Six Four (39 page)

Mikami exhaled deeply.

The commissioner would arrive in four days. The most important thing was to keep his cool. He would side with Administrative Affairs, for the sake of his family. The part of him that was still a detective would scream.

He felt a sudden rush of adrenalin.

Wait – this isn’t the time for sitting back . . .

What announcement was the commissioner planning to make? What would happen as a result? Mikami had yet to discover what it was.

A face flashed through his mind – the man who had kindly acted as a go-between in helping arrange his marriage. Osakabe was unwilling to help, but he could still try Odate. He had been one of the directors party to the cover-up. He was a greatly respected figure, second in estimation only to Osakabe himself. It was entirely plausible that he might have information on the commissioner’s plans. He had collapsed from a stroke at the
beginning of the year; when Mikami had taken him a gift in the summer he’d been at home and working on his rehabilitation. He’d been sorry to hear of Mikami’s transfer to Media Relations, and promised, with a slightly frozen mouth, to have a sharp word with Arakida.

Odate would talk. If Mikami asked him to . . .

His excitement passed, the enthusiasm suddenly leaving him, as though sucked away.

It would be too cruel. Odate had only been retired four years. The wound would be far from healed. It would be hard on him to have one of his officers – one he’d been fond enough to act as a go-between for – turn up and prise open the partially desiccated sore. Would he consider doing it even knowing that Odate was still in recovery?

Futawatari would do it. He wouldn’t even hesitate before pushing the buzzer.

He probably already had.

If the ace of Administrative Affairs had been there already, Odate wouldn’t have to ask Mikami the reason for his visit. He would only need to sit there in silence and look into Odate’s eyes. Wait for the man to come out with his final testimony.

Mikami shook his head.

He gazed at the steam rolling over the ceiling. For a while he did nothing else.

What was Mikumo doing now? She was probably still
in Amigos.

Cruel . . .

It’s not fair to use me as a surrogate . . .

Mikami tried to imagine her expression when she’d said the words.

You’re only able to speak like this because you’re a woman
, Mikami had thought, irritated during the first half of their conversation. Then Mikumo had broken the taboo. The last person he’d wanted to hear say the words had told him exactly what he’d hoped never
to hear. He’d been shocked and saddened, but the feeling went beyond her having landed a blow on him. He’d felt a concurrent surge of self-disgust and astonishment, realizing that the very thing he’d been looking for had been right there in front of him. Mikumo had been there the whole time. She was quiet, but he knew more than anyone that she was a quick thinker, that her eyes and ears were keen.

But . . .

It was because she was a woman. He’d realized it when she’d called him cruel. He’d never intended to use her as some kind of trophy. Nor had he ever thought to keep her untarnished on his behalf. He had wanted to protect her, that was all. Having failed to do the same for his wife and daughter, he’d chosen Mikumo to keep close, thinking he might be able to keep her safe for a year or two, for as long as he remained her boss.

He had been using her as a surrogate after all. Playing an unfair game. Perhaps he
had
been cruel to her.

Amigos
.
Laughter. The tang of alcohol . . .

He began to wonder if his attempts to maintain her innocence might have had the opposite effect. Was it possible her passion for the job had nothing to do with her decision to shun her womanly virtues? Mikami started to get worried. She’d told him she wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. How far had she decided she would go?

I want to contribute, to help with what we’re here to do.

‘Darling?’

Mikami started, thinking he’d dozed off and imagined Minako’s voice.

‘Are you okay?’

She was calling out from the next room, where the sink was. She was worried he’d been in the bath for too long.

‘Yeah, I’m fine. Getting out now,’ he replied, but he remained where he was.

He didn’t feel like he’d had time to warm up. Had he really
been in the bath long enough to justify her worrying? Their daily rhythms – washing, bathing, using the toilet – had all suffered since their daughter had run away. He would become engrossed in brushing his teeth. Not because his thoughts were on Ayumi, just focused on keeping the toothbrush in motion. So he didn’t have to think.
Turning away from reality.
Sometimes he was convinced that was what he was doing.

But he had never pictured her dead. He made sure he didn’t focus on the negatives.

She was alive
.

And yet . . .

He couldn’t see anything beyond that.

If she was alive, it followed that she would be out there somewhere. On her feet . . . moving around . . . eating . . . sleeping. But he couldn’t picture her doing any of those things.

In her mind, the whole world was laughing at her. She hated people looking at her. He couldn’t imagine in any detail her going about a normal life outside of home, not in that state of mind. What would she do for money? For a place to sleep? Most high-school girls ran away to get a job, a boyfriend, even to the red-light districts – but none of those cases fitted Ayumi. How would she support herself? Was she living on the streets? It seemed unlikely that a young homeless girl would slip through the net cast by 260,000 officers. Could someone have taken her in? If they had, who? It felt as if it would be a criminal act for anyone to take in a sixteen-year-old girl and not notify her parents or the authorities. She was locked up somewhere. Was that the only possible conclusion? Would he have to spend the rest of his life haunted by the thought?

It was better not to think at all, to ensure that Minako had no reason to dwell on it.
Ayumi is safe and well
. He made sure to draw a line under any other thoughts, forcing the subject to a close. For her part, Minako didn’t try to talk of anything else. She discussed the calls, but anything more was taboo. Ayumi, holding the
receiver in a public phone box. It was the only image they had of her in the outside world, the only one they permitted.

‘She’ll come back to us.’

Mikami tried saying the words he always said. He listened to the way they sounded. Whatever happened while Ayumi was away was immaterial. She just needed to come home. They would make it work.

‘Just come back.’

A drop of condensation trailed down the dark window. Mikami’s eyes felt heavy. The drowsiness was relentless this time. He wondered where he’d put Minako’s road-safety charm.

Darkness fell.

He saw a hand.

Minako, in her white kimono, smiling gently as she reached down with both hands.

As expected, the week failed to start normally. Mikami was woken by a call from Akama, which arrived even before the alarm he’d set for 6 a.m. went off.

‘Have you seen the morning edition of the
Toyo
?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Well, get a move on and read it.’ Akama sounded ready to explode. Still in bed, Mikami told Akama he would call back. He hung up the phone, threw a dressing gown over his nightshirt, then hurried outside to the letterbox. The
Toyo
had run some kind of scoop. His mind went first to the bid-rigging charges, but he dismissed the idea, realizing that Akama wouldn’t have called so early for that.

No
, he thought.

The Public Safety Committee. The pregnant woman. The old man’s death.

‘Is it something in the papers?’

Minako was already up by the time he came back into the living room, the papers bundled in his hands. She had just finished turning on the heater. She was frowning, looking nervous.

‘Seems so. Could you get me a coffee?’

Having coaxed her into the kitchen, he spread open the sheets of the
Toyo
, then leafed through to the local section.

Two headlines in bold jumped out from the page.

G
IFT
V
OUCHERS
B
UY
S
ILENCE

D
ETENTION
F
ACILITIES IN
Q
UESTION

A chill ran across his forehead. He noticed as soon as he started to read that the article was a detailed report with a parent write-up in the national pages. He quickly scanned across to the general news.
There
. The article lacked the detail of that in the local section, but the headline stood out nonetheless.

PREFECTURE D POLICE HEADQUARTERS. FEMALE DETAINEE ABUSED.

His eyes recoiled from the page.

The article contained an account of gross misconduct, allegedly having taken place at Station F, in the north of the prefecture, that August.

Mikami snapped back to the local section.

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.