Journey Under the Midnight Sun

by Keigo Higashino

  ‘She was at the library. Weren’t you, honey?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Yukiho replied.

  ‘Is that when you borrowed that book?’ Sasagaki turned to ask the girl directly. ‘Do you go to the library often?’

  ‘Once or twice a week,’ she told him.

  ‘On your way home from school, maybe?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do you have some set days you go, like, every Wednesday and Friday?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I just go whenever I need something to read.’

  ‘And that doesn’t make you worry?’ he asked the mother. ‘I mean, don’t you want to know where she is when she comes home late from school?’

  ‘But she’s always home right after six,’ Fumiyo said.

  ‘Is that when you came home on Friday, too?’ Sasagaki asked Yukiho directly.

  The girl nodded.

  Sasagaki turned back to the mother. ‘And did you stay home after Mr Kirihara left?’

  ‘No, actually, I went out shopping. Marukaneya.’

  Marukaneya was the name of a supermarket a couple of minutes away by foot.

  ‘Did you run into anyone you know there?’

  Fumiyo thought for a moment before saying, ‘Yes, Mrs Kinoshita. She’s the mother of one of Yukiho’s classmates.’

  ‘Would you happen to have her number?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’ Fumiyo picked up the address book sitting next to the phone and put it on the table. Her finger went to an entry marked Kinoshita. ‘That’s her.’

  Sasagaki watched Koga jot the number down in his notebook before continuing.

  ‘Was your daughter already home when you left for the supermarket?’

  ‘No, she hadn’t come back yet.’

  ‘And what time did you return?’

  ‘A little after seven-thirty, I think.’

  ‘By which time your daughter had come home, correct?’

  ‘Yes, she had.’

  ‘And you didn’t leave the house after that?’

  ‘No.’ Fumiyo shook her head.

  Sasagaki looked over at Koga to see if he had any more questions. Koga shook his head.

  ‘Right, well, I’m sorry to have taken so much of your time. I’m afraid we might be back again later with more questions,’ Sasagaki said, standing.

  Fumiyo saw the two detectives to the door. Seeing that the daughter had remained behind, Sasagaki had one more question for her. ‘Mrs Nishimoto, I have a rather delicate question to ask, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Yes?’ she said, her earlier unease returning to her face.

  ‘Did Mr Kirihara ever invite you out to dinner? Or did you ever meet outside of your home?’

  Fumiyo’s eyes widened, but she firmly shook her head. ‘No. Not even once.’

  ‘I see. I was just wondering why Mr Kirihara had taken an interest in you and your household.’

  ‘I think he was just a sympathetic man, that’s all. Detective, am I a suspect?’

  ‘We’re just establishing his whereabouts on the day he died, that’s all.’

  Sasagaki thanked her for her time and the detectives left. They had walked until the apartment was out of sight when he turned to Koga and said, ‘Something stinks.’

  ‘Sure does,’ the younger detective agreed.

  ‘Why did she try to deny Kirihara had been there at first? And why didn’t Yukiho help her hide it? You think she realised that I’d seen the pudding wrappers and there was no point lying?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past the kid.’

  ‘What did she say? She finishes work at the udon place and gets home around five? And that’s when Kirihara comes, right? Meanwhile, Yukiho is at the library and she only comes home after Mr Kirihara’s already left. The timing is just a little too clean.’

  ‘You think Fumiyo was his lover and she had her daughter stay out until they were done?’

  ‘Could be. But if she was his lover, I’d imagine he’d have been supporting her somehow. You wouldn’t think she’d be reduced to making rubber frogs in her spare time.’

  ‘Maybe he was just in the process of winning her affections.’

  ‘Could be.’

  The two detectives hurried back to the station.

  ‘It could’ve been an impulsive act,’ Sasagaki said after he finished giving his report to Nakatsuka. ‘I think it’s likely that Kirihara showed the million yen he had just got from the bank to Fumiyo.’

  ‘And she killed him because she wanted it? But if she’d killed him at the house there’s no way she could’ve got the body to where we found it,’ Nakatsuka pointed out.

  ‘True, so maybe she needed some reason why they had to meet there. I can imagine that they walked together.’

  ‘And forensics thinks a woman could’ve made those injuries.’

  ‘And I doubt Mr Kirihara would’ve been expecting it coming from her.’

  ‘Looks like we’ll have to check out Fumiyo’s alibi next,’ Nakatsuka said, his tone grave.

