The Isle of South Kamui and Other Stories (14 page)

“A dung beetle rooting around in shit doesn't notice how much it stinks.”

“You don't seem too fond of the police.”

“Can't say I am. They make out they're on the side of justice, but what they call justice is synonymous with the Establishment. The moment you do anything antiestablishment, they immediately crack down on you in the name of justice. I joined a protest against the US–Japan Security Treaty and was locked up for a week.”

“I see,” laughed Taguchi.

Sakakibara sneered. “I don't want your rotten sympathy. Why don't you get on and question me about that girl who was killed. That's what you came for, isn't it?”

“I guess so.” Taguchi turned toward the counter and ordered a beer, his brows knotted in a frown. By the time his gaze returned to the young man, however, his amicable smile was once again in place. “Now that I've met you, I find I'm just as interested in you as I am in the case.”

“How so?”

“I've been a detective for twenty years. If you'll allow me to speak from long experience, sarcastic people like you are surprisingly submissive deep down. You're ashamed of it, so you hide behind a mask of sarcasm and make yourself out to be the villain.”

“Are you saying I'm submissive?” Sakakibara gave a brief chuckle. It was a nervous, feminine sort of laugh, noted Taguchi, which matched the gentle-looking long, slender fingers wrapped around his glass.

“Is that all your twenty years of experience has taught you? What a shallow way of seeing things.” Sakakibara snickered. “People are more complicated than that. You can't just explain them away as neatly as that. If you approach this girl's murder with such a simplistic mindset, you'll never catch the culprit.”

“Sounds like you know who did it.” Taguchi leaned forward in his chair and looked searchingly at the young man. The collar of his purple shirt afforded a peek of shallow chest. His lips were thin, too. He really did look somewhat neurotic—and sensitive, although there was also something cold about him.

Sakakibara put down his glass, and took a crumpled cigarette out of his shirt pocket, slowly straightened it out, and put it in his mouth.

“I wouldn't say I know who did it, but I am familiar with the case.”

Taguchi raised his beer to his mouth. It was barely chilled, and unappetizing.

“We've also learned a few things about the case.” Taguchi put the beer down. “The bathhouse girl who was strangled to death— her name was Kazuko Watanabe. She was twenty-one years of age. She was on the night shift. There were two men in her life: one was a workshop owner she was due to marry; the other was you. Is there anything else I should know?”

“Yes. The very crux of the matter.”

“Ah.”

“Do you know what the key to solving a murder case is?” Sakakibara looked defiantly at him. Taguchi had to smile. This youngster seriously appeared to be lecturing him, a detective with twenty years' experience, on the basic rules of solving a crime. It was just as well young Suzuki wasn't here. He would have been apoplectic with rage by now. “The motive.” Sakakibara stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray.

“The motive?” Taguchi laughed. “Even a child knows that.”

“But you lot don't know what that really means. If someone gets stabbed, then there must be a subtle difference between a case where a woman crazed with jealousy stabs a man, and one where a lunatic stabs someone for no reason. With the former, there must be hatred involved, and even love, too. But you detectives don't understand that subtle difference. Strangulation is just that, strangulation to you. And you don't even realize that you're missing the essence of the crime.”

“So, what do you reckon is the motive in this case?”

“There is no motive. That's the distinguishing feature of this case.” Sakakibara grinned, pleased with himself.

“No motive?” queried Taguchi, tonelessly.

“That's right. If the motive reveals the killer's face, then in this case there is no face. So you guys will never catch the murderer.”

“We'll see about that.”

“I had to laugh.”

“If you're trying to wind me up, it's not going to work. You're just an amateur.”

“And I won't be able to stop laughing. Especially if you don't get him, and the press criticize you for incompetence.”

“I'm grateful for your concern, but shouldn't you be more worried for yourself?”

“Are you saying I'm on your list of suspects?”

“Not just you.”

“Me and the workshop owner, then?”

“I met him earlier.”

“So you've been wasting your time.” Sakakibara snickered again.

“That man couldn't even harm a fly. He hasn't got the guts to do something like that, or the motive. He really wanted to marry her, you know.”

“So what about you?”

“It'd be great if I had a motive, but I'm afraid I don't.”

“You had a thing for her, didn't you?”

“That's just the sort of crude comment I'd expect from a detective,” Sakakibara shrugged. “But yes, I did like her. Not in the vulgar way you're imagining, though, but in a poetic, spiritual sense.”

“Poetic?”

“You heard. But it wasn't just her—I like all the bargirls in this alley. All of them are burdened with misfortune, yet they're gentle and sweet. They're much more womanly than those pretentious celebrities or girls from rich families. I get them to tell me about themselves, and in return I dedicate one of my clumsy poems to them. Did you know that Baudelaire spoke of woman as slave to the muse, and the poet as slave to woman?”

“Meaning they're mutually dependent on one another, I suppose?”

Sakakibara muttered something under his breath, but it sounded like French and Taguchi could not understand. He was probably cursing Taguchi's vulgar language as unworthy of the muse.

Taguchi's silence seemed to restore Sakakibara's good mood. “Shall I tell you something else you don't know?” he asked, a smile playing around his lips. “She had almost two million yen in the bank.”

Seeing the gleam in Taguchi's eyes, Sakakibara grinned. “I suppose you're thinking that two million yen is motive enough for murder, but it merely serves to prove mine and Yoshimuta's innocence.”

“How's that?”

