Futawatari was out.
Tomoko felt partly relieved, having not been sure whether she should report what she’d learned about the perfume and the reporter. At the same time, she’d been hoping to ask for advice on how to proceed. While she wasn’t sure how far she could trust him, she knew he was the only senior officer in Administration with whom she felt safe discussing the matter.
The couch in front of the chief’s desk was overflowing with high-level officers from the various divisions of Administrative Affairs, each bearing a stack of papers. The daily pilgrimage to Akama’s office was, it seemed, already underway.
Hajime Akama.
The man had been appointed as successor to Director Oguro, the ever formidable and authoritarian leader of Administrative Affairs, following the latter’s transfer to the Regional Police Bureau in the spring. Those who had suffered under his rule had breathed a sigh of relief to see his gentle-looking replacement. Their celebrations had, of course, been short-lived. Akama turned out to have an obsession for statistics. He demanded reports on everything, spreading his focus across the whole department and pursuing even the tiniest of details. With a compulsion that bordered on the pathological, he called for data on everything from the number of batons being used in the substations to the number of trees the force had planted around the police apartments.
The result was a threefold increase in the workload.
Everyone had to have the answer to hand, backed up by the relevant data, whatever the NPA or the captain should ask. Akama’s goal, no doubt, was to carve himself a role as the prefecture’s most trusted functionary.
Tomoko picked up the phone, keeping an eye on the excited procession of chiefs filing in and out of the man’s office. It was one in the afternoon, already long past the time she could justifiably delay informing Mizuho’s parents of the fact that their daughter was missing.
She was trying to work out how to broach the subject when Mizuho’s mother answered and she found out there was no need.
Morishima had already called.
‘I’m so sorry. This must be causing you so much trouble.’
The woman would have been sick with worry, yet despite this her tone was primarily one of apology. Married to the force. That was perhaps how Mizuho’s parents, both farmers, had decided to rationalise their only daughter leaving home. Tomoko realised she had, until this point, been holding on to the hope that Mizuho would be there, that everything might be resolved without further incident. But Mizuho had not gone home. Far from it: she hadn’t even called. Her mother’s voice was almost inaudible when she confessed that she couldn’t think of a single reason why Mizuho would want to run away.
Shirota approached the moment Tomoko ended the call.
‘Any progress?’
‘Not yet,’ Tomoko said, not wanting to give any details.
She knew Shirota would pass anything she said on to Akama, who, aside from his obsession with detail, was also one of the force’s principal advocates for the total exclusion of women. Shirota, too, was acting in far too blasé a manner. Was it so trivial for a female officer to go missing? Was he simply clinging to the idea that, despite the time that had passed, this was simply a case of unreported absence? She’s Forensics. Criminal Investigations should look after their own. Maybe that was how he saw it.
‘Do you know where Futawatari went?’
‘He said he was going to the bank.’
The bank. That meant he had probably gone to check the details of Mizuho’s account. If she’d taken out any substantial sums of money, that would support the theory that she’d run away of her own accord.
Once free of Shirota, Tomoko took the chance to leave the office. She wanted to catch up with Morishima before Futawatari returned.
The fourth floor was host to the various divisions of Criminal Investigations and as such was often given a wide berth by the officers of Administrative Affairs. For Tomoko, however, Forensics felt like a second home. There was nothing here that intimidated her.
She saw Morishima’s bulldog-like features behind his desk. He was discussing something with Yuasa, who led the Mobile Forensics team, but raised his hand in greeting when he saw her come in.
‘Any luck at the dorm?’
The three reconvened on a couch behind a partition that closed off an area from the rest of the room. Tomoko’s nose bristled at the mix of Morishima’s pomade and Yuasa’s hair oil. It was also evident that neither feared the effects of smoking on their mortality.
Tomoko summarised what she’d heard from Toshie but took care not to mention the reporter or the perfume. It wouldn’t do Mizuho any favours to let them know she’d accepted a gift from someone in the press, even if it had been forced into her hands. Once this was done, Tomoko moved on to her questions.
‘How was Mizuho yesterday?’
‘Over the moon. You saw her, right, Sniffer?’
‘I know she was fine when I saw her. But what about later in the day? Did anything happen at work?’
‘Don’t think so. She seemed happy right up until she left. Right, Yuasa?’
‘Absolutely.’
Yuasa seemed to be a sensitive man, at least in comparison to the boorish Morishima. He looked genuinely distraught that one of his team had gone missing. He agreed that nothing major had taken place and that Mizuho had left the office at around six.
‘Did she say anything about stopping off somewhere on the way?’
‘No, not particularly.’
She’d left headquarters at six and nothing had seemed out of the ordinary at that point. That left a four-hour window between six and ten. Whatever had happened to wipe the smile from her face, it would have happened then. Perhaps she’d met up with someone. Perhaps the reporter. Tomoko suspected it wouldn’t be easy to fill in the gaps. She could have extracted more information, perhaps, if Mizuho had had other female colleagues, but she was the only woman in Forensics. There had been two, sometimes even three, stationed here in the past. But Futawatari’s plan to distribute the female officers more widely across the prefecture had left just one slot. Her own proposal to reshuffle these allocations, submitted that morning, had questioned whether this was, in fact, the best way of doing things.
Ceasefire, remember?
She tried to drive Futawatari from her mind.
Still . . . I could use this as a case in point.
She scolded herself for even entertaining the idea. She already had good reasons with which to argue against the individual posting of female officers. They were left isolated. And that increased their chances of becoming tokens like Junko Hayashi. That was what she wanted him to understand.
Returning to the present, Tomoko turned to face Yuasa. ‘How’s she been doing, in your assessment?’
‘Good, very good. She works hard. Gets on with her team. I haven’t seen anything to suggest any problems. I mean, you know, there’s always the fact that she’s—’ Yuasa caught himself mid-sentence. His expression seemed to suggest he’d just realised who Tomoko was.
That she’s . . .
The rest was obvious enough: That she’s a woman, so who’s to say what she’s really thinking? There was a part of Tomoko that couldn’t help agreeing. She thought about this as she made her way back downstairs. It was true that it was sometimes a challenge to judge what the officers under her purview were thinking. They were all women who had decided to join the force. As such, they were generally level-headed and in possession of a greater-than-average drive to contribute to society. Yet she couldn’t deny that, with every passing year, she found it increasingly difficult to understand their motivations.
She couldn’t help it. It was something she felt in her bones.
She didn’t doubt that she was changing, too. She still considered herself one of them, but the truth of the matter was that she was now on the side of management, in charge of overseeing their forty-eight-strong headcount. She did, of course, try to see things from their perspective but she would also take the interests of the force into account when making any kind of decision. Even now, as she tried to understand what it was that Mizuho was going through, there was a part of her that was hoping to minimise potential damage to the force.
Shirota raised his hand when she arrived back in Administration. He pointed a finger towards Akama’s office. As she made her way to the door, Tomoko thought she could already smell the cloying spice of the man’s cologne.