The Lady Killer

by Masako Togawa

  “Some customer, to give him ten thousand yen. Wish I could find one like that!”

  “But he only called the once, you know. Nobu hopes he’ll call again, but he won’t, mark my words. Once is enough with that cow! He’s got no sense of service, that one, which is why all his customers leave him in the end.”

  It was Akiko, also known by the diminutive “Attchan,” who was running down his rival behind his back. It appeared to Shinji that Nobu had stolen one of his customers off him. He sat listening to this and similar talk interspersed with suggestive banter between Attchan and the plump, pink customer on his right for thirty minutes, but still there was no sign of Nobu. Perhaps he’d better phone later. He paid his bill, a mere 350 yen for the beer and some tidbits, and left.

  But when he got to the bottom of the stairs he found that it was raining outside. In fact, it was a downpour, and he decided to shelter there until it subsided. The water formed deep pools on the asphalt, reflecting the red neon light of the bar sign. He lit a cigarette and gazed at the furious deluge. Not a soul was in sight.

  A taxi stopped at the end of the lane, and a man, his jacket pulled over his head, ran to where Shinji was sheltering. He paused under the eaves and put his jacket on; under it was a striped shirt, which revealed that he was a waiter from Bar B. He glanced at Shinji and smiled impishly. His face was feminine, with something of the soft roundness of childhood left in it. And on his tie was the initial N.

  “Nobu, I presume,” said Shinji. “I have been waiting for you.”

  “Sorry to keep you waiting in this rain. Won’t you come up?”

  “No thanks—I spent quite a time there already. I must be on my way now—but just a question or two first.” And taking a thousand-yen note out of his wallet, he folded it with deliberation and slipped it into Nobu’s handkerchief pocket.

  “I’m a lawyer,” he went on. “I’m checking into blood donation. Have you given recently?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I’ve become anemic of late. Are you looking for AB Rh-negative, then? What sort of operation is it for?”

  Shinji just shook his head. His stud card had turned out to be useless after all; it was time for him to fold.

  “Anyway,” the young man continued, “I made a pledge at my last birthday that I would never give blood again. I make an important resolution every time I have a birthday. Who knows, next year I may resolve to quit gay bars!”

  “And when is your birthday?”

  “January fifteenth.”

  January 15… the day that Mitsuko Kosugi was murdered. And the boy had said…

  “And you said that something interesting happened to you on your birthday. What was it?”

  “I didn’t say it.”

  “Sorry, Attchan did.”

  “Oh. Well, it wasn’t really anything nice—Attchan’s jealous, that’s all. I mean, yes, I was given money, but ooh, what a weird customer! I was called to the hotel by telephone. He made me take a bath, but he didn’t remove a single garment—in fact, he even wore gloves throughout! A short guy, with a muffled sort of voice. And he only left a small bedside footlight on, so it was almost pitch dark. I don’t think it’s so romantic in the dark, do you?”

  “And he gave you ten thousand yen?”

  “That’s right.”

  The rain had subsided; at the far end of the lane, a drunkard staggered along, supported by a harlot. And nobody had taken the boy’s blood after all. So the old man’s efforts—the careful listing of AB Rh-negative donors, his investigations with the blood banks—had been to no avail. His own long hours on the trail had also been useless.

  “Thanks,” he said weakly.

  “Is that all you want of me?” said Nobu Mikami, winking at him lasciviously and tapping the handkerchief pocket into which Shinji had slipped the thousand yen. “But, between you and me, I think that all men with moles are a bit abnormal, don’t you? My customer tonight had a large mole above his belly button, just where his fat was running to slack. Disgusting, I call it!”

  The rain had at last stopped, and Shinji left without a word. But he had only gone a few paces down the narrow street before the significance of the boy’s words struck home. He rushed back and caught Nobu halfway up the stairs.

  “You said ‘mole,’” he panted. “Do you mean that the customer on your birthday had a mole, too?”

  “Sure—a big one on the base of his nose.” He looked down the stairs at Shinji and laid his finger down one side of his nose suggestively.

  “Are you sure the customer was a man? Could it not possibly have been a woman in disguise?”

  The boy blinked in surprise at this peculiar question, but at length replied, “I have no idea—could be. I have lots of oddball customers, but it doesn’t worry me so long as they pay. But if it was a woman, I don’t know what on earth she wanted from me.” He turned his back and vanished up the stairs, his full buttocks twinkling under the tight jeans. Shinji stood there in stupefaction. At last it was all becoming clear.

  Three out of the five people with that rare blood group had met someone with a mole on the side of his or her nose. But in every case the circumstances had differed. And, even more significant, those three meetings had occurred on the day of one of the murders or on the day before. Three moles on three noses, all connecting up in one line. It hadn’t occurred to him until he had heard the boy’s last words. But who could she be, this woman with a mole on her nose? What was she after? Question after question poured through his mind.

  He hurried away from the shady quarter. On the main street, he looked for a public telephone.

  7

  He went into a coffee shop and used the public telephone to call up the old man at his home, but the maid answered and grumbled that he was not back yet. “And he didn’t even say where he was going,” she complained.

