Hidden Nexus (29 page)

Tuesday 4
^th
January 10:00am

While Inspector Saito was busy updating the Chief Super on their progress, Mori and
Junsa
Saito did what they could to confirm Sakamoto’s conviction that Eri Yamada had been spotted on the convenience store’s CCTV cameras on her way home. He bore in mind that the last time he’d reviewed the recordings himself he was intent on examining the movements of Yamada rather than his wife and so he was interested to review the recordings once more.

It had taken longer than expected to get hold of them and with both Sakamoto and Deguchi absent from their office he couldn’t immediately find what he was looking for. Eventually on returning to his office a breathless
Junsa
Saito brought him what he required and he gratefully received it, plugging the pen stick on which they were stored into his PC.

It didn’t take him long to spot a woman matching Yamada Eri’s description enter the store at the time frame as had previously been recorded in the notes. He followed her movements closely trying to pay particular attention to her face. For the most part, however, the woman in shot had her back to the camera and the totality of her action was to look briefly at the magazine rack picking out one publication before putting it back and then leaving. In a moment of irrelevant distraction he wondered what magazine it might have been before he returned to examining her once again. He rewound the recording over and over again. He wasn’t convinced. Superficially it looked like her – a woman wearing a mid-length coat, together with a hat and scarf. It could be her, but then again it could be almost any woman popping into a store to get a brief respite from the cold on her way back home. He opened the file on his desk which he’d started the day before, which included copies of his notes and photographs from his original file in the case. He looked at the photographs of the deceased and then with his heart racing returned to the shots on the CCTV. Something was different. Eri Yamada had not been wearing a scarf that day was his understanding. The woman on the CCTV definitely had. What an incredible lapse thought Mori. Someone, probably Deguchi, was sure to get a roasting for this mistake when this particular fact came to light.

What Mori failed to realise at this time was a further significance to his discovery. This would only be revealed, by Inspector Saito, in the days to come.

Mori was keen to check out a few more things particularly the witness statement given by the convenience store holder. He read it through carefully. Most of what was said concerned verification that Yamada Hideki had been in the store which was a fact that was now firmly established and incontestable. It didn’t take him very far. The statement said little about the existence of Yamada Eri and stuck only to a few vague comments concerning other people who may have been in the store at the same time. A description matching the woman on the CCTV had been given but it was nowhere near a positive identification of Yamada Eri.

It all added up to the possibility that Yamada Eri had not taken the train back from Tokyo and she had not walked home up the hill from Kamioka station. This lead to two possibilities - firstly she could have been killed and then dumped at the scene of crime by the murderer or secondly she could have been driven home only to be later attacked – and that person could quite possibly have been Ozawa Kenji.

It was time to check out the chauffeur!

As he and
Junsa
Saito drove back to Niigata Kyubin for once his mind wandered off the case and onto his colleagues. It wasn’t a monumental realisation that had suddenly gripped him, nor one that was particularly profound, nor for that matter pivotal in the case, but it suddenly struck Sergeant Mori that Inspector Saito had only been back from his suspension for a single day and so much seemed to have happened already.

During Saito’s suspension he had got used to him not being around. He had thought that there would have been a bigger hole in his life, but with Saito absent, Mori’s life and activities simply expanded to fill the void. Life moved on, work moved faster and it was to his dismay that he now looked back on the last three months with the realisation that Inspector Saito hadn’t been needed. He’d also got used to the more traditional methods of crime detection as being presently executed by Sakamoto.

One day in and it was if the last three months had been turned on their head. Within moments of his arrival Inspector Saito had completely realigned the case, he’d thrown hefty spanners into Sakamoto’s hitherto smooth workings, he’d rattled cages and been beaten up.

Mori didn’t know why, but he was worried about his Inspector, which was a feeling he’d never experienced before. It wasn’t just because of the injuries he’d sustained the night before but the purple bruising around his eyes and the cuts across his face had a way of concentrating the mind – they were a very telling image of the state of Inspector Saito’s career.

It was difficult to look at him without knowing that he was in pain. They hadn’t really fully explored the reasons behind the beating and this gnawed away at Mori. It wasn’t that Saito was reluctant to discuss the matter. On the contrary he’d been disarmingly open. But it just didn’t seem right that a senior police officer could be so brutally attacked and nothing be done about it. Like Saito, he hoped that in some way it would all tie back into the current investigation. The Inspector had laughed off his injuries and had pointed to the fact that it was doubtful the hospital would have been content to release him so early if he really was in a bad way, but Mori couldn’t help thinking that he’d been extremely lucky to get away with nothing more serious than a broken nose. It had also crossed his mind that in Saito’s last two days of work, falling before and after his suspension, he’d been badly beaten on both occasions.

