‘Hmm?’
‘Amamiya’s house. If you don’t want me to get it from Koda, tell me.’
‘But, I—’ Kakinuma broke off, a hopeless look spreading across his face.
‘I’m the same as you. I’m here to get my job done, too.’
Again, no answer.
‘I didn’t see you. We never spoke. Okay? Now talk.’
Kakinuma closed his eyes. Finally, he gave a weak shake of his head.
Mikami started to open the door. Something took hold of his wrist. The grip was strong. ‘This isn’t just about Koda. I have a family, too.’
‘So do I.’ Mikami grabbed Kakinuma. ‘Listen. No one will ever hear your name from my mouth. You, me, Koda – we will all get through this. Nothing will happen to our families. Tell me if there’s a better way of doing this.’
There was a long silence.
Kakinuma raised his head. He stared regretfully at Koda in the car park, then, eventually, turned slowly back around. The mouth he’d been holding shut dropped part-way open. He brought up a hand to massage his throat. There was another long pause before he was able to muster any words.
‘We missed our one chance to get the kidnapper’s voice on tape.’
Mikami caught his breath. Huh?
‘The recording equipment . . . it didn’t work.’
His head was racing.
Missed our chance to get the kidnapper’s voice . . . Recording equipment . . .
He didn’t understand what Kakinuma was trying to say.
‘What do you mean? That call came in before any of you were even—’
‘There was another call.’
Mikami swallowed a breath.
Impossible . . .
‘It’s true. There was another call, one apart from the two that went on public record. And we screwed up our chances of getting it on tape.’
The words rang in his ears.
‘It was just before your unit arrived. We had a third call from the kidnapper. We’d been ready. Everyone was in place to record and trace the call. Then . . .’ Kakinuma swallowed, visibly pained. ‘The moment the phone started to ring, Amamiya almost lost it . . . he tried to pick it up, forgetting everything we’d told him. We managed to stop him, and contacted NTT. Hiyoshi was switching on the recording equipment at the same time. But the machine wouldn’t come on. The tapes didn’t move. He started to panic, tried flipping the switch off and on again, but the tapes just wouldn’t move. The phone continued to ring the whole time. Amamiya must have been terrified it would go dead – he picked up in the middle of the chaos.’
He picked up? The detective in Mikami reacted immediately.
‘Did the kidnapper talk to him?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he have to say?’
‘He warned Amamiya to steer clear of the police. Said he was watching him. Amamiya swore he hadn’t contacted us and begged to hear his daughter’s voice, but the line went dead. The call was too short to finish the trace.’
‘Was it the same voice as the previous times?’
‘According to Amamiya, yes.’
‘Did you get to hear it?’
Kakinuma shook his head regretfully. ‘No one heard it but Amamiya.’
‘What about headsets?’
‘I had mine on before. Koda, too. But we’d taken them off to help Hiyoshi, he was in such a panic. We were in the middle of checking the power, the slack on the tapes, when Amamiya . . . Anyway, that’s what happened.’
The car fell silent. The press officer in Mikami was late to catch up. The police had covered up their error. They’d deceived the public, consigned to the dark a call from the man behind a kidnapping and a murder.
It was unimaginable. It should never have been allowed to happen. It was at that point that Mikami finally felt a shiver go through him.
‘Who made the decision for the cover-up?’
Silence.
‘You’re wasting my time. Spit it out.’
‘The chief.’
‘Urushibara? What did he actually say?’
‘That we didn’t need to report it. That Amamiya understood. That we were never to speak of it to anyone, whatever happened.’
‘Did he try to sweet-talk Amamiya into playing along?’
‘I don’t think so. Amamiya was actually apologizing to us, at least immediately after the call. He kept saying he was sorry he’d answered without checking first.’
At least immediately after the call . . .
‘But that changed over time. Amamiya decided he couldn’t forgive us for the error. That was the reason the relationship broke down?’
‘I can’t really say; I’ve got orders to stay away from him. All I know is that the papers covered the case in exhaustive detail after the embargo was lifted. I’m certain he would have noticed that we hid the third call.’
Was that what it was? Had Amamiya turned his back on the police because of the cover-up, not because of the error itself?
‘What time did the call come in?’
‘Seven thirty, on the dot.’
That was only an hour before Mikami had arrived. He hadn’t sensed anything out of the ordinary. Although . . . whatever he’d seen, he would probably have considered it a product of the situation, of being in the house of a family whose daughter had been kidnapped, just as he’d written Hiyoshi’s paleness off to stress.
‘What did you say to NTT?’
It was one thing to commit an error, but they’d requested a trace and would have needed to follow that up.
‘We told them the call had been a wrong number.’
‘That’s what Urushibara told you to say?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was anyone giving him orders during all this?’
‘No. The way things were, he needed to make split-second decisions, there and then.’
Meaning responsibility stopped with the Home Unit. But, if that was the case . . .
‘What’s the Koda memo?’
Mikami had expected Kakinuma to put up a last-ditch fight, but he didn’t even pause.
‘I don’t know what it is, not exactly, but I do know that Koda was sick with anger. He turned on Urushibara when he learned the kidnapper had got away with the ransom. The whole team’s responsible for this. We need to report it to HQ. All four of us should stand in the firing line. Urushibara just shouted back: Why would you want to alienate the public? Spare me the amateur politics until we’ve caught the damn kidnapper. I said the same things to him, begged him. I said he needed to put up with it, keep it quiet.
‘Believe me, I knew exactly how he felt, but I really didn’t think it would benefit the investigation to kick up a fuss over a single mistake. And a part of me thought Urushibara had a point. Koda kept quiet after that. Then, later, he seemed to be in agony, after everything started to go wrong, after Shoko was found dead. In the end, Urushibara couldn’t stop him. It was after we’d pulled out of Amamiya’s house. Koda wrote up a report detailing the error and posted it through the director’s letterbox.’