A Quiet Place (7 page)

There was no doubt about the mystery woman's identity now. That had been one of Eiko's favourite outfits. The burgundy crocodile-skin handbag had been a present from one of the businessmen he'd helped at work. He'd brought it back from a business trip to Southeast Asia.

“You say that my wife – or at least this person who most probably was my wife – was walking alone when you saw her. Are you sure there was no one with her?”

“I'm sure. There was no one else around. She was by herself.”

“Whereabouts on the hill did you pass her?”

“Right where the road begins to slope upwards.”

“So it was quite a way down the street, then?”

“Right.”

“There's a small boutique around there, isn't there? I think it's called Takahashi Cosmetics.”

The young woman seemed surprised that Asai would have heard of such a place.

“Well, yes, there is. I met her about twenty yards down from that boutique. She was heading up the hill.”

7

After leaving the Midori, Asai returned to the crossroads by the Tachibana, and set off down the hill. He checked his wristwatch under a street lamp: 9.20 p.m.

To tell the truth, he really wanted to pay a visit to the Mori, but he supposed those kind of places got busy after nine o'clock, so he decided to call it a night. Visiting two hotels in one evening had been exhausting enough.

The street wasn't well lit, and he made his way down the slope by following the concrete walls and the bamboo fences perched on top of the old stone walls. Hardly any light filtered through from the houses beyond. With the exception of the hotels on the top of the hill, it seemed this residential neighbourhood went to bed early.

Asai found himself again in front of Takahashi Cosmetics. He'd expected the lights of the shop to be spilling out onto the street, but it was just as dark as its neighbours. The glass entrance door was shut and the curtains were drawn. Asai supposed it was natural that a small boutique in this neighbourhood would also shut early. He glanced up at the first floor, where the shop sign hung. Not a glimmer of light was visible through the shutters.

The maid at the Midori had been sure that she'd seen Eiko here two months ago. From the description of her
clothes and handbag there was no doubt that it had been Eiko. And it made sense that she'd been out walking around two in the afternoon.

So if she'd been walking up the slope, about twenty yards below Takahashi Cosmetics, where was that exactly? Asai estimated it was a spot approximately between the house next door to Ms Takahashi's and the one next to that. Both of these houses were traditional old Japanese-style buildings with their low stone walls intact. The one directly across the street had a concrete-block wall and a pale western-style building just visible through the trees.

Asai stopped walking and turned around to look back up at the road he had just come down. He didn't deliberately look upwards, but the steep slope meant he automatically raised his eyes.

He tried to put himself in Eiko's shoes. She'd walked up the hill as far as this point. Assuming she hadn't slowed her pace at all, her destination must have been further up. Straight ahead at the top was the Hotel Tachibana; off to the right from there, the Midori; a little further on, the Mori.

So, assuming again that she'd walked straight up this hill, her destination was most likely to have been one of the hotels, but the maids at both establishments had sworn they'd never seen her. He believed that they'd been telling the truth. They'd definitely been sympathetic to the poor abandoned husband with his two motherless children.

So where? Takahashi Cosmetics, perhaps? The story was that Eiko had begun to feel unwell and staggered into the boutique, but the maid at the Midori had seen her twenty
yards before she would have reached the shop; in other words, where Asai was standing right now.

Was it a coincidence? Had Eiko visited Takahashi Cosmetics in the past, not just the day she died?

Surely that was a crazy idea. And if the maid had seen Eiko a little further up the hill, one that would never have occurred to Asai. It only crossed his mind because his wife had been seen near the bottom of the hill. Another vision came to him – this time Chiyoko Takahashi's heavily made-up face with its full lips.

So, two months before her death, Eiko had been seen here on this street. Asai imagined her destination could have been the boutique, but that was pure speculation. As long as he had no definite proof that Chiyoko Takahashi and his wife had known each other, it would remain just that. It wasn't really logical to believe that Eiko had come all the way to this particular area just to buy make-up.

Asai decided to stop his enquiries for now after investigating the two hotels at the top of the hill, and returned home to his lonely, empty house. He fell quickly into a fitful sleep, still troubled by the words of the maid at the Midori.

