‘Is something wrong?’ Kazunari asked, a suspicious look in his eyes.
‘No,’ Sasagaki said waving his hand. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘I’m sorry, that phone call really took us off track,’ Kazunari said, stretching in his seat. ‘Please, go on with your story.’
‘Right, where was I?’
‘You were talking about motives,’ Kazunari said.
‘Ah, right,’ Sasagaki said, sitting up straight and taking a deep breath.
Saturday afternoon was like an air pocket, a little bubble of tranquillity protected from the rest of the world. Mika was in her room listening to music and reading magazines as she always had before things changed. An empty teacup and a saucer with a bit of cookie left on it stood on the bedside table. Taeko had brought them in for her about twenty minutes earlier.
‘I’m heading out for a bit, Mika,’ Taeko had said. ‘You’re in charge.’
‘You’ll lock the door, right?’
‘Of course.’
‘Fine. Bring a key, ’cause I won’t answer even if you ring,’ Mika had said, snuggling under the covers of her bed and opening a fresh magazine.
Mika was all alone in the big house. Her father was out playing golf and Yukiho was at work. Masahiro had gone off to their grandparents’ for the night. After her mother died, Mika was often left to her own devices at home. It felt lonely a bit at first but these days she preferred it to company, especially if it involved being around Yukiho.
She was just getting up to swap in a fresh CD when she heard the phone ring in the hallway. Mika frowned. She welcomed calls from her friends but she doubted this was one of those. There were three lines in the house: one for her father, one for Yukiho, and the last one was for everyone to use. She’d been asking her father for her own line for some time now but hadn’t made much progress.
Mika went out into the hallway to pick up the cordless phone from its cradle on the wall. ‘Shinozuka residence.’
‘Hello? Is a Mika Shinozuka there?’ It was a man’s voice.
‘Speaking,’ she said.
‘I have an overnight delivery here from a Miss Tomoko Hishikawa? Would it be all right to bring that by now?’
That’s strange, Mika thought. The delivery people had never called in advance before, but then again, she’d never received an overnight delivery before. She didn’t wonder long, however, as her excitement over the prospect of something from her friend Tomoko drove all concern out of her mind. She hadn’t seen her since Tomoko’s father got transferred last spring and the family had moved down to Nagoya.
‘Sure,’ she said. The delivery man told her he’d be right over.
Several minutes later the doorbell rang. Waiting in the living room, Mika picked up the intercom. The security camera showed a man dressed in a delivery uniform. He was carrying a box about the size of an orange crate.
‘Yes?’ she spoke into the intercom.
‘Package for Miss Shinozuka?’
‘Come in,’ Mika said, pressing the button to undo the latch on the gate.
She went out to the entrance hall and opened the door. The man with the box was standing right outside.
‘Er, where should I put this?’ he asked. ‘It’s a little heavy.’
‘Right here is fine,’ Mika said, pointing down at the floor of the entrance hall.
The man put the box down. He was wearing dark glasses, and a hat with a brim that went low over his forehead. ‘Can I get your signature here?’ He handed her a pen and took out a small sheet of paper.
‘Where do I sign?’ she asked, leaning forward.
‘Right here,’ the man said, also taking a step forward.
Mika was about to put her pen to the paper when the slip suddenly disappeared.
‘Huh?’ she said as something soft pressed over her mouth. Mika gasped in surprise and felt the world slip away.
Time seemed to be slowing down and speeding up in fits and starts. There was a ringing in her ears but only when she was awake enough to hear it. She kept fading out, like a radio with bad reception. She couldn’t move at all. Her arms and legs didn’t feel like her own. Everything seemed dreamlike and unreal, except for the pain. That was real. It took her a while before she realised the pain was coming from a specific place inside her body. It was so strong her entire body felt numb with it.
There was a man immediately in front of her. She could see his face clearly. He was breathing on her. Hot, quick breaths.
I’m being raped.
Part of her understood this, yet another part of her felt as if she were watching the horror unfold from a great distance. And there was another part of herself, a higher level of consciousness, wondering why she was so spaced out, why she wasn’t reacting.
Then fear such as she’d never known before gripped her in its clutches. It was the fear of falling into a deep hole, of not being sure what was at the bottom. The fear of not knowing how long this hell would go on.
