The Ginza Ghost Read online

  According to the report from Constable Andō of the police box, the three pigs had come from three different owners in the outskirts of B Town, and they had each been stolen on the day of the accident. But they had no idea who was behind the horrible prank. All anyone knew was that The Mourning Locomotive, D50-444, had been as busy as monks during Higan week[ix].

  And then it happened again…. No, Mr. Student, I am absolutely not pulling your leg. The same accident really occurred again. The circumstances were all identical to the previous three times. It was a white pig that was run over. Its nose had been caught on the crank of the main driving wheel, so it turned around and around like a pinwheel as the locomotive advanced.

  Supervisor Iwase of the depot and Supervisor Nanahara of Vehicle Inspection were absolutely furious. If it was a prank, it had gone too far. A team of three, led by Mr. Katayama, the assistant-supervisor of the depot, was sent to B Town to investigate.

  And what follows is basically a tale of detection, as told to me afterwards by one of the investigators. It’s a pretty interesting one, and I’ll tell you what I know about it....

  Katayama, the assistant-supervisor of the locomotive depot, was exactly what you’d expect from someone who graduated from the Imperial University. He was still new to railway work, but was an intelligent and resourceful man who knew how to get things done. He’s moved on in his career since then, and is now in a high position at the Home Ministry. Anyway, he took a clerk from the depot with him—his subordinate at the time—and, led by a clerk from the Railway Maintenance Section, he made his way to B Town the following day on the two o’clock train.

  The curve in the tracks where it all happened was not even one mile away from B Station, in the direction of H Station. The inner track of the curve was the up-track, which ran alongside a pine forest, while the outer track was the down-track, running next to a mulberry field. The group arrived at the concrete mile post, which had some numbers written on it. The Railway Maintenance clerk pointed out that everything had been cleaned up after the fourth accident, which had occurred the day before. According to him, all four accidents had occurred at this very same spot; each time, the ends of a plain straw rope had been found on both the mile post and a large nail sticking out of the sleeper. It was a sturdy nail, driven into the sleeper to prevent the curving rails from moving around, and this particular nail, like all the other nails, was sticking halfway out of the sleeper.

  At the end of his explanation the Railway Maintenance clerk added one last comment: ‘…So in short, we suspect that the person behind these incidents fastened a rope between the nail in the sleeper on the outside rail and the mile post next to the inside rail, and then tied a pig down in the middle of the rails so it would get run over by the train.’

  Mr. Kayatama pointed out that all the piggy victims would have been alive and asked why the pigs, who had to have been terrified, did not run away, given that they were only tied down by a rope which would have been relatively easy to break. The culprit probably used the curve to prevent the locomotive operators from seeing the pigs and stopping the train, but the pigs must have been able to hear the rumbling of the oncoming train.

  After he decided there was nothing more to discover at the site, Mr. Katayama told his guide he wanted to visit the farmers from whom the pigs had been stolen.

  The group took a short-cut which ran across a mulberry field, and did not take long to arrive at the B Town police box. They asked the imposing Constable Andō, with his fine moustache, to show them the way, and he led them to the farm where the fourth victim had come from.

  The owner was a well-built farmer in his fifties, with a pockmarked face. He welcomed the party and, timidly bowing his head countless times, he showed them the unpleasantly dirty pigsty made of cedar bark. There he started to whine about how the stolen white pig was the pig he had treasured most, that it was a Yorkshire Large White sow of at least sixty kan, and that he couldn’t stop crying because it had been cruelly devoured by the locomotive.

  Assistant-supervisor Katayama turned to Constable Andō.

  ‘I heard the pig was stolen in the middle of the night and was run over in the early hours of the morning?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s what happened to all four of them,’ replied the constable.

  ‘And how were they stolen?’

  ‘If you open the door in the low fence, they’ll wake up right away and then it’s simply a question of luring them with some dried confectionery. They’ll follow you just like that,’ Constable Andō explained.

