The Ginza Ghost Read online

  1 chō

  120 yards

  109 m.

  1 jō

  10 feet

  3.03 m.

  1 ken

  6 feet

  1.818m.

  1 shaku

  1 foot

  30.3 cm.

  1 sun

  1.2 inches

  3.03 cm.

  1 tsubo

  36 square feet

  3.3 sq. metres

  1 tatami mat

  3ft x 6ft (18 sf.)

  1.65 sq. metres

  1 kan

  8 1/4 lbs

  3.75 kg.

  1 monme

  1/8 oz.

  3.75 gm.

  THE HANGMAN OF THE DEPARTMENT STORE

  　The incident happened approximately two months after I’d first made the acquaintance of Kyōsuke Aoyama at a film preview. I think it was a German film.

  I’d received a phone call from my company at five-thirty in the morning, and Kyōsuke and I had hurriedly taken a taxi to the R Department Store, in order to gather the news about an apparent suicide of somebody who had leapt off the building earlier that morning.

  Kyōsuke was three years my senior and had once been renowned as a highly original film director, but he’d been unable to accommodate the interests of the common film-viewing public or the crass commercialism of the industry, so he’d retired and now spent a quiet life studying whatever interested him. He was of steadfast character, yet often surprised me with his highly-developed sensitivity and great powers of imagination. But he also possessed an extraordinary analytical mind and had developed a wealth of knowledge in many fields of science.

  In the early days of our friendship, I’d planned to use his amazing knowledge for my own benefit, to assist me in my work. But, as the months passed, my designs soon turned into feelings of admiration and respect, so I decided to leave my hometown lodgings for the apartment building where he lived and move into the room next to his. That goes to show how fascinated I was by the man called Kyōsuke Aoyama.

  It was only ten past six when we arrived at our destination. The victim had fallen to his death at the rear of the department store and his body lay in an alley facing northeast. The alley was already full of nearby merchants, workers and early-rising passers-by, who were gazing up towards the roof of the store and chattering amongst themselves.

  The blood on the asphalt had already started drying and the body had been placed temporarily in a storeroom of the Purchasing Department. The medical examination was already over by the time we entered the room. My cousin, who had been promoted to the position of senior police detective of the XX Police Station, welcomed us. He explained that it wasn’t actually a suicide case but a homicide case, because the victim, a twenty-eight year old single man called Tatsuichi Noguchi, had been strangled. He’d worked as a cashier in the jewellery department, and a valuable pearl necklace, decorated with a number of diamonds, had been lying near where the body had landed. The necklace had been one of two items which had disappeared two days ago from that department, and the body and the necklace had been discovered at four o’clock in the morning by a guard making his rounds. My cousin announced—not without some self-satisfaction—that he himself was leading the investigation, and we were given permission to approach the body and study it for ourselves.

  The sight reminded me of a poppy flower. The skull had been pulverised and the face was distorted and coloured in a ghastly manner by the dried-up red-black blood. Violent strangulation marks could be seen on the neck, the ashen skin had ripped open in several places, and blood had seeped into the collar of the victim’s terry cloth pyjamas. The clothes had been opened for the medical examination, and there were welts running crisscross over the pale chest. A rib on the left side of the chest, following the line of one of the welts, had been cruelly broken. Furthermore, countless painful-looking abrasions and grazes had been left on the exposed parts of the body: both palms, the shoulders, the lower chin, the elbows and more. The terrycloth pyjamas had also been torn in several places.

  While I was taking down notes about the horrible sight, Kyōsuke boldly touched the body’s palms and made careful observations of the grazes and the strangulation marks on the neck.

  ‘How much time has passed since his death?’ asked Kyōsuke, straightening up. The medical examiner, who had been observing him with curiosity, replied:

  ‘Probably six or seven hours.’

  ‘So that means he was murdered between ten and eleven o’clock last night. And when was he thrown off the building?’

  ‘Based on the coagulation of the bloodstains in the alley and on the head of the victim, I’d say it was no later than three o’clock in the morning. Pedestrians were using that alley until at least midnight, so I think we can limit it to sometime between midnight and three o’clock.’

  ‘I agree. Another question: why is the victim wearing pyjamas? He wasn’t working here as the night guard, was he?’

  The medical examiner couldn’t answer Kyōsuke’s question. One of the six store clerks—now dressed in pyjamas—who had been questioned by my cousin the senior police detective, replied instead:

  ‘Noguchi was indeed on night duty last night. Our department store has a special rule, whereby people from each department must also take shifts as night guards. Of the people working in the store, Noguchi and I were on duty last night, as well as the five over there, making seven in all. We were joined by the three caretakers over there, making ten in total. The seven of us all stayed in the same night guard’s office. But we don’t really know each other that well. You want to know about last night? As you may know, we’re open until nine o’clock every evening. We close at nine o’clock, and it takes a good forty minutes after that before everything goes quiet in the store. By the time we had locked everything up, switched off all the lights and gone to bed, it was already almost ten o’clock. After he’d changed into his pyjamas, Noguchi went out again alone, but I assumed he was going to the bathroom, so I didn’t think anything of it. I slept soundly until four o’clock in the morning, when a policeman woke me up. Oh, by the way, the night guard’s office for the caretakers is in a different place from ours. They’re on the ground floor and we’re at the rear of the second floor. The door that leads from the fifth floor to the roof? No, it’s not locked.’

