‘Koda wrote about Hiyoshi’s mistake. Yes?’
‘I just told you—’
‘But Urushibara covered up both the mistake and the memo. Because he was afraid he’d lose his job.’
‘Mikami, I don’t know an—’
‘Are you the kind of person who abandons his team mates just to protect his boss?’
Mikami put everything into the words. Kakinuma’s neck stiffened. His arteries were pumping visibly.
Mikami waited for Kakinuma’s reaction.
Kakinuma eventually opened his mouth to speak. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Mikami let out a heavy sigh. All Kakinuma’s physical reactions had registered positive. But not his words. Mikami had guessed it might go this way. Kakinuma was on the far side of a dark river; appealing to his morals alone wouldn’t get him across.
‘Do you mind if I move off now?’ There was a firmness to his voice. His hand was already on the handbrake.
‘Keep doing what it is you’re doing.’
‘I already told you, I’m done.’
‘What’s done?’
‘My job. What I’m doing here.’
They were talking at odds to each other. The mood in the car became increasingly one of irritation.
‘I’m pulling out.’
‘Don’t you dare,’ Mikami threatened. His brain felt like it was on the verge of some kind of realization.
‘Anyone can see us here. If you want to talk, can we please do it somewhere else?’
‘You’re the one who parked here . . . where anyone can see us.’
Something clicked when he put it into words. Kakinuma had done this on purpose: there was no other explanation. Kakinuma had wilfully ignored the rules of a stake-out: he’d meant to park somewhere where he stood out. The man’s shrunken pupils flicked a glance at Mikami in the mirror.
‘I can drive you back to your car.’
‘I’m just back there. I’ll get out once we’ve finished talking.’
‘We haven’t finished yet?’
‘Not yet.’
Mikami had run out of moves. And it pained him to pressure Kakinuma any more. The image of Meiko was there in his mind. He’d seen their three children. Kakinuma was no different to him. He was unable to do the right thing, even if he wanted to. He was protecting his family.
Mikami sensed his will to fight wither away. He felt a wave of resignation washing over him. Yet he found himself increasingly curious about the strange disconnect in their conversation. Kakinuma had maintained his position without breaking, but, instead of letting his guard down, with each passing second he seemed to be growing more agitated. He looked like he was choking. He was holding the handbrake halfway down, desperate to get away.
No, that wasn’t it.
He wasn’t trying to get away. He was trying to get Mikami out of the way.
Why?
Mikami lifted his eyes and studied the view out of the windscreen.
‘If you’ve got something else to say could you hurry up and say it?’ Kakinuma pleaded. It was the voice of someone facing a very specific crisis. ‘Mikami, please!’
Mikami said nothing.
‘If not, I’ll have to ask you to leave.’
Kakinuma swung around in his seat, blocking the view from the window. Mikami shoved him out of the way and stared ahead.
‘Mikami, you’ve got what you came for!’
Kakinuma was all but screaming, but Mikami’s focus was unshakable. His eyes were being drawn towards a single point. He had the feeling you had when a face you’d been waiting for suddenly appeared in the middle of a vast crowd.
Kazuki Koda.
The car-park entrance. One of the two guards on traffic duty was Koda. His eyes were half hidden under his cap and, from the looks of it, he’d changed significantly in the last fourteen years; still, Mikami was sure it was him. The narrow eyes, the tall nose, the compact mouth. Each was a match for Mikami’s memory.
Kakinuma’s head had slumped on to his shoulders. Witnessing the depth of the man’s despair was all Mikami needed to solidify his astonishment. As though a cloth had been whisked away, everything came into view. Kakinuma hadn’t been on surveillance. Nor had he been trying to map someone’s routine. He was here as a demonstration of intent. His closeness to the object of his surveillance was deliberate: he was to show his face, intimidate Koda. Don’t talk to anyone about Amamiya’s. We can make things difficult, whenever we want.
Kakinuma probably made sure Koda was aware of him on a regular basis. He was there to drum it into Koda that they intended to keep him under long-term surveillance. That was the role Kakinuma had been assigned.
