by Nick Tanner
What a terrible mess her life had suddenly become.
For now though there was not much that she could do. She could only grasp the day and see what would unfold. For a brief moment she considered confiding in her husband. She glanced over to him and for a minute or two watched him finishing off his toast.
‘What?’ he said, noticing that she’d been staring at him. Eri looked down and studied her empty plate.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing.’
Instead of confiding in him she raised herself up and prepared to face the day switching her mind quickly to more mundane and practical matters - thinking about what to wear or more particularly what coat to wear. It was to be one of those fateful decisions, one of many minor decisions that taken on their own didn’t add up to much. Deciding which coat to wear in the whole scheme of things would appear to be a relatively minor decision, however it was one that would have gruesome consequences.
Before she left she hesitated in the genkan (porch). ‘What’s the forecast for today? Is it cold again?’ she shouted into the main room.
‘Cold again!’ confirmed her husband.
‘Is it cold again?’ – ‘Cold again’ Perhaps it summed up their relationship.
Eri looked at the various coats hanging on their hooks. After a moment of indecision she selected a long brown, fairly heavy looking coat and then to top off the ensemble took a dark brown woolly hat from the draw to the side, again hesitating before she did so - decisions, decisions. She opted not to take a scarf. Her more decretive silk ones were hanging in the closet upstairs and she couldn't be bothered to trail up there again. The woolly ones tended to tickle her neck. She gathered the collar of her coat around her, looked at herself in the mirror, re-applied her bright, red lipstick, pursing her lips as she did so and then opened the door. She stepped out into the biting cold, into the grip of a Kanagawa winter doing its best to be as full as it possibly could. There could be snow later and in the meantime the freezing grey sky did its best to impose itself on the hapless citizens below.
Worse than that – she had about fourteen hours to live.
2 - In which a murderer contemplates his business
Thursday 30th December 10:30pm
Of course he’d had no plan, no handy, pre-conceived, trail of bread crumbs through the labyrinth. He was making this up as he went along, driven by a need to satisfy an urgent, impulse. She had to die. On that score there really had been no other option. A quick, frantic decision had been taken from which there was no going back, but he was concerned that it was getting him into even deeper waters. He'd already made one crucial error! There was no room to make any more.
For a brief, crazy, irrational moment he had considered keeping her alive, keeping her imprisoned, trussed-up in bondage - maintaining her as his own personal sex-slave. It was true to say that he was now operating on a completely alternative plane of morality. It had been a quite delicious idea, for to say that he had enjoyed the sex with her would have been an understatement. He had experienced not only just the purest of physical sensations, not only just the joy of blood rising but more than that, he had experienced a steady onslaught of endorphins on his brain. He’d experienced a high – as high as any that he’d known, creating inexplicable feelings of euphoria and happiness. It had been an exercise in the execution of unadulterated power.
However, in equal and opposite strength to the ecstasy, grew a wretched and inconsolable torment. He had stared, wordlessly, upon the sullied, raped, woman sprawled upon the floor. He had wanted so much to take her again, and again and again, but then again he had so desperately hadn’t.
The only plan, post-coitus, had been to silence her.
The only plan, pre-coitus, had been to silence her!
A variety of thoughts criss-crossed through his mind and his brain was laughing at him once more - a ceaseless chattering, a mocking and taunting that had begun just a few hours previously.
He'd already made that one crucial error!
It tormented him, so much so that these ceaseless thoughts had taken over every facet of his being. It was mentally, but also physically painful.
She was a dirty slut and she needed to die – she deserved to die. It was the only way.
As he’d stood up, with her finally lying dead at his feet, he’d found that the execution of the ultimate power had not been as satisfying as the rape. There had been no transference of life-force from her to him – no epiphany or discovery of nirvana. Her searching, pleading eyes had seen to that. Her eyes had been the hardest to deal with. Had those eyes known what was about to come? He hadn’t thought so. Somehow he’d suspected that she’d been hoping for a reprieve – that a modern-day samurai would come to her rescue or that he would have a last minute change of heart…
That had made him laugh – a heart! He’d lost his heart many years ago.
As he’d suffocated the life out of her, those eyes had lost their fight and ultimately lost their light – their final imprint, the final negative had recorded a mix of horror and surprise, pain and disappointment. Her body had eventually lain still, the whole world had become quiet, although in his mind he could still hear the beating of her feet.
Thump, thump… thump, thump, thump...
That particular noise hadn’t stopped - would probably never stop.
Once away from her body however, he’d felt much better. Perhaps it had never happened. Perhaps the whole of this night had never happened. Perhaps those initial errors had never happened.
