The Tokyo Zodiac Murders (20 page)

When we returned to Emoto’s apartment, Kiyoshi made a phone call. He seemed to be talking to Misako Iida.

“Yes, the case has been solved… Yes, the culprit is still alive. We just met… Who is it? Well, if you’d like to know, please come to my office tomorrow afternoon. What’s your brother’s name?… Fumihiko? Hmm, I didn’t expect that he would have such a sweet name! He is free to join us, of course, but please remind him to bring his father’s note with him. If he doesn’t bring the note, I won’t talk to him… Yes, I’ll be in all day tomorrow. Any time is OK, but please give me a call before you come… Goodbye.” Kiyoshi hung up, and then dialled another number. He was calling Emoto at work.

I found a broom and began to sweep the room we’d stayed in. After the call, Kiyoshi continued to sit absent-mindedly in the middle of the room, staring off into space. I had to chase him away with the broom.

When we arrived at Kyoto Station, Emoto was already there, waiting on the platform.

“These are for you. Please enjoy them,” he said, handing us two
bento
lunchboxes. “Please come and visit me again.”

“Thank you very much,” I replied. “You’ve been so kind.
I had a very good time. Please visit us in Tokyo whenever you can. Thank you so much for everything.”

“Oh, I didn’t do anything. My friends just come and stay and go. Feel free to use my place any time. I’m happy to hear that the case has been solved.”

“Me too, but I don’t understand it yet myself. I’m still puzzled. Only this unshaven genius knows the truth,” I said, pointing to Kiyoshi.

“And he’s still keeping it a secret?”

“That’s right,” Kiyoshi piped up wryly.

“He’s never changed. He loves to hide things, but he never remembers where he’s hidden them! If you clean his room, you’ll find his stuff everywhere.”

“I just hope he doesn’t forget how he solved the mystery.”

“Make him explain everything while he remembers.”

“I wonder why so many fortune-tellers are cranks?”

“Usually it’s because they’re elderly,” Emoto said.

“So he’s already one of those stubborn old guys… at his tender age!”

“So young, yes. I feel sorry for him!”

“Hey gentlemen, it’s time to leave!” Kiyoshi said, interrupting our silly conversation. “Our train will soon be taking us back to an era five hundred years ago. We shall put on Roman armour and ride on a white mule again!”

“See? He’s always like this,” I said to Emoto.

“It must tire you out,” he replied sympathetically.

“But if and when I hear his explanation, I’ll let you know. It will probably be a very long letter.”

“I’m looking forward to it. Please come and visit me again soon.”

As the bullet train ran though fields gleaming in the sunset, I pressed Kiyoshi to explain everything.

“Couldn’t you give me just a hint? That wouldn’t hurt, would it?”

Kiyoshi was tired, but he couldn’t resist feeling superior. “As you saw, it was the transparent tape.”

“How can that be? You’re kidding!”

“I have never been more serious. It was more than a key; it solved the whole mystery.”

I was so confused.

“So Yasukawa and his daughter, Shusai Yoshida and Hachiro Umeda didn’t provide any key to the mystery at all?”

“Hmm. Well, they were related to the case, but we didn’t need them.”

“You mean we already had all the information necessary to solve the case?”

“Yes, of course we did. Nothing is left to circumstance.”

“But, wait… we didn’t already know Taeko Sudo’s address, did we?”

“Oh yes, we did.”

“From the information we had?”

“From the information we had.”

“But you must have obtained some new information—something I didn’t know—while I was running back and forth between Kyoto, Osaka and Nagoya.”

“Absolutely not. I only took a nap beside the Kamo River. Actually, we could have visited Taeko Sudo right after we got to Kyoto. We were just incredibly inefficient.”

“But who is she? Is that her real name?”

“No, of course not.”

“Do I know her real name?… I do, don’t I? Please tell me! And what about Azoth? Was she really made?”

“Azoth?… Hmm, yes, she exists,” Kiyoshi replied. “Azoth stood up, moved and committed all those crimes.”

I was dumbfounded. “What? But how?”

“It was magic, of course.”

