Wakatsuki took a sip of lemonade.
“Unsurprising.” She took out a scrapbook from her bag. “These are my original notes. I would always jot them down here first before writing them up officially. Whatever you were given was what Taniguchi filed after I left.”
Looking around the restaurant, she passed over her notes. Iwata and Hatanaka peered closely her small, scrawled text.
Severe maxillofacial injuries.
Iwata looked up.
“How severe?”
“Extensive trauma. Completely smashed in.”
“So he … had no face?”
“Correct.”
Hatanaka frowned.
“So Akashi was dead before he even hit the water?”
Wakatsuki nodded.
“Not particularly common in this type of death, but the damage could well have been on contact with one of the support struts or the iron outcroppings from the bridge.”
“But how? There’s only open space from the bridge to the water.”
“No, he jumped from the tower—the very top of the bridge—not road-level. That’s over one hundred meters.”
“So to clarify,” Iwata said, “Akashi was unrecognizable?”
Wakatsuki took a pen from her bag and sketched a cartoon face on a napkin. Then she took the bottle of ketchup and squeezed it until the face was covered completely.
“Like this.”
She tossed the pen into her bag, and, noticing a dollop of ketchup on her finger, sucked it clean.
Hatanaka blushed as Iwata carried on reading.
Small lacerations present on top of subject’s head.
“What are these lacerations?” Iwata asked. “From aquatic life?”
“Unlikely. He wasn’t in the water for long at all. If I had to guess, I’d say he had recently shaved his head. Just not very carefully.”
“To play devil’s advocate,” Iwata said, “just how ‘irregular’ might all this be?”
Wakatsuki slurped her drink through her straw before nodding to her notes.
“Finish reading.”
Ring finger on left hand badly broken. Small but clear ligature marks on wrist.
“… He was restrained.”
“And, from the shape of the marks, I’d say handcuffs,” Wakatsuki chirped.
“But wait, why just the one wrist?” Hatanaka said. “Akashi was a big guy, if you were going to restrain him—”
Iwata interrupted.
“Because someone handcuffed Akashi to something.”
They fell quiet for a moment as a family passed by with their breakfast specials.
“Then you were right, Iwata. Akashi didn’t kill himself. He had help.”
“Who identified the body?” Iwata asked her.
“It was a cop called…” Wakatsuki closed one eye to recall. “Suzuki? Yes, Suzuki I think.”
Iwata frowned.
“Suzuki? A cop?”
“Pretty certain. They were talking like he was Akashi’s partner. Tough break about your partner, that type of thing. But he didn’t look like a cop.”
“Why?”
“He was so drunk he could hardly stand. Honestly, he looked like he was homeless. In any case, Doctor Taniguchi would have his address.”
Wakatsuki checked her watch.
“Look, you can keep those notes. But I have class in forty minutes.”
“One last question, Ayako. What do you think happened here?”
She smirked darkly.
“The broken finger, the smashed face, the ligature marks … Inspector, if you’re asking me if Hideo Akashi was murdered, then my answer is yes. There’s no doubt in my mind that the injuries on his body were consistent with being restrained, assaulted, and then, most likely, thrown off Rainbow Bridge after death to simulate suicide.”
She chewed her lips for a second, then carried on.
“And not that I’m trying to do your job here, boys. But I’d have to wonder why your fellow policemen were so intent on ruling this out as murder.”
“Thank you for your time, Ms. Wakatsuki.”
“Good luck with this mess,” she said before turning to Hatanaka. “And thanks for lunch.”
When she was out of the door, Iwata turned to Hatanaka, who was still staring in her direction. Iwata snapped his fingers.
“Listen up, Romeo. I want you to go to Rainbow Bridge and get in touch with the Bureau of Port and Harbor. I want CCTV footage from the day of Akashi’s death. Get as much as possible on either side of the date too.”
“Got it.”
They left the restaurant and headed back toward the Chiba Hospital car park.
