Conversely, there weren’t many opportunities to talk to his son about his own work, and Shiroyama thought about how last night he had missed another occasion to do so for a while. Perhaps at some point he would tell his son about the various emotions that led him to act in a manner so unbecoming to his position and choose to breach his company’s trust, but he could not imagine when that day would come. More importantly, he had to worry about how the course of events and his own actions might affect his son’s position at the finance ministry.
Such thoughts occupied Shiroyama’s mind until the hands of the alarm clock read 6:15 a.m. He then rustled the futon beside him and said, “Come on, time to wake up.” Shiroyama also wanted his son to retrieve the morning paper for him.
Breakfast was a simple affair—miso soup with daikon radish and seaweed, soft-boiled egg, and simmered fish—and although it had been four days since he had sat at this table, neither the scene itself nor the way things tasted nor the tenor of his emotions were much different from before. His wife and son were both taciturn by nature and, as Shiroyama set aside the now-acquired morning paper, the topics of conversation during the meal did not venture beyond Shoko, who would be coming home to Japan for the first time in two years, and Mitsuaki, who would be leaving for his new post in Ibaraki prefecture the day after tomorrow. Apparently, due to the unforeseen circumstances, Mitsuaki hadn’t had time to pack his things, and so now he said, “I guess I’ll just do without them for a while.”
“Don’t forget to pick up the mentaiko tonight for Shoko,” his wife reminded Mitsuaki. “There’s a counter that sells it in the basement of the Mitsukoshi department store in Nihombashi.”
From this snippet Shiroyama gleaned that the salted cod roe was his daughter’s favorite, but it seemed as if this were the first time he was hearing such information.
Mitsuaki headed for the office shortly before 7:20 a.m., leaving his parents at the dining table. They sipped a second cup of green tea without much to say to each other, then Reiko, who looked as if she were in good spirits, stood to clear the dishes. Shiroyama opened the morning paper and, starting with the front page, perused just the headlines and the leads, refolding the newspaper after scarcely ten minutes. His heartbeat had quickened momentarily when he saw the headline mysterious tape sent to hinode on the Metro page, but he was able to subdue his anxiety by running through the relevant administrative concerns in his mind. First, he must decide how to explain the matter to people both within and outside of the company. Next, he needed to research the effect that such an article would have on consumer awareness. Finally, he had to investigate the item in question—the letter from Seiji Okamura dated June 1947.
It had not occurred to him before but, judging from the sensitive content of the letter this Okamura had sent to the Kanagawa factory—if such a letter did in fact exist—it must have been reported to the board members at the time. Moreover, regardless of how the letter had been dealt with, if an artifact written half a century ago had found its way into the hands of someone outside the company, it behooved him to conduct a thorough investigation. He decided he would search for the board meeting minutes from back then.
“Dear, you should start to get ready. Please don’t forget to take your coat, it’ll be chilly all day again,” his wife said, the busy clatter pausing as she emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. Just then, the intercom rang to announce that the company car had arrived.
合田雄一郎 Yuichiro Goda
“All staff, report to the dojo!” As the order rang out, the investigators who had been on standby in the large meeting room rose to their feet en masse. Yuichiro Goda was among them. Passing the television, which had been left on, he was lured by the sound and glanced at the screen.
“It’s Hinode’s president, Shiroyama! Mr. Shiroyama is coming out the front door of his home! One day after his release, Mr. Shiroyama looks refreshed and seems much more at ease!” a reporter cried out. As three men who appeared to be Hinode employees, along with two uniformed police officers, struggled to fight off the encroaching horde of reporters in front of the gate, Kyosuke Shiroyama kept his head down and slipped out through a fifty-centimeter-wide gap. The suit he was wearing today was a deep lustrous navy blue. His necktie was an understated silver with a light-green pattern. In one hand he carried a black briefcase and a duster coat.
“Were you able to get some rest last night?” “How do you feel this morning?” The reporters thrust their microphones in Shiroyama’s face.
