Spiral (26 page)

What made her want to come up here anyway?
wondered Ando, as he pulled himself up rung by rung. It wasn't because she wanted to jump. That was clear enough from the way the building had been designed. A jump from the roof would only have landed her a dozen feet below on the balcony. To fall to the ground, she'd have had to leap from the fire escape landing on the fourteenth floor instead.

It wasn't the kind of roof you went up to for the view, either. The water-resistant paint was peeling and cracking, and it gave way unpleasantly under his feet as he walked across it. There was no railing around the perimeter, and he wasn't going near the edge even if there was a balcony not far below.

There were concrete protrusions lined up at regular intervals, and they were shaped like the tetrapods used as breakwaters on beaches. Ando had no idea what they were for, but they were just the right height for him to sit on. Instead of going to the edge of the roof, he climbed up on top of one and had a look around. It was just before five o'clock, and it was the time of year when the sun set earliest. Lights had come on already in the surrounding buildings and the shops down below. Across the canal he could see a red Keihin Express train going by on the elevated tracks. It was actually an express train; it sped past the station platform that seemed to hover in the air. He knew that platform. He'd been on it a couple of times to visit Mai's apartment. Swathed in a diffuse white light, it was relatively empty for the time of day.

Using the station as a reference point, he tried to locate Mai's apartment. He found it only about four hundred yards away as the crow flies; it was right in front of his nose, so to speak. His gaze followed a path along the shopping street, turning right on the Shore Road. Another hundred yards brought him back to the building where he now stood.

Why this roof? There were any number of other tall buildings in the neighborhood. In fact, she could have gone up to the roof of the very building she lived in. He looked around until he found it again. Perhaps because the rooms were all low-ceilinged studio apartments, the seven-storied building was less than half the height of the one atop which Ando now stood. Still, Mai's had a flat space on the roof where one could walk around. At the same time, it was right on the shopping street, so it was surrounded by tall buildings. In particular, there was a nine-story commercial building on its west side from which the roof was easily observed. That was what distinguished the building Ando was on now. Located on a stretch of the Shore Road full of warehouses, there weren't many tall buildings in its immediate environs. No fear that someone might be looking down on you from above.

Ando descended from the concrete protrusion and went to stand between two equipment houses that jutted upward. One was for elevator machinery, while the other seemed to house a ventilation system. There was a large water tank on top of the southern machine house.

Between them was a deep groove that functioned as an exhaust shaft. Walking carefully, testing each step, Ando progressed until he stood right by it. It was cordoned off with a steel mesh, but this had holes in it. The maintenance crew must have decided to ignore the holes on the assumption that nobody but them ever came up here. Ando couldn't bring himself to step any closer. Just one foot on the lip of that dark rectangular crevice and already he felt he'd be sucked in. But he leaned forward and, with trepidation, tossed the bouquet he was holding through one of the holes in the meshing. He pressed his palms together and prayed for her eternal repose. If a technician hadn't come up here to inspect the elevator the day before, Mai would have lain undiscovered for even longer.

Night came quickly. The rooftop was veiled in darkness now, and the ocean breeze swirled in the narrow space Ando occupied, surrounded by concrete on three sides. He shivered. He ought to have come earlier in the day, when the sun would have been directly overhead. Yet, he knew he wouldn't have the courage, even in broad daylight, to peer into the shaft, this hole which had had a dead body in it until just the day before. And it wasn't just the thought of the corpse that was covering him in goosebumps. The idea of awaiting death down in that hemmed-in place filled him with terror. How many days had Mai spent down there, having twisted her ankle in the fall and unable to stand, staring at the small slice of sky just three yards above her, gradually losing hope, until she died? It must have felt like being sealed alive in a coffin floating in the air. Ando felt short of breath. The situation was too unnatural to call it an accident.

