11. An Unbreakable Barrier

1

Mihara walked out of the Tokyo Police headquarters and boarded a tram bound for Shinjuku. It was around eight o’clock in the evening, and the rush hour had subsided. The carriage was empty. He sat down slowly and, crossing his arms, felt a pleasant jolting sensation at his back as the tram moved off.

Mihara liked to ride the trams of Tokyo. Often, he would board without a specific destination in mind. Odd as it might seem, whenever he was at a loss for ideas, he would simply sit on the tram and allow his thoughts to roam. The tram’s steady trundle, its gentle swaying, induced in him an almost euphoric state of contemplation. As the tram made its frequent stops, each time moving off again with a clatter, he relaxed further and further into his seat. And, having thus sealed himself off from the world, he could sink deep into thought.

Yasuda had sent Kawanishi a telegram asking to be met at Sapporo station, and yet he had nothing particularly urgent to discuss. In that case, why summon Kawanishi to meet him? Pondering this question, Mihara’s expression turned vacant, and he scarcely registered the other passengers chattering away or getting on and off the tram.

Surely, he thought, Yasuda had asked Kawanishi to come to the station because he needed someone to confirm his arrival at Sapporo station on the Marimo. Kawanishi was the eyewitness who would support his alibi.

His alibi? Mihara puzzled over this word that had popped into his head. His alibi for what exactly? For not being where? Now Mihara was closing in on a truth he had previously only vaguely surmised. The only possible answer, of course, was Kashii beach. Yasuda’s alibi was intended to prove that he hadn’t been at the scene of the double suicide.

Mihara got out the timetable that had recently become a permanent fixture in his pocket. Assuming that Sayama and Toki had died between 10 and 11 p.m. on the twentieth of January, the next available train from Hakata to Tokyo would have been the Satsuma, an express which left at 7.24 the following morning. But at 8.44 on the evening of the twenty-first, when Yasuda had met Kawanishi at Sapporo station in Hokkaido, the Satsuma would have only just left Kyoto station.

This was what Yasuda had been trying to show: that he had not been present at the scene of the double suicide. But why go to such lengths to do so?

‘Sir?’ said the conductor, nudging Mihara’s shoulder. The tram had already reached its last stop in Shinjuku. He disembarked and then, a little disoriented, walked down the brightly lit street before boarding another tram. This one was bound for Ogikubo.

Wait a moment, thought Mihara as he settled into his new seat. Maybe this wasn’t the only time Yasuda had been trying to prove his absence. Those witnesses he’d created at Tokyo station might have served the same purpose. Until now, he’d assumed that Yasuda’s sole aim had been to ensure the waitresses saw Sayama and Toki boarding the train together. Now he realized there had been another reason: Yasuda wanted to make it clear that he himself had no possible connection to the double suicide. By calling out ‘Look! Isn’t that Toki?’ as the couple were boarding the train, he was showing Tomiko and Yaeko that he was simply a bystander – a witness just like them. The waitresses had even seen Sayama and Toki sitting on board the Asakaze. Yasuda, meanwhile, was on a separate train, bound for Kamakura. Here too, then, he had been establishing his alibi. He had even driven the point home by showing his face at the Koyuki the following two evenings.

There was no longer any doubt about it: these four-minute witnesses existed not by chance but by design. Kawanishi in Sapporo, the waitresses in Tokyo: they were all witnesses of Yasuda’s own creation. Their purpose was to prove that he could not possibly have been at the scene of the double suicide.

In the end, though, Yasuda’s actions in Sapporo and Tokyo pointed to only one place – the suburb of Kashii, outside Hakata, in Kyushu. Because everything Yasuda had done formed a single picture, one that said I was not in Kashii that night. Mihara felt increasingly confident that, in fact, that was precisely where he had been. The man’s actions were so clearly deliberate that the picture they formed had to be false. And to discover the truth, all Mihara had to do was invert that picture.