He woke up early. The wristwatch he'd placed by his head showed just after 6 a.m. Only a single man would put his watch next to his pillow, or someone on a trip away. Every day the feeling that he'd been abandoned grew stronger and stronger; Eiko's relatives had even stopped dropping by.

Asai lay on his stomach and smoked a cigarette. When Eiko had been alive he'd never been allowed to do this kind of thing. He wondered if he should sell the house
and move into an apartment. It had been his parents' home, so it was close to forty years old. The house itself wouldn't have any value, but it stood on about three and a half thousand square feet. In this part of Tokyo, land went for about 60,000 yen per square foot. He'd have enough money to buy himself a luxury apartment. But he didn't have the status to live in a place like that. Even at the division-chief level, whole families of four were making do in cheap civil-service housing. A modest apartment would suit his needs better, he thought. It'd be a while before he married again.

He finished his cigarette and went out to collect the newspaper from the letterbox. Then he got back into bed and opened the paper. There weren't many interesting articles, but, ever the civil servant, his eye was drawn to anything connected with government policy.

There was an article about the Japan Medical Association's opposition to a new plan by the Ministry of Health and Welfare. It included comments by the chairman of the association.

Doctors… Just a moment – why had he not thought of it before?

Chiyoko Takahashi had told him that after Eiko collapsed in her boutique, she'd sent a university student, a young woman who'd just come in to buy make-up, to a nearby doctor's office to get help. He recalled the words from Ms Takahashi's own, rather memorable, lips.

“Doctor Ohama has a clinic about five doors up, off to the right – I got her to run over and ask him for help.”
In his lunch hour, Asai took a taxi to Yoyogi. On his way up the hill he glanced at Takahashi Cosmetics, but the front entrance was shut and the curtains were drawn. It looked exactly the same as the night before. It must be closed today. Maybe it was the regular day off for all the local businesses. But no – all the shops out on the main shopping street had been open. It was only the cosmetics boutique that was closed.

Asai had the driver drop him about three streets away, opposite a narrow side street. Doctor Ohama's clinic was at the far end of the street. There was no mistaking the building for anything but a private clinic.

There was nobody in the waiting room when Asai entered. A nurse opened the glass window at the reception desk and looked out at him.

“Appointments are mornings only, I'm afraid.”

“I don't need a medical appointment. I'm here to enquire about a patient.”

“Could I have your name, please?”

“Asai.”

“Are you a relative of this other patient?”

“Yes. She was my wife.”

“How can we help you?”

“I'd like to meet with the doctor in person, if possible.”

“Do you have the patient's card with you?”

“The patient's deceased.”

The nurse looked at Asai for a few moments, then disappeared from the window.

About ten minutes later, the fat, bespectacled doctor came out into the waiting room. He appeared to be in his forties, and his skin looked quite good for his age. He
smelled faintly of whisky. He'd obviously grabbed his white coat in a hurry; the collar was still standing up. The coat made Asai think of Chiyoko Takahashi.

The doctor looked wary. He probably thought a grieving husband had come to accuse him of killing his wife.

Asai got out his business card. The doctor read his job title, but he didn't relax his guard at all. He fetched a wooden chair and placed it across from the sofa where Asai was sitting.

“Mr Asai, could you tell me when it was I saw this patient?” He was carefully polite.

“About two weeks ago. But first I must explain that she wasn't one of your patients. She suffered a heart attack when she was out walking, and ran into a shop – Takahashi Cosmetics – just down the street from here. The owner was kind enough to call you for help.”

The doctor nodded in recognition.

“I thought it might be about that lady. I couldn't think of anyone else it might have been.”

Asai supposed he meant that he couldn't think of any other patients he'd killed recently. Meanwhile, Doctor Ohama's expression relaxed slightly. It seemed that Ms Takahashi had been telling the truth. Ohama had been there when Eiko passed away.

“When you arrived, Doctor, was my wife already gone? I was away on a business trip in Kansai at the time, so I don't know the full details. I only heard about it third-hand, so to speak.”

“You have my sympathies.” The doctor bowed his head, but it was a mere formality. “When I was called to Ms Takahashi's place, an emergency case had just arrived here
at the clinic, and I couldn't leave immediately. It must have been about twenty minutes before I was able to get away. I'm afraid to say by that time your wife had already passed away. Her pupils were dilated and her heart had stopped beating. There was nothing I could do.”

