‘Well, she seemed to think that Makoto wasn’t Yukiho’s one and only. Which I took to mean that she thought Yukiho loved someone else.’
‘And you think that someone else is me? No way,’ Kazunari laughed and shook his head.
‘Still,’ Imaeda said, ‘she seems to think it is.’
‘I doubt that,’ Kazunari said, his smile fading. ‘Wait – she didn’t say that, did she?’
‘Not in so many words, but that was the impression I got.’
‘It’s dangerous to make too many assumptions like that.’
‘I know. That’s why I haven’t written it in the report. But there’s something there, I’m sure of it.’
Imaeda still remembered Eriko’s expression when she had told him. It was the look of someone with a deep, abiding regret. She was afraid of something too, he realised. She was afraid he was going to ask who it was that Yukiho Karasawa loved. The moment he realised that, several pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
Kazunari sighed and grabbed his glass of iced coffee, drinking down half of it in one gulp. The ice made a clinking sound in the glass as he set it back on the table.
‘Well, I’m afraid I have no idea who it might be, except I’m sure it’s not me. She never confessed anything of the sort to me and she’s never given me presents for my birthday or Christmas. I think the best I got was a chocolate on Valentine’s Day, but then again, she gave one to all the boys in dance club.’
‘Maybe your chocolate was special?’
‘Not even a little.’ Kazunari shook his head.
Imaeda stuck a finger in his box of Marlboros. There was only one left. He put it in his mouth and lit it, crushing the empty box in his left hand. ‘There’s another thing I didn’t write in the report. Something that happened when she was in middle school.’
‘What was that?’
‘A rape. Actually, it’s not clear whether it was technically rape, but it was definitely close.’
Imaeda explained how Yukiho and Eriko had discovered their classmate after she was assaulted and how their classmate had once been Yukiho’s rival in school.
‘So what about this incident bothered you?’ Kazunari asked, his voice hard.
‘Wouldn’t you say it bears some resemblance to what happened when you were in college?’
‘What if it does?’ Kazunari said with evident displeasure.
‘The assault in middle school had the effect of removing Yukiho’s rival. That doubtless left an impression on her. One could imagine that she arranged for the same thing to happen to her romantic rival several years later in college.’
Kazunari stared hard at Imaeda’s face. The look turned quickly into a glare. ‘You have a dark imagination, detective. Eriko was her best friend.’
‘Eriko certainly thought so. I wonder if Yukiho felt the same way? To be perfectly honest, I even suspect she had something to do with what happened in middle school, too. It would explain a lot.’
Kazunari held his hand up. ‘I think that’s enough imagining for now. I want facts.’
Imaeda nodded. ‘Of course.’
Kazunari stood and reached for the bill sitting on the table, but Imaeda quickly put his hand over it. ‘If I were to discover something that would prove what I just told you isn’t just my imagination, but something that actually happened, do you think you would be able to tell your cousin?’
Kazunari took his other hand and, moving slowly, brushed Imaeda’s aside, taking the bill from the table. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Provided there’s proof.’
‘Very well.’
‘I hope to see proof of something in your next report.’
Bill in hand, Kazunari walked away from the table.
The phone call from Eri Sugawara came two days after he met with Kazunari in Ginza. Imaeda had been on a stakeout for an unrelated job at a hotel in Shibuya until eleven at night. It was after midnight by the time he got home. He had just taken off his clothes and was about to get into the shower when the phone rang.
The first thing Eri told him was that she was worried. He could tell from her tone that she wasn’t kidding around.
‘There are all these messages on my answering machine where the caller just hangs up without saying anything. It’s weird. It’s not you, is it, Imaeda?’
‘Sorry, I’m not in the habit of making crank calls. Maybe it’s some guy from the bar who has a thing for you?’
‘No, no one has a thing for me. And I never give my phone number to customers, anyway.’
‘It’s easy enough to find out someone’s phone number,’ Imaeda told her. For example, you could steal someone’s phone bill out of their mailbox. He had used that technique himself, though he wasn’t about to share that with Eri now. She sounded frightened enough.
‘And there’s something else, too. It might just be my imagination,’ she said, lowering her voice, ‘but I have a weird feeling, like someone’s been in my apartment.’
