‘I am, however, a scientist,’ Yukawa continued. ‘If I’m presented with one theory that feels off for psychological reasons, and another theory that is physically impossible, though it might give me some pause, I’d have to choose the former. Of course, if there were some way to pull off a timed release of poison into the kettle other than the one I came up with, that would be a different matter.’ Yukawa poured tap water into the coffeemaker. ‘I wonder if coffee made with mineral water really tastes different.’
‘I understand it has less to do with taste than it does with health. Apparently, the wife occasionally used tap water when her husband wasn’t looking. I might’ve mentioned this, but Hiromi also admitted to using tap water when she made coffee on Sunday morning.’
‘So ultimately, the only one really using mineral water was the victim.’
‘Which is why we originally assumed the bottled water had been poisoned,’ Utsumi said.
‘But you had to abandon that idea when the lab results came up negative.’
‘Just because they didn’t find anything doesn’t mean there’s a zero percent chance the bottled water was poisoned. Some people wash out plastic bottles before recycling them. The lab admitted this could be the cause of the negative results.’
‘People wash out bottles of tea and juice, sure,’ Yukawa said. ‘But bottles of water?’
‘Habits are hard to break.’
‘Well, that’s true enough. But this would make our killer an extremely lucky person – to have the victim erase the evidence for them.’
‘Assuming the wife was the killer, that is,’ Utsumi said, glancing at Yukawa. ‘Unless you object to that kind of deductive reasoning?’
A wry smile came to Yukawa’s lips. ‘I don’t mind. We occasionally use hypotheses in my line of work … though most of them get thrown out pretty quickly. Is there some benefit to supposing that the wife was the killer?’
‘It was the wife who told us that Mr Mashiba only used bottled water. Detective Kusanagi thinks she wouldn’t have told us that if she poisoned the water, but I think exactly the opposite. If she assumed we would eventually find poison in one of the bottles, she might have told us in advance to deflect suspicion. But in the end, we didn’t find any poison. That left me confused, to be honest. If she was the killer and she did use some method to poison the water in the kettle, what reason could she possibly have for telling the police that Mr Mashiba only used bottled water? It got me thinking. Maybe she expected us to find poison in the empties?’
While Utsumi was talking, a grim look came over Yukawa’s face. He was staring at the steam coming from the coffeemaker. ‘Do you think she might not have expected her husband to wash the bottles after using them?’ he asked.
‘If I were she, I might not have. I would’ve expected them to find a bottle with poison in it on the scene. But Mr Mashiba used all of the poisoned water in the bottle when he made his coffee. Then, while he was waiting for the water to boil, he washed the bottle clean. And because she didn’t expect that, she tried to stay one step ahead of the police by suggesting that the killer had poisoned the bottled water. When you think of it that way, it all makes sense.’
Yukawa nodded, pushing his glasses up with the tip of his finger. ‘There is a certain logic to it.’
‘I understand there are a lot of problems with the theory, but nothing that keeps it from being a real possibility.’
‘I agree. Still, I wonder if there’s a way to prove your hypothesis.’
‘There isn’t, unfortunately,’ Utsumi said, chewing her lip.
Yukawa removed the pot from the coffeemaker. He poured the coffee into two mugs and offered one to Utsumi.
She thanked him and accepted the mug.
‘You two aren’t in cahoots, are you?’ Yukawa said abruptly.
‘Huh?’ Utsumi blinked.
‘You and Kusanagi. You aren’t working together to drag me into this, are you?’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Because the two of you are doing such a good job at piquing my intellectual curiosity, even though I’d decided not to get involved in another police investigation. And you even threw in a tantalizing dash of spice to seal the deal: the prospect of seeing whether Kusanagi finds true love.’ Yukawa chuckled and sipped his coffee, savouring every drop.
FIFTEEN
The tea shop and café ‘Kuzay’ was located on the first floor of an office building in Odenmacho, a corner of the Nihonbashi district in eastern Tokyo. Not far from Suitengu Avenue and its rows of bustling financial institutions, it was the perfect spot for an office lady’s lunchtime outing.
