Masako Togawa - The Lady Killer

The staircase, the hall downstairs, and the landing upstairs were all very spacious, as befitted a building that had formerly been a hospital. Where the reception counter had been, just under the staircase, there was a public telephone.

Mitsuko’s room was in the far corner of the ground floor. It was just over one hundred feet square and had a small sink and a gas ring. There was an unfinished painting on an easel and several finished ones stacked against the wall. These he proceeded to examine as Mitsuko boiled the kettle and made instant coffee. They drank the coffee; he was at a loss what to do next, and fiddled with books and a paperknife on the table, and picked up a plaster figure and examined it, pretending he didn’t know what to do with his hands, awaiting his chance. Looking at her, he detected increasing anxiety in her eyes.

This was the chance he had been waiting for. She seemed to sense his feeling, for she opened her mouth to speak.

“You are…” She broke off, perhaps feeling that he would not understand her meaning. He reached out and touched her knee; she pushed him away, but this only served to inflame his desire and he pounced on her, pushing her down onto the floor, and thrust toward her with his hands and his lips. She resisted him fiercely and did not give in.

After thirty minutes of struggle, he gave up. He could not think that this was happening to him… why? He separated from her and gazed at her face.

“I am sorry. I am just not in the mood today,” she said. She pulled down her skirt, which had ridden up in the struggle. There were tears in her eyes.

Ichiro made up his mind to go. He stood up and went to the door. On the way out, he turned and asked her, “Have you got another boyfriend?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “Really I haven’t.”

He smiled wordlessly, went back into the room and kissed her proffered mouth with his dry lips. It was no less than his duty to do so. This woman had become a different creature from the one who had yielded to his kisses, her whole body trembling, at the Tokyo Tower a few hours before. Now he saw her for what she was: dull, a woman lost in daydreams about true love, egoistical, ignorant, nothing.

“Your telephone number, please,” he commanded, and she wrote it down in large letters, telling him to call before 10 p.m. and, when the receptionist answered, to give her room number. She rose to see him off, but he pushed her down and made his way out on his own.

Leaving the building, he looked back, but there was not a light to be seen. It seemed that no one else was up at this late hour. He reached the highway and began to walk in the direction of Shinjuku, turning up his coat collar and thrusting his hands into his great-coat pockets. Inside, he was raging at his rejection. Suddenly, in a maudlin way, he thought of his wife, patiently enduring her loneliness in Osaka, hundreds of kilometers away. Perhaps it was self-pity, but he thought of his fruitless endeavors to bridge this gap. It is only because of that—that’s why I waste my time hunting women , he thought for a few seconds, but then he rejected the thought, at which moment a taxi arrived. He got in, and at first told the driver to take him to his apartment in Yotsuya Sanchome, but then suddenly changed his mind and decided to visit Fusako Aikawa, the typist he had met at the cinema. Her apartment was only one stop away on the subway from Mitsuko Kosugi’s. He got out of the taxi near her apartment and walked the last few yards. He had no particular pressing desire for a woman now, but needed something to distract his mind from the emptiness he had sensed when walking in the road.

He had difficulty in finding the building, but eventually reached it, arriving in the front yard, which was muddied by an overflow of sewage. In the dim light he saw some underwear on the clothesline, which someone had forgotten to take in. The garments floated like white ghosts in the dark.

Inside, the staircase awaited him, its vast maw ready to swallow him as he climbed.

Hesitantly, he knocked gently on Fusako Aikawa’s door, but there was no reply. Last time he had left her sleeping with the hem of her satin negligee riding up over her breasts; the lascivious image floated back into his mind. How bewitching she had looked! He pressed his ear close to the door and listened. Within, all was silent.

So far, he had visited this apartment three times; on the first occasion, Fusako had taken him there, but subsequently he had visited her without any warning, and she had always been glad to see him, even as late as 1 a.m. “Come whenever it suits you,” she had said to the young Algerian student, and he felt in her something protective, which was different from the emotions displayed toward him by his other victims. This gave him a strange sense of security.

He looked at his watch; it was already ten to three. Not wishing to disturb or attract the attention of the neighbors, he knocked again gently, but there was still no reply. It was late; perhaps she was sleeping heavily, he reasoned. He decided to go home, but the same instinct that makes one try the door of an empty house took hold of him and he turned the knob. The door was unlocked, and he stepped into the room.

There was a strange, sweet smell inside, something stagnant, reminiscent of Formalin in a hospital, both sweet and sour at the same time. He turned on the light, and saw Fusako spread-eagled on the bed, stark naked, her legs slightly apart, her hands resting at her sides. Her head was turned to one side. Could she be sleeping naked in this cold weather?

He moved over and stood by her. Her face was swollen and tinged with a purplish hue, and there was a red line about her throat, about as thick as a belt. It looked as if she had been strangled. He moved his hand toward her fat underbelly, so pink, and for a moment he imagined that she was breathing. Could she really be dead? But there was no doubt that she was.

He stepped back sharply, but at the same time as he felt terror he also felt drawn toward her by carnal desire. He hurried out of the room, switching off the light and obliterating the sight of that naked body. Creeping down the staircase, he realized that he had had a momentary desire to rape Fusako’s corpse, and knew that he could have been capable of such a cold-blooded act.

But still, he thought, who on earth could have forced Fusako Aikawa into such a posture? What other man had she let into her room? He felt as if the dead woman had betrayed him somehow. But he had no idea that Fusako’s death was another step on the path to his own misfortune.

He walked away from the apartment rapidly and met no one for several minutes. Then he came to a well-lit intersection and found a policeman standing there. They exchanged glances, but Ichiro said nothing, and the policeman merely tapped his left palm twice with the flashlight he was carrying in his right hand and then moved on without a word. Honda had no intention of reporting the murder that he had discovered.

He caught a taxi on Olympic Street and, his deep voice full of depression, told it to take him to Yotsuya Sanchome. Sitting in the back of the speeding cab, it suddenly occurred to him that the murder of Fusako Aikawa bore a similarity to the killing of the supermarket cashier about two months before. She, too, had been strangled at night, although in her case they had found the string of her Japanese nightgown around her neck. And the coincidence went further; on the night that Kimiko Tsuda was murdered in Kinshicho, had he not had sex with Fusako for the first time? And tonight, had he not expected to enjoy Mitsuko Kosugi—this very night upon which Fusako had been murdered? He felt an awful sense of premonition, but kept it at bay by muttering “No! No!” to himself several times. After all, his visit to Fusako’s room had been but a sudden whim. If he had not tried the door, then he would have left totally unaware of what had happened. So therefore the death of Fusako had nothing to do with him, he reasoned. But in the back of his mind, he heard a voice whispering doubts: “Do you really believe that? Did Fusako Aikawa’s death really have nothing to do with you?” And the voice would not be stilled.