Keigo Higashino: Malice

“I looked into your days in middle school and I heard a lot of different things from a lot of different people. The subject of bullying came up quite a bit. Some said you were a victim. Others said you were one of the bullies yourself. I think both statements are correct. You were bullied and continued to be bullied even when you joined Fujio’s circle. Only the form that the bullying took changed as you went along.

“From your experience as a teacher, you know as well as I do that bullying never ends. As long as the people involved are at the same school, it keeps going on. When a teacher says, ‘There’s no more bullying in my class,’ what they’re really saying is ‘I’d like to believe there’s no more bullying in my class.’

“I realize what happened to that girl left a very deep scar on you. I don’t believe you did what you did willingly, or that you took any joy in it. You simply knew that if you turned against Masaya Fujio, you’d be back in hell. When I think about the guilt you must have felt, the self-loathing, I feel physical pain, Mr. Nonoguchi, and I wasn’t even there. That day was the last time you were bullied, and probably the worst.

“You wanted more than anything to bury that dark memory in the past. You wanted it so much, you were willing to kill for it.

“But wait.

“Why did this secret start bothering you now? Hidaka had obtained the photograph before he wrote Forbidden Hunting Grounds , and there was no sign that he had shown it to anyone afterward. Why couldn’t you assume that your secret was safe with him?

“Please don’t try to tell me that Hidaka was using that photograph to blackmail you. The same lie won’t work twice; and besides, it’s simply beneath the architect of such a masterful crime.

“I suspect Miyako Fujio threw a wrench into everything. She was ready to take Kunihiko Hidaka to court over what he wrote in his book, specifically the thinly disguised portrait of her brother. Hidaka, meanwhile, had begun to realize it might be inevitable. That got you worrying. What would you do if that photograph was submitted as evidence in court?

“I imagine your worries began when Hidaka wrote that novel. When Ms. Fujio started pressing Hidaka, your fear built until, finally, you were ready to commit murder.

“That sounds plausible. Except, I’ve left out the most important piece of the puzzle: the true nature of your relationship with Kunihiko Hidaka. Why did you feel the need to kill Hidaka to keep your secret? This was a man who you were on friendly terms with in recent years. He never even alluded to you or what you did in his novel about Fujio. Why couldn’t you expect Hidaka to continue to keep your secret safe even if things got drawn out between him and Miyako Fujio?

“In your confession, you portrayed the relationship between Hidaka and Ms. Fujio as one of mutual antagonism. Yet we owe it to ourselves to question everything you’ve written, don’t you agree? Let’s look at some facts we were able to independently corroborate. One, you weren’t friends with Hidaka in middle school, yet you actively sought out his friendship and indeed established a relationship with him years later. He even helped introduce you to a publisher so you could become a full-time writer, writing children’s books. Furthermore, in his repeated talks with Miyako Fujio, your name and your involvement in the events described in Forbidden Hunting Grounds remained a secret, again due to Hidaka’s discretion.

“If we try to reconstruct who Hidaka was from just these facts, we find he closely resembles himself as a child. ‘A boy who was kind to everyone around him,’ as he’s been described. In fact, I think it’s possible that, regardless of your intentions, Hidaka honestly thought of you as a friend.

“It took me some time to arrive at this realization because this image of Hidaka was so different than the one I had as I began the investigation. In fact, that image tugged at the back of my mind the entire time I was gathering information about Hidaka’s childhood days.

“Was this disjuncture between what I was hearing and what I felt the result of what I read in your false confession? No. The negative image of Hidaka had been planted in my head much earlier than that—before your arrest. Ultimately I realized where it came from: your original account of the day of the murder.

“When I first read that account, I paid attention only to the details about the discovery of the body itself. Yet there was a very deeply laid trap in the last place I thought to look for one.

“From the look on your face, I can tell I’ve hit the mark. That’s right, I’m talking about the cat. The one you killed.

We found the pesticide mixed into the dirt in the planters at your apartment. You would have been better off flushing the extra down the drain. The pesticide in your apartment matched the one we found in the cat. The owner had it in a box and buried it in her garden. Yes, we exhumed the cat and tested the body.

“Maybe you read about Hidaka’s trouble with that cat in his article? Or since you two were getting along so well, maybe he told you himself? So you made the poisoned meatballs, snuck into the garden, and killed that woman’s cat, all to support an image of Hidaka you intended to craft in my mind.

“You know, once I realized I’d be spending time in the literary world while on this case, I decided to do a little background reading. That’s when I came across the concept of establishing character. Apparently, it won’t do just to tell the reader what a particular character is like. The author needs to show their habits or their words and let the reader form an image on their own.

“So, when you started writing your first account, you already knew you’d need to establish your main character, Kunihiko Hidaka, as early as possible. What better way to show his cruelty than to have him kill a cat? What a happy coincidence you ran into the cat’s owner in the garden that day. Throwing that in at the beginning of your account just made the revelation of Hidaka’s wrongdoing all the more believable.

“I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. Even after I’d arrested you and realized that your account wasn’t to be trusted, it never occurred to me that the episode with the cat might be a lie, and I never attempted to adjust my initial impression of Hidaka.

“I believe that of all the traps you laid for me, that was your finest.

“When I realized it was you who killed the cat, a lightbulb went on. What if the reason you killed the cat was the same reason for the entire crime? In other words, what if your real objective was not just to kill Hidaka, but to ruin him? Now, I thought, we’re getting somewhere .

“Just a moment ago I suggested that you wanted to cover up your own past by killing the only one who knew about it. You made no attempt to deny this, and I think there’s some truth to this. But it wasn’t the reason for your elaborate plan, it was just the final push you needed.

“Once you decided Hidaka had to die, what were your next steps? The first thing you realized was that you’d need a proper motive. It would have to be one that would, once revealed, not only defame the actual victim but would also turn public sympathy in your favor. The solution you came up started with his wife Hatsumi’s infidelity and ended with your enforced ghostwriting. If everything went according to plan, not only would you destroy Hatsumi’s reputation and Hidaka’s character, but you’d forever blacken his professional reputation and steal the credit for his writing to boot.

“This, of course, was the prize you were working for as you wrote out all of those manuscripts and spent those hours under the cold winter sky making your video. I doubt you’d have gone to such lengths merely to hide your own past. That was worth a little effort, sure, but murder was just another step in your plan to destroy everything Hidaka ever built and taint everything he ever had.