EIGHTEEN
Kusanagi sat on the sofa in the reception area, peering up at a painting of a single rose floating in darkness. The design seemed somehow familiar. Maybe he’d seen it on a bottle of wine once.
‘What are you staring at so intently?’ Kishitani asked. ‘That painting has nothing to do with her. Look. The signature’s a foreign name.’
‘I’m not a complete idiot,’ Kusanagi said, turning away from the painting. The truth was that he hadn’t noticed the signature until Kishitani pointed it out.
The junior detective twisted his head around to look at it again. ‘It’s hard to imagine him hanging onto the work of an ex-girlfriend. If it was me, I’d throw all that crap out.’
‘If it was you. Maybe not if it was Yoshitaka Mashiba.’
‘You think? We’re not just talking about keeping something at home, in private. This is the company, a public space. I dunno. It would bug me, seeing it up there all the time.’
‘Maybe he didn’t display it.’
‘Who would bring a painting to their office if they weren’t going to display it? That seems a little strange to me, too. How would he explain it to an employee who found it?’
‘I don’t know … He could just say he got it from someone.’
‘That’s even stranger. If someone gives you a present as a gift, it’s customary to hang the thing up. Who knows when they might visit?’
‘Will you button it, Kishitani? Look, I don’t think Yoshi -taka Mashiba was the type to worry about that kind of thing.’
Just then a woman wearing a white suit emerged from a door next to the reception desk. She wore thin-rimmed glasses beneath short-cropped hair. ‘Thank you for waiting,’ she said. ‘Detective Kusanagi …?’ Her gaze flickered between the two men.
‘I’m Kusanagi,’ the senior detective said as he rose to his feet. ‘Thanks for meeting us.’
‘Not at all.’ She offered her card, which introduced her as Eiko Yamamoto, head of PR. ‘I understand you wanted to go through some of the former CEO’s private effects?’
‘Yes, if that’s possible.’
‘Certainly. This way, please.’
She led them to a room with a plate on the door that read ‘meeting room’.
‘You’re not keeping them in the CEO’s office?’ Kusanagi asked.
‘The new CEO has already moved in. I’m sorry he’s out today, or he’d want to greet you personally.’
‘No worries. Glad to hear you’ve got a new CEO.’
‘Yes. We got the office ready right after the funeral. Everything work-related we left in place, but all of Mr Mashiba’s personal effects we moved here. We were planning on sending them to his home, and we haven’t thrown anything out. That was the advice of Mr Ikai, our legal counsel.’
Ms Yamamoto spoke without a hint of a smile. Her tone was guarded, as if she was choosing each word with care. The message was clear: Our CEO’s death had nothing to do with the company, so why should you suspect us of destroying evidence?
Tan cardboard boxes of varying sizes had been stacked inside the meeting room. In addition, Kusanagi spotted some golf clubs, a trophy, and a mechanical foot massager. No paintings in sight.
‘Can we take a look through this?’ Kusanagi asked.
‘Of course, take your time. I can bring you something to drink, if you’d like. Any preferences?’
‘No, that’s fine. I appreciate it.’
‘Very well,’ Ms Yamamoto said. She left the room with a steely look on her face.
Kishitani watched the door close and shrugged. ‘Not a very warm welcome, was it?’
‘Do you get a lot of warm welcomes usually, Detective? Just be thankful she’s letting us in here.’
‘You’d think she’d be a little more eager to help resolve this case as quickly as possible, for the company’s sake if nothing else. Or, I don’t know, she could at least smile a little. She was like a robot.’
‘As far as the company’s concerned, as long as the news-worthiness of the investigation erodes quickly, they don’t care whether it’s solved or not. Our very presence in the building is the problem. Just picture trying to rally behind your new CEO, only to have to deal with the police again. Would you be smiling if you were her? Anyway, enough chitchat.’ Kusanagi slipped on a pair of latex gloves. ‘Let’s get going.’
