She took it back to the living room. “Here it is,” she said. When she handed it to Yukawa, she was startled to see that he had put on white gloves.
“Let’s have a good look.” Yukawa took off the lid and plucked the hair slide out of the box. The gold had lost none of its shine over the past three years.
Yukawa inspected the hair slide with great care. He then put it back in the box and replaced the lid on the box. As he pulled off his gloves, he turned to Rumi with a satisfied look on his face. “I was right.”
“Right about what?”
“Your account of events was one hundred percent true. Not a single falsehood in it.”
“Of course there wasn’t. Why would I be lying at this stage?”
“The important thing is this: What you believe to be the truth and the actual truth are not necessarily the same thing. Until you know the difference, you can’t make the choice that will decide your fate.” Laying his white gloves on the table, Yukawa used the tip of one finger to adjust the position of his glasses on his nose, then looked directly at Rumi. “I will tell you the real truth: the truth as I deduced it.”
49
When he opened the door, Yukawa was sitting at the far end of the counter, chatting with the gray-haired bartender. Both men turned to look at Kusanagi. “Good evening, sir,” the bartender said.
Apart from a couple seated at a table, there were no other customers. Kusanagi walked over, sat down next to Yukawa, and ordered a Wild Turkey on the rocks.
“Got something to celebrate?” Yukawa asked. “Well, as long as you’re not drinking to drown your sorrows, it’s all good.”
“I’m somewhere between the two poles.” Kusanagi took a long rectangular package out of his bag and put it on the counter in front of Yukawa. “First things first. I want to give you this.”
“What’s this? From the shape, I’d have to say a bottle of wine.”
“It’s one I’ve been meaning — and failing — to give you for years now.”
“Opus One? Oh, very nice. Received with thanks.” Yukawa took the box and put it into the bag on the seat beside him.
A lowball glass arrived in front of Kusanagi. He picked it up and Yukawa lifted his tumbler. The two men gently clinked glasses.
Kusanagi took a sip of his bourbon on the rocks. He felt it burn his tongue, then his throat before the aroma burst in his nose. “Naoki Niikura retracted his statement.”
“Really? How did that happen?”
“You don’t sound very surprised.”
“Should I be?”
Kusanagi snorted. “I got a report yesterday from the investigators who are surveilling the Niikuras’ place. A guest showed up there. The investigators sent me a photo. It was you. You were in there, talking to the wife, for over an hour, they said. This morning, Rumi Niikura came to the Kikuno Police Station to see her husband. ‘Five minutes is all I need. Just let me speak to my husband alone,’ she said. Normally the custodial officer has to be in the room during visits, but given that Niikura had already made a full and frank confession, he went to have a word with the station commander who agreed to bend the rules. Because of that, we have no idea what passed between the two of them in that room. The upshot was that at his next interview, Naoki Niikura came out and said that all the testimony he had provided us with so far was false. He hadn’t killed Hasunuma accidentally; he had murdered him, and he had done so intentionally. Cue general consternation. It’s common enough for a suspect who’s admitted to murder to deny having the intent to kill, but the opposite — that’s something I’ve never encountered before.”
“His motive for the murder?”
“To protect his wife. ‘Ask her, if you want to know more,’ he said.”
“And did you?”
“You bet we did. We summoned Rumi Niikura to the station immediately. She was quite calm. When we informed her that her husband had changed his statement, she briefly appeared saddened, but she soon started talking, very much as if she’d made up her mind to do so. I was surprised at how coherent her explanation was. As for the content, I found it downright astonishing.”
Rumi Niikura’s account completely upended the police’s previous understanding of the case. From Saori Namiki’s unnatural death onward, the truth was very far from anything that Kusanagi and his team had imagined.
Rumi Niikura’s story contained no contradictions or inconsistencies. If anything, her account actually helped clear up many trivial questions the investigation team had.
“What a disaster!” said Kusanagi, raising his glass. “We all started wondering ourselves what the hell we’d been doing these last few months. That’s why I said I was halfway between celebrating and drowning my sorrows. I believe we’ve now solved the case. I have absolutely no sense of victory. Our strategy was completely off target. We won only because our opponent gifted us a goal.”
“Who cares? A win’s a win.”
“It’s not quite that simple. There are still a few loose ends we need to tidy up. The thing I find puzzling is why the Niikuras decided to tell the truth at this particular moment. It’s obvious enough that their meeting at the police station this morning was extremely significant. Unfortunately, neither the husband nor the wife are willing to tell us what they discussed, citing their right to privacy.
“That was when I realized that my only option was to ask you.” Kusanagi twisted around to look at Yukawa. “What was it that Rumi Niikura went to tell her husband? What did she say to him that made him decide to retract his statement? I know you know. No, let me rephrase that. You masterminded this whole thing. It’s you who got the two of them to change their minds. Am I right?”
Yukawa took a sip of whiskey and shook his head. “I did no such thing.”
“Liar.”
“I’m not lying. It’s certainly true that yesterday I told Mrs. Niikura my theories about the truth of the case. My goal was neither to condemn them nor to inspire them to turn themselves in. I just wanted to let them know the truth about something that I was pretty sure they didn’t know.”
“And what particular truth was that?”
Yukawa took a couple of deep breaths to settle himself. “It was something to do with Saori Namiki’s death.”
Kusanagi pulled a sour face. “You’re not going to tell me that Rumi Niikura’s statement was false, are you?”
“Her testimony covered only what she knew. That doesn’t necessarily imply that it was all true.”
It was a comment that Kusanagi had to take seriously. He looked around the bar. “Shall we go somewhere else?”
“Here’ll be fine. No one’s listening.”
Kusanagi moved his face closer to Yukawa’s. “Go on, then. Tell me.”
“The question is,” Yukawa began, “when did the bleeding occur?”
“The bleeding?”
“You decided to arrest Hasunuma after finding traces of Saori’s blood on his old work overalls. Now, in a bad case of a depressed skull fracture like this, significant blood loss is par for the course. Okay then, shouldn’t blood have been found at the crime scene? The day after Saori disappeared, the local police conducted a search over a wide area. They would have taken the discovery of any blood on the ground very seriously indeed. I got Utsumi to check the records. The police did examine the little park, but in the record there was no mention of them finding any bloodstains. Then there’s Rumi’s own testimony to consider. In a state of shock from having caused Saori’s death, she absconded from the crime scene for a period. After going back there, she was unsure where the body had been until she came across the hair slide. Both these pieces of information tend to suggest that there was no blood on the ground, don’t they?”