Less Than Human

by Maxine McArthur

  Mikuni shook his head and smiled. Ishihara could see the nervousness behind it.

  “I assure you, we’re merely making inquiries with regard to the Nakamura case. Nothing more.” He blinked and looked down for a second. Ishihara suspected the witness’s positive ID was being conveyed through Mikuni’s aural receiver.

  Mikuni looked up. “However,” he continued more confidently, “we appear to have a slight problem with your timing. You’re sure it was 7:20 you caught the train and 7:35 you got home?”

  “I think we’ve made that clear, Inspector. You spoke to my wife, you saw the Betta entry records.”

  “Nobody saw you at the station,” said Mikuni. “But somebody saw you outside the Betta at 8:20.”

  Ishihara wished he could see Yui’s face better.

  Yui looked bemused. “It’s a mistake.”

  Mikuni leaned back in his chair, but his eyes never left Yui’s face. “As Nakamura talked to someone on the phone at 7:30 and was discovered dead at 9:03, you can see why this witness interests us.”

  “He or she must be mistaken. I had no reason to wish Nakamura any harm. This whole interview is ridiculous.” Yui pushed his chair out from the table.

  Mikuni put his hands up in a calming gesture. “Please, a couple more minutes, if you don’t mind. Firstly, we’d like you to explain why you have been making regular large withdrawals from your bank account for the past six months.”

  Yui drew his chair under the table again. He straightened his glasses, looked at the observation wall, then back at Mikuni.

  “I think I’ll talk to my lawyer now,” he said.

  The screen darkened, then Mikuni’s face snapped into focus.

  “As you can see, we got a positive ID from the witness.” He sounded satisfied.

  Yui insisted he’d used the money to gamble and lost all of it. It was a coincidence that the amounts were the same as payments going into Nakamura’s account. As for the research on interface systems, that was the result of a former collaboration. They were welcome to check the people he’d collaborated with.

  “And?” said Ishihara.

  Mikuni shook his head. “One of them is a professor in Sweden, one left the field and works as a journalist, and the other one left with no forwarding address.”

  “It doesn’t sound like they kept in touch with Yui.”

  “No. We’ll check his mail just in case. We’ve got analysts looking at the research Yui mentioned, but it will take them a while to work out if it could be used to do something like whatever Nakamura did. And you know the file Nakamura mentioned? The one named ‘Doll’ or something?”

  Ishihara remembered McGuire saying it was probably the file with Yui’s core research. “‘Puppet,’” he corrected.

  “Yeah, well it’s not there.”

  Damn, he would have liked to give McGuire a look at that file. “When did Yui come in tonight—seven o’clock? Can you get a search warrant to go through his files before one o’clock?”

  Mikuni would have to apply for an arrest warrant before he could arrest Yui, as Yui had come in on voluntary appearance. That would have to be done within six hours, or they’d have to let him go and pick him up again. Ishihara doubted the magistrate would approve a warrant so quickly, especially as Yui had shown no signs of being likely to run. Mikuni’s superintendent, though, could issue a search warrant, and if they uncovered evidence, he could then make an emergency arrest without a warrant.

  Mikuni took off his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. “I’d feel better if we only had the wife’s word on when he came home. The Betta records evidence is too strong. We’ll need a confession to beat it.”

  “Talk to the wife again,” suggested Ishihara. “Does she know about the payments to Nakamura?”

  “Good point.”

  Ishihara checked the time. It was 8:45. “I gotta go.”

  “Something big?”

  “Not sure. Prefectural Office is being cagey.”

  Mikuni shook his head sadly. “They’re always like that. See you later.”

  The Prefectural Office incident room was rowdy with the noise of half a dozen conversations being held at the same time on different phones. The air smelled of smoke and Korean take-away. Four detectives he didn’t know tapped keyboards in front of computer screens. Inspector Funo was talking to two of them at the far end of the room. She saw Ishihara come in but didn’t nod.

