‘Well, well. Stranger things have happened.’
‘Right, sure. Work does keep me busy, you know.’
The wind was cold outside, but it might as well have been spring inside the greenhouse. Mikami was taken aback by the length of the structure. It was imposing; great ranks of seedlings stretched out like a diagram illustrating the effects of perspective. They were all beginning to bud, but without the flowers Mikami had no idea what they were.
‘The reunion was today?’ Mochizuki chided. He put a wooden box at Mikami’s feet, for him to use in place of a chair.
‘I wish. Seriously, things are busy.’
‘Sure, in Media Relations?’
He was exactly the same as when he’d been a detective. He made no attempt to hide his aversion to and contempt for Administrative Affairs.
‘How’s Mina-chan keeping?’
‘The same, mostly.’
‘Damn – bet she’s as good-looking as ever.’ He was genuinely peeved. Never the exception, he was one of the many officers who still had a crush on Minako. ‘How about Ayumi? She’d be, let’s see, in high school now?’
‘That’s right.’ So he hadn’t heard yet. Mikami considered telling him what had happened, but he had come out to ask his own questions. He sat up and slid the box forwards. ‘Actually, I went to see Amamiya earlier today. Something to do with Six Four.’
Mochizuki looked him straight in the eye. ‘I guessed as much.’
Guessed as much? But Mochizuki continued before Mikami had a chance to respond.
‘Why did you go to see him?’
‘Work.’
‘What kind of work?’
‘Press-related. An executive from Tokyo wants to come and pay his respects, offer incense. I went to ask Amamiya for his blessing.’
Mochizuki gave Mikami a dubious look. ‘That’s what you do these days? Light incense?’
‘Pretty much. I serve the top brass; I do all sorts of things.’
‘So, you went to see him. What happened?’
‘He turned me down right there, on the spot. Said a visit by a high-up wasn’t necessary.’
Mikami made a quick summary of the events at Amamiya’s house. Mochizuki listened, his expression flat.
‘He refused to budge. It looked as though he’d given up on the police. It was almost as though he was angry about something,’ Mikami said, probing.
Mochizuki only nodded.
‘How long has he been like that for?’
‘I can’t say really. I know he became increasingly withdrawn over the years.’
‘Did something happen – between us and him?’
Mochizuki chuckled, reacting to Mikami’s use of the word ‘us’. ‘Come on, Mikami,’ he said. ‘I left the force a long time ago.’
‘That’s exactly why I came to see you. You’ve got more freedom to talk.’
It was still rare for information on the continuing investigation into Six Four to get out, even after the Investigative HQ’s downgrade to Investigative Team.
‘Do you think he might hold a grudge because of the investigation into Kenji?’
‘Absolutely not. He isn’t fond of his brother.’
‘Right, the inheritance. What actually happened there?’
‘That bastard Kenji started pressuring Amamiya – said he’d give up his right to inherit if Amamiya made him managing director of his business. The man’s bike dealership was already dead in the water.’
‘But Amamiya refused . . .’
‘Yeah. I reckon he knew a good-for-nothing like that would drive the company into the ground.’
Mikami nodded, satisfied.
‘Okay, so you’re sure Amamiya isn’t angry because of the business with Kenji?’
‘Yeah. I guarantee it.’
‘Is he still a suspect?’
‘I think, at this point, we have to assume he’s innocent. We pushed him pretty hard . . . especially because he was mixed up with some low-level Yakuza.’ Mochizuki had started talking as if he were still on the case.
Mikami sighed briefly. ‘Hard to believe it’s been fourteen years. How’s the investigation going, anyway?’
Mochizuki snorted through his nose. ‘How should I know? Still, I’ll bet it’s the same old quagmire. That case was cursed from the outset.’
Quagmire. Mikami had occasionally heard the desolate-sounding word being used in Second Division. It referred to the fact that the Investigative Team was still dealing with a vast number of ‘grey’ suspects, that it had become stuck. Unnerved in the beginning by the seriousness of the case, Investigative HQ had cast its net too wide. A list had been drafted of seven thousand people. One hundred officers had been assigned to work through it. The detectives didn’t have the time they needed to investigate any single individual properly and, as a result, had needed to move on before they could come to any decision. In addition, the detectives had different levels of expertise. Some of those from district had been below par; others, back-up from more remote areas, had been sent from Transport and had no prior investigative experience at all.
Each day saw the investigation becoming more and more slipshod, reports more hastily thrown together. By the time the management realized the problem, it was already too late.
They had a huge number of potential suspects whose status was undecided, accumulated like a mountain of sludge behind them. With the passage of time, the investigations were becoming harder to reopen. And, with each year, cutbacks were made to the number of detectives working the case.
‘If Osakabe had been there when the kidnapping happened . . .’ Mochizuki said with a sigh.
Mikami felt himself nod. ‘Yeah.’
Michio Osakabe had been their greatest general, and Mikami had held him in the highest regard. As a leader, he had been grounded and meticulous, displaying a virtually telepathic ability to communicate his instructions to the rank and file. While he had only retired from his post as director of Criminal Investigations eight years ago, he had, to the misfortune of the Prefectural HQ, been in Tokyo on secondment to the Criminal Investigations Bureau during the year of the kidnapping.
The detectives had mourned their loss. We would have had the kidnapper if Osakabe had still been directing Criminal Investigations, even First Division.
Backing them up was his almost legendary record of never having failed to close a case.
And Six Four was only the beginning.
After Fujimura’s appointment from Administrative Affairs, people immediately began to complain of a sharp drop in results. It hadn’t been until five years ago that Criminal Investigations finally managed to regain some of its vigour, when the post was taken over by Shozo Odate, one of Osakabe’s favourites, but he retired after only a year. From that point on it was fair to say that the post had suffered a run of bad harvests, right up to Arakida, the current director. The next reshuffle wouldn’t happen for four or five years; it was essentially a waiting game until Katsutoshi Matsuoka was promoted from his current roles as chief adviser and chief of First Division. The man who had hidden himself behind the passenger seat in Amamiya’s car during the Six Four kidnapping. At the time, he had been heading up Violent Crime in First Division.