What was written there?
Mesaki had protested at first, claiming he hadn’t eaten anything. It’s on video. We can call a specialist to match the bite mark. He was quick to drop the pretence. Maybe I did eat a little bit, I wasn’t myself. I hadn’t eaten since yesterday. But this . . . this was all that was written down. Yes, I remember it clearly. Mikami had been shaking with fury as he’d listened in to the report being made to Matsuoka. He had already changed his mind from earlier, understanding now why Ogata and Minegishi had become so worked up. Why hadn’t Amamiya got Koda to push harder? They’d had plenty of time. All they’d needed to do was extract information on Six Four, drop by drop, back Mesaki slowly into a corner. They could have threatened to kill Kasumi if he didn’t confess. Koda had been a detective. If not a full confession, he should have been able to extract something close enough.
And yet he hadn’t. He hadn’t made Mesaki confess.
The end result was exactly as Matsuoka had said. Amamiya had delivered them a suspect. Nothing more, nothing less. It wouldn’t be hard for Mesaki to claim he didn’t know about the Ai’ai Hair Salon. The route came back to me, that’s why I made the turn . . . I remembered having seen a billboard for it, a long time ago . . . I was panicking, I don’t know what I was thinking . . . All he had to do was say something like that and the interrogators would have nowhere to go.
Why had the plan been so oblique? The more Mikami thought about it, the more difficult it became to grasp. And the more he thought about it, the more it seemed to have been engineered that way. Amamiya had drawn the line at ‘delivering a suspect’ and then thrown the ball into their court. It’s up to you to make the arrest.
Could what he’d done really be termed revenge?
The car horn sounded again. This time louder. Coming. The image came to him just as he was about to bring his hand up. The red baton. He saw Koda, in his guard’s uniform, guiding cars into the Tokumatsu car park.
Because of Koda.
Koda was the only one who hadn’t betrayed Amamiya’s trust. He’d worked without sleep as a member of the Home Unit. He had never got over the cover-up. He’d stood up to the force, and lost his job for his efforts. Even then he’d stayed true to Amamiya. Now, with all that had happened, he’d given Amamiya proof of his word. It’ll mean becoming a criminal. Koda had already been forced into the margins of society. It would have been only too easy to imagine the trials of having to serve time, then having to try to make a fresh start with his wife and child. Even then, Koda had agreed to help. He’d volunteered to become a kidnapper. That was when Amamiya had understood it, that there were still good men like Koda in the force.
Koda had endured the pain of putting the plan together. It had hurt – of that Mikami was sure. They were going to humiliate the force. Planning to expose the Six Four kidnapper, the very man the Prefectural HQ had failed to bring to justice for fourteen years. What would have happened if Koda had forced Mesaki to confess? Would Ogata and Minegishi have cheered in celebration? Koda would have ached to see the faces of his old colleagues. He knew he could deliver a physical blow to the Prefectural HQ, but the idea of humiliating them would have cut him up. No one had given him a second thought when he’d been forced to resign, yet he’d found a part of himself that couldn’t hate them for it. His home ground was still exactly that, no matter how corrupt it was. Some part of you remains a detective, even after you leave the force. It was why Koda had never forgotten about Six Four, about Amamiya. Even after his resignation, he’d stayed a detective the whole time. He’d kept the vocation with him, as a last measure of pride.
That was why the plan had stopped short. Amamiya had made the decision, unable to bear Koda’s anguish.
Mikami stepped out of the phone box.
The job’s an easy one. Easiest in the world. How would Koda respond to something like that?
Cases test a person, time and time again. Mikami’s feet were heavy as he stamped back through the dark.
78
The fare on the meter had shot up. The winter treads emitted a caustic sound on the road, but the taxi was like a dream compared to the command vehicle.
‘Must’ve been cold out there?’
The driver had just struck up a conversation when Mikami’s phone started to vibrate in his jacket pocket. It was Matsuoka. Mikami asked the driver to turn on the radio before he answered.
‘Been making silent calls, Mikami?’
‘I just happened across a phone box, so . . .’
‘Is that a play or something?’
‘I’m in a taxi.’
‘What were you calling about?’
Mikami asked the driver to turn up the volume, then brought up a hand to cover his mouth. ‘What’s happening with Mesaki?’
‘He’s still in custody. We release him tomorrow.’
Mikami nodded. If Mesaki said he wanted to be out, they would have no choice but to comply.
‘Did he say anything?’
‘He told us to arrest the fucker that did this to him.’
Incredible.
‘Well, maybe that’s an option. You could use Amamiya’s testimony to—’
‘No, we’re not doing that. We’re going to get all we can on Mesaki. Cover all fourteen years. We’re going to get enough circumstantial evidence to bury the man alive.’
Mikami made a deep nod.
‘I remembered something you might be interested in, could be a motive for the kidnapping. It relates to the imported-car business.’
‘Okay, go ahead.’