“Yes. But if that were the only thing, I wouldn’t have asked you to come all this way. There were a few other things that seemed unusual.”
“Yes, and what were those?”
“One was that this man was seen loitering in front of a dried noodle shop.”
“What is a dried noodle shop?”
“As I just explained, Kameda is famous for the dried noodles it produces. Rows of noodles are hung to dry next to the noodle-makers’ houses. It was at such a house that this man appeared.”
“What did he do when he appeared in front of this dried noodle shop?”
“Well, it wasn’t as if he did anything. He just stood there, in front of the place where they dry their noodles,” the station chief answered, with a strained smile.
“He just stood there?”
“Yes. He did nothing but stand there for twenty minutes or so, gazing at the noodles hung to dry.”
“Hm.”
“The shop owners were a bit concerned about this unkempt fellow standing in front of their drying area. But he went away after a while. That’s about all there is to tell. But I thought it might be of some interest to you.”
“It certainly is interesting,” Imanishi nodded deeply. “I assume that the man who stayed in the inn and the man watching the noodles were the same person?”
“I think so. There’s also something else.” The station chief gave a little laugh.
“What is that?”
“There is a river that runs through the town of Kameda. It’s called Koromogawa. A man thought to be this same person was seen lying on the bank of this river at noontime.”
“Just a minute,” Imanishi interrupted. “Was that the day after he had stayed at the inn?”
“No, not the day after. It was the day he went to the inn. As I told you, he got to the inn in the evening, so this was noon of that day.”
“I understand. Please go on.”
“Well, there isn’t much except that this man was lying at the edge of the river. But there aren’t any men around here who can take things easy like that. There’s a road at the top of the levee. A local person who was walking on that road thought it was a strange place for a man to be taking a nap. He thought the man was a drifter.”
“I see.”
“No one said anything about this. It’s just that my men heard about it when they made their inquiries. When they asked if there were any unusual goings-on, they were told about this incident.”
“That means that this man was lying about in the grass around noon. That night he left the inn after ten and returned at about one o’clock… This does seem to be strange behavior.”
“You think so, too?” The station chief seemed relieved.
“Napping on the bank of the river during the day and leaving the inn in the middle of the night, that doesn’t sound like a normal person, does it?”
“If you think he may have been a burglar, I thought of that, too. But there weren’t any thefts reported around that date.” The station chief continued, “If there had been any actual loss reported… but there was nothing, so it’s hard to figure him out.”
“Was that the only day that the man was seen wandering about?” Imanishi asked.
“Yes, that’s the only day. Imanishi-san, don’t you think there’s some connection to the case you were asking about?”
“Let me see,” Imanishi said and smiled. “Let us look around the town a bit.”
“I’ll have one of my men show you around.”
“Please don’t bother. If you could just direct us, we’ll go ourselves.”
Imanishi and Yoshimura got on the bus for Kameda. The passengers were all from that locality. Their accents were so strong that it was hard for the outsiders to make out their meaning.
Soon the row of houses ended, and the bus drove along a road through the fields. The warm season came to this area much later than to Tokyo. The color of the new green leaves of the hillside was beautiful.
They got off at the bus stop as instructed and went to the Asahiya inn. The station chief had said it was an old established house, and it looked it. The gabled entry seemed forbidding.
Imanishi presented his police identification to the maid who came to the doorway. The innkeeper, a man in his forties, appeared.
“I’ve come from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police,” Imanishi said. The innkeeper invited them to enter, but Imanishi preferred not to go inside. The maid brought seat cushions and some tea to the entryway.
Imanishi described what he had heard from the Iwaki police chief.
“Yes, we certainly had such a guest,” the innkeeper nodded.
“Can you tell me about him in more detail?” Imanishi asked.
The innkeeper agreed and recounted his version, which was no different from what they had heard from the station chief.
“I understand you have the guest register?” Imanishi asked.
“We do,” the innkeeper nodded.
“Could you show it to me?”
“Yes, certainly.”
The innkeeper asked the maid to bring the guest register. It was in the form of separate sheets of paper, each like a bill.
The entry the innkeeper showed them read:
“Hashimoto Chusuke, Number xx, xx town, Mito City, Ibaragi Prefecture.”
It was inscribed in a very poor hand, as if a grade schooler had written it. But this was not unnatural, since the man had seemed to be a laborer. Imanishi stared at the characters.
Imanishi asked what the man had looked like. About thirty years old, tall with a medium build, his face on the long side, and his hair short and unparted. His skin had been rather dark, but his nose was straight and his features even. The innkeeper said he had kept his face averted and had not met anyone’s eyes even when he spoke. That was why the maids’ memories were vague.
Asked about the way he spoke, the innkeeper responded that the man did not have a Tohoku accent. His speech was close to standard Japanese and his voice was low. The general impression was that he had seemed to be a gloomy sort, and terribly tired. Everyone agreed on this point. He’d had neither a travel bag nor a suitcase, only the kind of shoulder bag people had used during the war with all his belongings in it.
The two detectives visited the dried noodle shop. Next to it, bamboo poles were set with noodles draped from them. This made the noodles appear like white waterfalls when the sun shone on them.
The woman of the house came out and showed them a narrow pathway about two hundred yards from the drying area, between the grass lots, that led to the main road. In this section of town the spaces between the houses were wide and overgrown with grass. The man in question had hung around this lot, squatting and standing, for about thirty minutes.
Imanishi and Yoshimura walked until they reached a wide river that flowed from the surrounding mountains. The grass grew tall on its banks. A farm woman walked along carrying a hoe on the opposite bank of the river.
“Imanishi-san,” Yoshimura asked, “what do you think? Is it your feeling that this man is the one who was with the victim at the bar in Kamata?”
“I can’t say either way. But there is something strange about this fellow.”
“There’s nothing definite, though, is there?” Yoshimura looked disappointed. “The name he used in the inn register is an alias, of course?” Yoshimura asked.
“Of course.”
Imanishi stated this so definitely that Yoshimura took the bait. “How can you tell?”
“You saw the penmanship on that register, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did. It was very poor writing.”
“Of course it was poor, since he wrote it with his left hand on purpose.” Imanishi fished his notebook out of his pocket and took out the carefully folded sheet from the inn register. “Look at this closely. See, there’s no flow in the writing at all. No one writes such awkward characters. Remember what the maid said at the inn? He didn’t fill in the register in front of the maid. She brought the register and left it in the room. When she came back later, it was filled in. The guest filled it in using his left hand to hide his handwriting while the maid was out of the room. So we can assume that the name and address are false.”