“Oh, right, help with the investigation.” Kusanagi scratched his head as he walked.
Ishigami noticed his uncertainty at once. The detective seemed confused. Perhaps he didn’t ask Yukawa to come talk to me after all?
Kusanagi grinned sheepishly. “I talk to him about a lot of things, so I get a little confused about exactly which cases he knows about and which he doesn’t. What kind of help did he mention?”
Ishigami considered the detective’s question. He hesitated to say Yasuko’s name, but of course, he couldn’t exactly play dumb. Kusanagi would surely cross-check whatever he said with Yukawa.
Ishigami told him about Yukawa’s request that he spy on Yasuko Hanaoka.
Kusanagi’s eyes went wide. “He asked you to do that, did he?” he asked, sounding flustered. “Right, right—ah, I guess I did talk to him about that, yes. About whether you might be able to help us. He must have thought he could help out by asking you, since you two have a connection. Right, that makes sense.”
To Ishigami, the detective’s explanation sounded like a last-minute improvisation. Which meant that Yukawa had come on his own to prod Ishigami about the case. So what had he been after?
Ishigami stopped and turned to face Kusanagi. “And you came out here today to ask me that? Or was there something else?”
“No, sorry, I was just getting to it.” Kusanagi pulled a photograph from his jacket pocket. “Have you seen this man? I’m sorry the picture isn’t very good, I had to take it with a telephoto.”
Ishigami looked at the photograph and swallowed.
The man in the photograph was the person who had been foremost in his thoughts these past few days. He didn’t know his name. He didn’t know who he was. All he knew was that this man was close to Yasuko.
“Mr. Ishigami?”
Ishigami wondered how to respond. He could just say he didn’t know him and leave it at that. But then how would he ever find out who the man really was?
“You know, he looks somewhat familiar,” Ishigami said slowly. “Who is he?”
“Can you think where you might have seen him?”
“Well, I’m not sure. I see a lot of people every day. If you told me his name or where he works, I might be able to come up with something.”
“His name is Kudo. He runs a printing company.”
“Kudo?”
“Yes. Like this—” Kusanagi described the Chinese characters used to write Kudo’s name.
Kudo … Ishigami stared at the photograph. So why were the police checking him out? He must be involved with Yasuko somehow. In other words, the police suspected a connection—a special, maybe even intimate connection—between this Mr. Kudo and Yasuko Hanaoka.
“Well? Do you remember anything?”
“Hmm. Not really. He does look familiar though.” Ishigami shook his head. “I’m sorry I don’t remember more than that. Maybe I’m mistaking him for someone else.”
“Right, no problem,” Kusanagi said, frowning slightly and putting the photo back into his pocket. He pulled out a business card. “If you think of anything, do you mind dropping me a line?”
“Certainly. Um, does he have something to do with the case?”
“I really can’t say at this time. We’re still looking into it.”
“Is he involved with Ms. Hanaoka somehow?”
“They had some contact, yes,” Kusanagi said, being intentionally vague. He didn’t want to divulge any more information than he already had. “By the way, you were at Benten-tei with Yukawa the other day, yes?”
Ishigami looked up at the detective. The question was so unexpected, for a moment he didn’t know how to respond.
“I happened to see the two of you there,” the detective went on. “I was on the job. Sorry I didn’t say hello.”
So they are staking out Benten-tei.
“That’s right. Yukawa said he wanted to buy a lunch box, so I took him there.”
“Why go all that way? Don’t they sell lunches at the convenience store by the school?”
“Well, you’d have to ask Yukawa. Benten-tei was his idea.”
“Did you discuss anything about Ms. Hanaoka or the case?”
“Well, only what I told you before—that you wanted my help with the investigation.”
Kusanagi shook his head. “I mean other than that. As he probably told you, I ask Yukawa for advice on cases. Turns out he’s more than just a physics genius, he’s also a gifted sleuth. I was just hoping he might have said something about his thoughts on the case.”
Ishigami was confused. If they were meeting as often as it sounded like they were, then Yukawa and the detective should have been exchanging information. Why would the detective have to ask him what Yukawa thought?
“No, he didn’t say anything in particular,” Ishigami said.
“I see. Very well. Sorry to bother you on your way home.”
Kusanagi nodded farewell and headed back along the way that they had come. Ishigami watched him go. A feeling rose inside him, making him queasy, as though an elaborate formula he’d thought was perfect was now giving false results because of an unpredictable variable.
ELEVEN
Kusanagi pulled out his cell phone as he emerged from Shinozaki Station. He looked up Manabu Yukawa’s number and pressed the call button. Then, phone to his ear, he looked around. It was three in the afternoon—the lull time between the lunch rush and the commuter hour—but there were still plenty of people out on the street. A line of bicycles stood in front of the supermarket across the way.
Kusanagi’s cell found a signal quickly, and he waited for the dial tone—but then, before the phone began to ring, he closed it with a snap. He had just spotted the man he was looking for.
Yukawa was sitting on a guardrail in front of a bookshop, eating an ice cream cone. He was wearing white trousers and a simple black long-sleeved shirt. He was wearing sunglasses, too—a sleek, fashionable pair.
Kusanagi crossed the street and approached him from behind. Yukawa wasn’t moving. His eyes were fixed on the supermarket and its environs.
“Detective Galileo!” the detective exclaimed, hoping to get a rise out of his friend, but Yukawa’s reaction was unusually subdued. Still licking his ice cream, he looked around, his head turning in slow motion.
“I see your nose is as keen as ever. Who says the police need bloodhounds to do their sniffing for them?” he said, his expression unchanging.
“What are you doing here?” Kusanagi asked. “Oh, and before you say it, ‘I was eating ice cream’ isn’t an acceptable answer.”
Yukawa chuckled. “I might ask you the same question, but there’s no need. The answer’s quite evident. You came looking for me. Or rather, you came here hoping to find out what I was up to.”
“Well, now that the jig is up, you can just come out and tell me what you’re up to.”
“I was waiting for you.”
“Me? Yeah, right.”
“I’m quite serious. You see, I called the lab a little while ago, and one of the grad students said you’d been there asking after me. And I hear that you dropped by last evening, too, didn’t you? So, I reasoned that if I waited here long enough, you’d show up. After all, my grad student told you I was here at Shinozaki, didn’t he?”
This was all true enough, but it didn’t answer the real question, and Kusanagi wasn’t in the mood to let Yukawa off so easily.
“What I want to know is: why are you here in the first place?” he said, his voice rising a little. He was used to his physicist friend’s circumlocutions, but still they could be maddening sometimes.
“No need to get impatient. How about some coffee? All I can offer is what’s in those vending machines over there, but it’s bound to be better than the instant stuff back at the lab.” Yukawa stood, tossing the rest of his ice cream cone into a nearby trash can.