Journey Under the Midnight Sun

by Keigo Higashino

‘Yep, see you later,’ she said, half asleep.

  It was the last time they spoke. It was only several hours later that Yaeko found the note on her dresser that read, I’m not coming back. True to his word, Ryo never returned.

  If she had wanted to, she might have been able to track him down, but she never really tried. She was lonely, true, but she felt like it was inevitable. She’d never been a real mother to him. And he’d certainly never thought of her as a mother.

  Yaeko was fairly sure she had lacked any kind of motherly instinct from the very beginning. She gave birth not because she wanted a child, but because there wasn’t any good reason to get an abortion. She had got married to Yosuke in much the same way – because she thought it would save her from having to work. Yet the role of wife and mother had been far more confining in its tedium than she had imagined. She didn’t want to be either of those things. She wanted to be a woman.

  About three months after Ryo left, she got into a serious relationship with a man in the import trade. He took away her loneliness. He let her be the woman she wanted to be.

  They lived together for two years. When the split came, it was because he had to return to his other family. He was married, with a house in Sakai City to the south.

  She saw other men after that but broke up with them. Now she was alone. It was easier this way, except for the lonely times. On those nights she would think of Ryo, except she forbade herself to want to see him. She knew she didn’t have the right.

  Sasagaki put a Seven Stars in his mouth. Yaeko quickly produced a disposable lighter and lit it.

  ‘You know how many years it’s been since your husband was killed?’ Sasagaki asked, blowing out a stream of smoke.

  ‘About twenty, I guess.’

  ‘Nineteen to be exact. That’s quite some time.’

  ‘It is. I’m an old woman, and you’re retired.’

  ‘I was wondering if you might have anything you wanted to say, given how long ago it was.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Something you couldn’t say back then, but you could say now.’

  A faint smile came to Yaeko’s lips and she took a cigarette of her own. Lighting it, she blew smoke towards the dark stained ceiling.

  ‘Still the same, after all these years. I’m not hiding a thing, detective.’

  ‘Oh? That’s funny, because there’re so many things that don’t quite match up.’

  ‘You’re still on that case? You have the patience of a saint,’ Yaeko said, leaning on the shelves behind her, cigarette between her fingers. The faint sound of music drifted in from somewhere.

  ‘The day it happened, you said you were at the shop with Matsuura and Ryo. Was that the truth?’

  ‘It was,’ Yaeko said, flicking ash into her ashtray. ‘I thought you already looked into that one.’

  ‘I did. But the only testimony I was able to really corroborate was Matsuura’s alibi.’

  ‘You mean to say that I killed him?’ Yaeko blew smoke from her nose.

  ‘No, I think you were there too. What I suspect is that there weren’t three of you there. It was just you and Matsuura. Right?’

  ‘What are you getting at, detective?’

  ‘You and Matsuura had a thing,’ Sasagaki said, draining his glass. Yaeko tried to fill it again, but he stopped her and filled it himself. ‘You don’t have to hide that any more, it was so long ago. Nobody cares but me.’

  ‘Why do you care?’

  ‘I just want to know what happened. Right around when your husband was murdered, someone came to your shop and found the door locked. Matsuura says he was back in the storeroom, and you were watching television with Ryo. But that’s not the truth, is it. The truth is, you were in the back, in bed with Matsuura.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I’ll call that a yes,’ Sasagaki said, grinning a little as he drank.

  Yaeko sucked harder on her cigarette. She watched the smoke hang in the air and let her mind wander.

  She hadn’t ever really loved Matsuura. It was just something to break the monotony. She had begun to get worried at one point that she might stop being a woman altogether. Which was why she’d readily agreed when Matsuura came on to her.

  ‘And your son was on the floor above?’ Sasagaki asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ryo. You and Matsuura were in the back. He was on the floor above, right? That’s why you locked the door upstairs, so he wouldn’t barge in on you?’

  ‘The lock?’ Yaeko said vacantly, then she nodded. ‘Oh, right. There was a lock on those stairs. You really are a detective, aren’t you? Good memory.’

  ‘So, Ryo was upstairs. But in order to hide your thing with Matsuura, you said he was with you. Right?’

  ‘If that’s what you want to think happened, then fine. What do I care?’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Shall I open another bottle?’

  ‘By all means.’ Sasagaki drank the fresh beer with some peanuts. Yaeko joined him. For a while, the two drank in silence.

  Yaeko’s mind was tracing back across the years. It was just as Sasagaki said. The day it happened, she and Matsuura were right in the middle of it. Ryo was upstairs. The door at the bottom of the staircase was locked.