‘What?’
‘When I got back from work just now, I noticed something was off as soon as I opened the door. For one thing, my sandal had fallen over on its side.’
‘Your sandal?’
‘Yeah, they’re high heels. I left them in the entrance way and one of them had fallen on its side. I never leave my shoes lying on their side, never. No matter how much of a hurry I’m in, I always make sure they’re in a neat pair.’
‘So one of your sandals fell over and that’s why you’re calling me in the middle of the night?’
‘It’s not just that. There’s something weird about my phone.’
‘What about it?’
‘I always leave it at a bit of an angle to the table, so I can grab it with my left hand while I’m in bed, but for some reason it was flush with the table edge.’
A thought flashed through Imaeda’s mind, but he kept it to himself. ‘Right. Listen, I’m coming over.’
‘You’re coming here? Now? OK, I guess.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll behave. Also, I don’t want you using this phone until I get there. Understood?’
‘Fine, but what’s this all about?’
‘I’ll explain once I’m there. And one other thing. I’m going to knock on your door, but don’t open it until you’re sure it’s me. Got it?’
‘Right,’ Eri said, her voice sounding considerably more worried than it had when she first called.
Eri’s apartment was on a side street one block in from the main road, with a car park across the street. He ran up the outside staircase of the apartment building and knocked on the door to unit 205, saying his name. The door opened and Eri looked out, a scowl on her face. ‘OK, you have to tell me what this all is all about.’
‘I don’t know. In fact, I hope it’s just your mind playing tricks on you.’
‘It’s not.’ Eri shook her head. ‘After I hung up the phone, I could sense it. It was like my apartment wasn’t my own any more.’
Now that’s your mind playing tricks with you, Imaeda thought, but he just shrugged and stepped inside.
Three pairs of shoes were out in the hall: a pair of sneakers, a pair of pumps, and the sandals in question. The heels were rather high. It looked like it wouldn’t take much to knock one over.
Imaeda took off his shoes and stepped inside. It was a small place, one room with a small sink attached. Eri had hung a curtain halfway across it so you couldn’t see the whole apartment from the doorway. Beyond the curtain was a bed, a television, and a table. The air conditioner on the wall looked old, probably something that came with the apartment when she moved in. It was succeeding in blowing cold air into the room, but it was making an incredible racket in the process.
‘Where’s the phone?’
Eri pointed towards the bed.
Next to the bed was a small shelf with an almost perfectly square top on which rested a white telephone. He noted it wasn’t cordless – probably wouldn’t be much need for that in an apartment this small.
Imaeda took a black,
blocky device out of his bag. An antenna stuck out of the top and the front side had a small meter and a few switches.
‘What’s that? Some kind of radio?’ Eri asked.
‘Just a little toy.’ Imaeda clicked on the power switch and began to turn the frequency adjustment dial. At around 100 MHz, the meter started to react. At the same time a light on the front winked on. He brought the device closer to the phone, then further away. The meter went up and down as he moved.
He turned off the switch. Next he picked up the phone, looked at the base, then pulled a small tool pouch out of his bag. Fishing out a Phillips screwdriver, he began to undo the screws holding the cover on the base of the phone. As he’d expected, it didn’t take much effort to loosen the screws, because someone else had recently taken this phone apart.
‘Are you breaking my phone?’
‘I’m fixing it.’
‘What?’
He ignored her. Once all the screws were out, he carefully removed the cover. There was a small board inside with various circuits for the phone. His eyes went to a small box-like object attached to the board with tape. Grabbing it between his fingertips, he yanked it out.
‘Are you sure you’re supposed to take that out?’
Imaeda took another screwdriver and pried open the lid on the small box. It had a small mercury battery, which he dug out with the tip of his screwdriver. ‘There, all done,’ he announced.
‘What is that thing?’ Eri asked, terror creeping into her voice.
‘It’s nothing to be afraid of. Just a listening device – a bug,’ Imaeda said, as he re-fastened the cover on her phone.
‘What?’ Eri’s eyes went wide. She picked up the box. ‘Who the hell would want to bug my phone?’
‘That’s what I want to know. Are you sure some guy isn’t after you?’
‘Pretty sure.’
