by Nick Tanner
The culmination of all these thoughts ended up in no conclusion whatsoever and it had taken her another good hour before she’d been able to sense the welcoming cloak of sleep drifting over her once more allowing her to finally drop off again.
She’d then woken early, just after six, and had been instantly gripped by an eerie feeling that she was out of place, immediately stung by the lack of familiar objects around her. Unthinking actions like finding the light switch or a box of tissues had seemed to be completely beyond her. Nothing had been to hand as she preferred. As she’d lain in the strange environment of Inspector Saito’s apartment, cold and staring into the dark, she'd suddenly felt that she was far from being in her usual state of having everything organised and orderly. For another thing it didn’t smell right. In fact there was no smell – no scent, no potpourri, no tatami. Just cold air!
Now, all huddled in the office they silently appraised each other – tired, bruised, beaten and drawn. The immediate prognosis was not good. But then as soon as they had reassembled around the office table, as if a switch had been magically flicked, the mood shifted. Inspector Saito appeared to be suddenly energised. Junsa Saito too, found her thoughts turning away from pessimistic introspection onto the themes surrounding the case. To compliment the change in atmosphere Inspector Saito then nipped outside before returning ten minutes later dumping a box of donuts and three cups of coffee on the table. Some habits never changed.
He passed round the cups of coffee and selected his favourite donut - a chocolate ring.
‘Okay, so where are we with everything? What are our thoughts?’ he said looking expectantly at the other two. He was now back in the zone, he’d woken up and his last bout of silence had been effectively tossed away.
'I see he still doesn't do a home breakfast,' whispered Mori behind his hand.
'On the contrary, we've already had a round of toast and tea.'
'So everything okay last night?'
'I'll tell you later,' she replied quickly.
Inspector Saito glanced irritatingly at the other two. He hadn’t heard what they were whispering but it had all the hallmarks of two naughty school kids interrupting the pronouncements of the teacher.
‘How’s your nose, by the way?’ asked Mori pointing to Saito’s all too obvious bandage.
‘Fine, fine,’ replied Saito not really wanting to dwell on himself. ‘But my own injuries are no matter. Let’s pay attention to the little address book that you found yesterday Junsa,’ he continued, nodding now in the direction of his young colleague and pushing large chunks of donut into his mouth.
‘Does it make any sense to you, sir?’ queried Mori turning away from Junsa Saito. He looked into the box of donuts and picked out a humble honey ring.
‘A little,’ replied Inspector Saito licking his lips and the tips of his fingers. ‘They are undeniably meeting dates and times. That much is obvious, and I’m sure that these hiragana, here, refer to people. Don’t you agree?’ He passed the book back over to Mori.
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Tuesday 7th J, j – ˆ – w 1700
Wednesday 15th u – r 1600
Thursday 30th J, – W1830
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Tuesday 7th O, Na –Yo –Pu 1700
Wednesday 15th Fu –Hi 1600
Thursday 30th O, Wa –Shi 1830
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‘For example we know that Yamada Eri left Niigata Kyubin on the 30th for a secretive meeting, so secretive in fact that no-one seems to know anything about it and those that do are reluctant to reveal with whom that was with. I guess that ‘O’ refers to ‘Ozawa’ and the ‘Wa’ is our mystery man. You also mentioned that they met in Shinbashi - ‘Shi’, so that fits.’
‘So according to you on the 7th she also had a meeting with Ozawa and someone called ‘Na’.’ Mori peered at the little book.
‘Nakasone?’ suggested Junsa Saito.
‘That leaves ‘Fu’ – any ideas,’ said Mori, still examining the book. For some reason he put it to his nose and smelt it. It was a futile act. He couldn’t smell a thing. Not that it would have told him anything even if he could have smelt anything.
‘No ideas at all,’ admitted Inspector Saito. ‘But… working on the fact that ‘Shi’ is Shinbashi I suppose ‘Hi’ must be a place, as must be ‘Yo’.’
‘Could be Yokohama,’ said Junsa Saito.
‘Or just as easily Yokosuka, but I don’t think that first date is significant now. That must be just a meeting between Ozawa and Nakasone, in fact Takeda mentioned one such meeting himself, I remember. No, I think the significant one is the last meeting on Thursday, if indeed these meetings have any significance at all.’
‘I’m still confused,’ volunteered Junsa Saito.
Mori glanced at Inspector Saito. He knew his boss would be unable to pass up an invitation to stretch his mental muscles.
