Salvation of a Saint (22 page)

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Authors: Keigo Higashino

Tags: #Mystery, #Fiction

BOOK: Salvation of a Saint
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‘So not only the filter, but the entire area under the sink hadn’t been touched for some time?’

‘That’s what Forensics thinks, at least.’

‘Well, I agree with them.That was certainly the impression
I got when I first looked under there. But, there is one other thing they should have checked on.’

‘I know what you’re going to say. Could poison have been inserted into the filter from the other direction – via the tap, right?’

‘That’s what inquiring minds want to know. Their answer?’

‘Though theoretically possible,’ Utsumi said, ‘realistically, it’s impossible.’

Yukawa took another sip of his coffee and frowned – not because the coffee was bitter, Utsumi guessed.

‘They tried your idea about using a long tube, like a stomach camera, inserting it into the tap end all the way up to the filter, then introducting the poison up through the tube, but they couldn’t get it to work. The problem was that the joint where the tap connects to the filter is practically a right angle, and they couldn’t get the tube to go around it. It might be possible if one were to use a specialized tool with a manipulable tip—’

‘That’s okay, you don’t have to go on,’ Yukawa said, scratching his head. ‘I don’t think our killer went to such technical extremes. Looks like I have to give up on the filter theory. Too bad; I had high hopes for that one. What we need now is another shift in approach. There has to be a blind spot somewhere.’

He poured the remaining coffee in the server into his own cup. A little spilled, and Utsumi heard the professor grind his teeth.

So he does get irritated,
she thought.
Such a simple question: where did the killer put that poison? And yet he can’t figure it out. None of us can.

‘What is our famous detective friend up to?’ Yukawa asked.

‘He’s gone to Mr Mashiba’s office to ask some more questions.’

‘Hmph.’

‘Did you hear something from him?’

Yukawa shook his head and took another sip. ‘I was with him the other day and we ran into Mrs Mashiba.’

‘So I heard.’

‘We talked a bit. She is a beautiful woman – enchanting, even.’

‘Were you helpless before her charms, Professor?’

‘I was merely reporting an objective observation. That, and I was a little worried about Kusanagi.’

‘Really? Did something happen?’

‘Not something happening, per se, just another obser -vation – one that requires the telling of a tale to be understood.

‘Once, back when we were in college, Kusanagi picked up these stray cats – kittens, actually, just born. They were both really weak, and anyone could see they weren’t long for this world. But he brought them up to his room anyway, and he skipped class to take care of them. He was using an eye-dropper to feed them milk. One of his friends asked him, “What’s the point? They’re just going to die anyway.”
I remember his answer: “So what?” That’s all he said.’ Yukawa gazed off into the distance. ‘Kusanagi’s eyes when he looked at that woman were just like his eyes when he was taking care of those kittens. He knows something’s not quite right. And at the same time he’s saying to himself, “So what?”’

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.

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