Suwa was alone in the office. He looked transformed. His eyes were abnormally red, his eyebrows arched; even his close-cropped hair seemed to bristle with anger. Yet these were only surface details. He had the look of someone unbreakable, someone whose true potential had been shaken out of a deep sleep. He looked victorious, not worn.
‘Great work, sir.’ His voice was ragged, like a politician’s after a hard-fought election.
‘I think that’s my line.’
‘Mesaki’s name, it did the job. Turned everything around.’
Mikami had called in from the parking area in Station G. That had been fifty minutes ago.
‘What about the forecast for the coverage agreement?’
‘They’re on a conference call discussing it. It’ll probably take a while yet, but we should have it signed before the day’s out.’
‘Really?’ Mikami asked, genuinely surprised. ‘They’ll sign with just Mesaki’s name?’
‘Oh, they know the girl’s name. They did the research themselves, all of them.’
Right, of course.
‘Here are the names.’
Suwa held out a sheet of paper, saying he’d asked Administration to do the research in Station G.
Mutsuko Mesaki (42)
Kasumi Mesaki (17)
Saki Mesaki (11)
Ka . . . su . . . mi. Mikami read out the girl’s name. The sound seemed similar to that of Ayumi. Masato. Mutsuko. Kasumi. Saki. Lined up together, the names were unmistakably those of a family. Mikami felt a new emotion come into play. How wonderful – if it did turn out to be only a hoax. Her parents would be anxious to know their daughter was safe and well.
He shook his head.
‘How are Kuramae and Mikumo? Is the conference room ready?’
‘Yes – Kuramae managed to get everything together. He’s there now. We have ten people helping. Five from the Secretariat, five from Administration. Mikumo is in the underground car park, helping organize the cars from Tokyo. She’s got a few people from Welfare and Officer Development.’
Right . . . they’d need help to get everything done. Nanao would be in the assembly hall. Matsuoka had already told him that. Which meant Criminal Investigations must have called her in from Administration, to take charge of the female officers. The practical demands of the case were helping to bring down the wall between the two departments. After a delayed start, the Prefectural HQ had begun real preparations for the investigation into the kidnapping.
‘Have you seen Futawatari?’
‘The inspector? No.’
‘What about the conference room?’
‘Kuramae would have probably mentioned it, if he was there.’
‘Right . . .’
‘Do you want me to look for him?’
‘No, it doesn’t matter.’ Mikami changed the subject. ‘The conference room, is it filling up already?’
‘We’ve had more than a hundred reporters arrive from Tokyo. There’ll be more, too.’
‘What about our lot?’
‘Our lot?’
Suwa broke into a smile and chuckled. Unable to keep it down, he let this become a loud, open-mouthed laugh. It looked to Mikami as though he’d let go of a huge burden. He suddenly remembered his father’s wartime buddy, his exaggerated laugh.
Huh. Guess I forgot how to laugh.
Mikami gave Suwa a pained grin. ‘Yeah, maybe “our lot” was a bit of a stretch.’
‘Sorry, it was just . . .’ Suwa muttered. He rubbed his hands down his face. ‘The ground troops left for the conference room. The more senior reporters are out at the assembly hall. It’s locked, so they can’t get in. It shouldn’t be long before they give up and join the others.’
‘What about the timetable for our announcements?’
Suwa looked down at his desk. He leafed through a pile of hand-written memos. ‘Okay. When the agreement’s in place, once every two hours. We can add paper bulletins in between when necessary. We’re also supposed to hold emergency announcements if there’s a call from the kidnapper, or some other major development. That’s true for the duration of the provisional agreement, too.’
‘We can’t chair a conference every two hours.’
‘It’s only for the time being. This is the first day of the case . . . we probably can’t avoid it.’
‘Is this what the Press Club is asking for?’
‘That’s right. They’re asking for every last detail of the case and investigation, as we’re keeping the girl’s name anonymous.’
‘Two hours won’t be enough. If we gave them every detail we’d be in there until the morning. Do they expect us to keep the lead investigator there the whole time, under house arrest?’ ‘Ah, yes . . . there was that, too.’ Suwa’s expression clouded over. ‘Second Division’s Chief Ochiai has been appointed to make the announcements. That’s according to Criminal Investigations.’
‘They’re fucking kidding,’ Mikami blurted out.
During a kidnapping, tradition dictated that press announcements were to be made by the director of Criminal Investigations or the chief of First Division. The chief of Second Division was both lower in rank and from an unrelated office: what were they hoping to achieve in standing him before the press? And Ochiai was a young bureaucrat, with no experience of active field duty. He wouldn’t stand a chance fielding questions on a kidnapping.
Was that the plan? Were they going to usher him in with only a half-empty sheet of paper? The move was straight out of Akama’s playbook. If you don’t know anything, you can’t say anything.
‘It won’t work.’
The reporters would run riot, hundreds of them. Knowing this, Arakida had still decided to offer up Ochiai. There was something he needed to keep from the press. Something he was afraid would slip out if he was pressed. That was why he’d opted to use a puppet.
But was that true?
Mikami no longer thought the kidnapping was a sham. And the idea that Criminal Investigations was taking advantage of a hoax had also been disproved, now that Matsuoka had told him they didn’t have evidence either way. Mikami couldn’t see anything that would break under investigation – no chinks in their armour.
His mind still felt clouded. There was something he couldn’t pin down, the vague sense that something was out of place . . . It was why he was still asking questions.
But it was just nitpicking without any evidence, without something tangible. Mikami was forced to accept that, apart from their treatment of the press, Criminal Investigations was doing a good job of managing the investigation so far. They were aware the case could be a hoax, perpetrated by Kasumi Mesaki herself, but showed no signs of being negligent, of cutting corners. They’d sent First Division Chief Matsuoka to shore up the front line at Station G; they’d gathered detectives specializing in violent crime and had begun preparations to station undercover officers, all the while remembering to cooperate as necessary with the other divisions. The ransom was going to be delivered tomorrow. The case and the investigation would undergo significant developments. Yet Mikami felt no rush of anticipation. Something has to be wrong. He felt unbalanced, as though he’d sat on a chair with only three legs.