  After the clerk had finished his testimony, Kyōsuke asked the eight other persons on night watch whether they had anything to add, but none of them had anything of significance. One person, who worked at the children’s clothing department, said he’d had a toothache last night and hadn’t fallen asleep until one o’clock. He hadn’t noticed that Tatsuichi Noguchi’s bed had been empty all the time, nor had he heard anything suspicious.

  Kyōsuke continued with a question about the necklace, and this time it was the head of the jewellery department who answered, wiping his face with a handkerchief to mop up the perspiration.

  ‘I was surprised by the news and hurried here immediately. Noguchi was a good man. It’s a terrible thing that’s happened. He wasn’t someone who got on the wrong side of people. The theft of the necklace? No, I can’t believe Noguchi could have had anything to do with it. The necklace disappeared from the shop the night before last, you see, around closing time. The necklace and another item, two in total. Together, they’re worth precisely twenty thousand yen. Based on the circumstances, I suspect the thief was one of our customers, because we searched not only the people who work in the jewellery department, but every employee in the building, from head to toe. It’s been a very busy two days. And now it has ended like this. I’m utterly perplexed.’

  Transportation for the body arrived just as he finished. The three caretakers who had been on night watch lifted the heavy-looking body up and, with unsteady steps and anxious expressions on their faces, carried it out of the room. Kyōsuke stared at the sight for a while, as if he had things left undone. Eventually he turned around, slapped me on the shoulder and cried out energetically
: ‘Let’s go up to the roof.’

  It was almost opening time. A crowd of sales clerks was busy folding up the white cotton sheets which had covered the products and carrying in new products for every sales counter. I watched them from the elevator, which quickly took us up to the roof. I took a deep breath, as if to shake away the gloomy atmosphere, as I gazed out over the roofs of the city that sprawled into the distance beneath the early autumn skies.

  Kyōsuke walked over to the northeast side of the roof, from where the victim Noguchi had presumably been pushed. He crouched down and looked at the tiled floor, stuck his hand in the shrubbery, about three shaku wide, which had been planted inside the iron railing encircling the roof, and even dug around the roots of some of the plants. A curious gleam appeared in his eyes as he called out to me in a quiet voice. Meanwhile, I’d been captivated by the sight of a caretaker feeding a tiger on the west side of the roof, and by a man repairing an advertising balloon on the east side[i].

  ‘Admiring the tiger? But I think we’ve come upon the trail of our prey too… This is turning out to be quite an interesting case.’

  As Kyōsuke walked away I realised that he’d really taken a keen interest in the case and, full of curiosity, I followed him down to the fifth floor. There I found a telephone booth, performed my journalistic duties by reporting back to my newspaper, and accompanied Kyōsuke to the food hall.

  The hall was quiet, as it was still early in the morning. But in a corner, at a table near the window, my cousin the senior police detective and one of his subordinates were chewing on some very thick sandwiches. When he spotted us, he got up and brought more chairs to his table. We happily sat down with him and the waitress came over to take our orders. Kyōsuke, who had been looking at the gorgeous window grates, grabbed her arm before she could walk off and confirmed with her that the windows on all the floors were similarly protected.

  We tucked into our breakfast, and my cousin started talking as he sipped on his hot tea:

  ‘The case is complex, but the solution is simple. I’m a firm believer in investigation at the crime scene itself, you see. And, as you’ve heard, the murder happened between ten and eleven o’clock last night and the victim was thrown off the roof between midnight and three in the morning. Considering those times, and the fact that all the doors and windows were securely locked and nobody could have come from outside, we can assume the murderer was someone from inside the department store. Yes, to be clear: it was somebody who was inside this very store last night. You’re the only ones I’ve told so far, but I intend to perform a very rigorous interrogation of each of the men who were on night watch. There is one thing that poses a slight problem, however, and that’s the necklace. If Noguchi’s killer was also the person who stole the necklace, why did he leave it behind afterwards? And if the thief was in fact the victim Noguchi himself, what could the murderer’s motive have been? To get to the bottom of those questions I shall first have the fingerprints on the necklace examined. Well, enjoy your meal.’

  So saying, my cousin left us with a cheerful farewell and his subordinate followed him out of the food hall.

  Kyōsuke, who had been eating in silence, now grinned faintly and began to speak:

  ‘You said he was your cousin, didn’t you? Well, there’s nothing you can do about that. The police here in Japan like to concentrate on the motive behind a crime right from the start. Unfortunately, that means that whenever they come across a case where motive is just a superficial element, or—as in the present case—appears to be incomprehensible, things start to get difficult. There is, of course, logic behind wanting to look for the motive. But it leads to over-simple, stereotypical thinking which assumes that motive is the only basis for investigating a crime. So, for what it’s worth, I believe it’s much more important to focus on the three characteristics of the victim’s wounds, rather than the necklace. They are, firstly: the strangulation marks on the neck and the welts and abrasions on the chest, which were obviously made by an exceptionally strong force. At first I assumed they were made by some weapon used like a whip, but I was wrong. Secondly, the large number of grazes running across the victim’s palms. There were also calluses there. Thirdly: the many abrasions left on the exposed parts of the body: shoulder, chin, elbows, et cetera.