“Hey, Iwata, answer me something. If the Black Sun Killer murdered Akashi, why did he go to the trouble of making it look like a suicide? I mean, he didn’t bother going to those lengths with the others, right?”
Iwata smiled and pinched Hatanaka’s cheek.
“Now that’s the question, isn’t it?”
Hatanaka shrugged him off, trying not to laugh.
“Have you considered this probably had nothing to do the Black Sun case?”
Iwata smiled conspiratorially.
“What you really want to ask is: What if it was someone in the TMPD?”
“No.” Hatanaka kicked a pebble into a bush. “I don’t want to ask that question.”
“Then you’re not as stupid as you look. Now you answer me something, kid. Why don’t you ask Wakatsuki out?”
Hatanaka glared at him.
“Yeah, sure. I’ll wait outside her classroom, if you’ll give me the afternoon off.”
“I’m serious.”
The younger man snorted.
“Iwata, I don’t…”
“You don’t what? Like women?”
“I like women, I just don’t…”
“What?”
“Women don’t like me, all right?”
Iwata grinned up at the sky.
“Oh yeah, thanks for finding it so fucking hilarious, Iwata. I might suck with women but at least I have such a cool, understanding boss.”
Iwata held up his hand.
“I’m not laughing at you, kid. But I’m going to tell you something, the only reason women don’t like you is because you don’t like you. So bite the bullet. Ask this girl out. If she says yes, who knows? If she says no, what does that change?”
“Look, I can’t ask her out. ‘Hey, I’m investigating a murder, actually you’re cute, shall we go to the movies?’ Forget it. What have we even got in common?”
“Dead bodies, for one thing. She answered our questions and she had fun. Fuck, Hatanaka, you’ve already bought her a burger. Ask her out for a beer as well.”
They had reached the car.
“Under that quiet, brooding shit, you’re actually a nosy bastard, you realize that, Iwata?”
“That’s why I’m good at what I do.”
“Yeah, sure. Where are you headed?”
“To find this Suzuki. Now remember, Bureau of Port and Harbor.”
“Yeah, I got it.”
Iwata started the engine and pulled away. Hatanaka followed the black Isuzu with his eyes and pictured Wakatsuki sucking her finger.
* * *
Despite the frantic banging at the door, Ryozo Suzuki did not open his eyes. He prayed for it to stop, but he knew it wouldn’t. Swearing, he saddled his usual collection of agonies and lifted his frail body out of bed. It wasn’t actually a bed, there was no futon or mattress, merely a corner in which he bundled his clothes to sleep on. The room was a squalid chaos. It stank so badly of cigarette smoke and sweat that it was hard not to cough when walking in. The single window had long been broken, and the masking tape did nothing to stop the cold.
Suzuki spat on the floor and grimaced as he forced his boots on.
“All right, all right!”
He collected the last of his things and opened the door. An emaciated shrew of a man wearing blackened clothes pushed past him. He slung his bags of tin cans
and plastic bottles on the floor and kicked off his shoes.
“I should charge you the extra hour,” the man growled. “I’ve been standing out there like a damn snowman.”
From the doorway, Suzuki looked across the street at the car park. Above it, an old advertising board for car oil showed the time.
“More like ten minutes, you old fuck.”
“They were my ten minutes!”
The old man was still screeching, but Suzuki had already closed the door on him. He shifted his grubby pack but there was no position that wouldn’t hurt his back. He walked past an open kitchen window and caught a snatch of local radio.
“It’s just coming up to eleven in the morning, and what a beautiful morning it is in Taitō. Your top stories again. Police descended on Uguisudani early this morning following the suicide of a forty-four-year-old unemployed man at Uguisudani Station. It’s the second suicide in a month at this station and questions are already being asked in the local area about the cost of the anti-suicide blue lights on the Yamanote Line. No spokesperson from Japan Rail was available for comment…”
Suzuki gripped the railing of the narrow balcony and looked down at the street below. People sat in the café over the road, eating French tarts. A repairman worked on telephone wires. A delivery of water tanks for a small office had just arrived. Cherry trees had started to sprout their first tentative white petals. This slice of city had once been home to undertakers, butchers, and prostitutes. Now Taitō was like most other parts of Tokyo—being prepared for something else.