Mikami shuddered as he fixed his gaze on Kakinuma’s stooped back.
‘All this time?’
No answer.
‘Really? You’ve been doing this . . . for fourteen years?’
Kakinuma let out a groan, and cradled his head in his hands. He’d been following orders. Urushibara’s confidence, Mikami now realized, had stemmed from this framework of intimidation.
‘I’m sorry I got in your way. I’ll get the rest from Koda.’
Mikami put his hand on the handle to open the door. Kakinuma let out a subdued cry, then twisted all the way around. There were tears in his bloodshot eyes.
‘No . . . just let him be.’
‘You’re in no position to say that.’
‘No, you’re right. You’re absolutely right. But it’s not what you think. This isn’t about intimidation or surveillance – not any more. It’s just habit now. For me. For Koda, too.’
‘Habit?’
‘It’s what happens after fourteen years of doing this. Ah, he’s here today – that’s really all it is now. We don’t see each other outside of that. It’s become an unspoken agreement. It’s how I’ve made it this far – Koda, too.’ Kakinuma threw his head into a deep bow. ‘I’m begging you, Mikami. Don’t make any trouble. If you go after him, with your charisma . . . he might well say something. If he does, I’ll have no choice but to report it.’
Mikami refrained from nodding.
‘I’ve been watching him since the beginning. He’s had nothing but pain since he left. Can’t land himself a decent job. He might have left by his own volition, but everyone’s prejudiced against someone who’s resigned from the force. And he left so suddenly he wasn’t even able to get a letter of recommendation. He’s had to go from one job to the next. All physically hard. Now, he’s finally married, got himself a family. He’s started to settle into a new life. That’s why—’
‘Tell me what happened.’
‘Hmm?’
‘Amamiya’s house. If you don’t want me to get it from Koda, tell me.’
‘But, I—’ Kakinuma broke off, a hopeless look spreading across his face.
‘I’m the same as you. I’m here to get my job done, too.’
Again, no answer.
‘I didn’t see you. We never spoke. Okay? Now talk.’
Kakinuma closed his eyes. Finally, he gave a weak shake of his head.
Mikami started to open the door. Something took hold of his wrist. The grip was strong. ‘This isn’t just about Koda. I have a family, too.’
‘So do I.’ Mikami grabbed Kakinuma. ‘Listen. No one will ever hear your name from my mouth. You, me, Koda – we will all get through this. Nothing will happen to our families. Tell me if there’s a better way of doing this.’
There was a long silence.
Kakinuma raised his head. He stared regretfully at Koda in the car park, then, eventually, turned slowly back around. The mouth he’d been holding shut dropped part-way open. He brought up a hand to massage his throat. There was another long pause before he was able to muster any words.
‘We missed our one chance to get the kidnapper’s voice on tape.’
Mikami caught his breath. Huh?
‘The recording equipment . . . it didn’t work.’
His head was racing.
He didn’t understand what Kakinuma was trying to say.
‘What do you mean? That call came in before any of you were even—’
‘There was another call.’
Mikami swallowed a breath.
Impossible . . .
‘It’s true. There was another call, one apart from the two that went on public record. And we screwed up our chances of getting it on tape.’
The words rang in his ears.
‘It was just before your unit arrived. We had a third call from the kidnapper. We’d been ready. Everyone was in place to record and trace the call. Then . . .’ Kakinuma swallowed, visibly pained. ‘The moment the phone started to ring, Amamiya almost lost it . . . he tried to pick it up, forgetting everything we’d told him. We managed to stop him, and contacted NTT. Hiyoshi was switching on the recording equipment at the same time. But the machine wouldn’t come on. The tapes didn’t move. He started to panic, tried flipping the switch off and on again, but the tapes just wouldn’t move. The phone continued to ring the whole time. Amamiya must have been terrified it would go dead – he picked up in the middle of the chaos.’
He picked up? The detective in Mikami reacted immediately.
‘Did the kidnapper talk to him?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he have to say?’
‘He warned Amamiya to steer clear of the police. Said he was watching him. Amamiya swore he hadn’t contacted us and begged to hear his daughter’s voice, but the line went dead. The call was too short to finish the trace.’
