Of her husband, for having raised his hand to their suffering child?
Minako hadn’t tried to blame the therapist. Nor had she tried to blame herself for having fallen asleep. She had searched for Ayumi with the energy of someone possessed. She’d separated herself, then, from the Minako who had always consulted him before making a decision. He would try talking to her, but she hardly reacted. Her eyes wouldn’t meet his, even when he was standing in front of her. It was as though she’d been searching for Ayumi by herself. Once she’d exhausted the possibility of the train station or Ayumi’s friends helping, she started buying women’s magazines and making calls to the plastic surgeons and beauty clinics that had put out advertisements. Have you had a young girl come in, wearing a mask? She has a red sports bag. Please call me back if you see her. She then said, ‘I can’t get my message across on the phone, I need to ask them in person,’ and began to head out every day. To Tokyo. Saitama. Kanagawa. Chiba. If the silent calls hadn’t come in, she would have probably extended her investigations to the black-market surgeons.
Mikami could have approached Akama for his help. You couldn’t do much with one ten-thousand-yen note. And Ayumi couldn’t even approach a plastic surgeon’s office without signed parental consent. Yet the fact remained that it was one of the very few leads they had to pursue. And if fingerprints and dental records were means of identifying the dead, then perhaps Mikami should have requested that the focus of the search be shifted to businesses dealing in cosmetic surgery – if nothing else, as a way of searching for an Ayumi who still lived. But he hadn’t. Ayumi despised the face she’d inherited. It was the one thing he didn’t want anyone else to know. The family’s suffering would be too great if the knowledge got out. And he’d wanted to preserve his daughter’s dignity. He had pledged to himself that no word of Ayumi’s condition, or the things it had made her say, would ever leave the walls of their home.
But . . .
What did Minako think?
A tension like a faint electric current had grown between them. They were aware of each other, but their eyes were firmly shut. Ayumi’s absence had brought into relief the parts of their relationship that lacked solidity; at the same time, it formed an unbreakable bond that held them together. She had provided them with a single goal, compelled them to take care of each other, forced them into praying that their relationship would hold out.
Mikami wondered how long that would last.
Midnight. Mikami used the remote control to turn off the TV before he crawled out from under the kotatsu. He took the phone from its stand and switched off the room’s lights.
He walked down the dark corridor.
Yoshio Amamiya, old and wrinkled. Shoko Amamiya, innocent and sweet, a decorative band in her hair. It was just one of the cases he’d had to work on as a detective. It wasn’t until Ayumi ran away from home that he’d really known how the parents must feel, losing their only child like that.
Mikami tiptoed quietly into the bedroom. He put the phone next to his pillow and climbed on his futon. He found the electric foot warmer with his feet and pulled it up until it rested next to his calves.
He thought he heard Minako turn in her sleep.
He glanced across to her futon. Lying inside was a mystery he couldn’t solve. Whenever he thought of Ayumi, the way she hated her parents’ looks, he couldn’t help but recall the question everyone had no doubt asked themselves so long ago.
Why had Minako chosen him?
He was no longer sure about what he thought he’d come to understand. Listening to the ticking of the clock, he fumbled, as though he were squinting in darkness, to trace the genesis of their relationship.
15
Mikami had left the house prepared for a busy day.
The first thing he did on entering the office was check on Mikumo. She was all but allergic to alcohol. Her face became bloated if she’d been drinking the night before. He knew immediately that she hadn’t joined the others. This observation also meant he could anticipate the content of Suwa’s report as he approached Mikami’s desk.
‘We don’t stand a chance,’ Suwa said, his voice croaky.
From the sound of things, he’d spent a good portion of the night singing and having to raise his voice. Next to him, Kuramae looked to be suffering, too. His eyes were bloodshot, half hidden under puffy lids.
‘So it’s a lost cause?’
Suwa let out an exasperated, alcohol-tinged breath.
‘They’re still insisting on submitting it to the captain. They’re definitely not going to settle for leaving it with us. It seems his editor, Azusa, an old-fashioned reporter with a background in police reporting, is really pressuring Akikawa on this.’
The last part sounded more like intelligence than it did a simple report. Akikawa was getting caught in the middle.
Revealing the woman’s identity by thinking out loud. Mikami was leaning more and more towards the idea, but he had yet to hear from Ishii, who was supposed to be confirming Akama’s position on the matter.
‘Okay, we can forget about the Toyo. I want you two to split up – see if you can work on some of the others before the evening. Sound them out about leaving the protest with us; if they’re not receptive, make the suggestion that they leave it with Chief Ishii.’
As long as they remained in the dark as to Akama’s response, they needed to continue with their attempts to arbitrate peace. If a few of the papers relaxed their positions, that could be used as fodder to bring the Toyo around.
The Press Club was a fluid entity. Allegiances shifted in line with the complex interactions of its members, who reacted to each reporter’s strategies as well as to the overall balance of power.
When issues like the one they were facing arose, it became even harder to predict the outcome of this type of chemical reaction. The FM Kenmin, one of the Press Club’s associate members, was perhaps the only one whose stance they could predict. The station received its budget in full from the prefectural government; as such, it had no ability to speak out against anywhere deemed a public office. That left twelve of them. How many would Suwa be able to convert?
Mikami pulled his notebook from his jacket pocket and flipped through the pages.
Toyo. Branch D. Senior Editor. Azusa Mikio. University T. Forty-six. Cheerful. Brags. Well disposed to the police.
Mikami remembered the man’s dark face, his narrow forehead. The executive, round-table meeting held once a month between the media executives and the Prefectural HQ. Azusa had shown up once in lieu of his branch head, who had gone down with a cold.
It was worth trying him.