They’d held police ‘line-ups’ using recordings of his voice. Among those called in were the owners of the nine businesses where Amamiya had used the phone, together with people who had worked there; the detectives had also called in employees from Amamiya’s pickle business, including Motoko Yoshida. The latter was now a patient in a closed psychiatric ward; the head warden had refused to let her leave and she hadn’t been able to attend. A few of the remaining ‘witnesses’ had also failed to show, so that in the end only seven people listened to the recordings. Five agreed that the voice was similar; of these, three were convinced it was the same man. Out of the remaining two, one claimed not to remember, while the other said the voice wasn’t the same. It was a result, but only a tiny part of the evidence they would need to bury Mesaki, as Matsuoka had said. They had nothing else from fourteen years ago that could help narrow the perpetrator down to Mesaki. It was going to take a while before ‘the honest man’ could be brought before a court of law.
‘Would you prefer we let the tabloids and freelancers in, too?’
This time, the reporters had got hold of Suwa.
‘You keep going on about the club, acting like it’s an inalienable right. How about we hold another conference and give all of you the same information? Ready, set, go! You all go out and do your thing. If the tabloids beat you to it, you can think of it as motivation to improve on your reporting skills.’
‘Right, hilarious. We’ve been helping you with information, too. You’re making out like we’re the bad guys, but this only started because of the way your organization likes to treat small fry like us. The police have always treated us as an agency for propaganda, refused to dole out any intelligence worthy of the name – my predecessors had to fight long and hard, waging their battles on the front lines and in government offices. The ‘inalienable rights’ that you’re mocking? They’re the result.’
‘That’s nothing you should be proud about. Maybe your predecessors did all that, but I’m talking about the here and now. You pester us for information, always more information, even as you sit in the Press Room with your feet up. That’s not so hard to do.’
Suwa had matured. He no longer worried about upsetting the reporters. His tendencies towards calculation and brown-nosing were more subdued, and he’d developed a sharper edge.
The press had also undergone subtle changes. They were still worked up about having stumbled on to an important case, and that had made them more militant, caused them to talk big as they took their cues from Tokyo, yet they were showing signs of being able to rein themselves in when necessary. They still enjoyed laying siege, yet no longer rejoiced in breakdowns. They still exchanged blows, but they would shake hands afterwards. They’d even begun to exhibit a sense of altruism.
But . . .
. . . the true test of the relationship was still to come. Two days earlier, Mikami had gathered everyone in his department for a talk in a cramped basement meeting room. This stays between us. With the proviso in place, he had given them the truth about the investigation. He had talked about how it related to Six Four and told them everything about the cover-up Criminal Investigations had perpetrated.
Our relationship with the press dies the day they announce Mesaki’s arrest. Those were his exact words. What I want you to focus on is how we rebuild the relationship after that happens.
Suwa had been thunderstruck. He’d navigated the problem of anonymous reporting and even put himself in the firing line when lobbying to get the Press Coverage Agreement signed. He’d grown in confidence and been ready to continue the fight – and his shock had been all the more apparent for it. Even so, Mikami didn’t feel worried. That Suwa was still ready to battle on had been clear in the way he’d dealt with the press the day before, the way he continued to do so today. He would be the next press director. He’d woken up to his true talents.
Kuramae had listened with a pained look on his face; even then, it wasn’t until Mikami had explained about Amamiya and the silent calls that he’d looked genuinely crestfallen. Mikami had put a hand on his shoulder afterwards. We don’t know whether that was what happened with the message on Ryoji Meikawa’s answerphone. He wanted to believe it as much as Kuramae did. He wanted to believe the call had been someone from home.
Mikumo was the only one to give an opinion, her face blushing red.
‘If I learned anything from this it’s that our relationship with the reporters is always going to be like oil and water. If you stir hard enough we can move together, but only for a moment. I think . . . maybe the key is to engineer as many of those moments as possible.’
‘How so?’
‘We need to reach out to them, always . . . we can’t give up, even if our relationship dies, even if they choose to disassociate themselves from us. We need to keep knocking, even when they don’t answer. We can’t give up . . .’
Directly afterwards, Mikumo had gone to the hospital, complaining of a sore throat. When she returned, Suwa had caught a glimpse of her medicine and saw it was to treat cystitis. She hadn’t been able to use the toilet for the duration of that endless press conference. Mikami sympathized, felt worried even, but he still couldn’t stop himself from chuckling at Kuramae’s impromptu comment.
And all the time I thought Mikumo was like Ken Takakura, unable to lie . . .
He was sitting next to her now, both of them typing on computers. Media Relations had been given another computer following the Mesaki case. No doubt the time would come, as Akama had suggested, when they would get one for each member of staff.
‘I’m going upstairs for a bit,’ Mikami said, getting up.
Suwa was still busy with the reporters, but he managed to give Mikami a quick look.
First floor? Fourth floor?
Even further.
81
Wind gusted over the roof.
Mikami checked his watch. Two minutes after the arranged meeting time of two o’clock, and Futawatari was still to show.
Maybe he wasn’t planning on coming. If so, that only backed up Mikami’s theory.
Futawatari had been an instigator, too.
Now he’d had time to consider things properly, to run through the whole thing a number of times, Mikami had become convinced. Tokyo’s plan to sequester the director’s post. It had to have been Maejima, already in Tokyo on secondment, and therefore in a position to know, who had first sent word to Arakida. Mikami hadn’t found anything to suggest Futawatari had been acting on instructions from Tsujiuchi or Akama – and yet he’d moved quickly into action. The natural conclusion was that Maejima, a contemporary and close friend of Futawatari, had told him about the development, as well as Arakida.
What, then, had a born-and-bred detective like Maejima expected Futawatari to do? The answer was obvious. Stop it from happening. Stop the commissioner’s visit; make sure he didn’t issue his proclamation from above.
If Mikami could establish the link, that would at least explain Futawatari’s mysterious behaviour. He was the ace of Administrative Affairs, the secret overseer of personnel decisions with a modus operandi of working in the shadows, yet he’d jumped brazenly from detective to detective, spreading fear in his wake. Like a serial arsonist, he’d ignited flames of hatred and directed them towards Administrative Affairs. He’d set off alarm bells. To incite an uprising.