  ‘Your conclusion after your investigation is that, in all four cases, the pigs were taken away like that?’

  ‘Yes. The stories of all four victims basically match up.’

  Mr. Katayama continued with his questions.

  ‘It might be a bit bothersome, but could you tell me the exact dates when each of the four thefts occurred?’

  ‘The exact dates? Wait….’ Constable Andō took a notepad from his pocket. ‘Let’s see, the first happened on the eleventh of February. The next was err… the eighteenth of February. And then the twenty-fifth of February. And yesterday was the fourth of March. All of them happened in the middle of the night, before five o’clock in the morning.’

  ‘…Exactly what I thought. There’s always a seven-day period between the thefts. Today is Monday, so that means that they’re always stolen on the early hours of Sunday.’

  Mr. Katayama thought deeply for a while.

  ‘Can you think of anything which always happens here on Sundays? In fact, it doesn’t even matter which day of the week. Something that happens once a week, as part of a routine. Anything at all, it doesn’t matter how trivial it might be. For example, businesses or schools that are closed on Sunday, or a barber or public bath that’s closed on a certain day in the week. In other words, tell me about everything in this town which happens at a seven-day interval. It doesn’t matter what it is, I want to know everything you can think of.’

  Constable Andō was, of course, very surprised by this question, but he thought for a while as he frowned, and then looked up again.

  ‘...As for businesses, well, the H Bank branch office, town hall, the office of the credit cooperative, the agricultural school and the elementary schools are all closed on Sunday. I’m sure the spinning factory is closed on the first and fifteenth. The barber closes twice a month, only on days with a 7 in the date. The public bath also closes twice a month, only on days with a 5 in the date. But those are regular days off, and they don’t close each week. The silk market hasn’t started yet, but the egg market is held every fifth day. And what else is there… Ah, yes, the agricultural school has a sort of bazaar every Saturday afternoon.’

  ‘Aha, what do they sell there?’

  Constable Andō answered: ‘They’re learning agriculture, so it’s mostly stuff the students themselves have cultivated. Vegetables, fruit, flowers and things like that. They’re doing quite well, actually.’

  Mr. Katayama appeared to be very pleased by the answer and changed the subject.

  ‘As you still haven’t found the culprit, what are your plans for further investigation, and how are you going to prepare against further developments?’

  Constable Andō replied in an agitated manner: ‘We’ve taken precautions, of course. But we simply don’t have enough manpower.’

  ‘Well, do what you can do, but don’t attempt too much. I’ll take my leave now,’ said Mr. Katayama, and he ushered his subordinate and the clerk who was acting as his guide outside. The party then left silent B Town that evening.

  His subordinates had spent quite some time together with this assistant-supervisor of the locomotive depot, but they always thought it regrettable that Mr. Katayama could sometimes act very strangely, raising suspicions with other people. After they’d left B Town and returned to H Locomotive Depot, Mr. Katayama started on his usual work routine the following day, as if he’d completely forgotten about the bizarre case of the Mourning Locomotive.
For the next few days he conducted business as usual. One of his subordinates couldn’t take it any longer and questioned Mr. Katayama about it on the morning of the fifth day. He was given a very surprising reply.

  ‘But what else is there for me to do at this moment?’

  However, the attitude of the assistant-supervisor changed completely that night.

  It happened at around three in the morning. Mr. Katayama woke up one of his subordinates—a man called Yoshioka. They went outside and into a car.

  Yoshioka had no idea where they were heading, but after a high-speed drive through the darkness for about half an hour, Mr. Katayama stopped the car and stepped out on to a field. Signalling with his eyes to Yoshioka to follow him in silence, they left the car and entered a nearby pine forest. Yoshioka slowly awakened as they crossed the forest. When they crouched among some shrubs, he realised that the pine forest ended about ten ken in front of them, and that beyond that lay the curve in the tracks near B Station. As it became colder due to the night frost, it finally dawned on Yoshioka what Mr. Katayama was planning. The watch around Mr. Katayama’s wrist—with an illuminated dial—showed the time: four-thirty. Of course! It was now the eleventh of March: the early Sunday morning. Mr. Katayama naturally anticipated that the pig thief would show up there. Yoshioka could feel a shudder run down his spine at the thought. He buried his face in the collar of his coat and made himself smaller, crouching beside Mr. Katayama.

