At any rate, these two bodyguards had failed in their assignment to protect Leader, and their position in the religion was shaky. Their role now was to locate this woman, after she had seemingly vanished into thin air. The order was out: leave no stone unturned until they found her. But so far they had come up empty-handed. They were trained bodyguards, but when it came to finding missing persons, they lacked the right skills.

“I understand where you’re coming from,” Ushikawa replied. “And I will tell you some things I’ve discovered. Not the whole story, but I can reveal parts of it.”

Buzzcut sat there for a while, his eyes narrowed. And then he nodded. “That would be fine. We have uncovered a few details ourselves, things you may already be aware of, or perhaps not. We should share whatever information we have.”

Ushikawa put the lighter down and tented his fingers on top of the desk.

“The young woman, Aomame,” he began, “was asked to come to a suite at the Hotel Okura, and helped Leader to relax his muscles by working his body through a series of stretching exercises. This was at the beginning of September, on the evening of that tremendous thunderstorm. Aomame treated him for around an hour in a separate room, then left Leader while he slept. She told you to let him sleep undisturbed for two hours, and you followed her instructions. But Leader wasn’t asleep. He was already dead. There were no external injuries, and it appeared to be a heart attack. Right after this, the woman vanished. She had cleared out of her apartment beforehand. The place was empty. And the next day her resignation letter arrived at the sports club. Everything seemed to follow a preset plan. The inevitable conclusion is that this Miss Aomame was the one who murdered Leader.”

Buzzcut nodded. It all sounded correct to him.

“Your goal is to get to the bottom of what actually occurred,” Ushikawa added. “Whatever it takes, you need to catch this woman.”

“If this Aomame really is the one who killed Leader, we need to know why, and who’s behind it.”

Ushikawa looked down at his ten fingers resting on the desk, as if they were some curious object he had never set eyes on before. He raised his head and looked at the man across from him.

“You’ve already run a background check on Aomame’s family, correct? All of her family members are devout members of the Witnesses. Her parents are still quite active and they have continued to proselytize door to door. Her older brother, who is thirty-four, works at the religion headquarters in Odawara. He is married and has two children. His wife is also a devout Witness. Aomame is the only one in the family who left the religion—an apostate, they called her—and she was essentially disowned. I have found no evidence that the family has had any contact with her for nearly the last twenty years. I think it’s impossible her family would hide her. At the age of eleven, she cut all ties with her family, and has been on her own pretty much ever since. She lived with her uncle for a while, but since she entered high school she has effectively been independent. Quite an impressive feat. And quite a strong-willed woman.”

Buzzcut didn’t say a word. He might have already had all this information.

“There is no way that the Witnesses are involved,” Ushikawa went on. “They are well known to be pacifists, following the principle of nonresistance. It’s not possible that their organization itself was aiming to take Leader’s life. On that we can be agreed, I think.”

Buzzcut nodded. “The Witnesses aren’t involved in this. That much I know. Just to be sure, though, we had a talk with her brother. We took every possible precaution. But he didn’t know anything.”

“By every possible precaution you don’t mean ripping off his fingernails, do you?”

Buzzcut ignored the question.

“Don’t look so upset,” Ushikawa said. “I’m joking. I’m sure her brother knew nothing about her actions or her whereabouts. I’m a born pacifist myself and would never do something so harsh, but that much I can figure out. Aomame has nothing to do with either her family or the Witnesses. Still, she couldn’t have pulled off something this complicated on her own. Things were carefully arranged, and she just followed the plan. And that was also a pretty nimble vanishing act she pulled. She had to have a lot of help and a generous amount of funding. There’s got to be someone—or some organization—who is backing her, someone who wanted Leader dead. They’re the ones that plotted all this. Agreed?”

Buzzcut nodded. “Generally speaking, yes.”

“But there’s no clue what sort of organization we’re talking about,” Ushikawa said. “I assume you checked out her friends and acquaintances?” Buzzcut silently nodded.

“And—let me guess—you found no friends to speak of,” Ushikawa said. “No friends, no boyfriend. She has a few acquaintances at work, but outside of work she doesn’t hang out with anybody. At least I wasn’t able to find any evidence of her having any close relationship with anyone. Why would that be? She is a young, healthy, decent-looking woman.”

Ushikawa glanced at Ponytail, standing by the door, seemingly frozen in time. He was devoid of all expression to begin with, so what was there to change? Does this guy even have a name? Ushikawa wondered. He wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t.

“You two are the only ones who have actually seen Miss Aomame,” Ushikawa said. “How about it? Did you notice anything unusual about her?”

Buzzcut shook his head slightly. “As you said, she is a fairly attractive young woman. Not beautiful enough to turn heads, though. A very quiet, calm person. She seemed quite confident in her abilities as a physical therapist. But nothing else really leapt out at us. It’s strange, in fact, how little of an impression her outward appearance made. I can’t even remember much about her face.”

Ushikawa again glanced over at Ponytail by the door. Perhaps he had something to add? But he didn’t look like he was about to open his mouth.

Ushikawa looked back at Buzzcut. “I’m sure you checked out Miss Aomame’s phone record for the past few months?”

Buzzcut shook his head. “We haven’t done that yet.”

“You should,” Ushikawa smiled. “It’s definitely worth checking out. People call all sorts of places and get all sorts of calls. Investigate a person’s phone records and you get a good idea of the kind of life they lead. Miss Aomame is no exception. It’s no easy thing to get ahold of private phone records, but it can be done. It takes a thief to catch one, right?”

Buzzcut was silent, waiting for him to continue.

“In looking over Miss Aomame’s phone records, several facts came to light. Quite unusually for a woman, she doesn’t like talking on the phone. There weren’t so many calls, and those that she made didn’t last long. Occasionally there were some long calls, but these are the exception. Most of the calls were to her workplace, but since she works freelance half the time, she also made calls related to private business—in other words, appointments she made directly with clients rather than going through the sports club desk. There were quite a few calls like that. But as far as I could tell, none of them were suspicious.”

Ushikawa paused, and as he examined the nicotine stains on his fingers from a number of angles, he thought about cigarettes. He lit an imaginary cigarette, inhaled the imaginary smoke, and exhaled.

“There were two exceptions, however. Two calls were to the police. Not 911 calls, but to the Traffic Bureau in the Shinjuku police station. And there were several calls from the station to her. She doesn’t drive, and policemen can’t afford private lessons at an expensive gym. So it must mean she has a friend working in that division. Who it is, though, I have no idea. One other thing that bothered me is that she had several long conversations with an unknown number. The other party always called her. She never once called them. I tried everything but couldn’t trace the number. Obviously there are numbers that can be manipulated so that the party’s name remains undisclosed. But even these, with some effort, should be traceable. I tried my best, but I couldn’t find out anything. It’s locked up tight. Quite extraordinary, really.”