Kusanagi walked in through the glass doors and up to the sales counter. He had heard that the store stocked over fifty varieties of tea, and sure enough, there they were, all individually labelled and sorted into neat rows. Behind the counter was a little tea room. Even at the relatively quiet hour of four in the afternoon, he saw a few customers scattered around the café, sipping tea and reading newspapers. One or two were dressed in company uniforms. Male customers were definitely in the minority.
A diminutive waitress in white approached. ‘Just one of you?’ she asked with a plainly artificial smile. Kusanagi guessed he didn’t have the look of the regular clientele.
He nodded and the waitress showed him to a table against the wall, her smile still intact.
The menu was a long list of teas, none of which Kusanagi had even heard of before yesterday. He now had a passing familiarity with several of the varieties and had even sampled a few. This was his fourth tea shop so far.
He called over the waitress and ordered a chai. He knew from a conversation at one of the previous cafés that it was made by steeping Assam tea leaves in milk, and had decided that he rather liked this combination. He could stand having another cup.
‘I was wondering,’ Kusanagi said to the waitress, pulling out his business card and showing it to her, ‘if it might be possible for me to speak with the manager briefly?’
One look at the card and the waitress’s smile evaporated. Kusanagi hastily waved his hand. ‘Don’t worry, it’s nothing serious,’ he said. ‘I just need to ask about one of your customers.’
‘I’ll go and ask.’
‘Thanks.’ Kusanagi was about to ask whether it was all right for him to smoke when he spotted the no smoking sign on the opposite wall.
He took another look around the tea room. The atmosphere was quiet and pleasantly relaxed. There was enough space between the tables that two people on a date wouldn’t have to worry about other patrons overhearing a conversation. He could picture Yoshitaka Mashiba coming to a place like this. Nonetheless, Kusanagi kept his expectations low. The other three tea rooms he’d already visited were practically carbon-copy versions of this one.
Moments later, a woman wearing a black vest over a white shirt was standing by the detective’s table, a nervous look on her face. She wasn’t wearing much make-up, and her hair was tied in a knot at the back of her head. Kusanagi guessed she was in her mid-thirties.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Hi.’ Kusanagi smiled. ‘Detective Kusanagi with the Metropolitan Police. I’m sorry, your name was?’
‘Hamada.’
‘Thanks for coming out to talk with me. I promise not to take up too much of your time. Please, sit down.’ Kusanagi indicated the chair across from him as he pulled out a photograph of Yoshitaka from inside his jacket. ‘I was wondering if you ever saw this man at your establishment? This pertains to an ongoing investigation, but if he came here, it would have been about two years ago.’
Mrs Hamada took the photo from him and looked at it for a while before shrugging. ‘He looks familiar, but I can’t say for sure. We have a lot of customers here, and I don’t make a habit of staring at them.’
It was the same answer he had got at the other three places.
‘Right. I’m guessing he came here with a woman …’ Kusanagi added, on the off chance that it might help.
> She smiled and shrugged again. ‘We have a lot of couples here,’ she said, laying the picture back down on the table.
Kusanagi nodded and smiled again, a little thinly. He wasn’t exactly disappointed – he hadn’t expected much more. But the constant dead ends were getting a little tiresome.
‘Was that all you wanted to know?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
The manager stood and walked away just as the waitress arrived with Kusanagi’s tea. She was about to set it down on the table when she noticed the photograph and her hand stopped.
‘Oh, sorry.’ Kusanagi picked up the picture.
The waitress stood there, cup and saucer still in hand, looking at him. She blinked.
‘Yes?’ Kusanagi prompted her.
‘Is that the customer you came to ask about?’ she asked with apparent reluctance.
Kusanagi’s eyes widened, and he turned the photograph towards her so she could get a better look. ‘You know him?’
‘Yes – only as a customer, though.’
Now the manager returned; she’d been hovering nearby, and she had overheard the conversation. ‘Really?’ she asked the waitress. ‘You know him?’
