Soul Cage--A Mystery

by Tetsuya Honda

  Makio Tobe was the one common thread that linked them. She wasn’t sure how much he and his murky history had to do with the Takaoka murder case, but the fact that no one had seen him since December 3, the day of Takaoka’s death, had to mean something.

  On December 11, Sergeant Ishikura was dispatched to unearth information on the late Kazutoshi Naito. By speaking to several people who’d known Naito, Ishikura was able to establish that Kenichi Takaoka of Middle Rokugo was almost a dead ringer for Naito. Ishikura also identified the firm where Naito was employed when he committed his suicide: it was a subcontractor for Nakabayashi Construction.

  Ishikura also paid a visit to Kawaguchi police station, which handled the Naito family car crash thirteen years ago, and was able to sweet-talk them into showing him the accident report. Comparing the fingerprints in the accident report with those of the severed left hand in the minivan proved that Kenichi Takaoka of Middle Rokugo and Kazutoshi Naito of Umeda were one and the same person.

  There was just one problem.

  According to the family register, Kazutoshi Naito was dead. The male victim whose death they were investigating had lived his life as Kenichi Takaoka. That was who everyone had believed him to be. For reasons of convenience as much as anything, the task force decided to continue to refer to him by that name. Mainly because she had been first to spot the identity switch, Reiko would have preferred to use the Naito name, but in the end, did it really matter much? The victim was Kenichi Takaoka. No need to make an issue of it.

  Reiko identified fatherhood as a common theme that ran through the lives of both Kazutoshi Naito and his subsequent alter ego Kenichi Takaoka.

  The man had abandoned his original identity so that his sister Kimie could get a payout for his supposed death. The sum involved, they discovered, was twenty-six million yen. It was needed to fund hospital care for Yuto, the man’s quadriplegic son. The fact that Kimie was now taking care of the boy supported this interpretation of events.

  Takaoka subsequently became a sort of surrogate father to Kosuke Mishima. His motivation wasn’t hard to understand. Having shed his old identity, he had to stay away from his own son; instead, he gave Kosuke everything that he couldn’t give to his own flesh and blood. Everything that Kenichi Takaoka did was driven by the same powerful sense of fatherhood. Reiko was certain of it.

  But what was the connection between that and Makio Tobe? What sort of situation had Tobe got into that he had to kill Takaoka?

  So far they had no evidence that Tobe stood to gain from the murder of Kenichi Takaoka. If anything, it was the opposite: Takaoka’s death had shone a light on his identity swap, which looked like the first step in a trail leading all the way to the door of the Tajima-gumi. Why would Tobe want to set off a chain reaction that would bring the TMPD down on their heads? Then again, given the kind of man Makio Tobe was, he probably didn’t get unduly torn up about the unintended consequences of his actions.

  The man had vanished, leaving behind one of the victim’s severed hands and the vehicle he’d used to transport the body. Seeing Takaoka’s murder as spur-of-the-moment, rather than a calculated killing, made more sense.

  Everything in the man’s history pointed that way. The product of incest or not, Tobe was still the child of the first-generation boss of the Tajima-gumi. That hadn’t been enough to guarantee his spot in the Nakabayashi Group, the gang’s front company, and he’d been kicked downstairs to Kinoshita Construction, a corporate minnow by comparison. The man was a notorious weakling who probably didn’t have what it took to be as a proper gangster.

  He’d ended up carving out a niche for himself at Kinoshita as a low-grade swindler who exploited his talent as a womanizer to run insurance scams. He worked at Kinoshita for years. How did Tobe and the fake Takaoka first cross paths? At what point did Kosuke Mishima get involved? What about Michiko Nakagawa?

  If fatherhood was the driving force behind Takaoka’s actions, perhaps trying to protect Kosuke was what got him in trouble with Tobe?

  Tobe and Kosuke Mishima first come in contact with one another nine years ago. Tobe had either murdered Mishima’s father and made it look like an accident, or forced the man to take his own life. Whichever it was, Tobe was responsible for the death of his father.

