The article contained an account of gross misconduct, allegedly having taken place at Station F, in the north of the prefecture, that August.
A police sergeant in his fifties who was in charge of detainees has allegedly abused a woman in her thirties. While she was in custody on charges of suspected theft, the officer forced her to let him touch her breasts and genitalia over consecutive nights.
Mikami snapped back to the local section.
‘You’ll get out sooner if you do what I say.’ The officer had blackmailed the female detainee into permitting his misconduct. The female detainee later received a suspended sentence and, following her release, demanded an apology from the sergeant, protesting that he had taken advantage of her vulnerability, claiming his actions had been ‘unforgivable’. When she threatened to lodge an official protest with Station F, the sergeant offered her 100,000 yen in gift vouchers and begged her not to disclose the misconduct to his superiors.
Mikami drove his fist into the paper. They wouldn’t have gone this far without having first secured some kind of evidence. He could feel the bile in his throat. He admitted it was sometimes difficult to find evidence of decency within the force, but still – to think someone so twisted had the gall to masquerade as an officer of the law . . .
He flicked through the remaining papers. None contained any mention of the story. The Toyo had secured an exclusive. Suwa’s gut feeling had been on the money. Akikawa had failed to show up at Amigos: it was safe to assume that he’d been hard at work on the article.
Still, it didn’t make sense. Why hadn’t he known about the story before seeing it in the paper? Reporters always made sure to visit the executive the night before they ran a scoop of this magnitude – it was a necessary rite to request official confirmation of the facts to back up their story. Had they lacked the time, the information coming in too close to the printing deadline? Mikami supposed it was possible they had been confident enough of the truth of the story that they had deemed it unnecessary to seek official confirmation. Even then, however, they would usually call in advance to warn that the article would be in the morning paper; a surprise attack would only make it harder to approach the police for more information down the line.
And there was something else that didn’t seem right . . .
Minako had already brought him his coffee. He touched the mug to his mouth but stopped there. Picking up the internal line, he called Akama’s home number. The call connected after just one ring.
‘Okay, I saw it.’
‘It was written by one of our reporters,’ Akama said. It was a statement of fact.
The Toyo had a correspondent in charge of news in the area around Station F. Akama went on to say that the reporter, a contract worker in his sixties, had just put in an apologetic call to Kobogata, the captain at Station F: I just read the article in our morning edition. So, this really happened?
‘It was apparently the first Kobogata had heard of it.’
The captain had called the sergeant over. The sergeant had given a full confession. Kobogata had called officers from the Criminal Investigations Division and carried out an emergency arrest, citing indecent assault by a public official. An official from Internal Affairs was en route from the NPA in Tokyo, and a press conference had been scheduled to be held in the station at 9 a.m.
That was as far as things had progressed.
‘I can’t wrap my head around it. We didn’t get a single call – they didn’t call me; they didn’t call Shirota or Internal Affairs. From what I hear, this is unheard of. What do you make of all this?’
The brain asking its limbs for an opinion: it had never happened before. Akama was genuinely shaken. The scoop had made it to the national press. Mikami wondered if a call from Tokyo had interrupted his sleep.
‘I think it’s likely the reporter was tipped off; someone close to the source.’
‘That’s not what I’m asking you. I want to know your opinion as to why an article slamming us has found its way out at this particular point in time.’
Of course.
It was an attack on Administrative Affairs. The idea had come to him as he read the article: that Criminal Investigations had leaked the story to the Toyo; that they’d done an about-turn on their defensive stance, moved on to the offensive.
The fact that the article had been about the detention facilities had been suspicious from the start. The facilities were officially under the jurisdiction of Administrative Affairs, but the reality was that they were the territory of Criminal Investigations. The cells are a breeding ground for wrongful convictions. The police use them as prison substitutes: Criminal Investigations had distanced itself from the facilities, from an organizational standpoint, in a bid to stave off complaints from human-rights groups, but there wasn’t a station in the prefecture where the facilities were run exclusively by officers from Administrative Affairs. Many belonged to the department in name only, their background being in detective work; others were serving an apprenticeship with a view to becoming wardens or guards; they would often return to the facilities after a day of investigative work and keep watch over the detainees, filing detailed reports to Criminal Investigations.
What this boiled down to was that, while Criminal Investigations had full access to the facilities, whenever an issue cropped up concerning their management, it was Administrative Affairs, as the official managing department, who ended up shouldering the blame. Criminal Investigations might have lacked the means with which to expose malpractice from the more closed-off divisions at the department’s core, but it would have had ready access to a backlog of material in the case of the detention facilities.
Still . . .
Could they really have done it?
It seemed hard to believe; Akama’s apparent certainty meant that Mikami had to be careful in how he responded.
‘Sir, are you saying you think that this is Criminal Investigations trying to send us a message?’
‘A message? This is a blatant and unconditional threat. Seeing as they went after the detention facilities, they probably decided to take a small hit and deal us a serious blow.’
Take a small hit?
The article wouldn’t have hurt them in the slightest. Anyone in their fifties who was still a police sergeant was either gullible to a fault or just organizational flotsam. It went without saying that he wouldn’t have any experience of active duty, or in any of the department’s more high-powered roles. They had procured an ‘outsider’ for their sacrifice, making sure Administrative Affairs alone bore the brunt of the scandal.
It felt increasingly likely that it was the work of Criminal Investigations.
‘Might you be the cause, Mikami?’
The question left him stunned. The cause? Of what? ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’