Suzuki’s breath shortened. He gripped the railing, waiting for it to come, and there, right on cue, the coughing started. It was like inhaling glass and hot water at the same time. Recently, it ended in blood. Suzuki knew he was dying. His had not been a particularly fulfilling existence. Even so, he didn’t have too many complaints. At least the weather couldn’t hurt him today.
Thirty minutes later, Suzuki was setting up his blue tarp in the usual place.
It was late morning and only joggers and dog-walkers came to the park at this time. Most of the regulars hadn’t turned up to pitch today, and Suzuki figured the good weather had given them high hopes. A shining sun made people more generous. Suzuki knew that, but he couldn’t face the crowds today. The blood was too thick in his throat, the pain in his limbs too sharp, the accumulated cold in his bones too burrowed.
Suzuki felt a rare twist of hunger deep in his belly, and he tried to remember when he had last eaten. He took out a can of lentils, cut it open with his knife, and drank the salty water. He allowed himself to swallow a few mouthfuls before he closed the tin and hid it in his bag. He closed his eyes to savor the juice, clasping fingers over his lips in pleasure. That’s when he felt a shadow fall across him.
“Ryozo Suzuki?”
A slender man in a crumpled raincoat stood over him. Though he clearly hadn’t slept in a while, his eyes were sharp.
“Who are you?”
He held up his police ID—Kosuke Iwata, TMPD.
“Figures. I had you pegged for a cop.”
“I need to ask you some questions.” His voice was tired.
Suzuki took out a flimsy wallet from his coat pocket and held it open in reply. It was empty.
CHAPTER 30: THE DEVIL HIMSELF
SUZUKI SLURPED DOWN THREE FULL bowls of udon noodles and four cups of coffee. Iwata handed over cigarettes and ten thousand yen in cash. Suzuki lit up and savored the nicotine as the smoke curled up past his grubby face.
“God damn, that is the genuine article.”
“Now you talk, Suzuki.”
“Beauty is truth. Fire away.”
“Why did they ask you to identify Akashi’s body?”
“I was his partner for years. I assumed you knew that.”
“So why not a family member?”
“He had no family.”
“And you didn’t find it strange?”
“Find what strange, pal?”
Suzuki inspected the glowering tip of his cigarette as it burned.
“That the TMPD would go find a man living in a park, out of the force for almost ten years, to formally identify a body?”
“Thought never crossed my mind.”
“They paid you?”
“More than you did. Look, strange or not, you saw how I’m living. You don’t like it? Well, I got news for you. Neither do I.”
“I didn’t come here to pass judgment. I just want to know what happened to Akashi.”
Suzuki finished the last of his broth before wiping his mouth with a dirty sleeve.
“Then you’re wasting your time, Iwata. You already know he jumped off Rainbow Bridge. What are you asking me for? All I did was look at a corpse.”
“How did you know it was him?”
“In the morgue? Of course it was him. I knew right away.”
“How could you know? He had no face.”
“He had the same frame, the same shitty clothes, the wedding ring. Look, it was him, all right. No two ways about it.”
“Ring?”
“His ex-wife gave it back to him when they separated.”
“Yumi.”
Suzuki smiled yellow teeth and let a memory wash over him.
“What a woman.”
“What if it were possible that Akashi didn’t kill himself after all?”
An amused smile played on Suzuki’s lips.
“Then I’d say full speed ahead, Captain Ahab.”
“Why?”
“Okay look, I never thought Akashi would be the sort to top himself. But then I haven’t seen him in years. People change. Look at me.”
“Can you think of anyone who might want him dead? Was there anyone he feared?”
Suzuki chortled.
