His world was spinning. He was stunned, but he didn’t understand why.
The Six Four investigation . . .? Information from you . . .?
Something was vibrating on his shoes. His open phone was edging over his feet, faintly buzzing. Right. After he’d called Suwa, he’d tried to call . . .
Getting to his feet, he took up the phone, hearing the man’s voice as he held it to his ear.
‘Sorry you had to call so many times . . .’
It was Mochizuki.
‘. . . is something going on?’
‘Why?’
‘Last night, I had a call from Matsuoka. He wanted to know if I’d had any silent calls recently. I was a little bewildered, so I just said I hadn’t and ended the call. But, you know, something like that . . . it makes you think. A direct call from Chief Adviser Matsuoka. Do you have any idea what he might have been calling about?’
No.
None at all.
Mikami ended the call and collapsed on to one of the stools.
In that instant, the large, soft sheet seemed to slip away, crumpling at his feet before it vanished completely.
He’d woken up.
He could see something . . .
Information from you. That was it. When he’d visited Matsuoka’s home, he’d talked about the silent calls with his wife. He’d found out afterwards that their family home had also received a silent call. As had Mizuki Murakushi. Concerned about Minako, Mizuki had spoken with Matsuoka’s wife, Ikue, on the phone, and that was when they’d remembered that Mikumo’s family home had had a silent call, too. All of the calls had been recent. And Minako had been obsessive about noting the dates, so they would have had a timeline. Matsuoka’s family home. Mikami’s home. Mikumo’s family home. Mizuki’s apartment. The calls had come in in that order. Mikami knew of more still. Mesaki had received a number of calls before the kidnapping. Mikami supposed the call left on Ryoji Meikawa’s answer machine had been the same.
Everything seemed to fall into place. As he recited the names, they came together in a line. Like watching planets come into alignment.
Ma, Mi, Mu, Me, Me . . .
It was the ‘M’ row of the Japanese syllabary. Only the last of the syllables was missing – Mo.
Mikami raised his head. He looked at Minegishi.
‘Your parents, your relatives, did they receive any silent calls?’
Minegishi’s eyes conveyed the answer. Yes.
Mikami turned to Burly.
‘And you? What’s your family name?’
‘Shi . . . Shiratori.’
Mikami couldn’t help but chuckle. But the reaction was only surface deep. He forced it down and turned to Pencil-face.
‘And yours?’
‘Morita.’
‘Did you receive any silent calls?’
‘No.’
‘Did Matsuoka call you to confirm that?’
‘I can’t . . .’
‘Yes. I did,’ Matsuoka answered. As though to stop the questions, to put an end to the torment.
Mikami saw a single, blackened finger.
Ahh—
It hadn’t been Ayumi, after all . . .
He saw everything, the moment he accepted that one fact. He’d fought the truth for so long. The clarity brought with it an immeasurable feeling of loss. He held his hands to his face, balling them into fists. He pressed them hard into his forehead.
It was right there . . .
He saw it now . . .
A, I, U, E, O.
Ka, Ki, Ku, Ke, Ko.
Sa, Shi, Su, Se, So.
Ta, Chi, Tsu, Te, To.
Na, Ni, Nu, Ne, No.
Ha, Hi, Fu, He, Ho.
Ma, Mi, Mu, Me . . .
It was beyond belief. Incredible. 580,000 households. 1.82 million people. And he’d done it all alone. One man, behind all the silent calls. He’d started with ‘A’, and it was only now, after all this time, that he’d finally reached ‘M’.
When must he have started? Three, five years ago? Further back still? Every day and all day – morning, noon and night – his fingers had paged through the phone directory, drummed the buttons on his phone. Even after his index finger had swollen and blackened into a blister, even after the skin and nail had cracked, he’d been relentless in striking the buttons.
All to find the voice on the phone. All to find the voice of his daughter’s kidnapper, which he’d heard on the phone fourteen years ago.
I’ll recognize it if I hear it. Amamiya had made the declaration at the time of the kidnapping. He’d put his faith in the police investigation, but his hopes had been betrayed. He’d learned the truth, the disgrace of the cover-up. Eight years later, his wife had collapsed with a stroke. That would be when he’d started. As he’d nursed her, he’d started to make the calls. With nothing but his ears as a guide, he’d tried to seek out the kidnapper. While Toshiko’s still alive. Maybe that had been his motivation. Voices changed over time, but he’d been confident he would recognize it. The voice of a man in his thirties or forties, slightly hoarse, with no trace of an accent. No. The voice of his tormentor, one he’d heard at home and at nine different businesses, the voice that had spoken into his ear and committed him to a lifetime of anguish.
It was staggering even to consider it. The phone directory issued in the sixty-third year of Showa. They were in the regions . . . no one at the time had thought it a risk to have their number listed. Prefecture D, Central to East. Astoundingly thick, the edition contained the numbers of everyone in City D and three cities more. It started with Aikawa, then moved on to Aizawa, Aoki, Aoyanagi, Aoyama . . . Lurking in the middle were the vast realms of popular names like Sato, Suzuki, Takahashi, Tanaka . . . And he wouldn’t have got by making just one call per household. That would have been the minority. If it was a female voice that answered, he would have kept calling until a man picked up. If the voice was male but too young or too old, he’d have had to assume they were living with someone the kidnapper’s age and kept calling. There would have been numbers where no one answered, regardless of how many times he called. He’d persisted, despite all of this. Even after losing Toshiko, he’d refused to give up. Out of a thirst for vengeance. Out of his duty as a father. For the memory of his wife and child. He would have had any number of emotions driving him on. Then, finally, he’d found it – the voice from that day fourteen years ago.
– There, I can see the billboard!
Mesaki’s voice trembled through the speakers.