From inside one of the machine houses he heard a groan that sounded like cable being reeled in by a winch. One of the elevators was apparently on the move. Ando began taking small steps backward to get out from between the machine houses. Their walls were rough and blackened in places, with the paint chipping off, testifying to how seldom people came here.

He got away as fast as he could, rushing to the ladder and climbing down to the balcony of the fourteenth floor. The bottom rung was three feet above the surface, so he had to jump. Ando missed his footing on the landing. The back of his leg went momentarily numb; he crouched over and found himself at eye level with the bottom rung of the rusty ladder.

He went back inside and headed for the elevators. One of them was slowly making its way upward. He pushed the button for that elevator and waited in front of it.

As he waited, he tried to figure out why Mai had gone up to the roof of this building. He considered the possibility that she was being pursued. The warehouse district would be mostly deserted at night, and perhaps, walking along, she realized she was being stalked. She saw those stairs outside, with the iron gate. Judging that she could climb it but not the stranger, she might indeed have gone for them. Perhaps the person managed to scale the gate after all, and Mai had no place to go but up. Her first mistake, as it were, put her in a cul-de-sac. The ladder leading to the roof would have been her last lifeline. The bottom rung was a yard off the floor. Hoping that her assailant would give up at last, Mai had climbed to the roof. Well? Had the stranger been able to follow her up? Ando tried to imagine what sort of person would have a hard time with a ladder, set perpendicular to the ground, and the image that came to his mind was of some four-footed beast.

The elevator doors opened as the thought occurred to him. The elevator was not empty. Ando had been staring at his toes; he raised his eyes to meet those of a young woman. She stared at him as if she'd been lying in wait for him. There could be no mistake, he'd encountered this woman before, under similar circumstances. She was the one who had come out of Mai's room and shared an elevator with him. The cracked nails, and that odor, the likes of which he'd never smelled before-he couldn't forget her if he tried.

Now he stood directly in front of her, facing her, and he couldn't move a muscle. He was confused. His mind couldn't process what he was seeing and his body escaped his command.

Why. Is. She. Here?
Ando flailed about for a reason, which he was doomed not to find. The absence of any conceivable reason was what truly frightened him. As long as an explanation could be found, terror could be dispelled.

As they stared at each other, the elevator doors started to close between them. The woman reached out a hand and held them open. The motion was smooth, dexterous. She wore a blue polka-dot skirt, beneath which he could see her legs, bare, unstockinged despite the early winter weather. It was with her right hand that she had stopped the doors; in her other was a small bouquet of flowers.

Flowers!
Ando's sight rested on the bouquet.

"I've seen you before, haven't I?" She had spoken first, and her voice drew him in. It was deeper than her willowy proportions had led him to expect.

Ando's mouth hung open until he finally managed to dredge some words out of the parched depths of his throat. "Are you Mai's sister?"

That was what he wanted her to be. If that was who she was, it made sense: her emerging from Mai's room, her coming to this building with a bouquet. Everything would stand to be explained.

The woman made a slight, indecipherable movement with her head. It wasn't quite a nod, nor quite a shake. It could have been affirmation or denial, but Ando decided she'd intended a yes.

She's Mai's older sister, come to leave flowers on the roof of the building where her sister died.
It was most natural, quite fitting. People only ever believe what they can understand.

The moment he got that straight, all of his previous cowering struck him as funny. What had he been so afraid of? He couldn't make sense of his own psychology. The first time he'd met her, this woman had given him a strong otherworldly impression. But now that the riddle was solved, that impression faded away like a lie, while her beauty alone came to dominate his view of her. Her long, slender nose, the gentle, round line of her cheeks, her ever-so-slightly slanted eyes with their heavy eyelids. They didn't stare directly at him; rather, they seemed intentionally unfo-cussed. Within them lurked a seductive glow.

Those eyes.
When he'd encountered her the other day at Mai's apartment, she'd been wearing sunglasses. This was the first time he'd been able to see her eyes. Their gaze, full upon him, exerted a strong gravitational pull. He found it hard to breathe, and his chest pounded.

