The Silent Dead (18 page)

Katsumata thought he'd been doing her a favor by speaking so frankly. He was flabbergasted when her face crumpled and she began to cry.

“I don't know,” she whimpered. “When I asked him what he was doing, he wouldn't tell me. He was always hooking up with women—not just me and his wife—but he never tried to hide that. Whatever he was doing on those second Sundays, though, that was different. He came right out and said he had no intention of telling me what was going on. He got quite aggressive. I was afraid he'd found another woman and was going to dump me
and
his wife.” She paused. “Now he's dead, and I still have no idea what was going on.”

“You thought it was another woman?”

Kasumi gave a small shake of the head. “I don't know. When I pressed him about it, he'd totally fly off the handle. Then this sad, pained expression would come over his face. We'd been together ten years, but for the first time he was keeping secrets from me. Normally he'd tell me everything—about work, his family, everything.…”

“When did you notice the change?”

“The end of last year, I guess. Just when he rediscovered his passion for his work.” Kasumi suddenly inhaled sharply. She looked up at Katsumata and said, “I've just remembered something. He said something weird when I was trying to get an answer out of him.”

Okey-doke. Here comes your big fish. Reel it in carefully.

Masking his excitement, Katsumata looked flintily into Kasumi's eyes. “What did he say?”

“He starts off by asking me if I know anyone who's been in a war. My grandpa fought and died in World War II, while my dad was just a schoolboy at the time, so I said that no, I didn't. He goes all quiet for a while, then starts with this spiel about how people who make it back from war have a special kind of mental strength. He said he'd recently been able to experience that feeling firsthand, or something like it. He frightened me. It was like I didn't know him anymore.”

Katsumata sat lost in thought for a while.
What the hell has war got to do with anything? If this is my big fish, it smells a bit rotten to me.

The thought reminded him of Namekawa's putrid corpse.

 

5

Otsuka was in charge of interviewing Namekawa's friends.

There was an unspoken rule within the police force: every officer had to stay strictly within the parameters of their own investigation. If a promising lead came up when they were doing a neighborhood canvass, they couldn't follow it up outside their assigned sector. They had to find out who was in charge of the relevant sector, brief them, and then pursue the lead with them.

For that reason, when Otsuka was assigned to investigate Namekawa's friends, he had no right to interview Namekawa's direct colleagues at the ad agency—Himekawa and Katsumata were handling that—or his broader network of work connections, which Ishikura and one of Katsumata's squad were taking care of. Meanwhile Kikuta, Yuda, and another guy from Katsumata's team were looking into Namekawa's family—friends of the wife, the parents of the daughters' playmates, people they'd met at the PTA.

What Otsuka was left with were Namekawa's friends from his college days. With almost nothing to go on, Otsuka decided to visit Namekawa's college, Haseda University. Namekawa had graduated from Haseda fifteen years ago. That was all that Otsuka knew about the victim's college days.

Universities are like an alien planet to me
.

Otsuka had taken the Metropolitan Police entrance exam fresh out of high school. For his first job, he was assigned to the Koganei police station on Tokyo's outer fringes. A humble Community Affairs officer, he was passionate about becoming a detective. He knew that the reality of the job was nothing like the cop shows on TV. He wouldn't be spending his time firing his gun or punching smart-assed suspects. That didn't matter. If anything, the lack of glamor made him want it worse. While going about the daily grind of giving street directions, dealing with lost-and-found articles, and dropping in on local residents, he submitted multiple requests for a transfer to Criminal Investigation.

Opportunity came knocking sooner than he'd dared hope. A robbery-murder took place just a few hundred meters from his regular beat. A task force was established at the precinct, but the workload proved too much for the CI detectives. They decided to draft some cops from Community Affairs to lend them a hand. Otsuka was one of the lucky ones pulled off routine duties. All the CI detectives wanted Otsuka to do was to act as a neighborhood street guide. Otsuka didn't care. He was elated and flung himself into the investigation with gusto.

