The Ginza Ghost Page 15

  Mrs. Akazawa had pointed towards a part of the ground with vague tracks that continued towards the ward, as if something had been dragged there. Those tracks were accompanied by dark red drops….

  The three gasped and followed the tracks. They followed the wooden fence and arrived at the outside toilet of the ward. Inside was a cement dirt floor, without panelling. The moment the three peered inside, they cried out in fear and stood frozen to the spot.

  The whole dirt floor was covered by a sea of blood. The person lying near the centre of this blood puddle was the gruesome figure of director Akazawa, still dressed in the pyjamas he’d had on the previous night. Blood had flown out from the horrible scratches across his face and head—probably made with the glass fragment that was shining coldly in the sea of blood—and what made this sight truly impossible to watch, was the fact that a large hole had been opened in his head, starting from his face, across his forehead to the skull, and his brains had been removed, leaving the inside of his head completely empty. The brains had been taken somewhere else, as there was no sign of them anywhere close by….

  2

  It was twenty minutes later by the time the senior police detective sent from the police station in M Town, which had received the urgent message, arrived with his team of police officers.

  The detective’s name was Lieutenant Yoshioka and, after he’d listened to a simple explanation of the events by an agitated Ukichi Toriyama, the lieutenant sent out his subordinates in all directions with orders to find and detain the three madmen who had escaped.

  Not long after that, the people from the prosecutor’s office arrived, and promptly an investigation of the surroundings and the questioning by the preliminary judge started. Ukichi, Mrs. Akazawa and the maid were all three very confused. At first, the officers had trouble with their incoherent testimonies, but as they slowly calmed down, they managed—with some detours—to get their questions answered about the sinister mood caused by the current financial situation of the Akazawa Mental Hospital, on how the director had become aggressive lately, and about the peculiarities of the three madmen.

  Meanwhile, the medical examiner had placed the death of the director around four o’clock in the morning. At that time everyone was still sleeping and nobody had heard anything. The police learned that the director always got up early, and would often do exercises or go out on a stroll in his pyjamas.

  After the preliminary investigation had been concluded, the prosecutor said to the lieutenant:

  ‘Anyway, we know what the motive behind this crime is. The question is whether these three madmen committed the crime together, or whether one of them did it and they all escaped the hospital separately after discovering the door was left open. By the way, how many police officers did you send out to arrest them?’

  ‘I’ve got five men out there at the moment.’

  ‘Five?’ The prosecutor grimaced. ‘And did they bring you any news?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Of course they haven’t. Five men are too few. We’ve three escaped lunatics here. They might be hiding…,’ said the prosecutor, but he then thought of something horrible. His face visibly tensed up. He then continued speaking:

  ‘Yes, this isn’t just a matter of whether we can catch them or not. This could be terrible. Listen, the murderers are crazies. Three of them. And they’re not just mad, but they have grown violent now, so who knows what they’ll do?’

  ‘Precisely.’ The preliminary judge joined the discussion looking ashen.

  ‘… If those men reach town, with all the women and girls there, who knows what will happen?’

  ‘This is horrible,’ said the prosecutor in a trembling voice and he turned to the police detective. ‘We can’t waste time. Call quickly for more assistance. Yes, we need to inform all the police boxes in town….’

  Lieutenant Yoshioka’s eyes changed colour and he ran to the telephone room in the main building.

  The news went from the crime scene to the police station, and from the police station to each and every police box in town. A painfully tense atmosphere was suddenly spread across the telephone lines. The temporary investigation headquarters set up at the Akazawa Mental Hospital grew anxious.

  The reinforcement police troops which arrived shortly were split into two groups. One group was sent into town, while the other group was sent to search the outskirts surrounding the hill of the mental hospital.

  However, good tidings did not come. The senior police detective’s teeth were chattering in irritation. The only relief was there had been no follow-up on the violent incident yet.

  But this was not the time to dilly-dally. They needed to arrest these men as soon as possible to prevent any more tragedies from happening. But if these three madmen were hiding somewhere out of fear of other people, it could become a very troublesome problem.

  Once the lieutenant arrived at this point in his mind, he couldn’t sit still any more.

  Would a mad person in a situation like this hide? And, if so, where? He would need to ask the opinion of an expert.

  When no good news had arrived by noon, the lieutenant made up his mind and stood up. Investigation headquarters was moved to the police station in town and, having left care of that to the department chief, he headed for the municipal mental hospital in the outskirts on the opposite side of town to where Akazawa Mental Hospital was located. Doctor Matsunaga answered his call and immediately agreed to a meeting.

  ‘They did a horrible thing, didn’t they?’ ruddy-faced Doctor Matsunaga said as he offered the lieutenant a seat. He had already learned the news somehow.

  ‘Actually, to get down to business right away, I’m here to ask you a question about that.’

  ‘You haven’t caught those three men yet?’

  ‘Not yet,’ the lieutenant put his cards on the table and frowned. ‘Doctor, where do insane people like these hide in a situation like this? Or would they….’

  ‘Well… I guess they would hide in a place where they won’t be found, if they happened to come across one.’

