“Ah.” Yasuyo nodded. Yuriko took life seriously and Yasuyo could see her behaving like that.
Kaga’s expression changed. He must have remembered something. He looked at Yasuyo. “There’s something important I was meaning to ask you.”
“What is it?”
“You know you sent me that letter? How did you manage to get my address? I didn’t think my mother knew where I lived.”
Yasuyo could feel her cheeks tautening. Could she evade the question? When she saw the expression on Kaga’s face and the intensity of his gaze, she knew it was hopeless.
“Somebody gave it to me,” Yasuyo said.
“‘Somebody’ being who?”
“The man Yuriko was seeing.”
A harsh look briefly flashed across Kaga’s face; then it softened. “Can you tell me a bit about him?”
“Yes,” Yasuyo said. She didn’t know very much about Watabe, but she told Kaga what she knew.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hide anything from you. It’s just not easy to bring up...” Yasuyo added.
“You wanted to be tactful. I can understand that. Really, there’s nothing for you to worry about. To be honest, I’m glad that my mother had someone in her life. If possible, I’d like to meet the man — meet him and hear what he has to say about her.”
“I can see that. The thing is, I’ve absolutely no idea where he is.”
“Your bar aside, was he a regular anywhere else?”
Yasuyo grunted and cocked her head to one side. “Not that I know of. At least, Yuriko certainly never said anything about it.”
“Let’s try a different tack then. Can you remember any little details about him? You know, like where he was born or where he went school? Perhaps any places he visited regularly.”
“Places...”
Yasuyo had remembered something. Yuriko, she seemed to recall, had mentioned a place. Somewhere with a grand and impressive ring to it. After a moment or two, it came back to her.
“That’s it. Nihonbashi...”
“Nihonbashi? What, Nihonbashi in Tokyo?”
“That’s right. It’s something Yuriko once said. How Mr. Watabe used to go to the Nihonbashi district from time to time and liked to talk about restaurants and famous sights there. Yuriko told me that she hardly ever went to Nihonbashi when she used to live in Tokyo.”
“Did you ever ask her why Watabe used to go there?”
“No. Never really occurred to me to do that...”
“Not to worry, what you’ve told me is quite useful.” Kaga turned his gaze back to the cabinet. Even in profile, Yasuyo could see his earnest expression and the intense light in his eyes. It was every inch the face of a policeman.
Kaga returned the key to Yuriko’s apartment to Yasuyo three days later. He’d gotten rid of all his mother’s things by getting the recycling center to come and collect the furniture, the bedding, and the appliances.
“I couldn’t believe how few clothes she had. She was fifty-two... and she had so little,” Kaga said with a look of incomprehension on his face.
“Yuriko was always very careful with money. She never went out and splurged on fancy clothes. She wasn’t like that. Besides, she didn’t really have much chance to dress up and go out.”
“I guess not.” There was a hint of sadness in Kaga’s eyes.
“What did you do with her clothes?” Yasuyo asked.
“I threw them all away,” came the answer in a flat, uninflected voice. “What would be the point of hanging on to them?”
Even though Yasuyo could see Kaga’s point, she still felt a slight pang as she imagined how Kaga must have felt as he crammed his dead mother’s clothes into a trash bag.
The two of them went to the cleaned-out apartment to give it a last look-over. The tatami where the cabinet had stood was a completely different color from the rest of the floor.
“Did you take everything else?” Yasuyo asked.
“Yes, I packed it all up into cardboard boxes and sent it down to my place in Tokyo. I plan to take a good look through everything so I can get an idea of what my mother was doing with herself these last sixteen years,” Kaga said. He frowned slightly. “Though honestly, I don’t expect that will make much difference.”
“I think you’re wrong,” Yasuyo said. “I’m all in favor of you trying to form a picture of Yuriko’s emotional state — her thoughts and feelings — over these last sixteen years. Do it for me as much as for yourself.”
Kaga smiled weakly and nodded. “I have one request,” he said. “It concerns that man Watabe. If you find out anything about him, I’d like you to tell me. Anything at all. No matter how trivial.”
“Okay. I promise I’ll let you know.”
Yasuyo drove Kaga to Sendai Station and accompanied him as far as the ticket barrier to say goodbye.
After thanking Yasuyo for everything she’d done, Kaga turned smartly on his heel and strode off. It was only then that Yasuyo realized how much he and his mother looked alike.
Ten or more years went by. During that time, Yasuyo herself changed, as did the world around her. The most significant episode by far was the Great East Japan Earthquake and the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Even now, Yasuyo still shuddered when she thought back to the earthquake and the destruction in her neighborhood. But she and her neighbors were among the lucky ones. She’d had many relatives living on the coast, most of whom were caught in the tsunami and killed. Afterward, when she went to place commemorative wreathes for them, the pitilessness of it all left her dumbstruck. All that remained was a heap of ashen-colored ruins as far as the eye could see, with fishing boats, cars, and houses all tumbled together beneath a coating of mud. It was likely that there were dead bodies lying undiscovered beneath the muck and mess. When the wind blew, the penetrating stench was enough to set you gagging.
In the aftermath of the earthquake, Yasuyo closed both her establishments. With the electricity, gas, and water all cut off, operating a business was literally impossible. And even if she did manage to reopen, she knew that it would be a while before any of her customers came back. Yasuyo was now over seventy and it seemed like the right time for a change.
Thanks to the money she’d saved in the boom times and her state pension, Yasuyo had a comfortable enough existence. Several times a month, she would meet one of her old friends for a drink or take a little trip somewhere. As she saw it, she had a pretty good life for someone who had made it through the earthquake.
She was reading the newspaper one day when she suddenly found herself thinking of Kyoichiro Kaga. There was an article about a murder in Tokyo. It was the phrase “Tokyo Metropolitan Police, Homicide Division” that brought him to mind. Despite scrupulously sending her a New Year’s card every January, he never volunteered any information about himself. She sometimes wondered if he only kept in touch because he was hoping for news about Watabe. She, however, had not heard a word from or about Watabe in all this time.
The article was about a woman who had been found dead in an apartment in East Tokyo. Yasuyo’s own experience finding Yuriko’s corpse flashed into her mind. She idly wondered whether Kaga was part of the investigation.
2
The couple who showed up in the conference room were a short man of around fifty and a woman who was even shorter than her husband. They bowed as they shuffled in, casting timid glances at Matsumiya and his colleagues. Their behavior was understandable as they found themselves face-to-face with five investigators. Apart from Matsumiya, who was the youngest, the others were all forbidding-looking men.