Several days later, the perpetrator was apprehended somewhere else entirely. Somewhere Otsuka had never even heard of. He'd canvassed the neighborhood until his legs had turned to lead, but his contribution to solving the case was a big fat zero. Nonetheless, his partner, a seasoned CI hand, had nothing but kind words for him.

At the party to celebrate the successful conclusion of the case and the winding down of the task force, the old detective clapped Otsuka on the back, grinned, and told him he was “one heck of a stubborn bastard.” Clasping the man's hands, Otsuka bowed so deeply that his forehead almost touched his knees. He didn't want anyone to see the tears in his eyes.

Soon after, Otsuka's transfer request was approved, and he joined the larceny division of the Criminal Investigation Bureau
.
Only later did he discover that the old detective had put in a good word for him. Determined not to disappoint his secret patron, Otsuka applied himself doggedly to his job.

Otsuka was just made that way. He never unearthed key leads or directly contributed to closing important cases. What he specialized in was working his way through the list of initial suspects and flagging any who were obviously innocent.

Ultimately, every investigation was a process of elimination, and somebody had to do the eliminating. It was a tedious job but an important one. His colleagues noticed his contribution and valued it.

In the squad, Ishikura was the one who valued Otsuka's contribution the most, more than even Himekawa and Kikuta did. “Your tenacious approach really helps tighten the focus of an investigation. You're doing an important job.”

That was how Otsuka ended up being saddled with Namekawa's university. Unfortunately, there were few places Otsuka felt less at home than on a college campus. He'd visited several for various investigations over the years, and they always made him feel like a fish out of water.

It had taken him a while to realize that at university not all the students went to class when the bell signaled the start of classes. There were youngsters out on the lawn playing catch, youngsters in the dining room eating, drinking, and gossiping. Wasn't college supposed to be for studying? Instead, to Otsuka, universities looked more like vacation resorts that had been plunked down in the middle of the city; students were just spoiled brats who lived the life of Riley.

It was summer vacation, but despite there not being any classes, plenty of students were milling aimlessly around. There was a group sunbathing on blankets at the edge of the big sports field, and the sound of someone performing a drum solo came from one of the buildings. Mysteriously, a mud-stained rugby player was dragging an empty bicycle-drawn trolley after him. A criminally sexy girl greeted the rugby player with a wave.

“Hiya. Seen Komori anywhere?”

“He was in the library a minute ago. You want his notes, rights? He gave them to me.”

“Are they in your locker?”

“No, they're in the rec room chest.”

“Okay if I help myself?”

“Pick up mine too, will you?”

What are you two talking about? What is a “wreck room” anyway?

The girl, in a fluffy top that made her look as though she was about to sprout wings, vanished into a gloomy-looking building. A cute young girl had no business in a dump like that.

At their age, Otsuka already had his nose to the grindstone. In the summer, he spent the day either at the station or doing the rounds on his police-issue white bicycle. When he was assigned to nights, he'd sit at his desk staring out at the dark street, darting out from time to time to give a rowdy drunk a talking to. In those days, he had mostly dealt with old people who lived alone, housewives, store owners, janitors, real estate agents, workers in local factories and workshops, elementary school kids who came to hand in coins they'd found on the sidewalk. University was a different planet.

Otsuka glanced over at Lieutenant Kitami. He was squinting up at the sky, looking thoroughly bored as he lit a cigarette.
I forgot. The guy's a rich kid who graduated from a top university.

Kitami got into the National Police Agency without having to take the state examinations. The only way you could do that was by having a first-rate degree. He probably had a law degree from Tokyo University. Having completed the three-month-long cadet course at the National Police Academy, Kitami was now in the field as a trainee.

Seems like a mellow enough guy, given his background
.

Kitami was already a lieutenant as soon as he graduated from the academy. On his first day with the task force, he'd introduced himself to Otsuka with a deep and respectful bow. Since Otsuka was just a regular officer, he'd been taken by surprise. As there'd been plenty of other detectives around, Kitami could just have been playing to the gallery.

