People Who Eat Darkness (42 page)

Obara said, “There was a message about it.”

“What was the purpose of the letter?”

“May I refrain from commenting?”

“You mean you don’t want to answer the question?”

“I did it because there was a message.”

“You can’t explain in any more detail?”

“At the moment I can’t.”

As always, Obara held in his hands the small blue hand towel that he used to dab at his perspiring face and neck. Even viewed from behind, his unease had become obvious in his physical stance. His shoulders were slumping, and his head was angled towards the floor. Prosecutor Mizoguchi continued. “On July third, after leaving Zushi Marina at midnight and coming back to Moto-Akasaka Towers, what did you do that morning?”

Obara gave no answer.

“Do you remember doing a search on the Internet using your home computer?”

“No,” Obara said. “I don’t remember.”

“You have a computer at home, don’t you?”

“Yes, I have one at Moto-Akasaka Towers.”

“In the report on the use of that computer on July third, there is mention of an Internet search done on that day from around eight fifty. Do you remember that?”

Mizoguchi was holding up a sheaf of papers, densely printed. It was impossible to see Obara’s reaction, but evidently he registered surprise. “Let me show this to the defendant,” the prosecutor said, “as he seems not to have seen it before.”

Obara took the document.

“This is a list of searches performed using that personal computer from the middle of June,” Mizoguchi explained. “On July third, two thousand, between eight forty-four and eight fifty-seven, six searches were performed. Looking at those searches now, do you remember anything?”

Obara paused. The sentences that followed were fragmentary and difficult to follow, even in Japanese. “From around late midnight of the first, taken drugs,” he began falteringly (it was unclear who was supposed to have taken what drugs). “On July second with Lucie, we were talking about a Japanese woman who’d gone missing in Britain. She had been kidnapped and was still missing. Lucie said it was a well-known story, and I suggested that she might already have been killed then, although I didn’t know the story. That story was in my mind. I mean that kidnap case in Britain.”

The prosecutor listed the Internet searches that Obara had made that morning. The first was for
Datura metel
, the herb known as devil’s trumpet, which causes hallucinations and even death if eaten. The second was for Nachi Harbor, a place from which elderly Buddhist monks approaching the end of their lives would set sail on a final, fatal journey. The third was “how to get chloroform.” The fourth was “synthesis of GHB,” the date-rape drug. “Why were you looking at such sites?” asked Mizoguchi.

“You ask why—it’s like asking why someone watches crime films,” Obara said. “You don’t watch a crime film to commit a crime. You watch it just to reduce your stress. Actually, you’ll see that I looked at various sites of this kind.”

Mizoguchi pointed out the final searches that Obara had made that morning. “You accessed other websites about the process of producing sulphuric acid, and how to buy sulphuric acid. You were searching with a view to making a purchase, weren’t you?”

Obara made no response.

The prosecutor flicked through the document and pointed to another page. “This one here says ‘a possible method is to use a high-temperature furnace to burn even the bones to ashes, but this is too difficult.’ And also, ‘one way to melt down even bones is by immersing the bones in concentrated sulphuric acid.’ This is about disposing of a dead body, isn’t it?”

“I [also] looked up pages like that in June,” Obara said. “It wasn’t from the motive that Prosecutor Mizoguchi suggests.”

“Then why did you look at such sites again on that day?”

“It’s just because, as I told you, I chatted with Lucie about the kidnap case in London.”
*

“Do you remember those two methods [incineration and dissolution in acid] being described as ‘too difficult’?”

“I don’t remember.”

This was a rare thing in a Japanese court: a psychological contest, a struggle of wits between accuser and accused. Obara dabbed at his perspiration. How his heart must have turned over in his chest when Mizoguchi presented the next piece of evidence, a heavy folder containing yellowing pages.

This was where Obara had recorded his sexual adventures, the logbook of his “play.” Having quoted from Lucie’s diary, Obara was now being confronted with his own.

“Here is a book in which you made notes, from around 1970,” the prosecutor said.

Obara had no difficulty remembering this document. He said, “I wrote about my relationships with girls five years after they actually happened. Waiting five years made the stories more interesting. So I wrote it after five years had passed, and made the stories more pornographic.”