  At exactly forty-two minutes past four, a night train roared past on the up-track, immediately followed by silence. Not even five minutes had lapsed when Mr. Katayama suddenly stiffened and silently shook Yoshioka’s shoulder.

  Yoshioka held his breath.

  Yes, from the path across the mulberry field, far, far away, he could just make out the low, but somehow satisfied-sounding squeal of a pig. It was almost like a dream.

  The squealing got closer in the following two minutes, and they soon heard the sound of footsteps on the pebbled path. A dark figure appeared on the railway. Beneath the pale light of the stars, they could make out a sleeved figure, probably wearing a coat and a pair of long trousers. The feet he was pulling along with some kind of rope belonged to a white pig. Who knows from where it had been stolen? The man would occasionally bend over and give it some food, but then he stepped over the down-track and stood on the up-track—slightly west of the centre. There he gave the pig some more food as he looked around and scanned his surroundings. It was too dark for them to make out the man’s face.

  The pig thief then started with his task. The theory the clerk from the Railway Maintenance Section had expounded about five days ago at this very same spot turned out to be correct. The dark figure tied the pig down and scattered plenty of food in front of his poor victim. Mr. Katayama and Yoshioka got up silently and cautiously started to approach the figure.

  But how unfortunate! They hadn’t even advanced twenty steps before a dead branch made a loud crack from beneath Yoshioka’s feet. Yoshioka jumped, and sprinted towards the rails.

  At the same moment, the pig thief turned around towards the pine forest and screamed out in a strange manner, like the cry of a bird. It quickly hid its face in its clothes and darted off along the rails. Yoshioka sprinted along the rails after the dark figure, but he soon lost sight of it. In the distance he could hear Mr. Katayama crying out to him.

  Yoshioka felt it was his fault the figure had escaped, but as there was nothing he could do about it now, he returned back to the curve.

  There, Mr. Katayama told him there was absolutely nothing he should feel bad about. ‘There’s no need to get impatient. But look at this cute pig here. As I suspected from the start, there was no way that any pig would allow itself to get run over like that just by tying it down.’

  A closer examination showed that there was indeed something unusual going on. The pig was standing very tensely on its four legs, moving its head back and forth, and spitting out something while it cried out in pain.

  ‘The poor beast has been poisoned.’

  Mr. Katayama untied the rope and the two of them pulled the poor pig along through the pine forest in the direction of where they had left their car. The pig, however, had vomited heavily several times on the way, and by the time they arrived at the car, it couldn’t walk any more. It started to convulse. They had no choice but to tie it to a tree nearby and order the driver of the car to take them to the police box in B Town. The moment they stepped inside the car, they could hear the noise of a train passing by on the other side of the pine forest.

  ‘That’s the freight train pulled by D50-444,’ said Mr. Katayama. They headed towards B Town and asked Constable Andō to take care of the pig. Then they sped back across the outskirts of the town in the early, bright morning, back to H Station.

  ‘Will you have that pig killed and dissected?’ asked Yoshioka.

  ‘No, no. I don’t have any business with that pig any more. I’m already in possession of the food and poison administered to the pig,’ said the assistant-supervisor, and he produced three or four senbei rice crackers—shaped like flowers—from the pocket of his coat. They were coloured with red and blue spots, and the surfaces of the rice crackers were all covered with what appeared to be small berries, half the size of an adzuki bean[x].

