“Stuff like, the police'll never catch her ... She's a minor so they have to protect her ... She hasn't done anything against the law. Same with the courts─even if I bring an action, nobody'll know where she is, so they won't be able to haul her up there, and whatever the judgment, they won't know where to deliver the court papers, so whatever I do it won't have any effect. That's how it is─she's done her homework.”
“I wonder what her mother's doing now?” muttered Shigeko with a frown. Does her mother have no fixed address either?”
“The lawyer said he'd start by finding out about that. Whether the mother knows what Megumi's up to.”
“If her mother sets her straight─especially if she told her that what she's doing is counterproductive─it might help.”
“I doubt she'd listen,” Shinichi said listlessly, utterly without the will to fight.
“They should make her listen!” Yoshie said angrily.
“I can't see that happening.”
“I wonder if there's someone putting Megumi up to all this,” Shigeko murmured.
“Meaning?”
“It's not the sort of thing a high-school girl would normally think up all by herself, is it? Getting Shinichi to sign an application for leniency. The defense counsel can't be responsible, surely, but what if her father is behind it?”
Yoshie's eyes widened. “Hideyuki himself?”
“Yes. After all, Megumi has visiting rights with her father, right?”
“What sort of family are they?” Yoshio clenched her fists. She looked as though she was convinced that this was what had happened. “What a beast he is. He murdered three people without batting an eye. He's nothing but a brute.”
Shigeko glanced sideways at Shinichi. Then she looked down and reached for her glass of water.
“Why can't they just hurry up and execute him?” Yoshie's eyes were red. Her blood vessels had swollen in anger and they could almost see them pumping. “Why do we have to have a trial? We've known from the start that those guys did it. And now the trial's on hold because they requested psychiatric evaluations. What the hell for? And why do we have to stand for that?”
“Auntie, you shouldn't talk like that. You're a teacher, aren't─”
“I know!” Yoshie interrupted him. “I'm only too aware of that! But Shin-chan, doesn't it get to you? They murdered your family, just like that. Just because they wanted money! What gave them the right to do that? What gives them the right to go on living after doing something so terrible? Why does the court just look after their rights?”
“Auntie─”
“Nobody gives a second thought to the victims! ‘Criminals have human rights too, we have to uphold their rights’─they just keep bleating on and on about it as if the murder victims haven't been hurt at all! If the court won't do anything to help us, then I'll just kill the bastards myself, I swear I will!” Yoshie sat there with squared shoulders out of breath, tears rolling from her eyes.
“Of course it gets to me, Auntie,” Shinichi managed to say.
Yoshie looked up in surprise. Then she raised her trembling hands to her mouth. “Oh! I didn't mean to suggest … Shin-chan, I'm sorry!”
Shinichi nodded, but he couldn't look her in the eye. “It does get to me,” he repeated woodenly. “I'll never forgive them. I want to kill them too. I know that won't bring Mom and Dad and my sister back, but still I want to kill them. I can't bear the thought of breathing the same air as them. I wish they didn't exist.”
“Shinichi,” Shigeko shook her head, “That's enough.”
“But it isn't enough,” Shinichi said. “Just killing them isn't enough. That won't settle anything. And Auntie, you know very well why it won't.”
Yoshie paled. “Shin-chan … you're not still worried about that, are you?”
“I'm also responsible,” Shinichi said heavily, as if forcing himself to regurgitate some hard object out of the pit of his stomach. “Even if I kill them, that still remains. It's because I don't know what to do about that that I keep running away.”
“Let's not talk about this anymore,” Shigeko said flatly.
The ice inside Yoshie's glass of water quivered in her grip.
The three left the hotel and were instantly enveloped by the bustle in the street. Shigeko and Shinichi said goodbye to Yoshie and watched her trudge off wearily toward Shin-Ochanomizu Station until she disappeared from sight among the crowds of people.
“I feel like walking for a while,” Shinichi said.
“I was about to say the same.”
Without having any particular destination in mind, they set off in the direction of Akihabara. After a while, Shinichi said, “Shigeko, you've never asked me about it.”
“About what?”
“Why I'm partly responsible for what happened to my family.”
“No, I haven't,” Shigeko said, her face serious. “I decided not to ask you, but wait until you wanted to talk about it.”
Shinichi shoved his hands in his pockets, his elbow brushing against her arm as he did so. They walked on in silence, and little by little began to relax.
“It's really hit my aunt hard,” Shinichi said at length. “She's not the sort of person to say she'll kill anyone. I've never heard her talk like that before.”
“She really was shaken up.”
“If it wasn't for that─I don't mean to be rude, but there's no way she'd ever have agreed to me being taken in by someone she doesn't know from Adam.”
Shigeko laughed. “I see.”
“But then you don't know me from Adam either, do you?”
“So we're even then, eh Shin-chan? Shall we go get you a TV? Or a radio, if you like.” They had almost reached Akihabara Station. Electric Town, with the store walls and windows all plastered with flashy ads and notices, was packed as usual, even on a weekday. “It must feel a bit lonely in your room without one.”
