A Quiet Place (20 page)

The 360,000 yen that Yagishita had paid Kurosaki Machinery on his behalf Asai intended to pay back in full the next time he came to Tokyo. There was a chance that the other man would tell him it was fine and not to bother returning the money, but he was normally the type to expect a return on his investments. Asai began once again to see 360,000 yen as a huge expense, but he was determined to pay it all back, no matter what Yagishita said. If you weren't meticulous with your finances, then who knew what might befall you later down the road?

Asai fell asleep, then woke up abruptly in the middle of the night. He'd got used to sleeping alone, so that wasn't the reason. Perhaps it was nerves, but even when he was asleep these days a malaise festered in his mind, which sometimes manifested itself in terrifying images. His eyes would pop open, and he wouldn't be able to get back to sleep.

If Akiharu Kido and Jiro Haruta were suddenly included in the Southeast Asia trip, wouldn't everyone back in Fujimi wonder why? Imaginations would run wild trying to guess what circumstances would have persuaded Kurosaki to add these two men to the rigorously preselected list of names. And wouldn't someone eventually suspect that it
had something to do with the night of the murder, when these very men had picked up a mysterious stranger on the prefectural highway?

Damn! What if it became the topic du jour again in Fujimi, prompting yet another police investigation?

Asai had believed he'd come up with a brilliant plan, but now he realized how stupid it was. He'd been so obsessed with getting those two out of the way so he could give his Nagano lectures that he'd failed entirely to consider what the reaction of the local people might be. His stomach in knots, he sat up in his futon.

Should he call Yagishita first thing in the morning and cancel the whole thing? If he hurried, Kido and Haruta wouldn't have been told yet. There was still time to abort the plan.

But no sooner had he decided on this course of action, than he realized it would be even more dangerous. Making a request, cancelling it again… both Yagishita and Kurosaki Machinery were going to wonder what was going on. He hadn't ever explained properly why he was making the request, so a sudden cancellation now was going to look even more suspicious.

Asai couldn't sit still. His mind was in such turmoil, he thought he would go mad.

20

Worrying over nothing; making a mountain out of a molehill: Asai was soon to realize that this was what he'd been doing.

Akiharu Kido and Jiro Haruta were lucky enough to be chosen to participate in Kurosaki Machinery's tour of Southeast Asia. Asai received a letter from Yagishita in Kobe to tell him that they would be joining the group and leaving from Tokyo's Haneda Airport on 31 March.

Thanks to the special care taken by the managing director, Mr Yada, their inclusion didn't look like a last-minute addition. Their friends and acquaintances back home have been led to believe that they were included in the group from the beginning. Everything went very smoothly and naturally.

For the time being, Asai was relieved. There was no one left wondering why Kido and Haruta had received special treatment. There was no danger they would attract the attention of gossips who might put two and two together and associate their free trip with the suspect they had given a lift to the night of the Fujimi murder
case. They were no longer special cases – they were no more than two lucky members of the original group. They'd draw no extra attention, and therefore arouse nobody's suspicion.

It was a good thing that he'd stopped his scheming when he did. If he'd got the two men included on the trip only to ask for them to be removed again right away it would just have created doubts in the minds of Yagishita and Yada. They'd have examined his motives far too closely for comfort. Too many precautions would, ironically, have put him in even more danger.

He was having a nervous breakdown, Asai decided. So many unnecessary fears and concerns, one after the other. He hadn't slept at all for four or five days while he anxiously awaited the arrival of Yagishita's letter. Every time he'd been about to drift off to sleep his heart had suddenly started to palpitate and he had woken with a start. He'd try to sit up to calm himself, but the wild beating in his chest wouldn't stop and fear would stalk him under cover of darkness. Destructive thoughts would swirl round his head, and he would be seized by the urge to scream. All symptoms of neurosis.

Now that the danger had passed once more, Asai was going to have to take care of his fragile nerves. The source of his anxiety may have been removed, but the other symptoms didn't disappear so easily. They probably still lurked in the folds of his brain. There was no knowing when they might pop up and cause him to do or say something irrational. That could be serious. He would have to be extremely careful. Prudent, cautious, yet at the same time try to relax, take it easy.

Between the first and fifth of April, Asai toured around the southern part of Nagano. All of his lectures went extremely well.

The sources of his angst had now flown away, to visit Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. There was absolutely no chance of running into them. In his lecturer's role, he was able to talk and behave freely. He experienced a sense of liberation: his neurosis was disappearing.

After spending time at the agricultural cooperative in Chino he headed to Fujimi. The Yatsugatake mountain ridge was there in front of him. This time it was broad daylight, and he could see the line of the ridge and each fold of the range quite clearly. It was early spring, but winter still lingered up there. There was still snow on the peaks, and the slopes were tinged with brown. Under cover of night they'd seemed like a mighty barrier, dark and imposing; now the daylight exposed the desolate and rather forlorn landscape.