“Yes, very well, thank you,” Shiroyama responded with a slight bow of his head, his voice as aloof as his facial expression.
“The perpetrators are still at large.” “Do you have anything to say to them?” “Have you seen the papers this morning?”
Facing the surging crowd of people, Shiroyama spoke clearly, “I’m sorry, everyone, would you mind backing up a little?” He forced a reserved smile. As he surveyed the scene, the camera caught Shiroyama’s gaze—a strong will cloaked in politesse—and it traveled through the cathode-ray tube to meet Goda’s as he watched.
His eyes are a little bloodshot. Goda imagined Shiroyama would have been too psychologically charged to sleep much the first night after his release. Last night Goda had spoken to Kano—whose job as public prosecutor consisted of judging people’s appearances—and when Goda had asked what he thought of Shiroyama, Kano had responded, “He’ll pay lip service but never reveal what’s in his heart—the type who’s convinced what he’s doing is right. Similar to a politician.” To Goda, however, politicians were too far removed from his line of work as a police detective. As he stared at the company man on the TV screen and before he could stop himself, Goda began to wonder what it must be like to work for a private-sector enterprise. Whenever he felt the distance between the police and private citizens loom large, Goda always asked himself what the regular working people he saw outside his window must be thinking. Since being transferred from MPD to this local precinct, he had even more chances for such random ruminations.
“Hey, let’s get going. We’ll be late,” his partner called out, and Goda pulled himself away from the television. Investigation Headquarters had that day gone through another staff increase and turnover, and a surge of detectives from various departments and members of the Mobile CI Unit had mustered. Since the large conference room could no longer accommodate the additional officers, briefings by the chief of First Investigation would now take place in the dojo, starting this morning.
With the safe return of the victim, the weight of the investigation had shifted to legwork, canvassing neighborhoods on foot, and looking into stolen goods; now that they had assembled enough men, a full-on search operation was set to begin, but for those working on the fringes, the big picture of the investigation was still elusive. SIT and the team led by Second and Fourth Investigation tasked with researching the cross sections between and among the corporate and crime-syndicate connections had been using a separate meeting room so their progress remained private, and they did not share their findings during daily morning and evening meetings. This morning’s papers had reported that a mysterious tape was sent to Hinode back in November 1990—a story that was like a bolt from the blue for Goda—but he doubted that it would have any influence on the fieldwork of those tracking the perpetrators.
The narrow entrance to the dojo created a bottleneck as the procession of officers filed up the stairs to the fourth floor. In the jammed passageway, Goda caught sight of the back of the head of a detective a few steps ahead of him and thought it looked familiar. The dense hair, like a thicket of needles, and the crown with its elongated oval shape called to mind a tawashi scrub brush. After Goda entered the dojo, the back of that head entered his view again and, just as the man’s name came to mind, he turned and looked at Goda.
Goda remembered that, when they bumped into each other last year near Kamata Station, the man had mentioned he was now work
ing out of the Kamata Police Department. Handa was his name. A police sergeant from the local precinct who had been at headquarters during the investigation of the murder of an elderly man in Shinagawa in the fall of 1990, neither his personality nor his appearance were very remarkable, and he hadn’t left much of an impression at the time. They were not well enough acquainted to merit the exchange of a greeting, but since Handa had given a slight nod first, Goda returned the gesture. Then Handa’s figure disappeared among the rows of officers crammed into the dojo, and Goda, swept along himself by the throng, forgot about him.
“Attention!”
The command resounded through the hall, and the two hundred or so men fell into line, their feet moving like a centipede. Standing toward the back, Goda couldn’t see what was happening up front—he only realized that the top brass were assembled and Chief Inspector Kanzaki of First Investigation had entered the room when he heard the command, “All bow!”
Then Kanzaki’s voice over the microphone—“Good morning”—reverberated through the wooden floorboards. This was already the fourth time Goda had heard Kanzaki’s voice first thing in the morning.
