“You were kidnapped?” Tengo asked.

Komatsu finished his inspection of the ashtray, returned it to the table, and looked up at Tengo. “That’s right. A real kidnapping. Like in that old movie, The Collector. I don’t imagine most people in the world ever think they will end up kidnapped. The idea never occurs to them. Right? But when they kidnap you, believe me, you’re kidnapped. It’s kind of—how shall I put it?—surreal. You can’t believe you are actually being kidnapped by someone. Could you believe it?”

Komatsu stared at Tengo, as if looking for a reply. But it was a rhetorical question. Tengo was silent, waiting for him to continue. He hadn’t touched his highball. Beads of moisture had formed on the outside, wetting the coaster.

CHAPTER 16

Ushikawa

A CAPABLE, PATIENT, UNFEELING MACHINE

The next morning Ushikawa again took a seat by the window and continued his surveillance through a gap in the curtain. Nearly the same lineup of people who had come back to the apartment building the night before, or at least people who looked the same, were now exiting. Their faces were still grim, their shoulders hunched over. A new day had barely begun and yet they already looked fed up and exhausted. Tengo wasn’t among them, but Ushikawa went ahead and snapped photos of each and every face that passed by. He had plenty of film and it was good practice so he could be more efficient at stealthily taking photos.

When the morning rush had passed and he saw that everyone who was going out had done so, he left the apartment and slipped into a nearby phone booth. He dialed the Yoyogi cram school and asked to speak with Tengo.

“Mr. Kawana has been on leave for the last ten days,” said the woman who answered the phone.

“I hope he’s not ill?”

“No, someone in his family is, so he went to Chiba.”

“Do you know when he will be back?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t asked him that,” the woman said.

Ushikawa thanked her and hung up.

Tengo’s family, as far as Ushikawa knew, meant just his father—the father who used to be an NHK fee collector. Tengo still didn’t know anything about his mother. And as far as Ushikawa was aware, Tengo and his father had always had a bad relationship. Yet Tengo had taken more than ten days off from work in order to take care of his sick father. Ushikawa found this hard to swallow. How could Tengo’s antagonism for his father soften so quickly? What sort of illness did his father have, and where in Chiba was he in the hospital? There should be ways of finding out, though it would take at least a half a day to do so. And he would have to put his surveillance on hold while he did.

Ushikawa wasn’t sure what to do. If Tengo was away from Tokyo, then it was pointless to stake out this building. It might be smarter to take a break from surveillance and search in another direction. He should find out where Tengo’s father was a patient, or investigate Aomame’s background. He could meet her classmates and colleagues from her college days and from the company she used to work for, and gather more personal information. Who knows but this might provide some new clues.

But after mulling it over, he decided to stay put and continue watching the apartment building. First, if he suspended his surveillance at this point, it would put a crimp in the daily rhythm he had established, and he would have to start again from scratch. Second, even if he located Tengo’s father, and learned more about Aomame’s friendships, the payoff might not be worth the trouble. Pounding the pavement on an investigation can be productive up to a point, but oddly, once you pass that point, nothing much comes of it. He knew this through experience. Third, his intuition told him, in no uncertain terms, to stay put—to stay right where he was, watch all the faces that passed by, and let nothing get by him.

So he decided that, with or without Tengo, he would continue to stake out the building. If he stayed put, by the time Tengo came back Ushikawa would know each and every face. Once he knew all the residents, then he would know in a glance if someone was new to the building. I’m a carnivore, Ushikawa thought. And carnivores have to be forever patient. They have to blend in with their surroundings and know everything about their prey.

Just before noon, when the foot traffic in and out of the building was at its most sparse, Ushikawa left the apartment. He tried to disguise himself a bit, wearing a knit cap and a muffler pulled up to his nose, but still he couldn’t help but draw attention to himself. The beige knit cap perched on top of his huge head like a mushroom cap. The green muffler looked like a big snake coiled around him. Trying a disguise didn’t work. Besides, the cap and muffler clashed horribly.

Ushikawa stopped by the film lab near the station and dropped off two rolls of film to be developed. Then he went to a soba noodle shop and ordered a bowl of soba noodles with tempura. It had been a while since he had had a hot meal. He savored the tempura noodles and drank down the last drop of broth. By the time he finished he was so hot he had started to perspire. He put on his knit cap, wrapped the muffler around his neck again, and walked back to the apartment. As he smoked a cigarette, he lined up all the photos that he had had printed on the floor. He collated the photos of people going out in the morning and the ones of people coming back, and if any matched he put them together. In order to easily distinguish them, he made up names for each person, and wrote the names on the photos with a felt-tip pen.

Once the morning rush hour was over, hardly any residents left the building. One young man—a college student, by the looks of him—hurried out around ten a.m., a bag slung over his shoulder. An old woman around seventy and a woman in her mid-thirties also went out but then returned lugging bags of groceries from a supermarket. Ushikawa took their photos as well. During the morning the mailman came and sorted the mail into the various mailboxes at the entrance. A deliveryman with a cardboard box came in and left, empty-handed, five minutes later.

Once an hour Ushikawa left his camera and did some stretching for five minutes. During that interval his surveillance was put on hold, but he knew from the start that total coverage by one person was impossible. It was more important to make sure his body didn’t get numb. His muscles would start to atrophy and then he wouldn’t be able to react quickly if need be. Like Gregor Samsa when he turned into a beetle, he deftly stretched his rotund, misshapen body on the floor, working the kinks out of his tight muscles.

He listened to AM radio with an earphone to keep from getting bored. Most of the daytime programs appealed to housewives and elderly listeners. The people who appeared on the programs told jokes that fell flat, pointlessly burst out laughing, gave their moronic, hackneyed opinions, and played music so awful you felt like covering your ears. Periodically they gave blaring sales pitches for products no one could possibly want. At least this is how it all sounded to Ushikawa. But he wanted to hear people’s voices, so he endured listening to the inane programs, wondering all the while why people would produce such idiotic shows and go to the trouble of using the airwaves to disseminate them.

Not that Ushikawa himself was involved in an operation that was so lofty and productive—hiding behind the curtains in a cheap one-room apartment, secretly snapping photos of people. He couldn’t very well criticize the actions of others.

It was not just now, either. Back when he was a lawyer it was the same. He couldn’t remember having done anything that helped society. His biggest clients ran small and medium-sized financial firms and had ties to organized crime. Ushikawa created the most efficient ways to disperse their profits and made all the arrangements. Basically, it was money laundering. He was also involved in land sharking: when investors had their eyes on an area, he helped drive out longtime residents so they could knock down their houses and sell the remaining large lot to condo builders. Huge amounts of money rolled in. The same type of people were involved in this as well. He also specialized in defending people brought up on tax-evasion charges. Most of the clients were suspicious characters that an ordinary lawyer would hesitate to have anything to do with. But as long as a client wanted him to represent him—and as long as a certain amount of money changed hands—Ushikawa never hesitated. He was a skilled lawyer, with a decent track record, so he never hurt for business. His relationship with Sakigake began in the same way. For whatever reason, Leader took a personal liking to him.