After Kazunari exchanged a few words with Natsumi about how the funeral would proceed, little remained for him to do. Food and beer had been set out in an adjacent room, but he felt out of place standing in there all by himself.
He began walking around aimlessly until he discovered a vending machine with some coffee by the stairs outside the room. He wasn’t that thirsty, but he fished in his pocket for loose change.
He was buying his coffee when he heard women talking – Yukiho’s assistants from the shop. They were standing on the other side of the doors to the stairs.
‘Well, the timing on this worked out perfectly,’ Natsumi was saying. ‘I mean, it’s a shame she passed and everything, but still.’
‘No, I totally understand. She could’ve gone on a long time without ever regaining consciousness. That would’ve made it even harder,’ Junko agreed.
‘For a while there, I was afraid we’d have to delay opening in Jiyugaoka.’
‘I wonder what the boss would’ve done if her mother hadn’t died?’
‘Oh, probably showed up for opening day and gone back down to Osaka, I guess. To be honest, that’s what I was most afraid of. Imagine some of our repeat customers coming in to celebrate the opening and her not being there.’
‘Close call, then.’
‘I guess. Anyway, it’s really better for everyone that this ended soon. Comas can be really tough when they go on for ever. She was over seventy, right?’ Natsumi asked. ‘I mean, I almost asked the boss if pulling the plug was an option.’
‘Natsumi!’
He heard the girls giggle.
Coffee in hand, Kazunari slowly walked away from the door. Going back to the ceremony room, he set his cup down on the reception counter.
What Natsumi had said about pulling the plug echoed in the back of his mind, demanding attention. No, don’t even think that, he told himself. And yet the gears were already turning.
Reiko Karasawa had passed away just after Natsumi arrived in Osaka. She had been there with Yukiho when the call came, which gave Yukiho an alibi. But what if she had called Natsumi down there expressly so she would have an alibi. She could remain the picture of innocence while someone else crept into the hospital to play mischief with her mother’s life-support system.
Ridiculous, Kazunari thought. But it stuck in his head, jostling for space with the name Detective Sasagaki had written on the back of his business card: Ryo Kirihara.
Natsumi had said she heard sounds from Yukiho’s room that night. She had thought Yukiho was crying, but what if she had been making contact with the person she sent to do the deed? Kazunari glanced over at Yukiho. She was talking with an older woman, nodding sympathetically. Kazunari shook his head and went to get another coffee.
By ten at night the number of visitors to the wake had dwindled and Yukiho told her assistants to head back to the hotel.
‘What about you, boss?’ Natsumi asked.
‘I’m staying here tonight. It’s a wake, after all.’
There was a room for mourners to stay just off to the side of the hall.
‘Will you be OK by yourself?’
‘I’ll be fine. Thanks for all your help today.’
The girls left and Kazunari realised he was once again alone with Yukiho. He cleared his throat. It felt like the air had grown thicker. He glanced down at his watch and was about to say he should be heading out too when Yukiho turned to him and said, ‘You want something to drink? You have a little time, right?’
‘Sure, I’m good.’
‘Great,’ she said, walking ahead.
There was a room in the back with tatami mats, looking like a traditional Japanese hotel room. An electric kettle and teapot had been placed on the table. Yukiho poured some tea.
‘It’s strange being here with you like this, Kazunari.’
‘I know.’
‘Makes me remember those dance club days. And the trip we went on before the big competition.’
They’d all gone on a retreat just before the competition in hopes they could brush up their form a little and leave their mark on the scoreboards.
‘The boys were particularly well behaved,’ she said. ‘The girls were on full alert for a midnight raid, but it was all for nothing. A little disappointing, really.’ She smiled. ‘I’m joking of course.’
Kazunari took a sip of his tea and smiled back. ‘You would have been off-limits anyway. You were already going out with Makoto.’
Yukiho laughed and shook her head. ‘Oh, I’m sure he told you all sorts of things about me.’
‘Not as much as you might think.’
‘It’s OK, I know how it is. And a lot of it was my fault. I think that’s why he drifted, in the end.’
‘He seemed pretty certain that the fault was his, though I’m sure these are matters that only the two of you will ever understand.’ Kazunari cradled his teacup in the palm of his hand.
Yukiho sighed. ‘I’m just no good at it.’
Kazunari looked up. ‘No good at what?’
‘Love,’ she said, looking him in the eye. ‘I don’t know how to love a man.’
Kazunari looked away. ‘I’m not sure that there is a proper way.’ The air had grown heavier. Kazunari loosened his tie, almost gasping for air.