Kusanagi was actually looking forward to the day’s task. Any semblance of progress was enough to distract him from his main concern: that all they had to go on was a suggestion that one of Yoshitaka’s exes might have been a painter. They didn’t even know what kind of paintings she might have done.
‘I don’t think we can say she was an artist just because she carried around a sketchbook,’ Kishitani opined, opening the nearest box. ‘She could be a fashion designer, or even a comic book artist.’
‘True enough,’ Kusanagi admitted. ‘Just keep all the possibilities in your head while we go through this stuff. Maybe she’s in furniture or architecture. You think of those?’
‘Right,’ Kishitani muttered.
‘I’ve got to say, you don’t sound very enthusiastic.’
The junior detective gave Kusanagi a sorrowful look. ‘It’s not about enthusiasm. It’s just, I don’t get it. We haven’t found a single shred of evidence suggesting that anyone other than Hiromi Wakayama came to the Mashiba house on the day of the murder.’
‘I know that. But can we say for sure that no one else was there?’
‘Well …’
‘If no one did come, how did the killer get the poison into the kettle? Tell me that.’
Kishitani glared at Kusanagi in silence.
‘You can’t, right?’ Kusanagi continued. ‘Of course you can’t. Not even Yukawa, the great Detective Galileo, has a clue. That’s because the answer is too simple. There wasn’t any trick. The killer got into the house, poisoned the kettle, and left. That’s all. And I think I’ve already explained why we can’t find any evidence of who it might have been.’
‘Because it was someone Mr Mashiba didn’t want anyone else to know about, so the visit was a secret.’
‘You have been paying attention. And when a man wants to conceal who he’s been meeting with, our first step is to check for women. That’s Investigation 101. Anything wrong with what I’m saying?’
‘Nope.’ Kishitani shook his head.
‘Then if you’re down with the programme, let’s get back to work. We’re not made of time here.’
Kishitani nodded and turned back to his cardboard box in silence.
Kusanagi sighed inwardly. What are you so worked up about? he asked himself. He knew he shouldn’t let something like a simple question from his partner get under his skin, but somehow it had released a wave of irritation.
The problem, he realized, was that he’d begun to wonder whether there was any point at all to what they were doing. He was growing increasingly uncertain that checking into Yoshitaka Mashiba’s past relationships would turn up anything useful.
This kind of uncertainty was typical of most investigations. A detective who worried about hitting dead ends should consider a change of profession. But at the same time, he knew that his present unease stemmed from a different concern altogether.
He was afraid that if they didn’t find anything, they would be forced to turn to Ayane Mashiba as the last suspect. He didn’t care what Utsumi and Kishitani thought. Kusanagi was worried about what would happen when he started suspecting her.
He was acutely aware of the sensation he felt whenever he was in her presence – a kind of high-strung tension, like a knife pointed at his own throat. It was a challenge, an insistence to focus on that moment alone. It was also a feeling of immediacy that made the blood rise to his face, and tugged at his heart. But when he wondered what it meant, a picture came into his mind that made him even more uneasy.
Kusanagi had met plenty of good, admirable people who’d been turned into murderers by circumstance. There was something about them he always
seemed to sense, an aura that they shared. Somehow, their transgression freed them from the confines of a mortal existence, allowing them to perceive the great truths of the universe. At the same time, it meant they had one foot in forbidden territory. They straddled the line between sanity and madness.
This was what Kusanagi felt when he was near Ayane. He could try to deny it, but his sixth sense as a detective knew better. So I’m investigating dead ends in order to silence my own doubts. Kusanagi shook his head. It was his knowledge of his own wilful stupidity that had brought on his irritation.
An hour passed. They had found nothing suggesting any painters – or anyone in a profession requiring a sketchbook, for that matter. Nearly all the things inside the boxes were gifts or commemorative knickknacks of one kind or another.
‘What do you think this is?’ Kishitani held up a small stuffed toy. At first glance, it resembled a beetroot, complete with green leaves on top.
