Villain a Novel (2010) (9 page)

Outside the rain was gloomy and heavy. Yoshino changed gears and began instead to recount how squeamish she felt when she recently watched the movie
Battle Royale
with all its cruel, violent scenes.

“So you’re not going to see that guy anymore?” Mako asked.

A mean look flashed across Yoshino’s eyes. “If I dump him, you want me to introduce you?”

Mako was flustered. “No, no way,” she demurred. It felt as if Yoshino had seen into her mind and all her silly fantasies.

Mako could sense how Yoshino looked down on her as a woman. Maybe that was inevitable, for Mako was twenty and had never gone out with a man, which, unlike Sari, she didn’t hide. And of the three of them, Yoshino was by far the most experienced.

Strangely enough, though, Mako never felt inferior to Yoshino, no matter how much she bragged about her sex life. All her stories about hooking up with men from dating sites, and Keigo Masuo, were like something far away, like a TV drama, and Mako never felt contempt for her, or envy. But this time was different. For the first time, one of Yoshino’s stories took hold of her. She knew she should just let it go, but her rainy-day convenience-store fantasies about the man and his caresses made her overwhelmed by a mixture of jealousy for Yoshino, who really had been touched by this man, and contempt for her for leaping into bed with a guy she’d just met online, despite already having a boyfriend, Keigo. The more contempt Mako felt, though, the more uneasy she became, concerned that deep down she wanted to be just as shameless as Yoshino.

Mako knew she wasn’t the type to try to date men she met online. But she also knew she wasn’t like Sari, who was distressed that she couldn’t act like Yoshino, secretly trashing her because Yoshino could. If possible, Mako wanted to marry someone also from Kumamoto, settle down there, and raise a happy family. That’s all she really wanted—but the instant she pictured herself in the arms of Yoshino’s man, her dream evaporated.

·   ·   ·

“Um …”

The detective with the scar beside his right eyebrow looked at Mako.

Bright sunshine lit up the apartment-building lobby. The automatic front door must have had a slight gap in it, for the wind was blowing in, making a strange whistling sound. In addition to Mako and the detective interviewing her, five or six other policemen had entered and were making their way between the lobby and Yoshino’s apartment, on the second floor.

Every time they brought down another box of Yoshino’s possessions, Mako thought,
Ah, Yoshino really
was
murdered
. Sari, who’d been questioned before her, had broken down, wailing loudly, but Mako couldn’t do that. Not that she wasn’t sad. But the tears just wouldn’t flow.

“So those were the only three men you heard about from Miss Ishibashi?”

Mako tried to focus. “Uh, yes, that’s—that’s right.” She nodded.

“Two last summer and then one more this autumn. The two men from last summer were both from Fukuoka? And they took her out to dinner, bought her clothes and so on, and though you don’t know their ages, they seemed much older?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“And the man she met this autumn is a college student, and they went for drives together sometimes?”

“Yes, that’s what I heard.”

“There weren’t any others?”

“No, these are the only three I remember. She might have mentioned others.… Of course there were a lot more she e-mailed with.” Mako got this out in a rush, telling herself that she was helping the investigation, not putting down her friend.

“Is there anybody else besides yourself that Miss Ishibashi might have told these things to?”

The young detective’s long fingers had very healthy-looking nails. Perhaps it was his bad habit, but the backs of his fingers were marked where he had pressed his nails into them.

“I think I’m the only one she told,” Mako replied.

“All right. Let’s go over it one more time. You believe that last night Miss Ishibashi went to meet Keigo Masuo, correct?” The detective sighed deeply.

“Sari has her doubts,” Mako replied, “but I think that’s what happened.”

“I see.…”

“Maybe somebody took her away after that.…”

“We’re checking into that possibility,” the detective said, cutting her off, and Mako looked down meekly, knowing she’d been too pushy.

The detective looked down at his notebook and his scrawled notes.

“I understand. I’m really sorry I had to ask you all these questions.”

Mako was taken aback. “You—you mean we’re finished?”

Brusquely, the detective yelled out to a policeman standing at the entrance.

“Excuse me …” Mako said.

“Yes?”

“Is that all?”