“So the stories written here are fiction?”

“Not all of them are. The girls mentioned exist, but the stories are fables.”

The log of sexual encounters was numbered and in some cases dated, from 1970 to 1995, from 1 to 209. “Take a look at number sixty-three, line three,” Mizoguchi asked Obara. “What do you mean by SMYK?”

“This is just something I wrote to make it more interesting, five years later.”

“What does it mean?”

A pause, then: “I won’t answer that.”

“Number four—‘I gave her sleeping drugs.’ Number twenty-one—‘Today, I gave her sleeping drugs.’”

The Japanese word for sleeping drug is
suiminyaku
.

“That is what you wrote,” the prosecutor said. “Does SMYK mean
sui min ya ku
?”

“I don’t want to answer that.”

“Number one hundred forty—‘Gave too much SMY and CHM. I was very shaken up.’ What is the meaning of this CHM?”

“I forget.”

“In number one hundred fifty, you write about ‘CRORO.’ What does this mean?”

“I don’t want to answer that.”

“It means chloroform [in Japanese:
kurorohorumu
, pronounced “crororo-hormu”], doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know.”

Mizoguchi turned over the pages of the notebook. “Number one hundred ninety. You wrote, ‘She realized in the middle of it, and I made an excuse, but she knows.’ What does this mean?”

“This too is ‘play,’ so I’m not answering.”

“Judging from what’s written in the notebook, it seems you were very shaken up when [the girls] realized that you had performed ‘conquest play’ without consent.”

“No. It’s not true. It was ‘play.’”

“So, what kind of ‘play’ was it?”

“I’m not answering.”

“Number one hundred seventy-nine, February 1992. ‘Met Nanae, and later Carita.’ Is this Carita the same Carita in this criminal case?”

Obara said nothing. It was maddening to be unable to see his face.

“You insisted that you didn’t use chloroform on Carita,” said Mizoguchi.

“I didn’t [use it].”

“Number one hundred ninety-eight. ‘Used SMY and CROCRO. Used too much CROCRO. [Although I] used CROCRO in the case of CARITA, the drug from the hospital was the cause, I think.’ This is what you wrote. You did use chloroform, didn’t you?”

Obara said, “It’s fiction.”

A few hearings later, he had a go at repairing some of the damage done in this cross-examination by having his own lawyers question him about the Internet searches and the sex diary. Over the months, he had browsed many websites, he pointed out; it was unreasonable to take in isolation those which he visited on that morning. As for the diary, CRORO and CROCRO and CRO and the other code words referred not to chloroform but to various alcoholic spirits that Obara and his female companions used to sniff and snort from plastic bags. But having taken the stand on his own behalf, he had to submit himself to another grilling from the prosecutor. Mizoguchi’s first question was a simple one: “Does SMY mean
sui min yaku
?”

“SM means ‘Super Magic,’” said Obara. “And, in foreign countries, Y is a general term for hallucination. The letter Y expresses something unknown. Yellow sunshine … er,
yesca
 … y…” He trailed off into incoherence.

Justice Tochigi flashed his beautiful teeth. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

*   *   *

Amid all of this, in April 2006, Jane Blackman, Tim Blackman, and Carita Ridgway’s mother, Annette, flew out to Tokyo to give evidence of their own. Sensitive to the state of relations between Lucie’s parents, the prosecutors scheduled the two women to appear first, and Tim five days later.

The prospect of a face-to-face confrontation between the accused killer and the bereaved parents packed the public gallery. But the ushers were late in admitting the press and public to the courtroom; when the doors were opened, Jane and Annette were sitting at the front of the public gallery, but Obara’s usual space was empty.

Chief Justice Tochigi was beaming warmly. “The court has received word,” he said, “that the defendant has refused to appear before the court today.”

By law, he explained, a criminal trial could not proceed without the presence of the accused. But this rule could be waived if the defendant had received a summons and had no good reason for not being present. Obara had indeed been informed in the usual way, and the officers of the Tokyo Detention Center had gone to his cell that morning and requested him to come to court. “But he has been taking off his clothes and clinging to the sink, and he refuses to appear,” Justice Tochigi explained. “The defendant hasn’t given any justifiable reason for not appearing. Given that the bereaved families have come from abroad, the court has decided that despite the absence of the defendant, we won’t wait for him.”

