The Devotion of Suspect X - Keigo Higashino [13]
Ishigami turned back to the mother and daughter, who stood at the open apartment door. “Ms. Hanaoka, I want you to stay here. Your daughter should go next door and start cleaning. Use the vacuum, and get it as clean as possible.”
Misato nodded, her face pale, and after a quick glance at her mother she vanished from the entryway.
“Close the door,” Ishigami said to Yasuko.
“Oh … okay.” Yasuko did as she was told, then stood in hesitation.
“You might as well come in. It’s not as clean as your place, I’m afraid.”
Ishigami pulled a small cushion off a chair and placed it on the floor next to the body. Yasuko stepped into the room, but she did not sit on the cushion. Instead, she sat with her back against one wall, turning her face away from the body. Ishigami belatedly realized she was afraid of it.
“Er, sorry about that.” He picked up the cushion and offered it to her. “Please, use this.”
“No, it’s all right,” she said, looking down, with a light shake of her head.
Ishigami returned the cushion to the chair and then sat next to the body.
A reddish-black welt had risen around the corpse’s neck.
“The electrical cord, was it?”
“What?”
“When you strangled him. You used an electrical cord?”
“Yes—that’s right. The kotatsu cord.”
“Of course, the kotatsu,” Ishigami said, recalling the pattern of the kotatsu quilt. “You might consider getting rid of that. Actually, never mind, I’ll handle that myself later. Incidentally—” Ishigami looked back to the corpse. “Had you planned on meeting him today?”
Yasuko shook her head. “No, not at all. He just walked into the shop around noon, unexpectedly. Then in the evening, I met him at a family restaurant nearby. It was the only way I could get him to leave the shop. After that, I thought I’d gotten away from him. Then he showed up at my apartment.”
“A family restaurant, huh?”
That rules out the possibility of there being no witnesses, Ishigami thought. He put his hand into the corpse’s jacket pocket. A rolled-up ten-thousand-yen bill came out, then another.
“That’s the money I—”
“You gave him this?”
She nodded, and Ishigami offered her the money. Yasuko didn’t reach for it.
Ishigami went to where his suit hung on the wall nearby and pulled his wallet from the pocket. Removing twenty thousand yen he replaced it with the bills from the dead man’s jacket.
“I can appreciate why you wouldn’t want his,” Ishigami said, handing the money he had taken from his own wallet to Yasuko.
She made a show of hesitating for moment, then took the money with a quiet “Thank you.”
“Well then,” Ishigami said, searching the corpse’s pockets again. He found Togashi’s wallet. There was a little money inside, a driver’s license, and a few receipts.
“Shinji Togashi … West Shinjuku, Shinjuku Ward. Do you think that’s where he was living now?” he asked Yasuko, after looking at the license.
She frowned and shook her head. “I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. I know he lived in Nishi-Shinjuku a while back, but he said something—it sounded like he’d gotten thrown out because he couldn’t pay the rent.”
“It looks like the driver’s license was renewed a year ago, which means he must have kept the papers for his old location while finding another place to actually live.”
“I’m pretty sure he moved around a lot. He didn’t have a steady job, so he wouldn’t have been able to rent anything long-term.”
“That would seem to be the case,” Ishigami remarked, his eyes falling on one of the receipts.
It read “Rental Room Ogiya.” The price