The assembly hall, decorated in lavish marble and expensive wood, was bathed in a warm and dignified glow. Tsuge was in the waiting room behind it, unable to move from his seat. The question-and-answer session was already underway. Misaki’s voice was stately as it carried through the tannoy system on the wall.
. . . the unforgivable cowardice of the driver has sparked outrage in our community and caused a great deal of sadness and fear. We must not allow this to go . . .
Tsuge paid the man little attention. The room bustled around him as civil servants with stacks of documents hurried this way and that. They were standing by, having prepared a variety of documents to field any unexpected questions. Tsuge had nothing.
Assemblyman Ichiro Ukai, if you would be so kind as to take to the podium.
The tannoy shook with the deep register of the chairman’s voice. Tsuge held his breath. Time was up. Ukai was going to detonate the bomb.
The assemblyman’s voice began to fill the room.
The risks posed by environmental hormones, currently the subject of much attention in the papers and on television, are now too great to be . . .
Following the order of business, Ukai opened with a question on environmental hormones then moved on to another regarding policy and small and medium businesses. That was now drawing to a close.
Ukai coughed once, clearing his throat. For a moment there was silence. Tsuge closed his eyes. His hands clawed into his knees. His chest seemed to constrict. Ukai was speaking again. Sucked into the vacuum of Tsuge’s mind, the words took a while to form.
I thank you in advance for your considered response. That is all.
What?
Tsuge stared at the speaker on the wall. Was that it? Ukai had finished?
We do, of course, consider the issue of environmental hormones to be one of the utmost importance. As such, we have put in motion plans to . . .
The chief of Environment and Sanitation began to read out his response. Tsuge broke into a run. He inched open the door that led to the hall and scanned the area usually reserved for members of the assembly. Ukai was back in his seat, wearing his trademark look of annoyance. Leaning a little to the side, he was nodding as he listened to the chief’s answer.
Ukai had finished. He really had finished.
Tsuge’s feet dragged as he returned via the underground passage. He felt a mixture of relief and exhaustion, even as his mind busied itself with questions.
Why?
Why hadn’t the assemblyman followed through with his threat? Had he buckled under pressure from his committee? Had it been something to do with the call he’d taken the previous evening?
Or . . .
Tsuge was struck by a thought. What if he’d never had anything to start with? What if Ukai had only claimed to have something? Was that it? If so, for what reason? Maybe he’d wanted the police to panic. That didn’t make sense, though – his actions hadn’t had any impact on the force as a whole. They’d concerned only the Secretariat. Thinking about it, Tsuge realised that only Sakaniwa and himself had been affected. They were the only two who had suffered. Had that been Ukai’s intention? Again, the question remained: Why?
Who the fuck knows.
The door to the visitors’ room was open when he got back to the Secretariat. He saw the chiselled features of a private-sector CEO, one who had been there on a few previous occasions. Sakaniwa was there, too, sitting with his back to the door as he listened to what the man had to say.
Tsuge took a seat at his desk. For a moment, everything seemed to go dark. His eyes traced slowly back to the other room, fearful, as though he’d seen a ghost.
Sakaniwa. His back to the door.
That was normal enough. The couches were arranged so that Sakaniwa could – and always did – offer the furthest one to visitors while he sat with his back to the door. But not that time. Tsuge had returned to the office following his meeting with Toyama. Hearing that Ukai was already in attendance, he’d opened the door to the room without so much as knocking. He’d seen Ukai and Sakaniwa’s faces together. Ukai had looked annoyed but that was the man’s default expression. He hadn’t been angry, then, not until Tsuge had shown up. Not while he’d been sitting beside the chief.
Had they been in collusion? Tsuge considered the idea. There was, he had to admit, one thing that lent traction to the theory. Not once had Sakaniwa tried to dissuade Ukai in person. He’d delegated all the work to Tsuge. Sakaniwa was himself a veteran when it came to working with the assembly. It went without saying that he and Ukai would know each other. Despite this, and regardless of the fact that his own head was on the line, he hadn’t gone to see the man in person. Did that mean they’d been working together? That it had been some form of entrapment? No, it couldn’t be anything like that. He’d been made to do the legwork, that was all. No harm had come of it. Besides, he didn’t believe either of them had reason to hold a grudge against him.
I’m getting paranoid.
‘Tsuge.’ Sakaniwa came over, having already emerged from the visitors’ room. ‘I guess we should call this a win.’
‘Sir, I suppose. But—’
‘By the way,’ Sakaniwa went on, lowering his voice, ‘someone told me Ukai filed a theft report with district.’
‘A theft report?’
‘Yes. It seems that someone saw fit to steal the man’s briefcase,’ he said, a faint smile playing across his lips.
Tsuge watched, mouth gaping, as the chief walked away. Briefcase. Theft. For a while everything seemed lost in a haze. Tsuge failed to notice Aiko Toda offer him coffee. Briefcase. He started to shake. Briefcase. Prints. Camera. Trap. The words came together to form a cohesive but unexpected narrative. The story belonged neither to him nor to Assemblyman Ukai. Instead, it belonged to Secretariat Chief Shoichi Sakaniwa.
The man was hoping for a significant promotion come the next round of transfers. He would do all he could to secure himself a post as director. Before that, however, he had to first rid himself of the one blemish that could come back to haunt him.
His one mistake, made seven years ago.
The plan had already been in motion when he’d called Tsuge to join the Secretariat. He’d spun out the idea of the ‘time bomb’ and made damn sure that Tsuge felt the pressure. He’d understood that Tsuge’s instinct for self-protection would compel him to lay hands on the briefcase. There hadn’t been a doubt in his mind.
It was Sakaniwa who had called Ukai at his apartment the previous evening. He’d wanted to ensure that Tsuge was left alone with the briefcase. There’d been the empty bracket above the main door, the kind that housed a security camera. The camera itself would have been hidden, he guessed, in the room with him. Ukai would have kept watch from the bedroom, prolonging the call until Tsuge had done the deed.
The briefcase had not been stolen. If Tsuge should ever come to pose a threat, it would turn up at a substation in some town. It would be flagged as the stolen property of one of the prefecture’s key assembly members. As such, it would be sent for forensics testing. Tsuge’s prints would be found plastered over all the papers inside.
The officer who stole an assemblyman’s briefcase.
The fact would never become public knowledge but it would mark the end of his career in the force.
Still, that wasn’t how the story had panned out. Tsuge would, of course, never breathe a word about Sakaniwa’s past transgression. Keep things on an even keel. The story was over the moment Sakaniwa got what he needed.
Ukai had played a role, albeit a bit part, in the story. As Seshima had seen, the man was a coward at heart. The investigation had been devastating, and he’d been at the mercy of the force ever since. When Sakaniwa, one of the closest aides to the captain, had approached him for a favour, he’d jumped at the chance to earn some goodwill.
Yet Tsuge couldn’t help wondering whether there hadn’t been something more to the man’s ready agreement to become an accomplice. He recalled the ferocity of the anger Ukai had directed his way. Perhaps the man had decided to use him as a punchbag, as a means of venting his pent-up animosity.
This would, of course, never be more than conjecture. These were questions no one would answer.
He glanced at Sakaniwa’s desk. In profile, the chief’s unremarkable features had even less impact. Tsuge was surprised to find that he bore the man no ill will. He suspected he’d have done something similar in Sakaniwa’s position.
It’ll come in useful, some day.
He had to admit, the thought had been there at the back of his mind.
The Secretariat returned to its usual quiet that afternoon.
Tsuge saw the brown roof of the archives beyond the window. A narrow strip of blue sky peeked out from above.