  Where could he be, all by himself at this time of night? Shinji decided to wait a while for his return home and took a corner seat and ordered a cup of coffee. A few seats away, an avant-garde group of young people who seemed to be led by a young woman wearing white lipstick were striking extravagant poses and putting white tablets into their beer. Shinji ignored them. Getting his memo book out of his pocket instead, he began to write down his conclusions from his research to date:

  1. First murder. (November 5)

  Kimiko Tsuda.

  Nothing discovered relating to this day.

  2. Second murder. (December 19)

  Fusako Aikawa.

  On this day Seiji Tanikawa of the film-processing company first visited the Turkish bath at the behest of a woman with a mole on her nose.

  3. Third murder. (January 15)

  Mitsuko Kosugi.

  Nobuya Mikami (of the gay bar) was called on the phone and went out to a customer he had never met before. This customer, described as a man of short stature with a muffled voice, also had a mole on the nose.

  4. Event unknown. (January 14)

  ???????No murder case has been reported for this day. On this day, the cosmetics salesman sold fake jewelry to a woman with whom he went to an inn at Sendagaya. This lady, who had the appearance of being a married woman, was smartly dressed in a kimono and also had a mole on her nose.

  Common points concerning the person who appeared before the three witnesses are as follows:

  1. A fairly distinctive mole at the right side of the base of the nose.

  2. Only one appearance in each case before disappearing.

  3. Only approached men with blood of the AB Rh-negative group.

  Shinji reread what he had written and contemplated. Although the gay boy had said that he had met a man, there was enough about his description to suggest that it could have been a woman in disguise. Above all, there was the mole.

  So it was fair to assume that in all three cases, the person had been the same.

  And it was highly likely that it was the same person who had telephoned the blood banks inquirin
g about the rare blood group.

  So what lay behind this mysterious person’s actions?

  Why did she meet people with AB Rh-negative blood on the day of the murder, or the day before?

  Suppose all three men had told the truth, and she had collected blood from none of them, what was her purpose behind these meetings?

  She had always effected contact through sex.

  So…

  Perhaps her target was the semen, and not the blood, of the men! This seemed to Shinji to make sense.

  A murderess… gathering secretions from the bodies of men… leaving them in the bodies of her victims… how morbid! If he were a psychopathologist, he might be able to explain the distortion of the criminal’s mind, but as a lawyer he had no theories. His mind was horrified at the thought of this woman who gathered the sperm of men with clammy hands and then bent over the bodies of the women whom she had strangled. Could it really have been a woman, and not a man in disguise, who had entrapped Ichiro Honda?

  He looked again at the list. There was no appearance noted on the first occasion, the murder of Kimiko Tsuda. Did he, or she, visit someone with this obscure blood group on that day, too? he wondered. If so, it had to be either the day laborer Oba or else Yamazaki, the medical intern. Which of them had lied to him?

  By process of elimination, the day laborer seemed the most unlikely, particularly if the criminal was a woman. And then in his mind’s eye he was again sitting in the Bluebird coffee shop, facing the pale face of Yamazaki. What had the man said in response to his questions about blood? “Blood is an old-fashioned topic.” What had he meant? And then Shinji suddenly realized.

  Had Yamazaki not spoken of an interview with a third-rate magazine… on the topic of artificial insemination? Was not this a hint? Had the woman with the mole also approached Yamazaki? What had transpired to link him, his blood group, the woman with the mole, and the case of Ichiro Honda?

  Perhaps the sentencing of Honda to death had given him a guilty conscience; perhaps this was why he had remained silent about… about what? About the giving of his sperm. Shinji felt sure that it was Yamazaki who could fill in the blank space in his notebook. He would visit him again at the hospital tomorrow.

  He stirred his lukewarm coffee. One question remained in his mind. The cosmetics salesman had met the woman with the mole on the fourteenth of January. If he wasn’t lying, and if the woman had not taken sperm from him, then what had she taken? The only possible answer would be blood.

  When he was lying insensible on the bed, she had taken his blood.

  That was it; that made sense. So the old man’s theory that the criminal had taken blood from these men was correct! And his harvest today had been a woman with a mole on the base of her nose.

  Suddenly he felt weary. He called the old man’s home again, but still he was not back. He paid and left.

  In the street, he suddenly thought of his empty apartment where no one was awaiting him. And by contrast, he thought of the plump, white hands of Yasue, the girl in the Turkish bath, and of the slim nape at the back of the neck of Michiko Ono as she had walked ahead of him in the damp-smelling library.

  He shook his head to clear it of such thoughts and walked heavily toward the station.

  THE BLACK STAIN

  1

  The waiting room near to the entrance of the hospital was crowded with outpatients with bandages on them and with mothers soothing fretful children. It was just after 9 a.m.—opening time. Shinji sat on a hard wooden bench waiting to see intern Yamazaki. A little girl with short, bobbed hair sitting next to him had just wiped her caramel-covered hands all over his trousers; the child’s mother had said, “Don’t do that!” absently, her eyes looking away at something else.