Yes: on the twentieth of January, between 10 and 11 p.m., when Sayama and Toki committed suicide, Tatsuo Yasuda had, beyond a shadow of a doubt, been on that beach. And he had done something. What exactly that something was, Mihara didn’t know. But he was sure Yasuda had been there that day. He must have watched as Sayama and Toki swallowed the poison and crumpled to the ground. All Yasuda’s efforts were directed at forming a picture that was the exact opposite of this scenario.

This, it seemed to Mihara, was the only logical conclusion. But if it were true, Yasuda must have left Hakata at 7.24 the following morning on the Satsuma Express bound for Tokyo. By 8.44 that evening, the Satsuma was only just leaving Kyoto station – and yet that was when Yasuda had met Kawanishi at Sapporo station, a smile on his face. It seemed unlikely that Kawanishi had been lying. In any case, it was certain that Yasuda had strolled into the Marusō inn at around 9 p.m. At that time, the Satsuma Express would still have been travelling along the shore of Lake Biwa, just east of Kyoto. What to make of this discrepancy between logic and reality?

This wasn’t all. There was also the passenger form for the Seikan ferry, a seemingly irrefutable piece of evidence supporting Yasuda’s statement. That alone was enough to dismantle Mihara’s theory entirely.

But he did not lose heart. Propelling him forward, against the odds, was an instinctive distrust of Yasuda that no amount of apparent evidence to the contrary could shake.

‘Excuse me!’ It was the conductor. The tram had reached Ogikubo and the other passengers had all disembarked. Mihara got off and changed to a local train line that would take him back towards Ginza.

Yasuda had built his edifice carefully. The construction looked solid, but there had to be a weak point. The question was, where?

Mihara continued his thoughts, his eyes half closed now, a breeze from the open window buffeting his face.

After about forty minutes, he suddenly looked up and found himself staring blankly at a cosmetics advertisement in the carriage. But the advertisement was irrelevant. Mihara had just remembered that one of the passenger forms at Hakodate station had borne the name of Yoshio Ishida, the division chief at Ministry X.

2

‘I’ve dug up some more information on Ishida,’ said Inspector Kasai.

Sending someone to question Ishida directly would have ruffled too many feathers, especially since the ongoing investigation already had the ministry on edge. Knowing this, Kasai had used subtler methods.

‘He was indeed on a business trip to Hokkaido on the twentieth of January. He left Ueno station at 7.15 p.m. on the Towada and arrived in Sapporo on the Marimo at 8.34 the following evening. In other words, he travelled on exactly the same trains as Yasuda.’

The chief handed him a copy of Ishida’s schedule for that day. It showed that, rather than leaving the train in Sapporo, he had travelled on to Kushiro. The rest of his trip had taken him to the various administrative divisions of Hokkaido.

‘I had someone enquire discreetly about Yasuda. Ishida confirmed they were on the same train to Sapporo. Yasuda was also travelling second class, but they were in different carriages. Apparently, Yasuda dropped by to say hello from time to time, which is why Ishida is sure he was on board. He says he recognized Yasuda straight away because the two of them do business.’

‘I see,’ said Mihara, clearly disappointed. Here was another eyewitness asserting that Yasuda had been on that train. This time, it wasn’t one of Yasuda’s manufactured witnesses but a high-ranking ministry official whose business trip would have been scheduled several days in advance. His name had even been on the ferry register. There was simply no room for doubt.

‘Mihara,’ said Kasai, getting to his feet. He had noticed the inspector’s downcast face. ‘Looks like a nice day out there. How about we take a walk?’

Outside, it was indeed bright and sunny. With summer just around the corner, lots of passers-by were in short sleeves. The chief led the way, crossing the busy street to stand by the moat of the Imperial Palace. The white walls of the palace gleamed in the sun. After the darkness of the office, everything around them was so dazzling as to seem almost transparent. They strolled for a while, looking out over the moat, until the chief found a bench for the two of them to sit on. To those passing by, they must have simply looked like two office workers who had slipped out for a break.

‘While you were away in Hokkaido, I had someone look into Sayama and Toki’s relationship,’ he said, taking out a pack of cigarettes and offering Mihara one.