  ‘And in what manner would they hide themselves? They are a dangerous lot, so we need to act quickly….’

  The doctor answered with a wry smile. ‘That’s a difficult question to answer. You see, I really can’t say without observing each of them in detail. In general, people like them demonstrate limited thinking and few emotions, but even so, there are still different levels to their conditions and each has his unique kind of logic. And, if you permit me to state my own opinion on the matter, in this case, I think that, rather than looking at how they might have hidden themselves, it’s more urgent to determine whether they committed the murder together, or whether it was committed by just one of them. In the latter case, the murderer might be difficult to apprehend, but at least the remaining two should be quite over their initial excitement by now and have grown hungry. And once they’re not agitated any more, they represent little danger. However, if they worked together….’

  The doctor squirmed in his seat and suddenly started speaking in an agitated manner.

  ‘… If they were working together, this could turn into something very troublesome.’

  ‘By which you mean?’ The lieutenant couldn’t help but lean forward.

  ‘If this was the crime of one person, it is unlikely that person will be found unharmed, but for that same reason, if this crime was committed by the three of them, I fear for the lives of all three.’

  ‘… I don’t get what you’re saying. What do you mean…?’

  The lieutenant had a troubled expression on his face.

  ‘You see,’ the doctor said with a grin, ‘… I picked this rumour up at the pharmacy, but it appears that Doctor Akazawa had been worn out lately, and that he had started yelling things to his patients like “Get a replacement for your brains.”’

  ‘Yes, that’s correct. That’s their motive.’

  ‘Please listen. I heard this rumour only once or twice, but without a doubt th
ey were told to “get a replacement for their brains,” not “get a brain.” You do understand there is a very big difference between replacement and procurement.’

  ‘… Yes….’

  The lieutenant gave a vague answer, as he had not understood the implications completely. The doctor continued.

  ‘You see, you might call them imbeciles, but even imbeciles have some powers of comprehension and reasoning. If someone is told to get a replacement for his brain, and they manage to take out the brains out of an intelligent man, what do you think they’ll do next?’

  Silence.

  The lieutenant uttered not a word as he stood up in shock. He grabbed his hat with trembling hands and bowed deeply before Doctor Matsunaga.

  ‘Thank you. I see what you mean.’

  The doctor laughed jovially.

  ‘That’s quite alright. Please capture those poor men before they smash their own heads in and die.’ As he stood up, the doctor added: ‘There’s much to be learned from this incident. Everyone has to be careful….’

  3

  After leaving the mental hospital, Lieutenant Yoshioka felt relieved for some reason. The fear of the escaped patients attacking the general public had been alleviated tremendously due to Doctor Matsunaga’s explanation. Rather than assaulting other people, the three madmen—or one of them—were more likely to be absorbed in replacing their own brain with the brain they took Doctor Akazawa. Nevertheless, it still remained an utterly mad and terrifying matter.

  Lieutenant Yoshioka broke out in a cold sweat as one worry was replaced by another. On returning to headquarters, he resumed the baton of command again to lead the investigation.

  The expert’s view was soon proved to have been correct, and so the lieutenant’s efforts had paid off.

  It was in the evening of that day that they captured the first of the three madmen, Diva, near the crematorium. As Doctor Matsunaga had suggested, Diva had calmed down and when the western sky started to glow red, that sorrowful soprano voice started to sing from his hiding place in the thicket behind the crematorium. A bright plain-clothes constable heard him, and carefully approached him while being careful to applaud. Diva stopped singing for a moment and silence reigned, but—seemingly relieved—he resumed his seductive song. The constable clapped his hands once again. This time, an encore followed immediately. Once again applause. And another encore. Eventually, Diva even started to laugh. The distance between the two slowly shrank, and the fugitive was caught surprisingly easily.

  Diva, wearing a woman’s kimono, was taken by car to the police station, where the elated lieutenant started to question him immediately. But it soon became obvious that the lieutenant was in no way capable of dealing with the person in front of him, so he made a telephone call to Doctor Matsunaga.

  Having left his hospital, the doctor was visiting the Akazawa Mental Hospital, but once he got the telephone call from the lieutenant, he immediately headed for the police station. Once the situation had been explained to him, he first praised the quick thinking of the police officer who had made the arrest.

  ‘That was a fantastic idea. The one thing you must never do when dealing with such people is to agitate them. You need to handle them softly, like softly strangling them with silk floss. Get down to their level, and go along with their infantile feelings and way of thinking.’

  The doctor then proceeded to ask Diva some curious questions, while observing his body closely. He turned to the lieutenant and said: ‘This man is not the murderer. There is no blood on him anywhere. The madman responsible for that tragedy could not be this clean. So it appears they did not work together. The murderer is one of the remaining two men. Anyway, let’s get this one back to his home.’

  Diva was thus safely returned to the Akazawa Mental Hospital as per the doctor’s orders.

  The lieutenant then poured all his energy into finding Knock Knock and the Injured.

  Not even an hour had passed, when a report came in that told them that Doctor Matsunaga’s gruesome prediction had finally come true.