“So you’re joking,” I said, my excitement subsiding. “That’s right. It would never be real… But who was that woman? I have no idea.”

Kiyoshi opened his eyes slightly and grinned.

“You’ve got to tell me, Kiyoshi. This is intolerable! I’m dying to know!”

“I’m going to sleep for a little while, so please ponder the case and relax,” Kiyoshi chuckled, leaning his head on the window.

“As a friend of mine, don’t you think you have an obligation to tell me everything now? We’ve been working together, after all. You’re putting our friendship at risk, you know.”

“Oh, so now you’re starting to threaten me? I didn’t say I would never explain it to you, but I can’t do it in an offhand way. When the time comes, I will tell you everything step by step. I am exhausted physically and mentally. I won’t be able to rest if you bother me with all your questions. So, please relax and sleep. All will be revealed in my office tomorrow.”

“But I’m not sleepy!”

“Maybe not. But I am. I have barely eaten for two days. I haven’t slept in a clean bed. I haven’t shaved for several days. My beard irritates my skin when I lean my face against the window. I would like to shave right now. Why should men
have to bear such a nuisance?” Kiyoshi turned to look at me. “All right, I’ll give you one more hint. How old do you think Taeko Sudo is?”

“A little younger than fifty?”

“Come on. You’re an illustrator, aren’t you? You couldn’t tell? Well, she’s actually sixty-six.”

“Sixty-six?! Then, she was twenty-six years old forty years ago…”

“Forty-three years ago.”

“Ah right. So she was twenty-three then?… I’ve got it! She was one of the six dead girls! But that means someone else’s body must have taken the place of hers, right?”

Kiyoshi yawned. “That’s all for today’s preview. But just think: could she have found a ballet dancer of the same age that easily?”

“What? You mean I’m wrong? Shit! I won’t be able to sleep tonight!”

“That’s good. For the sake of our friendship, have a sleepless night, just as I did. You’ll feel much better tomorrow,” Kiyoshi said, closing his eyes contentedly.

“You’re enjoying watching me suffer, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not. My eyes are closed.”

After a few seconds of that charade, Kiyoshi, miraculously rested, opened his eyes, took out the sachet that Taeko Sudo had given him and started to study it.

The sky was aglow with the setting sun. I thought of the storm at Arashiyama several hours ago. I thought of the last seven days in Kyoto. Different places, different people, so many different things. All in one week.

“I guess all my running around was useless, then, huh?”

“That isn’t true,” Kiyoshi said, as he played with the sachet absent-mindedly.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you had such a good time in Meiji-Mura.”

When Kiyoshi turned the sachet upside down, out fell two dice. He rolled them around in his hand. “You know, Taeko said that she thought the case would be solved by a young man?”

I nodded.

“Was she satisfied with us?” Kiyoshi asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I’m just talking to myself.”

Kiyoshi kept playing with the dice as the brilliant sunset faded into night.

“The magic show is over,” Kiyoshi said.

As we raced back towards Tokyo, I sat thinking about Taeko Sudo. What would happen to her? I didn’t know anything about the law, but—according to Kiyoshi—the statue of limitations for murder is fifteen years under Japanese law. So she could not be punished for her crimes. However, thinking about the sensationalism of her crime, she would never lead a quiet life again…

Dear Reader,

Let us leave Kiyoshi and Kazumi speeding back to Tokyo for a moment.

Before you continue, I should just like to say that Kiyoshi was not exaggerating. By the time he and Kazumi arrived at Kyoto Station, you could have identified the murderer. I continued the story, however, because I thought you might be in need of some more hints. After all, the case had remained unsolved for more than forty years, so there was a good chance you were still confused!

Why not pause at this point and see if you can answer two very simple questions before all is revealed in the following pages:

1. Who is Taeko Sudo? Well, in fact, her identity has already been revealed.

2. How did she accomplish her murderous plan? Have you determined the type of magic she used?

I wish you luck in your pursuit of the truth.