‘I should go,’ he said abruptly, standing.
‘Oh. Sorry to have kept you so late,’ she said.
He nodded and turned away. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then.’
‘Thanks.’
He put his hand on the doorknob and had given it a turn when he felt something behind him. He didn’t have to look around to know that Yukiho was standing right there. He felt the touch of her hand on his back.
‘I’m scared,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m scared to be alone.’
Kazunari felt his heart wrench inside him. The impulse to turn to her came over him like a wave. But at the same time the warning lights in his mind had gone from yellow to red and a voice said if you look into her eyes now, you’re done.
Kazunari opened the door. Then without looking around he said, ‘Goodnight.’
As if those were the words to some magic spell, her presence and the hold it had over him disappeared like a puff of smoke. In its place he heard her voice, as dispassionate and collected as it had been before. ‘Goodnight.’
Kazunari walked out of the room, hearing the door close behind him. Only then did he allow himself to look back over his shoulder.
He heard the click of the door into the overnight room locking.
Kazunari stared at the door for a moment.
Are you really alone?
He began to walk, his footsteps echoing in the empty corridor.
THIRTEEN
Sasagaki’s coat whipped in the breeze as he stepped off the bus. It had been relatively warm until the day before, but this morning had brought a sudden chill to the city streets. Or maybe, he mused, it was just that Tokyo was a lot colder than Osaka.
He walked along the now-familiar route until he reached his destination, where he paused to check his watch. Four in the afternoon, right on time. He would have come earlier but he’d had to take a detour to a department store in Shinjuku to buy the contents of the small bag he carried in one hand.
He walked up the stairs to the second floor, feeling a little pain in his right knee. It had started bothering him several years ago – he couldn’t remember exactly when – and had proven a reliable indicator of the changing seasons.
He stopped in front of a door with a plate that read IMAEDA DETECTIVE AGENCY. The plate sparkled, having been recently cleaned. Anyone who didn’t know any better might think the agency was still in business.
Sasagaki pressed the doorbell and heard someone moving inside, probably checking him out through the spyhole.
He heard the door unlock and it opened to reveal a smiling Eri Sugawara. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d never make it.’
‘The line was out the door,’ he said, holding up the package.<
br />
‘Oh, fantastic! You got it!’ She took the bag from him and immediately opened it up to examine the contents. ‘Mmm. That is one fine-looking cherry pie.’
‘What is it with cherry pies?’
‘It’s the big thing right now. Because of Twin Peaks.’
‘I’m not sure what that means,’ the detective said, ‘but wasn’t tiramisu the big thing just a couple of months ago? When did that change?’
‘Don’t strain yourself trying to keep up with the trends, I’ll handle that. But first, some pie. You want some? I put coffee on.’
‘Coffee sounds nice.’
‘OK!’ Eri said brightly, heading into the kitchen.
Sasagaki took off his coat. The place had hardly changed from the time it had been a functioning agency. The steel shelves and cabinet were all in the same places. The only difference was that now there was a television in one corner and the number of knick-knacks had grown. These new arrivals belonged to Eri.
‘How many days are you here this time?’ she asked.
‘Three, maybe four. Can’t leave my place sitting empty for much longer.’
‘How much can you really get accomplished in so short a time?’
‘We work with what we have.’
Sasagaki pulled out a box of Seven Stars and lit one with a match. He threw the spent match in a glass ashtray sitting on Imaeda’s desk. The surface of the steel desk had been perfectly cleaned. If Imaeda came walking back into the door, he could get right back to work. Except the desk calendar was still on August from the year before – the month when Imaeda disappeared. It was hard to believe it had already been over a year.
Sasagaki beat a little rhythm with his feet and hummed a tune, watching Eri go to work on the cherry pie. She always looked so cheerful and optimistic, but he knew she was in pain, deep down, and it bothered him. She must have accepted the fact that Imaeda was dead and yet that hadn’t kept her from waiting for him to return.
It had been almost exactly a year ago when Sasagaki first met her. He’d come back to see if anything had changed with the apartment and found the young woman living there.
She had been extremely wary of him at first, but he’d introduced himself as a detective and told her that he had met Imaeda just before his disappearance, which seemed to warm her up to him a little.
Though she hadn’t ever admitted as much, he suspected Eri had been involved in a romantic relationship with Imaeda. She was fervent in her efforts to find him. She had even got rid of her own apartment and moved into the office because she wanted to be able to keep tabs on anything with a direct connection to him. Here, she could read his mail and meet anyone who came to see him. Thankfully, the landlord didn’t seem to mind. Having someone in the place was better than a missing tenant who didn’t pay rent.