“As you all know very well already, the case has taken an unexpected turn due to the victim’s release by the crime group and his safe return home. But of course, their release of the victim can only be interpreted as a step toward their next criminal act. I’ll reiterate: this crime is highly premeditated and unusually meticulous.” The excitement in Kanzaki’s voice had been growing with every announcement, so that now his inflections at the end of each word now had built up to a quiet roar. “The crime group demanding a cash payment of six hundred million upon the victim’s release not only indicates the intention to execute their next crime but also that they have some kind of weakness to exploit against Hinode Beer. However, suspecting the victim—the company, that is—of hiding something would be putting the cart before the horse. This morning, some of the newspapers reported on letters and a tape being sent to Hinode in 1990, but I would like you all to ignore any coverage of this sort. The sole mission of the police is to apprehend the perpetrators and prevent their next crime before it occurs.”
Kanzaki went on to say what needed to be mentioned. “It is extraordinary that now, on the fifth day after the incident occurred, there is still not a single eyewitness account. Our first priority is to gather any eyewitness reports in order to determine what vehicle and escape route was used in the crime, so I hope that everyone—especially those joining the investigation today—will put in their best efforts. That’s all from me.”
The briefing was over in three minutes, and after SIT and the forensics teams from Second and Fourth Investigation Divisions left, those who remained were the Search and Inquiry Squad, Evidence Investigation Squad, Vehicle Investigation Squad, and the newcomers—all told around 150 members. The men were promptly divided into new teams, an endless loop playing as Director Miyoshi of Third Violent Crime Investigation conducted roll call and each man responded to his assignment.
As of yesterday evening, Goda’s Vehicle Investigation Squad had completed researching the circumstances at the time of theft of all 350 vehicles that had been reported stolen in the last three months, including having ruled out the three stolen vehicles recorded by a dozen N-system cameras within the neighborhood of Sanno and westward in the timeframe before and after the incident. They were about halfway through the task of reviewing, one by one, suspicious vehicles recorded by high-speed surveillance cameras along the Shuto and Chuo Expressways provided by the Traffic Division. Their next job was to match fingerprints from each of the various cardboard boxes filled with ticket passes collected from highway toll booths.
On the other hand, the victim had said that after regaining consciousness in the moving vehicle, he had not heard the sound of any toll booths, so they were forced to consider the possibility that the crime group had carefully chosen their escape route—passing through the city on roads selected because they would not trigger any N systems and emerging on the Lake Kawaguchiko bypass without using a highway. Thus the Vehicle Investigation Squad expanded the search area, estimating several possible routes from Sanno Ni-chome to Lake Kawaguchiko, and deciding on several intermediary points. Keeping in mind the number of traffic signals and volume of traffic and assuming that the vehicle had been going an average speed of about forty or fifty kilometers per hour, they calculated the approximate time it would have passed these points. They hoped someone had spotted a suspicious vehicle around that time and were set to begin this search today. The specific protocol was twofold: the administrative work required to enlist local police to put up road signs seeking witnesses, and dynamic on-scene investigation and legwork.
Heading toward Fuji, there were a total of six potential origin points for the route that one would eventually have to pass through: the intersection at the entrance to the Ikusabata railway station in the city of Ome; the Juriki intersection in the town of Itsukaichi; the Kawarajuku intersection in Hachioji; the intersection at the entrance to Uenohara High School on Koshu Kaido Road; the Kajino intersection on National Route 413 in the town of Fujino in Kanagawa prefecture; and finally the Higuchi intersection along Route 246 that leads to Gotemba. Driving in the direction of Fuji from any of these intersections would lead to more or less a single road, and since the volume of nighttime traffic on those roads was quite low, if anyone had seen a strange van pass through on the night of the incident, chances were high that they would remember it. This was the reasoning for putting up signs along the roads.
