tea, and looked at Rumi.
“Well? You’re not going to tell me that you can’t answer my third question, either, are you?”
Rumi felt something give way inside her. It was as if some key part of a foundation had given way. With that having crumbled, the whole superstructure was destined to come crashing down. Yukawa had seen through everything.
“How could Hasunuma be so confident that he would never be charged? Deduction has led me to the only possible answer: It’s because he didn’t kill Saori. More than that, Hasunuma knew who had killed her. Knowing that meant he had the option to make that information public, if he ever found himself well and truly cornered. That’s why he was able to remain silent the whole time.”
Rumi could feel the blood draining from her cheeks. Her whole body went limp. It was a struggle to remain upright in her chair.
“May I continue?” Yukawa asked, sounding rather anxious.
“Yes, go ahead.” Rumi could barely form the words. Her heart was racing, and she was out of breath.
“The question now becomes why Hasunuma did what he did,” Yukawa went on. “I don’t just mean him knowing who really killed Saori and keeping quiet about it. He did something else that is very hard to explain before that. He concealed Saori’s body in a trash house in Shizuoka prefecture. Taken together, these actions make him an accomplice to the actual killer — and a very loyal one at that. But who would Hasunuma be so loyal to?” Yukawa slowly shook his head. “So far, the investigation has failed to find any such person. If it wasn’t loyalty, then what was Hasunuma’s motivation? Only one thing comes to mind: money. He helped the actual killer for the sake of money.”
“No, no, you’re wrong,” Rumi spluttered. “There’s no way you can call anything he did ‘help.’”
“I know what you’re trying to say,” Yukawa said. He restrained Rumi by raising his right hand.
“The actual killer didn’t ask Hasunuma for his help. My theory is that Hasunuma stepped in without being asked. What do I mean by that? I mean that he took Saori’s body and concealed it in the trash house after the actual killer had left the crime scene. Saori’s disappearance caused a lot of pain to a lot of people, but it was no less disturbing to the killer. They had no idea what had happened to the body. Hasunuma subsequently left Kikuno. He kept a watchful eye on the progress of the police investigation to make sure that he wasn’t a suspect. Then he kept a low profile and just waited. For three years — until the statute of limitations for the crime of illegal disposal of a dead body was up.”
Rumi was unable to speak. She needed all her energy simply to breathe. She wanted to run away but her body seemed to be frozen in place.
“Only one person in the whole world knew that the young girl’s corpse was hidden in an eyesore trash house in rural Shizuoka, along with the dead body of the house’s former occupant, an old woman. That person was Hasunuma. The actual killer had no idea. Maybe as time passes, the killer started to forget about Saori—” Having got that far, Yukawa paused and shook his head. “No, that’s not what happened, is it? Let me rephrase that. Her memory never stopped weighing on them.”
You’re right about that, Rumi thought to herself. She hadn’t forgotten about Saori once, even for a minute.
“Once three years had passed, Hasunuma swung into action. The first thing he did was to expose the fact that Saori Namiki had been murdered. How did he do that? You know how. Think of my first question: Why did the trash house burn down? Because Hasunuma deliberately set it on fire. That’s the only possible answer.”
Yukawa’s soft voice resonated deep inside Rumi’s head. She experienced a moment of revelation. So that’s what happened! She had never given it a moment’s thought before now.
“If Hasunuma had killed Saori, would he ever have done anything that resulted in her body being found? By that logic, he wasn’t the arsonist if he was the killer. The Shizuoka Prefectural Police never moved beyond that interpretation of events. However, if instead you posit that Hasunuma set the fire specifically so that the body would be found, you get an answer to the second question: Why did he hang on to the clothing that was stained with Saori’s blood? That, too, was something that he did intentionally. What I am trying to say is that Hasunuma arranged everything in order to be arrested. What does that tell us? Personally, I see the whole series of actions he took as a message to the real killer, that message being: ‘I know what really happened to Saori.’ But if he did know, then why didn’t he come out and say so? Presumably, because he knew that his unusual way of behaving would pile enormous psychological pressure on the actual killer. He was as cunning as he was bold, but he wouldn’t have acted as he did unless he knew that he couldn’t be charged for the crime. He had an ace up his sleeve: He knew the real killer’s identity. Plus, he was emboldened by his successful use of the tactic of silence two decades ago.”
Every word Yukawa uttered in his matter-of-fact way was like an individual piece in a jigsaw puzzle. One after another, he was slotting the pieces into place and they all fit perfectly. Even the gaps, which Rumi herself had never fully understood, were now being filled in.
“I don’t think that Hasunuma was expected to be released under deferment of dispensation. I think he was ready to spend two years in custody until the courts handed him another not-guilty verdict. He wouldn’t have minded. When he got out, he could have demanded compensation, like he did the last time. That could well have been part of his motivation for getting himself arrested. When, rather to his own surprise, he was released, Hasunuma decided to accelerate his plan. How, I am not quite sure, but he contacted the real killer to propose a deal, demanding money in return for not revealing the truth. Deal’s the wrong word; it was more like blackmail.”
Yukawa paused, took a sip of his tea, then returned his cup on its saucer. His cup was empty.
Would you like another? The phrase drifted across Rumi’s mind, but she couldn’t articulate it.
“I don’t know how or why the real killer killed Saori. I imagine that the whole thing was a sudden and unlucky accident, almost as much for the killer as for the victim. If the killer had contacted the police at the time, the problem could have been sorted out without ballooning to its current dimensions. There must, I suppose, have been a reason why the killer couldn’t do that. That would also explain why the killer couldn’t hold out against Hasunuma’s blackmail efforts. It was pretty clear that his demands for money were never going to be a one-off. The awareness that he was going to be hounding them forever provoked the most profound feelings of despair in the killer. It’s heart-wrenching just to imagine their psychological state.”
At some point, Yukawa’s manner had changed. He had gone from pontificating like an academic in a lecture theater to speaking directly to Rumi in a gentler and kindlier tone.