The bitter chill in the air had invaded his heart. The severed genitalia were on display, but what of the other organ that appeared to have been taken? He exhaled smoke and moved the beam of light over more of the room. Big drops of blood had stained the tatami, but most of it was on the bed. Aoki stepped back. His dinner was churning in his stomach.
~ * ~
Chapter Thirteen
ENTRANCE FORBIDDEN. POLICE. AOKI SEALED the Azalea Room and placed the notice, written on a piece of cardboard torn from the bonsai carton, outside the door. Suspended from duty, he had no authority to do this—in a strict sense, no authority to do anything— but it was the automatic action of an experienced CIB detective.
The ryokan remained mute and freezing and steeped in predawn darkness. He looked along the corridor. What hole had the perpetrator crept away to?
Grim-faced, Aoki returned to his room and lifted the phone. Dead. The place should begin to come to life about six. He had no idea where the proprietor’s quarters were, nor Ito’s room, and he wouldn’t blunder around in the dark, maybe disturbing evidence.
He lit a cigarette, noticing that his hands were shaking. Tension had locked his chest muscles rigid. Flexing his shoulders several times, he tried to relax, but Yamazaki’s slaughtered corpse was a vivid picture in his head. His street smarts had warned that something bad was coming. Whatever Watanabe’s reason was for sending him here, it had transported him back to the Madam Ito case, and now it had spiraled downward into murder. His boss couldn’t have foreseen this. Whatever his agenda was, had this brutal murder advanced or derailed it?—Staring at his disarranged bed, he shook his head. Maybe it’d been the murderer slipping along the corridor that woke him up. Or the cat.
He switched on the radio and found NHK. Nearly 5:00 A.M. Impatiently he waited for music to finish, then heard the world headlines. The latest on the bank soon came:
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police disclosed that a man answering the description of Hiroshi Ito, chairman of the Tokyo Citizens Bank, was seen at Tokyo Central station boarding the 7:45 A.M. bullet train for Akita on Sunday. He was accompanied by a man who police say may have been Haruki Yamazaki, an official of the Ministry of Finance. The MOF advises that Mr. Yamazaki is temporarily away from his office. At the bank’s annual general meeting last year, allegations about a connection to the yakuza were leveled at Mr. Ito. These were denied. Mr. Yamazaki, in a statement issued by the MOF, confirmed that the allegations were groundless. Fresh police inquiries indicate the men may have traveled to a mountain inn in Hokkaido. Since Tuesday the region has been blanketed by heavy snow, and the inn is presently cut off from all communication.
Aoki grimaced. Yamazaki was cut off, for sure, but at last the cops had gotten a fix on where the two were.
At 6:00 A.M. he went upstairs. The brazier was out in the hall, though the oil lamp there was still alight. He turned it up. No one was stirring yet. Where was Kazu Hatano in the labyrinthine building, and Ito—and the murderer? Where was the ex-husband, Hatano? The brief and startling late-night encounter with him was stark in Aoki’s mind. He paced the hall, rubbing his hands and swinging his arms. Kazu Hatano had had a shock last night, and this wasn’t going to improve matters.
~ * ~
At 6:30 A.M., in a swishing of kimono and a sliding of slippers on boards, Kazu Hatano emerged from a corridor and stopped dead. Her hand raced to her throat, as though she were seeing an apparition. Aoki stepped forward. “Mr. Yamazaki is dead. In his room. I regret to tell you, murdered. “
A soft gasp. She was gazing at him, very disturbed but not deeply shocked. Aoki could read nothing more than that. She turned, entered her office, and checked the phone, then shook her head at him. From the door, he said, “The room must not be entered by anyone. Please instruct your staff. How do I get to Mr. Ito’s room?”
“The Lily Room. I’ll show you.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
~ * ~
Aoki found the banker, fully dressed, hands joined behind his back, gazing at the frosted windowpanes. The fusuma door was open, and Aoki observed the small man for a moment. The room stank of rancid pickles. Aoki cleared his throat. Ito’s face swiveled around on his plump neck.
