This time he heard it clearly. The doorbell.
It was almost midnight. He flew out of the bathroom before he’d had time to think. His heart was thumping in his chest. Minako had come out of the bedroom. He took her by the shoulders, gently moving her to one side as he raced the length of the corridor. He switched on the hall light and stepped barefoot down from the tatami, bracing himself as he opened the door.
Cold air. Fallen leaves. A man’s shoes.
Yamashina from the Zenken Times was standing outside the door.
‘Sorry to intrude so late . . .’
Mikami looked back into the corridor. His expression was probably confirmation enough: Minako’s white bathrobe disappeared quietly back into the bedroom. He turned back to face the reporter. He levelled the man with a frosty glare, but noted a curious absence of annoyance. Yamashina’s nose was bright red. His collars were up and he was rubbing his hands to keep warm.
‘Get the hell inside.’ Mikami motioned him into the hall before shutting the door on the icy wind.
‘I’m sorry about what happened.’ Yamashina gave Mikami an apologetic bow, then volunteered an explanation of the events of the club’s meeting. He said that Akikawa had been the one behind it all. ‘It was the first thing he brought up. That you’d been using dirty tricks to get some of us on your side. That we’d be playing into your hands if we let you split us apart. Then Utsuki . . . from the Mainichi . . . he started to join in. After that, we couldn’t really suggest leaving the protest with someone else. Fact is, even the local papers started to get angry. Can’t blame them, really. I mean, they’d been ready to help out, then they learn you’ve been dealing with the hard-liners behind their backs . . .’
Mikami said nothing, just listened. For the most part, things fell into place. When he’d first heard that the decision had been unanimous, his reaction had gone beyond mere surprise and anger; he’d simply felt deflated. But he saw now how it might have happened. Their strategy had backfired. And Mikami’s own idea of trying to make a deal with the Toyo had been the main culprit. By electing to take the matter to Azusa – and over Akikawa’s head – Mikami had provoked the latter’s anger. Akikawa had taken the story on the bid-rigging as his due, and launched a full-scale retaliation to expose the backhand tactics of Media Relations. The other reporters had started jumping at shadows. Utsuki had started to feel nervous for having been party to the talks with Suwa. If I’m not careful, I’ll end up isolated in the club. The fear, no doubt, drove his decision to switch sides.
‘Still, he’s good.’
‘Akikawa?’
‘Yeah. I’m pretty much universally hated now.’
‘Not that I think Akikawa has anything against you personally, or that he’s hell-bent on attacking Media Relations,’ Yamashina said, assuming the look of someone who knew what he was talking about. ‘His target’s higher up. You know, the suits . . . the career officers. He’s got a bit of an inferiority complex when it comes to people from Tokyo University. That’s why he’s being so vocal about protesting directly to your captain . . . he wants to take a shot at the big cheeses. Basically, he gets off on acting like he’s an equal, wants the attention.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with the university he went to.’
‘Not for most people, sure. But he got a little drunk once when we were out together, confided in me about it. Both of his parents graduated from Tokyo University. He’d been on track to go himself. When he failed his entrance exams, he told me he seriously considered killing himself.’
Knowing who all this was coming from, Mikami was only half listening. Yamashina’s voice dropped to a whisper.
‘Anyway, was it true?’
‘Was what true?’
‘You know, were you really . . . coming to us in secret?’
That was the real reason for his visit – he hadn’t come over to offer an apology. He would know from experience that, if Suwa had been approaching certain reporters behind the scenes, he would have used stories or other incentives as bait; that Mikami would have something Yamashina could use, and that he might have already leaked it to some of the other papers.
‘Take a seat.’
The two men lowered themselves on to the cold step marking the threshold of the corridor. Mikami felt ready to sympathize with the mindset of the defeated. Reporters who lacked the flair to secure leads by themselves would sometimes appear on the doorsteps of media officials at night. Having failed to pick up a story, despite repeated trips to see various detectives, they would knock at the doors of Media Relations staff in the desperate hope of procuring scraps. It was taboo. Media Relations had been established with the express purpose of equalizing all communications to the press. There was no doubt that Yamashina was burning with shame. To visit Mikami was the same as admitting he was a second-or third-rate reporter, that he lacked the ability to stand his ground with the detectives. Even then, he’d been compelled to visit. The mindset of a reporter who couldn’t land a story was no different to that of a used-car salesman who couldn’t sell a car, or a life-insurance salesperson who couldn’t sell a policy.
His discomfort getting the better of him, Yamashina avoided the direct approach.
‘Has the beauty queen gone to bed?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And Ayumi?’
‘Yeah, Ayumi, too.’
Yamashina had been coming around every now and then ever since he started working for the Times. He had a gift for joking around and often had Minako – and Ayumi, before she fell ill with her anxiety – in stitches. Even when Mikami was preoccupied about his ‘criminal record’, he had often, until he banned Minako from letting reporters into the house, emerged from his bath at night to find Yamashina standing in his living room.
Mikami was suddenly struck with an odd thought. While his emergence from exile had resulted in him feeling allergic to reporters, he had still, in his following years as a detective, responded to them whenever they turned up outside his door at night. He’d felt something that was neither a sense of camaraderie, nor a feeling of being stuck with them. Their positions were different but they were tracking the same cases. They shared an almost kindred fanaticism.