Six Four

by Hideo Yokoyama

  So she had let go. It’s enough that she’s alive. She doesn’t have to be our daughter. That was what Minako had told herself in the dark.

  Not here, not with us. That’s why she left.

  Mikami’s eyes began to close.

  It felt like a wave lapping sand from his feet. Minako had never given up. Nor had she ever looked away from the truth. She’d looked death in the face and searched for the conditions necessary for their daughter’s survival; and she’d come up with the idea of an inviolable ‘someone’ to meet those conditions. In her heart she’d built a world in which Ayumi couldn’t die. Even though doing so had meant giving up her role as the girl’s mother.

  And what have I been doing?

  Mikami had been hiding. He’d accepted the horrific reality thrust before him. He’d failed to nurture the unshakable faith of a parent, choosing instead to hold on to pragmatism, his experience as a detective.

  The calls weren’t from Ayumi.

  He’d suspected it all along, but he’d pretended otherwise. Minako had been fighting to believe. She’d searched for reasons to differentiate the calls from the others, even as Mikami had looked the other way. Afraid of turning up the opposite result, he’d consigned them to the back of his mind. Earlier that day, when he’d finally had to accept the reality he’d feared all along, he’d done so with resignation. It hadn’t been Ayumi, after all . . . He’d been forced into a corner. He’d started listing the conditions for her death.

  He had, like Minako, focused on the conditions for her survival. He’d even considered the existence of that ‘someone’. But he’d shut the idea from his thoughts, unwilling to believe a person so genuinely good-natured could exist, deciding only a criminal would take her in. Too painful to consider, he’d driven the world in which Ayumi was still alive out of his head. For his own peace of mind, he’d stopped thinking about survival and focused only on death.

  He’d been getting prepared. Was that it? He’d given up the belief that his daughter was still alive.

  His hand drifted to his left ear. What had happened to the dizziness? After so many attacks, where had they gone? Had they gone because he’d given up? Because he’d stopped trying to hide. He’d accepted reality . . . had that ended the disconnect between his heart and his brain?

  There was his appearance, too. He’d completely forgotten about it, even though it was inseparable from Ayumi herself. He’d felt nothing at Goatee and Slick’s jeering, when they’d called him Gargoyle. All those reporters had burst into laughter. Even then, his feelings hadn’t responded. He hadn’t thought of Ayumi.

  Had the bond been broken between them? Had he severed it himself?

  Papa, Papa! Hey, Papa . . .!

  Absurd. He hadn’t given up on her. How could he do such a thing?

  He wanted to see her again. From the bottom of his heart, he wanted to see her again. He hoped she was still alive. He needed her to be alive. He knew she was still alive. She would come home soon. She was just getting ready. Yes . . . she would be back, with the ‘someone’ by her side.

  ‘Honey, you . . .’

  Mikami’s hands had come up to cover his face. His teeth were clenched tight. He was pressing down on his eyes, painfully hard, desperate to keep the tears at bay.

  He felt a hand on his cheek.

  He was supposed to have been the one to reach out. He was supposed to have touched her cheek, thumbed away the line of her tears, repeated those words from another age.

  Are you okay?

  ‘We’ll get through this. She’s doing fine, I’m sure of it.’

  She was rubbing his wrists.

  It’s you. Minako was his ‘somebody’. He’d already known it. He’d known it since the beginning. He’d pretended not to notice. Then, as he maintained the pretence, he’d actually stopped noticing. He’d been a fool. He’d been mistaken. He knew every sordid detail of his work, but what kind of a life was that if you didn’t even notice your wife?

  He would believe in it, too, the world Minako had created. The world in which that ‘someone’ existed. The world in which Ayumi was alive and well.

  ‘You’re exhausted. Why don’t you lie down for a bit?’

  Her hand came to rest on his forehead, as though checking for a temperature. He had the vague memory of his mother doing the same. He felt fiercely self-conscious. He rubbed his fingers over his eyes to extinguish the tears, then got to his feet.

  ‘They’ll need watering . . .’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The rosemary.’

  ‘The Christmas rose?’

