Even now, Goda realized that his mind was empty. After grasping around for something, he thought of Kano, whom he had seen only the day before yesterday, but he quickly thought better of it since Kano was always swamped with work and never seemed to have anything urgent to share with him.
Goda tossed aside the copy of Nikkei Science, and briefly gazed at the television screen again. There was a story about the management of nuclear power plants stemming from the privatization of electric companies in England. He scribbled the word “grid” on the back of the magazine closest to him, and just as he reached for the dictionary, the phone rang.
Lifting the receiver, out of habit he checked the time—10:55 p.m.
It was the officer on duty in his precinct’s Criminal Investigation Division. “About five minutes ago, we got a hundred-ten emergency call about a missing family member.” As he listened, Goda switched off the television with the remote control. “We sent an officer from the police box in front of Omori Station and there seems to be something wrong, so could you go check it out?”
“What’s my partner doing?”
“There was a burglary in Omori-Minami just a while ago, so he’s headed there. I’ll give you the address now, are you ready? It’s Sanno Ni-chome, number sixteen. Single-family home. The missing person is the husband, his name is Kyosuke Shiroyama. The person who made the hundred-ten call is his son, Mitsuaki Shiroyama.”
Goda mechanically wrote down Ni-16, Shiroyama on the back of Nikkei Science, and scanned the room for his socks. He had cast them off nearby and so he grabbed them and started putting them back on with one hand. Where is number sixteen in Ni-chome again? He tried to remember. Is it on the right at the end of the road past Ito Yokado supermarket?
Meanwhile, there was another phone ringing on the other end of the line and the officer told Goda, “Hang on.” The officer returned after a three-second wait. “MPD control center wants you to scope out the situation and report back. Kyosuke Shiroyama is the president of Hinode Beer.”
That’s right, he is, Goda mused. He had tracked the names and addresses of VIPs living in his precinct, and the president of Hinode Beer had been among the residents of Sanno Ni-chome.
“Got it. Be there in ten minutes. If you need to contact me just call on the scanner, don’t use the wireless. Until you hear back from me, don’t say anything to anyone for now. I’ll be right there.”
Grabbing a flashlight and throwing on a down jacket, Goda ran to the bathroom to rinse with Listerine to get rid of the whisky on his breath. He pushed the bicycle that he kept outside his apartment into the elevator, got off on the first floor, and by the time he started pedaling, it was 10:58 p.m.
Sleet mixed in with wind off the sea as it howled through the streets of the housing complex premises, where a smattering of lights glimmered here and there. Damn, it’s cold, was Goda’s first thought as he pondered whether he should take Ikegami-dori or the Dai-Ichi Keihin highway to Sanno Ni-chome, and it wasn’t until then that he finally began to wonder what might have happened. The president of Hinode would have a driver to chauffeur him around, so the fact that the family had reported to the police that he had not come home sounded an alarm. Something must have happened.
In the Sanno hills, each mansion with its lush green estate folded into the next one, protected by labyrinthine streets that all seemed to dead-end in a cul-de-sac. Late at night there were no cars passing by, and the darkness on the roads along the gated walls was total—as Goda pedaled on his bicycle, he felt as if he were swimming in the depths of the ocean. As he approached number sixteen in Ni-chome, he spotted a motorcycle from the police box parked in front of the gate of an estate walled off with Japanese andesine stone. The area was quiet, with no signs of any residents.
Goda stopped his bicycle a short distance away and checked the time. 11:07 p.m.
Next, he quickly scanned the premises from outside. The height of the wall was about 160 centimeters. A thick grove of tall trees surrounded the vast estate, and he could just make out the glass roof of a greenhouse. Beyond it stood an old Western-style home, where light from an incandescent lamp glowed in a second-floor window, as if someone had forgotten to switch it off. A single porch light was lit. He spotted another light on the first floor, obscured by the trees. Looking around, he noticed that the houses on either side and across the street were similar, and the dense trees all around offered little to no visibility.
