Iwata parked near the old Olympic stadium and headed toward the main campus of Komazawa University. It was 3:30 P.M. At the entrance, there was an old stone carving with the university’s name dating back to the 1590s. The motto ran beneath:
TRUTH. SINCERITY. RESPECT. LOVE.
The rugby team was out training on the playing fields, the university mascot, a magpie, emblazoned on their chests.
One for sorrow.
At the main reception, Iwata explained that he was investigating the murder of Mrs. Takako Kaneshiro. The receptionist immediately sent for the facilities manager. It took only a few moments for an elderly, pudgy man in a worker’s uniform to appear. Iwata held up his police ID and the man bowed deeply.
“I’m the manager, how can I help, Inspector?”
“Mrs. Kaneshiro worked for you, correct?”
“That’s right, she was a cleaner. Mainly in Radiological Sciences and Business Administration.”
“Did she have a workstation?”
“No, sir. Just a locker.”
“Please show me.”
The manager led Iwata along the polished corridors, descending several levels to the employee changing room. At the back of the dingy room, he pointed to the locker with wreaths of flowers beneath it.
Two for joy.
It was secured with a large padlock, twice the size of all the others.
“Did Takako ever have any problems here?”
“No, sir. She was a model employee, never late or sick. A wonderful worker and a wonderful person. What happened is … awful.”
“Sir, forgive me. If she had no problems here, do you mind telling me why she had such a large padlock?”
“Well there was an … incident at the beginning of the year. Takako complained that her locker had been broken into.”
Pipes shuddered and groaned above them.
“What was taken?”
“That was the strange thing—only her worker’s uniform. It made no sense; those are issued by the university. It’s just a cheap uniform. Replacements are frequently given.”
“Takako had no enemies that you can think of?”
“She was a quiet woman. I can’t imagine her having enemies. Who could hate such a person?”
“Do you have a key for this locker?”
“Just one moment.”
He rustled through a large ring of keys until he found the duplicate and unhooked it. Iwata unlocked the padlock and the door creaked open. The locker was empty.
Three for a girl.
Four for a boy.
“You said Mrs. Kaneshiro had the theft problem at the beginning of the year, correct?”
“That’s right.”
“Would you be able to tell me exactly when?”
“I have records in my office.”
He led Iwata along an unlit corridor that reeked of disinfectant. There was a soft scuttling in the darkness. The office held little more than a desk, a chair, and some shelves packed with binders. The manager grunted as he reached for the right folder.
“Here we are.”
He unclipped a page dated January 2011.
TAKAKO KANESHIRO COMPLAINT OF THEFT FROM LOCKER.
Iwata noted down the date.
“Were the authorities called?”
“No, sir. It was dealt with internally.”
“Did you discover who was responsible?”
“A young Iranian woman who worked with us for a short time was dismissed.”
“She admitted to the theft?”
The manager laughed uneasily.
“The process was rather more … informal, Inspector.”
“She lost her job informally?”
“Several of her fellow employees voiced their concerns about her trustworthiness and the woman in question made no fuss.”
Iwata nodded.
“An Iranian immigrant would be unlikely to, don’t you think?”
The manager turned red.
“Inspector, I assure you that—”
Iwata waved this away.
“What was her name? That’s all I want.”
“Saman Gilani. I’m not sure if that’s the correct pronunciation.”
Iwata ran his finger along the page, scanning the characters mentally.
“Do you have any employees here with criminal records?”
The older man thought about this.
“It’s quite possible, I suppose. However, I deal only in low-level workers, you understand. We don’t have those kinds of checks in place anymore. Everything is outsourced now.”
“All right, well, thank you very much for your time here.”
The older man bowed and showed him out of the office. Iwata walked alone through the dark corridor, the scuttling gone now, the shuddering squeals of the pipes and gasps of steam replacing it.
At the bottom of the stairwell, Iwata dialed Sakai.
“What now?” she huffed.
“I think I might have found a couple more horses. Are you at a terminal?”
“Yep, give me a name.”
“First of all: Saman Gilani, though I’m not hopeful.”
Iwata spelled the name out and there was a pause.
Five for silver.
“Okay. Iranian national. She was deported a couple of weeks ago. She arrived after the employment treaty in the nineties and seemingly never went back. Has a child with a Japanese citizen. Looks like the kid ended up in care. But what’s she got to do with this?”
“Nothing. Now cross-reference the next search with the criminal records database. Any current employee of Komazawa University.”
Iwata heard her fingers run over the keyboard, then a clucking sound from her tongue.
“Okay, two hits. First up we’ve got a guy with several delinquency charges some ten years ago, nothing on him since then except parking fines. Then we have Masaharu Ezawa. Hm, he’s got a nice spread of sexual harassment, peeping in female toilets, and theft of underwear. No address on him for the last three years—”
Six for gold.