Whereabouts had Konosuke Kubo's corpse lain? He saw a forest in the distance, right at the opening of a valley. There must be a river over there. He'd read in the newspapers that the body had been found not far from the bank of a river, and the forest looked vaguely familiar. He could be wrong, but the shape corresponded with the image of a black mass that had stayed in his mind.

Asai looked out at the landscape from the window of the agricultural cooperative's building. It wasn't at all frightening – after all, the man was dead, his face bloodied and surrounded by three small rocks. He remembered how the stones had gleamed faintly in the dark, while the
face, smashed in and covered in blood, had been virtually invisible.

“Come out, ghost of Konosuke Kubo! I dare you!” he silently shouted, his eyes fixed on a point in the distance. He wasn't afraid of ghosts. He wasn't bluffing like one of those abusive husbands who, following his poor wife's suicide, went to stare defiantly at the place she died, daring her to return as a ghost. There was nothing to fear from the dead. And in his case, he had never meant to kill Kubo. It had just happened in the heat of the moment. Kubo had exacerbated the situation with his rage and his threats, so in a way he was responsible for his own death. Was there any reason to be afraid?

Suddenly Asai realized that he'd been staring at the mountains for a while.
Stop it. The others will think you're weird
, he thought, annoyed at himself.
You have to ignore the mountains, just act normal. Don't show you feel uneasy. Take your eyes off the mountains, now
.

This odd behaviour, this kind of obsession – maybe he was having a nervous breakdown after all.
Careful, careful. Mustn't open my mouth and blurt out something bizarre. Steady now. Act normally. There's absolutely nothing to worry about. Just stay calm
.

During the whole time that he was travelling around Nagano giving his lectures, not once did he hear mention of Southeast Asia. It seemed that overseas trips were not all that unusual among agricultural cooperatives these days. Unfortunately, Japanese tour groups made up of their members had a bad reputation overseas. Still, the participants' behaviour notwithstanding, it was clear that if there were so many international tours organized for
such cooperatives, then it wasn't all that special any more to be treated to a trip to Hong Kong and Taiwan.

There really was nothing to trouble himself about. No one in this area cared whether Akiharu Kido or Jiro Haruta were originally supposed to be on the tour or not. As the topic of the trip never came up, there was no discussion of its participants either.

After a very pleasant lecture tour, Asai returned on 6 April to Tokyo. His division chief thanked him for his work.

“Well done, Asai. It seems your lectures were well-received everywhere. Great job. I got a call from the Nagano prefectural union president to say how much they appreciated your work. Thank you.”

With that, Asai had fulfilled his obligations. If Nagano Prefecture called again to ask him to visit, he'd be able to turn them down with a clear conscience.

The Kurosaki Machinery tour group was due to arrive back at Haneda Airport that night and return to Nagano in the morning. The schedules had worked out so that he had neatly avoided running into them.

Everything went smoothly. Yagishita confirmed it when he came up to Tokyo three days later. He and Asai went to a nearby café to talk.

“Mr Asai, I can report that the Kurosaki tour returned to Nagano on 7 April as scheduled.”

“Thank you so much for arranging that.”

Asai didn't want to say Kido's and Haruta's names aloud.

“The managing director, Yada, was glad to grant my request, so everything worked out fine. As I put in the letter, he managed to cover up the fact that they were added at the last minute, and I believe nobody suspected anything.”

“Thank you. Thank you,” Asai repeated, bowing his head.

“In the end, what he did was tell them they were replacements for someone who had to drop out.”

“Replacements?”

“Yes, well, the list had been finalized. There was no other way around it, it seems. Anyway, it was done so no one would know anything about it.”

That had certainly been true back in Nagano, where there had been no talk of the two men. The important thing was that they had attracted no attention. Asai decided to emphasize once again that it hadn't been his own plan.

“I'm glad I could be of use too. The person who passed the request on to me is very satisfied with the result. Actually, he asked me to pay you the money for Kido and Haruta's trip. How much is it altogether?”

“No, no. That's fine.” Yagishita waved a hand in dismissal.

“I need to pay you back.”

“Look, you can do that some other time.”

“No, that's not right. I'll pay. I mean, not me. The money belongs to the person who asked me to sort it out.”

Asai suspected that Yagishita intended to pay the full amount himself. At least that was what he seemed to be saying. Yagishita was first and foremost a businessman. He knew that the money would be an investment, bearing returns the next time he needed a favour from the ministry.