‘Okay, this is how I see it,’ started Saito sitting forward in his seat. ‘I think this all centres on the dealings of the Yoshihara Yakuza. There is some suspicion that they were behind the death of Nakasone and the gas explosion at YBP headquarters. Not only that but they had a presence at the YBP shareholder meeting last night. Now I don’t know exactly what that was all about but I suspect sokaiya activity, possibly sponsored by Niigata Kyubin – which brings that company nicely into the picture.’
‘But how does all this link in with Yamada Eri?’ interrupted Mori feeling, if not displaying, a sense of exasperation.
‘Well, I’ve been thinking about that, too. It seems quite possible to me that with the breakdown in merger talks between Niigata Kyubin and YPB that Ozawa was so set on getting a deal with YBP that he was… is… determined to get his prize at any cost and so he sets out to threaten and cajole YBP towards his way of thinking, and to do this he needs the Yoshihara. He gets Yamada Eri to set up these meetings but then senses that she’s become a risk and needs to eliminate her. He either does this himself or enlists the Yoshihara.’
‘This all sounds quite fantastic. I don’t believe it, sir. Niigata Kyubin are a well respected company, aren’t they?’ exclaimed Junsa Saito.
‘Yes, maybe you are right,’ conceded Inspector Saito. ‘But it’s the only way I can think of linking the Yoshihara into the whole thing, although I admit I can’t think what they would stand to gain from all this unless they were acting under strict instructions as part of a business pact with Niigata Kyubin. We really need to find if there is anything that links them to Niigata Kyubin, I mean beyond my mere guess work.’ He sat back in his chair, his brief flurry of energy and activity having blown itself out.
‘You obviously stumbled into something sensitive last night, though,’ suggested Mori.
‘Well, I don’t know-’
‘Why else would they have laid into you and from what you’ve said it sounded like your attacker was trying to give you a warning.’
‘It may be significant, it may be not. It was painful, I can vouch for that.’ He gingerly touched his rib cage. ‘And I’d like to think that my injuries were worth getting, in terms of pay-back, should all this help solve the case, but at the minute I’m not too sure that they do.’ It was an all too common occurrence that Saito could easily lapse into periods of gloominess and he appeared to be on the edge of entering one now.
Mori stood up from behind his desk and walked over to the window. He looked up at the cold, hard sky – an unrelenting, grey mask that seemed, in its permanence, to suck the joy out of all below. It looked cheerless outside and it felt pretty cheerless inside, too.
‘Let’s get back to what we know,’ insisted Sergeant Mori quietly and returning to his seat. ‘I think we should continue to build up what we understand of Yamada Eri’s last movements and not be too distracted by your Yoshihara theory. It might be a complete dead-end as you say.'
Inspector Saito appeared quite offended. ‘I’m sure there is some link
up somewhere along the way, even if I can’t prove it now, but okay, let’s do as you suggest – what do we know?’
‘We know she was at her office almost all of the day,’ started Mori. ‘And that she left the office at around five taking the train alone to Shinbashi where she met up with Ozawa, before they both had an apparently secretive meeting with a third party as yet unknown. According to Ozawa, this meeting finished at seven-thirty after which they made love in his car when finally she returned home and was murdered not a hundred meters from her house.’
‘The love making doesn’t fit your theory of Ozawa wanting to ‘eliminate’ her, does it Inspector?’ chipped in Junsa Saito.
‘No, no it doesn’t. You’re right.’ He scratched his ear and looked despairingly down at the table. ‘It’s the motive for all this that I can’t get my head around.’
All three of them sat back in their seats and lapsed into silence each one thinking through what had just been said. Their individual thoughts were interrupted by a polite tapping on the office door and a timid-looking Deguchi popped his head into the room.
‘What do you want?’ said Mori tersely.
‘The pathology report – I thought you should have it,’ said Deguchi, bowing.
‘Is there anything new in there?’
‘Not really.’
‘Okay – leave it here.’
‘Do you need anything else?’
‘No, nothing – thank you,’ said Mori gruffly.
Deguchi retreated leaving the three of them in silence once again. Junsa Saito picked up the pathology report and started flicking through it.
‘Do you think he was snooping or being genuinely helpful?’ said Mori.
‘Snooping – I’m absolutely sure,' replied Inspector Saito. 'Sakamoto must be intrigued as to what we are up to, but then again he’s fairly single-minded so perhaps he doesn’t give a damn what we are thinking.’ He dipped his hand into the donut box once again, lifting out a cinnamon ring. ‘Does anyone want any more coffee?’ he asked getting to his feet, ‘I’m going to get another from Doutor.’
‘I’m fine thanks, sir. I'll spend the rest of the morning in the toilet if I have any more,' replied Mori.