  Beppu beckoned to him from one of the desks closest to the door.

  “You took your time,” he said. “I had to explain to her ladyship that you were tidying up a case in Okayama. Meeting’s postponed until we hear from the chemical lab in Shikoku about that poison found in the paint.” He pulled over a chair from the neighboring desk. “Siddown.”

  Earlier that evening, two detectives from Osaka had gone to interview management of a research lab in Tokushima on Shikoku Island, one of the few places that stocked the fujirin chemical used to kill the four Silver Angels members. The two detectives would be there by now, and were to send word if any of the stuff was missing.

  “The thing that got everyone a bit excited,” concluded Beppu, “is that a few minutes ago we had a call from Takamatsu. Guess who the station cameras picked up on the platform of the fast train from Osaka at four this afternoon?”

  “Who?” Ishihara picked up an untouched box of food from the other desk. It was lukewarm, but he was hungry again. The less sleep he got, the more food he ate.

  Beppu groaned. “You could at least act interested. Harada, that’s who. Our tutor from the geography club. If he was involved in the poisoning …”

  “No wonder he ran,” said Ishihara, his mouth full. Takamatsu was the first stop after Okayama, through a long tunnel under the Inland Sea and into Shikoku. “Have Takamatsu police picked him up yet?”

  “Not yet,” said Inspector Funo behind them.

  Beppu swung his chair to face the desk properly and Ishihara put the box and chopsticks down. One of the chopsticks tipped off, flicking spots of kimchee onto Funo’s dark blue trousers. She didn’t notice.

  “How kind of you to join us, Assistant Inspector.”

  Ishihara had half expected a reprimand for failing to bring Harada in.

  “Harada and his friends are too savvy,” she said. “They don’t carry phones, they either don’t have Betta chips or they’ve removed them, and they manage to avoid public cameras.”

  “Makes it hard to track them,” Beppu said sagely.

  Funo raised her eyebrow. “To state the obvious, yes. It also interests me how they communicate with each other.”

  “Telepathy?” said Beppu carelessly, then caught Funo’s eye. “You’ll be wanting that train timetable …” He passed her the printout quickly.

  “He might come back by car,” said Ishihara.

  “I hope so,” she said. “We’ve notified all rental companies, and Shikoku is easy to roadblock. Now, we’re bringing in all the known Silver Angels we can find for interviews. I’ll need you both soon for that.”

  “We’re looking for information about the group’s plans?” said Beppu.

  “I doubt the ordinary members know the group’s plans.” She frowned. “Mostly we want to know where Adam lives, preaches, works, anything. Even the smallest clue.”

  “Quiet!” yelled a detective from the other end of the room. He cupped both hands over his ears, nodding, then jumped forward and ran his eyes over a monitor configured for visual input.

  “Inspector Funo?” he called. “I’m routing this to the super’s office.”

  Funo swept out, her face tense, her heels tapping.

  Everyone else in the room turned to the detective who’d taken the call. He was lighting a cigarette, his face somber.

  “From the lab at Tokushima. They found a discrepancy between the actual amount of toxin in storage and what’s on record.” He met their eyes in turn. “And the person in charge has disappeared.”

  “Shit,” said Beppu. “Not another runne
r.”

  “That’s not all,” said the detective, his voice lower. “When he left, he took a batch of rescopal with him.”

  Beppu and Ishihara looked at each other. Rescopal, like sarin, was one of those substances well-known to police all over Japan, and for a similar reason. A group calling themselves Swords of God had used it several years ago to gas almost an entire block in Tokyo, with thirty fatalities.

  The fax machine and two networked printers whirred into life.

  “That’ll be the background info now,” said the detective.

  “When did this person leave?” Ishihara asked. It was nearly ten.

  “The last anyone saw him was about five o’clock.”

  Silence, as everyone realized the man and the poison could be in Osaka or Tokyo or even Hokkaido already.

