Soul Cage--A Mystery

by Tetsuya Honda

  It was Kameari Central Hospital. A large sign in the lobby listed all the different departments: internal medicine, surgery, dermatology, pediatrics, cardiology, and so on.

  “You think she’s sick?” asked Nomura.

  “You guess is as good as mine,” Hayama replied.

  Without stopping at the outpatients’ reception counter, Kimie made straight for the elevator.

  “She’s probably visiting someone,” Nomura muttered.

  Hayama badly wanted to tell Nomura to shut up. As what Himekawa referred to as “a homicide detective in an elite numbered unit,” he should just come out and say it, despite his partner being older and of higher rank. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. In situations like this, he’d just clam up and let things be. It made life easier.

  Kimie got out on the fourth floor and registered at the nurse’s station. They sneaked a look at what she’d written in the register.

  Name: Kimie Naito

  Patient visited: Yuto Naito

  Relationship: Aunt

  Kimie vanished into room 505. As far as the two men could tell from their vantage point in the passageway, it was a six-bed ward. Hayama noticed the name Yuto Naito in the list of patients on the door. He rolled his eyes at Nomura, and the two of them strolled casually on by.

  “Kimie herself isn’t married,” whispered Nomura. “If she has a nephew, it has to belong to her brother or sister.”

  “I’ll see what I can learn.”

  Hayama left Nomura to keep an eye on the door of the ward and headed back to the nurse’s station.

  There was a woman sitting behind the counter. From the number of bands on her cap, Hayama guessed that she was the head nurse. She had a narrow face, looked the nervous type, was probably in her midthirties.

  “Excuse me, miss?”

  To keep things discreet, Hayama held his badge up right against his chest when he showed it to her. The woman nodded rather tensely and asked what he wanted.

  “You have a patient called Yuto Naito in room 505? How old is he?”

  The woman leaned over the counter and looked down the corridor toward the ward. For a while, she didn’t reply. She was probably wondering how much she was allowed to tell a cop who hadn’t flashed a warrant.

  “He’s eighteen.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  She hesitated a moment.

  “He was in a car accident.”

  She sighed. Hayama guessed that the boy must be in a bad way. The nurse looked him straight in the eye. She’d made up her mind to be frank.

  “Yuto was transferred to this hospital around four years ago. He’s been in the state he’s in now for thirteen years. He’s conscious but unable to talk: he’s quadriplegic and mute.”

  Hayama did some quick math in his head. The accident happened thirteen years ago. Yuto would have been five at the time and Kimie Naito thirty-six; Kenichi Takaoka would have been thirty, Kosuke Mishima seven, Tadaharu Mishima thirty-six, Michiko Nakagawa six, and Noboru Nakagawa thirty-two.

  “Do you know any of the details of the accident?”

  “I don’t. As I said, Yuto was in a different hospital back then.”

  “Do you know which?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t. For information like that, you’re better off contacting our administration department.”

  That was fair enough. Hayama didn’t want to push his luck. It was time to step back.

  “I understand. Thanks very much.”

  He went back to a small rest area just off the passage and updated Nomura on what he’d found out.

  “I’m heading for the nearest library to see what I can find out about the car crash,” he said. “You stick with Kimie.”

  Nomura’s mouth turned down at the corners.

  “Yes, sir,” he muttered.

  * * *

  The nearest library was about a kilometer from the hospital. The old newspapers were available in miniaturized bound format. Hayama pulled out all the volumes from thirteen years ago, piled them on a reading table, and began trawling through them all. As long as he limited his search to accidents featured on the local city news page, his task was not that forbidding.

  Yuto Naito, five years old. Yuto Naito, five years old …

  As he was skimming through one of the volumes, his phone rang. It was Nomura, telling him that Kimie was on the move. He ordered Nomura to call him if she stopped off somewhere or else when she get home, then hung up and returned to flipping the old newspapers.

  Yuto Naito, five years old. Yuto Naito, five years old …

  He found what he was looking for in well under an hour: it was an article from the morning edition of Monday, May 28.