The gate, which measured around 180 centimeters in both width and height, was made of sturdy cast iron and came equipped with an electronic lock that could only be opened with a passcode. The decorative latticework on the gate wove an elaborate arabesque design, leaving no leeway for a hand or arm to pass through. Beneath the intercom, the neon-bright red seal of SECOM home security was affixed to the gatepost. There was a straight path from the gate to the front door, about ten meters. On either side of the path were deep and shadowy shrubs, as tall as grown men.
Just as Goda was reaching for the intercom, a car turned into the street and stopped on the shoulder. Judging from the age and hurried pace of the young man who got out of the car, Goda knew it must be the son, and he called out, “Are you Mitsuaki Shiroyama-san?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“I’m Goda from the Omori Police Department,” Goda said, and showed him his badge.
Mitsuaki, who appeared to be almost thirty years old, was dressed in an exceptionally plain sweater and slacks, and his stoic features were devoid of expression.
“Are you the one who called the police? I’d like to speak with you for a minute inside,” Goda said in a low voice.
“I’ll open the gate.” Mitsuaki managed to reply in a measured tone, his shoulders heaving as he breathed, and he lifted the lid of the electronic lock on the gate and entered the four-digit passcode. As he did so, Goda asked him, “Where is your place of residence?”
“I live in the Ministry of Finance’s employee dormitory in Higashi-Yukigaya. My mother called to say that my father hasn’t come home.”
As they stepped inside through the unlocked gate, it closed automatically behind them, reverberating with the dull sound of cast iron colliding. Perhaps alerted by the noise, someone opened the front door, and Goda saw a familiar face peer out—it was Sawaguchi, the senior police officer from the Community Police Affairs Division. Goda gestured to Sawaguchi not to come out, and ushered Mitsuaki quickly through the front door.
Officer Sawaguchi stood on the concrete floor of the dimly lit entry vestibule, and an older woman sat kneeling on the wooden ledge of the raised entranceway floor. Wearing no trace of makeup, she wore a simple cardigan over her slight, petite frame. Mitsuaki, her son, called out to her immediately, “Mom, are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine—” the woman replied, with a rather carefree expression. Beside her, the officer spoke into the microphone of his radio, “Inspector Goda has arrived. Over.” Cutting through the static, a voice from the control room replied, “Roger.”
The woman, who appeared to be Shiroyama’s wife, bowed slowly to Goda. “I’m sorry to trouble you so late at night,” she said. “My son insisted that we call the police—”
“Forgive me for interrupting, ma’am,” Goda said, and he glanced at Officer Sawaguchi.
“I’ve just been informed of what happened,” Officer Sawaguchi said in a low voice, his notepad in hand. “Around 10:30 this evening, a man named Kurata who is a vice president at Hinode called here about a business matter, and she informed him that her husband had not yet returned home. Immediately after, Kurata called back to inform her that, according to the driver, there was no mistake he had departed the office at 9:48 p.m. with President Shiroyama and had dropped him off at his residence at 10:05 p.m. The driver confirmed that he had seen the president go through the gate and walk inside, so it was quite unclear what might have happened. She then called her son, and after hearing the detai
ls from her, he made the emergency call at 10:50 p.m. I arrived here three minutes later.”
As Goda listened to this report, the long hand on his wristwatch ticked forward again. 11:10 p.m. Since Shiroyama’s car arrived at 10:05, sixty-five minutes had already elapsed, Goda noted in his mind.
“Ma’am, please tell me your husband’s age, height, weight, and what he was wearing today.”
“He’s fifty-eight. He’s one hundred seventy-three centimeters tall. I think he weighs about sixty-three kilograms, he’s a little thin. What he wore today, let’s see, a dark navy suit, wool vest, black shoes, and he did not bring his coat with him. I believe his tie had a blue and silver pattern.”
Goda wrote this down in his notebook.
“Around 10:05 p.m., did you hear any noise by the gate?”
“No.”
“No sound of the car stopping?”
