Malice (28 page)

“If we try to reconstruct who Hidaka was from just these facts, we find he closely resembles himself as a child. ‘A boy who was kind to everyone around him,' as he's been described. In fact, I think it's possible that, regardless of your intentions, Hidaka honestly thought of you as a friend.

“It took me some time to arrive at this realization because this image of Hidaka was so different than the one I had as I began the investigation. In fact, that image tugged at the back of my mind the entire time I was gathering information about Hidaka's childhood days.

“Was this disjuncture between what I was hearing and what I felt the result of what I read in your false confession? No. The negative image of Hidaka had been planted in my head much earlier than that—before your arrest. Ultimately I realized where it came from: your original account of the day of the murder.

“When I first read that account, I paid attention only to the details about the discovery of the body itself. Yet there was a very deeply laid trap in the last place I thought to look for one.

“From the look on your face, I can tell I've hit the mark. That's right, I'm talking about the cat. The one you killed.

We found the pesticide mixed into the dirt in the planters at your apartment. You would have been better off flushing the extra down the drain. The pesticide in your apartment matched the one we found in the cat. The owner had it in a box and buried it in her garden. Yes, we exhumed the cat and tested the body.

“Maybe you read about Hidaka's trouble with that cat in his article? Or since you two were getting along so well, maybe he told you himself? So you made the poisoned meatballs, snuck into the garden, and killed that woman's cat, all to support an image of Hidaka you intended to craft in my mind.

“You know, once I realized I'd be spending time in the literary world while on this case, I decided to do a little background reading. That's when I came across the concept of establishing character. Apparently, it won't do just to tell the reader what a particular character is like. The author needs to show their habits or their words and let the reader form an image on their own.

“So, when you started writing your first account, you already knew you'd need to establish your main character, Kunihiko Hidaka, as early as possible. What better way to show his cruelty than to have him kill a cat? What a happy coincidence you ran into the cat's owner in the garden that day. Throwing that in at the beginning of your account just made the revelation of Hidaka's wrongdoing all the more believable.

“I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. Even after I'd arrested you and realized that your account wasn't to be trusted, it never occurred to me that the episode with the cat might be a lie, and I never attempted to adjust my initial impression of Hidaka.

“I believe that of all the traps you laid for me, that was your finest.

“When I realized it was you who killed the cat, a lightbulb went on. What if the reason you killed the cat was the same reason for the entire crime? In other words, what if your real objective was not just to kill Hidaka, but to ruin him?
Now,
I thought,
we're getting somewhere
.

“Just a moment ago I suggested that you wanted to cover up your own past by killing the only one who knew about it. You made no attempt to deny this, and I think there's some truth to this. But it wasn't the reason for your elaborate plan, it was just the final push you needed.

“Once you decided Hidaka had to die, what were your next steps? The first thing you realized was that you'd need a proper motive. It would have to be one that would, once revealed, not only defame the actual victim but would also turn public sympathy in your favor. The solution you came up started with his wife Hatsumi's infidelity and ended with your enforced ghostwriting. If everything went according to plan, not only would you destroy Hatsumi's reputation and Hidaka's character, but you'd forever blacken his professional reputation and steal the credit for his writing to boot.

“This, of course, was the prize you were working for as you wrote out all of those manuscripts and spent those hours under the cold winter sky making your video. I doubt you'd have gone to such lengths merely to hide your own past. That was worth a little effort, sure, but murder was just another step in your plan to destroy everything Hidaka ever built and taint everything he ever had.

“I wondered for a long time what it would take to drive someone to do that. To devote what little time remained to them to destroying another person's character. To be honest, I couldn't find any logical explanation for such behavior. I wonder if you'd even be able to explain it yourself, Mr. Nonoguchi.

“It reminds me of something that happened ten years ago. Perhaps you remember—that time when one of my students stabbed the ringleader of a group of bullies right after graduation. When the police asked those bullies why they'd abused my student so severely, all they were able to come up with was that they ‘just didn't like him.' It was just hate. Pure, simple malice.

