The Devotion of Suspect X - Keigo Higashino [91]
“You’ll see soon enough. I think it’s better not to tell you right now. Just, don’t forget what I said. All right?”
“No, it’s not all right. I need you to explain.”
Misato came over, noticing her mother’s consternation.
“There is no need to explain. Good-bye.”
“Wait—” she said, but he had already hung up.
* * *
Kusanagi was in the car with Kishitani when his phone began to ring. He was on the passenger side, resting, with the seat back lowered as far as it would go. He grabbed his cell and answered it while still lying down. “Kusanagi here.”
“It’s me—Mamiya,” came the division chief’s voice. “I need you to come down to Edogawa police station immediately.”
“What, did you find something?”
“Someone found us. There’s a man here who wants to talk to you.”
“Who?” Kusanagi asked, wondering if it was Yukawa.
“It’s Ishigami, the math teacher who lives next to Yasuko Hanaoka.”
“Ishigami? He wants to talk to me? Why didn’t he just call?”
“Uh, I think it’s more important than that,” Mamiya replied, his tone severe.
“Did he tell you what this is all about, Chief?”
“He says he won’t talk about the details to anyone but you. That’s why we need you here now.”
“Right, fine, I’m on my way.” Kusanagi put his hand over the receiver and tapped Kishitani on the shoulder. “Chief wants us down at Edogawa Station.”
Mamiya’s muffled voice came over the phone. “He says he did it.”
“Huh? What was that?”
“He says he killed Togashi. Ishigami’s turning himself in.”
“What the hell!?”
Kusanagi sat up so fast his seatbelt nearly left a bruise.
SIXTEEN
Ishigami, his face expressionless, was staring at Kusanagi. Or maybe his eyes just happen to be pointing in my direction, the detective thought. Maybe he’s not seeing me at all. The mathematician’s face was entirely devoid of emotion; it was as if his gaze was fixed on some faraway place and Kusanagi just happened to be sitting in that blank trajectory.
“The first time I saw him was on the tenth of March,” he was saying, his tone perfectly even. “He was loitering near her door when I returned home from school. I caught him putting his hand inside the mail slot in her doorway.”
“I’m sorry, this man—who was he, exactly?”
“Mr. Togashi. Though, of course, I didn’t know that at the time,” Ishigami answered.
Kusanagi and Kishitani were with him in the interrogation room. Kishitani sat off to one side, taking notes. Ishigami had asked that no one else be allowed in the room. He’d said he wouldn’t be able to tell them what he needed to say if a bunch of officers were there asking questions.
“I wondered what he was up to, so I called out to him. He looked surprised, and told me he had business with Yasuko Hanaoka. Said he was her estranged husband. That’s when I realized who he was, and I knew he was lying, but I pretended to go along with his story so as not to alarm him.”
“Wait a second, how did you know he wasn’t telling you the truth?” Kusanagi asked.
Ishigami took a short breath. “Because I know everything there is to know about Yasuko Hanaoka. I know she’s divorced, and I know she had been moving around, trying to escape her ex-husband.”
“How could you know all these things? I had heard that you hardly spoke to her, despite the fact that she’s your neighbor. That you only saw her because you frequented the lunch shop where she works.”
“That’s what we tell people, yes.”
“Excuse me?”
Ishigami straightened himself in his chair, puffing out his chest ever so slightly. “I am Yasuko Hanaoka’s bodyguard. It has been my duty to protect her from men with less than good intentions. And for obvious reasons, neither of us wanted people to know about it. I am a schoolteacher, too, after all.”
“But you told us you hardly talked to her at all when we first met,” Kusanagi pressed.
Ishigami sighed quietly. “You came to my apartment to ask questions about Togashi’s murder, didn’t you? Of course I couldn’t tell you the truth. You would have suspected something immediately.”
“Okay…” Kusanagi hesitated. “So now you’re telling me that you know everything about Yasuko