3 - In which the body is discovered and we meet up once again with Sergeant Mori
Thursday 30th Dec 11:13pm
Sergeant Mori pulled up next to the other police cars slewed unceremoniously across an empty housing lot and then trudged the rest of the way up the steep incline and into the small park that he’d been directed to. He puffed a bit as he walked and his breath evaporated in the cold air.
‘Out of shape, sir?’ asked Junsa Deguchi, seemingly appearing out of nowhere.
‘On the contrary,’ grunted Sergeant Mori. ‘I’ve actually been putting a bit of work in – running. I’m just feeling a bit weary. It is after eleven after all and I might have a cold coming on. Anyway let’s see what we have?’ he finished off quickly, invariably being uncomfortable talking about himself, particularly to Deguchi, however mundane the information might be.
The uniformed Junsa guarding the scene of crime moved aside to allow Sergeant Mori to kneel down beside the blue tarpaulin that covered the body that had so recently been discovered half-hidden behind a bush. As ever he was reluctant to pull back the sheeting. He thought of the last time he had done this. Not that long ago he was up in the woods around Kamakura confronting a similar scene - a bashed and mutilated young woman. He hadn’t forgotten so easily nor so quickly. He narrowed his eyes and set his eyebrows into his usual frown as he instructed the Junsa to step back, slipped on his protective plastic gloves and once again traced the shape of the bulge under the tarpaulin before drawing it back. He blew out his cheeks, suffering as always a mix of emotions. Thankfully he didn’t have another bashed and mutilated young woman on his hands, just, if just was the right word, which of course it wasn’t, just a woman who, if his trained eye hadn’t deceived him, had been strangled. It was a lot easier to deal with, but nonetheless it was murder all the same.
He remained crouched in silent thought and then started carefully to examine both the body and the surrounding area in the inevitable search for clues. The woman was still fully clothed and aside from the marks on her neck there were no other signs of violence. Her coat was still buttoned. She had not been wearing a scarf. Her slim briefcase lay by her side. He gently lifted her coat and skirt and noted that she was still wearing her knickers and tights - neither appeared to have been grasped or torn by an aggressor. It wasn’t conclusive but he wondered if he could rule out rape. He spent a good five minutes checking things through, his dark eyes darting back and forth over the ground and over her body loo
king for anything that might be of possible help. He noted that the ground was quite damp and was rutted and muddied. There were no identifiable footprints as such, but he was confident that the experts would do the best they could. A final examination of the scene revealed little else. The briefcase contained a few papers and a company lap-top – quite an up-to-date laptop he noted. As murders went it was a fairly ‘clean’ crime. After satisfying himself that there was nothing much more to be deduced or discovered he stood back up, expressed a deep sigh and then turned to see the figure of Takahashi, the pathologist, emerging from under the tape that had been quickly set up around the crime scene. ‘Konban wa - Evening,' he said sombrely.
Takahashi simply ignored him and set about her job indicating that she would be quite glad to have no interference from him. Mori was convinced that she wouldn’t have too much to report that he couldn’t guess at himself at this early stage. He was fairly confident how the woman had died, but you never could tell. The time of death was always revealing.
Slowly and carefully Takahashi examined the body, methodically entering notes into her small hand-held device using her own forensic short hand. Eventually she got to her feet and stood beside Mori looking at him sternly in the eye as if it was Mori himself who had committed the murder.
‘Strangulation,’ she said.
‘Ligature?’
‘Ligature.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Time of death…,’ she thought for a second putting her fingers to her lips. ‘Between eight and nine this evening.'
'You can't be more specific?'
'Neither before eight nor after nine. Is that specific enough for you,' she glowered back at him.
Mori thrust his hands into his pockets and mumbled a begrudging thank you.
‘My pleasure,’ replied Takahashi speaking in a tone that very much said that it had been anything but a pleasure and then exited the scene as quickly as she’d arrived. Mori turned around trying to locate his Inspector in amongst the approaching crowd of investigating officers and uniformed Junsa. Eventually he spotted Inspector Sakamoto.
‘Sir!’ he called.
‘What do we have?’ asked Sakamoto pulling on a pair of black leather gloves. So Mori told him what he knew. As they talked Deguchi approached them. ‘We’ve found a bag, sir, hidden a little further into the bush. It must have been thrown clear during the struggle.’
‘Show me where exactly,’ demanded Sakamoto.
They followed Deguchi to where the body lay. ‘Just in there, sir.’ Deguchi pointed further into a bush that was next to the body.
‘Hmm…’ growled Sakamoto. He indicated to the scene of crime officers to do their work while he patiently waited. Eventually they deemed it satisfactory for the bag to be removed from its resting place.
