‘Stop, you can’t . . . not all of you!’ Suwa yelled.
Someone screamed right back. ‘The vote was unanimous – what else do you expect us to do?’
Mikami brushed Mikumo’s hand away. Unanimous? But that was impossible. Still hunched in on himself, he began to stagger forwards. He strained his eyes, the light slowly returning, and forced himself to chase after the reporters, on half-numb legs. Mikumo tried to restrain him. Again, he brushed her away.
He was approaching the stairs. He grabbed at the clothes of one of the reporters up ahead and ploughed on through; he grabbed again. He looked up. Kuroyama. Had the ones at the front already reached the first-floor corridor?
I will not let you do this.
He passed the Mainichi’s Utsuki. Caught up with Yamashina from the Times.
‘M–Mikami?’
He pawed on past the man’s apologetic face. Then past another, and another. Move, move, move! He emerged on to the first-floor corridor. At the front, he saw a number of people breach the entrance to the Secretariat. He ran. He could run. He sprinted as fast as he could, breaking through to the front. He crashed into the office. Five, maybe six of the reporters were already inside. Immediately, he saw that the lamp to the captain’s office was lit. The captain was still there.
The Secretariat staff were quick to react, a number of them rushing over to blockade the door. It was the moment in which the soft-mannered, suit-wearing, dignified men transformed back into officers of the law. Mikami heard something smash. Aiko Toda was rooted to the spot, having dropped her mug on to her desk.
Mikami pushed his way between the division staff and the press. Akikawa’s face was right before his eyes. More than twenty reporters were pushing up from behind.
Everything would be over if they got through.
Mikami stretched his arms out to either side, blocking their path. At first he couldn’t speak. He was breathing heavily, his spit dry and sticking to the inside of his throat. He dug his feet in and stared menacingly at the press, and that was when he noticed something odd out of the corner of his eye. Futawatari. He was on one of the couches towards the middle of the room. His eyes were anchored on Mikami. Those eyes. Eyes like black pits, all the emotion suppressed. It had lasted only a moment. Futawatari looked suddenly away; he got to his feet and turned away. Threading through the reporters, he walked to the exit and disappeared soundlessly into the corridor.
Bastard’s escaping the spray.
‘Mikami.’
His head span back to face the press.
‘You need to move,’ Akikawa said in a low voice. He was holding a sheet of paper, folded in two. The written protest.
‘You go in by yourself,’ Mikami said, forcing a whisper.
Akikawa levelled Mikami with a challenging stare. ‘The decision was unanimous. We’re all making the protest together.’
‘You’ve lost our trust, Mikami,’ Tejima raised his voice at Akikawa’s side. ‘How are we to know you won’t find a way to punish him if he goes in by himself?’
‘Keep your bloody voice down.’
Mikami was beside himself; it felt as though the door might open behind him at any minute.
‘The representative goes in – that’s final. I won’t permit anything else.’
The throng of reporters reacted violently.
‘That’s absurd. Isn’t it true that our taxes paid for that room and its thick carpet? There isn’t anywhere that’s off limits.’
‘Enough! This is a government office; nobody is going in without my permission,’ Mikami bellowed over him.
‘We don’t have to listen to this. Let’s get in there!’
At the order, the crowd began to move. Akikawa stumbled as the swell sent him careering into Mikami’s chest.
‘Don’t you dare!’
He used both hands to shove them back. He felt hands pressing against him from behind. Suwa and the rest of the staff were driving him forwards. Akikawa was in the same position. Hardly able to move, the two men struggled as they were pushed together. They touched cheeks. Their faces were flattened.
‘Give it up!’
‘Get out of the way!’
Akikawa’s gums were on show. One arm had come up at an angle, the elbow digging into Mikami’s neck. He moved to grab the man’s wrist and pull it away. He missed, and his hand sailed through empty air before it caught hold of something else. There was a nasty ripping sound. He had the sheet of white paper in his hand.
It was in Akikawa’s, too.
The document had been torn in half.
A stillness descended over the room. Mikami felt the pressure on his back ease then fall away completely. The same was true for Akikawa. Mikami’s eyes said the words. That wasn’t on purpose. He didn’t say it out loud. He had no choice but to leave the decision on how to act to Akikawa, and the twenty-plus reporters there with him.
‘That was . . .,’ someone said weakly. It was Ishii. That was beyond our control. Again, Ishii.
Akikawa was staring, half dazed, at the scrap of paper in his hand. His eyes came around to look at Mikami. He made a show of scrunching the paper into a ball and throwing it on the carpet. His voice rang out across the room, dripping with menace.
‘As of this moment, the Press Club foreswears all previous association with the Prefectural HQ. I propose we boycott all coverage of the commissioner’s visit next week.’
20
The news was showing on the muted TV set, marking the end of another day. Mikami was lying down in the living room at home, vacantly watching the screen. They had hardly spoken. That sense of failure. Humiliation. The thirst for retribution. Regret. Unable to process fully the entire array of his emotions during the drive home, Mikami had brought them into the house.
His brain still felt numb.
Akikawa’s explosive remark had become the consensus. After the chaos, the press had convened an emergency meeting and formally ratified their boycott of the commissioner’s visit.
Ishii had been prostrate on the floor as Akama shouted at Mikami, his anger greater than anything Mikami had seen before. What on earth do you think you’re doing? It’s unfortunate that we have such an incompetent press director. But he’d stopped short of discharging Mikami from his duties. His actions had, at the end of the day, prevented the reporters from protesting directly to the station captain. Akama had interpreted the destruction of the document as a spur-of-the-moment decision, not as an accident. What had been a barbarous act in the eyes of the press had been credited as a lucky break in the eyes of the force, and this had mitigated in part the full weight of Mikami’s sins.