SUZUKI SLURPED DOWN THREE FULL bowls of udon noodles and four cups of coffee. Iwata handed over cigarettes and ten thousand yen in cash. Suzuki lit up and savored the nicotine as the smoke curled up past his grubby face.
“God damn, that is the genuine article.”
“Now you talk, Suzuki.”
“Beauty is truth. Fire away.”
“Why did they ask you to identify Akashi’s body?”
“I was his partner for years. I assumed you knew that.”
“So why not a family member?”
“He had no family.”
“And you didn’t find it strange?”
“Find what strange, pal?”
Suzuki inspected the glowering tip of his cigarette as it burned.
“That the TMPD would go find a man living in a park, out of the force for almost ten years, to formally identify a body?”
“Thought never crossed my mind.”
“They paid you?”
“More than you did. Look, strange or not, you saw how I’m living. You don’t like it? Well, I got news for you. Neither do I.”
“I didn’t come here to pass judgment. I just want to know what happened to Akashi.”
Suzuki finished the last of his broth before wiping his mouth with a dirty sleeve.
“Then you’re wasting your time, Iwata. You already know he jumped off Rainbow Bridge. What are you asking me for? All I did was look at a corpse.”
“How did you know it was him?”
“In the morgue? Of course it was him. I knew right away.”
“How could you know? He had no face.”
“He had the same frame, the same shitty clothes, the wedding ring. Look, it was him, all right. No two ways about it.”
“Ring?”
“His ex-wife gave it back to him when they separated.”
“Yumi.”
Suzuki smiled yellow teeth and let a memory wash over him.
“What a woman.”
“What if it were possible that Akashi didn’t kill himself after all?”
An amused smile played on Suzuki’s lips.
“Then I’d say full speed ahead, Captain Ahab.”
“Why?”
“Okay look, I never thought Akashi would be the sort to top himself. But then I haven’t seen him in years. People change. Look at me.”
“Can you think of anyone who might want him dead? Was there anyone he feared?”
Suzuki chortled.
“I’m sure there were a lot of people that wanted him dead. Akashi did a lot of bad things. But he wasn’t the sort to fear anyone.”
“Why not?”
Suzuki shrugged.
“It wasn’t just that he had no fear. It was more that he always knew the angle. Look, Akashi was the smartest bastard I ever knew.”
“Start from the beginning. I want to know what you know.”
Suzuki sighed—a deal is a deal.
“We were first put together in Nerima PD, a long time ago. Let’s just say that Akashi hit the ground running. The guy was a machine, best clearing record I’d ever seen. Within a few years, he transferred to Shibuya’s Division One and got to pick his own team.”
“I’m guessing you got lucky.”
“Yeah, along with this dumb fuck, Nomura. Honestly, that choice confused me at first. He was a good guy but any little simple task took him twice as long. He was constantly stuck between overthinking something pointlessly, to not thinking it through at all. He was completely dependent on Akashi, like a fucking retarded little brother or something. We grew to love him, though.”
Suzuki suddenly hacked up blood on the counter, his eyes streaming. When he was breathing normally again, he nonchalantly wiped away the stain with napkins.
“You should see a doctor.”
“I’m uninsured, they won’t see me. Just finish your questions.”
“All right. You were saying. Akashi transferred.”
“And how.” Suzuki ordered a bottle of beer and lit another cigarette. “So there followed a golden age of police work. In a relatively short amount of time, Akashi and his two trusted henchmen became the tip of the spear. We fucking owned Shibuya. The commissioner loved us. The other cops envied us. They called us the Three Little Pigs. To be honest, I always kind of liked the name.”
“So how did you end up…”
“What? Here?”
“Yeah.”
Suzuki’s expression soured for a moment, and he looked at a speck of blood in the ashtray.
“What happens to all streaks? Our luck ran out.”
“Go on.”
“In 1994, Akashi was tasked with heading up an infiltration unit—completely off the books, well-funded, full operational discretion.”
“Infiltrating what, organized crime?”
Suzuki shook his head.
“Cults.”
“Why?”
“Japan was shit scared back then. Aum Shinrikyo had hit Matsumoto and Tokyo with sarin gas attacks and the TMPD realized it had no real rulebook for dealing with them. I didn’t see Akashi for a couple of years after that. I’m not sure what happened to the infiltration unit, but there were one or two cult groups that got swallowed up and prosecutions did follow.”
“And then?”
“Akashi was reassigned to our old unit. We were given a case nobody wanted. This guy murders three children and then just falls off the map. We never worked a case harder than that, and in the end, we did manage to discover his identity—a guy called Matsuu.”
Something fell away in Iwata’s chest. He thought back to his first time in Shindo’s office, and what Sakai had asked.
What about the Takara Matsuu case, sir?
“Matsuu?” Iwata repeated.
“That’s what I said. Anyway, so we dug up every fucking rat in Japan and paid any asshole to whisper to us. In the end, we managed to corner Matsuu in some fucking field in Chiba. He was hiding out in this shack. Akashi tells us to stay outside while he goes in. Ten minutes later, he walks out, empty-handed. Not here, he says. After that, Akashi was never the same. You could tell it was eating him up. It was around that time our clearing rate dropped. We started accepting ‘gifts.’ Got involved in black market casinos. We started to owe the wrong people money. The sort of people that don’t give a fuck whether you have a badge or not. One thing led to another, as they say.”