‘Was it the same voice as the previous times?’
‘According to Amamiya, yes.’
‘Did you get to hear it?’
Kakinuma shook his head regretfully. ‘No one heard it but Amamiya.’
‘What about headsets?’
‘I had mine on before. Koda, too. But we’d taken them off to help Hiyoshi, he was in such a panic. We were in the middle of checking the power, the slack on the tapes, when Amamiya . . . Anyway, that’s what happened.’
The car fell silent. The press officer in Mikami was late to catch up. The police had covered up their error. They’d deceived the public, consigned to the dark a call from the man behind a kidnapping and a murder.
It was unimaginable. It should never have been allowed to happen. It was at that point that Mikami finally felt a shiver go through him.
‘Who made the decision for the cover-up?’
Silence.
‘You’re wasting my time. Spit it out.’
‘The chief.’
‘Urushibara? What did he actually say?’
‘That we didn’t need to report it. That Amamiya understood. That we were never to speak of it to anyone, whatever happened.’
‘Did he try to sweet-talk Amamiya into playing along?’
‘I don’t think so. Amamiya was actually apologizing to us, at least immediately after the call. He kept saying he was sorry he’d answered without checking first.’
At least immediately after the call . . .
‘But that changed over time. Amamiya decided he couldn’t forgive us for the error. That was the reason the relationship broke down?’
‘I can’t really say; I’ve got orders to stay away from him. All I know is that the papers covered the case in exhaustive detail after the embargo was lifted. I’m certain he would have noticed that we hid the third call.’
Was that what it was? Had Amamiya turned his back on the police because of the cover-up, not because of the error itself?
‘What time did the call come in?’
‘Seven thirty, on the dot.’
That was only an hour before Mikami had arrived. He hadn’t sensed anything out of the ordinary. Although . . . whatever he’d seen, he would probably have considered it a product of the situation, of being in the house of a family whose daughter had been kidnapped, just as he’d written Hiyoshi’s paleness off to stress.
‘What did you say to NTT?’
It was one thing to commit an error, but they’d requested a trace and would have needed to follow that up.
‘We told them the call had been a wrong number.’
‘That’s what Urushibara told you to say?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was anyone giving him orders during all this?’
‘No. The way things were, he needed to make split-second decisions, there and then.’
Meaning responsibility stopped with the Home Unit. But, if that was the case . . .
‘What’s the Koda memo?’
Mikami had expected Kakinuma to put up a last-ditch fight, but he didn’t even pause.
‘I don’t know what it is, not exactly, but I do know that Koda was sick with anger. He turned on Urushibara when he learned the kidnapper had got away with the ransom. The whole team’s responsible for this. We need to report it to HQ. All four of us should stand in the firing line. Urushibara just shouted back: Why would you want to alienate the public? Spare me the amateur politics until we’ve caught the damn kidnapper. I said the same things to him, begged him. I said he needed to put up with it, keep it quiet.
‘Believe me, I knew exactly how he felt, but I really didn’t think it would benefit the investigation to kick up a fuss over a single mistake. And a part of me thought Urushibara had a point. Koda kept quiet after that. Then, later, he seemed to be in agony, after everything started to go wrong, after Shoko was found dead. In the end, Urushibara couldn’t stop him. It was after we’d pulled out of Amamiya’s house. Koda wrote up a report detailing the error and posted it through the director’s letterbox.’
Mikami’s head lurched.
The error had been reported, fourteen years earlier. The director of Criminal Investigations had been made aware of the cover-up. This wasn’t the first time a secret the Home Unit had sought to bury for ever had come to light. The man in the top position in Criminal Investigations had known about it, too, and as far back as the kidnapping itself. Yet the facts had never been made public. The Koda memo had been stamped out of existence. They had decided to endorse Urushibara’s conduct. Koda had tipped them off and resigned from the force, yet no one had tried to stop him. On the flip-side was Urushibara, the man behind the whole cover-up – promoted to captain.