'Too much information,' smiled Junsa Saito, deciding that despite her colleague’s warning, that she would like another one too, but she insisted that should get it. It wouldn’t do to have the senior man, the injured senior man, waiting on her. Five minutes later she returned with two fresh cups of coffee. It appeared the two men had made no further progress in her absence so she sat down and picked up the pathology report once again.
‘Here’s something interesting,’ she said excitedly a few moments later. ‘It looks like there were two types of bruising on the victim’s neck. Do you think that means she was attacked twice?’ She passed over the report to Inspector Saito who quickly read through the key passages.
‘Interesting!’ He placed the report back down on the table. ‘Two types of bruises meaning, like you quite rightly say, possibly two attacks.’ His mind was racing now, trying to tie in all the possibilities. All three looked at each other simultaneously. It was Inspector Saito who spoke the words they were all thinking, ‘She was raped – by Ozawa!’
Sergeant Mori and Junsa Saito nodded in agreement.
‘Right! Now we have a motive - a decent motive!’ He was alive now and spoke with increased volume and pace. ‘When will the DNA results come back?’
‘Sadly, not for a few days – probably around next Tuesday or Wednesday.’
‘Pity! That’s a little too late for us, still we’re getting somewhere. We also need to check out forensics to see what trace evidence there is and whether we can link that to Ozawa.’
Junsa Saito sat quietly in her seat. She felt privileged that her input had not only been accepted without question but also valued. She was more used to carrying out background checks and basic research than being at the hard face of an investigation. She found that she quite liked it. One thing however, was nagging away at her.
‘Why would Ozawa rape Yamada san in Tokyo then allow her to take the train home and then murder her in Kamioka? It doesn’t make sense, sir?’
The two men thought about this for a second. ‘Maybe she managed to escape from him and it was only by the time that she got to Kamioka that Ozawa managed to catch up with her,’ suggested Inspector Saito.
‘We only have Ozawa's word that she took the train - we have no absolute proof that she took the trains at all,’ mentioned Mori. ‘Ozawa could have murdered her in his limo and then dumped her near her house to avoid suspicion from falling on himself. Think of all the other lies and cover-ups he and his staff have been throwing in our direction. It’s a definite possibility.’
‘But wasn’t she seen on the convenience store CCTV camera, though?’
‘I could always re-check that,’ said Junsa Saito.
‘And I think it would also be a good course of action to get hold of the company limousine driver, don’t you?’
‘Agreed!’ said Junsa Saito and Mori in concert.
'Ah! I've just thought of something,' said Sergeant Mori, looking not unlike Inspector Saito had a few moments before. A disconcerting look had spread quickly across his face. 'Ozawa mentioned he was at home with his father after eight. He has an alibi!'
'He's lying!' said Saito flatly. 'Think of all the other lies and misdirection he's spun for us. Still it all needs checking and re-checking. You two sort all that out. Meanwhile I have to report in to the Chief Super. I’ve strict instructions to keep him completely up-to-date.’
‘Including fights with the Yakuza?’
‘Yes, well – I’d rather keep that quiet.’
It was then that Inspector Saito’s eyes caught sight of the headline in the morning’s paper that was lying on his desk. Pity though, that this trained eye was not drawn towards political scandal and gossip for this may well have triggered a new and worthwhile line of thinking in the Yamada case. Instead his eyes settled on a story concerning the abduction of a woman and her eldest child by the religious cult Shinrikyo (Religion of Truth). Quite suddenly his thoughts switched to his own wife and children and a line of investigation in that mystery that he’d not previously considered.
*
Five minutes later and Inspector Saito was sat once again in front of the Chief Super awaiting his attention. The Chief Super kept him waiting appearing to pay overly studied attention to the document he had in his hand. Eventually he glanced up.
‘What happened to you? Walked into a door or something?’ The Chief Super nodded in the direction of Saito’s nose.
‘Something like that,’ mumbled Saito.
‘So, come on - the truth! What really happened?’
‘Yakuza!’ admitted Saito reluctantly.
‘Yakuza! What on earth have they got to do with anything?’
‘I’m not sure yet, but I suspect sokaiya. From what I could pick up at a shareholders’ meeting I went to last night the Yoshihara definitely had men primed to make trouble if things didn’t go their way.’
The Chief Super sighed. ‘I confess. I no longer understand the way you think, Saito san – Yakuza, shareholder meetings… What has this all to do with Yamada Eri?’ He removed his glasses and polished them with painstaking meticulousness and for a few moments the conversation stalled as he carried out, and Saito lamely viewed, this ponderous activity. The Chief Super replaced his glasses and then sighed deeply once again.