"Excuse me, but…" From the tone of her voice and her expression it was clear that she wanted to know his relationship with Mai.

"My name is Ando. Fukuzawa University Medical School." He knew this didn't exactly answer her question.

The woman stepped out of the elevator and, still holding the door open, motioned him in with her eyes. He had to obey. Her elegant movements left him powerless to refuse. As though enchanted, Ando entered the elevator in her place. They stared at each other again from their reversed positions.

"I'll call on you soon with a request."

She said this just before the door closed. Ando heard her clearly and there was no mistaking her words. The doors as they closed were like a camera shutter, removing her from his field of vision but leaving her image imprinted on Ando's brain.

As the elevator descended slowly, Ando found himself overcome with uncontrollable lust. Mai had been the object of the first sexual fantasies he'd had since his family had ceased to be, but this was far more intense. He'd only been with the woman for a few seconds, and yet he could remember every detail of her body, from the curve of her ankles, bare above her pumps, to the corners of her eyes. And his image of her remained sharp, even as the moments passed. Flustered by the sudden flood of sexual desire, Ando rushed out of the building, hailed a taxi, and hurried home.

In the cab, he thought about the last words she'd said.

I'll call on you soon with a request.

What was her request? Where did she mean to "call on" him? Was that supposed to be some sort of social pleasantry?

He'd rushed out of the building and into a taxi as if pursued by her gaze. He regretted not asking her for her name and number at least. Why hadn't he? He ought to have waited for her to come down from the roof. But he hadn't. Or rather, he couldn't. It was as though his every movement had been controlled by that woman. He had acted against his will.

A week had passed since Mai's autopsy. It was December, and the weather had suddenly turned wintry. Ando had never liked winter-he much preferred late spring to early summer-but ever since the death of his son he'd stopped paying much attention to the changing seasons. The morning's drastic chill had forced him, nonetheless, to recognize the advent of winter. On the way to the university he'd stopped in his tracks several times to go back and get a sweater, but in the end he'd simply continued on his way. He didn't feel like going all the way back, and the walking was warming him up.

His apartment in Sangubashi was close enough to the university that he could walk to work if he felt like it. And though he usually went by train, the transfer he had to make despite the short distance never went smoothly. As a result, and because he knew he needed the exercise, Ando sometimes ended up half-walking, half-jogging to and from work. The day had started out as one of those days, but halfway to campus he changed his mind and caught the JR train at Yoyogi Station. He wanted to get to the university sooner than later.

With just two stations to go, he didn't have the time to organize his thoughts in the rocking cradle of the train carriage. This morning he was supposed to look at samples of Mai's cells and Ryuji's through the electron microscope. Miyashita was going to be there, as well as Nemoto, an electron microscopy expert. The thought of what lay ahead made Ando want to hurry.

Up until then, the smallpox-like virus hadn't been found in anybody who hadn't watched the video. There had been no reports of the virus being spread by physical contact. In Mai's room he'd found a copy of the video, already erased. These two facts meant that if Mai's blood cells revealed the presence of the virus, it would be safe to conclude that she had actually watched the tape. The calamity that had befallen her would have been the video's doing.

He was so deep in thought that he almost missed his station, but he managed to jump off the train just before the doors closed. He allowed himself to be swept along with the rest of the crowd toward the ticket gates. The university hospital stood in all its grandeur right outside the station.

Ando poked his head into the lab, and Miyashita turned his ruddy face toward him.

"Finally he shows up!"

Miyashita and Nemoto had spent the previous week making preparations for today's session with the electron microscope. A virus wasn't something one could just pop into a microscope and take a gander at when the mood struck. There were a lot of things that had to be done first, applying a centrifuge, cell sectioning, and so on. The procedure was beyond the skill of a non-specialist like Ando. Given all the preparation it took, Miyashita could hardly wait for the moment. He'd been up since early morning getting ready.