A Quiet Place (16 page)

He gave up running and moved over to the side of the road, but didn't turn around. The headlights would illuminate his face and give his pursuers a clear look at him. Asai grabbed his dark glasses from his pocket and slipped them on. He had just enough sense left to think of that.

The car pulled up beside him. His heart felt as if it were going to explode. He heard the window roll down.

“Excuse me.”

Asai froze.

“Are you headed to the station?” The man's tone was surprisingly amicable.

“Yep.”

From behind his dark glasses, Asai could barely make out the speaker's face; then again, he wasn't really trying to look. He kept his head down.

“Great. That's on our way. Jump in!”

He realized there were two men in the car – the driver and someone in the passenger seat. He wondered if it was a trap. But there was no escape. Out here, there was nowhere to run to.

He climbed into the back seat and the car set off. Asai was seated behind the driver – a broad-shouldered man in a woollen jacket. The man in the passenger seat wore a leather jacket and was smoking a cigarette. His hair was long and quite messy, which gave him a feminine look. This reassured Asai a little – these men were obviously not police – but his heart rate only slowed very slightly.

The driver and the young man in the leather jacket resumed their conversation, but Asai couldn't hear what they were saying. His ears were ringing. Outside, the dark silhouettes of the mountains and fields flew past.

“What time's your train?”

The loud voice of the driver in the woollen jacket made Asai jump. The question had come out of nowhere. In fact, he had no idea. He'd never consulted the return train timetable. He'd been planning to spend the night either here in Fujimi or in neighbouring Kamisuwa, depending on how things went with Kubo.

“Hmm. At this time I'll take whichever train I can get,” he replied.

“Back to Tokyo?”

“Yes.”

Damn! He should have said he was going in the other direction. Now they knew he was from Tokyo. If he'd said he was headed the other way, once they'd dropped him off at the station they'd have had no way of knowing where he was going. But it was too late. If he changed his story now, it would seem bizarre. The younger man in the passenger seat looked at his watch, then said something in a low voice to the driver.

“It's 9.30 now. You'll have to wait for the eleven o'clock. It'll get you into Shinjuku at 4.30 in the morning.”

Asai nodded in response.

“Were you visiting someone up at the sanatorium?”

The driver turned the wheel to the left. There was a sharp bend in the road, and then the sparse, distant lights of the town came into view.

“Yeah.”

“It would help if the buses round here ran a bit later.”

Asai caught sight of the driver's white gloves gripping the wheel, and almost cried out in horror. He must have left his fingerprints on the bottle of hair oil. He sat up. He was going to have to get them to stop the car and retrace his steps. He'd been right in the first place – he should have gone back to retrieve the bottle right away.

“So how's business up Tokyo way?”

“Huh?” Asai was thrown for a moment.

“We heard the economy's not too good right now. Us too – we're having a hard time of it with all these forced cuts in rice cultivation. I know the folks in the city think we have it good here in the country, they think we're making a fortune from farming, and until recently we were doing okay. But tonight we've just been to a meeting of the agricultural cooperative about the cuts and the new quotas, and it felt more like a funeral wake, I can tell you. Not long ago there was a union president who killed himself over these quotas.”

These men were members of the local agricultural cooperative? He'd better be even more on his guard, Asai thought, sinking back again in his seat.

16

The Tokyo newspapers were filled with articles about the death of Konosuke Kubo. One paper ran with the headline “The Yatsugatake Mountain Murder Case”. Another had “Fujimi Highlands Homicide”. But the content was more or less the same.

At around 7 a.m. on Sunday morning, on a small rural road about a mile to the east of the prefectural highway in Fujimi, Nagano Prefecture, a local resident made the grisly discovery of a dead body. The man, estimated to be around forty, had been beaten to death with a rock. An examination of the contents of a suitcase found at the scene revealed that the murdered man was Konosuke Kubo, 38, of Keyaki Mansion, Higashi Nakano in Nakano Ward, Tokyo. Time of death was estimated to have been between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. on Saturday evening.

The crime took place near the foot of the southern face of Mount Amigasa, one of the peaks in the Yatsugatake mountain ridge, near the upper ravine of the Kamanashi River. This is a remote area that is practically deserted after dark. By the victim's head lay three large, bloodstained stones, weighing approximately two kilos each. It is believed that these stones
were used to deal fatal blows that fractured the victim's skull. Additionally, the face had been damaged by sulphuric acid, which strongly suggests that the killer first threw acid at the victim, then, once his target was on the ground, finished him off with the aforementioned stones. The particularly brutal method employed in this attack has led authorities to believe that the motive was likely to be some kind of personal grudge. There was no sign of a robbery.