“Sir, I’m sorry to tell you, Mr. Yamazaki is dead. Murdered.”
A sharp hiss came from the banker. His heavy-lidded eyes popped wide open; then the lids dropped again, like shutters.
Aoki was startled. “I must ask you some questions—”
The banker was staring glassily at him. Aoki moved forward and peered into his face. Amazing! In the space of a microsecond, the moon-faced man had shut down. He seemed totally out on his feet. Aoki withdrew from the room to find a maid to bring tea for the shocked man.
~ * ~
At breakfast, the malignant atmosphere of disaster hung over the snow-besieged inn. Mori hadn’t turned up with Aoki’s tea, and the dining-room maid had the fumbles, clattering dishes on the lacquered table. When the detective came out to the anteroom, Saito was standing beside the Go board, peering out the window as if to a point beyond the range of his eyesight. He swung his eyes to Aoki. This morning Aoki was a student of eyes; the big man’s were dark and contemplative.
“So! Something has happened.”
Aoki nodded curtly. “Who told you?”
“My room maid.”
Aoki scrutinized the Go-player’s face. “Did you hear anything last night?“
Saito smiled sardonically. “The nightlong roar from these frozen mountains, the timbers creaking in this old place, nothing else. Will you investigate, Inspector Aoki? Can you investigate, or will you leave it to the prefecture police?”
Aoki didn’t respond. The new fire crackled in the room.
Saito shrugged. “And Mr. Ito?”
“In his room. “
“Doubtless considering his own situation.” That word “situation” was meaningful in Aoki’s ears. “Emasculation?” Saito pondered aloud.
Aoki gaped. ‘‘Who told you that?”
“My room maid. The people here already have all the details.”
The detective rubbed his jaw. What in the hell? He turned toward the windows. His mind had gone off on a tangent—back to other murders , seemingly of this type. Crimes of passion: male and female perpetrators. Crimes of revenge: ditto. He’d found a severed penis in an alley where a vengeful wife had thrown it, held it in his handkerchief as they’d raced to the hospital with the amputee-victim. Speeding through the dark city, to the accompaniment of a siren, another man’s cock in your hand . . .
Saito broke into his thoughts. “On December 1, the Master played chess and billiards. The night before, he’d played mah-jongg till midnight. Was he escaping from a match that he was losing?” Saito’s voice was pragmatic, his eyes fixed on the board.
Aoki blinked in amazement. Was this guy for real? For himself, the match had been relegated to the 1930s—where it belonged— but in Saito’s mind, clearly, it had parity with the vicious drama played out last night.
Aoki shook his head, gave a perfunctory bow, and left the anteroom. Investigate? That was the mode he’d fallen into. Suspension or not, it was what he was trained to do. Grimly, he thought, What I am going to do. Well, he’d quarantined the room, though ineffectually. He felt certain that no human being could’ve left the ryokan. However, the snow would begin to thaw soon, and their isolation couldn’t last much longer. The local CIB would want the crime scene left undisturbed, and he couldn’t afford to make more mistakes, so he’d have to tread carefully. He traced his tongue over his split lips.
For the second time, he entered Kazu Hatano’s office. She rose and moved to the center of the room, one slender hand resting on the desk. Aoki’s eyes settled on that delicate white wrist below her kimono sleeve—delicate, but strong, too. She would do some of the physical work of running the ryokan. He said decisively, “I’m starting an investigation. When the local police can get through, they’ll take it over.” He paused. She was without makeup
, a different and far more beautiful woman. “Please give me a complete list of everyone in the ryokan, their occupations, how long they’ve been here, and the rooms where they slept last night. “
Aoki dropped his gaze to the dark, polished wood of the old desk. There’d been no knife in the Azalea Room and no apparent blood spots in the corridor, and he’d examined the environs closely. A few minutes ago, from the hall, he’d looked out to the vestibule and seen the snow shutters locked in place. He’d found out yesterday that the other entrances were snowed in even deeper than the front door.
