The Devotion of Suspect X - Keigo Higashino [12]
Ishigami pointed to the corpse’s right hand. “There’s bruising on the wrist and the back of his hand. I think I can even make out finger marks. I’m guessing he was strangled from behind, and naturally tried to protect his throat. These marks came from someone stopping him from doing so. The evidence is plain to see.”
“It was me,” Yasuko insisted. “I did that, too.”
“Ms. Hanaoka, that’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“You strangled him from behind, right? How could you pull his hands forward at the same time? It’s impossible. You’d need four arms.”
Yasuko had nothing more to say. She felt trapped in a tunnel from which there was no exit. She lowered her head, her shoulders sagging. If Ishigami could tell all this with just a glance, the police would surely see even more.
“I just don’t want to get Misato involved. I have to help her…”
“I don’t want you to go to prison, either, Mom,” Misato said, her voice choked with tears.
Yasuko covered her face with her hands. “I just don’t know what to do.”
She felt the air growing heavier around her. It felt like she would be crushed where she sat.
“Mister,” Misato spoke. “You came here to tell Mom she should turn herself in, right?”
There was a beat before Ishigami replied. “I called thinking I could help you and your mother in some way. If you want to turn yourselves in, that’s fine, I won’t argue with you. But, if you weren’t going to turn yourselves in, I thought it might be hard managing with just the two of you.”
Yasuko let her hands fall away from her face. She remembered something odd Ishigami had said over the phone. How a woman couldn’t dispose of a body by herself—
“Is there some way we don’t have to turn ourselves in?” Misato asked.
Yasuko looked up. Ishigami tilted his head, thinking. His face betrayed no emotion.
“It seems to me that you have two options: hide the fact that anything happened, or hide the fact that you had anything to do with it. Either way, you have to get rid of the body.”
“Can we?”
“Misato,” Yasuko said sternly. “We’re not doing anything of the sort.”
“Please, Mom.” She turned back to Ishigami. “You really think we can?”
“It will be difficult, but not impossible,” Ishigami replied, his voice calmly mechanical. To Yasuko, this lack of emotion made everything he said sound somehow more logical than her own rattled thoughts.
“Mom,” Misato was saying, “let’s let him help us. It’s the only way!”
“But I couldn’t—” Yasuko looked at Ishigami.
His narrow eyes were fixed on the floor. He was waiting for them to decide.
Yasuko remembered what Sayoko had told her, that the math teacher had a crush on her. That he only came to buy lunch at the shop when she was there.
Now she was glad Sayoko had said so, or she would have seriously doubted Ishigami’s sanity. Why else would someone go so far out of his way to help a neighbor to whom he had barely even spoken? He had already risked arrest just by coming into the room.
“Wouldn’t somebody find the body? If we hid it, that is,” Yasuko asked.
“We haven’t decided whether we will hide the body yet or not,” Ishigami replied. “Sometimes it’s best not to conceal anything. We’ll decide what to do with the body once we have all the information at hand. The only thing we know now for certain is that we can’t leave him lying here like this.”
“What information?”
“Information about this man,” Ishigami explained, looking down at the corpse. “About his life. I need to know his full name, address, age, occupation. The reason he came here. Where he was planning to go afterward. Does he have family? Please tell me all that you know.”
“Well, I—”
“No, actually,” Ishigami cut her off, “before that, let’s move the body. We should clean up this room as quickly as possible. I’m sure there are mountains of evidence here as it is now.” Before he had even finished talking, Ishigami set about lifting the head and torso of the corpse.
“Move it? To where?”
“To my place,” Ishigami said, with a look that indicated this was the obvious choice; and he hoisted the body over his shoulder. He