She wasn’t entirely sure when it ended. She’d fallen unconscious at some point.
It was her vision that came back first. She saw flowerpots in a line. Cactuses – the ones that Yukiho had brought from her home in Osaka.
Next her hearing returned. She heard a car somewhere nearby and the sound of the wind blowing. With a start, she realised she was outside, in the garden. She was lying on the grass. She could see the net that her father had set up for practising golf.
Mika sat up. She hurt all over. She was cut and bruised and there was another, dull pain near her lower belly. It felt like something had scooped out her insides. The air was cold on her skin. Only then did she realise she was mostly naked. What clothes remained on her had been torn to rags. Her other consciousness was still there too, coldly observing, upset that her favourite shirt had been ruined.
She was still wearing her skirt, but she didn’t have to look to know that someone had taken off her panties. She looked into the distance and saw the reddening sky.
‘Mika!’ a voice called out. She turned her head slowly to see Yukiho running toward her. Mika stared, lost in a dream.
Nothing seemed real. Nothing at all.
Noriko struggled to open the front door. The plastic handles of the convenience-store bag were digging into her fingers with the weight of a big bottle of mineral water and bag of rice. She stopped herself from saying, ‘I’m home.’
Noriko put her bag down in front of the fridge and opened the door to the back room. It was dark, the air still and cold. In the back corner, the white computer case seemed to float in the dim light. She missed the glow of the monitor, the slight whirr of the fans.
Noriko returned to the kitchen and started to put away her shopping: veggies in the fridge, frozen stuff in the freezer, everything else on the shelf. Before she closed the refrigerator door, she pulled out a can of beer.
Making her way to the living room, she turned on the television and switched on the electric heater. She picked up a throw rug that lay in a ball in the corner and draped it over her legs while she waited for the room to warm up. There was a game show on TV pitting various comedians against each other. The one with the worst score would be forced to bungee-jump off a bridge. It wasn’t the kind of show she would have been caught dead watching before but now she found she liked them because they were so ridiculous. She already had enough to think about, sitting alone in her cold, empty apartment.
She pulled back the tab on the beer and drank, feeling the coolness flow from her throat to her belly. It gave her goosebumps and she shivered. It felt good. She kept a supply of beer in the fridge in the winter. He liked to drink beer most when it was cold. He said it kept him sharp. Noriko hugged her knees to her chest. I should eat dinner, she thought. Nothing special. She could just warm up the stuff she’d bought at the convenience store. But even that seemed like far too much trouble. Inertia was working against her. She didn’t even feel hungry.
She turned up the volume. Too much quiet made the room feel colder. She ed
ged a little closer to the heater.
I know what my problem is. I’m lonely.
She had loved being alone before, taking a break from the pressure of human contact. She’d even breathed a sigh of relief when she cancelled her contract with the matchmaking service. But now that she knew what it felt like to be with someone she loved she couldn’t go back. It just wasn’t the same. She took another swig of her beer and tried not to think about him, but when she closed her eyes, there he was, sitting at his computer.
Her beer was finished. She crushed the empty can between her hands and put it on the table next to two others just like it – one from yesterday, and one from the day before. She’d recently given up trying to keep the house clean.
I’ll microwave something, she thought, it’s the least I can do. She was just standing up when the doorbell rang.
She opened the door to see an older man standing outside in a rumpled coat. He had broad shoulders and a sharp look in his eyes. Noriko immediately guessed his line of work and a bad feeling began to form in the pit of her stomach.
‘Noriko Kurihara?’ the man asked. He had an Osaka accent.
‘Yes?’
‘The name’s Sasagaki.’ He held out a business card, blank except for a phone number and his name. ‘I was a detective with Osaka police until last spring.’
Noriko nodded, unsurprised.
‘I was hoping I could ask you some questions, if you don’t mind?’
‘Right now?’
‘If you don’t mind. Maybe at the café down the street?’
Noriko frowned. She didn’t feel like going out, but she didn’t relish the idea of inviting a stranger in, either. ‘Can I ask what this is about?’ she asked.
‘A few things, including your visit to the Imaeda Detective Agency.’
Noriko gasped.
‘So you did go to Mr Imaeda’s office in Shinjuku? That’s the first thing I wanted to check on,’ the former detective said with a pleasant smile.