He suddenly felt quite envious of the Inspector, closeted away with such a fetching companion and for an instant the image of
Junsa
Saito kneeling by Saito’s bedside, in a low cut nurses’ uniform, gently dabbing soft cotton wool around his cuts and bruises and tenderly taking his temperature before administering recuperative whiskey sprang invidiously into his mind. He looked across at her sitting demurely in the passenger seat and was once again struck by her good-nature and uncomplicated beauty. He recalled, guiltily, his own feelings of the day before when he’d felt captivated by her large eyes and charming smile and now as before he thought immediately and awkwardly of his girlfriend, Narase Ren.

Last night between snuffles and sneezes he’d given her a call. It hadn’t quite gone as he’d hoped. He’d felt tetchy and Ren had been as equally as bad-tempered. She’d sent him a present through the post – a new iPhone
and he’d neither
acknowledged its arrival nor yet used it, particularly in terms of keeping in touch with her. They’d ended up having a pointless argument about why this was and after that they’d found it hard to say anything pleasant to each other. It was a disappointing end to the phone call.

It would be completely wrong to suggest that Sergeant Mori was an unfaithful sort of man – one for whom the slightest disagreement with his partner would see him hurtling off into the darkened dens and dives of deepest Yokohama ‘on the rebound’ but it would be equally true to say that in his current condition a little bit of gentle female sympathy would have been most welcoming. In no way was his state as bad as Saito’s but all the same his head cold was most debilitating. He idly mused that it would have been pleasant indeed to have
Junsa
Saito attending to his ministration and then, with some shame, he considered not only Ren far away but also the differences between the two men’s reduced circumstances. It was therefore with a rediscovered and more generous frame of mind that he decided that he was quite relieved that
Junsa
Saito had been with the Inspector the night before. It was right that someone was there to care for him. He needed looking after. So what if that person turned out to be
Junsa
Saito. In addition he had no genuine desire to test his own levels of temptation much further – there was absolutely no need to stand beneath the plum tree if you had no desire for plums!

With this thoughtful interlude concluded he turned through a series of bends, now all quite familiar to him, refocused his mind back onto the real matter at hand and searched out their final destination and headed this time for the warehouse and garages of Niigata Kyubin
to sound out the company chauffeur, of which they soon found out, and were pleased to hear, there was only one.

The snow was still relatively thick on the ground despite the constant coming and going of the company fleet, although it was gradually turning into an encrusted dark grey discoloured by the salt-thawed snow which threw up dirty slush off the roads. Sergeant Mori and
Junsa
Saito gingerly made their way across the compound wishing, like everyone else, that they’d chosen more appropriate footwear and entered the garage. They found the chauffeur hard at work giving the limo a thorough wax finish and Mori guessed that the car was his pride and joy and that he cared for it more than he did his own. For a second he wondered if all this hard work would be wasted as within seconds of driving, the pristine shine was sure to become dulled by the salt that had been spread liberally on the roads. He refrained from making such an observation. The chauffeur placed the leather cloth down on the bonnet as they approached, wiped his hands on his dark-grey overalls and made to greet them.

Mori explained what they were interested in – the days and times not before taking a look inside the car. It was quite clear that the tinted windows on all sides enabled the occupants of the backseat to do whatever they wished in complete privacy secure in the knowledge that their actions, whatever they might be, would be sight and sound proofed.

‘Thursday, you say?’ The chauffeur stroked his chin.

‘Exactly.’

‘It was a busy day from what I remember.’

He seemed the sort of fellow who would take his time over every statement and every thought.

‘Can you tell us what you did from about five o’clock onwards?’ asked Mori impatiently.

The chauffeur scratched his head and thought for a moment. ‘We were in Kamakura and then it was a nightmare trying to get back up to Shinbashi for just after six. Luckily we made it and I dropped Ozawa san at Shinbashi station.’

‘The station, are you sure – not outside a particular building?’

‘No, it was the station. It’s where he wanted to go. I think he was meeting Yamada san there.’

‘Okay. And after that what did you do then?’

‘I was asked to wait but it’s not exactly easy to park up so I drove around a bit.’

‘A bit?’

‘Well, about an hour actually.’

‘So what time did you meet back up with Ozawa san?’

‘About seven thirty.’

‘You can’t be more precise.’

‘Not really. I got a call from him but I don’t know when… actually wait a second, I can probably tell you.’ He reached into his jacket pocket which had been lying inside the car and produced his mobile phone. He fiddled with it for a few seconds, ‘Yes, it was seven twenty-three precisely.’

‘Good – and when he met up with you, was he alone?’

‘He was.’

‘He wasn’t with Yamada Eri san?’

‘No. I didn’t see her at all that day.’

‘And so she didn’t get into the car a little later, then?’ said Mori sounding a little confused.

‘No.’

‘Okay, so just to confirm - it was only Ozawa san that was with you in the car.'

'Yes.'