Fuminori Nakamura - Evil and the Mask

Several years went by, and finally I started thinking about becoming a different person, not so much to start a new life as to make my old self disappear. To extinguish myself, to vanish, to become a bystander in life. The messages I received at infrequent intervals from Yoshigaki told me that Kaori’s life wasn’t going all that smoothly either. Idly I imagined myself as the air that hung around her.

Everyone plays the lead role in their own life. The world progresses through gathering all these leads, through the jumble of different ideas and values. But I planned to drop out of my own play, to expunge myself, to drift into the cracks between the actors who make the world go round. When stagecraft or dramatic tricks were required, I wanted to work in the background, quietly and unobtrusively. I wondered if there were others besides me who had disappeared while they were still alive. Somewhere there must be, I thought vaguely.

I went and bought a can of coffee from the vending machine out front. A group of children was playing in the park, their mothers watching. The intensity of their happiness was too much for me. The sun was just about to set behind the apartment buildings. A motorbike delivering evening papers stopped nearby, a truck loaded with boxes swept past, an elderly man out jogging ran by me.

I put my hand in the pocket of my jeans and sipped my coffee, wondering what would happen to me. I thought about that, unable to marshal my thoughts. How would a life like mine turn out? What meaning would my existence have in this world? But even if my new life was full of despair, I reflected quietly, my real life had ended when I leapt to my death several years ago. I made my way slowly back to my room.

On the screen Kaori was moving. Looking down, she was opening the door of the convenience store, holding her plastic bag and purse in her left hand and putting the receipt away with her right. I thought again how typical it was for her to store her receipt carefully. She was still moving. I was smiling.

“THERE’S A MAN who often comes to Ms. Kaori’s club. He might be a bit of a problem. A con man. It looks like he’s after her bank account, which has about thirty million yen in it. The Kuki family gave it to her as her share of the inheritance after Shozo Kuki was declared missing, presumed dead, but it appears that she’s just left it there, never even touched it.”

The detective handed me a single photo. It showed a man in a suit with longish hair and narrow eyes.

“He calls himself Takayuki Yajima, but his real name is Masayuki Nishida. He’s thirty-four, and of course he’s single.”

“You mean this is the guy who was checking up on Kaori?”

“No, that was someone else. I’m still not sure who. My guess is that it’s some kind of shadowy company, the kind that avoids publicity. I don’t know why an outfit like that would be investigating Ms. Kaori, but if I look into her past I might find the reason.”

“No, don’t do that yet. For the time being I just want to wait and see what happens.”

Sitting next to the detective was his assistant, Azusa Konishi, who had started working at Je le Répète and become Kaori’s friend. She was studying me with interest.

“But what puzzles me more than why he’s doing it is how he knew about Kaori’s bank balance in the first place.”

“Did you know that one of the clerks at the Kuki family’s law firm was accused of embezzlement?”

“Yeah.”

“The lawyer filed a complaint against him, the police issued an arrest warrant and he killed himself in Wakayama. But at university he was in the same year as Yajima, and apparently they were friends.”

“You mean it’s connected to the Kukis?”

“Yes. Fraudsters like Yajima gather information from a wide variety of sources. Most likely he heard that Ms. Kaori had a large sum of money in the bank from this ex-employee.”

“Is it possible that other people could have the same information?”

“I don’t think so. Con men usually keep their information pretty close to their chest, and it was leaked to him privately in the first place, by a friend.”

I leaned back on the sofa and took another mouthful of lukewarm coffee. The hotel windows were covered with raindrops. The TV had been left on, and a reporter was running somewhere with a microphone in hand. There had been another series of explosions. I could tell that Konishi was eager to say something, but was holding back out of politeness. With her dyed brown curls, her shorts and the white, long-sleeved T-shirt that accentuated her breasts, she was one of those striking women you see all over the place.

“Ms. Kaori,” she began, her voice lower than I expected. “My impression is that she’s very good-natured. She’s cheerful and considerate, so she’s popular with customers, but I still get the feeling that she’s putting it on. Of course it’s a service industry, so everyone fakes it to some extent, but it seems to me that she always has to force herself to be cheerful. Even her thoughtfulness is kind of painful to watch. She’s pretty but, how can I put it, it’s like she’s afraid of living.”

She looked at me searchingly.

“It looks like she’s got a bit of a soft spot for this guy Yajima. She still thinks of him as a customer, but I don’t know how things will pan out. Even if she finds out he’s a con man, she might end up feeling sorry for him. She’s got that side to her. Some women let themselves be fooled, even knowing the guy is a cheat. With his previous victims, Yajima was quite capable of continuing to work on them even after he was exposed, telling them that he needed the money, this time he really meant it. I can’t say for sure that would happen with Kaori, but he’s a nuisance.”

She straightened up.

“I think she brings out the worst in people. It’s like the part of her that’s afraid, the part of her that’s insecure, can’t help accepting other people’s weaknesses. It worries me to see that.”

The man turned to look at her and she fell silent.

“It’s okay. Please say anything that’s on your mind. It’ll be useful.”

The detective took up the conversation.

“As well as that, Yajima’s into drugs. It sounds like he makes the women take them as well, whether they want to or not, sometimes even injecting them by force. When you see a beautiful woman and think, what on earth’s she doing with a guy like that, nine times out of ten there are drugs involved. It goes without saying.”

“He injects them?”

He looked at me strangely for a second.

“So I hear. I got that from a woman he mistreated before.”

“I see.”

I picked up the photo of the man calling himself Yajima and stared at it again. I didn’t feel the least bit disturbed, and my heart rate didn’t alter. I was aware of the stillness in the room and I thought I could hear faint noises somewhere in the distance. When I glanced at the clock, it was almost time for Azusa to go to work.

“What should we do?” the detective asked.

I stubbed out my cigarette.

“Look for any obvious patterns in this guy’s behavior. His regular hangouts, days and times he goes there. And then after a week I want you to stop watching him. One thing I need to ask you, though. How far are you prepared to go?”

The man’s expression didn’t change.