  Maybe that was what this was about.… Maybe Kosuke was planning to let the world in on the dirty secret of what Tobe was up to. No, that was impossible. When Kosuke’s father died nine years ago, Kosuke was only eleven. He could hardly have figured out the mechanics of insurance payouts at that age. Let’s say that he’d recently started asking questions?

  But why nine years later? Why now?

  Try another tack. What if Michiko Nakagawa acted as the trigger? Michiko’s father died just a couple of months ago. The girl was already nineteen. That was old enough for her to be suspicious. But how could she have contacted Kosuke Mishima—or even known that his father had been killed in a similar accident to hers? It was much more likely that Kosuke initiated contact.…

  What brought the two of them together? There must have been something.…

  Whatever it was, they met and became increasingly suspicious about the “accidents” both their fathers were involved in.

  Then what? How did one get from there to Takaoka’s murder?

  Perhaps the two youngsters had approached Takaoka for advice. What would Takaoka have said to them? Takaoka probably knew all about what Tobe was up to. How would he have acted?

  Takaoka took being a father very seriously. Did he take it seriously enough to consider exposing Tobe’s crimes? But exposing Tobe would also expose Takaoka’s own false identity and nullify the new life insurance policy he’d taken out as Kenichi Takaoka, preventing his sister from getting any benefits in the event of his death. The police would also go after him for stealing the family register of the real Kenichi Takaoka, which was a serious crime.… Or would the statute of limitations have already expired on that one?

  Takaoka’s only remaining connection to his quadriplegic son, Yuto, was via the insurance policy of which Kimie was the designated beneficiary. As a father, reckoned Reiko, he wouldn’t want to jeopardize that by exposing Tobe’s crimes.

  Okay, where did that hypothesis lead? To Takaoka choosing to protect Tobe by persuading the two youngsters to back off?

  It was doable enough. All Takaoka needed to do was feign ignorance of what Tobe was up to. Had something happened to prevent him from allaying the youngsters’ suspicions with a simple bluff?

  What?

  Reiko had no idea.

  * * *

  The top brass restructured the investigation around three priority areas and made some major changes in the assignment of personnel.

  Firstly, they decided to place Kimie Naito, Kosuke Mishima, and Michiko Nakagawa under twenty-four-hour surveillance, with at least one pair of investigators watching them all the time. That meant two sets of two investigators, each pair covering one twelve-hour shift, for each of the three subjects. Reiko and Ioka were one of the teams assigned to Michiko Nakagawa.

  Twenty-six detectives, including Kusaka and Kikuta, were assigned to the second priority, which was to locate Tobe. They interviewed his girlfriends, visited insurance companies, made the rounds of all the pubs and clubs he frequented, and talked to his friends. They made inquiries in Middle Rokugo, where the body had been dismembered. They also put under surveillance the residence of Miyuki Ogawa, Tobe’s biological mother; the headquarters of the Tajima-gumi; and the offices of the Nakabayashi Group.

  Last priority was the search of the river and the riverbank. With so much time having elapsed, it looked like the least promising aspect of the whole investigation.

  Investigations, however, have a habit of defying expectations, and, sure enough, on December 15, one of the search teams discovered what looked like the torso of Kenichi Takaoka. They found it in the river around four kilometers downriver from where the van had been parked.

  The first Reiko heard of it was when Imaizu
mi called and ordered her over to the forensic pathology department of Tomei University Hospital. The autopsy was already under way when she arrived. Around ten people were in the dissecting room watching, including the Special Assistant to the Director of the Ministry of Justice, the autopsy recorder, the public prosecutor, and a representative from the Mobile Forensics unit. Director Hashizume, Lieutenant Kusaka, and his partner Sergeant Satomura were sitting on a bench in the hallway outside.

  “Sorry I’m late. What’s the story here?”

  Kusaka, who was a bit of a gadget head, took his precious digital camera out of his briefcase, clicked a few buttons on it, and passed it to Reiko.