One by one, the names of officers were called to join the ranks of the Vehicle Investigation Squad, and from the head of the line, the squad leader—who was in charge of the ninth unit of Violent Crime—passed out maps. The one Goda’s team received was a road map of the Ome Highway that included the intersection at the entrance to Ikusabata Station—the intersection was marked with an X and the estimated time of passing, “23:30 ± 15.” There was another X about ten kilometers to the west at the Hikawa intersection and one more X at a fork in the road on Route 139 near the prefectural border with Yamanashi. They would be responsible for having road signs put up at these three spots, and for the related dynamic on-scene investigation and legwork.
“This is like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Goda’s partner, an inspector from Crime Prevention, muttered, but Goda didn’t feel the need to complain. Considering the distance to Lake Kawaguchiko and the road conditions late on that snowy night of the 24th, there was a better chance that the perpetrators had driven over the Daibosatsu Pass—a relatively easy ride from Ome Highway, compared to the other routes—and besides, it was a good season to be in Okutama in western Tokyo, with the cherry blossoms coming into bloom.
The Vehicle Investigation Squad was ultimately increased to three times its original size. Now thirty-six men strong, there were eighteen teams, twelve of which were assigned to trace the perpetrators’ possible movements along these six routes; three teams were assigned to investigate the recordings from N-system and speed enforcement cameras, and the remaining three were to check the toll booth ticket passes. The meeting was adjourned after less than ten minutes. The Search and Inquiry Squad, where half of the new members had been allocated, still awaited their team assignments and instructions from the top. And the Evidence Investigation Squad, which had also received a large influx, likewise awaited instructions before commencing the task of pinpointing where the food items consumed by the victim during his confinement had been purchased. It was not by chance that Goda noticed Handa again among the latter group. Quite suddenly, Handa had turned to look over at him.
While the rest of the squad members were taking notes, heads bowed, only one man had raised his eyes and was slowly looking around, as if casing his surroundings. When his gaze met Goda’s, he instantly looked away, but in that moment, Goda felt like Handa’s gaze had pierced him right in the gut.
Why did he do that? Was it just hi
s imagination? No, he definitely looked over here. Goda dredged up his dim memories of Handa from Investigation Headquarters at the Shinagawa Police Department in the fall of 1990. Back then, during morning and evening meetings Handa had always kept his head down—he was an unremarkable detective whom Goda had rarely seen chatting with colleagues. On the random occasions when Goda happened to see him on the platform at Aomono-yokocho Station, Handa was always reading a horseracing newspaper. He’d had one in hand last year when Goda ran into him in front of Kamata Station. The guy must be quite the racing enthusiast . . . That was the extent of the insight Goda could conjure about the man’s character, but then he recalled another matter. In the course of a murder case in Shinagawa of an old man who liked to wander, Handa himself had strayed from his assigned but dead-end territory and was later fired from headquarters for deviating from the investigation. On the morning when that happened, Goda had passed him on the stairs at the Shinagawa Police Department, Handa had suddenly lunged for him and tried to grab him.
Goda tried to remember why Handa had done such a thing, but it was beyond him. Handa’s inscrutably enraged expression hovered in the fringes of his memory until Goda finally convinced himself he was reading into things too much. And yet a visceral sense of unease remained on the surface of his skin, and his mind felt fuzzy as well. Handa’s gaze, whenever it was directed at him—on the stairs five years ago, or when they bumped into each other in front of Kamata Station, or today, for that matter—felt a bit too persistent, and it triggered a deep, instinctive ache that was well outside of the ordinary.
After spending nearly half the day distracted by recollections of Handa’s eyes, Goda concluded that he was the one who was going off his hinges. Five years ago, Goda had been the kind of man who barely acknowledged other people, even when the veins were popping out of their temples right in front of him, but now here he was latching onto this person’s behaviors and expressions, and indulging in pointless contemplation. Something is wrong, something about me is out of order, he mumbled, and before even starting to wonder how long he had been feeling this way, he repeated to himself, It’s all right. You’ll feel better as long as you stay focused on the investigation.
Lady Joker, Volume 1 Page 55