  Yamazaki came in. Tall and elegant, he wore his white coat with distinction, one hand in the pocket, the front buttons undone. Stylish fellow, Shinji thought.

  Shinji rose to greet him. “Thank you for seeing me yesterday.”

  “Not at all. But why are you back again today? I’m busy, you know.”

  “Yes, I do realize, but I won’t keep you long. Look, I told you I was a journalist, but that isn’t true. I’m a lawyer.” And he presented his genuine card. The intern gazed at it with interest.

  “I’m defending Ichiro Honda. Incidentally, do you know his blood type?”

  “Yes. I saw in the newspaper. It’s the same as mine.”

  “We are convinced of his innocence. For one thing, we do not believe that the AB Rh-negative blood found under the fingernails of the victims was his. The same applies to the sperm that was found.”

  “Really? Are you implying that the blood was mine?”

  “Not the blood. The sperm.”

  The intern was speechless for a moment; he stared at Shinji out of the corner of his eye and then broke into a high-pitched laugh that had a hollow and insincere ring. “Very interesting. And what makes you so sure?”

  “Well, you told me yesterday that you were interviewed by a popular magazine on the topic of sperm donation. That’s correct, isn’t it? So you have some experience, don’t you?”

  “Well, yes, I’m one of several medical students here who donate. Usually about three of us, but sometimes four or five. But the names are always kept confidential, and even if you give you don’t know if it will be used. But what on earth can this have to do with Ichiro Honda?”

  “I have reason to believe that you donated on the fifth of November last year.”

  “Wait a minute.” Yamazaki consulted his pocket diary. He shook his head. “I didn’t note it, and my memory of last year is hazy. I have a feeling that I donated in about October, but I can’t be sure.”

  “And where would the donation have taken place?”

  “Why, here, of course.”

  “And how is it usually collected?”

  The faint smile vanished from Yamazaki’s face. His susceptibilities were plainly offended. “I don’t see why I have to go into details… I don’t see what bearing… Oh, very well, I suppose there’s no harm in telling you. In a test tube, of course.”

  “So someone goes around collecting these tubes? For example, a nurse?”

  “No, we usually hand it over to the registrar in person.”

  Whilst talking, they had moved away from the crowd and were now standing by a window next to a shoe locker. To the casual observer, they would have been seen as two men holding a light conversation.

  “Look,” said Shinji. “A man’s life depends upon this. You won’t have to go into court and give evidence if you don’t want to, but please just tell me the truth. On or just before the fifth of November, did you not give a test tube of sperm to someone other than the registrar—even, a faint possibility that occurs to me, to a strange nurse?”

  A cool breeze, chilled by the shade of the trees outside, blew in through the window. Kotaro Yamazaki had turned his back on Shinji, causing the latter to reflect on how such a gesture symbolizes rejection. After a pause, Yamazaki turned and faced Shinji again.

  “How much do you think the hospital pays me?” His voice was low and challenging. Shinji did not reply.

  “Nothing, that’s the answer! No matter how long you’ve worked, nothing. You’ve got to be rich to become a doctor, you know! A lot of the others are themselves sons of doctors, so they can afford it and don’t mind working like horses for nothing. I’m not complaining; that’s the way it is. I’m just saying it’s easier to qualify if you are rich, if you’re a doctor’s son like those others, so I ask you to spare a thought for people like me who have to make it on our own. Yes, I did sell a test tube of semen for ten thousand yen on the fifth of November last year, if you must know.”

  “Ten thousand yen! That’s a lot of money! What’s the normal rate?”

  Yamazaki again turned his back on Shinji and answered over his shoulder. “A thousand or fifteen hundred.” His voice seemed to be full of self-contempt.

  “And what did the person look like—the one who came
to collect the tube?”

  “A nurse in a white uniform. It was in the afternoon, I think. I had just had lunch, and was walking down the corridor when a strange nurse carrying a test tube appeared and, having identified me, offered me ten times the usual rate to make an urgent donation under conditions of strict secrecy. I accepted without hesitation. I mean, ten thousand yen. And in other ways it was not such an unusual request.”

  The nurse had waited for him to make the donation and had then left. She had introduced herself as being from the K Obstetric Clinic in Setagaya.

  “And you got the payment all right?”

  “Oh, yes, she gave it to me in a brown envelope together with the test tube.”

  “And what did you do with the envelope?”

  “I threw it away.”

  “Can you remember what she looked like?”

  “Not particularly. A small woman in a nurse’s uniform, which contributes to anonymity. When she turned to go, I saw that her hair was braided under her cap.”

  “Did she have a mole at the right base of her nose?”

  Shinji touched his nose to refresh Yamazaki’s memory.

  “Yes, she did, now you mention it. Quite a big mole. She was wearing a mask at first, and I didn’t see it.”

  So the woman with the mole had come here, too. She had collected semen; her criminal intent now seemed clear.

  “And she took her mask off?”

  “Yes. She apologized for having a cold and blew her nose. That’s when she took the mask off and I saw the mole.”

  So she invariably tried to conceal the mole, and thereby drew attention to it. Was the criminal fighting a losing battle with fate?