“I wonder if you aren't operating on the same level. I wonder if, deep inside you, it wasn't just malice toward Hidaka, incomprehensible even to yourself, that led to his death.

“But where could such malice have come from? I looked into your past and his in great detail, but I couldn't find any reason why Hidaka earned your hatred. He was a good boy … no, an exceptional boy. You should have thanked him, not killed him. Even after you'd spent all that time egging on Masaya Fujio, goading him to torture Hidaka, years later he was there to help you.

“I know you felt inferior to him. And I know how, as an adult, you envied Hidaka. The one person in the world you couldn't bear had become a hugely successful author. Everything you wanted, he'd achieved. When I imagine how you must've felt when he received his first award, it makes all the hair on my body stand on end.

“But you still reached out to him, didn't you? That's how badly you wanted to become a published author. You thought having a connection to him would be a shortcut to achieving your dream, so you decided to ignore the malice in your heart, if only temporarily.

“It wasn't easy, was it? I can't say whether it was bad luck, a lack of talent, or a mix of both, but you never realized your dream. When your body began to fall apart around you, you realized that you never would.

“When you realized your own death was imminent, you stopped holding back. You couldn't bear to leave this world with so much rage burning inside you. The fact that Hidaka knew about your past and he had proof that could expose those secrets, that wasn't the reason you acted. But it was enough to push you over the edge, to push that darkness you held within you out into the light. You decided to spend your last days planning the perfect crime. You murdered a man and let yourself get caught in order to steal everything from your victim—to ruin his name and his honor and everything he loved, even stealing the credit for the books he wrote.

“That pretty much sums up my thoughts on this case. Do you disagree with anything I've said?… I'll take your silence as a no.

“Let me suggest one last thing before I go.

“In the background interviews I conducted, people remember you and your mother having a dislike, even a prejudice, against Hidaka and the other people living in your neighborhood.

“There was no basis for that prejudice. Nor any indication anyone else shared that prejudice.

“It occurred to me that this whole dislike of Hidaka might not have started with you at all. It might be your mother's misguided prejudices that planted the seed that led you astray. I just wanted you to know that. Since you can't blame Hidaka anymore, maybe you can blame her.

“I've been talking for some time, haven't I? My mouth's quite dry.

“Now that you've given your permission for the surgery—and I checked, it's irrevocable—the doctors will be coming for you soon. I hope your surgery is a success, and that you have many years left ahead of you.

“After all, you have a trial to look forward to.”

 

ALSO BY KEIGO HIGASHINO

The Devotion of Suspect X

Salvation of a Saint

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

KEIGO HIGASHINO is the bestselling and most widely read novelist in Japan, as well as several other Asian countries, with hundreds of millions of copies sold worldwide. His work has been adapted in dozens of television series and films in several countries and languages. He won the Naoki Prize for
The Devotion of Suspect X,
the first novel featuring his character Detective Galileo, and the English translation was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Novel and the Barry Award. He lives in Tokyo, Japan.

 

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

 

MALICE
. Copyright © 1996 by Keigo Higashino. Translation copyright © 2014 by Alexander O. Smith. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

 

www.minotaurbooks.com

 

Cover design by Ceara Elliot/Little, Brown Book Group Limited and David Baldeosingh Rotstein

 

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Shutterstock.com

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Higashino, Keigo, 1958–

    [Akui. English]

    Malice / Keigo Higashino; translated by Alexander O. Smith. — First U.S. edition.

            pages cm

    ISBN 978-1-250-03560-8 (hardcover)

    ISBN 978-1-250-03561-5 (e-book)

  1.  Police—Japan—Fiction.   2.  Murder—Investigation—Japan—Fiction.   I.  Smith, Alexander O., translator.   II.  Title.

    PL852.I3625A5713 2014

    895.63'6—dc23

2014019885

 

e-ISBN 9781250035615

 

First published in Japan as
Akui,
by Kodansha

 

First English Edition: October 2014

 

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