Yours sincerely,

Soji Shimada

Early in the morning of Friday the 13th, I got off the train at Tsunashima Station. Everything was quiet in the morning mist, although that same area at night is boisterous and bright with all the neon signs of the love hotels. I hadn’t slept well the night before. The more I thought about Taeko, the more confused I got. Kiyoshi had revealed very little, and I was still stuck. I realized now that none of my reasoning had risen above the level of mediocrity. I had breakfast at a coffee shop and tried to anticipate the day ahead. It would be a day to remember.

When I got to Kiyoshi’s office, however, he was still asleep. So I washed the coffee cups left in the sink and prepared places for the two visitors who were expected. Then I put the stereo on low and lay down on the sofa. I dozed off. Eventually, Kiyoshi emerged from his bedroom, yawning and scratching his head. He was already dressed and clean-shaven; in fact, he looked very dapper. “Did you sleep well?” I asked.

“So-so,” he replied. “You’re here early. Bet you couldn’t sleep last night, huh?”

“Because today is a historic day.”

“Historic? Why?”

“Well, today is the day the great mystery is finally revealed. You’re the one who’s going to deliver the truth, so you must be as excited as I am.”

“Delivering the truth to that gorilla, Takegoshi Jr? I won’t enjoy that very much. The historic moment has already come and gone. But I’m willing to explain the case to you.”

“However, today’s meeting is official; it’s not only for my sake.”

“Clearing up the mess officially, huh?” Kiyoshi responded.

“Whatever. There are only a couple of listeners today, but they will soon spread the story.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s thrilling,” Kiyoshi sniffed. “I’d better brush my teeth.”

He didn’t seem excited or nervous at all—if anything, he just seemed reluctant.

“Kiyoshi, today you’re a hero!” I said to encourage him when he reappeared.

“I’m not interested in being a hero or being treated as one. I solved the mystery; that’s all. I don’t want to be decorated! What a bore! Good paintings don’t need to be framed, you know… The thought that I’m going to help that thug of a cop disgusts me. If I didn’t care about his father, I wouldn’t tell him anything. People, huh!”

Mrs Iida phoned a little after noon. She said she and her brother would arrive in about an hour. While we waited, Kiyoshi drew some diagrams in a notebook.

Finally, there was a knock on the door.

“Hello, please come in,” Kiyoshi said. He looked perplexed when Mrs Iida entered with someone else, not her brother. “Oh, where’s Fumihiko? Isn’t he coming?”

“He wasn’t able to come today, so my husband has accompanied me. This is Mr Iida.”

Iida bowed to us twice. He was a modest-looking man who looked more like the manager of a kimono shop than a detective.

“He is with the police department, too, so there should be no problem,” Mrs Iida continued. “I also wish to apologize for my brother’s rudeness when he met you, Mr Mitarai. I regret that very much.”

“Well, I am also sorry he couldn’t be here,” Kiyoshi replied, trying to contain his sarcasm. “I wonder if he would have been absent if I had failed to solve the case. Well, we must understand that a man in such a high position is always busy. Mr Ishioka, aren’t you fixing coffee for us?”

I hurried off to the kitchen.

When everyone was settled and I had served the coffee, Kiyoshi went over and stood in front of a small blackboard.

“I asked you to come here today,” he began, “because I wanted to explain the Tokyo Zodiac Murders. But first, do you have your father’s note with you?… Very good. May I have it, please?”

The legacy of Bunjiro Takegoshi was very important to Kiyoshi. The policeman had suffered his entire life, and Kiyoshi had worked passionately to redeem his honour. When he accepted the note from Mrs Iida, I noticed that the blood vessels on the back of his hand stood out.

“It’s not difficult to tell you the name of the murderer. She now goes by the name of Taeko Sudo, and she sells small handbags at her boutique near Seiryoji Temple in Sagano in Kyoto. The name of her shop is Megumi. There are no other shops in Sagano named Megumi, so you will find it easily enough. May I
end this meeting now? You will know the whole story when you ask her for the details—unless you wish for me to continue? Shall I? All right, then, let me continue. It will be a long story…”

Kiyoshi’s explanation was so brilliant, so coherent and well articulated, that I wished we could have had a thousand people in that small office, listening to him.