‘I’m pretty sure it’s him,’ the waitress said. ‘He came in several times.’ Though there was still some hesitation in her voice, the girl seemed confident in her memory.
‘Do you mind if I speak with her a moment?’ Kusanagi asked Mrs Hamada.
‘Yes, of course,’ the manager quickly replied, turning to greet a newly arrived customer.
Kusanagi invited the waitress to sit down across from him. ‘When did you see this man?’ he asked.
‘I think the first time was about three years ago. I had just started working here, and I didn’t know all the teas yet. He got impatient with me. That’s why I remember him.’
‘Was he alone?’
‘No, he always came with his wife.’
‘His wife? What did she look like?’
‘Pretty, with long hair. I thought she might not be entirely Japanese – maybe Eurasian?’
Not Ayane Mashiba then, Kusanagi thought. Ayane was pretty, but there was no mistaking her for anything other than pure Japanese. In any case, three years ago was well before Mashiba had met her.
‘How old did she look?’
‘Oh, early thirties. Maybe a little older.’
‘Did they say they were married?’
‘Well …’ The waitress frowned, thinking. ‘Maybe I just assumed they were. They certainly looked like a married couple. They were very close … they often came in after going shopping.’
‘Do you remember anything else about the woman? Any little detail would be helpful.’
A worried look came into the girl’s eyes. ‘Well, this might’ve just been another assumption of mine, but …’ she began slowly. ‘I think she was a painter.’
‘A painter … Like an artist?’
She nodded, looking up at him. ‘She brought a sketchbook with her one time … or something like that, anyhow. It was in a case about this size.’ She spread her hands about sixty centimetres apart. ‘It was square and flat.’
‘But you never saw inside it?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ she replied, looking down.
Kusanagi recalled that Hiromi Wakayama had told him one of Yoshitaka’s exes was involved in publishing. If she was a painter, maybe she published books of her artwork. But that didn’t fit with what Hiromi had said about Yoshitaka not wanting to give his opinion of her books. Looking over a collection of drawings or paintings couldn’t have been that onerous a task.
‘Anything else you noticed?’ Kusanagi asked.
The waitress shook her head, then shot him a curious look. ‘Were they not married?’
‘I don’t think so, but why?’
‘Well, I don’t remember all the details,’ she said, putting a hand to her forehead, ‘but I have the feeling they talked about kids – not their own kids, but about wanting to have kids. At least, I think that was them. Or, I don’t know … I might be getting them mixed up with another couple.’
Bingo. She wasn’t confused. The couple had definitely been Yoshitaka Mashiba and his girlfriend of the time. A lead, finally. Kusanagi let himself get a little excited.
He thanked the waitress and let her go, reaching out for his cup of chai. It had gone cold, but the blend of spice and sweet milk was sublime.
He drank half the cup, considering how he might track down Mashiba’s painter. Then his mobile phone rang. He checked the display and saw with some surprise that it was Yukawa. He kept his voice low as he answered, not wanting to bother any of the other customers. ‘Kusanagi speaking.’
‘It’s me. You good to talk?’
‘Yeah. I’ll have to keep my voice down, but how could I refuse a rare call from you? What’s up?’
‘Got something I wanted to talk to you about. Any time today?’
‘I can make time, if it’s that important. What’s this about?’
‘I’ll save the details for when we meet, but suffice to say, it’s about your current case.’
Kusanagi sighed. ‘You and Utsumi got some secret plan brewing again?’
‘If it were a secret, would I be calling you? So do you want to meet or not?’
Arrogant bastard, Kusanagi thought with a dry chuckle. ‘Fine. Where do you want me?’
‘I’ll leave that to you. Just somewhere smoke-free, if you don’t mind,’ Yukawa said, his tone suggesting that it was irrelevant whether Kusanagi minded or not.
They met in a coffee shop near Shinagawa station, close to the hotel where Ayane was staying. Kusanagi planned to wrap up the talk with Yukawa quickly so he could go and ask her about the painter ex.
