The Informer

by Akimitsu Takagi

  (1) Segawa left the scene of the crime between 9:15 p.m. and 9:25 p.m. (Two witnesses.)

  (2) He plotted to escape.

  (3) He is the only person apart from the victim whose fingerprints were found at the scene.

  (4) The key to the victim’s flat was in his possession.

  (5) An investigation of the victim’s background and movements indicates she had no close relationship with any man other than Segawa, nor was there any other person who had taken a special in­terest in her.

  (6) On the other hand, the alibi produced by Segawa in the Ogino case indicates he was in close relationship with the victim.

  (7) His movements after 7 p.m. are not clear, while there is no evidence whatsoever to substantiate his claim that when he entered the victim’s flat she was already dead.

  (8) Segawa claims the victim’s flat was in complete darkness when he entered it, but there is a witness who saw light in the win­dow of that flat around 8:30 p.m.

  The summary was followed by detailed information on each point. A separate report on the victim said Kazumi Yamaguchi had been personal secretary to the president of Sanei Products. She was highly regarded by executives of the company and had been very popular with the staff. She had earned a fairly high salary for a woman, and there was a considerable amount in her bank account. She came from a wealthy family of excellent reputation. It was most unlikely she would have been mixed up in anything unlawful. Her movements after 6 p.m. on the day of her death could not be ascertained. She had left the com­pany’s offices at closing time, but no one knew where she would have gone from there.

  Kirishima began his examination of the suspect the following morning, going over all the major points. Segawa stuck to his guns, denying his guilt all the way through. But it looked very much like a desperate last-ditch stand.

  The real problem still to be solved was the Ogino murder. Segawa’s alibi relating to this seemed to be a likely motive for the second murder. Inspector Ishida’s theory was that Segawa had fabricated his original alibi in conspiracy with Kazumi Ya­maguchi, and when she subsequently discovered Segawa’s rela­tionship with Mrs. Ogino, she became angry and threatened to reveal the truth to the police. Segawa lost his temper and killed her—perhaps accidentally. His panicky attempt to es­cape seemed to confirm this.

  Kirishima was prepared to go along with Ishida’s theory. He also realised that Yamaguchi’s death, which had brought about Segawa’s arrest, was a severe blow not only to the suspect but also to the prosecution. Now there was little hope of destroying Segawa’s original alibi. And without this the chances of estab­lishing a clear motive for Yamaguchi’s murder were greatly re­duced, and so was the prospect of proving Segawa guilty of Ogino’s murder.

  It looked like a vicious circle, but he’d have to break it before he could charge Segawa with murder. Otherwise the defence would tear the case to pieces at the trial, and the judge would throw it out for sure on the ground of insufficient evidence.

  He made up his mind to re-examine the facts of the first murder in the hope of discovering some new angle. He didn’t expect to find any new fact, as Ishida had done everything pos­sible during the police investigation.

  Once more he read through the report and all the written statements. One thing that kept bothering him was the ex­posed film. He decided to re-think this problem thoroughly.

  It was quite unlikely that Ogino would’ve left a useless piece of film lying on his desk for two of three days. An untidy bache­lor might’ve done this, but not him. It was then reasonable to assume that he did handle the camera on the day of his death. And on the basis of the available statements, this must’ve taken place between his arrival home at about 6:30 p.m. and his death around 9 p.m. He had been a full-time executive—far too busy to fiddle with a camera before leaving for work in the morning.

  The fact that Segawa had left his fingerprints on the cassette didn’t upset this theory at all. He had said he hadn’t been aware of the film on the desk. Supposing he was telling the truth. Then the film would’ve been already on the desk when he entered the study and he would’ve touched it without noticing. It followed that if Segawa was telling the truth, then the period of time during which Ogino could’ve handled the camera was no more than thirty minutes—between his arrival home at 6:30 p.m. and Segawa’s arrival at 7 p.m.