  ‘Right, those . . .’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘I mean . . . tomorrow, the day after. We should water them every day.’

  ‘You think so? It is winter.’

  ‘Yeah, we should. They’re alive, after all.’

  ‘Well, I suppose.’

  ‘Why don’t you buy a few more flowers – it’ll liven the place up a little.’

  ‘Listen to you!’ Minako laughed, spurring him on.

  ‘When work eases, we can go buy some from Mochizuki. You know him, right? Mochizuki?’

  ‘Yes I think so – he retired, grows flowers now?’

  ‘It’s impressive. He’s got these huge greenhouses, we could get some of those . . .’ The name of the flowers refused to surface. ‘Anyway, we should go and buy some. We can get some you like the look of.’

  The conversation ending, Mikami looked at his watch. It was just after half past eight. The press conference would have finished by now.

  ‘I have to make a call.’

  ‘Is anything wrong?’

  He looked her in the face. She was frowning, looking concerned.

  Not yet, that’s still to come, he thought. He looked her in the eyes.

  ‘No, nothing’s wrong. Never has been, not really,’ he said.

  He picked up the phone in the living room and dialled Media Relations. He felt clearer, almost cheerful.

  ‘Media Relations.’

  It was Suwa.

  ‘Is the press director in?’

  ‘Nice, sir. You’re not still awake, are you?’

  ‘How was the seven o’clock conference?’

  ‘Terrible. The press were relentless, kept insisting we give them Mesaki’s address.’

  ‘That’s not our remit. What about Ochiai? How’s he doing?’

  ‘He’s full of beans. And we know why. It’s Mikumo . . . Mikumo!’

  Stop saying that! Mikumo sounded genuinely angry in the background. Mikami smiled. He left a few instructions then ended the call.

  He pressed some more digits. Koichiro Hiyoshi’s home number. When his mother picked up, Mikami asked if she would take the phone to the first floor, as she had the last time. From then on, time seemed to expand. Mikami grew wary of falling asleep.

  Do a good deed, and it’ll find its way back.

  No, Dad. That’s not why I’m . . .

  Minako, tending to the flowers with a watering can. The clenched hands are open. Reds, yellows, blues. The area’s in shadow; a dazzling ray of light shines on the flowers alone.

  The phone’s ringing . . .

  Don’t worry, I’ll get it. It’s fine, I’ll get it . . .

  Mikami started. He could hear a shuffling. Someone taking the phone into the room.

  ‘It’s Mikami. I’m just going to get straight to it, okay?’

  ‘. . .’

  ‘Hiyoshi, we got the kidnapper. Shoko’s murderer.’

  ‘. . .’

  ‘It’s big news, right? It won’t be in the press for a while, but we’ve got the bastard. I saw his face. So did a guy just like you, called Morita. And this guy called Shiratori . . . you’d laugh to see the man’s bulk after hearing that name. All of us had a good long look at the bastard’s face.’

  ‘. . .’

  ‘Amamiya did, too. After fourteen years . . . he finally got to see the kidnapper’s face. I think he’s a lot calmer now. Grateful, too, to all the peopl
e who worked with him, all that time ago.’

  ‘. . .’

  ‘Hiyoshi, I hope you’re listening to this. I guess you’re tired. I am, too. Just hold on for another ten minutes. I’m going for a new record . . . thirty-nine hours without sleep. Thought I’d make a go of breaking the record I made at twenty-five.’

  ‘. . .’

  ‘Anyway, I’m going to put in a call every now and again. You’ve got the time, right? I have, too. My nights are free now I’ve been booted from detective work.’

  80

  The week hurtled by.

  The press conferences were pulled back to twice a day. The majority of those still showing up were local, friendly faces, although any semblance of like-mindedness had all but faded away. Akikawa was back to his usual self. The others, too, had regained their aggressive edge and had taken to bulldozing their way into Media Relations after every announcement.

  ‘You’ve got them in hiding, admit it. It’s ridiculous . . . we’ve tried every trick in the book and we still can’t track them down.’

  ‘You can’t blame us for your ineptitude.’

