Ruined Map - Abe Kobo [74]
“Curious. The noodle fellow must have got out of there before me, so he couldn’t actually have witnessed the scene.”
“Once he had parked the bus in a safe place, he said, he went back again.”
There was nothing I could say to that. Even I could have done something … rushed to the office of the temporary workmen’s quarters … or run to the police station … or something. But all I did was clear out of the place. I let him die without lifting a finger, without showing him as much good faith as the noodle man.
“But I didn’t go back.”
“It appears his head was stomped in with a heel.”
“That’s questionable. According to that boy in charge I spoke with a while ago, it seems he was shot to death.”
“You can’t trust what those boys say. Right away imagination becomes fact. The police also said he had been clubbed to death.”
“But you imagine facts yourself, don’t you?”
“I guess so.”
“Did the police mention anything concerning me or your husband?”
“No, not particularly.”
“A thing like this revolver doesn’t mean much.” I was irritated at being fooled and I deliberately applied my fingerprints to the surface of the gun. “But it’s something of a problem if you consider that the business your brother was running was as innocent as this gun.”
“Of course. Originally, the gun was my husband’s, you realize.”
“What was your husband doing with it?”
“He bought it somewhere and loved to flaunt it around. My brother got all excited and took it away from him.”
“That’s strange too. The positions seem somewhat reversed. Your brother had no right to complain about some thing as innocuous as a toy pistol, when you consider what he was doing. For instance, do you know what he was up to in the dry river bottom where the fight took place last night?”
“Yes. In a general way …”
“He took the key money he got and had a number of shops set up for the workingmen’s quarters—you know, the microbuses. That in itself would be all right, but he put women in them—prostitution right in the open. Did you know that?”
“Well, yes … generally …”
“For heaven’s sake, what sort of a relationship was there between your brother and your husband? I can’t believe they were individuals of the same kind. When you talk you seem so uncritical of your brother.”
“I think I understand him. My brother would never permit my husband to play with such a toy.”
“So that’s why I wondered how he could justify complaining about the gun. I can’t believe he had any justification.”
“Justification? Well, I don’t know …,” she said, thrusting her finger into her glass and then licking the beer foam from the tip. “It’s a strange turn of the wheel of fortune. If my brother was killed because of this toy, it would seem my husband did it.”
Perhaps her complete indifference and her tenseness, which seemed to be on the verge of tearing her apart, dwelt together in her single expression. Suddenly the pain which convulsed her breast, as she frantically stifled a cry, pierced me. It was apparently not my turn to be upset.
“You worry too much. A thing like this is a straight clue.”
“Put it away right now. Please. I hate toys like that.”
“I’ll take it along with me. What shall I do with the badge?”
“Oh. Well … you might as well throw it away.”
“I’ll have to be leaving shortly after six.”
“Would you have another beer?”
“Actually I’d prefer looking at an album or something.”
“An album?”
“Yes, one with family pictures.”
“We do have one, but … surely it’ll be a bore.”
Twisting around and half rising, she drew from the bookcase behind her an oversized scrapbook contained in a case, on the spine of which was printed in large letters: The Meaning of Memories. On closer inspection, I saw it was not printing but letters that had evidently been cut out of a magazine or something and pasted on in a line.
“The Meaning of Memories is a rather strange title, isn’t it?”
“It’s typical of him. So meticulous …”
So this was the meticulousness typical of him.
“No doubt the pictures inside are just as meticulously done.”
“Hmm.”
Turning to