The Silent Dead (17 page)

“Hello, who's there?” It was an upper-class woman's voice.

“Good morning. I'm from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police.”

A pause.

“Wait there a moment.”

A minute later, the front door opened. A woman in a moss-green dress emerged. Kikuta put her at the same age as Reiko, possibly a little younger. From the way she walked down to the gate—even her way of standing behind it—Kikuta could tell that she came from a good family. She was genteel. That was the word.

As soon as she had opened the gate and let him in, Kikuta bowed deeply at her. “Mrs. Namekawa, allow me first to offer my condolences.”

She bowed back at him, slowly and in silence, then motioned for him to go into the house, mumbling “This way” in a barely audible voice. Kikuta had the sense that her husband's death wasn't what was making her so glum. The woman didn't look like much of a live wire in the best of circumstances. He couldn't picture her strutting around, pounding on desks and yelling at people, like Reiko did.

Guess Reiko's more my type.…

Kikuta and his young partner from the precinct followed Mrs. Namekawa into the hallway. Several expensive-looking pieces of furniture immediately caught his eye. Although he wasn't equipped to judge the aesthetics, even he could tell that the stuff must have cost an arm and a leg. A big shot creative director at a top ad agency obviously pulled down a hefty salary.

“This way, please.” The woman ushered them into a large living room. The floor was an expensive-looking parquet number made from exotic woods rather than your normal cheap flooring. A number of photographs in solid-looking frames sat in a bay window framed by lace curtains. Must be family pictures, thought Kikuta. Kikuta and his partner sank down into the deep, soft sofa she pointed them to.

Mrs. Namekawa served them some iced tea, then settled down in the chair opposite.

“We're very sorry to intrude at such a difficult time.”

It was the standard thing to say in the circumstances. The wife gave a quiet little nod. She didn't seem unduly shaken up by her husband's death. Despite feeling quite unable to establish any sort of connection with the woman, Kikuta went ahead and asked her about her family.

The woman's name was Tomoyo. She was twenty-eight years old, ten years her husband's junior. She got a job in a trading company after graduating from a two-year junior college. It was there that she had met Namekawa, who was in and out of the place for business. They had gotten married six years ago, and their first child was born the year after. They now had two girls, ages five and three. She came from money, and her family had given them help to build this house.

Tell me about it. Your normal working stiff under forty could never afford to live in a palace like this.

Kikuta glanced at the bay window. “I need to ask you something that might be a little awkward. Try not to get upset.”

“I see,” she replied hesitantly. “Well, go ahead.”

Her eyes were fixed on the coffee table.

“How was your relationship with your husband?”

“Our relationship was neither good nor bad,” she replied with a wan smile. “Let me put this on the table right away: my husband and I weren't all that close. It's embarrassing for us as a family, but I might as well tell you. God knows, you'll find out soon enough if you ask around at Hakodo. My husband had a lover at work. Her name is Kasumi Shiratori, and they'd been going out since before our marriage.”

Tomoyo's whole demeanor seemed strangely impassive given the circumstances. Kikuta couldn't be bothered to hide his distaste. “You were aware of that when you married him?”

She gave a heavy shake of the head. “No, I only found out after we'd gotten married. My husband came right out and told me when I was pregnant with our second girl. I'd sort of sensed it before. He was quite happy to come back home without washing off the telltale signs. I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but even I knew what was going on.”

By telltale signs, Kikuta assumed she was talking about lipstick on the shirt collar, the smell of perfume, and so on.

“Lately I've begun to think that it was my fault. At least partly. Namekawa proposed, I said yes, and we got married. But you know how I felt? I was just like, ‘Oh, so this is what marriage feels like. Big deal.' It was the same thing when I had my daughters and when we built this house. ‘Is that it?' Listen, I'm a woman. Of course I was flattered when he asked me. The man worked twice as hard as anybody else. All my friends told me he was a great catch. I felt pretty smug, pretty pleased.… But somewhere in my subconscious I was, like, willing myself to be happy. What I'm trying to say is that I really didn't know what I felt.”

