by Nick Tanner
Once again Mori sank into deep thought. The questioning was hardly revealing any startling information or uncovering any obvious lines of enquiry. ‘Just a few more questions, sir, if you don’t mind?’
‘Fine,’ replied Yamada as if the talking was therapeutically helping. Not that he was saying that much.
‘You mentioned about a merger. Do you know who the other company was?’
‘No, no I don’t.’
‘And were these talks going smoothly – there weren’t any problems or anything?’
‘Look, I told you,’ Yamada suddenly spat back angrily. ‘I don’t know anything about her work. I just don’t…’ he broke down unexpectedly into a series of unending sobs.
The two policemen sat in silence as they watched Yamada, head now in his hands, slump onto the kotatsu, knocking his whiskey tumbler onto the floor as he did so. Mori bent down to pick it up. Luckily Yamada had already drained the glass. He topped it up for good measure and offered it back to Yamada who downed it in one. ‘Gomenasai,’ he apologised, his voice becoming more slurred. The drink and the emotion were finally hitting home. ‘Gomen- I…’
‘We understand, sir - just a few more questions, if you don’t mind, and then we’ll leave you in peace. We apologise for the trouble. Believe me we understand that this can’t be easy for you, but anything you can tell us might just help us catch the killer of your wife sooner rather than later. Do you understand?’
Yamada nodded in pitiful agreement.
‘You said about her brother. Did she have any other family?’
‘Her mother and father live in Kawasaki, but aside from them there's no-one else.’
‘No cousins or anything like that?’
‘None that I ever met.’
‘Okay, sir, and your neighbours. How would you describe them?’
‘We don’t have much to do with them. It’s a quiet street.’
Once again Mori was disappointed at the lack of any clear lead. ‘No disputes or problems?’
‘No, not really?’
Mori gave Sakamoto a despairing look, simultaneously wondering why it was he, Mori, who was asking all the questions.
‘One more, sir and then we’ll be going.’ He looked briefly at his hands before he asked the question. ‘How would you describe your relationship with your wife?’
Yamada looked up - the anger of before once again filling his face. ‘My relationship? Why’s that important?’
‘We of course need to eliminate you from the enquiry. It’s all part of the procedure.’
Yamada seemed hardly mollified but answered the question nonetheless. ‘I suppose we are just like any other couple. We work hard, try to save money when we can - you know, the usual.’
Mori was getting quite a clear picture of 'the usual'. It sounded quite bleak, but he recognised it as a fairly typical set-up. He’d noted, of course, that there were no children. He was grateful for that. At least there wasn’t the need to deal with their loss. ‘No Kids, then?’
‘No. No… we didn’t have any.’
‘Any your wife was, how old?’
‘She’s thirty four.’
‘Right!’ Mori sat back and allowed his mind to drift, although he didn’t really know what he really wanted to think about. His brain felt rusty as if his approaching cold was slowly grinding his thought processes to a halt. He couldn't seem to get going and much to his chagrin Sakamoto wasn't helping at all. He briefly wondered if the lack of kids had been a problem – a cause of friction between them. ‘Her parents – do you see them often?’ he asked instead.
‘Not often – about once a month I’d say. We might meet up for a meal, that sort of thing.’
'One more thing, sir, if you don't mind - your sex life, with your wife-'
'What?'
'Your sex life-'
'I heard you. I just can't believe you asked me that with Eri just...' Once more Yamada broke down. It appeared that he was a man of limited resilience, a bit weedy, a bit feeble thought Mori on reflection.
Mori decided that he’d seen and heard enough, at least for the moment. It was clear that Yamada, between his tears, had no light to shine on the whole sorry mess. However, before the two men left they had a quick look around the rest of the house. They asked if she kept a personal journal, she didn’t, and checked to see if she had kept any unusual appointments, she hadn’t. The main bedroom appeared particularly unremarkable. The whole house appeared to be particularly unremarkable. They poked around the cupboards much to Yamada’s consternation but they found nothing of note. They asked if she had her own laptop, PC or ipad, but she didn’t – not unique to her anyway. They left the house with no clues whatsoever as to why she might have been so tragically murdered. As he walked back to the car he couldn’t help thinking that he’d stumbled into yet another indeterminable case where nothing at all seemed obvious.
‘What do you think about all that, sir?’ he asked Sakamoto not before taking out a packet of cigarettes from his inside jacket pocket and lighting up. ‘There doesn’t seem to be much motive, does there?’
Sakamoto, who’d remained surprisingly silent throughout the whole of the interview considered the question quickly. ‘He’s guilty. It’s obvious to me. He looked deeply uncomfortable in there, especially when you asked about their relationship.’
‘I suggest we start digging into her life a bit more, sir, before we jump in and charge him. Get the team interviewing her colleagues at work and first thing tomorrow we could start with the family, the brother and parents and see what we can dig up.’
‘I think you are wasting your time, Sergeant. I’d just get Yamada down to the station and start questioning him thoroughly. Put the squeeze on till the pips begin to squeak.’