“She always used to say that out of those two million, she would give one and a half million to her husband once they were married, as capital for his business. The remaining half million was for penniless little me, to pay the costs of publishing an edition of my poetry. Everyone knew about it. Now that she's been killed, far from profiting from her death, Yoshimuta and I have lost out on our share of those two million yen. In other words, those two million in the bank indirectly prove our innocence. That'll stump the police now, won't it? I sympathize. Looking at the situation on the ground, the murderer has to be a man close to her. There are only two men close to her, Yoshimuta and me. But as I just said, neither of us have a motive. So now do you understand what I meant by a crime with neither a face nor a motive?”

“Where do you get money to live on?”

“Huh?”

A flicker of dismay ran across Sakakibara's self-satisfied expression, and his pallid face reddened at Taguchi's unexpected query. “I've been talking about things that are crucial to your investigation, so why do you come out with something trivial like that?

“Looks like I've upset you,” laughed Taguchi. “I asked because I'm concerned about you. You want to publish a collection of poetry, but you haven't got any money, right? Yet you're a regular at this bar. So you've got enough money for that, I guess.”

“I work for money, in my own way. I sell copies of my poems, and I make money at Pachinko. And when I haven't got any money, I don't drink. I don't like drudgery. Idleness is the mark of a free man, after all.”

“A free man?” Taguchi gave a sardonic smile as he rose to his feet.

“I expect I'll want to talk to you again. May I have your address?”

When Taguchi arrived back at the office, Suzuki was already there. “You look tired,” he commented with some concern.

“Yup. I'm on my last legs,” smiled Taguchi, before wiping his face with the towel Suzuki held out to him. The day was as clammy as ever. “So did you find out any more?”

“The victim had almost two million deposited in a local bank. It seemed she managed to save that much in just a year, so being a bathhouse girl isn't such a bad business.”

“I've heard some girls manage to put by fifteen million in the space of five years,” laughed Taguchi. “I heard about her savings from that poet Sakakibara. Who's going to get it now she's dead?”

“Her parents are still alive, so I suppose it'll go to them. The other girls at the bathhouse told me that Sakakibara was poor so she planned to give him half a million so he could publish a collection of poetry. The remaining million and a half was for Yoshimuta's business once they were married. Apparently she often used to talk about it.”

“Yes, I already heard about it from Sakakibara. So apart from Yoshimuta and Sakakibara, wasn't there any other guy she was on intimate terms with?”

“I made a point of asking about that too, but it seems there wasn't anyone else. A year or so ago there was some cheap gangster type giving her a certain amount of bother, but three months ago he was killed in a fight with another yakuza.”

“Which just leaves those two.” Taguchi sank back in his chair and folded his arms. Behind him, an electric fan squeaked gloomily, evidently in need of oil. It was merely stirring up the hot air in the room to little effect. Irritated by the noise, Taguchi turned it off.

So, which of the two men was the murderer? Was it the middle-aged workshop owner, or the young self-styled poet?

Sakakibara had exultantly claimed this was a crime with no motive. It was true that at this moment in time no obvious motive had presented itself. But Taguchi could not believe there was any such thing as a crime with no motive. Many murderers did act on impulse, but something must have led them to do it. If someone committed a crime, there had to be a motive. The fact that there did not appear to be one only meant that they had not yet discovered it.

“What's Sakakibara like?” asked Suzuki.

Taguchi turned the fan back on. “He talks too much. He told me he doesn't like the police. I suppose it's because he was arrested at an anti-Security Treaty demo and locked up for a week. Ah, right, would you check that he really was detained?”

“Has it got anything to do with the murder?”

“Probably not. I just want to know as much as I can about him.”

“I'll call HQ.”

After Suzuki had left the room, Taguchi rose from his chair and gazed out of the window. The neon lights of the entertainment district were stunning. Sakakibara was probably still comfortably installed in that bar and no doubt enjoying poking fun at the police. Taguchi chuckled to himself. Sakakibara probably thought he had won the first round, but Taguchi merely considered his behavior childish. The kid would sooner or later find out how frightening the police could be. And he would regret having ever tried to mess with them.

Suzuki was back in twenty minutes.

“Sakakibara was indeed arrested the day of that demo and detained at Kamata police station. But…”

“But what?”

“He wasn't arrested for attending the demo. He was arrested for shoplifting. Books.”

“Hmm, was he now?”

Taguchi grew pensive, recalling Sakakibara's pale face. Why had he lied? Perhaps it sounded cooler to say you had been arrested at a demo, rather than for shoplifting? Whatever the reason, Taguchi felt that this trivial incident was somehow revealing of the young man's character.

The following afternoon, the results of the autopsy came through. The cause of death was suffocation by strangulation with a necktie, a cheap, commonplace article on which no fingerprints could be detected. The time of death was a simple matter, estimated at between two and three o'clock in the morning.

Suzuki had gone to investigate Yoshimuta's alibi, while Taguchi headed out in the rain, which as bad luck would have had just started, to meet Sakakibara.

As he arrived at the Peace Villa apartment block, it started to really pelt down. Even for the rainy season, this was a serious downpour. The block was a flimsily constructed, run-of-the-mill mortared wood-frame building with cracks stained dark from the rain running through its walls. It was so close to the building next door they were almost touching, and as Taguchi went in, he was enveloped in shadowy semi-darkness even though it was only five in the afternoon.

After stopping to check the room number with the caretaker, Taguchi climbed the creaking staircase to the second floor. It was the last door at the end of the corridor, upon which the sign “Contemporary Poetry Appreciation Society” written in large letters had been stuck in place of a nameplate.