“The case was really very simple. Taeko Sudo killed all the Umezawas single-handed. Then why, we may ask, did such a simple crime remain unsolved for forty years? It is because Taeko Sudo, serial killer, made herself invisible. As Mr Ishioka conjectured earlier, it was, indeed, the work of magic. But it was not magic performed by Heikichi Umezawa, as he imagined; the magician was Taeko. The success of her plan was based on the Umezawas’ astrological background. So perhaps it should be called the magic of astrology. But I will come to that later.

“First, let’s consider the enigma of Heikichi Umezawa’s death in his locked studio. As you will recall, all of the windows had iron grilles, there were no hidden exits and the door was secured with a sliding bar and a padlock. Moreover, due to the heavy snow that day, visitors to the studio could not have come or gone without leaving shoe prints.

“Heikichi had taken some sleeping pills before he was killed. His beard was cut short, but there were no scissors or razor at the scene of the crime. There were two lines of prints left in the snow. One was made by a man’s shoes, the other by a woman’s shoes. It appeared that the man walked away from the studio after the woman. It stopped snowing at 11.30 p.m., and so the presumed time of Heikichi’s death was between 1 p.m. and 11 a.m. A model was believed to be sitting for Heikichi that evening, but she was never found.

“So, how many possible scenarios can we think of? Well, I have come up with six. One: the murder occurred right after 11 p.m. and the killer left immediately. The snow covered up his shoe prints. The two lines of shoe prints were made by two other people. Two: Heikichi was killed by his model. Three: the person who wore the man’s shoes killed Heikichi. Four: those two people worked together. Five: the model intentionally made two different types of shoe prints. Six: the person who wore the man’s shoes was trying to trick us with the pair of woman’s shoes.

“Now some people have speculated that Heikichi’s bed was pulled up to the ceiling and then dropped. However, that does not seem at all feasible to me, so we will dispense with that theory altogether.

“The business of the shoe prints is very interesting. But no matter how logically we approach it, the clues lead us nowhere. This is part of the reason why the case remained unsolved for so long. However, finding no answer is actually an exquisite key to this mystery. You see, it is the pauses between the notes that make the music!”

After that dramatic statement, Kiyoshi paused for a sip of coffee.

“Now, let’s look again at these six scenarios. The first has some plausibility, I admit. But if two people had witnessed the murder scene after the killer left, they never revealed themselves. Why? If they wanted to hide their reason for visiting Heikichi’s studio, they could have sent an anonymous letter to the police. And if they were murder suspects, they would have wanted to claim their innocence. But no one came forward.

“The second scenario is impractical. Based on the duration of the snowfall, the person wearing the man’s shoes and
the person wearing the woman’s shoes must have met in the studio. If the model killed Heikichi, the person in the man’s shoes must have witnessed it. But there was no indication that that happened.

“The third scenario is similarly impractical. If the person in the man’s shoes killed the victim, the person in the woman’s shoes must have witnessed it. Again, there is no indication of that happening.

“The fourth scenario is more likely, but would Heikichi have taken sleeping pills in the presence of two visitors? Of course, he might have been threatened and forced to take them. And would the same two killers have committed Kazue’s murder and the Azoth murders? There is no evidence of two killers being involved in those cases. It’s always difficult for two people to keep a deadly secret. And if there were two killers, then they wouldn’t have needed Mr Takegoshi to dispose of the bodies. All this would suggest that the murders were organized by a single person—a person with a cool mind and a cold heart.

“The fifth scenario seems unlikely, too. The model entered the studio after 2 p.m. on the 25th. At that time, snow had not been expected, so she wouldn’t have thought to bring men’s shoes for a later cover-up. She would have had to use Heikichi’s shoes. There were two pairs of his shoes in the studio before and after the murder. However, the shoe prints showed the fact that the model did not return with his shoes after she left. What may have been possible was for the model to have walked out of the studio in her own shoes, and then walked back on her toes using long, man-like strides; then she put on Heikichi’s shoes and stepped in her toe prints. But if so, she wouldn’t have been able to return the shoes to the studio. And
why did she leave the shoe prints of her first walk, even though she could have covered all her shoe prints? Perhaps her aim was to confuse the investigators, leading them to think that there were multiple killers who had pulled the bed up to the ceiling—or that the crime was committed by a man.