‘You really think-’
‘Don’t question me Mori. I’m not Inspector Saito!’
‘No, sir, but all the same I think it appropriate to ask further questions of the immediate circle of work, family and friends, although I’ll instruct the team to bring him in if that’s what you want.’
‘It’s what I want,’ instructed Sakamoto marching off in front of Mori to the cars.
Mori once more felt his throat tickling away. It had got steadily worse as the interview had progressed and all he now wanted to do was to get off home and get into a warm bed, perhaps having something hot and soothing before he did so.
He arranged for a uniformed Junsa to stand guard outside Yamada’s house – Yamada was in no fit state at the moment to be dragged in for further questioning in his opinion. To the public at large the Junsa was there for Yamada’s own protection and support.
As he made his way back to the car he saw the unmistakeable sign of snow falling, caught in the yellow glare of the street light. He wrapped his coat tighter around himself and hurried on worried about the incessant tickling within his throat. Also tickling away at him was the feeling that Sakamoto was completely and utterly wrong on this. He was also quite sure that Inspector Saito would have approached the whole case entirely differently.
4 - In which the snow falls…
Friday 31st December 0.05am
The snow continued to fall - steadily. Uniform sized flakes in an almost uniform formation in a dead-fall emerged unendingly from the dark sky. Some fell to a backdrop of orange light, some fell as if invisible, but they all fell silently and as softly as an assassin ninja. Across the whole of Kanagawa it began to gradually settle until a smooth white carpet covered the surface of the land. The trains had stopped, so too, for the most part, had the road traffic. In the back streets and suburbs the falling snow met no defence – no grit nor salt, no lorries churning it to a slush, no footfall to push it aside, no snow shovel scrapping it into disgruntled heaps.
The snow fell – hiding everything.
An elderly man emerged from an office building – an office building located on the untidy side of town, down in the docklands and hidden amongst the warehouses. The sort of office that no-one in the smart s
uits would really want to work. He had, for the last hour turned over in his mind the significance of what he had just witnessed. By profession he was trained to be wary, after all he was a night watchman, and yet he had allowed himself to be less than dedicated in the execution of his duties. This didn’t prevent his conscience from stabbing at him with the occasional pin-prick. He consoled himself that he hadn’t been quite sure what he had seen. After all it had been dark, the snow had been falling and there were no street lights. What he thought he had seen was a man dumping something into the canal. It had all looked highly suspicious. However, he had ignored this. His job was to look after the warehouse and the offices and to patrol around the compound. It wasn’t for him to be sniffing around beyond this.
Something niggled away at him, however.
He had spent the last couple of hours attending to his usual duties. He’d made his rounds, secured the premises, checked, particularly, that the warehouse was locked and that everything was in place. He’d returned to his office-cum-cubby-hole and had taken a cup of green tea at eleven-thirty as was his usual habit, but as he’d sat, his mind now unoccupied and freed from the distraction of security, he could no longer push away the thoughts that told him that something wasn’t quite right.
He had a civic duty not-withstanding.
Twenty minutes later and he had finally convinced himself that a minor investigation was needed. He didn’t particularly want to enter out into the cold night and the falling snow, but duty pushed him on. He wrapped himself up well in his thick woollen overcoat, took hold of his flash light and ventured out.
The car that he’d spotted had been parked at the back of the compound so it was a bit of a walk for him and meant that he had to unlock a series of doors and gates, something else he was reluctant to do. However as he went he replaced each and every lock and bolted each and every door. Once outside he trod gingerly into the snow. It was unusual for it to fall, unusual for it to fall so heavily and for such a prolonged period of time and unusual for it to stick. He didn’t like it – it wasn’t normal.
He looked at his feet and to his polished shoes which he suspected were not suitable for extended snow-walking. He made his way slowly around the perimeter of the compound with the huge wire fence on his right until he came to the road at the back which ran parallel to the disused canal. It was completely quiet save for his breathing and the squeaky crunch of his shoes moving through the fresh snow. On another occasion he might have enjoyed this late night walk. He noted that there were now no-longer any tyre tracks in the snow. He had no idea where the precise location of the car had been. He turned to face the company building. His memory was now playing tricks on him. Which room had he been in when he’d looked outside? He no-longer knew. He peered over the side of the parapet and looked into the canal. There was nothing to see save for the smooth blanket of snow beneath him. He walked along for several meters keenly looking down and shining his torch to aid his investigation.
There was nothing to see.
He shrugged his shoulders. What a waste of time that had been! He had though, done his bit, even if had resulted in absolutely nothing at all. There was no mystery here or if there was, it was now completely hidden by the snow that had fallen and which continued to fall.
5 - In which a politician plans his next move in his never-ending game of chess.