The woman was looking down at the floor, and her head was wobbling gently from side to side. “My husband used to criticize that side of me. He'd say, ‘So go on, tell me what you think.' When he took that tone, I completely lost my nerve. I honestly couldn't tell if I was happy or sad, how I felt about anything.” She lapsed into silence. “I think that's why he told me upfront about his mistress. He said the same thing, ‘Go on, tell me what you think about that.' … And you know what I thought? I thought, ‘Oh, you're having an affair? So what.' I guess I felt angry at being cheated on—angry and a bit worried about our future. But my main reaction was just, ‘So this is what being cheated on feels like. Big deal.'” She paused. “Do you think there's something wrong with me?”

At a loss for words, Kikuta felt that a noncommittal grunt would be an inadequate reply. His best bet, he decided, was to change the subject.

“Very … uhm … interesting. Now, can you give me any pointers as to what your husband has been doing recently?”

“I'll try, though given the nature of our marriage, I may not be that well informed. My husband took his work very seriously and wasn't at home much, even on weekends. When he was, though, he was a wonderful dad, really sweet with the girls. I'd started to think, ‘Hey, what we've got here is good enough.' He didn't hide any of his income from me. Everything he earned was for us, for the family. Who knows, perhaps for a married couple our relationship was on the good side.” A brief silence. “I suppose people despise for me for allowing a third person into the marriage. For my part, I just felt, ‘It is what it is.'”

Kikuta was getting increasingly annoyed. The woman wasn't providing any useful information, while her whole attitude to relationships—no, her approach to life in general—was violently rubbing him the wrong way. She might as well be from a different planet. How had she been raised to turn out like this?

This interview's probably a write-off whatever angle I take.…

Kikuta decided to try asking the woman about her husband's friends.

*   *   *

Lieutenant Katsumata was sitting opposite Kasumi Shiratori in a swanky Italian restaurant. Of course, Kasumi had chosen the place. Katsumata's own tastes ran more to deep-fried pork cutlets.

The woman was definitely a looker. She caught his eye the instant she breezed into the office a little after eleven o'clock. At the time he'd been interviewing one of Namekawa's subordinates. With a leer, he'd asked, “Who's the babe?”

“Her? That's Kasumi Shiratori, Namekawa's mistress. I told you about her.”

She was wearing white slacks and a black sleeveless blouse and had a bag and a white jacket slung over her shoulder. The jacket, Katsumata assumed, was for rooms where the air conditioning was cranked up too high. He was struck by her eyes: they were big, like a Westerner's.

That is one tasty piece of ass!

Katsumata had only seen photographs of Namekawa. The guy looked like a player. The two of them must have made a great couple. His gut told him that the broad knew everything there was to know about Namekawa. According to the roster they'd drawn up, Himekawa would be interviewing Kasumi that afternoon—assuming, of course, he played by the rules.…

“Okay, that's enough. You can go,” snapped Katsumata, bringing his interview with Namekawa's subordinate to an abrupt end.

“Matsuoka, it's time for us to skedaddle.” He slapped his partner from the local precinct on the back. Yesterday his partner had been a young officer, but today he was paired up with a grizzled old sergeant. If the man had his own ideas about how things should be done, he had the sense to keep them to himself.

Katsumata paused to think at the door of the meeting room. According to the schedule, Himekawa was due to finish her first round of interviews at around twelve o'clock, but if she popped out for bathroom break or something she might notice that they'd already left. Katsumata figured a ten-minute head start would be enough to smuggle Kasumi safely out. To create the impression that the room was still occupied, he left the light on and lowered the disconcertingly bright yellow blind. Then he walked over to her desk.

“Hi. You're Kasumi Shiratori, right?”

Kasumi had only just sat down. She glanced suspiciously up at Katsumata, then nodded when she realized what it was about. He didn't even need to flash his badge.