  It had been Matsuura’s idea to tell the police that Ryo was with them when they came asking after their alibis. He said that would head them off before they got their noses in any place they shouldn’t be. They agreed to say that Yaeko had been watching television with Ryo – a science fiction show for kids. Ryo had a magazine he was reading that explained all about the show, which Yaeko read, just in case the detectives asked her about it.

  ‘I wonder what’s going to happen to Miyazaki?’ Sasagaki said abruptly.

  ‘Sorry? Miyazaki?’

  ‘Tsutomu Miyazaki.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Yaeko brushed back her long hair. She felt some clinging to her hand and looked to see one white hair caught around her middle finger. She brushed it off on to the floor so that Sasagaki wouldn’t see. ‘They’ll give him the death penalty, won’t they?’

  ‘I read an article about the case a few days ago in the newspaper. They say his grandpa died three months before he did what he did. Apparently, that’s what broke him.’

  ‘I’m not sure that excuses murder,’ Yaeko said, lighting a new cigarette.

  Between 1988 and 1989, a serial killer had abducted and killed four young girls in Tokyo and Saitama prefecture. It was all over the news. The defence was trying to plead insanity, but Yaeko was pretty sure that wouldn’t hold.

  ‘I wish you’d told me sooner,’ Sasagaki muttered.

  ‘Told you about what?’

  ‘About your late husband’s predilections.’

  ‘Oh,’ Yaeko said, trying to smile, but only succeeding in making her face go tense in a weird way.

  So that’s why he brought up Miyazaki.

  ‘What good would that have done you?’ she asked.

  ‘What good? If I’d heard about that at the time of the investigation, it would have turned things around completely.’

  ‘You don’t say,’ Yaeko said, blowing out smoke. ‘Well, that’s too bad, I guess.’

  ‘Not that you could’ve said anything at the time.’

  ‘No, I couldn’t have.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Sasagaki said, putting a hand to his forehead. ‘And now here we are, nineteen years later.’

  Yaeko wanted to ask him what he meant, but she held back. Whatever the detective was thinking deep down inside, she didn’t want to know.

  Another silence followed. They had got the second bottle of beer down to about one third full when Sasagaki stood. ‘Guess I’ll be heading home.’

  ‘Thanks for coming out in the cold. Don’t be a stranger.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Sasagaki said, paying the bill, putting on his coat, and wrapping his brown scarf around his neck. ‘Oh, and I’m a little early, but happy New Year.’

  ‘Happy New Year,’ Yaeko said, with a smile.
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  Sasagaki grabbed the handle on the old sliding door, but before he opened it, he turned. ‘Was he really upstairs?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Ryo. Was he really upstairs that day?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  Sasagaki shook his head and smiled. ‘It’s nothing. Next time.’ He opened the door and stepped outside.

  Yaeko stared at the door for a while before sitting down. She had goosebumps on the back of her neck, and not because of the cold air that had come streaming into the bar.

  Sounds like Ryo’s heading out again. Matsuura’s words came back to her across the years. He was right there, on top of her, a bead of sweat running down his temple.

  She had heard it too, the sound of footsteps on shingles. She’d known about Ryo’s habit of leaving through his window and walking across the roof to get outside. She’d never mentioned it to the boy, though. Having him out of the house made it easier for her to spend time with Matsuura.

  He had left that day, too. She remembered hearing the sound again when he came back.

  So he wasn’t there. But so what? What does that detective think Ryo did?

  Santa Claus stood by the doorway, handing out cards. Speakers inside were playing classical arrangements of Christmas songs. The combination of Christmas, New Year, and the grand opening sale meant that the aisles were packed. Nearly all the customers were young women. Like insects drawn to a flower, Sasagaki thought.

  It was opening day at Yukiho Shinozuka’s R&Y Osaka branch. Unlike the shops in Tokyo, this one took up an entire building. It was more than just clothes. There were accessories, bags, and a whole floor for shoes – all luxury brands, not that Sasagaki could tell the difference. Everything about the place seemed to contradict what he had heard about Japan’s economic bubble breaking.

  There was a small café next to the escalator leading from the ground floor to the first. Sasagaki had been sitting there for about an hour, looking down on the floor below. Even when night fell outside, the customers kept coming. He’d had to line up for a while just to get into the café, and there was still a long line at the entrance. Sasagaki ordered a second cup of coffee to keep himself on the good side of the staff.