  “That’s funny,” Kirishima muttered to himself.

  Ogino had thirty minutes to spare between arriving home and receiving his guest. He would’ve needed that much time just to wash and change and perhaps relax for a few minutes. How could he have found time to play around with a camera just then? If he’d just bought a new camera and was all wrapped up in it, or if he’d been one of those camera cranks who spent every spare moment toying with photographic gear, that’d be different. But Ogino didn’t fit into either of those categories. Furthermore, if he’d been camera-crazy, he wouldn’t have made the silly mistake of opening the camera with half the film in it still unused.

  It seemed much more likely that Ogino had been handling the camera during Segawa’s visit, perhaps offering to take a pic­ture of his friend. And as he hadn’t used it for quite a while, he didn’t remember there was already a film in it and opened it to put one in. Then he realised his mistake and replaced the dam­aged film with a new one.

  This sounded logical enough and could well be what had ac­tually happened. But if this was the truth, it meant Segawa had told a deliberate lie. Why would he lie about something so unimportant? It was not as if the film had been dropped at the scene of the murder in the visitors’ room.

  Kirishima was wondering if there was something more to it. Did this piece of film have some special significance he couldn’t see?

  He kept chewing on it for a while, then turned to his clerk, looking as if he’d just come back from a dream. “Ring Inspector Ishida, will you,” he said sleepily. “I want to take another look at the Ogino house. Ask him to bring a fingerprint man along.”

  Kirishima and the police officers were shown into the visitors’ room by Toshiko Murozaki. She looked tired and dejected.

  “These last nine days have played havoc with my sister,” she said in a toneless voice. “She’s been in bed most of the time. I’ve hardly ever left her side since that night. I can’t go to work at all, but there’s nobody else to look after her properly. She needs a lot of kindness and reassurance.”

  “Yes, it must’ve been a big shock for her,” Kirishima said absent-mindedly, looking around the room. It had been re­arranged quite a lot since he’d last seen it, but the memory of the murder still seemed to hover about it somehow.

  “Now that the funeral is over, nobody wants to visit this house any more.” Toshiko gave a pathetic little smile.

  “That may be just as well until Mrs. Ogino gets better . . .” He cleared his throat and hesitated for a moment. “We’re sorry to cause more inconvenience, but today we’d like to talk to Mrs. Ogino again. We could do it at her bedside if she isn’t well enough to get up.”

  Toshiko’s smile was replaced by a fleeting expression of fear. “Then would you please wait here,” she said without hiding her disapproval.

  They waited quite a while before Eiko appeared in the door­way, wrapped in a blue kimono. Kirishima had to control an impulse to turn his eyes away. In that short time her face had changed completely. Her cheeks were sunken and grey, and her eyes had become sharper but lifeless.

  She took a chair slowly. “Is there anything new?” she asked more firmly than she looked. There was a faint hope in her voice.

  Kirishima felt sorry for her. She must’ve thought they’d un­covered something that shifted the suspicion from Segawa to someone else. Perhaps she thought they were going to start the investigation all over again.

  “Well, maybe,” he said uncomfortably, trying to find his offi­cial voice. “Mrs. Ogino, would you please recall the day of
the tragedy? We’d like to know what your husband did that morn­ing before going to work.”

  “Before going to work?” Puzzled by the unexpected ques­tion, she cupped her chin. “He didn’t do anything unusual . . . just washed and shaved, got dressed . . . had breakfast, looked through the paper . . . I think that was ail.”

  “Did he take out his camera at all?”

  “Camera? No, he didn’t. Once he’d been interested in cameras—used to buy the new models, one after another. But lately he’d been so busy—he hardly ever touched it.”

  “I see . . . Now, could you tell me this. After your husband had left for work, did you clean his study that day?”

  “Yes, I think so. I used to clean it every day unless something unexpected came up.”

  “Just try to think back now. Did you see anything unusual on the desk that day?”

  “No—nothing that I can recall.”