Iwata was already sprinting back toward the manager’s office. He ripped open the door, and the old man flinched.
“Masaharu Ezawa, he works here?!”
“Y-yes.”
“Address?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“I need it now.”
He opened a plastic wallet and then passed over a single-sheet file. It outlined Masaharu Ezawa’s address, national insurance number, and shift timetable. Iwata looked up.
“He’s on shift now?”
The manager nodded, a worried expression on his face.
“Take me.”
Moving faster than he had for many years, the older man hurried up to street level with Iwata cursing him forward. They cut across lawns and through buildings until he pointed. His finger was aimed through a bank of trees, to a man crouched over. In a quiet corner, Masaharu Ezawa was slowly and diligently tending to a strip of irises.
Seeing them, Ezawa stood. He was a short man with a long, feminine mop of thin hair hiding one eye. His worker’s uniform hung off him like a child wearing his father’s clothes. His lips were full, his teeth were small, and his nose was pug-like. He looked like a boy put to work on a man’s job.
Iwata gestured for the manager to leave them.
“Mr. Ezawa.”
“Who are you?” His voice was soft but strained.
Iwata took out his badge in reply and Ezawa immediately looked down at the flowers.
“Oh.”
Three paces from him, Iwata looked down to put his ID away. As he looked up, he caught only a snatch of Ezawa’s hand in his pocket.
“Hey, come on—”
A muddy rock hit Iwata’s face. Staggering back, he tried to claw soil from his eyes. Snarling, Ezawa crashed down his trowel on Iwata’s skull.
“Fuck!”
Ezawa was already running, running as fast as he was able but something was wrong. His stride was pathetic, his ankles at odds. Iwata was on his feet now—swearing and bleeding but closing on Ezawa’s weak, limping stride.
“Stop!”
Ezawa glanced over his shoulder, his face desperate.
Iwata’s body tackle was hard.
Seven for a secret, never to be told.
* * *
On the seventh floor of Setagaya Police Station, Iwata sat across from the interview rooms pressing a bandage to his scalp. Through the two-way mirror, he watched Ezawa, who was sitting alone at a metallic table.
“You need to change that bandage.” Sakai sat next to Iwata and handed him a vending machine coffee.
“I’m fine. This coffee is more dangerous than he is.”
“An arrest and a beating from a midget on your first day—that has to be a record.”
“Go home, Sakai.”
She laughed softly into her coffee.
“I’ve got some news that will cheer you up, though.”
“Really?”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
Iwata rested his head on the wall behind him, closing his eyes.
“Occupational hazard. Did you pick up Kiyota?”
“No, but that note from Kaneshiro’s calendar? Well, it turns out we might have an ‘I.’ Guy by the name of Ijiri—moneylender in the local area.”
“He lent to Mr. Kaneshiro?”
“Well, the guy won’t speak to us. So I brought him in for refusing to cooperate.”
Sakai gestured to the second interview room with her plastic cup. A large man with a beard and a red suit was pacing the room, smoking impatiently.
“He looks like a real charmer.”
“I like a man with panache. Shall we?”
Iwata groaned. Sakai slung her coffee in the wastebasket and stood. She nodded to the guard and the door opened. Iwata watched as she sailed in, her white blouse the only clean thing in there. He saw Ijiri’s face twist into a smile as he registered the woman before him.
“You’re in for a real surprise,” Iwata whispered.
He closed his eyes and tried to wait out the throbbing pain screaming inside his skull. Iwata looked into his cup of coffee and saw his face in the black circle.
“Fuck it.”
He threw the cup and the yellow-red bandage into the wastebasket, then nodded to the guard outside Ezawa’s interview room. The door clunked open and heat hit Iwata in the face. Ezawa did not look up. He was hugging his own shoulders, a sad mime in a cell. He rocked slightly back and forth in his chair.
Iwata turned on the tape, reeled off his name, the date, and the name of the interview subject. He sat down before Ezawa and spread his hands on the table. He said nothing for a while, the only noise in the room the fleshy sound of Ezawa chewing his lips.
“Coffee?”
Ezawa shook his head.
“Smoke?”
Another shake.
“Okay, Mr. Ezawa, I need to ask you some questions and I need you to be honest with me. It’s very important, do you understand?”
Ezawa kept his eyes on the table.
“I understand.”
Iwata nodded.
“All right, good. Now, I’d like you to help me understand why you ran from me earlier. Did you just panic?”
Ezawa looked up.
“I don’t know you.”
“You saw my badge.”
“Not properly. I was scared.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Iwata sat back in his seat now and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“You’ve been in trouble in the past, haven’t you?”
