‘Tell them individually, one by one.’
‘They’re unanimous in saying they won’t sign an official agreement. They won’t stop shouting. They won’t call their head offices.’
‘They’ll be coming whatever happens. Every paper will send all the reporters they can spare. Most likely, they’re already on their way.’
No answer.
‘You don’t have time to think; do it now. The life of a seventeen-year-old girl is hanging in the balance. We can’t arrest the kidnapper. What we can do is make sure the press don’t get her killed.’
He started the engine without waiting for an answer.
‘You’re right. I’ll do what I can.’
Her voice was obscured by the shouting in the background, but her determination was clear.
Mikami accelerated sharply. He pulled past the swirls of dead leaves and out of the Prefectural HQ. He rode the prefectural highway east. If traffic was light, it would take less than half an hour to reach Station G. The life of a seventeen-year-old girl is hanging in the balance. The words had left a bitter taste in his mouth. Not because he’d deployed them to coax Mikumo into action. Not because he felt any less concern for C now the idea of a hoax had been planted in his mind. It felt real. Ayumi’s smile. Shoko’s death mask. High-school uniforms. Hair decorations, the shichigosan festival. Girls walking in the streets. A bright-red coat in a shop window. Mikami’s vision conjured images, mixing with memory and emotion to give C a tangible reality, furnishing her with warmth and a pulse. And yet . . .
Something was interfering with the picture.
Do they even exist?
Mikami spun the wheel, putting his foot down to overtake two cars ahead of him.
The Investigative HQ were placing too much emphasis on the theory that C had orchestrated the kidnapping herself. They’d started with the conclusion and worked their way backwards. Seeing Mikura’s calm detachment, suspicion had wormed its way into Mikami’s head. Under any normal circumstances, it would suggest he was holding some kind of trump card. If they did have some kind of irrefutable evidence that it was a hoax, then there was no case. No need to set up an Investigative HQ. And yet they had staged a dramatic occupation of the assembly hall. They had demanded that the press sign a coverage agreement, and been careful also to float the possibility that the case was a hoax. We can stop the commissioner’s visit. Someone had had the idea. They’d decided C could play the role of instigator and were taking advantage of something they knew was a hoax to magnify the disturbance.
Mikami put a cigarette in his mouth. His hand stopped before he lit it.
But was that really it?
Was it really just chance?
It felt too perfect. Why now? The commissioner was due to arrive and claim the director’s head. But a kidnapping occurred the day before the visit. A kidnapping and ransom, the kind of case that happens maybe once in every ten years in the regions. And the kidnapper was imitating Six Four, playing off the ostensible reason for the commissioner’s visit: Get 20 million yen ready by midday tomorrow. Midday was the time scheduled for the commissioner’s arrival. The lines might have been a carbon copy of Six Four, but the timing had to be more than simple chance.
They had made it look as if C was the perpetrator of the hoax, when in fact it was on a completely different scale . . .
Mikami stopped at a red light. He lit the cigarette he had in his mouth.
Do the girl and her family exist?
The answer was perhaps yes and no. The family existed, but not as victims of a kidnapping. It seemed possible, because Mikami knew what the police were capable of when they put their mind to something. It wouldn’t be difficult to procure a victim. The investigation was a sham. Or worse . . . He didn’t want to believe it, but the hypothesis stuck because he knew they could do it if the decision had been made.
The case was a kidnapping. Their first step would have to be setting up a ‘victim’s house’. As NTT would maintain records of any calls made, they wouldn’t be able to use the phones of police officers or their relatives, or anyone belonging to police-affiliated organizations, for the ‘victim’s phone’. The quickest way to do it would be to use someone already in deep cover. It didn’t have to be someone in the underworld. They would prefer some citizen they had on a leash, someone in their debt who had a weakness they could exploit, someone under their control. That way they would have no reason to fear double-dealing, or the truth slipping out. For this particular role, a married couple who lived outwardly normal lives.
Mikami thought back to one of the guards outside the assembly hall – Ashida from Organized Crime. Goggle Eyes. He had once saved a family who were running a ryokan business from going through with a suicide pact. The man had liked to play around and had got himself involved with a girl who was part of a Yakuza scheme; they had started blackmailing him. They raped his wife, took photos, filmed every last detail. The man had approached Ashida in private, and he worked behind the scenes to settle things with the Yakuza. They agreed to leave the man alone, but on the condition that Ashida turn a blind eye to the blackmail and violence. Ashida received a commendation from the station captain when, three months later, a couple of guns were found in one of the Yakuza group’s lower-ranking offices. Mikami had later heard that Ashida had his own private room in the ryokan, and that the photos and tape of the owner’s wife were kept there in a safe.
The case wasn’t even unique. There were many couples out there hiding an unsavoury background or running from debt who would suddenly find life difficult if their secrets got out. The longer your service as an officer – particularly in the case of detectives – the greater the number of potential ‘collaborators’ in your network. Most crimes would never happen without there first being some kind of secret.
Yes, it would be easy enough to get a couple to act as parents.
All they needed then . . .
Mikami stubbed out his cigarette and started forwards. The road was looking busy; he pulled in front of a truck, then back into the left lane.