“Is it my turn?”

The voice was husky and sensual. Everyone Katsumata spoke to described her as a combination of brains and beauty. They were right. The woman was a true stunner, not a dime-store Barbie like that hick Himekawa. Look at that bone structure! True class. Okay, the broad was fucking around, but at least she was doing it with a top creative director. This is how God wanted women to be!

Look at her. The broad's glowing
.
That's a woman at the top of her game.
She was the kind of woman it was easy to fall for but about whom you should think twice before marrying. When you genuinely liked a woman, sometimes retaining distance in the relationship made sense, especially when the woman had a job. That was what Kasumi and Namekawa had done. Shagging was a whole lot more fun when you had some time apart. Not being together left you with some secrets and kept the lust alive and the sex enjoyable. There was nothing secret or sexy about taking your evening bath in a prearranged order and climbing together into an old futon in worn-out pajamas. When a man and a woman had no more secrets, it was all over.

I'm freshly divorced; I'm a man and in full working order!

Katsumata had slipped thirty thousand yen to Sergeant Matsuoka, his partner, to take himself out of the picture while he took Kasumi out to lunch. Small infusions of cash were very popular with sergeants of a certain age. You just told them, “Here's some pocket money. Now you go off and play,” and they'd vanish as fast as a fart in the wind. Matsuoka fit the bill. And he wouldn't kick up a fuss about whatever Katsumata wrote in the report for the day, either.

“What was your take on Namekawa's disappearance?” asked Katsumata, as he sucked the spaghetti up from his plate. The stuff had some long and unpronounceable foreign name. He'd scoured the menu for Japanese-style seaweed spaghetti, but there was none on offer. By pretending he was having udon noodles with a stingy serving of broth, he could just about bring himself to eat them.

Whatever he was having, Kasumi had ordered it for him. He'd just asked her to get him the lightest thing on the menu. What was it called? “Pero-pero” or something like that. It was so light it was next to nonexistent. The only tastes he could pick up on were olive oil, garlic, and chili. Some key ingredient must have been left out by mistake. Seasoning might have helped, but there was neither soy sauce nor brown sauce on the table.

Kasumi put down her fork. “I had no idea what was going on. I mean, Namekawa was hardly the kind of person to miss a whole day of work. Even when he was working through a backlog of jobs, it never took him more than a few hours. I heard nothing for several days; after a week, I just had to accept that he was dead somewhere.”

Her neck was white and slender. She was having the same dish as Katsumata. The spaghetti that she was sucking down left her scarlet lips glistening with olive oil. There was something obscene in the sight! She was everything a woman should be!

“That's quite a laid-back response to the death of your longtime lover.”

Apparently, Kasumi liked her emotions like her spaghetti—light.

“You think that's wrong? Don't tell me you suspect me.”

Katsumata let that pass.

“Aren't you broken up about it?”

“Of course I am. I want to bawl my eyes out.”

“But you don't.”

“No, not during work hours.”

After the meal, they were given ludicrously strong coffee in ludicrously small cups. What the fuck was that about? Katsumata admired the way Kasumi tossed hers back. The broad certainly had style.

Get a grip on yourself, Katsumata! This is business, not pleasure.

Katsumata refocused and pushed on with his questions.

“Was there anything different about Namekawa before his disappearance?”

“Different? How do you mean?”

“Could be anything—though I'm most interested in what he was doing on the second Sunday of the month.…”

Kasumi's perfectly sculpted eyebrows twitched.

“The second Sunday? Did something happen…?”

“That's what I'm asking you. Were you with him on the second Sunday of the month recently?”

She stared down into her empty coffee cup.

“I need you to tell me a bit more.”

The woman really was a cool customer. She never spoke without weighing up the angles. Katsumata was the same. Don't give anything away without getting something in return, or you'll never catch yourself a big fish.

“Namekawa was going somewhere every second Sunday. Wherever it was, we don't think it had anything to do with his work. I want to know if it had anything to do with you.”