The Silent Dead (16 page)

“Is everybody ready? We have figured out the identity of the body found in the Mizumoto Park pond, so that is where I want to start today. The victim is a Yukio Namekawa. He was thirty-eight years old, lived in Azabudai in Tokyo, and was married with two daughters. He worked for Hakodo, one of the country's two biggest ad agencies, as a so-called creative. Apparently he made quite a name for himself in the business. A couple of years ago he was in a car accident, a one-car incident in which no one but Namekawa himself was injured. We were able to identify him because we took his prints then, and they're a match with the body. A missing persons report for him was filed on the nineteenth of last month.”

The captain moved briskly on to assigning that day's tasks. “Himekawa and Katsumata, I want you to talk to Namekawa's colleagues at the Hakodo office.”

Reiko caught her breath.
Why's he pairing me with Stubby?
She looked past Ioka's shoulder at Katsumata. He was sitting on the far left at the front. He was busy taking notes from a file and his face was expressionless. Beside him sat an old, battle-scarred sergeant from precinct. Today she and Ioka would be working with those two.

The thought was enough to bring back the nausea of the day before. This time she managed to keep her breathing under control. Yesterday she'd been weak. She'd not been able to forget Katsumata's parting remark, and that, combined with the heat and the all-too-familiar-looking landscape outside Nishiarai police station, had triggered those memories of what had happened to her on that day when she was seventeen years old and had left the house.

I don't care what Katsumata says. There'll be no more fainting fits today
.

Her face was a grim mask. When she reopened her eyes, she found Ioka anxiously inspecting her face. He smiled and nodded. “I'll take care of you, Lieutenant.”

Reiko grinned back. “Thanks. I'm okay now. I won't let him get to me.”

I'm not the same person I was back then
.

Reiko and Ioka left the room while the meeting was still running.

*   *   *

They went to Hakodo to interview people who knew Namekawa. Allowing for the differences in the two firms' businesses, perceptions of Namekawa at Hakodo were remarkably similar to those of Kanebara at Okura Trading.

Namekawa, everyone agreed, was a creative prodigy whose name inspired respect not just at Hakodo but in the broader world of advertising. When Reiko inquired about the nature of Namekawa's work, she was informed that he was an all-rounder who did everything from directing TV commercials for a cosmetics brand to designing the package for a popular brand of instant noodles. Most recently, he'd produced a music video for one of those prepackaged pop superstars.

In his private life, Namekawa was apparently quite the stud: his affairs ran the gamut, from a high school girl to a well-known actress. In addition, he had a steady, long-term mistress. According to his colleagues, his wife put up with his ostentatious philandering in silence. Either she had a generous and forgiving nature, or she was just too worn out to be jealous. Whichever it was, Reiko couldn't sympathize. She could never accept a partner who screwed around. Anyway, the wife wasn't her problem. Kikuta had been sent to interview Namekawa's family.

The Don Juan antics aside, Namekawa had more than a little in common with Kanebara, as the testimony of one of his subordinates showed.

“Namekawa won a major award for one of his TV commercials the year before last. He wasn't obsessed with awards, but he still seemed to lose his way after that. His mojo kind of deserted him. It stayed that way for most of last year. He was still Yukio Namekawa, though. Even in a downswing, he churned out plenty of top-notch work. The other production companies were left eating his dust. The thing is, I knew the guy. I could see what was really going on inside him. His ideas weren't as sharp as before. The creativity was still there, but he was treading water. He was playing defense rather than offense.”

This is the stuff that people with artsy-fartsy jobs worry about?

“That all changed this year. He suddenly recovered his form. It was like he was a different person. Even more than before the award, he was hitting it out of the creative park every time. I was like, ‘Wow! This guy's incredible, a genius.' At the same time, he seemed a bit out of control. None of us could begin to keep up with the pace he set. But he was always like, ‘Feed me. Give me more work!'”