“Hold on, go back. Takara Matsuu?”
“That’s right. Big fucker.”
Iwata shook his head.
“But they did find him. Or at least, until he went missing several weeks ago.”
Suzuki shrugged.
“Well … I guess they must have caught him. I’m not really one for current affairs, you know?”
“But if he murdered three children, how did he get out at all? He would’ve hanged.”
“Fucked if I know. Must have had a pretty hot defense lawyer.” Suzuki downed his beer. “Not that they exist in this country. Matsuu probably served his time and then became an informant after he got out. Makes sense, if he’s missing. Nobody likes snitches.”
“But informing on who? On what?”
“You work it out, man. Anyway, you want to know what happened or not?”
“I want to know.”
“Our bribes got bigger. The risks got even bigger. Our feuds got out of hand. And we got fucking rich. We weren’t staging photo-op drug busts anymore. I’m talking vote rigging, fixed public bids, entire projects. We were so far inside the yakuza, we’d go weeks without turning up at HQ. We didn’t have the tattoos, but we knew what we had become.”
“And then?”
“Nomura, the poor bastard. One day he comes to Akashi and tells him that he can’t do it anymore, he wants to leave. Can’t face killing or being killed. Akashi embraces him, says something in his ear, and leads him to the door. When Nomura turns his back on him, he cuts his throat.”
Suzuki looked upward at the fan, the slow blades chopping the oily air.
“That was when I knew, I guess. But Akashi rationalized it, as he always could. He said that it would only be a matter of time before an ethics review would identify Nomura, and they’d work him, and we’d all be fucked. I swore never to tell anyone and we tried to keep things subtle for a few months. Funny thing is, Akashi was right. TMPD did clean house. One morning I wake up with a flashlight in my face and my own colleagues arresting me.”
Suzuki ordered another beer.
“You wanna know my story, Inspector? First it was the jail, then it was the car plant, then it was the park.”
Iwata shook his head.
“So you’re telling me that Hideo Akashi was, among many other things, a murderer. You’re sure of this?”
“I came up with Nomura in the academy. Seeing him killed in cold blood isn’t exactly something I could misinterpret, you know what I mean?”
“How did Akashi get away with that?”
“Staged it as a yakuza hit. Found some patsy to hang and we both testified. That was that. As for the rest of it, Akashi put everything on me. Probably called the ethics review himself.”
Suzuki ran a dirty finger through a clump of ash and exhaled. Iwata glanced up at the clock and stood.
“I’ve got to go. Thanks for your time. Take care of yourself, Suzuki.”
The door trilled as he opened it.
“Inspector,” Suzuki called. “You think he jumped to get away from someone, don’t you?”
Iwata nodded.
“Then I’m telling you it must have been the devil himself.”
“Why?”
“Because in this world, the only thing that Akashi feared was Akashi.”
* * *
Speeding through Tokyo’s gray arteries, Iwata glanced at the dashboard clock. Time was running out. His phone rang.
“Hatanaka?”
“Iwata, I’m at Rainbow Bridge, but the office is closed. Don’t worry, I’m not going until I get the CCTV.”
“Good job, kid. You wake up anyone that you have to.”
“Did you find Suzuki?”
“Yes, and all it really did was confirm what we already suspected—somehow Akashi is key to all of this.”
“Where are you headed now?”
“TMPD Central Records. I’m looking for a guy called Takara Matsuu. Before Sakai was put on the Black Sun case, she was investigating him as a misper.”
“You’re not going to call her?”
“No. I’m betting the Matsuu case was being led by Akashi before his death. Every time I’ve mentioned him, she’s clammed up. Something isn’t right.”
“Okay, boss. I’ll be in the Shibuya TMPD video suites as soon as I have the footage.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
A quarter of an hour later, Iwata was driving through Chiyoda. To the north, he could see the twinkling lights of the Imperial Palace. Around him, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the National Diet Building, and Hibiya Park to the east.
Iwata skipped up the steps to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department headquarters. It took him several minutes to clear security. He punched in the temporary code he had been given to the elevator and descended to Level −4. The doors opened on a huge, windowless office and a young man in an immaculate suit greeted Iwata.
“Good evening, Inspector. You need Central Records access?”
“That’s right. Active case. Missing person. Takara Matsuu.”
“Please follow me.”
Iwata was led to a plush breakout area, where he was offered mineral water. The young man promptly returned with a tablet computer.
“Here we are, Inspector. Takara Matsuu. Convicted of the murders of three children, aged between five and eight—under Article 199, Part Two of the Penal Code.”
“Sentence?”
“He was sent to a psychiatric unit where he spent five years. On his release in 2004, he took a role as an informant for the TMPD.”
“That’s it? He got five years?”
“That’s what it says here.” The man frowned. “Though I don’t understand why he’d get such a lenient sentence after killing three children.”
“I think I might have an idea.” Iwata stood. “Thanks for your help.”