“I'm a total greenhorn, Officer Otsuka,” he'd said. “I'm looking forward to you showing me the ropes.”

Kitami was perfectly coiffed, and his features were handsome and regular. He wore trendy frameless glasses and a suit and tie that were obviously expensive. By contrast, Otsuka's hair was a tousled mess, his three-year-old suit was rumpled and shapeless, he'd picked up his tie cheap from a street vendor, and his looks were nothing to write home about. Despite being under no obligation to do so, Kitami had treated him with respect. It wouldn't be fair for him to be standoffish in return. Besides, word had come down from the top brass to go easy on the boy. Otsuka decided to err on the side of caution and ratchet up the deference.

“Do you think the administrative offices of universities are closed during the summer vacation, Lieutenant Kitami?” Otsuka asked solemnly. A little groveling couldn't do any harm.

Kitami gazed thoughtfully at a tall building on the far side of the playing field. “It's the middle of a recession. I would guess that the career center, where they help the students find jobs, is still open.”

That made sense. Students needed jobs like everybody else.

With the economy in a rough patch, finding jobs was probably not easy for recent graduates—that much Otsuka could figure out for himself. But making the leap from there to figuring that the career center would be open over the vacation would never have occurred to him.

Otsuka decided to let Kitami take the lead in tracking down Namekawa's college buddies while he tried to avoid saying anything tactless and making an enemy of the young lieutenant.

*   *   *

“Why don't we start by finding out what clubs or societies Namekawa belonged to when he was a student,” Kitami suggested.

They explained what they were doing to one of the clerks in the career center. After setting up camp in one corner of the room, the clerk brought them the written records of the different clubs at the university.

“The clubs all submit annual accounts. The accounts include a list of the members for the relevant year,” announced the clerk offhandedly. There were around three hundred clubs and societies at Haseda, so a single year's worth of accounts was enough to fill several thick binders. Kitami and Otsuka were going to have go through the accounts for all four years Namekawa had been a student. That meant an awful lot of checking.

In an effort to speed things up, Otsuka called Kikuta and got him to ask Namekawa's wife what clubs her husband belonged to as a student. She had no idea. He called Himekawa and asked her to do the same thing. She replied that asking that of the man's coworkers would be a complete waste of time, then hung up.

Something's pissed her off
, thought Otsuka.

So much for shortcuts. Otsuka and Kitami began examining the accounts. Since Namekawa had worked for an ad agency, they looked at the Advertising and Marketing Study Group first, but had no luck. Since he had been quite robustly built, their next ports of call were the rugby, American football, and soccer clubs. Another blank. They were going to have to grind their way through the whole lot.

It was half past four by the time Otsuka came across Namekawa's name. The students had mostly gone home, and they could feel the resentful glares of the office staff burning holes in their backs. “Here it is, Lieutenant Kitami,” yelled Otsuka excitedly. “He was in the hiking club.”

Perhaps Kitami wasn't cut out for this sort of simple, mechanical work. He looked exhausted and only managed an indifferent grunt. Identifying a group of potential interviewees in Namekawa's fellow hikers was only a small first step, and it was all they had to show for their day's work when they reported at the evening meeting.

*   *   *

The next morning they called Yuzuru Takeuchi, who had been the head of the hiking club when Namekawa was at university. Takeuchi had last seen Namekawa at a reunion in November the previous year, he said, but they had not really seen much of each other since graduation. A guy by the name of Tashiro would be a much better bet, as he had stayed in close contact with Namekawa over the years.

Tomohiko Tashiro was thirty-nine years old and worked in sales for an electronics company. He was amenable when they called, and he made time to see them that evening.

They met in a café in a busy pedestrian street in Shibuya, not far from Tashiro's office. Otsuka and Kitami both got to their feet when he came in and bowed. “Sorry to call you out of the blue like this, sir.”