‘Okay, check it out.’ Sakamoto sniffed and passed the bag to Mori with a manner that suggested that ‘bag checking’ was a demeaning occupation for one so lofty. Mori tolerated, rather than enjoyed, working with Sakamoto, a man who always gave the impression to his subordinates that he’d rather be somewhere else – that somewhere else being the Chief Super’s office, an office and position he coveted very much indeed. Mori pushed these thoughts to the back of his mind and had a quick glance through the bag, picking out a purse and examining the cards within. ‘Still plenty of money in here,’ he said quietly, counting out at least eighty thousand yen and there don’t appear to be any cards missing. The deceased’s called Yamada Eri and according to this she lives just up the hill.’ He passed over an address card which had also been tucked into her purse.
‘Phone?’
Mori looked again back inside the bag and picked out a mobile – again he noted a fairly up-to-date model.
‘Any messages?’
‘I don’t know, sir. I’m not very good with phones. Do you know how to work these?’ He passed it over to Sakamoto who obviously did know a thing or two. He gave Mori a techno-sneer as he pressed a few buttons, checking her e-mail and calendar. There was nothing of interest and Sakamoto tossed the phone back to Mori, who dropped it. ‘Careful, Mori, careful,’ he said as he turned away. ‘Time to talk to the family then, assuming there is one.’
Mori bent down to pick up the phone and wondered how it was that in the space of a few seconds Sakamoto had reduced him to nothing more than an incompetent, bumbling school boy.
Before he set off after his superior he ensured that the posse of Junsas had their instructions to check out the surrounding houses for any witnesses and of course any signs of the perpetrator.
If Mori was honest he never relished talking to relatives of the deceased so soon after they had received the bad news. It went without saying that they were in no condition to answer penetrating questions, although people invariably reacted differently to a death. Some went into a shell and never got beyond the shock of their loss while others moved on surprisingly swiftly and wanted retribution and justice. Some just merely lied, hiding whatever truth there was. And so Mori never looked forward to these occasions. He wasn't particularly good with his own emotions never mind other people's.
It was soon apparent that there was only a husband. On entering the poor man’s house Mori immediately sensed the lack of heat. Curiously it appeared to be colder inside than it was outside and it was with a great reluctance that he removed his overcoat. He shivered quite openly and once again felt that his body was about to succumb to the control of a heavy cold.
‘Our condolences,' he began, 'Are you okay to talk?’ It was his usual opening gambit.
Hideki Yamada was non-committal and merely nodded in reply. He played with a tumbler of whiskey in his hand. Mori noted a newly opened bottle on the sideboard. Nothing wrong in that, he thought.
‘We can come back another time if you’d prefer.’
‘No, it’s fine. I just… I can’t believe it… I…’ He took a sip of whiskey and then sank into a period of silence as if he was striving to discover a deeper resilience, one that Mori suspected he might not have. As he drank Mori also noticed his face wince as if he wasn't used to the bite of the whiskey.
'Not your usual?' Mori nodded at the glass. Yamada simply bowed his head. His face was also beginning to redden. It was abundantly clear that the man was unused to drinking.
‘Is there any obvious reason why anybody would do this? Did your wife have any enemies?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘Any relatives with whom she was not on good terms?’
‘Well, there is her brother. They don’t really get on, but I hardly think-’
‘Anything you can tell us, anything at all will be a great help,’ interrupted Sakamoto.
But Yamada had nothing much more to say, at least as far as the brother was concerned. Mori placed his chin on the tips of his fingers and thought deeply. He could feel a nagging tickle in his throat - a full cold was definitely on its way. He knew it. He attempted to push this depressing thought to the back of his mind and focus on matters at hand. ‘And her work? Did she work?’ he asked.
‘She works for a company in Yokohama. ‘Niigata Kyubin' – you know, the logistics company - in the admin department, contracts, company law, that sort of thing…' He trailed off quite rapidly, obviously lost in some deeper thought or recollection.
‘I see, so did she deal with any sensitive information, you know, commercially sensitive?'
'Not that I know of. I don't think so.'
'Hmm... Do you know anything of her colleagues? Did she talk about them at all?’
‘Not really. Well, you know – the usual.' Once more Yamada appeared non-committal. He was most likely still in shock Mori reminded himself. 'Did she enjoy her work?' he asked.
'So, so. She’d been doing quite well recently and over the last few months has been involved in some merger talks or something. That much I know. She doesn’t like her boss very much. I think he’s called Takeda. He’s a bit of a creep by all accounts, works them hard and gives nothing back in return
. She doesn’t have much time for him, but nothing out of the ordinary. I could say the same about my place of work and my boss.’ Yamada took another slug of whiskey.
‘I know what you mean.’ Mori smiled and risked a glance in Sakamoto’s direction. Sakamoto grunted in response.
‘Did she have any particular colleagues that she talked about, anyone that she may have confided in?’
‘I don’t know. I never really asked her. To be honest we didn’t really talk about each other’s work. We spend enough time there without bringing it home as well.’
