The Mystery of the Fire Dragon

Lady Partridge: But the 7:58 stopping train arrived at Swindon at 8:19 owing to annual point maintenance at Wisborough Junction. 

John: So how did you make the connection with the 8:13 which left six minutes earlier? 

Tony: Oh, er, simple! I caught the 7:16 Football Special arriving at Swindon at 8:09. 

Jasmina: But the 7:16 Football Special only stops at Swindon on alternate Saturdays. 

"Railway timetable sketch" (Monty Python)

Never been on a night express!

Disclosure: I translated Shimada's 1985 short story The Running Dead. Different series though!

Shimada Souji's Izumo Densetsu 7/8 no Satsujin ("The Izumo Legend 7/8 Murder", 1984) starts early on the morning of the twentieth of April at Ooshinotsu Station, where the conductor found a lost bag in the local train that had arrived from Yonago. As it appeared some kind of liquid was leaking through the package, the man opened the bag on the spot, only to find something wrapped in several plastic bags. When he finally unpacked the whole thing though, he was in for a surprise: inside he found the cut-off left arm of a woman! In the following hours, similar discoveries were made at local train stations in and around the region that was once the Izumo Province: some of the bags were found and opened inside a train like at Ooshinotsu, some parcels had already been brought to the Lost & Found at the respective stations. In the end, they retrieved seven body parts at seven different stations: two thighs, two legs, two arms and one torso, all seemingly belonging to the same woman. The missing head, and the fact her fingerprints were burned off with acid, make identifying the victim difficult though. Inspector Ishida is busy working the whole kooky things out when he's greeted by his old friend Inspector Yoshiki Takeshi of Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department. Yoshiki had a few days of holiday and had hoped to meet with his old friend, but those plans seem to be ruined due to the horrible murder in this region. As a fellow investigator, Yoshiki too becomes interested in the case and after studying the time table, he realizes that this might be the work of one single person: All the body parts were discovered on local train lines with stations on the route of the night express Izumo,, meaning that someone on the Izumo could've hidden the bags in the other trains as the Izumo stopped at each of those stations, and then the local trains would leave with the body parts. A few days later, the MPD receives an anonymous letter that indicates the victim might be Aoki Kyouko, a History scholar at Tokyo's K University who's been missing these last few days. Nomura Misao, a colleague at the faculty, had ample motive to want to kill Kyouko, as Misao lost battles with her for both academic prestige and romance these last few weeks. Thanks to the tip, it is confirmed that Kyouko was indeed seen riding the Izumo Express on the night of the nineteenth, but there's also a catch: main suspect Misao has an alibi for the night of the murder, as she was riding another night express, which left Tokyo Station fifteen minutes earlier than the Izumo Express the victim took.

Shimada Souji's best known series is about Mitarai Kiyoshi, the brilliant detective who had a weird career going from astrologist to private detective to neuro-scientist or something like that, but Shimada's second best known series is probably about the MPD Homicide detective Yoshiki Takeshi (which finally got a new volume last year I think, after a long hiatus). I myself hadn't read any of the Yoshiki stories before this one (which is the second in the series), but especially the first three novels are supposed to be Shimada's take on the "travel mystery", a subgenre usually associated with writers like Uchida Yasuo. The travel mystery is, obviously, often about travelling, especially by train. The genre has a distinct touristic angle, with the mystery set in popular tourist destinations/regions often outside the capital Tokyo and the stories also often include references to local habits, folklore and legends. The genre is often seen as a rather light subgenre within the broader mystery genre, often associated with two-hour television dramas that focus more on imagery and playing the tourist than providing a really interesting mystery plot, so it was kinda interesting to see what Shimada would do with this.

