The Isle of South Kamui and Other Stories (18 page)

“No, Sensei, you
are
a great person. Much more so than some petty detective.”

Taguchi smiled wryly, saying nothing, but he recalled what he had been thinking on the way over here, matching it with the way the pair of them were talking now.

There was something strangely translucent about Sakakibara and Mineko's conversation.

He fully understood the feeling that Mineko and also the dead Kazuko had demanded something emotionally from Sakakibara. From their point of view, reality was sometimes fun but it was also tough and unhappy. So when a man calling himself a poet had come along making what for them seemed a fairytale world, it provided them with an escape from their harsh reality and they were making the most it. Young girls needed a prince, and Sakakibara probably fulfilled that role for them.

But why did Sakakibara need them?

If Sakakibara had been living off them like a pimp, then things would be clear. Even if they were merely linked by a sexual relationship, Taguchi would consider it natural. He had seen it so many times before—and if it had been that kind of relationship, there probably would have been no murder case now.

But Sakakibara had formed an unnatural relationship with the girls. From the girls' point of view it was natural, but for Sakakibara surely it was anything but?

To put it another way, for the girls, Sakakibara was a fairytale prince, but Sakakibara probably did not see himself that way. Was it this gap in awareness between them that had led to the murder?

If so, then just how did Sakakibara perceive himself?

What was it that he'd said?

What had the line been? Something about woman as slave to the muse, and the poet as slave to woman. It was apparently something that Baudelaire had said, but Taguchi was interested in why Sakakibara had quoted it.

If he asked Sakakibara to his face, he would probably say, “I'm like a slave to those girls.” But Sakakibara's exhibitionism bordered on the abnormal, carrying around that Baudelaire anthology, and putting up the sign “Contemporary Poetry Appreciation Society” on the door of his tiny apartment.

In which case he was probably subconsciously likening himself to the muse. And if so, wouldn't that mean the girls were his slaves?

During the time Sakakibara was in hospital, Taguchi met up with a number of people to find out more about him. Of interest were the accounts given by a fairly well-known poet by the name of Ko Fujimura, and a former college friend.

Ko Fujimura had never met Sakakibara, but had apparently read some of his poetry.

“I used to be involved with a publisher that holds the T. A. Poetry Award, which is a pretty authoritative prize. He used to enter it every time. But he was apparently never selected.”

“Ah.”

“I was on the panel of judges, and he once wrote demanding to know why his poem hadn't been selected. He wanted to know the reason. He sounded pretty full of himself, which is why the name Tetsuya Sakakibara has stuck in my memory.”

“Sorry to be so crude, but were his poems any good?”

“They're very sensual, and in that respect I think some of them are quite good, it's just that they're somewhat saccharine. It's like there's no rigorousness in his view of reality, or perhaps it's that there's something lacking in the way he relates to the world.”

“I think I know what you mean,” laughed Taguchi. This was true, but he was more interested in how Sakakibara had kept entering the poetry competition, and had even written to the judges.

The old college friend's account backed up what Ko Fujimura had told him. At college, the words that Sakakibara had been fond of quoting were not by Baudelaire, but that famous line uttered by Byron, “I awoke one morning and found myself famous.”

“That's why,” the friend told Taguchi, “at that time I thought it would be Sakakibara, not Kyo Sasanuma, who would become a popular writer. He was precocious, a real go-getter. I'm amazed that it turned out the other way round.”

These two statements were consistent in that Sakakibara's current lifestyle was somewhat removed from reality, but he himself longed for worldly fame. And his was an uncommonly intense longing for fame. However, that ambition had never been satisfied, not even once. His heart must be full of disappointment. Could it be that Kazuko and Mineko had been necessary to him in order to soothe his disenchantment?

Taguchi decided to talk to Mineko once more. Why had Sakakibara needed the girls, and what on earth did they mean to him? Things were still hazy, but he had the feeling he was beginning to understand. He wanted something concrete he could hold onto. If he could just clear these points up, he might possibly discover Sakakibara's motive for killing Kazuko Watanabe.

That evening, he headed for Julie's bar. There was no sign of Mineko, and when he commented to the manageress that it must be her day off, the answer came back, “Mine-chan won't be coming back at all.”

“At all?”

“She quit.”

“You're not telling me…” A thought had popped into Taguchi's mind that put a gleam in his eyes. “She's not getting married, is she?”

“How come you knew?”

“It's true, then?”

“Yes. An old boyfriend from her hometown she hadn't seen for several years turned up and asked her to marry him. She told me she was going back to Akita to get married.”

“Getting married…” A slight shiver ran through Taguchi's chest.

Kazuko had been killed just before her wedding. Now Mineko was in the same situation as she had been in.

Will Sakakibara kill Mineko too?

Taguchi left Julie's and headed for Peace Villa apartments.

Mineko was in her room packing her bags.

When Taguchi told her, “I hear you're getting married,” she wiped the sweat off her brow with the back of her hand and then grinned at him.

“Yeah, a guy from my hometown. He wants me despite everything.”

“Sakakibara will be lonely, won't he? You'll no longer be around for him.”

“I guess.” There was a fleeting expression of triumph on Mineko's face.

“Have you told him you're getting married yet?”

“I'll go to the hospital tomorrow to tell him. I'm sure he'll be pleased for me. He always tells us he wants to see us happy. He often says it. Although I don't know if marriage is happiness really.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-one.”

“The same age as Kazuko then.” Taguchi hesitated.

