Ushikawa nodded. “Yes, that about sums it up.”

“Nothing you can do about it,” Tamaru said. “For mavericks like us it’s not easy to live a normal, everyday life. It might look like we’re doing okay for a while, but then we definitely trip up. That’s the way the world operates.” Tamaru cracked his knuckles, a sharp, ominous sound. “So does Sakigake know about the Willow House?”

“I haven’t told anyone,” Ushikawa replied truthfully. “When I said that something about the mansion smells fishy, that was my own conjecture, nothing more. The security was too tight for me to confirm anything.”

“Good,” Tamaru said.

“You were the one who made sure of that, weren’t you?”

Tamaru didn’t answer.

“Up till now you’ve answered truthfully,” Tamaru said. “In general, at least. Once you sink to the bottom of the sea, you lose the power to lie. If you tried to lie now, it would show in your voice. That’s what fear will do to you.”

“I’m not lying,” Ushikawa said.

“Glad to hear it,” Tamaru said. “No one wants to feel any more pain than they have to. By the way, have you heard of Carl Jung?”

Under the blindfold Ushikawa instinctively frowned. Carl Jung? What was this guy getting at?

“Carl Jung the psychologist?”

“Exactly.”

“I know a little about him,” Ushikawa said carefully. “He was born at the end of the nineteenth century in Switzerland. He was a disciple of Freud’s, but broke with him. He coined the term ‘collective unconscious.’ That’s about all I know.”

“That’s plenty,” Tamaru said.

Ushikawa waited for him to continue.

“Carl Jung,” Tamaru said, “had an elegant house in a quiet lakeside residential area of Zurich, and lived an affluent life with his family. But he needed a place where he could be alone in order to meditate on weighty issues. He found a small parcel of land on one corner of the lake in an area called Bollingen and built a small house there. Not exactly a villa or anything that grand. He piled the stones one by one himself and constructed a round house with high ceilings. The stones had been taken from a nearby quarry. In those days in Switzerland you had to have a stonemason’s license in order to build anything out of stone, so Jung went to the trouble of obtaining a license. He even joined the stonemasons’ guild. Building this house, and doing it with his own hands, was very important to him. His mother’s death also seemed to be one of the major factors that led to him constructing this home.”

Tamaru paused for a moment.

“This house was dubbed the ‘Tower.’ He designed it so it resembled the village huts he had seen on a trip to Africa. The inside was one big open space where everything went on. A very simple residence. He felt this was all one needed to live. The house had no electricity, gas, or running water. He got water from the nearby mountains. What he found out later, though, was that this was just an archetype and nothing else. As time went on, he found it necessary to build partitions and divisions in the house, and a second floor, and later he added on several wings. He created paintings himself on the wall. These were suggestive of the development and split in individual consciousness. The whole house functioned as a sort of three-dimensional mandala. It took him twelve years to complete the entire house. For Jungian researchers, it’s an extremely intriguing building. Have you heard of this before?”

Ushikawa shook his head.

“The house is still standing on the banks of the lake in Zurich. Jung’s descendants manage it, but unfortunately it’s not open to the public, so people can’t view the interior. Rumor has it, though, that at the entrance to the original tower there is a stone into which Jung carved some words with his own hand. ‘Cold or Not, God Is Present.’ That’s what he carved into the stone himself.”

Tamaru paused again.

“ ‘Cold or Not, God Is Present,’ ” he intoned, quietly, once more.

“Do you know what this means?”

Ushikawa shook his head. “No, I don’t.”

“I can imagine. I’m not sure myself what it means. There’s some kind of deep allusion there, something difficult to interpret. But consider this: in this house that Carl Jung built, piling up the stones with his own hands, at the very entrance, he found the need to chisel out, again with his own hands, these words. I don’t know why, but I’ve been drawn to these words for a long time. I find them hard to understand, but the difficulty in understanding makes it all the more profound. I don’t know much about God. I was raised in a Catholic orphanage and had some awful experiences there so I don’t have a good impression of God. And it was always cold there, even in the summer. It was either really cold or outrageously cold. One or the other. If there is a God, I can’t say he treated me very well. Despite all this, those words of Jung’s quietly sank deep into the folds of my soul. Sometimes I close my eyes and repeat them over and over, and they make me strangely calm. ‘Cold or Not, God Is Present.’ Sorry, but could you say that out loud?”

“ ‘Cold or Not, God Is Present,’ ” Ushikawa repeated in a weak voice, not really sure what he was saying.

“I can’t hear you very well.”

“ ‘Cold or Not, God Is Present.’ ” This time Ushikawa said it as distinctly as he could.

Tamaru shut his eyes, enjoying the overtones of the words. Eventually, as if he had made up his mind about something, he took a deep breath and let it out. He opened his eyes and looked at his hands. He had on disposable latex gloves so he wouldn’t leave behind any fingerprints.

“I’m sorry about this,” Tamaru said in a low voice. His tone was solemn. He took out the plastic bag again, put it over Ushikawa’s head, and wrapped the thick rubber band around his neck. His movements were swift and decisive. Ushikawa was about to protest, but the words didn’t form, and they never reached anyone’s ears. Why is he doing this? Ushikawa thought from inside the plastic bag. I told him everything I know. So why does he have to kill me?

In his head, about to burst, he thought of his little house in Chuorinkan, and about his two young daughters. And the dog they owned. The dog was small and low to the ground and Ushikawa never could bring himself to like it. The dog never liked him, either. The dog wasn’t very bright, and barked incessantly. It chewed the rugs and peed on the new flooring in the hallway. It was a totally different creature from the clever mutt he had had as a child. Still, Ushikawa’s final conscious thoughts in this life were of the silly little dog scampering around the lawn in their backyard.

Tamaru watched as Ushikawa, his body tightly bound into a ball, writhed on the tatami like some huge fish out of water. Ushikawa’s arms and legs were tied behind him, so no matter how much he struggled, the neighbors next door wouldn’t hear a thing. Tamaru knew very well what a hideous way to die this was. But it was the most efficient, cleanest way to kill someone. No screams, no blood. Tamaru followed the second hand on his Tag Heuer diver’s watch. After three minutes Ushikawa stopped thrashing around. His body trembled slightly, as if resonating to something, and then the trembling stopped. Tamaru looked at his wristwatch for another three minutes. He felt Ushikawa’s wrist for a pulse and confirmed that all signs of life had vanished. There was a faint whiff of urine. Ushikawa had lost control of his bladder again, this time emptying it completely. Understandable, considering how much he had suffered.

Tamaru removed the rubber band and peeled away the plastic bag. The bag had been partly sucked into his mouth. Ushikawa’s eyes were wide, his mouth open and twisted to one side in death. His dirty, irregular teeth were bared, his tongue with its greenish moss visible. It was the kind of expression Munch might have painted. Ushikawa’s normally misshapen head looked even more lopsided. He must have suffered terribly.