“The sixth scenario might at first glance appear the most plausible. A man came to the studio alone after it started to snow. He brought a pair of woman’s shoes with him, and made prints with them while leaving his own shoe prints. But if so, the police would have thought that the prints of the woman’s shoes were the model’s and concluded that the killer was a man after all. Furthermore, Heikichi didn’t have any close male friends, and the thought that he would take sleeping pills and go to sleep in the presence of a man seems very unlikely. Therefore, this scenario comes to a dead end, too.

“But having no other way to turn, we must reconsider these six scenarios. As I said, we can definitely cross the first off and the fourth off. Neither seems possible. The second and third don’t hold up, either. So we are left with scenarios five and six. A man putting down the prints of a woman’s shoes really does strain credibility. So I would suggest we are only left with scenario number five.

“Let’s look at it carefully again: the model intentionally made two different types of shoe prints. The fact that the killer would not have been able to return Heikichi’s shoes to the studio and the fact that the shoe prints of a woman were left become critical to the mystery. But one question remains. Was the person wearing the woman’s shoes Heikichi’s model? Assuming that the answer is yes, and that she was the one who killed Heikichi, would she come out to testify to anything? Of course not!

“Who was this model, then? She must have been close enough to Heikichi to be able to return his shoes to the studio. We can focus on only one person: Taeko Sudo.

“You see, Taeko had been planning these murders for a long time. She was determined to trap Masako and her daughters. She had decided that the 25th would be the night she killed Heikichi. She had already broken the glass of the studio skylight and had it replaced. But things didn’t quite go as planned, because it started to snow while she was posing for him. As the snow accumulated, she must have grown more and more bewildered. But she was smart enough to think of a new trick. Making the prints of a man’s shoes would make the police think the murderer was a man. She must already have had a precise plan for killing Kazue as well, so it would fit conveniently with that murder if it appeared that Heikichi’s murder had also been committed by a man. She must have had a murder weapon in mind—such as a frying pan—so even though the snow presented an unexpected obstacle, she wouldn’t have needed to change her basic plan.

“After beating Heikichi to death, Taeko put some dust in his hair to suggest that he had fallen out of his bed and hit his head on the floor. Then she cut his beard with scissors. Now why did she do that? Perhaps it was to confuse the police, since Heikichi and his brother looked so alike. She was complicating things unnecessarily, however. This was her first murder and she must have been in a panic—her methods were rather amateurish. She didn’t need to put down two sets of shoe prints; a man’s shoe prints alone would have been enough. That way, the investigators would have spent their time looking for a male killer—and not spent time trying to locate the model. Also, if
the police had thought that Heikichi’s visitor was male, they might have turned their attention to the possibility, however remote, of the group of Umezawa women climbing up on the roof once the male visitor had left. However, because Taeko had left prints of a woman’s shoes, I was able to exclude any suspicion involving the Umezawa women.

“But how did Taeko return Heikichi’s shoes when the studio was locked from the inside? In fact, to lock the studio from the outside is not difficult. You will remember that shoe prints were jammed near the window above the sink. She stood there, tossed a piece of string or rope in and hooked the sliding bar and the padlock into position.

“And that is how Heikichi Umezawa’s murder was committed.” Kiyoshi stopped briefly to sip his coffee again, and we all did the same.

“Now let’s move on to the murder of Kazue. Pardon me, please, but talking about all the details is rather tiring, so allow me to give you the conclusion first. Bunjiro Takegoshi entered Kazue’s house at around 7.30 p.m. and left near 8.50 p.m. The presumed time of Kazue’s death was between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. How was this possible? Again the answer is quite simple: Kazue was already dead when Mr Takegoshi entered her house. If he had opened the sliding doors to the next room, he would have seen her naked body lying on the floor. The woman who seduced him was not Kazue, but Taeko. Her plan was to trap him and blackmail him into disposing of the bodies of the dead girls. After having sex with him, she took some of his semen from her own vagina, and put it into Kazue’s. That explains the difference between his confession and the investigation that suggested intercourse after the victim died.”