“Oh? About what?”
Sano dumped Lilac’s pouch of gold nuggets on the desk. “Did these once belong to you?”
Daigoro’s eyes took on a hungry, acquisitive gleam as he looked at the nuggets. “Maybe. A lot of the gold in Ezogashima passes through my hands.”
“They were found in Lilac’s room.”
“Who?” Daigoro drew back from them as if they might burn him.
“Lilac. The girl who died in the hot spring yesterday,” Marume said.
“Why did you give them to her?” Sano asked.
“I didn’t. I never even knew the girl.”
“Yes, you did,” Fukida said. “Don’t lie to us.”
“I’m not lying,” Daigoro huffed.
“She blackmailed you,” Sano said, fed up with the runaround he’d been getting ever since he’d started his investigation. “About what?”
“Nothing! Whoever told you that was mistaken.”
“Did you kill Tekare?” Sano demanded. “Did Lilac find out? Did you pay her to keep quiet?”
“No! You’ve got it all wrong.”
“Oh, come on, don’t waste our time.” Impatient, Marume pulled his sword, then grabbed Daigoro’s hand and held it flat against the desk. “Start telling the truth, or I’ll cut off your fingers one by one.”
Daigoro squealed and struggled. “No! Please!”
Sano ordinarily didn’t approve of torture, but this time he would make an exception. Even if Daigoro wasn’t a double murderer who deserved to lose his head, never mind his fingers, he was a beast who preyed on native women, and Sano thought he was also hoarding information. Sano nodded to Marume.
Marume raised the sword. Sano braced himself for bloodshed. He felt as though he was crossing a line and compromising his principles but this was Ezogashima; here, ideals didn’t matter.
“All right!” Daigoro cried. “Stop! I’ll tell you if you let me go!”
“Talk first.” Marume kept his grip on Daigoro, and the sword poised to chop. “We’ll see if what you say is worth sparing your fingers.”
Daigoro strained away from the blade. “Lilac was blackmailing me, but it wasn’t about Tekare. It was about-” He moaned. “If I say, I’ll get in trouble.”
“Trouble doesn’t get any worse than this,” Marume said. “Spit it out.”
Daigoro blurted, “I lend money to Lord Matsumae’s retainers. Whenever they can’t pay it back, they steal supplies from his storehouse. I accept them in lieu of money and sell them in town. Lilac saw me with some soldiers, taking bales of rice from them and cutting a deal. She threatened to tell Lord Matsumae. I paid her not to.”
This was a petty crime, but if Lord Matsumae had found out, he would have put Daigoro as well as the thieves to death as an example to other would-be criminals. Sano could understand why Daigoro had been reluctant to confess, why he’d succumbed to Lilac’s blackmail.
“So Lilac asked you for more gold, and more,” Sano surmised. “She bled you dry. So you murdered her.”
“No, no. That was the only time she asked. She was satisfied. The little fool didn’t know I’d have paid ten times more to shut her up. I didn’t need to kill her. It wasn’t me.”
This sounded like the truth, and Sano was not only disappointed by the letdown, but consumed by fury. The air in Ezogashima seemed full of mischievous spirits goading him to violence.
“Kill him,” Sano told Marume.
Marume, Fukida, and the Rat looked astonished by the savagery in Sano’s voice, but an order was an order. Marume shrugged. “Here goes.”
He seized Daigoro in a tight hug and put the blade to his throat. Daigoro wriggled and shrieked for help. None came; his employees were probably too scared. He clawed at Marume’s arm, trying to pry it off his chest, his eyes goggling with fear.
“Wait!” he screamed. “Don’t kill me. If you want to figure out who killed Tekare, I’m worth more to you alive than dead.”
“Why? Do you know who did?” Sano said in spite of distrusting Daigoro and understanding that this was his last-ditch effort to save himself.
“Not exactly.” Feral with desperate cunning, Daigoro said, “But I have a good idea.”
“Because it was him that killed her,” Fukida said. “Don’t let him manipulate you, Sano-san.”
But Sano wasn’t so possessed by desire for violence that he’d lost his instincts, and they said not to kill Daigoro yet. “How is that?”
“I was there. When Tekare died.”
Sano said to Marume, “Let go of him, but keep that sword handy.” Marume obeyed; Daigoro slumped and groaned in relief; Fukida looked askance. Sano turned to the Rat. “Start counting from one to a hundred.”
“What for?”
“Convince me that you were there,” Sano told Daigoro. “If you haven’t by the time he’s finished, you’re dead.”
“One… two… three…” the Rat began.
Daigoro gulped and spoke rapidly: “That night, I went to the castle to collect on a debt. My man met me at the back gate and paid me with a bag of tobacco he’d stolen from Lord Matsumae.”
The Rat continued counting. Daigoro hurried to say, “I started back to town, along the road that goes down the hill behind the castle. I stopped to urinate, and I’d just finished when I heard someone coming. It was two women. They were arguing. One of them ran past me, into the woods. I didn’t turn around fast enough to see who it was. The other came running.”
“Thirty… thirty-one… thirty-two…”
“Her I did see. It was dark, but there was a full moon. It was Tekare. I hadn’t seen her since she moved on to Lord Matsumae, but I still wanted her. When she passed me, I thought, ”Here I am, there she goes, tonight’s my chance.“ I followed her.”
A dirty gleam of lust appeared in his eyes; saliva pooled in his grin-Sano was revolted. As the Rat counted past fifty, Sano said, “You don’t have much time left. What happened?”
“I could hear Tekare running and panting ahead of me. Then suddenly she screamed. There was a thud. It sounded like she’d fallen. I kept going until I saw her. She was on the ground. She was moaning and flipping around. I didn’t know what to make of it. She screamed again. Then she stood up and staggered toward me. I was scared. I backed into the woods to hide.” He saw Sano frown. “What?”
Tekare had obviously been hurt, and Daigoro hadn’t even thought to help. Sano said, “Never mind. Go on.”
“She fell again. She thrashed and made awful noises. Pretty soon she stopped, though. She just lay there. I tiptoed over to her.” Daigoro swallowed a retch. “And oh, merciful gods.”
“One hundred,” said the Rat.
Sano raised his hand, signaling Marume to wait.
Daigoro said, “There was blood all over her. I knew she was dead. So I got out of there. I ran all the way home.”
“Well, I have to say that sounds just like him,” Fukida said to Sano.
Marume said, “I think he’s finally telling the truth.”
So did Sano, but he was furious at Daigoro. “You not only neglected to mention this to Hirata-san when he came to see you about the murder, but you never told anyone else, either.”
“After how Tekare treated me, I was glad she was dead,” Daigoro hastened to excuse himself. “When I found out she’d been murdered, I figured someone had done me a favor. Why turn them in? I thought I’d better not say I’d been there because Lord Matsumae might think I did it. And I didn’t want him looking into why I’d been at the castle that night. Later, when he went crazy-” Daigoro paused, then said with a shamefaced grin, “Well, I was too scared.”
These excuses failed to placate Sano. He grabbed Daigoro by his fur coat. “If you’d reported it at once, maybe none of this would have happened. Lord Matsumae wouldn’t have gone mad. He wouldn’t have murdered my son.” Almost choking on his rage and grief, Sano said, “He wouldn’t have declared war on the natives. This is as much your damned fault as the murderer’s!”
“I beg to disagree,” Daigoro said haughtily. “Who’s to say what would or wouldn’t have happened if I’d told? I didn’t kill Tekare. What I saw wouldn’t have helped Lord Matsumae. I don’t know who did it.”