  ‘Let’s take each of them in turn. From the first characteristic I infer that the murder was either the work of multiple culprits, or one person of exceptional strength. The second characteristic, the grazes on the palms, suggests clearly that the victim had been holding something which had caused his palms to be chafed. As for the third, the abrasions all over the victim’s body, the wounds are superficial yet wide and rough and were clearly not made by a knife or any metal object. They were made by some dull, heavy, rough object, and we can assume it was a similar object to the one that made the wounds on the palms. From which we can deduce that the object which made such wounds was present at the crime scene at the time of the murder. Which means that either this object was already close to hand as the victim and murderer were struggling, or else the murderer brought the weapon along himself. I suspect it was the latter. Now let’s go back to the strangulation marks and the abrasion marks on the chest. You’ll note that there were no clear ligature marks, only areas where the lifeless skin had ripped and bled. This makes me think that the same rough, thick object which made the grazes and abrasions was also responsible for the marks on the neck and chest.

  ‘Now I have to rethink what I said at the beginning: the countless abrasions on the victim’s body were not caused by coming into contact with some strange object lying around at the crime scene as the victim was struggling with the murderer. The wounds were in fact caused by a snake-like weapon, with which the murderer attacked him persistently. But what will prove most interesting for further deductions are those singular grazes on the victim’s palms. Surely you are not going to suggest the deceased played tug-of-war with somebody?

  ‘Now we’ve established that the wounds were made during a struggle, the next question is where the struggle and the murder took place. Given that all the clues pointing to murder have been left intact, it seems ludicrous to suggest that the murder was committed outside the department store, and that the murderer had gone to all the trouble of carrying the body inside and all the way up to the roof for the sole purpose of making it appear as if the victim had fallen from the building on his own. Not to mention that the entire building was locked up tight at night. How about the hypothesis the murder was committed inside the department store? The surprising fact that the victim did not cry for help during his struggle in the moments before his murder helps contradict this theory. Ergo, the murder took place at the last remaining location: the department store roof. This is a fairly obvious conclusion and the police will probably agree with it. Even though I think that theory is correct, however, I must point out one or two obvious problems with that conclusion. For example, I first suggested that the murderer was either an exceptionally strong man, or that there were multiple men, based on the characteristics of the strangulation marks. But the theory of multiple murderers has been disproven by my foregoing analysis. People thrown together on night watch in an organisation like this do not plot together. So we arrive at the conclusion that the murderer is one, very powerful, man. Who could that person be?’

  ‘The case is beginning to become quite complicated.’

  I had been listening intently to Kyōsuke’s theories and my excitement had reach boiling point. Kyōsuke lit a cigarette, took a deep drag and then continued as a flicker appeared in his eyes.

  ‘Complicated? You’re wrong, it’s become simple. If I were to pretend I was Sherlock Holmes, I’d say: “When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” So the crime took place on the roof. And don’t forget that there were no footprints left in the shrubbery. We have the many curious grazes on the victim’s palms, an exceptionally powerful murderer and a ubiquitous murder weapon. With th
ese clues as our basis, let’s proceed to a thorough examination of the premises. Let us procure a magnifying glass and go up to the roof again.’

  We stood up and left the food hall. The sound of ordinary daytime activity had returned to the building as customers were starting to arrive. I could hear a cheerful jazz tune from the music department one floor below flowing over the streams of people on the gallery.

  We purchased a medium-sized magnifying glass at the optical department on the third floor and made our way through the waves of people to go up on the roof again. It had been closed to the general public because of the incident, and a couple of officers stared at us inquisitively as we entered the scene.

  Deep furrows of concentration appeared on Kyōsuke’s brow as he cocked his head and took a long look at every corner of the roof. Then he took me across to the northeast corner, from where the body was thought to have fallen. He then brandished his magnifying glass and started investigating the railing and the shrubbery even more intently than before. He soon straightened up and started mumbling to himself, as if he’d remembered something, and walked over to the tiger’s cage on the west side of the roof. He seemed lost in thought as he stared for a while at the large African male tiger having a relaxed nap. But then he suddenly turned round and looked straight up into the clear, open sky. A gleam appeared in his eyes and he strode quickly to the balcony on the east side.

  The large grey advertising balloon floating slowly in the clear blue sky above the balcony was a wondrous sight to behold, and I held my breath in awe.

  To my surprise, Kyōsuke grabbed the man in charge of the balloon and started questioning him aggressively.

  ‘What time did you arrive here this morning?’

  ‘Err, the weather last night was bad, so I became worried and came earlier than usual this morning, at half past six.’ The man answered in a polite manner as he turned the handle of the winch to release more rope.