The trip had cost a total of 356,000 yen for the two participants. Asai would have been grateful if Yagishita had paid the whole sum himself. He had been quite willing, in the face of danger, to part with 500,000 or even a million
yen, but now that things were calm again he felt like a fool paying such a huge sum of money for two complete strangers. He'd admonished himself once before for feeling this way, but he hadn't quite been out of the woods at that point. Now that he had nothing left to fear, it felt like a waste of money.

“Are you sure?” asked Yagishita, leaning forward a little. “If you insist, then how about paying me half the money?”

“Just half?”

“One person's travel expenses, if you like. 178,000 yen.”

Yagishita was no longer offering to pay the whole thing. Asai wondered if it was the savvy negotiator in him coming out, or whether Asai himself had insisted too strongly on paying. Perhaps he should have played it more coolly, but he couldn't go back now. Anyway, he had to make out that the money wasn't his, that it had come from his mysterious client.

“Are you okay with that?” Asai produced an envelope from his jacket pocket and discreetly counted the 10,000-yen bills inside.

“Sure. If it was your money then I wouldn't accept it, but as it came from someone else, I'll just take half.” The broad grin on Yagishita's face seemed to suggest that he'd be fine with Asai using the other half of the sum as pocket money.

Asai handed him seventeen of the 10,000-yen notes, and then, having no smaller notes to make up the exact amount, he added one more 10,000 note. But Yagishita tried to return it.

“Sorry, I don't have any change either. Don't worry, 170,000 is enough.”

“No, I couldn't… I mean —”

“Come on, Mr Asai. What's a little 10,000-yen bill between friends?”

Akiharu Kido and Jiro Haruta were extremely grateful to have been chosen to participate in a tour of Southeast Asia sponsored by Kurosaki Machinery, even if they did only make the cut as replacements. Kido wasn't exactly one of the more powerful officials at the Fujimi agricultural cooperative. He was just an ordinary member of the council. Haruta was no more than a junior clerk in the cooperative's sales department. They were delighted to have the opportunity to travel abroad in the company of so many influential people from various districts throughout Japan. At the same time, they were puzzled at the imbalance in status between the others and themselves.

That said, the men made no connection between the invitation and any criminal intent. On the contrary: they wanted to find out who had been thoughtful enough to offer them this preferential treatment so they could thank him properly. They were honest, dutiful types.

As soon as they returned to Nagano, the two men wrote a letter to the managing director of Kurosaki Machinery, the most senior of the people who came to see the group off at Haneda Airport. The letter was handed to him in person by one of his staff members.

In his reply, Mr Yada made it clear that it was Mr Yagishita, the president of Yagishita Ham in Kobe, who had been responsible for getting the two men on the tour, and that Yagishita had paid their costs personally. He felt
obliged to admit that it hadn't been his own company that had paid for the two men, and to let them know of the other man's generosity.

Naturally, Kido and Haruta did the right thing. They set off immediately for Kobe, to thank Yagishita personally for his kindness and take him a souvenir they had purchased in Hong Kong. All the while, they couldn't grasp why someone with whom they had absolutely no connection had taken it upon himself to pay for their overseas travel.

Yagishita, for his part, was embarrassed when the two men entered his office and bowed so low to him. He'd only paid half of their travel expenses; in other words, only one of the two men was in debt to his kindness. Asai had paid for the other one, and it pained Yagishita to have both men thank him so wholeheartedly.

And with that, Yagishita broke his promise to Asai. He explained that their real benefactor was Assistant Division Chief Tsuneo Asai at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. You couldn't really blame Yagishita. It was too uncomfortable for him to accept the effusive thanks from the two men all by himself.

“But you really don't need to thank Mr Asai. He was asked to do the favour by someone else, who insists on remaining anonymous. I'll contact Mr Asai myself to let him know how grateful you are.”

But Kido and Haruta really were conscientious types. Even more so when they heard that their secret benefactor was an assistant division chief at the Ministry of Agriculture. On their way back from Kobe, they didn't change trains at Nagoya to head up to Nagano. They stayed on board and travelled straight to Tokyo.

Arriving in Kasumigaseki around three in the afternoon, they went up to the reception desk at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. Presenting their business cards, they requested a meeting with Assistant Division Chief Tsuneo Asai. After being asked to wait a while, the reply came that Mr Asai was very busy and wouldn't be able to meet with them.

However, their sense of obligation was very strong. They thought it would be impolite just to leave a letter of thanks, and decided to wait in the reception area until Asai left the ministry at the end of the day. Country folks are incredibly patient. Asai had absolutely no idea that they would wait for him, and assumed the two men would have left long ago. So much so that he didn't even bother to slip out of the back door but instead came walking out through the main foyer with all the other employees at the normal finishing time of 5.40 p.m.