  “You didn’t see any photographic equipment lying on it by any chance?”

  “No, I didn’t. The camera was usually sitting on top of the cabinet, and the accessories and boxes of film were always in­side the cabinet beside the bookshelf.”

  Kirishima nodded. “Since the tragedy, has the study been left as it had always been?”

  “Yes. Nothing has been changed.”

  “You haven’t taken anything out of it?”

  “The secretary, Mr. Fujita, came over one day and took back all the company documents.”

  “But nothing else has been touched apart from the documents?”

  “No,” she said slowly, as if talking to herself. “It’s much too soon to start giving his things away.”

  “Well, that’s all we wanted to know, Mrs. Ogino. Is it all right if we take another look at the study now?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Thank you.” Kirishima saw a ray of hope in her tired eyes and couldn’t help feeling a bit of a heel. What he was about to do next could produce exactly the opposite result to what she was expecting.

  They went upstairs and into the study. The windows had been kept closed, and the room was filled with warm, stale air. Nothing seemed to have been changed since the night of the incident.

  Kirishima went straight to the cabinet with the photo­graphic gear in it and showed it to the fingerprint expert. “I’d like you to pick up every print in this cabinet, not missing any if you can help it. I know the prints will be at least nine days old, so you might meet with some trouble processing them, but just do the best you can.”

  “I’ll try anyway,” the officer said. “Prints on anything neatly put away are likely to survive much longer than on something that’s been thrown around.” He carefully opened the door of the cabinet.

  Back at police headquarters Inspector Ishida stared at the re­port on the fingerprint tests.

  Segawa’s prints had been identified on the camera as well as on the close-up lens. So far as the camera was concerned, it was what Kirishima had expected, but the close-up lens was a lucky break, he thought.

  Ishida couldn’t see why Kirishima should be so jubilant about it. “This shows Segawa had the victim’s camera in his hands. So what?” His tone was almost truculent. “The only thing that puzzles me is why he had to tell a lie about such a tri­fle? He admitted going into the study. So what was the point in hiding the fact that he had touched the camera?”

  “I think he might’ve had a very good reason for that,” Kirishima said. “If he’d only touched the camera, then I’d say he might’ve done it inadvertantly, even by accident. But the close-up lens? That makes all the difference.”

  “Close-up lens . . . What did he copy?”

  “I understand the Shichiyo Chemical Company has been developing some new product, and Ogino was in charge of that operation.” Kirishima paused for a moment. “I know this sounds fantastic, but what if Segawa was trying to steal the se­cret of the new material by taking advantage of his friendship with the victim?”

  “Industrial spying.” Ishida pronounced the words slowly, looking at Kirishima with obvious respect. “I think it’s an excellent guess, Mr. Prosecutor. It makes everything fall im­mediately into place. Now I understand why he so suddenly re­established his contact with the victim after such a long time. I also see why he tried to seduce Setsuko Kondo, the assistant in the research section. He must’ve thought this might be a short cut to the secret of the new product.”

  Kirishima nodded, appreciating this veteran police inspec­tor’s ability to develop instantly a theory from a single hint.

  Ishida went on excitedly. “Now we have the solution to the puzzle of the fingerprints on the cassette. When Segawa was being shown around the house, he must’ve noticed some secret document on the desk in the study. Shoichi Ogino might’ve dozed off after the drinks, and Segawa decided this was his chance. He sneaked up into the study, put the close-up lens on the camera and started copying the document. Then the vic­tim woke up, couldn’t see Segawa around and became suspi­cious. He went upstairs to investigate, and caught Segawa red-handed. He heaped abuse on Segawa and opened the cam­era, exposing the film to the light. Am I right?”

  “Yes, that sounds like it. Now we have another motive for the crime.”