  When he first became a detective, Ishihara had worried constantly about every detail in each case he worked on. He tried to see the whole picture, to second-guess what had to be done by everyone in order to solve the crime. Now he found it comforting to know that all he needed to concentrate on was his own particular corner of the crisis.

  So while a national police and public network alert went out for Harada and the man from the chemicals lab, Yasuo Inoue; while public transport authorities and national organizations went into high-security mode; and while police toxicologists contacted hospitals and advised them how to treat rescopal poisoning. Ishihara and Beppu interviewed the pitifully few Silver Angels members whom the police could find.

  Most of the Silver Angels were missing, including McGuire’s niece and her friend. They’d tentatively identified the boy, however. Based on McGuire’s description, the geography club convener thought it was Shin Takagi, who’d been once or twice to the club with Mari Kitami. The convener didn’t know anything about him except that he’d made everyone uncomfortable.

  The National Data Network found several Shin Takagis between eighteen and twenty-five living in Osaka. Phone calls accounted for all but one, the son of a small factory owner who’d committed suicide six years earlier, when Shin was fourteen, after the business was bankrupted by a cartel of larger companies.

  The widow, Shin’s mother, didn’t know where her son was. He moved between jobs, never settled down, and only came home occasionally. The last she heard, he was working as a courier based in Sakai, south of Osaka.

  The courier company said Shin Takagi quit in May and left no forwarding address.

  Of the four suspected Silver Angels the police did find, one couldn’t be questioned because she was an anorexic girl of seventeen who collapsed in panic when she saw police uniforms and had to be rushed to hospital.

  Of the other three, one worked as an intern at Osaka Central Hospital, one studied at the same university as the two dead boys, and one was the girlfriend of this student.

  Ishihara interviewed the intern and Beppu the student. Afterward, they compared notes.

  The intern was brought in because he’d talked about the Angels by name in a well-known chat room, using his real name backward as an alias. Unfortunately, he wasn’t a Silver Angels member—he’d only heard about the group from a friend, another doctor who couldn’t be found.

  The student knew a bit more—he recognized Harada’s photograph from his one visit to the geography club. He liked the ideas some of the members were talking about, such as meditation and renouncing consumerism, but he thought the bit about Adam saving the world seemed weird. He thought they might be stuck in a role-playing game that got too real. He didn’t know where any of them lived.

  “Neither of them has met Adam.” Beppu tossed the disc with the recorded interviews onto one of the desks. “And neither of them knows how to contact him. Waste of time bringing them in.”

  The incident room was peaceful again. Headquarters for the investigation had moved upstairs, and the superintendent had taken direct control. Funo was coordinating alert status in Osaka public areas.

  Beppu stretched and wriggled his shoulders irritably. “Do you want to do the girl?”

  Ishihara nodded. “Might as well. It shouldn’t take long.”

  “I told my boyfriend he’d better avoid them.” The girl wound a strand of long, bleached brown hair around her finger as she spoke. “They gave me the creeps with their fancy implants and shaved heads.”

  “Shaved?”

  “Yes, even the girls.” She flicked a long purple fingernail through the strand of hair as if looking for nits. Her small, thin body hunched in the chair and bright button eyes reminded Ishihara of a monkey.

  “They only talked about stuff like meditation and self-cleansing and computer games.”

  Ishihara swung the monitor to face her across the desk. He ran through several photos—Harada, the four dead students, and the chemist Inoue. Harada’s photo came from university files, and Inoue’s from his driver’s license photo in the national database.

  The girl shook her head at Harada, Inoue, and one of the girls, but correctly identified the other students.

  “Can you go back?” she said.

  Ishihara replayed the photos in the opposite direction.

  The girl pointed at Inoue. “Maybe … maybe not.”

  Ishihara had an idea. “Wait a minute.” He fiddled with the image controls and finally produced Inoue without hair or glasses. The studious-looking young man with longish hair and a vague expression was transformed into an ascetic priest. Even his expression seemed more intense.