The bit about no one being able to keep up set off alarm bells in Reiko's head, but she didn't interrupt.

“I warned him that he'd kill himself if he kept working at that rate. You know what his comeback line was? ‘You've got to live every day like it's your last, so you've got nothing to regret. Otherwise, what's the point?' He was quite angry. I know what he was getting at … I think.… Still, living every day without regret and actively flinging yourself into the arms of death are two different things, in my book. Namekawa looked like he was in the second category to me, so I wasn't so surprised to hear about his death.… How did he die? Was it a fight or something like that? How come no one found him for a month?”

Reiko decided that the notion of a grudge killing wasn't worth pursuing, at least for the time being. As a star in his profession, Namekawa was more likely to have enemies than Kanebara; at the end of the day, though, he too was just a hired hand, a salaried employee. It was hard to conceive of any work problem that would lead to murder, let alone such a bizarre one.

Nor was there any sign that Namekawa was connected to Kanebara in any way. There was no reason why the star creative talent at an advertising agency and a salesman from an office equipment leasing company should cross paths. To be certain, Reiko checked: Hakodo didn't lease its office equipment from Okura Trading.

The next person they interviewed was Namekawa's personal assistant. She had a good grasp of his schedule.

“Oh, you're right. He made me cancel an engagement I'd penciled in for the evening of July thirteenth. You're interested in the month before too? That would be … June eighth. No, he had no work engagements on the eighth either. The second Sunday before that would be May eleventh. He blocked out that evening too. Gosh, I never realized. What was Mr. Namekawa doing every second Sunday?”

That what we're here to find out
.

Working back through Namekawa's diary, they discovered that he'd been keeping the second Sunday of the month free since December the previous year. When the PA had scheduled something for April, he simply failed to show up. Where was he? What was he doing there? His colleagues had no idea. Tellingly, the blocked-out Sunday evenings and his frenzied overperformance at work—what his subordinate referred to as his “comeback”—had both started at almost exactly the same time.

Perhaps Namekawa had some special experience on Sunday, December 8, last year. It was something that happened every second Sunday. What, though? Was he meeting someone? Was it an organized event, or some sort of natural phenomenon? A negotiation of some sort? What?

Whatever it was, it had inspired Namekawa to throw himself back into his work with manic energy. Then, roughly six months later, on July 13, he had suddenly disappeared. Reiko guessed that the missing person's report had not been filed until six days later because Namekawa—unlike Kanebara—didn't work the usual nine to five, Monday to Friday.

Something on the second Sunday of the month had affected both men the same way, motivating them to work harder. According to Mrs. Kanebara, her husband had started going out once a month in early spring, though she'd not been able to provide precise dates. Early spring was also when Kanebara had launched his one-man sales assault on the East Tokyo Bank. That was suggestive.

In the end, both Namekawa and Kanebara had been murdered on the second Sunday of the month. In truth, it wasn't certain that Namekawa had been murdered on July 13—that was speculation on Reiko's part. The coroner had placed his death “sometime in mid-July” as the state of the body made greater precision impossible. Still, it made sense: Namekawa had gone missing after canceling an evening engagement for the thirteenth, and he had been killed in the same way as Kanebara.

From there it was a short step to imagining a whole series of victims: Kanebara in August, Namekawa in July, someone in June, someone in May, and so on. Namekawa's involvement with the second-Sunday business dated from December the year before. If that was true, then a nine-victim tally was the best-case scenario.

That also means that somebody else will be killed on the second Sunday next month, too.

What the hell was going on? What was this thing that got people so stoked about their jobs on the one hand, but came with the possibility of violent death on the other?

*   *   *

Reiko and Katsumata took a meeting room each at the advertising firm to conduct their interviews. Namekawa's immediate boss had drawn up a list of the employees who were closest to the victim, and they divvied it up between them.