  The hostess of Azuma, a brothel for workers near the outskirts of M Town, was pulling back the rope curtain in front of her shop prior to leaving for the public bath, when a middle-aged man came staggering towards her from the dark street up ahead. She cried out as he approached her, for his clothes had not been buttoned up and his face was covered in blood, with an eerie glimmer in his eyes. Like a jizō statue, the man held one hand out in front of him—palm upwards—and in it he held something which looked like broken tofu. With unsteady steps, he disappeared in the direction of the nearby railway tracks.

  After receiving the report, the lieutenant jumped up, his face pale. He asked Doctor Matsunaga to accompany him, and had a car take them to the brothel.

  There he confirmed once again the contents of the report, and immediately started an investigation of the area that led in the direction of the railway.

  At around the same time, the last remaining madman was captured near M River, which ran right through town. It was precisely as if he had calmed down now and was getting hungry, as Doctor Matsunaga had predicted he would.

  It was the Injured, whose face was wrapped completely in bandages. He’d suddenly appeared on a bridge, peering down at the dark water surface with a strange look. Having received a report from a passerby, a police officer managed to capture the patient in the same way you’d capture a cicada. Unlike Diva, the Injured did resist capture slightly. But he soon calmed down and was brought to the police station.

  When the lieutenant had been informed of the capture, he’d been at a booth next to a railway crossing. He asked the police officer who’d brought the report: ‘Did that lunatic have any blood on his clothes?’

  ‘No, not at all. But it did appear he’d been sleeping somewhere, as there was a lot of straw clinging to the bandages on his head.’

  The lieutenant shot a glance at Doctor Matsunaga and smiled.

  ‘Okay. Bring that loony back to the Akazawa Mental Hospital. But handle him gently.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The police officer departed and the lieutenant walked side by side with the doctor along the dark railway tracks.

  ‘I think we finally know what happened,’ said the doctor.

  ‘Yes,’ the lieutenant nodded energetically. ‘But where could he be hiding?’

  The beams from the police officers’ flashlights appeared and disappeared in the surrounding darkness. The sight reminded them of fireflies.

  They’d hardly been walking for ten minutes, when in the darkness of the railways in front of them, a flashlight suddenly made a large sweep.

  ‘Heeeey,’ a voice called out.

  ‘What is it?’ the lieutenant yelled back.

  A voice answered: ‘Lieutenant? He’s here! He’s dead!’

  The lieutenant and the doctor immediately ran forward.

  They soon arrived at the spot where the police officer was standing, and the lieutenant took in the terrible scene.

  Knock Knock was lying sideways on the railway tracks, his head resting on the rails as if they were a pillow. It had already been cruelly run over and crushed into pieces, which lay scattered over the surrounding pebbles.

  They moved Knock Knock’s remains to the side of the railway tracks for the moment, and the lieutenant and the doctor began to examine the body. Soon the lieutenant appeared to have seen enough, however, and muttered to nobody in particular: ‘What an absolutely terrifying end….’

  The doctor was still crouching in front of the body, carefully examining the soles of the man’s feet. He raised his head with an expression of dissatisfaction.

  ‘The end?’

  The words were spoken reproachfully as the doctor stood up wearily. For some reason his demeanour had changed completely. His face was completely pale, and his face showed signs of intense suspicion and anguish.

  ‘Please wait,’ the doctor finally grunted. He turned his angry face away and, as if he was still in doubt, kept glanc
ing at the body of Knock Knock. But then he raised his head again with a determined look.

  ‘Yes. Please wait. You just said this was the end? No. I might have been under a horrible misunderstanding. Lieutenant, I fear this is not the end.’

  ‘Wha-what?’

  The lieutenant approached the doctor as if he’d had enough. But the latter took no notice of the lieutenant’s menacing look, and said something curious as he glanced at the body of Knock Knock:

  ‘By the way, is Director Akazawa’s body still at his mental hospital?’

  4

  Approximately twenty minutes later, Doctor Matsunaga had succeeded in dragging the reluctant lieutenant to the Akazawa Mental Hospital.

  The treetops on the hill in the night were rustling in the wind, and an owl cried from some hidden place.

  The doctor found the nurse Ukichi Toriyama in the main building and explained that he wanted to see the body of the director.

  ‘Very well. We haven’t had permission to bury him yet, so we haven’t held a wake for him,’ said Ukichi, as he led the two to the ward, guided by candle light.

  They passed by room 2. From inside the room, they could hear Diva’s soprano voice. Tonight, he was singing in a faint, docile voice, almost as if he were simply muttering. The party then passed by room 3. Inside the illuminated room, the Injured had set the glass sliding window ajar, and he watched the group pass by with a suspicious look as he cast a large shadow on the window. There was no electric light from room 4 onwards, so the hallway was pitch-dark.

  Ukichi’s shadow danced by the candle light, as he led the group to room 5.

  ‘We don’t have a coffin yet, so we laid him out like this,’ Ukichi explained as he held the candle in front of him.

  The director’s body had been laid on top of oil paper in the corner of the room, and was covered by a white cloth. Without uttering a word, the doctor walked over to the body, crouched down and removed the cloth. He raised the body’s right foot and said to Ukichi: ‘Light, please.’