  ‘Just give us a little more, on the girl’s family. That was part of the coverage agreement. You have an obligation to let us in on the whole picture.’

  ‘The agreement’s no longer in effect. I can’t hand out confidential case information.’

  The Mesaki family were renting a house in a town in the north of the prefecture. Mesaki had brought someone in to run the sports business and had decided to sell their old house. No longer in police custody, his official status was now ‘under observation’. After days of being questioned as the victim, he had revealed nothing that could be used against him. The only change was that the detectives had taken to calling him ‘the honest man’; this was partly due to the first character in his name, meaning ‘truth’, but mostly due to the detectives’ frustration with the way he always said exactly the right thing.

  They’d held police ‘line-ups’ using recordings of his voice. Among those called in were the owners of the nine businesses where Amamiya had used the phone, together with people who had worked there; the detectives had also called in employees from Amamiya’s pickle business, including Motoko Yoshida. The latter was now a patient in a closed psychiatric ward; the head warden had refused to let her leave and she hadn’t been able to attend. A few of the remaining ‘witnesses’ had also failed to show, so that in the end only seven people listened to the recordings. Five agreed that the voice was similar; of these, three were convinced it was the same man. Out of the remaining two, one claimed not to remember, while the other said the voice wasn’t the same. It was a result, but only a tiny part of the evidence they would need to bury Mesaki, as Matsuoka had said. They had nothing else from fourteen years ago that could help narrow the perpetrator down to Mesaki. It was going to take a while before ‘the honest man’ could be brought before a court of law.

  ‘Would you prefer we let the tabloids and freelancers in, too?’

  This time, the reporters had got hold of Suwa.

  ‘You keep going on about the club, acting like it’s an inalienable right. How about we hold another conference and give all of you the same information? Ready, set, go! You all go out and do your thing. If the tabloids beat you to it, you can think of it as motivation to improve on your reporting skills.’

  ‘Right, hilarious. We’ve been helping you with information, too. You’re making out like we’re the bad guys, but this only started because of the way your organization likes to treat small fry like us. The police have always treated us as an agency for propaganda, refused to dole out any intelligence worthy of the name – my predecessors had to fight long and hard, waging their battles on the front lines and in government offices. The ‘inalienable rights’ that you’re mocking? They’re the result.’

  ‘That’s nothing you should be proud about. Maybe your predecessors did all that, but I’m talking about the here and now. You pester us for information, always more information, even as you sit in the Press Room with your feet up. That’s not so hard to do.’

  Suwa had matured. He no longer worried about upsetting the reporters. His tendencies towards calculation and brown-nosing were more subdued, and he’d developed a sharper edge.

  The press had also undergone subtle changes. They were still worked up about having stumbled on to an important case, and that had made them more militant, caused them to talk big as they took their cues from Tokyo, yet they were showing signs of being able to rein themselves in when necessary. They still enjoyed laying siege, yet no longer rejoiced in breakdowns. They still exchanged blows, but they would shake hands afterwards. They’d even begun to exhibit a sense of altruism.

  But . . .

  . . . the true test of the relationship was still to come. Two days earlier, Mikami had gathered everyone in his department for a talk in a cramped basement meeting room. This stays between us. With the proviso in place, he had given them the truth about the investigation. He had talked about how it related to Six Four and told them everything about the cover-up Criminal Investigations had perpetrated.

  Our relationship with the press dies the day they announce Mesaki’s arrest. Those were his exact words. What I want you to focus on is how we rebuild the relationship after that happens.

  Suwa had been thunderstruck. He’d navigated the problem of anonymous reporting and even put himself in the firing line when lobbying to get the Press Coverage Agreement signed. He’d grown in confidence and been ready to continue the fight – and his shock had been all the more apparent for it. Even so, Mikami didn’t feel worried. That Suwa was still ready to battle on had been clear in the way he’d dealt with the press the day before, the way he continued to do so today. He would be the next press director. He’d woken up to his true talents.

  Kuramae had listened with a pained look on his face; even then, it wasn’t until Mikami had explained about Amamiya and the silent calls that he’d looked genuinely crestfallen. Mikami had put a hand on his shoulder afterwards. We don’t know whether that was what happened with the message on Ryoji Meikawa’s answerphone. He wanted to believe it as much as Kuramae did. He wanted to believe the call had been someone from home.