They crossed over to Ishimaru Denki. Shigeko stopped by the wall of TV screens displayed by the entrance. They were all showing the same scene, and people had gathered to watch. It was a news flash. The sound was off, but just watching it was clear what was going on.
“It's that case …” Shinichi said. “They've found a body.”
Shigeko pushed her way through the crush. Shinichi watched her go. Recently she'd been writing up the part of her story about Shinichi's discovery of the arm. She had even arranged to meet Kumi Mizuno. Her plans would probably have to change now this had happened, though.
A picture of a young woman's face came up on the screen, with the name “Mariko Furukawa” in subtitles. That was the woman whose handbag had been found in the park, he recalled. She was very pretty. A nice face, smiling … Suddenly he wondered if the killer would ever be caught. He hoped so, but if they did someone was bound to try and protect him. They'd say that the killer, too, was a victim of society and the dissenting voices would diminish and eventually fizzle out altogether.
The world was full of victims. We're all victims, Shinichi thought. And if that's so, then how on earth were you to know your enemy?
When the news flash came on, Yoshio was minding the shop alone while Kida was out on a delivery.
An unexpected order had suddenly come in from the Kikyotei that they had managed to fill from their stock for the shop, although Kida hadn't stopped grumbling about it. “That old man thinks the whole world revolves around him!” Yoshio had laughed and sent him on his way.
Ever since the caller had been in touch again the week before, the two of them had avoided talking about the investigation and had gone about their daily work as if nothing had happened. Even the police on stakeout in the apartment next door never came up in their conversation. It was easier that way.
There weren't many customers all morning. Yoshio sat at his desk bringing the accounts up to date, then checked the newspaper to see if there was a
ny further news on that other case that had been linked to Okawa Park. Finding nothing, he had just turned to the sports pages when he heard someone enter the shop. It was a housewife from the neighborhood, a regular customer─the one who worked afternoons in the dentist's. Normally she came in alone, but today she had a child with her, a girl of five or six who was busy parking her brightly colored bike with training wheels behind her mother's.
“Good morning,” Yoshio said.
“Morning Pops,” she said brightly, peering into the display case. “Ooh, you've started making ganmodoki again at last!”
“Since yesterday,” Yoshio replied.
“I'll take four, please, and a block of silken tofu.”
As Yoshio washed his hands the little girl finished parking her bike and came in.
“Say hello,” her mother told her.
“Hello,” Yoshio said first with a smile. The little girl fidgeted nervously. “Is she your daughter? It's the first time you've come here together, isn't it?”
“She's my youngest. She's in her last year of kindergarten.”
“What's your name?” Yoshio asked, leaning down toward her.
The girl hid behind her mother. “Don't be so silly,” her mother told her.
“How cute!”
“No! It's no good for girls to be like that these days. How old-fashioned you are, Pops!”
Yoshio hadn't quite finished bagging up the tofu when the phone started ringing. “Go ahead and answer it, we're not in a hurry,” the housewife said amiably.
“Excuse me. I won't be a moment.”
Yoshio rushed back into his office and picked up the phone from the desk. He heard Detective Sakaki's voice on the line.
“Mr. Arima, are you watching the TV?”
Sakaki regularly called Yoshio to see how he was getting on, and sometimes came with him to visit Machiko in the hospital. This time, though, his voice was charged with tension and unusually nervous.
“No, I'm not. What's up?”
“Turn it on if you would. HBS.”
“Has something happened?”
“Didn't the detectives next-door tell you anything?”
“Um, no. Nothing.”
“Well, maybe they don't know yet. Mr. Arima─” Sakaki gulped, and paused a moment. “Mariko's apparently been found.”
Yoshio froze. Without saying anything, he put the receiver down with a clunk and went straight to the living room and switched on the TV to see Mariko's face filling the screen. It was the photo that he'd taken out of an album and given to the police when they'd asked for one. It was from New Years' this year. Only her face was shown, but he recognized the scene right away. She was laughing, and holding a tangerine in one hand, he knew. In the photo he'd taken right after this one, she'd put a segment of the fruit in her mouth and was making a silly face at the camera
“Hey, Pops?” the young housewife called from the shop. “Is something wrong?”
She was a local and of course she knew about Mariko, although she had only once said anything about the case directly to Yoshio. It was just after the Plaza Hotel affair. As she took her change, she'd told him “Keep your spirits up, Pops. You mustn't give in.” Her voice had been brave, and the words “You mustn't give in” were refreshing, inspiring in him a strength that the regular commiserations never could.
Now, however, her voice was trembling a little. The TV screen was visible all the way from the shop, so she'd surmised what the situation was. Yoshio looked at the screen. He listened to the voice of the reporter who was broadcasting. As if to drive the point home, the screen went back to the close-up of Mariko's face. Yoshio slowly got up and went back into the shop.
“Pops …” the housewife murmured. She looked as though she was about to cry, and her little girl was clinging to her back.
“Has your granddaughter been found? It's on the news now, isn't it?”
Yoshio nodded. Then he suddenly stooped forward and supported himself on the counter.
“It's awful,” the housewife said, holding one hand to her forehead. “Just awful.”