“Yes, we’re finished here. I’m sorry to have taken up so much of your time. Especially now, with what happened to your friend.”

Mako went out in the hallway and saw Suzuka standing there, eyes puffy from crying. She was next to be questioned, it seemed. Mako silently slipped past her.

As soon as she was in the elevator, Mako wondered why she hadn’t told the detective one more thing. About one more man Yoshino met online. But she just couldn’t bring herself to tell the young detective about him. If she did, he’d think she was the same sort of girl as Yoshino, a girl who hunted for men online. She would hate for him to think that.

Mako didn’t realize it at the time, but this decision of hers threw off the subsequent investigation.

Early Monday morning, December 10, 2001, Norio Yajima—who ran a wrecking business on the outskirts of Nagasaki City—was driving his old van to work. He’d had the van, which now had more than two hundred thousand kilometers on it, for so long it felt like a part of him, and he drove it lovingly, gingerly.

His throat had been bothering him since the previous night, and he kept clearing it. It felt full of phlegm, but no matter how hard he coughed he couldn’t bring any up. When he forced himself to cough, this only brought up the sour taste of bile in his mouth. Last night in bed he’d vomited, and his wife, Michiyo, told him he should gargle. He’d done that long before and he muttered, to no one in particular, “Damn it! I
hate
this!”

Norio turned left at the usual intersection, and as he did, the traffic protector amulet Michiyo had hung on his rearview mirror swung back and forth.

The way the intersection came together looked grotesque, as if a wide road constructed by a giant and a narrow little path made by dwarves had been forced to merge. Going down the broad highway, the intersection appeared to be an L-shaped road that curved right at a 90-degree angle. But farther down, the curve became a narrow alley and then opened into a small bridge that spanned the waterway paralleling the highway. In 1971 they’d finished filling in the shore
between the mainland and an island, and the road now connected the two.

The island was home to a mammoth shipbuilding dock. This was where the giant lived. And the narrow alley still ran through the fishing village, whose shoreline had been stolen from it.

Norio steered smoothly off the highway into the alley. On his left was a church, its stained glass sparkling in the morning sun. Here there was always the presence of the sea. As Norio reached the end of the alley, there stood Yuichi Shimizu as always, outfitted in his tacky sweatshirt, a sleepy look on his face.

Norio pulled up in front of him, and Yuichi yanked open the door, said a desultory good morning, and climbed into the middle row of seats. Norio grunted out a hello and stepped on the gas.

Every morning on their way to the construction site in Nagasaki City, Norio picked up three workers in this order: first Yuichi, then another man in Kogakura, and a third in Tomachi.

After his abbreviated greeting, Yuichi was invariably silent. As Norio accelerated he asked, “Not enough sleep again? Bet you were out driving around again till late.”

Yuichi glanced for a second at the rearview mirror. “Not really,” he said.

Norio knew it was hard for a young guy like Yuichi to be picked up at six every morning, but between his disheveled hair and his eyes still encrusted with sleep, he looked as if he’d been in bed until three minutes ago. Norio couldn’t help scolding him.

If Yuichi had been a total stranger Norio wouldn’t have found his appearance and attitude so irksome, but they were relatives. Norio’s mother and Yuichi’s grandmother were sisters, which made Yuichi and Norio’s only daughter, Hiromi, second cousins.

At the end of the alley was a communal parking lot used by local residents. Among the old cars and vans was Yuichi’s precious white Skyline, bathed in the morning sunlight as if it were just out of the showroom. Yuichi bought the car used, but he had still paid more than two million yen for it, taking out a seven-year loan.

“Can’t you buy something cheaper?” Yuichi’s grandmother Fusae said when he bought it. “I asked him this, but he insisted he had to have this one. Well, I suppose a big car is convenient, when we have to take Grandpa to the hospital.” It had been hard to tell if she was happy or worried about his purchase.