He found Yukawa already there, sitting at the back of the no smoking section, reading a magazine. Despite the fact that winter was around the corner, the physicist was wearing a short-sleeved shirt. A black leather jacket rested on the chair next to him.
Kusanagi walked over to his table and stood beside it. Yukawa didn’t look up.
‘What are you reading so intently?’ the detective asked, pulling out a chair.
Yukawa tapped his magazine with his finger. ‘It’s an article about dinosaurs. They’re talking about using CAT scan technology to analyze fossils.’
‘A science magazine, then,’ Kusanagi said, secretly disappointed that he hadn’t managed to catch Yukawa unawares. ‘So what’s so great about CAT scanning dinosaur bones?’
‘Not bones. Fossils,’ Yukawa said, finally looking up. He adjusted his glasses with one finger.
‘What’s the difference? Aren’t all dinosaur fossils bones?’
Yukawa’s eyes narrowed with mirth. ‘That’s what I like about you. You never defy expectations. You always say exactly what I think you’re going to say.’
‘Your point being that I’m an idiot.’
A waiter approached, and the detective ordered a tomato juice.
‘An unusual choice,’ Yukawa said. ‘Watching your health?’
‘So what if I don’t feel like tea or coffee right now? Cut to the chase. What’s this all about?’
‘I would’ve been happy to talk about fossils a bit more, but fine.’ Yukawa lifted his coffee cup. ‘Did you hear what Forensics had to say about my poisoning idea?’
‘I did. Doing anything with gelatin would’ve left traces, meaning the possibility such a trick was used in this case is zero. I guess even the great Galileo makes mistakes sometimes.’
‘It’s not very scientific to say things like “absolutely” and “zero possibility”. It’s also rather unorthodox to say someone made a mistake when they’ve only presented a hypothesis that proved to be incorrect. But I’ll forgive you on the grounds that you’re not a scientist.’
‘If you want to be a sore loser, you could at least be a little more straightforward about it.’
‘I don’t see how I’ve lost anything. Disproving a hypo -thesis is progress. It narrows our options b
y closing off a possible path of entry for the poison into the coffee.’
Kusanagi’s tomato juice arrived, complete with straw. He left the straw on the table and gulped it down. The sharp taste of the juice stung his tongue after all that tea.
‘But there’s only one path of entry,’ Kusanagi said. ‘Some -one put the poison in the kettle. Either Hiromi Waka yama, or if it wasn’t she, someone else Yoshitaka Mashiba invited in on Sunday.’
‘So you deny the possibility that the poison was mixed in with the water?’
Kusanagi’s mouth curled upward at the corners. ‘I make it a policy to believe what Forensics and the labs tell me. They found no poison in any of the bottles. That means it wasn’t in the water.’
‘Utsumi thinks the bottles might’ve been washed out.’
‘Yeah, I heard about that. She thinks the victim washed the bottle out himself. Problem is, people don’t wash out bottles of water. I’d be willing to put money on that.’
‘But you have to agree there’s a possibility he did?’
Kusanagi snorted. ‘Not a bet I’d like to make. But if that’s the way you like to play, by all means. I’m more of a sure-thing kind of guy myself.’
‘I’ll admit your current path of investigation is more of a sure thing. But remember, there are always exceptions. In science, it’s important to cover everything.’ Yukawa shot the detective a serious look. ‘I have a request.’
‘Yeah?’
‘I’d like to see the Mashiba house again. Think you can get me inside? I know you have a key.’
Kusanagi raised an eyebrow at the eccentric physicist. ‘What are you going to look at? Didn’t Utsumi show you everything the other day?’
‘Yes, but my viewpoint’s changed since then.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Call it a shift in my thinking. Maybe I did make a mistake, after all. I’d like to know for sure.’
Kusanagi tapped a finger on the table. ‘You mind being more specific?’
‘I’ll tell you once we’re there, if I find that I did, indeed, make an error. It’s better for both of us that way.’
Kusanagi leaned back in his chair and sighed deeply. ‘What are you up to, Yukawa? This is some deal you’ve made with Utsumi, isn’t it?’