‘It’s a beetroot.’
‘Yes! But it’s also an alien.’
‘How so?’
‘Look at this,’ Kishitani said, placing the beetroot leaf-side down on the table. Kusanagi noticed there was something like a face on the upper white tip, and if you thought of the leaves as legs, it did resemble one of those jellyfishlike aliens from the cartoons.
‘Incredible,’ Kusanagi deadpanned.
‘There’s an instruction card,’ the junior detective went on. ‘Our friend here is Beetron from the Planet Beetilex. Look at the copyright – it was made by Mashiba’s company.’
‘Okay, I’ll bite. Why are you showing me this?’
‘Wouldn’t the person who designed this have used a sketchbook?’
Kusanagi blinked and looked at the toy more closely. ‘Huh. Definitely a possibility.’
‘Let’s ask the friendly Ms Yamamoto,’ Kishitani said, standing.
The PR director arrived shortly after and nodded when she looked at the toy. ‘Yes, we did have that made a while ago. It’s the mascot for an online anime we produced.’
‘Online anime?’ Kusanagi prompted.
‘Something we had up on our home page until about three years ago. Would you like to see it?’
‘Very much,’ Kusanagi said, not entirely facetiously.
They went into an office where Ms Yamamoto began opening files on the computer until the screen was filled with the opening titles to the Internet anime Beetron, Go! She pressed play, and the anime ran for about a minute. The show featured the Beetron character stepping through the paces of a largely forgettable story.
‘So this isn’t online anymore?’ Kishitani asked.
‘It was popular for a bit – thus that stuffed toy – but sales weren’t so good, and eventually it was cancelled.’
‘Did one of your employees design the character?’ Kusanagi asked.
‘No, actually. The designer posted some illustrations of Beetron on a blog and developed a small following, so we commissioned the anime.’
‘Was the designer a professional illustrator?’
‘No, a schoolteacher, actually. Not even an art teacher.’
‘Huh.’
This was starting to sound like a definite possibility to Kusanagi. Tatsuhiko Ikai had insisted that Mashiba would never have let work relationships develop into romance, but he could see it working the other way around.
‘Ah,’ Kishitani said, as he typed on the computer. ‘Looks like another dead end, Detective. This isn’t her.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because it’s a him. Look at the artist’s profile.’
Kusanagi stared at the screen and frowned.
‘Guess we should’ve asked ahead of time,’ Kishitani said. ‘I guess guys draw cute designs, too.’
‘Yeah, I assumed it was a girl myself,’ Kusanagi said, scratching his head.
‘Excuse me,’ Ms Yamamoto said, inserting herself into the conversation. ‘Is there some problem with the artist being a man?’
‘No, it has to do with our investigation,’ Kusanagi explained. ‘We’re looking for someone who might provide us with the lead we need to close the case – and that someone had to be a woman.’
‘By “case”, you are talking about Mr Mashiba’s murder, yes?’
‘Of course.’
‘And the Internet anime has something to do with that?’
‘I can’t go into the details, but suffice to say that if the creator of the anime were a woman, it might have had something to do with Mr Mashiba’s death … but since this gentleman is clearly not a woman …’ Kusanagi sighed and looked over at his partner. ‘I think we’re done here for today.’
‘Yep,’ Kishitani agreed, his shoulders sagging.
Ms Yamamoto saw them to the front door, where Kusanagi turned and thanked her. ‘Sorry to interrupt your day – and apologies in advance if we need to come back for anything.’
‘Not at all. You’re welcome anytime,’ she said, a curious look on her face, one markedly different from her cold demeanour when they first arrived.
The detectives started to walk away; but they had only taken a couple of steps when Ms Yamamoto called after them. ‘Detective?’
Kusanagi looked around. ‘Yes?’
She trotted over to them and whispered, ‘There’s a lounge on the first floor of the building – could you wait there for just a moment? There is something I wanted to talk to you about, but not here.’