  At that point Sasagaki was pretty sure that Fumiyo was guilty. The way she had been acting was far too suspicious. And with the time of death somewhere between five and eight o’clock, she would have had plenty of time to do the deed.

  Which made the news that Fumiyo Nishimoto had an alibi come as a something of a shock.

  The park in front of the Marukaneya supermarket had a swing set, a slide, and a sandbox. It wasn’t big enough to play catch, but it was just the right size for mothers to leave their children to play while they saw to the grocery shopping. This led to the park’s other main use, as a place for housewives to meet, swap gossip, and take turns babysitting.

  Around six-thirty in the evening on the day Yosuke Kirihara was murdered, a Mrs Yumie Kinoshita had met Fumiyo Nishimoto inside the supermarket. Fumiyo had already finished her shopping and was heading for the cash register. Yumie Kinoshita had just come into the shop and her basket was still empty. They exchanged a few words and parted ways in the front of the store.

  It was already past seven when Yumie Kinoshita finished her shopping and left the store, upon which she got on the bicycle she’d left out front in order to ride home. As she was getting on the bike, she’d noticed Fumiyo in the park. She was on the swing set, gently swinging, lost in thought.

  When asked if she was sure the person she saw was Fumiyo Nishimoto, Yumie Kinoshita replied that she was absolutely confident it was.

  There was one other person who’d seen Fumiyo on the swings that evening, an older man who ran the takoyaki stand in front of the supermarket. He said she had stayed there, swinging, until it was almost closing time at eight. His description matched Fumiyo’s age and appearance exactly.

  Meanwhile, new information had come in concerning Kirihara’s whereabouts after his visit to Fumiyo. A pharmacy owner of the pawnbroker’s acquaintance had spotted him walking alone just after six. He had thought to call out to him but noticed that he seemed to be in a hurry. The location of the sighting was exactly midway between Fumiyo’s apartment and the building where the body had been discovered.

  With the time of death falling somewhere between five and eight, it was theoretically possible for Fumiyo to leave the swings, make straight for the building, and commit the murder. However, most of the investigative team agreed it seemed highly unlikely. It was already pushing it to stretch the time of death to eight. The most likely time for Kirihara’s death had been placed between six and seven in the evening.

  There was another piece of evidence that strongly suggested the murder hadn’t taken place after seven-thirty, this being the available light at the scene of the crime. There were no lights in the room where the body was found. Though sunlight crept in during the day, at night it would be pitch dark. If the lights in the building across the road were on it would be light enough in the room to make out someone’s face, at least once one’s eyes had adjusted. However, those lights had been turned off at seven-thirty that night. It still would have been physically possible for
Fumiyo to commit the murder had she brought a torch, yet, given the unusual circumstances that would entail, it was hard to imagine Kirihara being caught off his guard.

  Though she was their main suspect at the time, the team was forced to admit that the probability that Fumiyo had murdered Kirihara was low.

  While suspicion faded on Fumiyo Nishimoto, another investigator uncovered new information concerning Kirihara Pawnshop. His team had been going through the list of customers in the shop ledger, contacting each until they found someone who had visited the shop on the evening Kirihara was murdered.

  The person in question was a middle-aged woman who lived by herself in Tatsumi, a neighbourhood several kilometres to the south of Ōe. Widowed when her husband had died two years earlier, she’d been making regular visits over the last several months, having chosen a pawnshop far from her home so friends wouldn’t see her going in. On that Friday she had brought a pair of watches to Kirihara Pawnshop at five-thirty in the afternoon.

  According to her statement, though the shop had seemed open, the door was locked. She had rung the doorbell, but no one had answered. She had then gone to a nearby market to buy things for dinner, dropping back by the pawnshop on her way home. This was around six-thirty.

  Again, the door was locked. This time she didn’t bother ringing the doorbell, but gave up and went home. She pawned the watches three days later at a different shop. As she wasn’t in the habit of reading the newspapers she hadn’t learned of Kirihara’s murder until hearing it from the detectives.

  Suspicion then turned naturally towards Yaeko and Matsuura, who had both previously stated that the pawnshop had been open until seven. Once again Sasagaki and Koga paid a visit to Kirihara Pawnshop – this time with two other detectives in tow.

  Matsuura’s eyes went wide when he saw the crowd at the door. ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘Is Mrs Kirihara in?’ Sasagaki asked.

  ‘Yeah, but —’

  ‘Would you mind calling her?’