“Perhaps, but when I’m inside the house I can’t really hear any noises from outside.”
“There has been a string of incidents targeting corporate executives recently, so my father had told my mother not to go out at night. That’s why we installed the SECOM service and doubled the locks . . .” Mitsuaki added.
“Does your husband always unlock the gate by himself when he comes in?”
“Yes.”
“The SECOM alarm is turned off at that time, correct?”
“That’s right. My father always turns on the nighttime alarm system himself when he comes home.”
Goda looked at Officer Sawaguchi. “What’s the contact number for this Kurata?”
“He’s still at the main office, apparently. Here’s the direct number to reach him at night. He’s called here a number of times already.”
Goda looked at the eight-digit number scrawled across the notepad that the officer handed him. “I’d like to borrow your phone,” he said to the son. Mitsuaki immediately offered him his cell phone, but Goda declined and reached for the landline that was on one side of the hall stairs.
He dialed the number from Officer Sawaguchi’s notepad and someone answered immediately.
“Hello, this is Kurata. Has the president returned home?” Kurata spoke in a hushed whisper, as if he had been holding his breath.
“No, not yet. This is Goda from the Omori Police Department. How would you say the president appeared today?”
“Exactly the same as usual. Tonight was the launch for our new product and it was a great success so he was very pleased. I had just seen him off personally in the underground parking lot a little before 9:50.”
He sounded as if he was calmly choosing his words, but the edge in his voice belied his suspicions and fears—the panic he was suppressing showing through. Of course Goda wouldn’t expect him to sound upbeat under these circumstances, but he thought that the man sounded particularly gloomy.
“The driver, how long has he been working for the company?” he asked.
“Going on twenty years. He’s been driving our executives for a long time.”
“Please tell me the name and address of the driver, as well as where to contact him.”
“His name is Tatsuo Yamazaki. I don’t have his contact information, so I’ll get back to you. In any case, please begin your search immediately. You must find the president!”
His composed voice finally gave way to an angry cry. This, Goda thought, sounded much more normal.
“We’ll do everything we can, so please listen carefully to what I’m about to tell you. First, please designate a single contact person for the police on your end, and make sure that person will always be able to answer the phone. Next, for the time being please tell all of the executives in the main office, as well as those in management at the branch offices, to be mindful of any phone calls they may receive at home.”
“Has the president been kidnapped—?”
“At this point, we don’t know anything. It’s possible he’s been involved in an incident, so stay off your cell phones and car phones, as those could be tapped. Now, the police will be in touch shortly so please have that contact person ready.”
Goda hung up first, and then dialed the number of his precinct.
“It’s Goda. Get me CID.” As he said this to the operator, various images began to whirl around the core of his mind, emitting bright flashes of light: the hushed alley he had seen just a few minutes ago; the wall of Japanese andesine stone; the gate with its electronic lock; the ten-meter path to the front door, with the dense towers of shrubs on either side.
“Yes, CID,” answered the officer on duty, whose name was Sakagami.
“It’s Goda. The president hasn’t returned. Around 10:05 p.m. he was dropped off at home in his company car, and the driver saw him enter through the front gate, but he’s gone missing since. Relay all that to the chief and put a call out to every officer in CID. Tell Konno and Izawa to report directly here. Radios and cell phones are prohibited. Everyone else stand by at the department. All activities should be kept strictly confidential. Next, about contacting MPD . . .”
Goda was aware of Mitsuaki’s gaze as he held his breath right beside him, so he lowered his voice even more and held the receiver closer to his mouth. “It’s possible he’s been abducted, so let the head of the First Investigation Division know that I want to mobilize every relevant department. SIT, Mobile CI Unit, Crime Scene Unit, NTT Task Force—all of them. I’ll wait here until MPD arrives. Also, I’d like to keep the landline at Shiroyama’s residence open, so no more calls here going forward. All communication should be made via landline to Senior Patrol Officer Sawaguchi at the police box in front of Omori Station. Also, Sakagami-san, do you see a corporate directory lying around on a desk nearby? Check if any other Hinode executives live in this precinct. As for the rest, we’ll wait for instructions from MPD. Any questions so far?”