Her unease began to spread, but it came with a glimmer of hope. Maybe this man would know where Akiyoshi had gone. She hesitated for a few more seconds before opening the door wider. ‘Why don’t you just come in?’
‘You’re sure?’
‘It’s fine. Pardon the mess.’
The detective stepped in. He had an old man smell to him.
Noriko had gone to the Imaeda Detective Agency in September, roughly two weeks after Akiyoshi suddenly vanished from her life. There hadn’t been an accident, she knew that. He’d left his set of keys in an envelope in the mailbox. He’d also left most of his things behind, not that there was much to begin with.
The largest of his possessions was the computer, but Noriko had no idea how to use it. After debating with herself for some time, she finally invited over a journalist friend who was good with computers and had her check to see if there was anything on it. She found nothing. According to her, the hard drive had been wiped completely clean and all the floppy disks were blank.
Noriko racked her brains, trying to think of some way she could find out where Akiyoshi might have gone. The only thing she could remember was the empty file she had found in his duffel bag that night, the one with the name of the Imaeda Detective Agency on it. She looked in the phone book and found it right away. Noriko paid a visit to Shinjuku the following day.
Except the agency had been a dead end. The young woman there had told her there was no record of anyone named Akiyoshi, either as a client or a case. Which made the former detective finding her through the agency very curious indeed.
Sasagaki seemed a little surprised to hear that she had gone to check after a man who had been living with her and suddenly disappeared.
‘It’s odd that he’d have an empty file from the agency like that,’ Sasagaki said when she finished explaining. ‘And you have no idea where he might have gone? Did you contact his friends and family?’
She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t. I don’t know any of them. I don’t really know anything about him.’
‘Interesting,’ Sasagaki said, looking a little taken aback.
‘Um, can I ask what you’re investigating, Mr Sasagaki?’
He hesitated for a moment then said, ‘This may come as a surprise to you, but Mr Imaeda has also gone missing.’
‘What?’
‘Yes. It’s a bit of a long story. I’ve been trying to find out where he went, and haven’t had any luck. Which is why I’m here, grasping at straws as it were.’
‘I see. When did Mr Imaeda go missing?’
‘Last summer, August.’
Noriko thought back and almost gasped out loud. That was right around the time that Akiyoshi had gone out for a night, taking the cyanide with him – the same night he’d come back with the empty file from the Imaeda Detective Agency.
‘Something wrong?’ the former detective asked, his eyes squinting.
‘No, it’s nothing.’ Noriko shook her head.
‘Incidentally,’ Sasagaki said, pulling out a photograph, ‘have you ever seen this man?’
Noriko took the photograph and nearly shouted out loud. He looked younger than when she had met him, but it was Yuichi Akiyoshi, without a doubt.
‘Well?’ Sasagaki asked.
Noriko tried hard to keep her heart from beating out of her chest. Her mind was racing. Should she tell the truth? Why would a former detective be walking around with his picture? Was Akiyoshi a suspect in some crime? Had he killed Imaeda? No…
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know him,’ she said, returning the photo. Her fingertips were trembling and she could feel that her cheeks were red.
Sasagaki stared at her face for a long moment, looking through her. Noriko turned her head away.
‘I see. That’s unfortunate,’ Sasagaki said softly, putting away the photograph. ‘I suppose I should leave.’ He stood. ‘Actually,’ he said after a moment, ‘I wonder if you could show me anything that belonged to Mr Akiyoshi, anything that might help me find him?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Something he left behind, if you don’t mind?’
‘No, not at all.’
Noriko showed Sasagaki into the back room where Akiyoshi’s computer was still sitting.
‘This was his computer?’
‘Yes. He was using it to write a novel.’
‘A novel?’ Sasagaki said, looking over the computer and the desk. ‘You don’t have any photographs of him, do you?’
‘No, I’m sorry. I don’t.’
‘Even a small one is fine. All I have to see is his face.’
‘No, I really don’t have a single photo. I never took one.’
It was the truth. Noriko had wanted to take a photo together several times but Akiyoshi always refused – another reason she had nothing left to remember him by.
Sasagaki nodded, but seemed clearly suspicious. Noriko swallowed.
‘Would you have anything he wrote by hand? A memo, or journal?’