Кэйго Хигасино - A Midsummer’s Equation

There was a pause, then, “I’d say I did, yes.”

“Good,” Kusanagi said. “Where are you now?”

“Walking toward Asakusa.”

“Asakusa? What’s there?”

“A good place for dinner. I haven’t had anything to eat yet.”

“Great, give me the name. I’ll meet you there. Dinner’s on me.”

“Really? Then maybe I should suggest a different place—”

“Don’t get greedy.”

Kusanagi punched the name of the place into his car’s GPS and pulled away from the curb.

Utsumi’s favorite spot to grab a late dinner in Asakusa was right next to the Azuma Bridge, a little place on a narrow alleyway wedged in between the main road and the Sumida River. Lucky for Kusanagi, there was a parking lot just across the way.

The two sat down at a table fashioned from the cross-section of a large log. They both ordered Utsumi’s recommendation: the cow tongue platter.

“Well, let’s hear it,” Kusanagi said, pulling an ashtray over and lighting a cigarette.

Utsumi pulled a navy-colored notebook out of her shoulder bag.

“Well, basically, you were right. Tsukahara was looking for Senba — no fewer than nine places told me that a man in his sixties had been around showing people a picture of him and asking questions. I didn’t quite get confirmation that the one asking the questions was, in fact, Tsukahara, but the description matched.”

Kusanagi looked up at the ceiling and blew out a stream of smoke. “That sounds about right,” he said. “So we know where Tsukahara was. What about Senba? Did Tsukahara ever find him?”

Utsumi looked up from her notebook and shook her head. “I don’t think he did. Not with the number of hotels he ended up asking at.”

“And nobody said they’d seen Senba around?”

“I showed the picture to everyone I talked to, but nothing.”

Kusanagi frowned. “Yeah, that would’ve been too easy.”

Their dinner arrived. Each one of them had seven pieces of cow tongue on a large tray, surrounded by a small bowl of grated yam, a bowl of boiled rice and barley, salad, and oxtail soup.

“This looks fantastic,” Kusanagi said, snuffing out his cigarette.

“You didn’t think we’d find Senba there, did you?” Utsumi said, staring at him.

“I had my doubts,” Kusanagi admitted. “Even if Senba was out looking for places to stay, Sanya probably wouldn’t be his first choice. It’s a tourist dive for backpackers from overseas. You can’t stay there too long without some kind of income. Maybe Tsukahara didn’t know how the area had changed because he was off the force for a while. Or maybe he knew, but he went to check anyway. Classic old-school detective, leaving no stone unturned.” Kusanagi took a bite of his cow tongue and whistled. The combination of texture and taste was sublime. “That is good. Dammit. Now I want a beer.”

“Where would he have gone, then? An Internet café?”

Kusanagi nodded, pouring his grated yam over the rice and barley. “That’s where all the drifters, young and old, wind up these days. Cheaper than budget places in Sanya, and they’ve got showers. Wow, this yam rice is amazing too.”

“Okay,” Utsumi said, “I’ll try the Internet cafés tomorrow, then. We still haven’t figured out why Tsukahara was looking for Senba in the first place, though.”

Kusanagi sipped his oxtail soup, gave a little sigh, and reached for his jacket on the chair next to him. He pulled his notebook out of the inner pocket and flipped through the pages.

“Well,” he said, “while you were out tromping around, I went to Ogikubo and checked the records from the time of Senba’s arrest. I found out that Tsukahara’s partner on the case was a sergeant by the name of Fujinaka. He’s still with the Ogikubo department, though out on medical leave. I got them to call him up, and he agreed to meet me, so I went to his place — a swanky apartment on the thirtieth floor of one of those towers. Sounds like his wife hit pay dirt with a massage business. I guess not every detective lives in a rundown place in the suburbs.”

Fujinaka was in his midfifties but skinny, which gave him the feel of a much older person. The medical leave was due to heart trouble.

“I remember the case well,” he had told Kusanagi. He was well spoken and had sounded almost like a schoolteacher. “They had me partnered with Detective Tsukahara from the beginning of the case, but I wasn’t able to assist with much of it, as I recall.” Fujinaka had smiled.

“And you weren’t there when Tsukahara took Senba in?” Kusanagi had asked.

“That’s right. I was on the other side of town, much to my chagrin. If I’d been with Tsukahara, I would have gotten the chance to see him chase that fellow down,” Fujinaka had said. Not I would’ve gotten the chance to take him down myself , Kusanagi noted. The deference Fujinaka showed his ex-partner was impressive.

“You said you weren’t able to assist much during the solving of the case,” Kusanagi had said next. “Did you do any follow-up work with Tsukahara?”

“Nothing much, beyond being his guide to the streets around here. It was a very clear-cut case, Detective. The murderer’s confession was believable; all the details checked out. In the end, there was really only one question.”

“What was that?”

“The body was found on the street in Ogikubo, a typical residential area,” Fujinaka had told him. “According to Senba’s testimony, he had spoken with the victim in a nearby park, and she had laughed at him and walked away. In a rage, he had run after her and stabbed her.”

“I read that in the report. Where’s the question?”

Fujinaka had straightened in his chair and said, “The question is, why did it happen there? The victim, Nobuko Miyake, lived on the other side of Tokyo, in Kiba. And Senba lived in an apartment in Edogawa Ward, less than ten kilometers away from her. So why did they meet up at a place that was inconvenient for both of them?”

“There was something about that in Senba’s testimony, wasn’t there? Didn’t he call Ms. Miyake, who told him that she was in Ogikubo and if he wanted to talk to her, he’d have to come all the way out?”

Fujinaka had nodded. “He also said that he didn’t know why Ms. Miyake was out in Ogikubo — that he’d been too preoccupied with the money she owed him to care. So we tried to piece together where she’d been before the attack. We walked all over town, asking around. The arrest was quick, but everything after that — well, truth is, we never came up with much of anything to explain what she was doing out there. That’s the lingering question.”

“It doesn’t seem that important,” Kusanagi had said.

“That was my opinion as well, given that we had a confession and everything checked out. I could live with a few mysteries. But Tsukahara wasn’t satisfied. Not only did he come with me on all the questioning, but he also did a lot of looking into the victim’s past on his own. He paid me a visit after the case went to court and Senba had been sent to jail, and I could tell it still didn’t sit well with him. I remember thinking that was the difference between a dyed-in-the-wool detective and, well, someone like me.”

Kusanagi finished recounting his visit with Fujinaka and took another bite of his meal.

Utsumi picked up her chopsticks, which she’d set aside while Kusanagi was talking. “It sounds like Tsukahara had more suspicions concerning the victim than the murderer.”

“That was my takeaway, too,” Kusanagi agreed. “What I want to know is, why was Tsukahara so dogged about that point? Sure, it’s important to know the background to the case, but it’s rare that everything is revealed, even after a successful investigation. He had to have a reason for being so concerned with what the victim had been up to before the murder took place.”