  She scrolled through the pictures of the torso.

  The torso was a ghastly, livid white—probably because all the blood had drained from it—and the head and limbs were gone. The head had been cut off just below the jawline, leaving the neck in place, while the arms had been severed at the shoulder and the legs at the hip joint. In shape, it was like an elongated pentagon.

  “It’s in surprisingly good condition,” Kusaka volunteered.

  He was right. It was far better preserved than Reiko had expected.

  Hang on! There’s something odd about this body.

  Assuming it had been dumped in the river on the night of the third, it had spent twelve days in the water. That was ample time for the fish to start eating the thing.

  There’s no sign of any scavenger activity on the body. How come?

  Reiko felt a vague sense of unease. Still, she could hardly resolve any doubts she had based on a few tiny images on the back screen of a camera.

  She handed the camera back to Kusaka.

  “Remarkable lack of damage.”

  “It’s possible that for much of the time it was in the water it was protected somehow. For example, it could have been wrapped in plastic sheeting.”

  Reiko grabbed the camera out of Kusaka’s hands as he was about to switch it off.

  “Just a minute,” she said. “Did you notice this part of the neck here? This big gouge mark?”

  A semicircle of skin on the left of the pharynx was missing.

  “I see it, yes. Wonder what caused it. Looks like the work of fish to me.”

  Reiko grunted noncommittally.

  The autopsy ended after ninety minutes. The Metropolitan Police crime lab sent over the DNA data they had extracted from the various crime scenes so that a DNA comparison could be made.

  The chief pathologist withdrew to his office after the autopsy to draw up his report. Meanwhile, Fujishiro, Special Assistant to the Director of the Ministry of Justice, came out into the corridor to talk them through the findings.

  “We found no wounds on the torso that could have been the cause of death,” he explained. “The analysis of the stomach contents is still ongoing, but judging by the condition of the organs, we can also rule out poison as the cause of death.”

  “Did the torso’s blood type match with the other blood samples?” interrupted Hashizume, scratching his temples.

  Fujishiro and Hashizume both had equivalent ranks, but in this particular instance Fujishiro had the greater authority.

  “The basic blood type is the same,” replied Fujishiro. “We can’t confirm that they’re from the same person until we’ve finished the DNA test on the torso.”

  “Is there a rush on dismembered bodies here today? You can’t turn around the test any faster?”

  “Let us focus on doing our job right, Hashizume. Your job is to just sit tight and wait for the results. If the DNA doesn’t match, that’ll mean we’ve got a second dead body on our hands. In that case, I’ll recommend that the chief of Homicide set up a second task force in Kamata.”

  “Like hell you will! That precinct can’t handle another goddamn task force. The place will implode! God knows, the quality of the food the canteen serves is vile enough already. The thought of living off rice balls from the convenience store until we’ve cleared this case is getting me down.”

  Reiko was very much on Fujishiro’s side, though she couldn’t come out and say so.

  Why would a high-ranking civil servant care about your stupid stomach?

  Oblivious to his own lack of tact, Hashizume made a great show of examining his watch.

  “When will we get them?”

  “What?”

  “What? The DNA test results, of course.”

  It was ten past four.

  “The crime scene DNA data was delivered around one hour ago,” Fujishiro replied. “My guess is they’ll need till midnight to get a result.”

  Hashizume scratched the crown of his head.

  “That’s no damn good. No damn good at all. I need it by nine. Can you get it to me by nine?”

  “In six hours? Out of the question.”

  “Last time they did it in seven.”

  “That was the central crime lab at TMPD headquarters.”

  “Big deal. Get them to do it an hour faster. They can do it, if they try.”

  “What kind of idiot are you? What’s ‘trying’ got to do with anything? You want the technicians to sing songs to the PCR equipment and the automatic analyzer so the machines will complete the job faster? You’ve no idea what you’re talking about, so I advise you to keep your stupid mouth shut.”

  Ioka, who was standing behind Reiko, burst out laughing.

  Hashizume wasn’t going to give up.