‘Does this concern the case?’
‘I’m not sure. It has to do with the beetroot alien, actually. About the creator.’
Kusanagi and Kishitani exchanged glances. ‘Of course.’
‘I’ll be down as soon as I can,’ she told them, then disappeared back inside the office.
The lounge on the first floor was spacious. Kusanagi drank coffee and glared at the no smoking sign on the wall.
‘What do you think she wants to talk to us about?’ Kishitani asked.
‘Who knows? I can’t imagine some amateur illustrator – a guy – having anything to do with anything, but we’ll see.’
Ms Yamamoto arrived quickly. She glanced around before holding up an envelope about half the size of a standard sheet of paper.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ she said, sitting down across from them. The waitress came over but Ms Yamamoto waved her off.
Clearly not planning on staying long, Kusanagi thought. ‘What did you want to talk to us about?’
She looked around again, then leaned forward. ‘You have to understand, I really can’t have this released to the public. If for some reason you have to let it out … please don’t tell anyone you heard it from me.’
Kusanagi peered at her intently. He wanted to tell her that whether or not it became public knowledge depended on the nature of the information, but he also didn’t want to jeopardize their chances of hearing about a possible lead. So he kept quiet. It wouldn’t be his first time breaking a promise, and he would cross that bridge when he came to it.
He nodded. ‘Okay, the word stays here.’
Ms Yamamoto wet her lips. ‘That beetroot alien you were looking at before? Well, the designer was a woman.’
‘Huh?’ Kusanagi said, his eyes widening. ‘Really?’ He straightened in his chair. This might actually be something worth hearing.
‘Yes. For various reasons, we had to lie on the web page.’
Kishitani nodded, beginning to take notes. ‘That’s not so unusual. People’s names, ages, and genders are often falsified online.’
‘Was the bit about him being a teacher also not true?’ Kusanagi asked.
‘No – or rather, the teacher we have featured on our site does actually exist. He was the one writing the blog. But someone else designed the character. She had nothing to do with him at all.’
Wrinkles formed between Kusanagi’s eyebrows, and he rested his elbows on the table. ‘So why all the subterfuge?’
Ms Yamamoto hesitated before saying, ‘Actually, everything was prearranged.’
‘Can you elaborate?’
‘The story I gave you before, about the alien becoming popular on the teacher’s blog, and us making an anime – in fact, it happened the other way around. We planned on producing a character-driven Internet anime first, and as part of our PR strategy, we decided to start the character out on a private blog. Then we started doing things online, search engine optimization and the like, to make sure people saw the blog. Once the character started gaining popularity, we published the story that we had contracted with the blogger to make our show.’
Kusanagi crossed his arms and grunted. ‘Sounds like an awful lot of trouble to go through, if you ask me.’
‘People online respond better to things that seem organic. It was our CEO’s idea.’
Kishitani looked over towards Kusanagi and nodded. ‘She’s right. Everyone likes it when something created by a nobody goes viral like that.’
‘So ultimately,’ Kusanagi said, ‘the designer was one of your employees?’
‘No. We started with a search of relatively unknown manga artists and illustrators. Then we had them submit ideas for character designs, and we picked one we liked: the beetroot alien you saw. We wrote up a nondisclosure agreement with the designer, to keep it a secret, and we had her draw some illustrations to put on our teacher’s blog. She did all the initial work, though we switched to another artist about halfway through. I’m sure it’s obvious by now, but we were also paying the teacher to write his blog.’
‘Quite the show,’ Kusanagi muttered. ‘You weren’t kidding when you said everything had been prearranged.’
‘It takes a real strategy to introduce a new character these days,’ Ms Yamamoto said with a light laugh. ‘Not that ours worked very well.’
‘So who was this illustrator you ended up using?’
‘A children’s book illustrator, originally. She’s had a few books published,’ Ms Yamamoto said, producing a slim volume from the envelope on her lap.