He doubted Matsuoka would just let him go. Theft. Open threats. Blackmail. His actions were unmistakably criminal. And yet the whole time Mikami had been in the command vehicle, he hadn’t heard Matsuoka mention his name once; nor had it been mentioned on the radio. Had the Intercept Units not been able to bring him in? Had they deliberately let him go? Koda had to have been in contact with Matsuoka. At the very least, Matsuoka would have received an anonymous tip-off before everything started. It was the only way some things could be explained.
Matsuoka hadn’t seen Amamiya’s blackened finger. Without anything to make the connection, how else could he have joined the dots between the ‘M’ calls and the kidnapping?
Still . . . there were more pressing issues. Was Mesaki the mastermind behind Six Four? That was the most important question.
Matsuoka had seemed convinced. But with no evidence beyond Amamiya’s testimony, there was no case for prosecution, nothing that would stand up in court. Without a confession or some kind of real evidence, Mesaki’s status would stay unchanged and he would just remain a man under ‘police protection’.
Supposing he was the Six Four kidnapper, he’d done a good job of concealing it after leaving his house in the white coupé. He’d been genuinely concerned for his daughter’s safety, so perhaps that had helped. But he’d slipped up at the end. His front had collapsed, for a brief moment, as he’d blurted out a response to Koda’s instructions on the phone. It was after he’d been told to pull out from the Cherry Café, when he’d been driving north on the state road. It was what Ogata had been referring to when he’d said, There was that one time, in the car . . .
– Please, just tell me! Where do you want me to go . . .?
– Go straight . . . three . . . kilometres.
– Go straight?
– Ahead . . . there’s a hairdressers up ahead . . . the Ai’ai Hair Salon. Get there in ten minutes or . . . your daughter’s dead.
– B— . . . but . . .
Mikami had picked up on it, listening to the recording afterwards. Koda had caught Mesaki out. Even before he’d sent him on to the state road, Koda had asked if he was familiar with the area. He’d forced Mesaki to say, Here? No . . . not at all. As the Six Four kidnapper, Mesaki wouldn’t have been able to admit knowledge of the route. Having forced the declaration, Koda had then told Mesaki to drive straight for three kilometres. Before he realized what he was doing – genuinely so – Mesaki had responded with a question. Go straight? He would have known the correct way to reach the salon was to take a right at the next intersection, one kilometre ahead. At that point, Koda hadn’t even mentioned the name Ai’ai. He’d duped Mesaki into revealing his expectation that the next destination would be the Ai’ai Hair Salon.
For Mesaki, the kilometre leading to the intersection would have felt like half a lifetime. He’d been instructed to go straight, but also to go to the Ai’ai Hair Salon. Should he turn? Should he go straight? The choices had been equally terrifying. There was a detective on the floor behind his seat. The call was being recorded. He didn’t think the police suspected him of being the Six Four kidnapper, but they would realize he knew the salon’s location if he made the turn. Meaning he had to go straight. But he couldn’t do that. He had to think of what might happen if he didn’t get to the salon as instructed. The kidnapper had told him his daughter would be dead if he wasn’t there in ten minutes. Are you sure you want me to go straight? The words would have been on the tip of his tongue, but saying them would have been tantamount to making a confession. After exhausting every possible avenue in his mind, he chose to take the right. He chose his daughter’s life.
But the real dilemma had been kept for the end. That was, it went without saying, the note on the paper.
Unexpectedly, there was still a pen-written message on the piece of paper Mesaki handed in to the police. Horizontal, on just one line.
Mikami shuddered.
A daughter. A child’s coffin.
Having found and read the note from the bottom of the container, Mesaki had crumpled to the ground in tears. He’d begun to howl. Kasumi is dead. Mesaki had read this as the meaning of the two sentences. Then Mutsuko had called, telling him his daughter was alive and well. He read the message again. Noticed a detail. That it said ‘child’s coffin’ and not just ‘coffin’. It had dawned on him then. The note hadn’t been referring to Kasumi: it had been referring to Shoko Amamiya.
Since the kidnapper’s calls, since learning that the kidnapping was a carbon-copy of his own crime, Mesaki would have feared the possibility that the kidnapper was somehow related to the Amamiyas. At the same time, he would have assured himself that no amateur – relative or not – could track him down, not when the professionals had failed after fourteen years of investigation. Coincidence, it’s just coincidence. He’d repeated the line like a mantra, attempting to drive his fears into submission.
But reading ‘child’s coffin’, he had realized the truth. It had left him no room for doubt. The message was from someone in Shoko’s immediate family. He’d realized this, yet he’d still handed the note to the police. What, then, had he chosen to eat?
Mikami had no idea. The paper had been torn above the message. The writing had been Western-style, horizontal, meaning Mesaki had chewed up the first half of the note. Specifically, he’d eaten two fifths of the sheet. The message they’d seen had filled the bottom half, the lower three fifths.
The first line would usually contain the addressee’s name. It seemed plausible. Masato Mesaki. But no. Amamiya would have known the police would take possession of the note. He would have wanted something to spell out the fact that Mesaki was Shoko’s murderer. Mesaki’s voice was close to identical to the kidnapper’s from fourteen years ago. That was all Amamiya knew for sure. Maybe that was exactly what he’d chosen to write. Masato Mesaki. Slightly hoarse, no trace of an accent.
It didn’t constitute evidence of any kind. Yet Mesaki had put it in his mouth regardless. Because he was the Six Four kidnapper.
What would be the clever thing to do, knowing the police would ask for the note? Mesaki’s mind had gone into overdrive. It would arouse suspicion to refuse. They would logically conclude that someone bore him a grudge, that he was trying to hide something from them. Yet he couldn’t allow himself to give them the note as it was. The first line would create a connection between him and Shoko’s murderer. And there was less than a year until the statute of limitations came into effect. Taking care not to be seen, he would put the top half in his mouth and leave the bottom as it was. That was his decision. To eat the part that would portray him as a suspect and leave the part that suggested he was a victim of a kidnapper who had murdered his child. He didn’t imagine the phrase becoming a problem. Child’s coffin. Offspring were always children in the eyes of their parents.
Carefully, he’d torn the paper in half. Carefully, he’d transferred one part to his mouth. Carefully, he’d begun to chew. At that point, he was no longer a father concerned for the well-being of his daughter. He’d become a savage, a man who – despite having a three-year-old daughter of his own – had collected a ransom after kidnapping and murdering a seven-year-old girl.
Why did you eat the paper?