People familiar with Japanese mythology can probably make the connection themselves, especially considering the title references both Izumo and the number eight, but the legend of Yamata no Orochi plays a role in this story. Izumo has been always been 'the land of legends', with many myths of Japan originating, and taking place in Izumo. One of the most famous myths is about the mythological eight-headed dragon (snake) Yamata no Orochi. The celestial being Susaso'o no Mikoto was banned from heavens to Izumo, where he learned about the horrible monster Orochi, who each year demanded one of the daughters of two earthly deities. Susano'o prepared vats of liqour and had each of Orochi's heads drink until they became intoxicated and fell asleep: Susano'o then cut the dragon up in pieces, and from its eigh-forked tail he also retrieved the sword Kusanagi, which would become one of the regalia of the Japanese Imperial family. The legend of Orochi plays a two-folded role in Izumo Densetsu 7/8 no Satsujin: Misao and Kyouko's academic rivalry revolved around a theory Misao had about the roots and meaning of the Orochi legend, but of course, the fact the victim was cut up in eight pieces (of which the head's missing), and spread across stations in the Izumo region also invokes this myth, almost as if the murderer themselves considered them Susano'o cutting up an eight-headed dragon.

After the introduction and Yoshiki's first inferences on the case, we're pretty much just coping with one central problem for the rest of the novel. Yoshiki's pretty much convinced that Misao's the murderer the moment she appears on his radar (though I have to say, it feels really forced to have Yoshiki so convinced so early on considering she has a good alibi), so the problem is: how could she have killed Kyouko, who was seen on the Izumo Express, even though Misao was riding in a different night express that evening (in the same general direction, to the west, but via a different route) that had left Tokyo Station earlier than the Izumo? Much of the novel is Yoshiki weighing possibilities only to learn they're wrong, and it indeed seems like an impossible task. There is a possible male accomplice in the Izumo, but multiple witnesses state he had no luggage with him, which means he wouldn't have tools with him to cut Kyouko up in a relatively clean manner (without leaving blood in the compartment) and have bags available to put the body parts in. Misao on the other hand was travelling for a few days and had bags with her which might have held the necessary tools, but she was in another train. Even supposing Kyouko did get on Misao's train, how then would Misao get Kyouko's body back to the Izumo to get all the body parts in the local trains connected to the Izumo route?

Like any good alibi deconstruction story, Shimada does a good job at constantly dangling possibilities in front of you of how the impossible alibi could've been achieved, only to disprove them again and making the whole deal seem even more impossible. Each time Yoshiki thinks he's on the right trail, his experiments or some small comment earlier he had forgotten come back to dismiss his theories. I like the trick of how Kyouko's body parts were eventually disposed off, though I do have to say the book is a bit dragged out in the middle part. The novel is mostly focused on Yoshiki and his investigation, and the other characters barely have any screen time. This means you're often confronted with page after page of Yoshiki reading time schedules and train routes, which can be a bit boring as all you see are times and location names. I figured out a small part of the trick behind the body parts disposal, but I quite like the idea: it's daring, but juuuuust within the realms of what is practically possible. The one mistake that allowed Yoshiki to really seal the deal however, that is something I doubt anyone save for a really savvy train anorak would be able to figure out. The story is apparently based on the actual 1984 time schedule of the train by the way, similar to how the infamous "4 minutes" of Matsumoto Seichou's Ten to Sen was also based on the actual time tables.

What is somewhat unsatsifying however is how many lucky breaks Yoshiki got over the course of his investigation. If not for the anonymous letter at the start of the story, the police might not have had any idea about who this victim was, and there were more coincidental incidents in his favor, like random witnesses who happened to pop up. Even the finale where the culprit is found with the decisive piece of evidence is completely dependent on the actions of a third party who took them on their own will, and not based on any actions or inferences by Yoshiki. You'd almost think this story would've been the same if Yoshiki hadn't been present at all.

Izumo Densetsu 7/8 no Satsujin was on the whole a fairly entertaining novel. The problem of how all the body parts found their way to a different local train is interesting and the imagery with the Yamata no Orochi legend is also okay, though it's also clear that Shimada wrote the novel focusing completely on the main trick and Yoshiki's investigation of the murder. In that regards the novel definitely invokes the utter dryness of a Crofts novel, which might deter some readers (and attract others). For one interested in Japanese trains though, this is probably heaven, as it's based on real time schedules and you can really see how the thing was done by following all the routes and trains.

Original Japanese title(s): 島田荘司『出雲伝説7/8の殺人』