“No. In addition to finding her, we’ve got to find a motive, and also how the crimes were committed.” The old man showed his normal prudence.
“She must have believed that her sister killed herself because of Honda deserting her.”
“I expect so.”
“So we must find out where the sister is.”
“That may not be so easy. However, I agree with you that we have no alternative.” The old man’s voice was suddenly tired, and Shinji could see why. A person capable of the cunning that had been used to trap Ichiro Honda would be no less capable of disappearing from the face of the earth once the plot was complete. If they failed to prove Honda’s innocence, and if he were executed, would the real criminal wallow in secret satisfaction? Or would he or she—and it seemed to be she—have killed herself by then?
The old man looked up at Shinji. “I’d like you to go to the police station that handled Keiko Obana’s suicide,” he said, half apologetically.
The M Police Station was housed in a gray building so dirty in color as to be almost sordid. Shinji reported to the policeman at the front desk and was kept waiting on a plain wooden bench in the entrance hall for some time. The section chief who had been in charge of Keiko Obana’s case was informing the relatives of the discovery of a drowned corpse in the palace moat that morning. Eventually he came out, conducting a matronly-looking woman whose eyes were red from weeping. She had a small baby on her back, poor soul, and Shinji reflected that those who are left behind always suffer most.
The section chief greeted him amiably and conducted him into his room. But when he heard that Shinji’s business concerned Keiko Obana, his face set in firm lines and he crossed his arms.
“It is correct that this station handled the suicide of Keiko Obana, a key-punch operator with K Life Insurance. We officially decided that the motive for suicide was neurosis caused by a vocational disease.” As he spoke, his eyes avoided Shinji’s; he stared at the wall or else widely over his shoulders, as if addressing a large audience. Shinji judged him to be an honest man who did not like telling lies.
“Yes, that’s very interesting, but apart from the official version, what else can you tell me—off the record, of course.” The section chief struggled with himself for a moment and then obviously decided there was nothing for it but to tell the truth.
“Well, there’s one thing I did not make public, and that was on my own responsibility. Keiko Obana was six months pregnant at the time of her death. I did not tell the press, and I hope you see why.”
“Did you tell anybody?”
“Just her sister, when she came to collect the body.”
“And did she know who the child’s father was?”
“It seems that it was some man that she met at an all-night café or some such place.” But it was so long ago that the policeman did not wish to talk further without reference to his records and, excusing himself, went over to the filing cabinet in the corner of the room. Shinji gazed at the toe caps of his shoes and reflected, So Keiko Obana, too, was pregnant by Honda. That would surely give Keiko Obana’s sister adequate motive for revenge. How many people would pardon such a thing? How many more would never forgive?
He imagined the sister sitting in this room, perhaps in this very chair, two years ago and hearing the news of her dead sister’s pregnancy. Did she not at that moment fix her mind upon revenge? And after so many long nights, so many slow dawns, would she ever have relented? Perhaps grudges bring out the most tenacious in the human spirit.
The policeman came back to his desk, bearing a file. Shinji hastened to ask him the most important question that was on his mind.
“Did the sister have a mole on the right side of her nose?”
“Oh, yes, a big mole—I remember it quite clearly, although I forget which side it was on.”
“And did she seem very shocked to learn that her sister was pregnant?”
“To the extent that I felt pity when I saw her reaction and half wished that I had not told her. And I am quite accustomed in my duty to imparting bad news to the relatives of suicides and witnessing their grief.”
Shinji half thought of observing that the sister must have been indeed a beautiful woman to have won the sympathy of the section chief, but he thought better of it.
He glanced quickly through the file and, thanking the section chief, left the building. He wondered if he could bring out what he had learned in court; it would certainly put the policeman in a difficult spot for having covered up the pregnancy out of the kindness of his heart.
The lives of men and women are like toothed cogs; once one cog slips out of sync, it damages not merely those around it but also others having no direct connection with it. Thus, now, the tiniest secrets of individuals were likely to be laid before the public gaze. Not just the policeman—the cosmetics salesman and the medical intern, too.
He phoned the office and reported the results of his visit to the police station, but the old man did not seem in the slightest surprised. “Is that so?” was his only response.
“Well, I’ll be off to check out the Omori apartment,” Shinji said and hung up. He must do his best to track down Keiko Obana’s sister as quickly as possible.
The apartment was located close to the waterfront, and he could smell the sea as he got out of the taxi. “It’s somewhere round here,” the driver said and was of no further assistance. He had to hunt for the red pillar box that stood on the corner near the building. When at last he found it, it proved to be a cheaply constructed wooden edifice, its corridors cluttered with such junk as old earthen braziers, empty orange boxes, and so forth.
He found a housewife roasting fish over a charcoal brazier, which she had taken into the garden. She seemed to be a person who liked to talk and answered him immediately. Fortuitously, it turned out that she lived immediately next door to Number 5, which was where the Obana sisters had lived. The surviving sister had moved out in the last September. The decision had apparently been very sudden, and she had sold all her furniture to the local secondhand shop. She had let it be known that she was moving to the west of Japan and had departed without making the appropriate round of farewell calls.
“Did she have any visitors just before she left?”
“I heard that a journalist from a woman’s magazine came to interview her about her sister’s suicide two or three times, but I don’t think she had any other visitors.”
“So no one knows where she went?”
“Well, she did talk about going back to Hiroshima sometimes, but…”
“Did she use a removal firm when she left?”
“No, I doubt it. There was nothing to carry—she even sold her bedding. But she left late at night, so none of us saw her go. The rumor is that she got paid a lot of condolence money for her sister’s suicide, and so she probably went home and set herself up in some small business.”
He thanked her for her help and left. He could not help feeling gloomy, for it was clear to him that tracking down Keiko Obana’s sister would be no easy task. Suppose—and it seemed quite possible—that she had vanished on purpose; how could he find her amongst over one hundred million Japanese? And there was a deadline—the opening day of the trial at the appeal court. And that was looking on the bright side of things, presuming that she was still alive. What if she had killed herself—had plunged into the crater of an active volcano, or cast herself into a whirlpool, had gone, in fact, where none would ever find her body? Such cases were common enough.
He was caught in a steel trap, and the more he moved, the more hopeless his predicament became. In the taxi, he decided to make inquiries at the various scenic spots where people commit suicide. One never knew, after all…