Since meeting her that first time, Sasagaki had always made a point of stopping in whenever he visited Tokyo. She was helpful, giving him tips about how to get around the unfamiliar city and keeping him up to date on the latest trends. She was a good conversationalist, too, and Sasagaki genuinely enjoyed the time spent talking with her.
Eri brought a tray with two mugs and two small plates, on to which she put two slices of cherry pie. She sat the tray down on Imaeda’s steel desk.
‘Dig in!’ she said, holding a blue mug out towards Sasagaki.
‘Thanks,’ he said, accepting it and taking a sip. Nothing like hot coffee to chase the chill out of the bones, he thought.
Eri sat down in Imaeda’s chair and took a bite of her cherry pie. She chewed enthusiastically, giving Sasagaki the thumbs-up.
‘So, anything to report?’ Sasagaki asked. Even though it was the same question every visit, he’d been working up the courage to ask it since he walked through the door.
The faintest cloud came over Eri’s features. She set her fork back on the dish and took a sip of her coffee.
‘Nothing you’d be interested in, unfortunately. I hardly get any letters any more and most of the calls are just new customers, looking to hire a private eye.’
She had kept Imaeda’s phone line connected and listed. Eri was paying the bills.
‘So nobody’s dropping by the office these days?’
‘Not really. There were a bunch of callers at the beginning of the year, but that tapered off.’ Eri reached over to the desk and pulled a notebook out of the drawer. ‘We had one more in the summer, and another in September. Both women. The one in summer was a repeater.’
‘Repeater?’
‘Someone who’d asked Mr Imaeda to do work before. Her name’s Kawakami. She looked pretty disappointed when I told her Imaeda was on an extended stay in the hospital. I looked into it and she’d had him investigate her husband for cheating two years ago. He hadn’t found any conclusive evidence at the time, so I wonder if she didn’t want him to try again. Her husband probably got back into the action,’ Eri said, looking cheery. Sasagaki had guessed before that part of the reason why she had helped with Imaeda’s work was that she liked digging into other people’s secrets. Her smile seemed to confirm that.
‘What about the person who came in September? Another repeater?’
‘No, not her. She wanted to know if someone had made a request here.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘Well,’ Eri looked up from her notebook. ‘Specifically, she wanted to know if someone named Akiyoshi had come in to make a request about a year earlier.’
Sasagaki frowned. The name Akiyoshi sounded familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. ‘That’s an odd question.’
‘Not that unusual,’ Eri said with a grin. ‘This is something I heard from Mr Imaeda, but apparently some people who have affairs get to wondering whether their spouse has hired a detective to check up on them. I think she might’ve been one of those. She must have found some evidence that her husband had hired Imaeda, or at least visited the agency, and came to find out.’
‘You sound pretty sure about that.’
‘I have a sense for these things,’ she said. ‘Also, when I told her I would look into it and get back to her, she didn’t give me her home address, but her work address. Suspicious, right? She doesn’t want her husband to pick up the phone.’
‘And what was this woman’s name?’
‘She told me it was Kurihara. I’m guessing that’s her maiden name, the one she uses at work. A lot of women do that these days.’
Sasagaki shook his head. ‘Well, I’m impressed. Eri, you’d make a good private eye. Heck, you’d make a good police detective.’
Eri laughed and shook her head at that. ‘I’ll tell you my next bit of conjecture, then. This Kurihara woman is a pharmacist at the Imperial University Hospital, see? So she’s having an affair with a doctor. And the person she’s having an affair with has a family. That’s what I think. Double infidelity!’
‘I think you’ve gone past conjecture and into fantasy,’ Sasagaki said, managing to frown and chuckle at the same time.
It was already seven at night when Sasagaki walked into the lobby of his hotel in Shinjuku.
It was a drab place, dimly lit. Even calling it a lobby was being generous – there was just a long desk that served as the reception. A middle-aged man who didn’t look particularly well suited for the hospitality industry stood behind it, a scowl on his face. It wasn’t Sasagaki’s first pick for lodgings but he didn’t really have a choice if he was going to stay in Tokyo for several days. In truth, even this was a bit of a financial stretch, but he couldn’t stand those new capsule hotels. The cramped quarters and shared facilities weren’t easy on his old body: he felt more exhausted when he woke up than when he went to sleep. Even if it was plain to the point of desolate, he preferred a private room where he could relax.