  Mikumo was the only one to give an opinion, her face blushing red.

  ‘If I learned anything from this it’s that our relationship with the reporters is always going to be like oil and water. If you stir hard enough we can move together, but only for a moment. I think . . . maybe the key is to engineer as many of those moments as possible.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘We need to reach out to them, always . . . we can’t give up, even if our relationship dies, even if they choose to disassociate themselves from us. We need to keep knocking, even when they don’t answer. We can’t give up . . .’

  Directly afterwards, Mikumo had gone to the hospital, complaining of a sore throat. When she returned, Suwa had caught a glimpse of her medicine and saw it was to treat cystitis. She hadn’t been able to use the toilet for the duration of that endless press conference. Mikami sympathized, felt worried even, but he still couldn’t stop himself from chuckling at Kuramae’s impromptu comment.

  And all the time I thought Mikumo was like Ken Takakura, unable to lie . . .

  He was sitting next to her now, both of them typing on computers. Media Relations had been given another computer following the Mesaki case. No doubt the time would come, as Akama had suggested, when they would get one for each member of staff.

  ‘I’m going upstairs for a bit,’ Mikami said, getting up.

  Suwa was still busy with the reporters, but he managed to give Mikami a quick look.

  First floor? Fourth floor?

  Even further.

  81

  Wind gusted over the roof.

  Mikami checked his watch. Two minutes after the arranged meeting time of two o’clock, and Futawatari was still to show.

  Maybe he wasn’t planning on coming. If so, that only backed up Mi
kami’s theory.

  Futawatari had been an instigator, too.

  Now he’d had time to consider things properly, to run through the whole thing a number of times, Mikami had become convinced. Tokyo’s plan to sequester the director’s post. It had to have been Maejima, already in Tokyo on secondment, and therefore in a position to know, who had first sent word to Arakida. Mikami hadn’t found anything to suggest Futawatari had been acting on instructions from Tsujiuchi or Akama – and yet he’d moved quickly into action. The natural conclusion was that Maejima, a contemporary and close friend of Futawatari, had told him about the development, as well as Arakida.

  What, then, had a born-and-bred detective like Maejima expected Futawatari to do? The answer was obvious. Stop it from happening. Stop the commissioner’s visit; make sure he didn’t issue his proclamation from above.

  If Mikami could establish the link, that would at least explain Futawatari’s mysterious behaviour. He was the ace of Administrative Affairs, the secret overseer of personnel decisions with a modus operandi of working in the shadows, yet he’d jumped brazenly from detective to detective, spreading fear in his wake. Like a serial arsonist, he’d ignited flames of hatred and directed them towards Administrative Affairs. He’d set off alarm bells. To incite an uprising.

  Driven by his actions, Criminal Investigations had stepped up the intensity of its retaliation. They’d drawn closed the Iron Curtain and leaked details of misconduct to the press. They’d even made the misguided threat to set off a ‘letter bomb’ in Tokyo, a final notification of their intent. What, Mikami wondered, would they have had in waiting for the day of the commissioner’s visit if the ‘kidnapping’ had never taken place?

  Futawatari’s machinations hadn’t ended there. He’d set his sights on the press. Judging that a Criminal Investigations uprising would be insufficient to secure Prefecture D’s status as Dallas, he’d opted for a double-pronged approach. Relations with the press had been falling apart. The troubles stemming from anonymous reporting had caused the press to threaten a boycott. Futawatari’s goal had been to make powerless anyone trying to defuse the situation, thereby averting the boycott. Media Relations. He’d made Mikami – the press director – his target. Sure, they’d been pieces on the same board, but their repeated meetings had been no coincidence. Usually, it was a toss-up that they would meet once, twice a year. Futawatari had engineered each collision to pique Mikami’s irritation. When Mikami’s anger for the NPA was at its peak – having learned of their plans to take over – Futawatari had gone in for the kill, gunning straight at Mikami’s sympathies as a detective.