Ezawa flinched, breathing hard through his nose—the face of a scolded boy.
“Yesss. But that isn’t—”
“Ezawa, you ran because you thought I was coming to arrest you.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Iwata’s head throbbed.
“You knew Takako Kaneshiro, didn’t you?”
Ezawa looked away now, as though Iwata had placed a rotten fruit on the table before him by mentioning her name.
“Everyone knew her.”
“You know what happened to her.”
He nodded.
“But despite this, you saw a policeman and you assumed I was coming to arrest you.”
There was no reply.
“Ezawa, you realize that doesn’t look good.”
A shrug.
“Tell me, does your manager know about your past?”
Ezawa chewed his lips furiously now, shaking his head.
“Okay, so tell me something else. Did you know the Iranian woman, Saman Gilani?”
“… Not really.”
“She has a child, you know.”
Ezawa looked away.
“She lost her job. Without work, she was deported. Her child is still here, in care. Think of what growing up without a mother does to a child. Do you understand?”
Ezawa was rocking again, harder now.
Iwata smacked the table hard with his palm.
“Answer me, Ezawa. Do you understand what you’ve done to this child? Tell me why the Iranian woman lost her job.”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t lie to me. Not to me. Now you tell me why she lost her job.”
“For stealing,” he whispered.
“Yes.” Iwata leaned back in his chair again and watched the blades of the fan above them stir the heat like an empty merry-go-round. He had ahold of his anger now. “For stealing.”
“Please can I go?”
“Ezawa, you ran from me because it was you who stole from Takako’s locker. That’s the truth of it, isn’t it? You have her panties, don’t you? That’s why you ran from me. Tell me the truth.”
Ezawa’s eyes were closed, his lips wet, his body trembling.
“Tell me, Masaharu, so that we can clear your name of suspicion. Take responsibility for what you have done to the Iranian woman—to her small child. Tell me that you took Takako’s clothes. You took them, didn’t you?”
There came a small, childlike nod.
“Now tell me why you did that. Why did you steal her panties? Was it because you wanted to jerk off on them?”
Ezawa looked up now, face pink, the same hidden snarl from earlier.
“No!”
“Then why?”
“I … I just wanted to have something that belonged to her. But she was never careless, she never left things behind, not like the others.”
“The other what, crushes?”
“No!”
“She was more than a crush, wasn’t she? Masaharu, be honest with me. You loved her, didn’t you? You loved Takako.”
He looked away, his expression screwing into pain.
“That’s why you killed her, isn’t it? Sniffing her panties was no longer enough for you. The fantasy of Takako had to become reality. Only it didn’t happen, did it? She rejected you because you’re a small, ugly cripple and the rejection obliterated you. So you sought to wreak vengeance on her and her family. That’s why you reserved such special attention for her husband, isn’t it?”
Ezawa was on his feet, in tears.
“No!” he shrieked. “No!”
“Sit down.”
Ezawa obeyed, his face twisted with revulsion.
“Where were you on the night of the fourteenth of February?”
“At work, at home … I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember where you were a few days ago? Masaharu, we have a witness saying they saw a man with a limp like yours leave the crime scene. You have a motive, you have no alibi, and we know that if we search your house we will find evidence of prior criminality against one of the victims. I can walk out of this room right now and wash my hands of you. How do you think things will turn out for you?”
Iwata clutched his tie and pulled it taut above his head in a mock hanging. Ezawa looked at him with trembling loathing.
“I would never hurt her. I would never hurt anyone…”
“Like you would never hurt me?” Iwata leaned forward to show his lacerated crown. Ezawa was quietly crying now, his limbs sagging like parched petals in the heat.
Iwata sat up straight, his palms flat on the table. “You attacked a cop, kid. You ran from the police. You have the possessions of a dead woman in your house.”
“… I didn’t touch her.”
“If you didn’t kill her, what did you do?” Iwata leaned forward again and stroked Ezawa’s sweat-soaked head. The young man’s eyes closed in disgust or gratitude.
“Masaharu,” Iwata whispered. “Just tell me what you did. What did you do?”
“I took pictures … Oh God. I took pictures of her…”
“Where? Where, Masaharu?”
“At the university … sometimes at her gym … sometimes outside her house.”
Iwata sat back and checked his watch.
“You didn’t kill her? You didn’t hurt the Kaneshiro family?”
Ezawa was on his knees now, snot streaming down his chin.
“Never, never, never. I’d never hurt Takako.”
Iwata reached forward and turned off the tape.
“All right, Masaharu. You still have more questions to answer and you will face consequences for what you have done. But we’ll call this a free pass.” Iwata pointed to his head. Still on his knees, Ezawa was just repeating Takako’s name under his breath as he wept.
“Must be your lucky night,” Iwata said as he stood.