A systematic cover-up. Orchestrated by the Prefectural HQ. That was the truth behind the Koda memo.
‘Koda’s got a strong moral core. He’s also a good man, and he honours his obligations. Every year, on the anniversary of Shoko’s death, he goes to offer incense at her grave. He even made a quiet visit to Toshiko’s grave after she passed away last year, to pay his respects.
‘That’s why your hands are tied.’
‘Sorry . . .?’
‘You know what I’m talking about. You’re the only one who can watch Koda. That’s what this is.’
‘Yeah . . . I suppose so. The director’s secret was passed down the lines.’
‘Of course,’ Mikami said, feeling disgusted.
He could see a man in a guard’s uniform, his trousers, flapping in the biting wind. Fourteen whole years. All because he’d been true to his conscience.
‘He must really hate us.’ What was supposed to be a sigh came out as words.
‘Not really,’ Kakinuma muttered. ‘You know, I think he feels grateful now.’
‘Grateful?’
‘This is the first time he’s been able to hold down a proper job. Urushibara put in a good word.’
Mikami grunted when he heard this. It was probably true; the security agencies were essentially an old-boy network for the police. Under normal circumstances, an allegedly unstable element like Koda would never be able to find work with them.
‘Koda came begging, asked the chief to forgive him.’ Kakinuma dabbed a finger over his eyes. ‘He asked Urushibara to let it go, help him out, said he just wanted a normal life with his wife and child.’
Submission. Mika
mi felt it in his chest. A deep sympathy. An officer. A security guard. The only difference was the uniform. Off in the distance, Koda was laughing. He was in gloves, holding a red baton. Chatting with the shoppers through their car windows. Nodding happily away. He’d had his fangs removed. He was no longer a threat to the force. Yet he was still subject to Kakinuma’s regular surveillance. By the same measure, Kakinuma was being made to recall what had happened. They were two sides of the same mirror, the strategy functioning also to keep Kakinuma, who understood the truth of the cover-up, in check. This is you, if you go shooting your mouth off. Even though he’d been the one keeping watch for fourteen years, Kakinuma would have been instilled with a fear that was much the same as Koda’s.
Mikami felt the sudden urge to set them free, both of them.
‘Okay, I’m going to leave now. Just let me know one more thing. Why did Hiyoshi start crying in Amamiya’s house?’
‘That was because . . . he felt responsible.’
‘That’s all?’ Kakinuma grimaced. ‘Urushibara said something to him. Yes?’
‘. . . yes.’
‘What did he say?’
‘It was about Shoko.’
‘Tell me exactly what he said.’
‘He told Hiyoshi that if the worst came to the worst . . . that it was his fault.’
32
Mikami’s foot eased down on the accelerator.
He was heading east on the prefectural highway, having taken his leave of Kakinuma. He was going to visit Amamiya. He didn’t know if the new information was enough to talk him around, but he felt it was enough to warrant a second attempt. The truth was that he wanted to go directly to Urushibara’s in City Q and beat the truth out of the man. He could feel the bile rising in his throat. This wasn’t something he could just build a wall around or keep apart from his emotions. There was anger, but that wasn’t all. He felt dismay, too. They’d had a chance to get the kidnapper’s voice on tape. If they’d succeeded, they could have broadcast it to the nation. They could have used voice fingerprinting to pare down the list of suspects.
He rammed his palm into the steering wheel. One after another, the negative emotions boiled up from within.
The police had messed up their one chance to record the kidnapper’s voice. What would have happened if this had got out to the public at the time? The case had ended in the worst possible way, with the kidnapper making off with the ransom, then with the discovery of Shoko Amamiya’s dead body. The police had, in the course of their investigation, failed to procure evidence that could have led them directly to the perpetrator. The tapes hadn’t moved. There would have been an outcry. Management’s heads would have rolled. Mikami doubted even that would have been enough to quell the fire. For as long as the case remained unsolved, the press would have seized every opportunity to bring up the mistake, continued, regardless of the passage of time, to rub salt on old wounds. The police would face endless condemnation: if only you’d recorded the kidnapper’s voice that time.
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