  At around about 5:45 p.m. on May 27, Kazutoshi Naito (31), a construction worker from Umeda, Adachi Ward, Tokyo, was driving along the Kawaguchi section of the expressway in Saitama Prefecture when he lost control of his car. It skidded onto the median where it flipped over. There were two passengers in the car: Asako Naito (26), who died as a result of the severe head injuries she sustained, and the Naitos’ only son, Yuto (5), who is in critical condition. Kazutoshi himself suffered serious injuries to his chest. Eyewitnesses report seeing a dump truck with a Saitama number sideswipe the Naitos’ car, causing the loss of control. The Kawaguchi police are looking for the driver of the truck.

  Hayama took careful note of the age of the people involved. Kazutoshi Naito was thirty-one and Asako twenty-six.

  The man probably blamed himself, not the truck that sideswiped him, for his wife’s death and his son’s quadriplegia. Where was he now? What was he doing? What sort of state was he in?

  Hayama went out into the lobby of the library, flipped open his phone, and called one of his preprogrammed numbers.

  “Himekawa here.”

  “This is Hayama.”

  “Hi, Nori. What’s up?”

  “Kimie Naito went on a walkabout this afternoon. She visited her nephew, Yuto, in Kameari General Hospital. He’s eighteen and quadriplegic. He was in a car crash thirteen years ago. I’m at the library now. I went through the old newspapers. According to them, Yuto’s parents were a Kazutoshi and an Asako Naito, but Asako, the wife, was killed in the crash. Kazutoshi himself was badly hurt. I’m guessing that Kazutoshi is Kimie’s younger brother.”

  “How old was Kazutoshi at the time of the accident?”

  Typical Himekawa, thought Hayama. He’d dumped a ton of information on her, but she’d absorbed and processed it all at high speed.

  “Thirty-one. Which would make him forty-four now.”

  “Did the papers say anything about his job?”

  “Just a second.” Hayama checked his notes. “Yes, he worked in construction.”

  “Really.”

  Himekawa went quiet. Hayama knew what that meant: she was thinking. He pictured her gazing off into the middle distance with that strange look that managed to combine serenity and tension. Like a leopard sizing up its prey.

  “Nori,” she said abruptly. “Call Captain Imaizumi and tell him to look into that relationship. You’ve still got time to nip into the city office and do some checking.”

  Hayama looked at his watch. It was 4:28 p.m.

  “What exactly do you want me to check up on?”

  He heard a snort at the other end of the line.

  “If Kazutoshi Naito’s alive or not, of course.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My hunch is that we’ll find that Kazutoshi Naito’s dead.”

  A chill of excitement shot up Hayama’s spine.

  “Got you.”

  Hayama ended the call. He was about to get in touch with Imaizumi at the task force HQ, when he had an incoming call. It was Nomura.

  “Yes, hi.”

  “It’s me, Nomura. I followed Kimie back to the restaurant. When we got there, I spotted a suspicious person lurking behind one of the nearby electricity poles. Any guesses who?”

  “No,” said Hayama.

  “
Kosuke Mishima,” Nomura announced. “How does he even know where Kimie Naito lives?”

  “Any direct contact?”

  “No, Kimie didn’t even notice him.”

  “Did Mishima make you?”

  “I don’t think so. The guy’s never seen me before. We walked right past each other and there was no reaction on his part.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “He just sort of looked at the restaurant a while and then wandered off, climbed into a little truck parked some ways down the street, and drove off.”

  “You’re certain it was Mishima.”

  “Yep. He was wearing an orange down jacket with a stain on the right shoulder. I took down the license number of the truck, so we can look that up too.”

  Hayama wasn’t sure what was happening. He just knew that the case was gaining momentum. He felt it in his bones.

  “I’ll come and pick you up. You need to attend the evening meeting at the station tonight. I’ll call ahead and get them to send a relief to take over the stakeout.”

  “Very good,” replied Nomura. The note of relief in his voice was audible.

  5

  The atmosphere at that night’s task force meeting was electric.

  Reiko dropped the first bombshell.