There was definitely a possibility that Mineko would be killed, in which case he should probably warn her not to inform Sakakibara of her marriage. But he stopped himself. Mineko would probably just laugh it off, and also he had a somewhat imprudent urge to make a “bet.” He wanted to set a trap for Sakakibara, and this stopped him from saying anything. If he could trap Sakakibara—

“Detective, there's something I want to ask you.”

Jogged out of his thoughts by Mineko's studied formality, Taguchi replied, “What's that?”

“Are the police allowed to rummage through anyone's apartment at will?”

“What are you talking about?”

“It's just when I started packing that I noticed, but I'm missing a makeup set. Did the police take it?”

“Why do you think it was the police?”

“If it had been a thief, he would have taken money. It must have been the police. But it's not that I'm asking for it back or anything.”

“Sorry, but the police don't engage in that sort of petty thieving,” Taguchi smiled wryly. But the next moment his smile disappeared and his expression hardened. “When did it go missing?”

“What?”

“I'm asking you when the makeup set disappeared.”

“I don't know. And I've got loads of other makeup, so I don't need it back.”

“What exactly was it that went missing?”

“Don't bother about it.”

“Even if you don't mind, I do. I need to know. I want you to tell me exactly what it was that was taken.”

“A makeup set. Cream, lipstick, eyebrow pencil, that sort of thing.”

“I see.”

“Do you know who took it?”

“I think I just might,” replied Taguchi vaguely, his eyes narrowed.

The next evening it started raining.

With each passing car, sheaves of rain shone white in the headlights. It showed no sign of easing up. In his sheltered location on watch, Detective Suzuki stirred slightly and looked at Taguchi.

“Will Sakakibara go out in this?”

“Probably,” responded Taguchi, his gaze fixed on the hospital. “At least, Mineko came this afternoon and told him she's getting married. And what's more, Sakakibara can walk again.”

“What was Sakakibara's motive for killing Kazuko Watanabe? You know it, don't you, boss?”

“I'm not certain I'm right, though.” Taguchi lit a cigarette, never taking his eyes from the hospital. He thought he knew what it was, but if he was wrong then Sakakibara was unlikely to leave the hospital. “I just tried to imagine what sort of person he is.”

Taguchi spoke slowly, as if reconfirming his own thoughts to himself. “He doesn't have a proper job, he lives in a tiny, cheap apartment, and he spends what little money he makes selling mimeographed collections of his poetry on drinking in a back alley bar. The girls who work in the bar and the bathhouse all call him Sensei. This is the Sakakibara you see on the surface.”

“So carefree! Sounds pretty enviable to me.”

“I also thought that to begin with, too.” Taguchi smiled sardonically. Nobody had come out of the hospital yet, and the light was still on in Sakakibara's room. “But looking at it rationally, Sakakibara's lifestyle is fake, it has no substance. When we were watching him, he hardly sold any of his poetry, did he? Can he really live on that? Let alone go drinking in bars. The fact he's been able to do that is because those girls have been helping him. Or to put it simply, he's pretty much like a pimp. However much he calls it a poetic relationship, I think he's just using words and airs to cover up for the lack of substance in his life. That pompous sign “Contemporary Poetry Appreciation Society,” carrying around that Baudelaire volume, and even the girls—they're all nothing more than decorative means to cover up his empty life.”

“It really sounds like a house of cards, doesn't it?”

“House of cards?” Smiling, Taguchi flicked away his cigarette butt. “I guess it is. He's far more desperate for fame than most people, but he hasn't achieved it. In other words, he's a failure. You could say he's become the lord of his own house of cards in order to escape that sense of humiliation. Therefore, it wasn't because he liked the girls that he kept them close to hand. They were just cards that he used to build his house. They were objects that he could commiserate with.”

“So when one of them decided to marry, it meant the loss of one of the cards.”

“It's not just that he lost one of the cards, but that someone who should have been oppressed by a miserable existence transformed into someone happier than him. It must have been intolerable for Sakakibara. He was probably gripped with the fear that his house of cards would come tumbling down. So he killed her.”

“But he must have known that even if he killed her, he would never return to where he was before.”

“No. I think he believed that if he killed Kazuko, she would once again be a pitiable woman. You remember that despite her heavy makeup, she had just slipped her feet into sandals?”

“Yes, I remember. It really stood out as being oddly mismatched.”

“That makeup was applied by Sakakibara after he killed her. He used makeup that he stole from Mineko's room.”

“Why would he do such a thing?”

“She had become a happy twenty-one-year-old girl about to be married, and he wanted to return her to being a bathhouse girl, I think. I can't think of any other reason.”

Taguchi lit up another cigarette. Rain was still falling. The hospital was enveloped in deep silence.

“There is one thing I just don't understand,” said Suzuki in a low voice. “If that's the sort of guy he is, why would he get himself hurt rescuing a child or saving an old guy from a beating? It takes a pretty terrific sort of guy to do that sort of thing.”

“It is terrific. But doesn't it strike you as a bit abnormal?”

“Abnormal?”

“Sakakibara even got into a fight with some yakuza thug to help out Kazuko Watanabe. That's terrific. But a normal person wouldn't do something like that with no regard for the danger to themselves, would they? Let alone three times. It's got nothing to do with courage. It's just that most people would naturally think of their life, their family, or their lover or whatever and hesitate. It's more natural to remain an onlooker. Yet Sakakibara flew to the rescue not just once, but a full three times. There was nothing in his life to make him hesitate. The only thing holding him back was fear, but his sense of duty wouldn't allow him to give in to this. It'd be too shameful. He's a bit out of synch with most people. He isn't so much terrific, as abnormal, I'd say. And I think the flip side of that is that he's capable of killing someone.”