The Devotion of Suspect X - Keigo Higashino [72]
“But that doesn’t fit with the movie theater story at all,” Yukawa observed. “If they were just getting together to talk, why prepare an alibi? Even an insufficient alibi like hers?”
“So you think it was planned? That Yasuko and Ishigami told him to come someplace and then ambushed him?”
“That’s hard to imagine.”
“Well, great. So what do you think happened, then?” Kusanagi asked sourly.
“If Ishigami planned the whole thing from the start, it wouldn’t be half as full of holes as it is now.”
“Fine, but how does that help—” Kusanagi broke off abruptly as his cell began to ring. “Hang on a second.” He answered the phone.
A moment later he was engaged in a hurried sotto voce conversation. He pulled out a pad and scribbled a few notes before hanging up.
“That was my partner, Kishitani,” he told Kusanagi. “I’ve received some very important news concerning Yasuko’s daughter. It turns out one of Misato’s classmates just gave a very interesting testimony.”
“What’s that?”
“Apparently, at lunch on the day of the murder, this classmate of hers heard from Misato that she was going out to the movies with her mother that night.”
“Really?”
“Kishitani confirmed it. It looks solid. Which means that Yasuko had already decided to go to the movies by lunchtime that day at the latest.” Kusanagi nodded to the physicist. “Maybe I was right to think this was premeditated.”
In response, Yukawa shook his head, his eyes dead serious. “Impossible.”
THIRTEEN
Club Marian was about a five-minute walk from Kinshicho Station, on the fifth floor of a building that held several other drinking establishments. The building was old, with an ancient elevator that growled dispiritedly as it carried Kusanagi and his partner upward.
The elder detective peered at his watch. It was just past seven in the evening. Perfect time for asking a few questions, he thought, as he stared dubiously at the peeling paint on the elevator wall. There shouldn’t be many customers around at this early hour—not that I’m an expert on this sort of place …
The noise of the crowd took Kusanagi by surprise as he got off the elevator and stepped through the nightclub door. Of the more than twenty tables inside, fully a third were already occupied. Judging by their clothes, most of the patrons were salarymen, though there were a few in the crowd whose occupation he couldn’t place.
“I was asking questions in a club in Ginza once,” Kishitani whispered in his ear. “The mama there was wondering where all the guys who used to drink at her place during the economic bubble were drinking now—well, I think I just found out. They’re all here.”
“I have a hard time believing that,” Kusanagi shot back. “Once you get used to luxury, it’s hard to lower your sights. The Ginza crowd wouldn’t be caught dead in a place this seedy, hard times or no.”
He called over one of the waiters, who was dressed in a black tuxedo, and asked to speak to a manager. The young waiter’s casual smile vanished, and he disappeared into the back.
A bit later, another waiter came out and showed the two detectives to seats at the bar.
“Will you be drinking something?” he asked.
“A beer for me, thanks,” Kusanagi replied.
“You sure that’s okay?” Kishitani asked after the waiter had left. “We’re on duty.”
“If we don’t drink anything, the other customers will get suspicious.”
“You could’ve had some tea then.”
“Since when do two grown men come to a bar to drink tea?”
They were still debating the ethics of drinking alcohol on the job when an elegant woman in a silver-gray suit appeared. She was about forty, and wearing a lot of makeup, with her hair done up in a neat bun on her head. A little on the thin side, Kusanagi thought, but a beauty nonetheless.