“Hey, wait up!” Goda heard Sakagami yell, then he was on hold for five seconds. “It’s the officer on duty from First Investigation Division. He wants to know if you’re sure he’s missing.”
“I’m sure.”
Goda hung up the phone, and as Mitsuaki started to say something he turned his back to him and addressed the officer. “Sawaguchi-san, let’s step outside for a minute.” Officer Sawaguchi turned the switch on the electronic lock on the front door to open it and, letting Goda out first, he wedged an umbrella stand in the doorway to keep it from closing. With the door ajar, they stepped onto the path.
“Can that front gate also be opened from inside with just a switch?”
“Yes. Works the same way as the front door. The wife told me earlier,” the officer replied.
“Sawaguchi-san. Many VIPs live around here, so it was my understanding that these parts were considered a priority for police patrol.”
As he briefly questioned the officer, Goda pointed his flashlight at the shrubs growing on either side of the path. With their pliable branches, they turned out to be cryptomeria, a kind of Japanese cedar. The trees were planted only 50 centimeters apart and, sprouting from the ground in conical shapes, the dense wall of needles glimmered blue-silver in the beam of the flashlight.
“Yes, that’s right. The president of Hinode returns home around 10 every night, so we always patrol the vicinity between 9:45 and 10:15. The president’s car always drives right past the police box and straight down the alley as it makes its way here.”
“Where were you around 10 tonight?”
“I’m always circling the area, so I’m not sure. But I made sure to drive by so I could see the road in front of here every five or ten minutes.”
“You mean you take a different route depending on the day?”
“Yes. I also constantly receive instructions over the radio to go here or there . . .”
This was true. In a precinct containing around 58,000 households, there were eleven police boxes. The average number of households in the
area patrolled by one police box was 5,000. If one were to judge based solely on the incidence of burglaries and violent crime, nights in the Sanno neighborhood were peaceful for the most part, but the department-level radio incessantly blared out crimes that were occurring in adjacent areas. If something were to happen in neighboring Omori-Kita, precautionary instructions would come flying to the police box by Omori Station in Sanno Ni-chome, and the patrol routes would shift immediately. Even though there were a lot of high-income taxpayers in this district, with several thousand households to watch over, the emergency calls—a family member is late coming home, the neighbor’s dog won’t stop barking, an unfamiliar car is parked on the street, and so on—never seemed to end.
“Did you get any calls around 10 tonight?”
“That single-motorcycle accident beneath the overpass in Magome Ni-chome.”
“So you were over there then?”
“Yes. It only took about five minutes to deal with, though. Immediately after that, there was a car parked illegally on Ikegami-dori. Then I had to conduct some questioning on another matter . . .”
As he listened to Sawaguchi, something snagged in Goda’s mind, but perhaps because he was inspecting the shrubbery at the same time, in that moment he failed to fully process it.
“I’ll stop by the police box later, I’d like to see the logbook. Anyway, so you never saw the president’s car tonight, correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“Which means you just so happened to be away from this area around 10.”
“That’s correct . . .”
Goda suddenly stopped midway along the path. Scattered in the pool of light cast on the paving stone by his feet were several tiny conifer needles. Along with the silver-blue needles, around a millimeter wide and a centimeter long, he identified a few clods of earth that had been trampled over and caked onto the stone. The front gate was about five meters away.
He retrained his flashlight on the shrubs to either side of him and, facing the gate, he saw something in the depths of one on the right side. Kneeling on the paving stone, he stuck his hand all the way into the shrub, down by the roots, and scooped up what turned out to be a piece of paper crushed lightly into a ball around three centimeters in diameter. He uncrumpled it with his white-gloved hands, and as he cast his flashlight upon it, the characters written in ballpoint pen leapt out at him.
Lady Joker, Volume 1 Page 29