Jane took the witness stand first. She spoke of her memories of Lucie as a baby, and as a child and a young woman, and of their closeness, like that of sisters. “I used to believe that the sorrow of any parent losing a child is the greatest sorrow anyone can know,” she said. “I was wrong. To lose a child and know her body was desecrated in such an inhuman way is the greatest and most unrelenting pain I have ever had to endure.” She went on: “The fact that Obara has refused to attend court today is very dishonorable and a clear sign of his guilt. He is a coward.”

Annette was next. She talked about the effect of Carita’s death on her older daughter, Samantha, and on Carita’s boyfriend, Robert Finnigan. “Even though fourteen years have passed, I still think of her every day and feel the pain of her loss,” Annette said. “She was a wonderful daughter and nothing can replace her. My preference for Obara’s sentence is that he should be executed. However, in the circumstances that is impossible. Therefore, he should be in prison until he dies.”
*

Five days later, Tim appeared in court. Obara was absent again. This time, the judge reported, he had squeezed himself into a narrow niche in the walls of his cell and refused to come out.

Tim spoke for nearly half an hour. “The death of my daughter, Lucie Blackman, has been the most terrible, terrible event of my life,” Tim’s statement began. “The shock and trauma … has changed me.”

Lucie lived for eight thousand days and I carry many images of her in my mind, and there are many things in everyday life which I see which make me cry in public, which make me cry in business meetings, which make me cry when with friends and which make me cry in the night.

Sometimes when I see a child in a pushchair I can see Lucie and tears come to my eyes. Sometimes I see children playing with their daddy in a park and their fun and joy makes me so sad for Lucie. I may be standing next to a lovely twenty-five-year-old young woman on a train and Lucie fills my eyes with tears. Seeing a young woman with her young children makes me think of how Lucie will never be …

I will never feel her loving arms around my neck and feel warm breath as she tells me she loves me. I cannot stop myself thinking of the moment when her life stopped; the moment when her brain stem ceased to function; her last deep and tragic breath. Was she in pain, was she terrified, did she call for me?

Now I have images in my head of her cut-up body, the chain saw marks on her bones, her rotting, decomposing flesh … her parts in plastic bags buried beneath the sand, the grief on Sophie and Rupert’s faces. These images will stay with me for the rest of my life and when I am reminded of Lucie, when I see a little child, I see these terrible images too.

I hear her voice in my sleep and, for a moment, I forget she is dead. For a moment I feel the joy of hearing her voice and then the pain hits me because I know she is not there, and I know that I can only dream of her now.

I have been changed by all these things … I have been left distraught and traumatized with a depth of indescribable sadness. I do not sleep properly. I cry very often uncontrollably. I am frightened to meet with friends and family because I know how upset it will make me as I see the grief in their eyes … Some days I find it impossible to concentrate on my work and am too upset to make important decisions at work, as it seems so pointless and unimportant.

I feel guilt for all the times when I could have seen Lucie but was maybe too busy; guilt for the times I was cross with her as a girl; guilt for not giving her the money she needed and guilt for not being with her at the times when she needed me most. This guilt may not be logical, but it will always be with me and makes me feel terrible and deepens the terrible wound left by Lucie’s death.

But the worst guilt of all is the feeling of guilt I have when I do not think of her, the guilt I feel when I am happy for a moment about something. This guilt feeling makes it impossible to ever be really free during my life from the devastating effect of her [death]—and part of me knows that I will never be free from this tragedy until I am able to be with her in my future life. Only death will release me from this pain. Only knowing that when I die I will feel her arms around my neck again helps me live my life.

It was the most powerful statement that Tim had ever made. The Tokyo District Court was a colorless and unemotional place, but the impact of these words was unquestionable. The prosecutor’s case was tight and consistent; Obara’s defense was a thicket of contradictions: And now, here was the father of dead Lucie, setting out in searing terms the anguish brought about by their deaths and pleading for the heaviest penalty. So it was all the more jolting to learn, later that year, that Tim Blackman had accepted half a million pounds from Obara and signed a document questioning the evidence against him.