Who the fuck knows.
The door to the visitors’ room was open when he got back to the Secretariat. He saw the chiselled features of a private-sector CEO, one who had been there on a few previous occasions. Sakaniwa was there, too, sitting with his back to the door as he listened to what the man had to say.
Tsuge took a seat at his desk. For a moment, everything seemed to go dark. His eyes traced slowly back to the other room, fearful, as though he’d seen a ghost.
Sakaniwa. His back to the door.
That was normal enough. The couches were arranged so that Sakaniwa could – and always did – offer the furthest one to visitors while he sat with his back to the door. But not that time. Tsuge had returned to the office following his meeting with Toyama. Hearing that Ukai was already in attendance, he’d opened the door to the room without so much as knocking. He’d seen Ukai and Sakaniwa’s faces together. Ukai had looked annoyed but that was the man’s default expression. He hadn’t been angry, then, not until Tsuge had shown up. Not while he’d been sitting beside the chief.
Had they been in collusion? Tsuge considered the idea. There was, he had to admit, one thing that lent traction to the theory. Not once had Sakaniwa tried to dissuade Ukai in person. He’d delegated all the work to Tsuge. Sakaniwa was himself a veteran when it came to working with the assembly. It went without saying that he and Ukai would know each other. Despite this, and regardless of the fact that his own head was on the line, he hadn’t gone to see the man in person. Did that mean they’d been working together? That it had been some form of entrapment? No, it couldn’t be anything like that. He’d been made to do the legwork, that was all. No harm had come of it. Besides, he didn’t believe either of them had reason to hold a grudge against him.
I’m getting paranoid.
‘Tsuge.’ Sakaniwa came over, having already emerged from the visitors’ room. ‘I guess we should call this a win.’
‘Sir, I suppose. But—’
‘By the way,’ Sakaniwa went on, lowering his voice, ‘someone told me Ukai filed a theft report with district.’
‘A theft report?’
‘Yes. It seems that someone saw fit to steal the man’s briefcase,’ he said, a faint smile playing across his lips.
Tsuge watched, mouth gaping, as the chief walked away. Briefcase. Theft. For a while everything seemed lost in a haze. Tsuge failed to notice Aiko Toda offer him coffee. Briefcase. He started to shake. Briefcase. Prints. Camera. Trap. The words came together to form a cohesive but unexpected narrative. The story belonged neither to him nor to Assemblyman Ukai. Instead, it belonged to Secretariat Chief Shoichi Sakaniwa.
The man was hoping for a significant promotion come the next round of transfers. He would do all he could to secure himself a post as director. Before that, however, he had to first rid himself of the one blemish that could come back to haunt him.
His one mistake, made seven years ago.
The plan had already been in motion when he’d called Tsuge to join the Secretariat. He’d spun out the idea of the ‘time bomb’ and made damn sure that Tsuge felt the pressure. He’d understood that Tsuge’s instinct for self-protection would compel him to lay hands on the briefcase. There hadn’t been a doubt in his mind.
It was Sakaniwa who had called Ukai at his apartment the previous evening. He’d wanted to ensure that Tsuge was left alone with the briefcase. There’d been the empty bracket above the main door, the kind that housed a security camera. The camera itself would have been hidden, he guessed, in the room with him. Ukai would have kept watch from the bedroom, prolonging the call until Tsuge had done the deed.
The briefcase had not been stolen. If Tsuge should ever come to pose a threat, it would turn up at a substation in some town. It would be flagged as the stolen property of one of the prefecture’s key assembly members. As such, it would be sent for forensics testing. Tsuge’s prints would be found plastered over all the papers inside.
The officer who stole an assemblyman’s briefcase.
The fact would never become public knowledge but it would mark the end of his career in the force.
Still, that wasn’t how the story had panned out. Tsuge would, of course, never breathe a word about Sakaniwa’s past transgression. Keep things on an even keel. The story was over the moment Sakaniwa got what he needed.
Ukai had played a role, albeit a bit part, in the story. As Seshima had seen, the man was a coward at heart. The investigation had been devastating, and he’d been at the mercy of the force ever since. When Sakaniwa, one of the closest aides to the captain, had approached him for a favour, he’d jumped at the chance to earn some goodwill.
Yet Tsuge couldn’t help wondering whether there hadn’t been something more to the man’s ready agreement to become an accomplice. He recalled the ferocity of the anger Ukai had directed his way. Perhaps the man had decided to use him as a punchbag, as a means of venting his pent-up animosity.
This would, of course, never be more than conjecture. These were questions no one would answer.
He glanced at Sakaniwa’s desk. In profile, the chief’s unremarkable features had even less impact. Tsuge was surprised to find that he bore the man no ill will. He suspected he’d have done something similar in Sakaniwa’s position.
It’ll come in useful, some day.
He had to admit, the thought had been there at the back of his mind.
The Secretariat returned to its usual quiet that afternoon.
Tsuge saw the brown roof of the archives beyond the window. A narrow strip of blue sky peeked out from above.
10
The apartment was dark when Tsuge arrived home.
Misuzu and Morio were in the next town along, at Misuzu’s family home. The school had granted them leave as an emergency measure to escape the bullying, which had apparently grown worse.
Tsuge sipped at a bowl of noodles. He turned on the washing machine and started to run a bath but turned the tap off halfway. He collapsed into bed. He lay there for a while, arms and legs spread like a cross. There was a drawing of him on the wall. Scribbled in paint and crayon, he didn’t think it much of a likeness. The words were a mess, too.
Thanks for working so hard.
Tsuge put on his clothes and left the building. There was something he needed to tell his son. He held on to the words as he set out in the car:
Make a friend. Just one will do.
He wasn’t sure if he really believed them, but he pushed down on the accelerator regardless, as though to stamp out the apathy growing inside him.
Prefecture D Page 18