Friday 31st December 7:55am
The yellow-painted ploughs and salt spreaders had been toiling since the early morning, working tirelessly under a marbled grey sky and the unending weather reports delivered by over-excited, blue-nosed reporters from outside locations, with unseemly relish in their voices - there was nothing quite like a disaster to get the journalistic juices flowing, indicated that although it was unlikely to snow again the unusually cold temperatures would remain, creating hazardous driving conditions and havoc on the roads. The people of Kanagawa were reminded to refrain from taking unnecessary car journeys and were implored to make adjustments to their usual routine. There was a sense of enforced seriousness in their voices and an underlying feeling that what they coveted most, but were unable to admit, was another tranche of snow to propel the city into an increased level of chaos and therefore allowable media hysteria.
Hiro Watanabe turned away from the window from where he had been watching a brigade of eager workers clearing away the snow from the sidewalks, glanced at his watch for the third time in as many minutes and then sat down to await the rest of his inner circle in the main meeting room in his comfortable but, non-the-less, hard-backed leather chair. He was mulling over his next move and drummed his fingers on the table with a jolting, uneven rhythm whilst nervously chewing at his lip – an unbecoming habit that he didn’t realise he’d unknowingly developed. Finally he swept his hand over his hair - not for the first time, either.
He had already read – skimmed read, with the precision of a sumo wrestler in a patisserie, some, but not all of the morning papers, becoming marginally more satisfied as he’d turned each page. He wasn’t known for his quick reading or his ability to digest, understand and memorise ream upon ream of intricate detail and so true to form he had focussed solely on news concerning his political faction and his party.
That morning however, his mind had been smothered by other matters and it was only after the briefest of run-throughs that he’d placed the newspapers to one side, satisfied to be guided by his gut feeling which dictated that the tide of negative stories was at last upon the wane. The self-same gut feeling also told him that, in addition, there was no doubt that they were still under some pressure – no doubt at all, but it was equally true that there were signs that the manoeuvring of the past month was beginning to pay some dividend.
He could trace this change in political fortune to a specific day and a specific meeting that had taken place four weeks previously. It was a meeting that he still felt profoundly uncomfortable about, but a meeting that none-the-less had proved singularly significant.
That particular Monday had dawned like so many others that had gone before and emerging from the underground concourse and subterranean shopping malls of Yokohama station he'd had no suspicion of the critical events which were due to follow. He’d entered what he would have hesitatingly described as a square. Sadly, this was no leafy sanctuary, nestling amongst the urban clutter replete with benches and fountains, but more a magnet for taxis and buses which obediently lined-up waiting for their custom to alight from the trains. He’d barely noticed this however, as this was a scene typical of many a town and city across Kanagawa and would be more properly described in modern parlance as a ‘transport hub’ where city planners had opted understandably, perhaps mistakenly, for functionality over beauty. Like a casual tourist stepping out into the hazy winter light he’d spied nothing here to grab the attention having noted, not for the first time, that the country’s treasures, exquisite in the extreme, could be all too easily cloaked in grey concrete and the pressure to meet the needs of commerce.
On this particular bitter, fresh morning there had been a new addition to the lines of white, black and yellow taxis and the blue and white buses that constantly pulled in and pulled out of the square, and this had been a garishly decorated political, campaign bus which he'd made a direct bee-line towards. Not that he would have particularly described the bus in such a negative way, plastered as it was with pictures of the local ruling party candidate, Hiroko Tanaka and those of her party leaders – in short pictures of himself!
On the bottom floor of the bus, partially hidden from view, a veritable side-show compared to the attraction on the top deck, had stood the local candidate grinning sheepishly, bowing to those around her, handing out campaign leaflets and being generally eager to follow whatever instruction she’d been given by Watanabe, the key instruction quite ironically, given the nature of the day, seemingly being to keep her well away and not to interfere with the pronouncements of the grandees. Watanabe had known how she’d felt. Unquestioningly Hiroko Tanaka had probably ho
ped that one day she would be eligible for a top-deck role and that she, in turn, would be in a position to lord it over the minions. For the present though, she would unquestioningly confine herself to a role of secondary importance, uncomfortable at the constant smiling and the gentle but insistent chipping away of her own political self-esteem so demanded from those above her. Watanabe had been there. He’d known exactly how she’d felt, but as mentioned earlier she had been of secondary importance.
He had positioned himself on the open-topped, superior, level of the bus and had smiled his best politician’s winning smile and clutched in his white-gloved hand a trio of microphones that had been taped together, themselves attached to the huge speakers adorning the bus, which had blasted his message to the unassuming passers-by, who’d paid little or no attention to the obtrusive noise pollution.
Up to this point Watanabe had been undisturbed by the apparent ambivalence of the erstwhile constituents and had continued with his endless stream of entreaties, slogans and general smarm and on the whole had considered himself to be in pretty fine form. After reluctantly performing his duty by grabbing the hand of the local candidate and raising it aloft in victory salute he had been pleased to usher her back down to ground level and to get on with what he’d seen as the main purpose of his visit to the bus that day, that being - unfailing and unending self-promotion. Tanaka was a woman for whom he had no great faith and precious little time but he had none-the-less publicly endorsed her before dismissing her to a role of secondary, leafleting, importance and commencing his speeches.