  ‘This was the main objective of our adventure from the start,’ explained Mr. Katayama. ‘I had, of course, not expected to actually get my hands on these rice crackers. You see, this is what I suspected right away. It would have been impossible for someone to kill the pig right after they’d stolen it, and then carry it on their own to that place. So the thief had to bring the pig alive to the tracks. And it’s inconceivable the thief could have succeeded so many times with this scheme of running the pigs over by the train, if all he’d done was to fasten a rope between the nail and the mile post on the other side of the tracks and tie the pig down in the centre. So the thief had to either kill the pig after he had tied the pig down, or at least make it impossible for the beast to move. Suppose the thief had either beaten it to death, or stabbed it to death with some sharp instrument, or killed it with a strong poison? That would mean he had some means of killing the animals instantly, and that in turn would mean he wouldn’t have needed to tie them down. He could have just killed the pigs and left them behind on the rails. But that was something the culprit had not done. So I concluded that the poison in the dry confectionery didn’t cause any acute reaction, so the culprit slowly lured the pig to the tracks with the poisoned food. There he’d tie the pig up and give it some more. The poison would start to work, and then D50-444 would arrive…. Anyway, that is the gist of what I imagined. But what could this dry confectionery be? I have never seen such colourful senbei rice crackers[xi]. Have you ever seen any like these?’

  Yoshioka shook his head. The two arrived at H Station soon after, and they started examining the curious clues they had gained from their adventure, with the locomotive depot offices as their base of operations.

  The next day, Mr. Katayama remained inside the entire time, thinking about the confectionery in question, but on the day after he finally got out and continued his investigation. He returned in the evening and, after finishing the meal which had been delivered there, he called in Yoshioka and another investigating clerk and gave them their instructions:

  ‘Tomorrow morning I want you to go to B Town. What I need you to do is… well, let me explain this first.’ He placed the confectionery in front of the two men. ‘Thanks to my investigations so far, I now know what these confections are. They’re very strange, shaped like a toy windmill, and look too horrible to eat. And indeed, they’re not usually made for consumption. They belong amongst the lowest grade of confectionery, and are called kazarigashi, or “decorative confectionery,” but around here it seems they’re usually called harigashi, “display confectionery.” You must have seen them before? They’re used at funeral services. And I also looked into the berries pasted on the surface of these senbei rice crackers. They�
��re the fruit of a small evergreen plant of the magnolia family. Its academic name is illicium anisatum, or Japanese anise, but we usually call it shikimi or hanashiba. The fruit of the plant contains a poison called Shikimic acid. It belongs to the picrotoxins and causes convulsions. Now it starts to become a bit technical, but the physiological reaction to the acid is stimulation of the nerves in the hindbrain, causing convulsions similar to those of epilepsy attacks, which in turn cause a temporary loss of consciousness during those same convulsions. It’s possible to die from ingesting Shikimic acid in some cases, but it’s not considered a strong poison. You can find the plants growing naturally in the mountains south of central Japan. But there’s another use to this plant. And now it gets really interesting. You see, they’ve been planting them around graveyards as an offering to the deceased for a very long time, and in some areas they also place the branches and leaves of the plant inside the coffin, beside the deceased. However in most regions, people dry the leaves or crumble up the stem, and use it as a raw material in the incense burnt for the deceased, or at their gravestones. So, now do you see the connection? Please take note that both the senbei rice crackers and the berries are two very unique clues. Let me turn back to our poor pig. If I’d been in the culprit’s shoes, I wouldn’t have used such unusual items. I’d have used some regular food to lure the pig, such as carrots, and I wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble of tying it down. I’d have just killed the animal with one good whack with a hammer, and then I’d have placed the dead beast on the rails. But as we’ve seen, our culprit chose to do something very unnatural, with an almost theatrical selection of props. So where does that lead us? The fact that our culprit uses these decidedly unique objects each time means that they are convenient items for him to lay his hands on. In other words, these objects are related to our culprit’s daily life. So what I want you to do is to go out to B Town and its surroundings, and see if there is a store there selling funeral accessories that has both these display confectioneries and self-made incense sticks.’