  Matsuura frowned and opened the sliding door behind him a little, calling in, ‘More detectives here to see you.’

  There came a sound of someone moving and the door opened the rest of the way. Yaeko appeared, wearing jeans and a knitted top. Her eyebrows drew together when she saw the detectives in the shop. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Sorry to trouble you. But we have a few questions,’ Sasagaki said.

  ‘It’s no trouble, but I’m not sure what I can help you with.’

  ‘Maybe you could come with us,’ the detective behind Sasagaki said. ‘Just to the café around the corner. We won’t take much of your time.’

  Yaeko frowned, but she put on her sandals. Sasagaki noted with interest the worried look she gave Matsuura before leaving with the other two detectives.

  Once they were gone, Sasagaki walked up to the counter. ‘And I have a question for you, Mr Matsuura.’

  ‘Yes?’ he said, smiling pleasantly even as his back stiffened.

  ‘It’s about the day of the murder. In our investigation we found something that contradicted one of your earlier statements,’ Sasagaki said, his words deliberately measured.

  ‘What sort of a contradiction?’ Matsuura asked, the smile tightening on his face.

  Sasagaki told them what they’d heard from the woman in Tatsumi. Matsuura’s smile faded as he spoke.

  ‘What are we to make of this? You said that the shop was open until seven that day. But now we have someone saying that the door was locked between five-thirty and six-thirty. Doesn’t that seem strange to you?’ Sasagaki stared the man in the eye.

  Matsuura looked away, his gaze drifting up towards the ceiling. ‘Well now, let’s see…’ He moved as if to cross his arms, then clapped his hands together with sudden realisation. ‘I know! I was in the safe.’

  ‘The safe?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s at the back. We keep all the things from the customers there, anything of value. You can come take a look later if you want, but it’s quite large. Like a bank vault. Anyway, I had to check on some things, so I was in there. You can’t hear the door buzzer from inside, see.’

  ‘And no one was watching the store while you were inside?’

  ‘Well, usually the boss is here but since I was alone I’d locked the door.’

  ‘And what about the wife and son?’

  ‘They were both in the living room,’ Matsuura said.

  ‘Wouldn’t they have heard the doorbell ringing?’

  ‘Right, well,’ Matsuura’s mouth hung open for several seconds before he said, ‘they could’ve been watching television in the back and not heard it.’

  Sasagaki looked at Matsuura’s bony-cheeked face for a moment before saying to Koga, ‘Try ringing the doorbell.’

  ‘Right,’ Koga said, stepping outside. The buzzer went off above Sasagaki’s head. The noise was almost painful.

  ‘That’s quite loud,’ Sasagaki said. ‘They would’ve had to be pretty engrossed in whatever show they were watching to have missed that.’

  Matsuura’s face twisted, eventually ending up in a wry smile. ‘Well, Mrs Kirihara’s never been that interested in the business here. She usually doesn’t even greet customers when they come in. Ryo’s never been one for helping out, either. They probably heard the buzzer but just ignored it.’

  ‘Ignored it, right,’ Sasagaki said, but what Matsuura was saying did have a ring of truth to it; neither Yaeko nor her son seemed very enthusiastic about the business.

  ‘Am I a suspect, detective? I mean, do you think I killed the boss?’

  ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,’ Sasagaki said, waving his hand. ‘We hit a contradiction in our investigation so we had to look into it. That’s standard procedure.’

  ‘I see, I guess. Not that being a suspect would bother me much,’ Matsuura added, showing yellowed teeth. ‘I got nothing to hide.’

  ‘Not that we suspect you, but it always helps us to have something a little more concrete for an alibi. I don’t suppose you have anything that can prove you were here on that day between six and seven?’

  ‘Well you could ask Mrs Kirihara or the kid… but that’s not enough, is it?’

  ‘A witness who has nothing to do with the case would be preferable.’

  ‘So now we’re conspirators, is that it?’ Matsuura said, his eyes narrowing.

  ‘We’re just considering all the possibilities here,’ Sasagaki said with a shrug.

  ‘Well, that’s messed up. What do I have to gain by killing the boss? He might have talked like he was a high roller, but I know there’s not much money here.’

  Sasagaki didn’t answer. He was happy to have Matsuura get angry and maybe say more than he should. But the man had already calmed down. ‘Between six and seven, right?’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t suppose talking on the phone counts?’

  ‘You talked to someone on the phone? Who?’

  ‘Someone from the union, about our meeting coming up next month.’

  ‘Did you call him?’