Chapter 53 Chapter VII

The "details of cutting up the corpse" explained by Kamiya detective are as follows. For the convenience of description, let’s start with the cutting state of the limbs—— After the two hands and feet of the limbs were cut from the root, the elbows and wrists of the two hands were cut, and the knees and ankles of the two feet were also cut.The upper and lower arms of the hand were cut in two, and the thigh and calf of the foot were also cut in two.Then the fingers of the left and right hands and the toes of the left and right feet were also cut off one by one—in this cutting method, the limbs were cut into forty parts.

Then the head was cut from the body, first the skull and neck, then the upper and lower parts of the head from the jaw joint, and then the ears—that's five parts. After the remaining body is cut into three parts: buttocks, abdomen, and chest, the left and right breasts are cut off from the chest—the five cut out parts plus the front parts add up to exactly fifty parts . ——When the Kamiya detective described the above details, he purposely drew a rough drawing of the human body on a piece of paper, and then explained: "Cutting here, this is how it was cut..." while drawing dotted lines to mark the Where to cut.

The tools used for cutting include axes, chopping knives, kitchen knives, saws, scissors, etc. It seems that different cutting tools are used according to the needs of the cutting part.These props are all original things in the shrine. "It was indeed cut into fifty parts in total." I raised my head, looked away from the picture drawn by the criminal police, and sighed deeply. It is disgusting to imagine a dismembered corpse.Although there are often plots of dismemberment cases in mystery novels, as a mystery novelist, I should be accustomed to such plots.However, a novel is a novel after all, and I don't want to see that kind of scene at all in real life.

"Just now you said that the gender of the deceased is not clear. However, from the point of cutting the breasts, the deceased should be a woman, right?" I point out bluntly what I notice.The criminal policeman looked serious again, and replied: "The identity of the deceased is still being identified. I have already said this." "but……" I frowned and said: "Isn't this obvious? You can understand it without identification. By the way, there are also sexual organs! Are there male sexual organs on the corpse?" "There is no mention of male sexual organs in the report, and there are no traces of male sexual organs being removed."

"Then, it really is a female corpse..." "As I said, it's still under DNA identification." The attitude of the criminal police insisting on this point made me feel strange, but I still shifted the direction of the discussion for the time being. "What was the murderer's purpose in burning the body? Why did he do it?" After all, I've always been a speculative novelist, and had to ask a question worthy of my status. Generally speaking, the purpose of dismembering a corpse is nothing more than to prevent people from knowing the identity of the deceased. In addition, the dismembered corpse is easier to carry, bury, or hide.However, as far as this incident is concerned, let’s not talk about the former, but the latter does not meet the upstream assumptions.Because the murderer was the abbot of the shrine, he burned the dismembered body parts in his own gentry shrine. This way of hiding the body was too thoughtless-then, what is the purpose of dismembering the body?

"The work of dismembering the corpse is carried out indoors. There are traces left when dismembering the corpse in the office of the shrine." The criminal police added.With a serious expression, I crossed my arms and said: "Since the purpose of dismembering the corpse is not to hide it, we can only think that the purpose of the murderer is to 'cut up' the corpse and 'burn' the body parts after the cutting. Is that so?" The detective didn't answer me.I continued: "I'm still very concerned about one thing, that is: Is it necessary for the murderer to cut up the corpse so carefully? This is also a big question. The method of dismembering the corpse is not random cutting, but very careful cutting according to the parts. It seems to be for Cut it into fifty parts and calculate it before doing it..."

"Yes, there is nothing wrong with that." The detective said. "In order to achieve the goal of cutting into fifty parts, Doba seems to be cutting while counting very carefully." "Count on one side?" "In order to avoid counting mistakes, he also marked it with 'positive'. He said that after counting so carefully, he finally completed 50 cuts correctly." "Well—did he say it himself?" "Yes. The police also found the mark of '正' in his office." "Oh—as you said just now, Mr. Doba has been saying that no matter what, it must be cut into fifty pieces. Is that so?"

"yes." "Didn't you ask why it had to be that way?" "Of course I asked...but I couldn't ask for an understandable reason." The detective shook his head gravely. "Especially insisting on cutting it into pieces and burning it. He kept yelling: If you don't do that, the other party will wake up." "That...is very similar to 'Dead Transformation'!" "what is that?" "Ah, no..." Does this person not know? 'Dead Dead' is a masterpiece directed by Samuel Raimi! ——However, I immediately thought: Maybe it's just that my personal hobbies are different from others, so I know that movie and associate it with that movie.

"In any case, it must be cut into fifty pieces..." Why cling to this number?Why do we have to be persistent? "I seem to have heard the 'voice' say so." The detective sighed. "Must be fifty. It must be fifty, and if it's not fifty it won't work—it seems so." Hearing this, I couldn't help but sigh. "The so-called radio system?" The electric wave system...the abbot of the electric wave system. Although such a statement is interesting, it is too unreasonable to regard this as the answer to the "mystery".This is not a question of whether or not people can understand——

"My colleagues have a guess as to why Mr. Doba insists on the number fifty." Interpol said. "That is to say: Mr. Doba cares too much about his name?" "Name?" I asked puzzled. "Mr. Doba's name?" "Yes. That's his name." Just heard his name, if I remember correctly, his name is... "His name is Masashi, isn't it?" "That's right." The policeman showed a wry smile on his frowning face. "'Zheng' in the first month, 'ten' in one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eighty, ninety. That's his name."

"Zhengshi... Indeed. Ten 'Zheng' characters? Exactly fifty strokes. You mean, he used his name as a reason for the crime?" "Otherwise why would he insist on the number fifty." The detective's wry smile deepened. "Looking at it now, it seems that this incident can only end with 'Mr. Doba is crazy'. It's a pity that there is no idea here that can become the content of a mystery novel." "Well...it seems to be." Affected by the criminal policeman's wry smile, I can only smile wryly.However, I always feel that there is something wrong.What makes me feel wrong is not that the murderer is obsessed with "fifty", or the reason why he is obsessed with "fifty", what is wrong... While writing the word "positive" as a mark, carry out fifty times of cutting. Fifty human body parts that were burned. Fifty cuts, fifty body parts... ah!Yeah?Is that so? "There is something strange here! Mr. Interpol." I said and stood up.

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