  “To sum up, then, we think it a very real possibility that the victim in this case—the man whom we believed to be Kenichi Takaoka—is not Kenichi Takaoka after all. The Kenichi Takaoka who resided in South Hanahata—Takaoka’s address prior to Middle Rokugo, according to his resident’s card—was a weak, bookish boy who was bullied at school, worked at a series of different office jobs after university, and was selling English-language textbooks when he was finally evicted from the family home. When I showed Yuji Sawai, the son of the family who ran a local restaurant, our photograph of Kenichi Takaoka, he insisted we had the wrong man.”

  Reiko was delighted at the impact her report was having. The top brass were clearly having trouble getting their heads around the implications.

  “So, if the dead Kenichi Takaoka isn’t the real Kenichi Takaoka, then who on earth is he? We have some interesting information to share with you on that very point. Officer Hayama, would you do the honors?”

  Hayama got to his feet.

  “I found out today that Kimie Naito has, or had, a younger brother, Kazutoshi Naito. Kazutoshi died at the age of thirty-two, a year after a car crash that killed his wife and made his son a quadriplegic. From a visit to the Nishiarai Police Station in Adachi Ward, I learned that Kazutoshi Naito committed suicide on April twenty-ninth, twelve years ago. He hung himself on the first floor of a building that was under construction. The developer was … Nakabayashi Construction.”

  The room exploded with surprised chatter. Reiko was pleased at the effect they were causing.

  “The Nishiarai police found nothing suspicious and handled Kazutoshi’s death as a straightforward suicide. I plan to go back tomorrow and take an in-depth look at the case file and any other available documentation.” Hayama paused for a moment. “I also need to report that Sergeant Nomura witnessed a man he believes was Kosuke Mishima hanging around in the vicinity of Kimie Naito’s restaurant. Either someone here told Mishima where Kimie lives, or he already knew her address.”

  Kusaka put up his hand. Imaizumi nodded permission to speak.

  “I did mention Kimie Naito’s name in the course of my interview with Mishima, but I said nothing about her living in Kitasenju. Captain Kawada took his first statement back on the first day, but we didn’t yet know about the connection to Kimie Naito when they spoke. Now we need to find out if anyone else here has had direct contact with Kosuke Mishima.”

  “Well?” growled Imaizumi.

  No one said anything.

  “Good,” Kusaka continued. “Mishima claimed not to have heard the name. There was nothing suspicious in his manner when he denied knowing her. He could have been pretending, but I’m more inclined to think that he found out about her some time after our interview.”

  Imaizumi cocked his head.

  “Any ideas, Kusaka?”

  “Yes, sir. As I reported at a previous meeting, Mishima wasn’t entirely sure if he had got any insurance-related documents from Takaoka or not. He hasn’t contacted me about it, but assuming he’s found them, he could well have found Kimie Naito’s address, since she’s the beneficiary of one of the policies.”

  Reiko was on tenterhooks. Was Kusaka about to steal her thunder? Not this time, apparently, as he brought his remarks to an end there.

  “Thank you, Kusaka. Hayama, have you said everything you need?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Reiko raised her hand.

  “Yes, Himekawa?”

  Reiko got to her feet for the second time that evening.

  “The Kazutoshi Naito whom Hayama mentioned just now lost his wife and, to all intents and purposes, his son, in a car crash thirteen years ago, then took his own life a year later. The first thing we need to check up on is whether Kazutoshi’s death triggered any life insurance payouts. The second thing is the chronology of events: Kazutoshi Naito’s suicide and Kenichi Takaoka moving to his present Middle Rokugo address happened very close together. We also have grounds to think that our Kenichi Takaoka was not, in fact, the real Kenichi Takaoka. Putting all that together, I believe that the victim, whom we are referring to as Kenichi Takaoka…”

  The room was hanging on her every word. Reiko took a moment to savor all the attention.

  “… could well be Kazutoshi Naito.”

  “I object.”

  Kusaka had his hand in the air.

  “What are you basing your theory on?” he asked.

  What an idiotic question! I just told you.