Mr Kubo had arrived in the area on the evening train from Tokyo, with the intention of visiting his wife at a nearby sanatorium. He was attacked on his way from the station to the sanatorium. The killer left nothing behind him besides a small amount of acid in a 60ml bottle that had once contained hair oil. The bottle was old, and it is supposed that the killer refilled it with sulphuric acid and brought it to the site of the murder, making it probable that this was a premeditated act. A single fingerprint was lifted from the bottle, but it was reportedly too smudged to be of use in identifying the murderer. The bottle used was from a brand of hair oil popular among women and is widely available throughout the country, making it difficult to investigate its origin. From the use of the hair oil bottle, one theory is that the crime may have been committed by a woman.

Mr Kubo was the manager of the General Affairs department of his uncle's textiles firm in Kyobashi, Tokyo. According to his colleagues he was a rather quiet character, was not the type of person to make enemies, and had no history of affairs with women.

As previously stated, one theory of the crime is that of a grudge killing, but the fact that a hippy commune has recently taken up residence at the foot of the Yatsugatake ridge has also fuelled speculation that this could be a copycat killing, modelled on the infamous murder of the actress Sharon Tate by the fanatical followers of Charles Manson in the United States. Authorities are currently pursuing both leads.

On Monday morning, Asai purchased a selection of newspapers from the stand at the station and compared their versions of the story. They all contained more or less the same information.

He'd had a moment of panic when he read that there was a fingerprint discovered on the bottle of hair oil, but then calmed down when he saw that it was too indistinct to use as evidence. He knew that reporters tended to work with the police, so he believed it was true. He guessed that a fingerprint had to be clear to be of help in an investigation. If any part of it was smudged or too faint then it became unusable.

Asai was reminded of a famous case from a couple of years ago. Hundreds of millions of yen, being transported to a certain factory in the western suburbs of Tokyo for its workers' year-end bonuses, were stolen by thieves posing as traffic cops. The bank workers in charge of the transportation had voluntarily handed over the cash to the robbers, who'd turned up on the distinctive white motorbikes used by police, so the case did not legally qualify as an armed robbery. According to the newspaper, a partial fingerprint had been discovered on one of the
duralumin cases that had contained the bags of bonus money. There had been hope that this might lead to the identification of the thieves, but all discussion of the fingerprint disappeared from the news the moment it was announced that a lump of red soil had also been discovered in the back of the van. The newspapers focused all their attention on the analysis of this piece of soil and the conclusion that it had come from a specific part of the Kanto region, but in the end it had led nowhere. When Asai had first read these reports, he'd found it hard to believe that someone who'd pulled off such a meticulously planned crime would have been careless enough to leave behind a lump of soil in the van. He guessed it had been left there deliberately in order to throw the detectives off the scent. When discussion of the lump of earth also disappeared from the news, Asai had been sure that the head of the investigation had realized he'd been taken in. Even grand-scale investigations in the public eye could fall prey to ruses like this. There was nothing that could be obtained from a blurry fingerprint on a bottle of hair oil. Asai felt pretty confident of this.

First and foremost, any fingerprint discovered in a criminal investigation would be compared to all the prints on file. But these files contained only the prints of former and current convicts, not the general public, so that search wouldn't turn up any useful result. And on top of that the fingerprint wasn't even clear.

Secondly, the hair oil bottle that had contained the acid was sold in vast quantities nationwide, so Asai agreed with the opinion expressed in the newspapers that this wouldn't turn out to be much of a clue. And it hadn't
even been purchased recently. There was no chance of tracing a cosmetics bottle that his wife had bought over a year ago.

When he considered all these points, Asai was glad that he hadn't gone back to retrieve the bottle after all. He'd been worried about the possibility of his fingerprints being left on it, but now he realized it wasn't a big deal. If he'd persuaded himself to return to the scene of the crime, who knows what kind of bad luck he might have run into? The reports said that the body had been discovered around seven the next morning, which suggested that no one had passed by the spot until that time, but who might he have run into on the way there who could later have identified him to the police?

At that point, Asai realized that none of the newspapers had mentioned the two men from the agricultural cooperative – the men who had picked him up on the prefectural highway and dropped him off at Fujimi station. Surely, given the location and the lateness of the hour, they would have reported the encounter to the local police? It was strange that there was nothing written about them.

There were three possible explanations for this. Firstly, the police may have decided to keep this information secret for now. Another possibility was that the two men hadn't heard about the murder and therefore hadn't offered their evidence before the deadline for the articles going to press. In that case, it was likely that tomorrow's papers would carry the story of the suspect walking by the side of the prefectural highway who'd been given a lift to the local station. The third conceivable explanation was that the two men had not considered their story worth mentioning to
the police as they didn't see any connection between the murder and the man they gave a lift to.

Asai had one more hypothesis – a rather over-optimistic one, perhaps, but one he couldn't ignore. He wondered if the two men had difficulty believing that a man who had just paid a visit to a loved one in the sanatorium could be walking calmly along the street towards the station moments after committing a brutal murder.