With her free hand she felt for her daughter's tiny one and gripped it tightly. The girl looked up at her mother. Then she looked at Yoshio. Then she looked back at her mother and said in a small voice, “Mommy, why are you crying?”
It was later that night, well past 2 AM, that the bones were formally identified as Mariko's. They had been taken to Bokuto Police Station, and Yoshio headed there accompanied by Sakaki.
The fact that they'd been able to access her dental records so quickly was thanks to Sakaki. Soon after Mariko had gone missing, he had casually asked Machiko for the name of her daughter's regular dentist just in case, he explained apologetically, as if he were personally to blame for her body turning up now.
Yoshio shook his head. “I'd already resigned myself to Mariko's fate. I'm glad she's come home. Now we can give her a proper burial.”
Sakaki held his tongue. He didn't believe that Yoshio had already resigned himself to it at all. In fact, Yoshio wasn't sure whether or not he really was resigned to it either. His words had sounded unconvincing, and he felt as though he was treading air. It hadn't really sunk in yet. It just didn't feel real that Mariko was already reduced to bare bones.
When they reached the police station, Mariko's father, Shigeru, was already there. A senior detective was with him.
“Dad,” he said, his face dark. “It's come to this.”
His eyes were bloodshot, and stubble covered his jaw. He'd always had a fast-growing beard. It was now flecked with gray, Yoshio noticed.
The four of them went downstairs to the morgue. The faded gray door at the end of the corridor was fitted with a small frosted-glass window. The smell of incense reached them as they approached the bench along the wall outside it.
The detective with Shigeru indicated the door and told them, “Please go in.”
But Shigeru turned to Yoshio and said, “Dad, I want to go in alone first. Please.”
Yoshio looked at him.
“I want to be alone with Mariko when we meet again. She's my daughter.”
Sakaki was about to say something, but when Yoshio gave a nod he stepped back and sat down on the bench. Shigeru and the detective disappeared through the door.
It was quiet in the corridor. The linoleum floor was the same gray as the door, with black marks on it here and there. Yoshio began counting them. Some of them looked like footprints, heading for the exit. It struck him that someone must have arrived here empty, only to leave weighted down with a burden─one so heavy as to leave these prints behind.
What sort of people came here? What did they bring with them, what did they lose, what did they take away? Resignation? Despair? Anguish? Rage? But then, would you really acquire anything new just coming here? Whoever had made those footprints probably hadn't been carrying anything when they left. Just the fact of living itself had become a burden and that's why those footprints were here.
He had counted up to seven marks when he heard Shigeru wail behind the door.
“It's too sad,” Sakaki said.
Yoshio covered his face with his hands. In their darkness he was assailed with images of Mariko: her baby face through the window in the maternity clinic; her face as she toddled along clapping her hands and smiling; her face when he had laughed at her school cap being too big for her and she'd burst into tears; her face when she got all sulky and refused to wear pink anymore because it was too childish; her face when she stuck out her tongue and admitted she'd gotten a love letter from a classmate.
So do you like the guy, Mariko?
He's not my type. What should I do, Grandpa?
Her face when she turned up at his place one evening after having had a fight with Machiko and asked to stay the night. And her face after he'd told her off for exposing her thighs when she wo
re cutoff jeans, and she'd accused him of ogling her, then had given him the silent treatment for a while.
Her face when she'd confided, I think Dad's got a lover. Grandpa, did you ever fall in love with a woman other than Gran? When he'd replied that he'd never had time for anything like that, she'd looked at him sharply and said That's not an answer. You're avoiding the question, Grandpa. Her face as she'd said that, pouting.
What face had she shown him the last time he'd seen her? He seemed to remember that she'd just been worried about his high blood pressure. When I get my bonus, I'll get you a blood pressure gauge. Make sure you check it every day! But she'd disappeared before her first bonus came in.
He heard Shigeru cry, “Mariko!”
Mariko, Yoshio called silently to her. Welcome home. I'm glad you made it back. You're safe now. There's nothing more to be frightened of …
Come to think of it, a long, long time ago he'd comforted her with those very words. There'd been a large persimmon tree in the garden of the company-owned house where the Furukawas used to live. She and her friend had been trying to reach the fruit at the top of the tree, so she'd quickly climbed up to the top and only then, when she looked down and saw how high up she was, she froze with fear. Yoshio just happened to be visiting at that time and he climbed up and carried her back down again. She had been sobbing and he'd comforted her with the words, You're safe now. But you mustn't do anything dangerous like that again.
Mariko! Yoshio called out silently to her again. Mariko, didn't you promise me that time that you'd never put yourself in danger again? So how come this happened to you? Who duped you and made you climb too high even though you promised not to? Where is he now? What does he look like? Please tell me! Please tell Grandpa! I promise I'll go after him. I'll chase him down wherever he is. I'll get him, I promise you. Mariko. Mariko, my treasure!
“Mr. Arima.” Sakaki put his hand on Yoshio's shoulder. Feeling the warmth, Yoshio wept silently to the sound of Shigeru's anguished wailing behind the closed door.