He looked up sharply. “Do you have any information that might assist me? “
She shook her head. “No.”
Hmmm, an automatic response. His fingers stroked his right cheekbone. The faces of Ito and his bodyguard came to him. What had that blazing row—from Ito’s side, anyway—been about in Yamazaki’s room, the Azalea Room?
Chairman Ito’s reaction when he’d heard the news had verged on the surreal. The man was an experienced operator in the brutal business world; he must’ve cut more tension-charged deals, more financial throats, than Aoki had had plates of yakitori. His being thrown into an immobilizing trance was a reaction about as believable as Superintendent Watanabe’s sudden concern for Aoki’s health.
Burning with annoyance, Aoki stood immobile and silent. He was conscious of Kazu Hatano watching him, but the thoughts were ricocheting around in his brain. Starkest was Yamazaki’s sick simulation of a woman reaching her climax; almost as vivid, the bank chairman’s face as he’d stormed into the hall.
And this woman’s!
And her father’s, as he’d hurried through the ryokan.
Devoid of electric light, cut off from the outside, the atmosphere in the ryokan on the seventh anniversary had been deeply bizarre, with all the major players in the missing woman’s life present. Aoki had screwed his eyes almost shut, concentrating. He jerked his head up. “Someone other than myself and the perpetrator has seen the corpse. Details of its condition are known. What do you know about that?”
She flicked him a surprised glance and shook her head. Aoki studied her. Then he bowed, turned, and went to see Ito again.
Tea had been served to the bank chairman, and he was on his feet, cup in hand, eyes now alert, but otherwise unreadable. He gestured to the detective to enter. Aoki frowned. The banker had snapped out of that stupor fast.
“A shocking affair,” Ito murmured hoarsely. “A great tragedy. Who?” He put down the cup and examined his small hands. Aoki stared at the downturned face; it resembled a piece of discolored marble. What he had here was the chairman of a bank that had imploded and pancaked down on itself like a skyscraper being demolished, the cuckolded yet reportedly complaisant husband of a woman who’d been missing for seven years, the holiday companion of the man who cuckolded him—the man who was now a stiffened corpse in a room of this snow-entombed ryokan—and in the background, like a shadow, the woman’s ex-husband. That was all, or all that he could see at present!
The heavy-lidded eyes met the detective’s. “Well? We’re totally locked in. No one can get in or get out. So?”
Aoki weighed the inference. “Yes, the murderer’s still under this roof. Unless there’s a factor I can’t see.”
Ito gave him a hard, puzzled look. Abruptly, he put his hands into the kotatsu. “Stabbed through the heart, his genitals cut off and placed in the alcove. “
“How do you know that?”
Ito quickly withdrew his hands. They’d turned red, looked almost bloody, and were shaking slightly. “I went to the room after you were here. “
Aoki’s face muscles tightened. “You should not have done that. The room’s a sealed crime scene.” He shook his head in disgust. “Who did you tell those details to?”
“No one.” Ito shrugged his soft, padded shoulders. “Insane!” he muttered. He was having difficulty breathing.
Aoki controlled his anger and gazed into the alcove. Ito was showing definite signs of pressure. Maybe he’d misread the man; perhaps his reaction when he first heard the news had been genuine. For sure, the fellow was sending out mixed signals, and the position was awkward. He should have a colleague with him before asking questions that might have incriminating answers. It was irregular, but everything about his situation was. Aoki stared down at the glowing coals, gathering energy.
He turned on the banker. “Who’s the murderer? Why was he murdered?“
Ito’s face froze. The round head shot back on the thick neck. He sneered, “How do I know that? How in hell do I know any of that?” He flung out his hands.