To Asai's surprise, there must have been some truth in this last theory, because neither the next day's newspapers, nor the following day's, nor all the days after that contained any mention of the man walking along the highway who had been picked up by a passing car. If the two men had reported the event to the police, then there was no reason why the press wouldn't have picked up on it and splashed it across their headlines. There was no point in keeping that kind of information under wraps. In fact, it would be useful to the investigation to have it out there, in the chance it might jog the memory of any other witnesses. Asai had to assume that the men didn't believe he could have had anything to do with the murder.

The early newspaper articles had focused repeatedly on the brutality of the murder, which apparently made it a grudge killing. At least that seemed to be what the investigators believed. But Asai's “brutality” hadn't been intentional. There hadn't been any plan. It had just happened, a product of circumstances, and he refused to admit any responsibility for it. If there was blame to be apportioned, then let it be the fault of momentum.

The newspapers still published claims, by people who knew him, that Konosuke Kubo wasn't the kind of person
to have enemies; that there was no reason for anyone to murder him; that they rejected the theory of a revenge killing. Clearly nobody knew about the love affair with Eiko Asai that had so enraged her husband. Even Kubo himself had been unaware of Asai's anger. Asai had never spoken of his feelings to another soul.

However, there was one point that was worrying Asai – the detective agency that he had hired to investigate Konosuke Kubo. If the detective were to read in the newspaper that Kubo had been murdered, he could easily report his client to the police. But for now, there was nothing in the media on that subject.

Why not? Probably because private detective agencies respected their clients' privacy. If someone connected to one of their cases were killed, telling the police would go against their policy of complete confidentiality. Which should be their priority – professional confidentiality or the public good? (Offering information to a police investigation would fall here into the category of public good. Or perhaps you could say that complete respect of professional confidentiality was in fact
for
the public good.) It was a grey area, but as it looked as if the detective agency had revealed nothing to the police, Asai concluded that their professional reputation for absolute privacy was what they held sacred. This privacy must have been beneficial to both parties: the client requesting an investigation and the person investigated. The success of these agencies was founded on this principle of confidentiality, and because all parties were able to put their trust in this principle, business flourished.

Of course, Asai had added that extra layer of security, just in case, when he'd given the detectives a false name,
address and place of work. They had never contacted him – he had always contacted them. His original request; the payment of an advance fee; his request for a second investigation; picking up of the report and settling of his account – he had done all these in person at the agency. He'd worn his dark glasses throughout, so that even if he were seen in the street, no one would recognize his face. If for some reason the detective decided to cooperate with the police, he wouldn't be able to give them Asai's name or where he came from. He was sure no one had imagined that he could be an employee of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. It was precisely to avoid any possible trouble like this that Asai had settled on all these precautions before ever setting foot in the detective agency.

His final concern was Chiyoko Takahashi, but he guessed he didn't need to be too worried about her. Asai was certain she had no idea that he had found out the truth about his wife's death. She would never imagine that he knew of her relationship to Kubo, or that Eiko had died in his home. Hearing the news of Kubo's death, she would never connect it with Eiko or Eiko's family members. What was more, she herself had blackmailed the victim into giving up his house and the land it stood on, so her guilty conscience would stop her going to the police. She wouldn't want to draw any more attention to herself than necessary.

All in all, Asai felt fairly safe. He had carefully prepared for any eventuality, with the result that he had successfully created a zone of protection around himself. And yet he remained alert.

It was also fortunate for Asai that the media had run with the theory that Kubo's murder had been a nihilistic attack by members of the hippy commune at the base of the Yatsugatake ridge. A meaningless attack was the simplest and most fascinating explanation. The idea that a new American phenomenon had arrived in Japan – that following the current US-style recession, now even Japanese crimes were becoming Americanized – was a concept bound to thrill their readership.

It was the brutality of the crime that encouraged the press to make the connection with the hippy commune. Editorials and opinion pieces appeared, claiming that throwing acid in someone's face before smashing their skull with three separate stones – well, it was no ordinary killing; the motive could be a kind of social vengeance, just the same as the Manson Family, a cult that had killed in retaliation against modern society.

These articles must have created all kinds of problems for the poor Yatsugatake hippies. And yet, among all the opinion pieces on the subject, there was not a single one that suggested the killing might have been in self-defence.

The vision of Kubo's face, almost completely obscured by the darkness, surrounded by those three bloodied rocks, troubled Asai's conscience. Still, all he needed to do was put it out of his mind, and everything would be fine.

Every day at the ministry, Asai put everything he had into his job. He checked all kinds of texts and documents, adding his notes on a slip of paper for the attention of his superiors; met with manufacturers; attended meetings; drew up proposals. He was extremely busy as usual.

The killing on the Fujimi plateau began to fade in his memory. It had happened somewhere far away in place and time; his mind had already filed it in the “past events” section. He was completely detached from the reality of the experience. It wasn't anything he'd planned and engineered – it had been pure chance, and there was no objective involved in chance. And an action without objective is one with only a tenuous connection to reality.