He got back to the office, but the old man was out. The secretary, Mutsuko Fujitsubo, was engaged in copying a newspaper advertisement.
“Mr. Hatanaka has gone to the prison. He asked me to place an advertisement in the missing-persons section of the paper—do you think that this will do?” And she handed him her draft.
TSUNEKO OBANA. Aged 31. Born in Hiroshima city. Lived at Fujii Apartment, Sansei-cho, Omori-kaigan, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, until last September. Distinctive feature: a large mole, about the size of an azuki bean, on the right base of her nose. We wish to contact her urgently. A reward will be paid for information leading to her whereabouts.
“Did Mr. Hatanaka tell you to publish this every day?”
“Yes, for at least a month.”
“Pity we haven’t got a photo.”
“That’s what Mr. Hatanaka says. He says we might be led on a wild-goose chase and end up with the wrong person.”
Shinji went over to the window and looked down on the park below. The pigeons that congregated every morning on the windowsill were gone about their noonday business. There was a delicate haze over the woods of the park; the sky above was scattered with cumuli. Somehow or other, he thought, they would not track down Keiko Obana’s sister. She had vanished, and it was due to the crimes.
His premonitions, dark as winter, contrasted with the vigorous skies of summer outside.
INSERTION
The woman stretched her hand slowly to the pillow on the bed where she lay. These noises in her head; she must calm them.
Her lean hand looked like a dehydrated chicken leg: no flesh, only skin and bones.
That dry hand clawed under the pillow and took out a large notebook. The cover was soiled, with inky fingerprints showing on certain parts.
On the cover were brushed the words “The Huntsman’s Log.” But the word Huntsman was so stained as to be almost illegible. It had been read so often… it sent away, for a while, the noises in her head.
She brought the notebook to her breast. After a while, she opened it and flipped the pages, stopping at the tenth page. Her eyes were concave, like black holes drilled in her head, like the eyes of a rotting corpse. Just visible in the dark hollows were muddy pupils, which no longer seemed to focus.
The lean hand flipped the pages precisely, but the eyes did not seem to see. This was her daily routine, so most of the words in the diary were inscribed in her heart. Her hand came to rest at a certain page.
Prey had a strong head for drink. Anyway, no resistance, no hysterics, no overacting. Just put herself into my hands. Felt like a god accepting a human sacrifice.
Did her best to satisfy my every need, but was too tense and kept trembling. Took two hours to kill. She was a virgin; drew blood.
“Silly, silly little girl. Don’t say you cried in his arms; don’t tell me that you were crushed under his body. Don’t try and tell me any of those things. I bet you were biting your lip with those sharp little teeth of yours that you always kept so clean; I bet you bit so hard that the blood came. Silly little girl!
“Silly to shed blood for his enjoyment! That man, to steal two hours of pleasure, pressed his filthy lips against your girlish and unsullied skin. He left his sticky seed of sin within your childlike body, not yet mature, and all for his own selfish satisfaction! Was it in spite of that seed, or was it because of it, that seed growing in your body, that you were forced to die? And as you were preparing to kill yourself, that man had long forgotten you and was tasting the flesh of some other woman… But it’s all right now, darling; don’t cry any more. Curse him no more, though you lie underground being eaten by worms!
“For I have taken revenge, in spite of these sounds in my head. I have put him away into prison, where he can never touch any woman’s body again. Now he faces the hard wall of a cold cell, doubtless inscribing upon it your name, yours and the names of many other women, with his anecdotes of those nights spent together. Soon, they will take him away and hang him, and then they will place a heavy tombstone above him. It will press down upon him firmly so he won’t be able to budge an inch ever again. So there! Instead of pressing himself upon your body, upon the bodies of other women, the stone will press him! Cruel stone, press him!
“Now let me tell you how I made that man taste the same agony with which he fed you…”
THE BLACK STAIN—CONTINUED
A week passed after the advertisement was placed in the newspaper, and many leads came about Tsuneko Obana, but all of them were false trails. And then there came the first real clue. It was from the manager of an apartment building called the Midori-so, the building where Mitsuko Kosugi was murdered. He reported that a woman with a mole on the right side of her nose had been residing there under the name Keiko Obana since last September.
The woman was a little over thirty and worked as a model for a cosmetics company. This work took her to department stores the length and breadth of Japan, so she only spent about two days a week in the apartment. And for the last two months, she had not shown up at all.
“Well, she’d paid six months in advance, so at first I thought nothing of it. But recently I got worried and was thinking of going to the police, when I saw your advertisement.”
The manager, who had the air of a war veteran, talked in tones that bespoke his honesty. His linen suit, shiny with age, was well pressed and stank of mothballs; obviously, it was only worn on special occasions. The mole, the age, the recent disappearance… all added up to the elusive Tsuneko Obana.
“Right under our noses, so we didn’t see it!” Shinji exclaimed. The old man said nothing, and Shinji then reflected that there was something fishy; why use Keiko Obana’s name? Wasn’t that a giveaway?
The old man seemed to be thinking the same thing; he chewed his cigar in a perplexed manner.
“Let us suppose that the woman really is Tsuneko Obana, as seems likely,” he said. “Then it seems that she used her sister’s name to make clear her intention of revenging her sister. In that case, we can presume that she has vanished again, this time perhaps for good.”
At all events, they decided to visit the apartment immediately. The old man sent for his secretary and told her to give the manager the reward, which was handed over in a brown paper envelope, the manager protesting politely at first. A hire car was called, and soon they reached the Midori-so at Asagaya. Until they arrived there, the old man spoke not one word but merely pondered, chewing his cigar the while.
First of all, they looked into Mitsuko Kosugi’s room. In spite of the housing shortage, no one had moved in—naturally enough, in view of the fact that somebody had been murdered there. Both the door and the windows stood open, as if to wash out some half-sensed odor of the mortuary.
There was nothing to see, so they went upstairs to the Obana room.
It was very neat and tidy. The manager, half-fearfully, opened the door of the closet, but it proved to contain no more than a set of bedding. All seemed in order, and yet Shinji felt strangely uncomfortable. Why did the woman with a mole rent this apartment under the name of a dead woman? Why had she now abandoned it? He thought of hermit crabs moving from shell to shell; had she not thus, once more, effected her escape? Would she ever return? Where was she now?