  The girl reacted instantly. “Samael, that’s what they called him. I remember because he came to Tsuneo’s room once, and they all practically kissed his feet. Pretty dishy he was.”

  Samael. Wasn’t that one of the names the old priest Gen had mentioned when he and McGuire visited? One of Adam’s disciples.

  “You found him attractive?”

  “Not really. He looked an S and M type. Not my thing.” She grinned at Ishihara’s expression. “Uncle, you’re a bit old-fashioned for a cop.”

  Her casual “Uncle” made him feel about eighty. He asked her a couple more questions without getting any further useful information, then sent her home.

  “Samael, huh?” Beppu added the name to the Inoue file.

  Ishihara’s phone buzzed.

  “Constable Aratani speaking. I’m in Tachibana North Betta, Amagasaki. I have a bit of a problem with one of the other voluntary informants. The, er, person involved will only talk to you.”

  Ishihara shook his head irritably. “What are you talking about?”

  “When I went to ask McGuire-san to come to the station…”

  “Why?” Ishihara interrupted. “What’s this about?”

  “Inspector Funo wanted everyone with a possible Silver Angels connection…”

  “Brought in, I know.” Ishihara looked at Beppu.

  “Maybe because of the niece?” Beppu guessed. “Or the foreign connection?”

  “What’s the problem?” Ishihara asked the constable. McGuire was probably demanding an explanation or refusing to move. Funo should have told him.

  “McGuire-san’s husband says she hasn’t come home yet. He wants to talk to you about where she might be.” The constable nervously overlaid two mutually exclusive polite expressions.

  “Tell Tanaka-san he’d better come over to the station.”

  “He’s already waiting in the car,” said the constable.

  Eleanor didn’t grasp the slim man’s words for a moment, why he was calling Akita “Adam.” Then she remembered talking about the Silver Angels to the old priest Gen with Ishihara, and it made sense. Akita was Adam, and these young men were part of the cult. Shit, and Akita thought she’d joined them …

  She might find Mari this way. The thought formed itself without warning and held her to her chair instead of obeying her first impulse to run out the door.

  “I had to discipline Niniel. He has endangered us all.” The new arrival’s words spilled out quickly, as if he’d been waiting desperately to tell someone. His voice was quiet, bu
t the precise way he said “discipline” made Eleanor shiver.

  Fujinaka had stood up immediately when the other man entered. He cleared his throat and gestured at Eleanor.

  “We have a guest,” he said.

  The slim man put the briefcase down and strode closer to stare at Eleanor. “Is this the foreigner you talked about?” he asked Akita.

  They won’t let you leave, Eleanor told herself. You’ve seen their faces. You can stay as a prisoner or you can try and bluff the other way. She grabbed a business card from her bag, stood up, and offered it to the new man with a bow.

  “Eleanor McGuire, from Tomita Electronics. Glad to m … meet you.”

  He stared at her, mouth half-open. Closer up, he was a striking young man, with sharply angled eyebrows and large, clearly lidded eyes. His collar-length hair was curiously flat and black, probably a wig.

  “I’m…” He glanced at Akita, who nodded happily. “I’m Samael.”

  Beside her, Fujinaka murmured discontentedly. Did he suspect her? She sat down again, trying to look relaxed.

  “Settle down, Samael.” Akita pointed to the kitchen. “Get yourself a drink. You look hot.”

  Samael didn’t budge. “We must implement Operation Debug immediately. I have had to leave the lab permanently, due to Niniel’s carelessness in using the fujirin to discipline his acolytes. They will eventually trace the connection between you and me, and find you here.”

  Akita received this news with an impassive face, but Fujinaka cursed and took out his phone.

  “I’ll need help setting this up.” His thumb danced over the keys.

  “You’ll be fine,” said Akita calmly. “Just do as you practiced.”

  Samael paced nervously beside the kitchen. “What about her?”

  “She comes with us.” Akita sounded surprised to be asked. He smiled at Eleanor in what was probably supposed to be a reassuring way.