Salvation of a Saint (14 page)

Utsumi looked up, flustered by the harsh tone in the older woman’s voice. This was not the Mrs Mashiba she had seen first after her husband’s body was discovered.

Ayane turned to Hiromi. ‘You have to tell them the truth. You know that, right? If you keep things to yourself, no one will be able to protect you. You understand what I’m saying? It’s not good for you to be holed up in that interrogation room for so long.’

Utsumi noticed Hiromi’s face tense at those words.
That hit a sore spot
. Suddenly, a light went on in her head. She stared at the younger woman. ‘Wait, you’re not—’

‘You might as well come clean now,’ Ayane broke in. ‘It looks like the lady detective has figured it out anyway, and if even
I
know—’

‘Did … Mr Mashiba tell you?’ Hiromi asked.

‘Not a word. But I am a woman, and I’m not blind.’

The situation was now clear to all three, but Utsumi still had to hear it in words.

‘Ms Wakayama, are you pregnant?’

There was a pause, then Hiromi gave a slight nod. ‘Two months.’

At the edge of Utsumi’s vision, she saw Ayane twitch.
She really is hearing this for the first time. I guess woman’s intuition does count for something.

A moment later Ayane turned to Utsumi with an implacable look on her face. ‘I hope you’re satisfied? Hiromi has to
take care of herself. She can’t be hanging out at the Police Station for hours on end. You’re a woman. You understand.’

Utsumi had no choice but to nod. The list of required precautions detectives had to observe when interrogating a pregnant suspect was long and detailed.

‘I’ll let my superiors know. I’m sure they’ll be able to arrange something.’

‘I certainly hope so,’ Ayane said. She turned to Hiromi. ‘This is all for the best. If you had kept it hidden, you wouldn’t even be able to go to the hospital.’

Hiromi leaned towards Ayane, her lips trembling as though she were about to cry. Utsumi couldn’t clearly make out what she said, but it sounded like ‘Thank you.’

‘There’s another thing worth mentioning.’ Ayane squared off against the detective again. ‘The child’s father is Yoshitaka Mashiba. There’s no question of that. That was why he decided to separate from me and go to her. Now, let me ask you: what possible reason could she have to kill the father of her own child?’

Utsumi agreed, but she held her tongue. She wondered how the woman would take her lack of response.

Ayane shook her head. ‘It’s a complete mystery to me what you detectives are thinking. She has no motive. If anyone has a motive here, it’s me.’

Utsumi returned to headquarters to find Kusanagi and Mamiya still there, sipping vending-machine coffee, frowns on their faces.

‘What did Ms Wakayama have to say about the water she used when she made the coffee?’ Kusanagi asked Utsumi when he saw her. ‘You asked her, right?’

‘She said she used tap water.’

Utsumi related everything Hiromi had told her about that morning in the kitchen.

‘Which is why nothing happened when they drank their morning coffee together,’ Mamiya concluded. ‘The poison still could’ve been in one of the bottles in the fridge.’

‘We can’t know for sure she’s telling the truth,’ Kusanagi put in.

‘True, but as long as there aren’t any glaring contradictions in what she’s told us, we don’t have much to follow up on. We’ll just have to wait for Forensics to give us a little more dirt.’

‘Did you ask Forensics about the plastic bottles?’ Utsumi asked.

Kusanagi picked up a report from his desk and scanned it. ‘They found only one bottle of water in the Mashibas’ fridge. The seal on the cap was broken. The water inside was clean.’

‘Okay,’ Utsumi said. ‘What did you mean about waiting for more dirt?’

‘The situation isn’t quite so simple.’ Mamiya’s lips curled into a frown.

‘Oh?’

‘They found a one-litre bottle in the fridge,’ Kusanagi continued with a glance at the papers in his hand. ‘But there
were nine hundred millilitres of water left in it – only one hundred millilitres were gone. That’s not enough to make even one cup of coffee, and there were enough grounds in the dripper for two.’

‘So there was another bottle of water in the fridge that’s gone missing?’ Utsumi asked.

Kusanagi nodded. ‘That’s what it looks like.’

‘And it might’ve been poisoned?’

‘Seems likely,’ Mamiya said. ‘Here’s the scenario: The killer opens the refrigerator. They find two bottles – one open, one sealed. If they put poison in the brand-new one, they’d have to break the seal, which might alert the victim. So they poison the one that’s already open. Now, when Mashiba goes to make his coffee, he takes the open bottle, uses it up, and tosses it. But that’s not enough water for two cups of coffee, so he opens the other bottle and adds a little to the dripper, then puts it back in the fridge.’

