The Tokyo Zodiac Murders (10 page)

He was being quite serious.

“Kiyoshi, you haven’t been in very good condition lately… You’ve been thinking too much… You’ll drive yourself crazy… Why don’t you sit down and relax?”

“I don’t get it at all!” Kiyoshi shouted, not listening to me at all. “We’re all struggling so hard, heading in the wrong direction. All our efforts are in vain, Kazumi. They come to nothing! Our pleasure, our sorrow, our anger—it all comes and goes like a typhoon or a squall or cherry blossoms. We are all being pushed by our petty feelings and carried away to the
same place. None of us can resist it. Do whatever you think is idealistic? But it’s not. It’s just petty! We only end up knowing that our efforts were in vain!” He collapsed on his sofa.

“Yes, I know what you mean…”

Kiyoshi stared at me. “You do? How could you?” he said. Then, apologetically, he added, “Sorry, it’s not your fault. Please forgive me. You don’t think I’m a lunatic, do you? Thank you. You might be one of those people who think they’re normal, but you’re much better than most of them. All right, let’s get back to the drawing board. So has anything been found at the place you mentioned before?”

“What? What place?”

“Come on! I’m talking about the ‘centre of 13’, north-east of the town of Toka. Amateur detectives swarm there like bees, I bet.”

“Yes, I suppose that little town must be quite a tourist spot by now.”

“They’re probably selling cookies shaped like Azoth.”

“Most likely.”

“Did they find anything there?”

“No.”

“Nothing? Absolutely nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“So what all this means is that even though Heikichi only left those mysterious numbers—4, 6 and 3—the killer seems to have known the exact place they suggested. I wonder if those two people are the same person.”

“Exactly! That’s what I’ve been thinking!”

“The killer might have had to change his plans for some reason, or maybe he found a better place… or maybe he buried Azoth very deep. Did anyone dig in the area?”

“Sure, they did. They dug everywhere. The place looked like it had been bombed just like Iwo Jima.”

“Like Iwo Jima, eh? Heikichi mentioned that somewhere… But nothing was found? What about the geographical features of the area? Is there any place they left unscratched?”

“I don’t think so. The land is relatively flat. People have been digging in the area for forty years.”

“Hmm. So maybe Azoth was never created.”

“But there’s no doubt that the girls’ bodies were cut up.”

“Maybe the decomposition process was faster than he expected, which means he’d have had to rely on taxidermy. Would he have known anything about that?”

“He could have studied it.”

“You think so?”

“Heikichi never mentioned it in his note, but the idea isn’t illogical. If the killer had to assemble different parts of bodies, they’d start rotting in a day. It would be more satisfying if he gave new life to Azoth. I think he must have done something to preserve it, even if it wasn’t perfect.”

“Heikichi believed that Azoth would last forever, like Hitler’s Third Reich.”

“He couldn’t have been serious,” I replied. “Well, he might have been. He was a lunatic.”

“Yes, he was… I have another idea, Kazumi.”

“What’s that?”

“Heikichi’s whole story could be one great big fiction.”

“No, I don’t think so. It’s not feasible.”

“Really? Why do you say that?”

“Because there must be something about longitude 138° 48’ E.”

“What do you mean?” Kiyoshi asked.

“Well,” I replied, “this may be a bit off the subject, but Heikichi wasn’t the only one who had it on his mind. The mystery writer Seicho Matsumoto wrote about it in his book
Longitude 139 Degrees East
. You may not be as well versed in mystery novels as I am. Have you ever heard of it?”

“No.”

“Well, it seems to support Heikichi s view of history. You see, there were two kinds of fortune-telling techniques in ancient Japan—
kiboku
and
rokuboku
. Ancient psychics burned the shoulder blades of deer and then stuck iron skewers in them to make them crack. They read the cracks to foresee what the hunting and the harvest would be like each year; that was known as
rokuboku
. Eventually, they used turtle shells instead of deer bones, because turtles were easier to catch, and that was known as
kiboku
.

