As she made the trip almost daily, the dogs and free-roaming chickens of the farm no longer seemed to regard Tomoko as an outsider.
‘You can take some time off. It’s been approved,’ Tomoko said, stroking the muzzle of the cow next to her.
‘I’m not sure that I’ll, you know . . .’ Mizuho’s eyes dropped to the ground. She was wearing denim overalls and oversized wellies. They suited her.
‘Don’t decide anything now. Take your time and think it over.’
‘Thanks.’
On the day she went missing Mizuho had walked. She’d visited a café, a bookstore, another café. But she was a girl with a strong sense of duty and there was only so much time she could spend doing nothing. What she did next proved beyond a shadow of doubt that she was police.
She decided she needed to know why it was that someone had claimed her drawing to be a spitting image of the assailant, even though nothing could have been further from the truth. Caught up in celebrating the arrest, she’d forgotten to ask who had given the statement. And the papers had described the man only as owning a shop, not revealing his name in case the gang sought retaliation.
Feeling guilty for not having gone into work, Mizuho had decided she couldn’t contact anyone in the force. The reporter who’d given her the perfume had come to mind. She’d called him in his office and asked for the name of the shop. He’d come to see her in person. The Mild Sevens in the car had been his. Having learned this much, Mizuho had driven to Train Station M, where she’d parked, then walked into the shop. She’d been inside, talking to the owner, when the van belonging to Mobile Forensics had pulled up.
‘I was shivering behind a display case when you came in to buy those pastries,’ Mizuho said, showing the hint of a smile, perhaps the first since the day of her disappearance.
‘Silly girl. I could have bought you some juice if you’d just told me.’
Anmitsu, soon, Tomoko told herself as she headed back to her car. She felt better now that Mizuho’s leave had been officially sanctioned. Especially as the green light had come from Akama himself. She couldn’t even begin to guess how Futawatari had made that happen.
Futawatari, for his part, had not asked for a report after Mizuho’s return. He’d read the article several times. It was possible he’d worked out from the start that the likeness had been redone. That he’d conducted some kind of investigation of his own. If that were the case, his true colours would be revealed come the next transfer season. Would he choose to punish Morishima for his actions? Or would he choose to overlook them, write them off as unavoidable from the perspective of someone in charge?
For now, Tomoko had something else to focus on – the yellow folder that rested on the passenger seat. It contained her redrafted proposal to reassign the female officers in the prefecture.
She would hand it in the moment she got to the office.
She turned the wheel to join the prefectural highway, causing the eggs Mizuho had given her to rattle on the back seat.