‘So we need to look in the rubbish – check the empties.’

‘Forensics did,’ Kusanagi said, shaking the report in his hand. ‘You’d think that’d be enough.’

‘It wasn’t?’

‘They went over every empty bottle they could find. No poison anywhere. But, they also couldn’t prove that any of the bottles
weren’t
used in the crime.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘What it means is we’re not really sure about anything yet,’ Mamiya said. ‘The trace amounts of water they got from the bottles didn’t give them enough to test properly.
Which I guess makes sense; they
were
empties, after all. They’ve sent them all to a different lab for further testing.’

Utsumi nodded, finally understanding the frowns she’d seen when she walked into the room.

‘Not that finding poison in one of the bottles would change our case much at this point,’ Kusanagi said, replacing the papers on his desk.

‘It would widen the range of possible suspects,’ Utsumi said.

Kusanagi raised an eyebrow. ‘Were you listening to what the chief just said? If our killer put the poison in one of the plastic bottles, he or she would have put it in one that was already open. Which means there was an open bottle of water in the fridge that the victim
didn’t
drink from until he made that final cup of coffee. Which means that not a lot of time passed between the poisoning of the water and the victim’s death.’

‘I don’t see why the victim not drinking from the water should indicate that not much time had passed. There were other things for him to drink besides bottled water if he got thirsty.’

Kusanagi flared his nostrils in a sort of triumphant display. ‘You seem to have forgotten that Mr Mashiba didn’t just make coffee on Sunday night. According to Ms Wakayama, he made his own coffee on Saturday night, too. That coffee was too strong, so she showed him how to make it the next morning, right? So we know that as late as Saturday night, there was no poison in that bottle.’

‘How do we know that Mr Mashiba used water from one of the bottles when he made coffee on Saturday night?’

Kusanagi leaned back in his chair and spread his arms wide. ‘Are you suggesting we throw out our assumption that Mr Mashiba demands bottled water for his coffee? His wife’s statement to that effect is the whole reason we’re talking about this at all.’

‘Not throw it out, exactly,’ Utsumi said, keeping her voice even. ‘I just think it’s dangerous to assume what she told us is an absolute. We don’t know how consistent Mr Mashiba was about only using bottled water. It could’ve been a preference, not something he insisted on or even practised with any kind of regularity. Maybe the whole bottled water thing started with an offhand comment that his wife took more seriously than he intended. Not to mention that it was the first time he had actually made coffee in a long while. I can imagine him using water from the tap without thinking about it. They did have a filtration system on their sink.’

Kusanagi shook his head. ‘Twist reality to fit your guesswork too much and you’ll break something, Detective.’

‘All I’m saying is, we have to judge the case based on objective facts.’ She turned to Mamiya. ‘As long as we don’t know who last drank bottled water from that fridge safely, or when, we won’t be able to determine when the poison was added.’

Mamiya grinned, rubbing his chin. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I like this kind of open discussion. At first I was firmly on
Kusanagi’s side, but as I listen to the two of you go on, I find myself slowly leaning towards the challenger’s position.’

‘Chief!’ Kusanagi looked a little wounded.

‘However.’ Mamiya turned a stern gaze towards Utsumi. ‘We’re not completely in the dark about the timing of the poisoning. You recall what took place on Friday night at the Mashiba house?’

‘Of course. A dinner party,’ Utsumi replied. ‘During which several people in the house likely drank bottled water.’

Mamiya raised his index finger. ‘So the water was poisoned after the party – or perhaps during it.’

‘I agree. However, I don’t believe either of the Ikais would have had a chance to poison the bottle. For one thing, they were the guests; it would be difficult for either of them to go into the kitchen at all – let alone do their work in there undisturbed.’

‘Which leaves the two ladies as our suspects.’

‘Now just wait a minute,’ Kusanagi broke in. ‘I understand suspecting Hiromi Wakayama, but Mrs Mashiba? She’s the one who told us the victim used bottled water for his coffee. Why would she go out of her way to give us information that could incriminate her?’

‘Because she knew we’d find out eventually?’ Utsumi said. ‘If she suspected that, given enough time, poison would be found in one of the bottles, she could have told us in advance to deflect suspicion.’