“Now there were only two places where
kiboku
was performed. One of them was Yahiko Shrine, near the Japan Sea. The other was Shirahama Shrine on the Izu Peninsula, near the Pacific Ocean, directly south of Yahiko. Between those two shrines are three others: Nukisaki Shrine in Gumma Prefecture, and Mitake Shrine and Akiru Shrine—both in Tokyo. The five shrines are located in a straight north-to-south line at longitude 139° E, and they were the only ones that performed either
kiboku
or
rokuboku
.”

“Wow!”

“And then someone turned up this very revealing fact: in the ancient Japanese language, when you pronounced the numbers 1, 3 and 9, it came out as
hi, mi
and
kokonotsu
, which is abbreviated as
ko
. Put them together, and you have ‘Himiko’, the mythical empress of Japan!”

“Very interesting. But that’s merely a coincidence, surely? The
concept of longitude and latitude is based on modern science, with measurements centred on Greenwich in England. On the other hand, the supposed empire of Himiko was two thousand years ago. There can be no relationship between the two.”

“Matsumoto didn’t dispute that. But given the fact that Himiko was a great shaman, I would think it quite possible. I think she must have used
rokuboku
and
kiboku
during the Yamatai Empire.”

“You mean that the Yamatai Empire was on longitude 139° E?”

“No, but—as the story goes—the post-Yamatai regime moved, or was forced to move, to that area. According to one Chinese history book written in the middle of the third century, the Yamatai lived in Kyushu. There’s nothing about the Yamatai in any Japanese documents, only about the Yamato Empire, which was formed in the eighth century. No one knows what happened to the Yamatai. Some say they were destroyed by the counterforce, Kuna, or by a race that came from the Chinese continent. Heikichi belonged to the latter school. Historians think that the Yamatai Empire was destroyed or merged with the central government.

“According to Matsumoto’s novel, the government forced the Yamatai population, including the offspring of Empress Himiko, to move east. This policy was sort of reflected in the Nara period, when the government decided that Kanto in eastern Japan—including Kazusa, Kozuke, Musashi and Kai—was where Korean refugees would be located. Matsumoto thought that the Yamatai might have been the first case of compulsory immigration in the history of Japan. Interesting, huh?”

“Hmm.”

“Let’s get back to the mystery of longitude 139° E, which obviously caught the imagination of Matsumoto, too. As I said,
there were five shrines along the longitudinal line from Yahiko to Shirahama, which is very close to longitude 138° 48’ E that Heikichi mentioned in his note. The line happens to be midway between longitude 124° E—where the Sakishima Islands of Okinawa are located—and longitude 154° E, where Shiashkotan Island is located—adjacent to Kharimkotan Island—which he defined as the easternmost tip of Japan. We don’t know if the fortune-tellers of old intentionally chose the centre of the country as the place for making their prophecies, but it now seems that Heikichi’s ideas were not totally absurd.”

“No, obviously not.”

“Then there’s the novel
A Golden Key
, by Akimitsu Takagi.”

“Which has something to say about this same longitude?”

“Well, it’s a little bit complicated. The novel focused on the fall of Edo. At the time, two politicians were in charge—Katsu Kaishu and Oguri Kozukenosuke. Katsu was the cautious one, but Oguri, despite Edo’s weak army, was ready to attack the allied forces of Satsuma and Choshu. Katsu’s caution won out, but when Saigo Takamori, the Satsuma general, learnt about Oguri’s strategy later, he shuddered. Oguri’s strategy went like this: Edo would pull its army back to Hakone and Odawara, letting the allied forces advance to the east on the Tokaido coast. At Hakone, where Edo’s modern battleships were waiting near the shore, Edo would make its stand, pushing the enemy back to Okitsu, a town on a narrow strip between a mountain ridge and the sea. When the Edo ships attacked, the allied forces would have had no place to hide.

“Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu was reluctant, so Oguri’s plan was not put into practice. If it had been, the Edo government might have secured its regime. But this isn’t a history lesson.
From a geographical perspective, the towns of Hakone and Okitsu are located equidistant, to the east and the west, of longitude 138° 48’ E. Also, the village of Gonda, where Oguri was born, is located at longitude 138° 48’ E. Oguri was later caught there by the enemy, beheaded and buried—all at longitude 138° 48’ E. Reportedly, Oguri buried a considerable amount of the government’s treasury on Mount Akagi, at longitude 139° 12’ E. Akimitsu says the place Oguri chose must be somewhere between Matsuida and Gonda. If he’s right, that would be very close to longitude 138° 48’ E.”

“The coincidences don’t stop, do they?”

“No, they don’t. Akimitsu also wrote about how, in the final phase of the Second World War, Japan—expecting that the US forces would be landing
soon
—made plans to move its military headquarters from Tokyo to Matsushiro, south of Nagano. Matsushiro was famous for the battle at Kawanakajima, where two samurai forces led by Takeda Shingen and Uesugi Kenshin fought a bloody battle. Takeda, drawing on his strength and a bit of good fortune, was victorious. The government of Japan, knowing they would be fighting with their backs to the wall, hoped to have the same good fortune as Takeda. The US forces were expected to land at Kujukurihama Beach and Sagami Bay in order to occupy the Kanto area first. Then they would move their troops inland to attack the Japanese headquarters at Matsushiro. The Japanese military hoped to fortify this by placing several units along Nakasendo Road, which lies between Annaka and the Usui Pass, where the most intense fighting was predicted. Anyway, the point I’ve been trying to get to is this: Matsuida is located halfway between Annaka and the Usui Pass on longitude 138° 48’ E.”

This was a lengthy digression, and Kiyoshi’s blank expression reflected that. “Well, it might be fun to explore that area,” he said absent-mindedly.

“Actually, some people do explore it. They regard it as one of Japan’s ley lines.”

“Ah, ley lines? Like the ley lines in Britain?”

“So you’ve heard of them?”

“Yes, of course. They’re the phenomenon of ancient sites located in a straight line.”

“Well, we have the same things in Japan. Along latitude 34° 32’ N, for example, there are many shrines and ancient sites lined up straight for seven hundred kilometres.”

“Hmm.”

“Also, north-east of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, there are shrines in a line, including Yasaki Inari, Hie, Ishihama and Tenso. Also—and this is where it starts getting good—there are several shrines that worship gods related to metals located on a north–south line connecting Tsurugaoka Hachimangu in Kamakura and Toshogu in Nikko.”

“Aha!”

“So the ancient Japanese, just like the ancient Brits, must have had some kind of geographical theory for the placement of their sacred sites.”

“And crazy old Heikichi must have known all about that.”

“I believe so. Anyway, I think I’ve now explained everything I know about this case to you. With the new piece of evidence from Mrs Iida, all you’ve got to do now is solve the three cases…”

You might wonder what it was that had led us to get so serious about the Zodiac Murders. Well, in fact, it was the visit of a woman named Misako Iida. She came to see Kiyoshi one day at his office without an appointment.

I had never thought that Kiyoshi had many customers. His office was always quiet, except when his students of astrology came by. But there were some clients, mostly female, who had heard of his reputation from friends and visited him to have their fortunes told. Mrs Iida was one of those. But her request was very, very unusual.

“This may be strange…” she began slowly. “It’s not actually about fortune-telling that I’ve come—although that could perhaps help me, even though it’s not about me… It’s about my father.”

From her demeanour, she seemed genuinely serious. Kiyoshi was sitting as still as if he was fishing in a pond. He was too depressed to encourage her to talk, but she was waiting for him to say something. It was the kind of pause where you light a cigarette, waiting for the other person to continue. But in fact Kiyoshi was a dedicated anti-smoker, so he just sat there looking rather foolish.

“To tell you the truth,” Mrs Iida continued, “I ought to report it to the police, but our situation doesn’t allow us to… Mr Mitarai, do you remember Ms Mizutani? I believe she came to see you about a year ago.”

“Ms Mizutani?…” Kiyoshi’s eyes blinked quickly. “Oh yes. She came to us about some harassing phone calls she was getting.”