Tengo looked again at the hollow his father had left in the bed, and he remembered all the pairs of shoes his father had worn out. As his father had pounded the Tokyo pavement collecting fees, he had consigned countless pairs of shoes to oblivion. All of the shoes looked the same—cheap, no-nonsense leather shoes, black, with thick soles. He had worn them hard, until they were worn out and falling apart, the heels warped out of shape. As a boy, every time Tengo saw these terribly misshapen shoes it pained him. He didn’t feel sorry for his father, but for the shoes. They reminded him of a pitiful work animal, driven as hard as possible and hovering on the verge of death.

But come to think of it, wasn’t his father now like a work animal about to die? No different from a worn-out pair of leather shoes?

Tengo gazed out the window again as the colors of the sunset deepened in the western sky. He remembered the air chrysalis emitting a faint, pale light, and Aomame, as a young girl, sleeping inside.

Would that air chrysalis ever appear here again?

Was time really a straight line?

“It seems I’ve reached a deadlock,” Tengo mumbled to the wall. “There are too many variables. Even for a former child prodigy, it’s impossible to find an answer.”

The walls didn’t have a response. Nor did they express an opinion. They simply, and silently, reflected the color of the setting sun.

CHAPTER 4

Ushikawa

OCCAM’S RAZOR

Ushikawa found it hard to get his head around the idea that the elderly dowager who lived in a mansion in Azabu could somehow be involved with the assassination of Sakigake’s Leader. He had dug up background information on her. She was a well-known figure in society, so the investigation had not taken much effort. Her husband had been a prominent businessman in the postwar era, influential in the political sphere. His business focused mainly on investments and real estate, though he had also branched out into large-scale retail stores and transport-related businesses. After her husband’s death in the mid-1950s, the woman had taken over his company. She had a talent for managing business, as well as an ability to sense impending danger. In the late 1960s she felt that the company had overextended itself, so she deliberately sold—at a high price—its stock in various fields, and systematically downsized the business. She put all her physical and mental strength into the remaining areas. Thanks to this, she was able to weather the era of the oil shock that occurred soon after with minimal damage and set aside a healthy amount of liquid assets. She knew how to turn other people’s crises into golden opportunities for herself.

She was retired now and in her mid-seventies. She had an abundance of money, which allowed her to live in comfort in her spacious mansion, indebted to no one. But why would a woman like that deliberately plot to murder someone?

Even so, Ushikawa decided to dig a little deeper. One reason was that he couldn’t find anything else that even resembled a clue. The second reason was that there was something about this safe house that bothered him. There was nothing especially unnatural about providing a free shelter for battered women. It was a sound and useful service to society. The dowager had the financial resources, and the women must be very grateful to her for her kindness. The problem was that the security at that apartment building—the heavy locked gate, the German shepherd, the surveillance cameras—was too tight for a facility of its type. There was something excessive about it.

The first thing Ushikawa did was check the deed for the land and the house that the dowager lived in. This was public information, easily ascertained by a trip to city hall. The deed to both the land and the house were in her name alone. There was no mortgage. Everything was quite clear-cut. As private assets, the property tax would come to quite a sum, but she probably didn’t mind paying such an amount. The future inheritance tax would also be huge, but this didn’t seem to bother her, which was unusual for such a wealthy person. In Ushikawa’s experience, nobody hated paying taxes more than the rich.

After her husband’s death, she continued to live alone in that enormous mansion. No doubt she had a few servants, so she wasn’t totally alone. She had two children, and her son had taken over the company. The son had three children. Her daughter had married and died fifteen years ago of an illness. She left no children behind.

This much was easy to find out. But once he tried to dig deeper into the woman’s background, a solid wall loomed up out of nowhere, blocking his way. Beyond this, all paths were closed. The wall was high, and the door had multiple locks. What Ushikawa did know was that this woman wanted to keep anything private about her completely out of public view. And she had poured considerable effort and money into carrying out that policy. She never responded to any sort of inquiry, never made any public statements. And no matter how many materials he raked through, not once did he come up with a photograph of her.

The woman’s number was listed in the Minato Ward phone book. Ushikawa’s style was to tackle things head on, so he went ahead and dialed it. Before the phone had rung twice, a man picked up.

Ushikawa gave a phony name and the name of some investment firm and said, “There’s something I would like to ask the lady of the house about, regarding her investment funds.”

The man replied, “She isn’t able to come to the phone. But you can tell me whatever she needs to know.” His businesslike tone sounded mechanical, manufactured.

“It’s company policy not to reveal these things to anyone other than the client,” Ushikawa explained, “so if I can’t speak with her directly now, I can mail the documents to her. She will have them in a few days.”

“That would be fine,” the man said, and hung up.

Ushikawa wasn’t particularly disappointed that he couldn’t speak to the dowager. He wasn’t expecting to. What he really wanted to find out was how concerned she was about protecting her privacy. Extremely so, it would appear. She seemed to have several people with her in the mansion who kept a close guard over her. The tone of this man who answered the phone—her secretary, most likely—made this clear. Her name was printed in the telephone directory, but only a select group could actually speak to her. All others were flicked away, like ants who had crawled into the sugar bowl.

.    .    .

Pretending to be looking for a place to rent, he made the rounds of local real estate agencies, indirectly asking about the apartment building used as the safe house. Most of the agents had no idea there was an apartment building at that address. This neighborhood was one of the more upscale residential areas in Tokyo. These agents only dealt with high-end properties and couldn’t be bothered with a two-story, wooden apartment building. One look at Ushikawa’s face and clothes, too, and they essentially gave him the cold shoulder. If a three-legged, waterlogged dog with a torn-off tail and mange had limped in the door, they would have treated it more kindly than they treated him.

Just when he was about to give up, a small local agency that seemed to have been there for years caught his eye. The yellowed old man at the front desk said, “Ah, that place,” and volunteered information. The man’s face was shriveled up, like a second-rate mummy, but he knew every nook and cranny of the neighborhood and always jumped at the chance to bend someone’s ear.

“That building is owned by Mr. Ogata’s wife, and yes, in the past it was rented out as apartments. Why she happened to have that building, I don’t really know. Her circumstances did not exactly demand that she manage an apartment building. I imagine she mostly used it to house their employees. I don’t know much about it now, but it seems to be used for battered women, kind of like those kakekomidera, temples in the old days that sheltered wives running away from abusive husbands. Anyway, it isn’t going to fatten a real estate agent’s wallet.”