Kusanagi frowned. ‘Talking with you gives me a headache
sometimes. Why are you so determined to make the wife the bad guy?’

‘It sounds pretty logical to me,’ Mamiya said. ‘Utsumi’s idea’s as good as any we’ve got going right now. And there are serious problems with the assumption that Ms Wakayama is the killer, most notably the fact that she didn’t dispose of the tainted kettle. As far as motivation goes, Ayane Mashiba
is
the most logical suspect.’

Kusanagi opened his mouth to protest, but Utsumi headed him off. ‘Speaking of motivation, I have some new information that strengthens the wife’s motive for killing her husband.’

‘From whom?’ Mamiya asked.

‘Hiromi Wakayama.’

Frowns became looks of complete astonishment as Utsumi began to explain.

‘Hold on –’ Tatsuhiko Ikai lowered his mobile and picked up the ringing phone on his desk, launching immediately into another conversation. ‘What? Yes. That’s why I want you to take care of it – all of it. I think that was made pretty clear in the second clause of the contract … Yes, I’ll handle that part, of course … Right. Thanks.’ He put down the receiver and lifted the mobile back to his ear. ‘Sorry. I just talked to them … Right. Just like we discussed at the meeting … Got it.’

At last the phones were silent. Ikai began scribbling a memo, still standing over his desk – the CEO’s desk – which until recently had belonged to Yoshitaka Mashiba.

Only when he had stuffed the memo in his pocket did Ikai look over at Kusanagi, who was sitting on a nearby sofa. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’

‘No problem. You seem pretty busy.’

‘It’s all details, really. Yes, we lost our CEO, but from the
way they’re acting, you’d think all of our section directors had their heads cut off. I always had misgivings about Mashiba’s one-man-show style of management. I only wish we’d done something about it sooner,’ Ikai concluded as he joined Kusanagi on the sofa.

‘Will you continue as CEO?’

The lawyer waved the suggestion away. ‘I’m not fit for management. I’m a firm believer that everyone is born to do a specific job, and me – I’m at my best pulling the strings behind the scenes. I will happily leave that big desk to someone else.’ Ikai looked the detective in the eye. ‘Don’t think I killed Mashiba to take over his company, because, believe me, I don’t want it.’

Kusanagi’s eyes widened and Ikai laughed. ‘I’m sorry, that was a joke. Not very funny, I’m afraid. I’ve been too busy to let it sink in that he’s gone.’

‘I’m sorry to take up more of your time,’ Kusanagi said.

‘Don’t be. I’m interested in how the investigation is proceeding. Any new developments?’

‘Some things are coming into focus, I guess you could say. In particular, the route by which the poison got into the coffee.’

‘That’s interesting.’

‘Were you aware that Mr Mashiba was excessively health conscious to the point of not drinking tap water?’

Ikai raised an eyebrow. ‘I wouldn’t call that
excessive
. I don’t drink tap water, either. Haven’t for years.’

‘Oh?’ Kusanagi asked.
Rich people
. ‘Any particular reason?’

‘Not really, now that you mention it,’ Ikai said, his gaze wandering back to the desk. ‘I can’t even remember when I stopped. It wasn’t that tap water tastes bad. Maybe I’m the victim of some bottled water company’s advertising campaign? But once you fall into a pattern …’ He looked sharply back up. ‘The water was poisoned?’

‘We don’t have a definitive answer yet, but it’s a possibility. Did you drink any mineral water when you visited the Mashibas on Friday night?’

‘We did. Quite a bit of it. Poisoned water, huh?’

‘We’ve been led to understand that Mr Mashiba used bottled water when he made coffee. Were you aware of this?’

‘I suppose so.’ Ikai nodded. ‘So that’s how the poison got into the grounds.’

‘The question is: when exactly did the killer poison the water? I was wondering if you could think of anyone who might’ve visited the Mashibas over the weekend, possibly in secret?’

Ikai shot the detective a sharp look. ‘In secret?’

‘Yes. Unfortunately we haven’t been able to identify any visitors. But it’s probable that someone did visit during those two days – perhaps even with Mr Mashiba’s knowledge.’

‘You’re asking me if another woman came to see him while his wife was away?’

‘That’s one possibility, yes.’

Ikai uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. ‘Let’s be frank, Detective. I understand that you have to keep some aspects
of your investigation a secret – I’m not new to criminal inquiries. So I assure you, anything you say stays here. In return, I won’t hold anything back.’