  “My word. Segawa would’ve been desperate by then. Ogino must’ve called him all the names under the sun. That’s when Segawa would’ve got the first impulse to fix the victim for good . . . They came downstairs together, Ogino intent on throwing Segawa out of the house. Segawa would’ve been apologising profusely to put Ogino off his guard, and when the opportunity came, struck the victim on the head with the statuette. This wouldn’t have been so hard to accomplish if Ogino was drunk.” Ishida stopped long enough to catch his breath and to put on a troubled expression. “But if we’re right so far, then isn’t it possible Mrs. Ogino is an accomplice?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Well, I don’t think the victim would’ve had enough time before his death to put away the camera and the close-up lens. It’s reasonable enough to assume he pulled the film out of the cassette and threw the lot on the desk. But why would he have chosen that particular moment to unscrew the close-up lens and put it into the cabinet in front of Segawa?”

  “Are you suggesting that when Mrs. Ogino came home and found out what happened, she put away the camera and the close-up lens to protect Segawa? Then where are her fingerprints?”

  “She might’ve used a handkerchief. She might’ve even tried to wipe the camera clean of prints but didn’t succeed, though she managed to keep her own prints off. This isn’t unthinkable, is it?”

  Kirishima thought Ishida’s speculation about Mrs. Ogino was a bit far-fetched, though at this stage there was nothing to disprove it. “We’ll see,” he said quietly.

  “Of course, I’m not suggesting we should arrest Mrs. Ogino right away. But now that we’ve managed to establish a logical sequence up to this point, it’ll be only a matter of time before Segawa owns up to his spying activities. Intelligent criminals often break down once they feel their defence is beginning to fall apart. And if he implicates Mrs. Ogino, and we arrest her after that, public opinion will be on our side.”

  Inspector Ishida was bursting with energy once more. His face was beaming with satisfaction.

  But Kirishima had some reservations. He decided he’d take a good look at Mikio Sakai.

  12

  Sakai walked into Kirishima’s office at the Criminal Affairs Division at three o’clock the following afternoon.

  He greeted Kirishima with a broad smile, but then knitted his heavy eyebrows in concern. “I’m glad you’ve asked me to come to see you, Mr. Prosecutor. As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking of actually seeking an interview with you. I’m very disturbed about Mr. Segawa. He showed quite a lot of ability as a partner in my business. How could an intelligent man like him do such a thing? I simply refu
se to believe Mr. Segawa had anything to do with this stupid crime.”

  “I requested your appearance here because I want you to tell me all about your business.” Kirishima spoke sharply. His first impression of Sakai was that the man was a villain, and this de­cided him to try the brow-beating technique rather than waste time on beating about the bush.

  “What d’you mean by business? Are you referring to the trading company?”

  “Yes, that’s one of them, and the other is the job Shigeo Segawa was actually doing.”

  “Well, so far as Segawa’s work is concerned, the other day—I forget what day it was—a detective visited our office and car­ried out a full investigation on it. Segawa himself was out selling at the time.”

  “You’ve been paying him a salary of 50,000 yen a month. Don’t you think this is rather extraordinary—paying that much to a salesman?”

  Sakai’s face took on a pained expression. “Do we have to go all over that again? I’ve already explained it all to the detec­tive. I thought you would’ve received his report by now . . . I treated Segawa as a future managing partner. Payment of a salary was only a temporary measure to tie him over until the completion of his financial arrangements for the partnership. His position was entirely different from that of an ordinary salesman.”

  “What was Segawa selling?”

  “A range of electric massaging machines. This is a brand new line—nothing like the other commodities we handle—and I wanted him to take charge of it and organise a sales cam­paign for it.”

  “Was it economical to pay him 50,000 yen a month for such a job?”

  “In a narrow sense, no. But as I’ve just explained, his salary wasn’t based on this particular work—it was calculated on his future worth to the company. I’d never intended balancing his performance against his salary on a day-to-day basis.”

  “But were you satisfied with his performance generally?”

  “Yes, definitely. I felt I’d made the right choice—he would’ve become a very good partner in time.”