Fusae and her husband, Katsuji, who was bedridden most of the time, had two daughters, Shigeko and Yoriko. The older, Shigeko, was living in Nagasaki City with her husband, who ran a high-end confectionary shop. She’d put her two sons through college and now they were out on their own. According to Fusae she was “the daughter I never have to worry about.” In contrast, her second daughter, Yuichi’s mother, never seemed able to settle down. When she was young, she married a man she worked with at a bar and they had Yuichi. This was fine as far as it went, but around the time that Yuichi entered elementary school, his father ran off with another woman. Not knowing what else to do, Yoriko brought Yuichi back to her parents’ home and stayed for a time but then took off, leaving her parents with no choice but to raise him. Rumor had it that she was working as a maid in an inn in the resort town of Unzen. Norio thought that it had worked out better for the boy this way, better for him to be raised by his grandfather, who worked for years in the shipyard, and his grandmother, rather than be dragged all over the place by irresponsible parents. Because of this, when Yuichi entered junior high and his grandparents proposed to adopt him, Norio didn’t hesitate to support the idea.

When Yuichi was adopted by his grandparents his last name, naturally enough, changed, from Honda to Shimizu. At New Year’s the next year, when Norio stopped by to give Yuichi the traditional gift of money, he asked, half joking, “What do you think? Doesn’t Yuichi Shimizu sound better than Yuichi Honda?”

But Yuichi, who was getting interested in motorcycles and cars, replied, “No, Honda is way more cool,” as he traced the English letters on the tatami.

·   ·   ·

Now, driving, Norio returned to the intersection—the spot where the giant’s land and the dwarves’ had been forcibly stitched together—and as they were waiting for the light to change, Yuichi spoke up from the backseat. “Uncle, this morning we’re gonna remove the blue sheet on the concrete, right?”

“We could wait till the afternoon,” Norio replied. “How long you think it’ll take to get rid of all of it?”

“If we leave just the front, about an hour should do it.”

At this time of morning the lane going in the other direction was packed with cars all headed toward the shipyard, full of men trying their best to suppress yawns.

The light changed and Norio stepped on the gas. The tools stacked in the back of the van clanked together. Yuichi must have opened the window, for the scent of the sea wafted into the van.

“What’d you do last night?” Norio glanced back at him in the rearview mirror. He saw Yuichi grow suddenly tense.

“Why are you asking?”

Norio actually wanted to ask about Yuichi’s grandfather Katsuji, who would probably have to go back in the hospital before long, but Yuichi’s response made him keep asking questions. “I just figured you must have been out driving around last night.”

“I didn’t go anywhere yesterday,” Yuichi replied.

“What kind of mileage do you get with that car, anyway?” Norio tried to change the subject but he saw a slightly disgusted look on Yuichi’s face. “Bet you get ten kilometers to the liter.”

“No way. It depends on the road, but if I get seven I’m doing okay.” Yuichi’s tone was curt, but he perked up at a conversation about cars.

Already the line of cars headed for the city was starting to show signs of turning into a traffic jam. If they had come thirty minutes later they would have been caught in a massive tie-up.

The road they were on was the only interstate that ran north and south along the Nagasaki peninsula. In the opposite direction, past the city, the highway ran past an abandoned offshore industrial island called Battleship Island, so named because of its shape; past
Takahama Beach, crowded with people in the summer; then past the swimming beaches at Wakamisaki; and finally, at the end of the highway, the beautiful lighthouse at Kabashima.

“Hey, how’s your grandpa? Still not feeling so good?” Norio asked as they continued down the highway toward the city.

There was no response, so Norio asked, “Is he going to go back in the hospital?”

“I’m taking him there today after work.”

Yuichi was looking out the window, and his reply was half blown away by the breeze.

“You should have told me. You could have taken him first and then come to work.” Most likely Fusae had told him to go to work first, but Norio thought this was a little cold of her.

“It’s the same hospital as always, so it can wait till evening,” Yuichi said, protective of his grandmother.

For the last seven years Yuichi’s grandfather had suffered from a severe case of diabetes. He was getting on in years, and no matter how often he went to the hospital he never seemed to improve. When Norio called on him once a month to check on how he was doing, he was struck by the older man’s increasingly ashen complexion.

“I know it’s my own daughter’s fault, but I’m really happy Yuichi’s with us. Without him I’d have a heck of a time getting Grandpa back ’n’ forth to the hospital.”