“I’m sure there were a lot of people that wanted him dead. Akashi did a lot of bad things. But he wasn’t the sort to fear anyone.”
“Why not?”
Suzuki shrugged.
“It wasn’t just that he had no fear. It was more that he always knew the angle. Look, Akashi was the smartest bastard I ever knew.”
“Start from the beginning. I want to know what you know.”
Suzuki sighed—a deal is a deal.
“We were first put together in Nerima PD, a long time ago. Let’s just say that Akashi hit the ground running. The guy was a machine, best clearing record I’d ever seen. Within a few years, he transferred to Shibuya’s Division One and got to pick his own team.”
“I’m guessing you got lucky.”
“Yeah, along with this dumb fuck, Nomura. Honestly, that choice confused me at first. He was a good guy but any little simple task took him twice as long. He was constantly stuck between overthinking something pointlessly, to not thinking it through at all. He was completely dependent on Akashi, like a fucking retarded little brother or something. We grew to love him, though.”
Suzuki suddenly hacked up blood on the counter, his eyes streaming. When he was breathing normally again, he nonchalantly wiped away the stain with napkins.
“You should see a doctor.”
“I’m uninsured, they won’t see me. Just finish your questions.”
“All right. You were saying. Akashi transferred.”
“And how.” Suzuki ordered a bottle of beer and lit another cigarette. “So there followed a golden age of police work. In a relatively short amount of time, Akashi and his two trusted henchmen became the tip of the spear. We fucking owned Shibuya. The commissioner loved us. The other cops envied us. They called us the Three Little Pigs. To be honest, I always kind of liked the name.”
“So how did you end up…”
“What? Here?”
“Yeah.”
Suzuki’s expression soured for a moment, and he looked at a speck of blood in the ashtray.
“What happens to all streaks? Our luck ran out.”
“Go on.”
“In 1994, Akashi was tasked with heading up an infiltration unit—completely off the books, well-fun
ded, full operational discretion.”
“Infiltrating what, organized crime?”
Suzuki shook his head.
“Cults.”
“Why?”
“Japan was shit scared back then. Aum Shinrikyo had hit Matsumoto and Tokyo with sarin gas attacks and the TMPD realized it had no real rulebook for dealing with them. I didn’t see Akashi for a couple of years after that. I’m not sure what happened to the infiltration unit, but there were one or two cult groups that got swallowed up and prosecutions did follow.”
“And then?”
“Akashi was reassigned to our old unit. We were given a case nobody wanted. This guy murders three children and then just falls off the map. We never worked a case harder than that, and in the end, we did manage to discover his identity—a guy called Matsuu.”
Something fell away in Iwata’s chest. He thought back to his first time in Shindo’s office, and what Sakai had asked.
What about the Takara Matsuu case, sir?
“Matsuu?” Iwata repeated.
“That’s what I said. Anyway, so we dug up every fucking rat in Japan and paid any asshole to whisper to us. In the end, we managed to corner Matsuu in some fucking field in Chiba. He was hiding out in this shack. Akashi tells us to stay outside while he goes in. Ten minutes later, he walks out, empty-handed. Not here, he says. After that, Akashi was never the same. You could tell it was eating him up. It was around that time our clearing rate dropped. We started accepting ‘gifts.’ Got involved in black market casinos. We started to owe the wrong people money. The sort of people that don’t give a fuck whether you have a badge or not. One thing led to another, as they say.”
“Hold on, go back. Takara Matsuu?”
“That’s right. Big fucker.”
Iwata shook his head.
“But they did find him. Or at least, until he went missing several weeks ago.”
Suzuki shrugged.
“Well … I guess they must have caught him. I’m not really one for current affairs, you know?”
“But if he murdered three children, how did he get out at all? He would’ve hanged.”
“Fucked if I know. Must have had a pretty hot defense lawyer.” Suzuki downed his beer. “Not that they exist in this country. Matsuu probably served his time and then became an informant after he got out. Makes sense, if he’s missing. Nobody likes snitches.”
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