Masako Togawa - The Lady Killer

He lay back and gazed up at the ceiling, his brows furrowed in thought. The cheap apartment in a district full of lumber wholesalers came back to his mind. A foreigner passed by close in front of him striding long and heavily, followed at a trot by a page carrying his suitcase. This brought Honda out of his reverie, and he replaced the newspaper in its rack and walked out of the hotel. He made his way to the newsstand at the underground station and bought every evening edition that he could find. In the train, he avidly read every article concerning the murder of the cashier.

The photographs of the girl certainly looked different from the face that he remembered. The girl he had met, if he recollected aright, had a puffiness around her eyes and cheeks that did not show up in the newspaper photos. Perhaps it wasn’t the same girl, but he had to know. He would not relax until he had checked the name and address in his Huntsman’s Log.

Getting off the crowded car at Yotsuya Sanchome Station proved difficult; he had to push his way through the throng, and in doing so he felt the body of a young woman press against his thick overcoat. This unconsummated experience appealed to his sensuality. At last he forced his way out onto the empty platform, where he was overcome by a deep sense of unquiet, for it seemed as if everyone remaining in the train was gazing at him accusingly and might set off in pursuit of him at any moment.

He thrust the papers into his pocket and made his way out of the station. On the way to his flat, he stopped off at a small liquor store, which was just closing, and bought a bottle of whiskey and a jar of olives. As soon as he got in, he opened the lid and gulped down a few of the olives; their oil lined his throat and stomach, and he chased them with a whiskey before opening his diary. The name and address were the same; he began to read the passage that he had written two months ago.

September 2

Cloudy

Had business in Chiba in the morning. Came back at 3 p.m.

Toll road congested, so used Chiba Kaido.

Landscape pale gray—soot, smoke, and ashes from the factories lining the road.

Left car at office and walked around Koto Rakutenchi.

Cinemas, gaudy posters for low-class dramas, workmen wearing clogs, tango music played by second-rate orchestras. Heard fragments of music from a dance hall and went in.

Had to buy a ticket for a soft drink in order to gain admission. Floor small and very dark. Looked into tearoom just inside door; a few potential targets in there. But also young men looking like punks or incipient gangsters.

Sat down on my own for a while. Then a woman’s voice behind me offered to change my ticket for a soft drink. White pants, blue sweater, looked like she was up to no good, but seemed to be open-minded enough. Talked. Overfamiliar, and a bit vulgar, but she would do.

Today her day off; says she works at a supermarket. Danced a bit and then she offered to take me out to the F Health Center. Was curious, so went. My role today was American buyer of part-Japanese descent. Took a cab to Funabashi. Health center full of women and old people—looked like farmers. All having great time going up on stage and dancing between eating and drinking.

Victim suggested we take a bath together. Had to wait an hour for small bathroom to fall vacant; passed time drinking beer and eating not very good sushi. Maybe because it was still early, but felt out of place amongst all these villagers. She kept talking and I listened, trying to work up desire by looking at the nape of her neck and her alcohol-flushed face. Bathroom free at last. Tipped middle-aged woman in charge, got key, and in we went. Sank into mineral-spring water and looked at victim’s body. White flesh seemed to sway under water. Bath was tiled. Touched her body—no adverse response. Sitting in bathtub having fun and feeling desire rising in me. Her breasts and fat bottom caked with the mineral salts; left a taste on my tongue.

Mark of the tiles on her back; reminded me at first of whipping, then of iron-barred windows.

Buzzer rang; time up. Woman in charge of bath looked at us curiously on way out.

Went straight to Kinshicho. Desire aroused and then interrupted—annoying, but perhaps better than the hollow feeling I always get after the act.

Took her to Korean restaurant. She had an enormous appetite—wolfed down a large bowl of rice with nothing but pickles to go with it. Nothing doing tonight, it seemed, but she gave me a map of her apartment and I promised to call around in a few days.

The diary for September 2 ended there, with the sketch map that the girl had drawn attached by tape at the bottom of the page. It was drawn and lettered in a childish hand; he looked absentmindedly at the various landmarks—a tram stop, a moat, a concrete bridge. Gradually the image of the apartment came back to him, and he could clearly remember the bridge, the narrow streets.

The apartment was behind a lumberyard; when he had made his way there, night had drawn its gloomy curtains around him, and he remembered passing by the dark shadows that were bundles of timber.

He thought back to the newspaper reports of the murder. She had been discovered by a middle-school student delivering milk at 5:30 a.m. on that very morning, just when he had been standing on Olympic Street waiting for a taxi. He imagined the boy passing the lumberyard, the milk bottles rattling in the carrier on his bicycle. When he crossed the small garden at the back of her apartment, he had noticed that the window was half-open, and he could see the whole room reflected in the mirror on her dressing table. The woman whom he had seen writhing on the tiles of the bathroom—now the milkboy saw those same limbs writhing, but frozen by death.

Honda remembered that dressing table well. It had been covered with a red square of fine silk, on which were arrayed jars of powder and bottles of cheap creams and lotions. It was now unpleasant to remember that the girl had taken a bottle of milky lotion from that same dressing table and poured it over his body. He threw down the diary in disgust and opened the window, gulping down the cold night air. It was unbelievable that the woman who had innocently pressed her lips all over his body was now dead.

At all events, it was clearly the same woman; the name and address in the diary told him that.

The newspapers reported that on the night of her death a man had visited her room, and that the evidence suggested that he had had sex with her. Kimiko Tsuda must have been something close to a prostitute, he imagined. Although he had no direct evidence as to this—she hadn’t asked him for payment—it seemed likely from her overfriendly manner and also from her obvious sexual expertise. Why, she had had a man with her last night… and that had been the end of her.

The newspapers also reported that she had had many male friends, so in due course every one of them would be investigated. What about him? No need to worry, surely. He had only been to her room once, and she had only known him as Sobra, a buyer from the U.S.A.

He closed the window, and in that instant, inexplicably, he remembered how large the whites of her eyes had been when she had raised her head from his loins…

At the time, there seemed to be no connection between the murder of his former victim and the fact that he had been sleeping with a new girlfriend at the time.

The connection only became clear much later.

At 8 p.m. on the nineteenth of December, Ichiro Honda was high above Tokyo on the observation platform of Tokyo Tower. He was accompanied by a girl, a student at an art school, whom he had met about a week before.