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  'Consult? No, not exactly. Though he did say he thought it might be hard.' That was a lie. Yoshiki had said nothing when she'd announced her decision, and Nobuki hadn't said anything at all to her for as long as she could remember.

  'Really?' said Imai, as though he didn't quite believe her. He gave her a puzzled look as he opened his memo pad. 'I'm asking because your situation is the same as Yamamoto-san's, and I guess I find it hard to understand why any husband who worked regular hours himself wouldn't be against his wife working nights.' Startled by this line of reasoning, Masako looked up.

  'Why do you say that?' she asked.

  'Well, for one thing, you'd be on opposite schedules. How would you have any kind of life together if you were always passing each other on the way out the door? And I guess any man would wonder what his wife was doing, up and about in the middle of the night. It seems to me that a day job would be much better for everyone involved.' Masako took a deep breath. She gathered that Imai suspected Yayoi of getting up to something with other men probably par for the course for a detective's imagination.

  'In Yayoi's case,' she said, 'she'd already been fired from a day job because of the children. The way she explained it to me, she didn't have any other options.'

  'That's what she told us, too. But I still don't see how a night job could be worth it.'

  'It isn't,' Masako said, interrupting his train of thought. His persistence got on her nerves. 'The one good thing about it is that it pays twenty-five per cent more than the day shift.'

  'I don't see how that could be enough to make a difference,' he said.

  'Maybe not. But if you had the choice of spending three hours less on the job for the same pay, it might make sense.'

  'I see your point,' he said, though it was obvious he didn't.

  'I suppose it's hard to understand if you've never had a parttime job.'

  'Not many men do,' he said, failing to see the irony in this admission.

  'If you did, I think you'd see that it's only natural to want to make a little extra pay for a little less work.'

  'Even if it means living your life out of sync with the rest of the world?'

  'Even then.'

  'Okay, then perhaps you could tell me why Yamamoto-san in particular was willing to put up with this kind of life.'

  'I suppose she needed the money,' said Masako.

  'Couldn't they get by on what her husband made?'

  'I don't really know, but I assume they couldn't.'

  'Wasn't it really because her husband was fooling around? Wasn't she doing it to get back at him, and because she wanted to avoid having to see him?'

  'I wouldn't know about that,' said Masako. 'She never said anything about her husband, and as far as I know, it would've been a luxury she couldn't afford.'

  'Luxury?'

  'You said she was doing it to get back at him, but from what I could see she was too busy with those kids and her job to bother about anything as frivolous as revenge.'

  Imai nodded. 'I'm sorry - I spoke out of turn. It's just that we've learned that her husband had used up all their savings.'

  'Really?' said Masako, making an effort to look as though she were hearing this for the first time. 'Doing what?'

  'As far as we can tell, he was a regular at a hostess club and he played baccarat almost every night... . So I'll get to the point here. We've been told that you're Yamamoto-san's closest friend at the factory, so I need to ask you what you know about the couple's relationship.'

  'I don't know much at all. She hardly ever talked about it.'

  'But don't women usually tell one another this kind of thing?' he said, eyeing her doubtfully.

  'I suppose some women do,' Masako said. 'But Yayoi isn't that type.'

  'I see. That's to her credit. But her neighbours tell us they often heard them arguing.'

  'Is that so? I'm afraid I don't know anything about it.' She suddenly wondered whether Imai already knew that she'd been at Yayoi's house that night, and she glanced at him nervously. He looked back calmly, as if still trying to size her up.

  'As far as we can tell, he'd been playing around a lot lately and they weren't getting along. At least that's what his colleagues at work told us. It seems he'd been complaining about her to them, saying that she flew off the handle so easily that he tried to avoid getting home until after she'd left for work. Yet his wife insists that he'd never been late until the night he disappeared. Odd, isn't it? Why would she need to lie about something like that? Did she ever mention it to you?'

  'Never,' Masako said, shaking her head. 'Then you think she might be involved?' she fired back.

  'Not at all!' Imai insisted, fluttering his hands. 'It's just that I've been trying to think of things from her point of view. Here she is, slaving away on the night shift while her husband is out throwing away their hard-earned money on women and cards, stumbling home every night drunk. It's like she'd been bailing out a sinking ship only to find out that he'd been pumping water in. She must have felt pretty helpless. Most men would have refused to let their wives work at night, but he seemed to encourage it. I can't help thinking there must have been some bad blood there somewhere.'

  'I see what you mean, but Yayoi never said anything about it to me.' It struck her as almost comic how perfectly he had reconstructed the situation.

  'So you'd have to say that she's just incredibly long-suffering.'

  'You'd have to, yes,' she agreed.

  'Katori-san,' he said, looking up from his notes. 'When a woman's put in that kind of position, would she go looking for a lover?'

  'I suppose some women would. But not Yayoi, she's not the type.'

  'Then she wasn't involved with someone at the factory?'

  'No, I'm quite sure she wasn't,' Masako said flatly, realising that this was what Imai had wanted to ask her from the beginning.

  'Someone not at the factory then?'

  'I don't know,' she said. Imai hesitated for a moment before continuing.

  'The fact is, I've found out that five men were off from work that night. Is any of them particularly friendly with Yamamotosan?' He turned his notebook so she could see, and her heart started pounding at the sight of Kazuo Miyamori's name at the end of the list. She shook her head gravely.

  'No, none of them,' she said. 'Yayoi isn't like that.'

  'I see '

  'In other words,' she interrupted, 'you think Yayoi had a lover and he murdered her husband?'

  'No, no!' Imai said, frowning in embarrassment. 'Not at all. I didn't mean to imply . . .' And yet it was clear that that was the scenario he probably had in mind. Yayoi must have had an accomplice, a man, who'd helped her kill Kenji and dispose of the body.

  'Yayoi was a good wife, and she's a good mother. I can't think of any other way to describe her.' As she was saying it, Masako realised that she really believed it to be the case; and it was exactly because she had been such a model wife that the discovery of Kenji's betrayal had set her off, had driven her to kill him. If only she'd had a lover, perhaps none of this would ever have happened. In that sense, Imai's theory seemed completely off the mark.

  'I'm sure you're right,' he said, though he went on flipping through his notes, apparently reluctant to abandon his theory. Masako went to the refrigerator and got a pitcher of cold barley tea, and poured out a glass for him. As he drained it in large gulps, the sight of his bobbing Adam's apple reminded her of Nobuki's and Kenji's, too. She watched a moment longer, almost in a trance, then slowly turned away. 'I'm sorry,' Imai said when he'd finished drinking, 'but I have to ask, just as a formality. Could you tell me what you were doing last Wednesday from the early morning until about midday?' He set his glass down on the table and cleared his throat as he looked up at her.

  'I went to work as usual. I saw Yayoi there. And when I was done, I came home about the same time as always.'

  'But you got to work later than usual that night,' he said, glancing at his notes. He'd noticed that she'd punched in at the last po