Imaeda turned his bug detector back on and adjusted the frequency as he walked around the apartment. The meter didn’t react at all.
‘Looks like they weren’t that serious about listening to you,’ he said, turning off the device and putting it back in his duffel bag along with his tools.
‘Serious enough. How did you know someone had bugged my phone?’
‘You got anything to drink? I’m all hot from walking around.’
‘Yeah, sure.’ Eri went over to her mini-refrigerator and took out two cans of beer. She put one on the table and opened the other for herself.
Imaeda sat cross-legged on the floor and took a sip. He felt himself relax, which was a signal for the sweat to start pouring from his body.
‘Basically, it was intuition via experience.’ He set the beer down. ‘You said it looked like someone had been in your room, and the phone was moved. Makes sense that someone might have done something to your phone, right?’
‘When you put it that way, I guess it was pretty obvious.’
‘I’d like to claim some special professional knowledge, but yeah, you’re right,’ he said, taking another sip of beer and wiping his mouth with his hand. ‘You sure you don’t know anyone who could have done this?’
‘I’m sure. Positive.’ Eri sat down on the edge of her bed.
‘Which means,’ Imaeda said, ‘they were probably after me.’
‘After you?’
‘You said someone left messages on your phone? That got you worried, right? So what did you do? You called me. That might’ve been what they wanted you to do. In other words, they wanted you to make a phone call to the first person you thought might’ve left those messages.’
‘What would that do for them?’
‘They would learn who you talk to, who your friends are, who you call in times of need.’
‘I can’t see how knowing any of that would do anybody any good. I mean, they could’ve just asked me. They didn’t have to bug my phone.’
‘Clearly, they wanted to know more about you without you knowing they knew. Let’s review the facts. Our snoop wants to know someone’s name and identity. Their only lead is you. All they know is that the person they want to know more about is close to you somehow.’ Imaeda finished his beer and crushed the empty can in his hand. ‘Now who do you think knows you who wants to know me?’
Eri looked down at the floor and chewed the thumb of her hand that wasn’t holding the beer. ‘The people at that boutique we visited in South Aoyama?’
‘An excellent guess,’ Imaeda said. ‘I believe you gave them your address? But I wrote nothing. If they wanted to know more about me, they would have to go through you.’
‘But why would they care about you? You think they knew you were a detective?’
‘There are a number of reasons they could’ve wanted to know,’ Imaeda said, grinning. ‘But that’s grown-up talk.’
A picture of Kazunari’s watch loomed in the back of Imaeda’s mind. Yukiho obviously knew it was his. Of course she would want to know who this man was coming to her store wearing such an important timepiece. So she had hired someone in Imaeda’s profession to follow up on their only lead: Eri Sugawara.
He thought back on his conversation with Eri over the phone just before he had come to her apartment. She had called him ‘Imaeda’ over the phone, which meant that it was only a matter of time before whoever placed the bug would find out that there was a man by that name who ran a private detective agency not far from this apartment.
‘But I didn’t give them my real address. I figured it would sound weird if I was supposed to be this little rich girl and my address had an apartment name like “Yamamoto Co-Op”. I changed several things.’
‘You did?’
‘Yeah. I mean, I am a private detective’s assistant. I know a few things.’
Imaeda reflected back on their visit to the boutique, trying to figure out where they had slipped up.
‘Did you have your wallet with you that day?’ Imaeda asked.
‘Yeah, sure.’
‘It was in your handbag?’
‘Uh huh.’
‘You tried on a lot of dresses that day; where did you put your bag while you were doing that?’
‘I guess… in the dressing room?’
‘So you left it there when you went to look at other clothes on the racks?’
Eri nodded. She was starting to frown.
‘Can you show me your wallet?’ Imaeda held out his left hand.
‘Hey, there’s not a lot of money in there.’
‘I don’t care about the money. I’m interested in what’s in there besides money.’
Eri reached inside the shoulder bag hanging from the corner of her bed and pulled out a black wallet. It was a slender leather one with a Gucci mark.
‘That’s quite a nice wallet you’ve got.’
‘It was a gift, from the boss.’
‘At the bar? You mean that guy with the whiskers?’
‘That’s the one.’