  A young couple sat across the table from him. To a casual observer, they might have looked like a young man and wife out for a day with grandpa. ‘No show, huh?’ the younger man said quietly.

  Sasagaki nodded. His eyes focused on the floor below them.

  Both of the people sitting across from him were officers from Osaka Homicide.

  Sasagaki looked at his watch. It was nearing closing time.

  ‘There’s still a chance,’ he said, half to himself.

  If Ryo Kirihara showed up, the two officers were going to take him into custody. The retired Sasagaki was only there as a spotter. Koga had arranged everything.

  Kirihara was wanted for murder.

  The moment Sasagaki had seen the fragment of glass from the broken cactus pot, a light had gone off in his head. He remembered the descriptions he’d read in reports of Matsuura just before he disappeared, in particular the comments they’d had from several people that he often wore Ray-Bans with green-tinted lenses. Maybe he hadn’t been lying low after the pirated game bust after all. Maybe something worse had happened to him.

  Sasagaki had Koga run a check on the glass. He was right. It was from a pair of Ray-Bans, and the slight fingerprint they found on it bore a strong resemblance to one they had taken in Matsuura’s apartment. Forensics said there was a greater than ninety per cent chance it was his.

  So why was a fragment of Matsuura’s sunglasses in that pot? The most obvious explanation was that the glass had been in the dirt Reiko Karasawa used when she potted her cactus. So where did she get the dirt? Probably from her own garden.

  They had needed a search warrant to start digging up the Karasawa garden. That was a difficult call to make, given the evidence they had, but Koga was willing to risk it. It helped that there were currently no residents at the Karasawa house. It also could have been grudging respect for an old detective’s persistence, Sasagaki thought.

  They had performed the search the day before and found a patch of soil in the tightly planted yard with no trees in it. They began to dig there first.

  Roughly two hours later, they found a single white bone. Then the others. There were no clothes. They estimated that seven or eight years had passed since the time of death.

  Osaka police then sent the remains to a forensic laboratory in an attempt to determine their identity. There were several ways by which they could do this, but each would take time. The odds were good, though, that they would be able to tell whether the bones belonged to Matsuura or not.

  For his part, Sasagaki was sure they were Matsuura’s once he heard that they’d found a small platinum ring on the right pinky finger of the skeleton. He could remember seeing it on the man’s hand like it was yesterday.

  The right hand was holding a piece of evidence, too: several strands of human hair wrapped around the bleached finger bones. Like hair he might have pulled out during a struggle.

  Now the question was whether they could identify those hairs as belonging to Ryo Kirihara. Typically hair was identified by its colour, lustre, hardness, thickness, medullary index, pigment distribution and blood type, allowing a near one-to-one match with an individual. But given that the hair in question had been buried for years, it was uncertain how much of that information remained intact. Koga had promised to send it to a DNA lab for testing if it came to that.

  DNA testing was a relatively new method, but they’d had some success with it over the last couple of years. There were plans to share the technology with every police station in the country within the next four years, but right now there was only one lab running the tests.

  Times had changed in the nineteen years since the pawnbroker died. Everything was different now, even the way the police ran investigations.

  The problem, then, was finding Ryo. No matter how much evidence they had on him, if they couldn’t arrest him, none of it mattered.

  It had been Sasagaki’s suggestion that they keep a close eye on Yukiho Shinozuka’s surroundings. Watch the shrimp and eventually you’ll find the goby, that was his belief.

  ‘He has to show up when she opens her new shop. Opening a place in Osaka has a special meaning for them. And Yukiho’s been too busy with her shops in Tokyo to come down to Osaka all the time, so they’re due for a reunion. Opening day is our day,’ Sasagaki had told Koga.

  Koga agreed with the old detective. From the moment the shop opened, several officers had taken turns watching from various vantage points. Sasagaki, too, had been there since that morning in a coffee shop across the street. Eventually, after hours of fruitless watching, he’d come inside.

  ‘You think Kirihara is still going by Yuichi Akiyoshi?’ the male detective asked.

  ‘Hard to say. He might have switched to a different name by now.’

  While he answered, Sasagaki’s mind was drifting off in another direction – wondering about Ryo’s choice of alias.

  It had sounded familiar the first time he heard it, but it was only recently that he had put two and two together. He had heard the name ‘Akiyoshi’ from his informant Fumihiko Kikuchi. Yuichi Akiyoshi was the name of the kid who had tattled on him about the keychain, linking Fumihiko to the rape. Yuichi Akiyoshi, the traitor.