  “You need to think about the investigators working the case. We haven’t got a cause of death, and the DNA analysis is going to take hours. If we get your report in the middle of the night, it’ll be too late for our evening meeting.”

  “Then do your meeting later.”

  “I can’t do that. After the general meeting for all the investigators, we have the executive meeting. The executive meeting often runs all night.”

  Well, that’s a lie. Besides, you’re usually asleep during it.

  “Let me lay out the bottom line: we can’t do what we can’t do.”

  “Yes you can. I know you can.”

  Reiko was beginning to be impressed by Hashizume’s sheer bullheadedness, when someone tapped her on the shoulder.

  “I’m going back to Kamata,” Kusaka said. “Call me if anything comes up.”

  He walked briskly down the corridor.

  Watching this Punch-and-Judy show all evening’s not my idea of fun either, you know.

  But Reiko felt strangely reluctant to leave.

  What was bugging her?

  It was something about the photographs of the torso. She felt as though a gray mist had rolled in and enveloped her mind in murk.

  * * *

  Fujishiro obviously won the pissing contest with Hashizume. It was two in the morning before the DNA test results arrived from Tomei University Hospital.

  “About time,” grumbled Hashizume, yawning. “That stuck-up bastard.”

  The rest of the executive team ignored him and skimmed through the report.

  The DNA test proved that the torso belonged to the same person as the blood from the garage, the blood in the minivan, and the severed left hand.

  The report on the torso was along the lines of what Fujishiro had told them in the hospital.

  No wound that could have caused death was found. There were no significant abnormalities in the internal organs. It was suggested that the cause of death was “something other than suffocation or blood loss.” Absence of congestion or anemia in the internal organs excluded poisoning, strangulation, or choking; beating, which would result in massive bleeding from the head, was also ruled out.

  What other means of killing are we left with, then?

  In the section about distinctive physical marks, the report mentioned “scars consistent with cholecystectomy for acute calculous cholecystitis”—scars left by an operation to remove gallstones, in layman’s terms.

  As far as Reiko could see, the report didn’t attempt to explain the reasons behind the semicircular patch of gouged-out skin on the left
of the pharynx that she had noticed in the photographs. The pathologist had noted its location and measured it. The diameter of the semicircle, which was seven centimeters long, was flush with the top of the severed neck; the gouge was 1.2 centimeters in depth.

  “Anyone have any thoughts about this missing patch of skin here?” she said.

  None of the five other people there—Director Hashizume; Captain Imaizumi; Lieutenant Kusaka; Captain Kawada, the head of detectives at Kamata; and Lieutenant Tanimoto, from the Kamata Major Crimes Unit—bothered to reply. They were probably just too tired.

  “Captain, look. You see how the skin’s been gouged out at the throat? What do you think it means?”

  Imaizumi’s only response was a grunt. The copy of the report in front of him was open to the page about stomach contents, and he made no effort to turn to the relevant photograph.

  “What’s your take, Lieutenant Kusaka?”

  “Got to be fish, I’d say.”

  “Wouldn’t there be some mention of tooth marks with fish?”

  “The skin’s so macerated that the tooth marks dissolved.”

  “If that’s what had happened, the report would say so.”

  “No. Like I said, skin maceration would eliminate any telltale signs.”

  This is a waste of time. Everyone’s worn out. Their brains aren’t firing on all cylinders.

  Reiko couldn’t come up with an explanation either. She was as hopeless as the rest of them.

  * * *

  After a night’s sleep, Reiko had an idea.

  The next morning, as soon as the meeting ended, she made a copy of the text of the autopsy report, scanned and printed all the photographs on a high-quality photo printer, and put it all into an envelope.

  “Hey Ioka, the post office is in that direction, right?”

  “Shall I take you?” said Ioka, with a smirk.

  “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  Reiko went to the post office in Kamata and sent the package by express mail. Then she phoned Dr. Kunioku, her friend in the Tokyo Medical Examiner’s office.

  “Hello, Doctor? It’s me.”