  “Why do I think Kenichi Takaoka is not the real Kenichi Takaoka? Okay, consider the fact that the fake Takaoka arranged for Kimie Naito—someone with whom he had zero contact—to receive a fifty-million-yen payout on his death. People normally choose a family member as their beneficiary, very occasionally people opt for someone to whom they have a very special obligation. We don’t know how the fake Takaoka justified his choice of beneficiary to the life-insurance company, but if Takaoka is in fact Kazutoshi Naito, then everything falls neatly into place. Now, do you remember what Yuji Sawai told me about the South Hanahata Kenichi Takaoka? That he’d been harassed so badly he looked ready to commit suicide at any time. Who reduced Takaoka to that state? The Nakabayashi Group.”

  Nobody was sticking up their hand to make silly objections now. Reiko felt that her big reveal was proceeding nicely.

  “Let me throw out a possible scenario. The real Kenichi Takaoka takes his own life—maybe he hangs himself, we don’t know—in the family house in South Hanahata. Somebody working for Nakabayashi Real Estate comes across the body, transports it to one of Nakabayashi Construction’s building sites and does whatever ‘stage dressing’ is needed. Kenichi Takaoka’s death would have been a major spanner in the works for Nakabayashi’s ongoing attempts to buy the land. They were desperate to keep his death under wraps. They decided that the best way to do that was to keep Takaoka ‘alive’ by putting someone else in his place. That ‘someone else’ was Kazutoshi Naito.

  “Yuto, Kazutoshi’s son, was a quadriplegic after the crash. The medical-care costs for him during that first year were probably astronomical. That’s something we need to look into, as with Kazutoshi’s financial situation. For now, let’s assume that Kazutoshi was in dire financial straits. He might well have toyed with the idea of committing suicide to provide a decent chunk of money to his sister, Kimie, and his boy.”

  She examined the faces of the brass at the table at the front. It was fine. She could keep going.

  “The Nakabayashi Group cleverly exploited that situation. Substituting Kenichi Takaoka’s body, they made it appear that Kazutoshi Naito had committed suicide on their building site. His death triggers the payout of Kazutoshi’s life insurance to his sister, Kimie. As next of kin, Kimie was probably
the one who had to identify the body. Obviously she knew that the corpse was not that of her brother, but she chose not to say anything. That suggests to me that Kazutoshi had briefed her about his scheme in advance.

  “There was something else that had to be dealt with—transferring Takaoka’s family register to Kazutoshi to provide him with a viable new identity. My guess is that Nakabayashi took care of this in return for Kazutoshi helping them get their hands on Takaoka’s house for their development project. Kazutoshi then ‘became’ Kenichi Takaoka and started his new life in Middle Rokugo. As Kenichi Takaoka, he witnessed the ‘accidental’ death of Tadaharu Mishima, whose son, Kosuke, he later got to know.… Note that there is an age difference of just two years between Kosuke Mishima and Yuto Naito. For the fake Takaoka to want to help little Kosuke, bewildered at the loss of his father, strikes me as the most natural thing in the world…”

  Uh-oh. Why’s Director Hashizume leaning forward like that? This doesn’t look good.

  “Kazutoshi Naito, or Kenichi Takaoka as he now was, then took out a new life insurance policy, and once again designated Ki—”

  “Himekawa, hold it. Just stop.”

  Damn. End of the line?

  “Yes, sir?”

  “With you, it’s always the same. There you go, building more of your castles in Spain.”

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “The circumstantial evidence we currently have cannot support your theory.”

  “Oh, I think it does, sir. Our Takaoka is not the real Takaoka; Kimie Naito had a brother around the same age as the real Takaoka; both the real Takaoka and our fake Takaoka were under tremendous financial pressures. And then you have Nakabayashi, like a great spider whose web entangles them all.”

  “Easy on the metaphors, Himekawa.”

  “Sorry, sir. But if we pull together all the leads we currently have, you see—”

  “We need to give it more time. This is all premature.”

  “It’s simple. All we need to do is to find people who knew Kazutoshi Naito and show them a photograph of Kenichi Takaoka. That’s the quickest way to prove that Takaoka is really Naito.”