“Wouldn't it have been possible to give her a camphor injection, or any other kind of emergency treatment?”

“Camphor?”

The doctor's expression hardened. This was probably the one he used when dealing with complaints from the angry family members of a deceased patient.

“Do you imagine that kind of treatment would be any good to a patient who's no longer alive? When I arrived, she was lying in the tatami room at the back of the shop and she was already dead.”

“What time did you arrive?”

“I checked my watch. It's very important to do that. It was 4.35 in the afternoon on the seventh of March. Actually, I checked my records just before I came out to see you. She wasn't my patient, but I issued her death certificate anyway.”

“I received the certificate, thank you. I'd like to ask you about the time of death shown. It says ‘around 4.05 p.m.' You say you arrived at Takahashi Cosmetics at 4.35 p.m. and confirmed that she was dead. In that case, was it just your assumption that my wife had passed away thirty minutes earlier?”

“I wasn't actually witness to her moment of passing. According to Ms Takahashi, your wife had taken her last breath about thirty minutes before I arrived. So that is what I went by. That's why I didn't write ‘4.05 precisely'. I put ‘around 4.05'.”

The doctor spoke vehemently, and the expression on his face was clearly meant to emphasize that there had been no error on his part.

“I completely understand; I'm sorry if I've made you feel uncomfortable. Please don't get me wrong. I'm simply asking whether my wife's time of death was precisely 4.05 or not. For example… how shall I put it… when you examined my wife's body, did it appear to you that she had died thirty minutes previously?”

Doctor Ohama undid his white coat and produced a cigarette case from his shirt pocket.

“As I said, I was not the attending physician at the time of your wife's death. And therefore, even though I can say she had only just passed away, it's impossible for me to tell you the exact hour, minute and second of her death.”

He drew on his cigarette. Asai smiled slightly, hoping to make the doctor feel less threatened.

“That's not what I'm asking. I'm asking if there was anything strange or unnatural about her having died thirty minutes before you got there.”

The doctor looked offended again.

“No, there wasn't anything strange about it at all.”

“I mean, what if it hadn't been thirty minutes earlier? If it had been, say, forty minutes, would you be able to make that distinction?”

“Forty minutes earlier? Hmm. I'm not sure. All I could do was trust the word of Ms Takahashi, who had been with her at the time.”

“Of course; that's only natural. But in this case I'm asking if there could have been any discrepancy in what Ms Takahashi told you. In your professional opinion, that is.”

“Was there anything suspicious about your wife's death?” The doctor narrowed his eyes, and looked a little cagey.

“No, nothing suspicious. My wife had a weak heart. However, it had been years since she'd suffered a heart attack. I was told that she'd had a sudden coronary walking up that hill, but I felt that her death seemed very quick.”

“No, that would have been about right. Thirty minutes before I examined her; forty at the most. Probably not as long as an hour. If I had been able to get there a little quicker I might have been able to try and massage her heart. There have been cases with a heart attack where the patient's heart was restarted by massage, but I'm sorry to say in your wife's case there was no hope.”

“So, doctor, what you're saying is that there's an outside chance that she died an hour before you arrived? That would only be thirty minutes earlier than the time of death you wrote on her death certificate.”

“Thirty minutes earlier? Yes, well, I suppose it's possible. Definitely within an hour of her death, anyway. But that's the absolute maximum. After an hour, it becomes much easier to determine the exact time of death. The body begins to cool rapidly, and in some cases where rigor mortis sets in early, you can find it in the muscles around the jaw, but your wife wasn't in that state. And so I based the time of death on what Ms Takahashi told me. You understand there was nothing else I could have done?”

Asai nodded solemnly.

“Of course. You couldn't have done anything differently.”

“If there had been anything at all suspicious, I'd have called the police and had an autopsy done. But she wasn't a patient I normally treated, and her death appeared to
be from natural causes. Though it was sudden, of course.” The doctor frowned, as if insulted that Asai was questioning his medical prowess.

“And as Ms Takahashi pointed out, this was a lady, and she felt sorry for her having to undergo any further examination. So given that it clearly wasn't an accidental death, I agreed, and wrote out the death certificate.”