Aoki stepped back and said forcefully, “Did Mr. Yamazaki fear himself in danger? Did he speak of such? “
“No,” the banker snarled. Sharply, his hands dropped to his sides.
“Or show it?”
Ito gulped in air. “Yamazaki feared nothing. He could accept danger or reversal of fortune with equanimity.” He stopped. “If he apprehended danger, he didn’t tell me.”
A rare type, if it were true, but it might be. Aoki recalled the man’s arrogant progress through the corridors, his condescension in the bath. This man, though, despite his anger and contempt, was badly shaken. He’d got that now and wondered how the fellow had stomached viewing the corpse. If he was an innocent party. If he’d actually gone there as he claimed—and what about his bodyguard?
His face severe, Aoki said, “Last night after you retired, did you leave your room again?”
“No!”
Aoki raised his eyebrows.
“Do you think I’m lying?” A menacing undertone, but Aoki’d heard an infinity of them.
“What happened to your man after you left the hall?”
“He went to bed.”
“Why did you beckon him to follow you?”
“To give him instructions for today.”
“Yes?”
“I was hopeful the road might be cleared.”
“Where is he now?”
Ito blinked angrily. “Probably having breakfast in the kitchen.”
Aoki retasted his own breakfast. He was dying for a cigarette; his fingers tingled for one. What had Ito been shouting about last night in the Azalea Room, and what had been said in those conversations over the banquets? Had they been an overture to the murder, or the murder a result of that talk fest—or was it totally different territory? A new caution held him back from asking these questions. Delicate territory, not to be contaminated by a wrong move.
Aoki paused. Instinctively, he had a strong feeling that this man knew why Yamazaki had been murdered. His reticence, his whole demeanor, had the stench of concealment and insincerity. Lies had come out of the fellow’s mouth, Aoki was sure. For one, Yamazaki was the kind of man who’d know who his enemies were, where threats lay.
Aoki bowed to the banker. “I will speak to you again later.”
Shoba was outside Ito’s door, motionless and solid against the corridor wall. Aoki pulled up and swept his eyes over the bodyguard, examining the gray suit: creased but unmarked. “I’m a detective in the TMP. I’ve got some questions to ask you.” The man bowed his conical head, and the red birthmark blazed in the dusk. The muscles of his arms and torso rippled beneath the gray serge. This close, he appeared almost as wide as he was tall. Aoki spat out, “Concerning the murder of Mr. Yamazaki.”
The small eyes examined Aoki. “Your badge, sir?” The voice was thick and labored but deferential.
Aoki nodded slowly. His badge and gun were locked in Watanabe’s desk in Tokyo.
The man looked almost apologetic, but Aoki knew that these were the mini sumo’s little tricks.
The door to Ito’s room slid open, and the banker stood there. He’d overheard. “Answer his questions,” he snapped.
Shoba had nothing to tell—the way he told it. He’d followed his boss to his room, received his instructions, then gone to his own room on a lower level. He’d heard nothing and seen no one until he’d gone to the kitchen for his bre
akfast at 7:00 A.M. and been told the news.
When the short, strangulated report finished, Ito grunted and went back into the room. The door with its pale painting of a lily slid shut behind him. Aoki stared at Shoba. At some point, the minder’s voice box had received forceful attention, but that didn’t make him a liar, or a killer—though he had apparent credentials for both roles. Aoki sighed inwardly and turned away.
He headed back to the main hall. Motive? A crime of revenge and retribution—after the amazing scene played out at the end of the banquet? The obscene simulation by Yamazaki, the sinuous cries, sounded afresh in Aoki’s mind. It was the deduction crying out to be made, yet maybe the emasculation was merely dressing on the salad, a premeditated or spontaneous act to muddy the waters. And that other big incision—what in fuck’s name was that about? According to Superintendent Watanabe’s old investigation, ex-husband Hatano slotted into the picture, with jealousy and retribution figuring. But that had been against his ex-wife . . .
Kamakura Inn Page 12
