“Darling?” Rumi raised her head. Her eyes were bloodshot, their rims red and puffy. Her cheeks were damp with tears. “What should I do? Should I turn myself in?”
Although that was exactly what he thought she should do, Niikura couldn’t bring himself to say it. Besides, he could never accept his wife being arrested for Saori’s murder. Kanichi Hasunuma was the sole culprit. That was what everyone else believed. And that was why they had all banded together to give him the punishment he deserved.
That was when Niikura had an idea.
He knew that Yutaro Namiki was planning to extract the truth from Hasunuma. What if he stymied that plan and killed Hasunuma instead? Namiki and the others would all be surprised and shocked. That was unavoidable. Still, thought Niikura, if he said that he had felt compelled to avenge Saori, they would probably come around to his side.
On the other hand, if Hasunuma managed to make it through the whole ordeal — standing firm against Namiki’s threats and not revealing the truth about Saori — then he would just go back to blackmailing Rumi. Whichever way you looked at it, Hasunuma was a problem he had to deal with once and for all.
If the police found out that he’d killed Hasunuma — then so be it. It was highly unlikely and besides, this was a crime he wouldn’t really mind being arrested for. Public opinion would probably be with him. No, the only thing that mattered was concealing the fact that Rumi had caused Saori’s death.
Deep inside his eardrums, Rumi was singing “I Will Always Love You.” I will always love you: That was how he felt about her, too.
His mind was made up. He would protect Rumi, come what may.
48
“Tojima talked my husband through his plan. It was complicated, with a large number of people each playing a small part in the crime. Yutaro Namiki was supposed to be on his own when he interrogated Hasunuma, trapped in his little room. My husband’s idea was to engineer a situation where he got to take over from Namiki.” Noticing that Yukawa’s cup was empty, Rumi paused. “Would you like some more tea?” Yukawa guessed that she could be calm and rational now because, having made up her mind what to do, she was under less psychological pressure than before.
“No, thanks. I’m okay.” Yukawa waved his hand over his cup. “Please, go on.”
“A few minutes ago, you mentioned the trick he came up with. He was quite sure that Namiki wouldn’t be able to turn down a sick customer who begged to be taken to the hospital.”
“Which is where Mrs. Yamada comes in.” There was a glint in Yukawa’s eyes. “Who was she?”
“To be honest,” Rumi said, “we don’t know her real name.”
“I’m sorry?” Yukawa’s eyes widened behind his spectacles.
“We got her through one of those rent-a-family agencies.”
Yukawa knitted his brows. “What on earth’s that?”
“They’re sometimes called family rental or proxy family agencies. What they do, basically, is to provide actors to perform whatever family roles a client might need. Like, if for some reason you can’t take get your real parents to meet your girlfriend or boyfriend, they’ll arrange for a couple of actors to play the part of your mom and dad.”
“What a business model... Amazing!”
“They don’t just supply family members. They can provide people who perform all sorts of roles: posing as your boss when you have to visit a client to formally apologize for some work-related mistake; phony audience members for an author’s book signing. The list goes on.”
“And Mrs. Yamada was an actor from an agency like that?”
“Yes. The story we fed her was that we were doing a surprise inspection of the crisis-management capacity of restaurants in the Kikuno shopping district.”
“That’s pretty plausible. Good thinking on your part.”
“The plan went off even better than we expected. Hasunuma was asleep by the time my husband got to the hut. What he said about making a racket and shouting to wake him up — that was just a lie. He just went straight ahead and started tipping the liquid nitrogen into the room. The liquid nitrogen turned out to be a far deadlier weapon than he thought. He didn’t hear a sound from inside the room; no groans, no cries, nothing. When he had tipped the whole container into the room, he opened the door. Hasunuma was already in a state of cardiac arrest.”
“If he was already asleep when the liquid nitrogen started coming into the room, he probably never woke up.”
Rumi took a deep breath. She seemed quite reinvigorated.
“That’s all I can tell you. Sorry, my explanation was probably all over the place.”
“Not at all. You’ve been a model of clarity.”
“I hope I can do a better job,” Rumi said, “when I go to the police. I want to be clear about a few points — like how everything my husband did, he did for me.”
Yukawa’s face clouded. “Are you planning to turn yourself in?”
“Isn’t that why you’re here? To make me?”
“Far from it,” said Yukawa, with a shake of his head. He spoke with startling emphasis.
“I’m not a detective. I’ve got no legal authority to take a statement from you. I made that clear right from the start: that I didn’t want you to say anything that works to your disadvantage. I told you that you had a choice.”
“Will you tell the police what I...?”
“I have no intention of telling the police anything. My sense is that, as long as I don’t say anything, they’ll struggle to work out the truth. Perhaps, though, I’m just being conceited.”
Rumi ran her tongue over her lips. “You mean you’ll keep quiet about me?” she said.
“The idea of people I like all being sent to jail doesn’t appeal to me. As things stand, Mr. Niikura will get a sentence of at least three years for manslaughter. Considering who the victim was, that seems reasonable to me.”
Yukawa looked away for a moment. Then he went on: “Something like this happened to me once before and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. There was this man who took on the responsibility for a murder committed by the woman he was in love with. When I revealed the truth of what he’d done, the woman’s conscience got the better of her, which undermined the man’s acts of self-sacrifice. Frankly, I have no desire to go through anything like that again.”
Yukawa’s expression, as he delivered this explanation, was grave. Abruptly, he broke into a self-deprecating laugh and began to shake his head.
“You’re probably wondering why I bothered coming. If I’m not here to encourage you to turn yourself in, then what need do I have to ascertain the truth? I should just keep my thoughts to myself. That’s fine, but there is something I absolutely have to share with you — a crucial piece of information that I’m aware of and you’re not.”
Uncertain what the professor was going to say next, Rumi frowned and tilted her head quizzically to one side. “What might that be?”
“I need to ask you a question first,” said Yukawa. “In your account, you mentioned that Saori had a hair clip, a hair clip in the shape of a golden butterfly...”
“You mean the hair slide?”
“Yes. You said you found it on the ground near where Saori fell. Have you got it here in the house?”
“I do, but...”
“Could I see it?”
“The hair slide?”
“Yes,” replied Yukawa.
Rumi got to her feet. She had no idea where this line of inquiry was going. “Wait a minute,” she said.
She went into the master bedroom and walked over to the dresser. She opened the bottommost drawer and extracted a small box that was shoved right to the back. She hadn’t opened the box even once in the past three years. She had no idea what to do with the thing, but she couldn’t even think of getting rid of it.