Reiko and Ioka had done half of their scheduled interviews when Reiko consulted her watch. It was ten past twelve. She suggested breaking for lunch. Being hungry wasn't the point—she was eager to learn what the Katsumata team had found out.

The journey that morning to the Hakodo office had taken them almost an hour. Katsumata didn't say a word to Reiko either on the train or in the street. Once they arrived, he'd limited himself to suggesting that they divide up the interviews and drawing up a roster.

Just my luck, being paired up with that old stalker.

In fact, Katsumata's silence had been a boon to Reiko. Normally, every word he uttered was like a needle probing an open wound. She'd promised herself not to let him get to her, but that didn't stop her feeling apprehensive. His keeping his mouth shut meant she'd been able to give her full focus to the interviews this morning.

“I suppose we really ought to invite Lieutenant Katsumata to join us for lunch,” Ioka ventured.

Reiko sighed. “I don't think we
have
to, but it would be unprofessional not to brief each other on what we've learned this morning. Pooling information now will help us get better results this afternoon.”

Reiko started to feel uneasy before the words were even out of her mouth. Would Katsumata be willing to pass on what he'd found out? No, the man was a bastard, but surely not even he would refuse to share information from interviews they'd agreed to divide up between them. Besides, neither of them had the full picture; he needed her input as much as she needed his.

“Okay, let's go.” She left the room, and Ioka followed her. They went down a gleaming, blue-carpeted corridor and into the open-plan space where the creative team was based. Reiko had no idea what people in ad agencies did all day, but the place looked like a war zone. Most offices quieted down during the official lunch break between 12:00 and 1:00, but here people were charging around every which way. Behind their shoulder-high partitions, all the desks were buried under heaped up files, product packages, mock-ups, and samples.

At the far end of the room, beyond the maze of partitions, there were three meeting rooms. Their walls were plate glass down to waist height. Katsumata had set up shop in the one on the far left. A yellow blind had been pulled down, blocking her view into the room. The same had been done with the room on the far right, though there the blind was green. Presumably pulling the blind down was to indicate that the room was in use. Reiko idly wondered what color the blind in the middle room was.

Reiko raised her hand to knock on the door of the meeting room on the left.

“Excuse me, miss,” said a woman sitting nearby.

“Yes?”

“Your friends left around half an hour ago.”

For a moment, Reiko was nonplussed.

“My friends? You mean the detectives who were using this room?”

“Yes.”

Ioka pushed the door open. It was empty.

“What? Both of them?”

“Yes. In fact, they took Ms. Shiratori with them.”

Ms. Shiratori…? Damnation.

Kasumi Shiratori knew Namekawa better than anyone. The woman had been his lover for years.

“I thought Ms. Shiratori wasn't due back until the afternoon?”

“I think the idea was it would be safer to schedule her interview in the afternoon. As it was, she got back to the office early, and your friends…”

Katsumata was a dirty operator.

When they divvied up the names, Kasumi Shiratori had been on Reiko's list. She was a key witness. Her name had come up repeatedly in the interviews she had done that morning. Their relationship was an open secret in the office. The woman had been Namekawa's lover since before his marriage. She knew all the ins and outs of his work and his personal life.

Damn that Stubby for a double-crossing bastard!

Snagging one of her interviewees was bad enough, but then to take her out of the office! What was the man thinking? There was no point in calling Katsumata's cell. He wouldn't pick up. She could try calling Shiratori directly, but Katsumata wouldn't let her slip through his fingers. If he let her go, it'd probably be after warning her to say as little as possible to anyone else.

He fucking played me.

Now Reiko realized why Katsumata had been so quiet that morning.

*   *   *

Kikuta went to visit Namekawa's family at their home.

The house and the wall around it were both made of brick. Kikuta's first impression was that the place was a grand old mansion; on closer inspection, however, Kikuta realized that the bricks were not the real thing, but modern siding treated to look like brick.

He pressed the button on the intercom on the front gate.