Mihara couldn’t help glancing at the chief. Sayama and Toki had gone as far as committing suicide together; surely they had been deeply in love. What could Kasai have hoped to gain from investigating their relationship?

‘Pointless as that might seem,’ said Kasai, as if reading Mihara’s mind, ‘I wanted to be sure. The thing is, they must have kept a very tight lid on their affair, because nobody had the faintest idea about them. Even the waitresses at the Koyuki were surprised to hear that Toki had chosen to end her life with Sayama. Women working in places like that are usually pretty good at sniffing things out, and yet none of them realized what was going on. Still’ – and here the chief puffed on his cigarette, as if to signal that what he was about to say was important – ‘it does seem certain that Toki had a lover. She lived alone in her small apartment, but she often received phone calls. The concierge who usually answered the phone said the caller was a woman who gave her name as Aoyama. Sometimes there was gramophone music in the background, so perhaps she was the proprietress of a coffee shop. But it seems she’d only been asked to call Toki for the sake of appearances, because the voice would always change to that of a man once Toki came to the phone. Whenever one of these calls came, Toki would bustle about, getting herself ready, and then head out. This had been going on for about six months before her death, but Toki never had any male visitors to her apartment. In other words, she seems to have been pretty careful about meeting her lover.’

‘And the lover in question was Sayama?’ asked Mihara. A vague doubt was beginning to form in the back of his mind.

‘Presumably. I had him investigated, too, but he was even more of a mystery than Toki. Seems to have been a very quiet man – timid, too. Not the type to go around chatting about his love life. But the way he and Toki committed suicide makes it clear they were intimate.’

The chief sounded slightly unconvinced by his own assertion. Noticing this, Mihara’s own feeling of apprehension seemed to intensify.

‘Next, I had someone inquire into Yasuda’s private life,’ said Kasai, looking over at the pine trees in the palace grounds. The small figure of a guard could be seen standing at the top of the stone wall.

Mihara looked steadily at the chief. He realized that while he had been in Hokkaido invisible currents had been swirling around his superior, pushing him to act. Of course, even Kasai was just one cog in the wider machinery of the investigation.

‘That didn’t turn much up either,’ murmured the chief, taking no heed of the troubled expression that had come over Mihara’s face. ‘Yasuda goes to see his sick wife in Kamakura once a week. It’s possible he’s been involved with other women, but we haven’t uncovered any clear evidence. If he does have a mistress, he’s kept her nicely hidden. Or maybe we’ve got him wrong and the man really is a devoted husband. I mean, as far as we can tell, he and his wife are certainly on good terms.’

Mihara nodded. This tallied with his own impression from his visit to Ryōko Yasuda in Kamakura.

‘In other words, it seems all three of them – Toki, Sayama and Yasuda, if Yasuda even had a mistress – did a very good job of keeping their affairs secret.’

At these words, all Mihara’s doubts seemed to coalesce into a single, precise form.

‘Chief …’ he said, his pulse quickening. ‘Why all these new lines of enquiry? Has something changed?’

‘Yes,’ replied Kasai without a moment’s hesitation. ‘It’s the superintendent. He seems to have become very interested in the double suicide all of a sudden.’

From this Mihara intuited that it wasn’t just the superintendent who was interested; the pressure must have come from even higher up. And, as Kasai went on to explain, he was right.

3

The next day, when Mihara returned to the office, Inspector Kasai called him over.

‘Mihara, we’ve received a message from Division Chief Ishida.’

The chief had propped his elbows on his desk and clasped his hands together, which usually meant something was bothering him.

‘No, he didn’t visit us himself. His assistant dropped by. Ah yes – he left a card.’

The assistant’s card read ‘Kitarō Sasaki. Clerk, Ministry X’. Mihara glanced at it and waited for the chief to speak.

‘Ishida says he recently received an enquiry from a certain gentleman about Tatsuo Yasuda. But he seems to have twigged that it was really the Tokyo Police asking, which is why he’s sent us this message directly. He confirmed that he and Yasuda were on the same train to Hokkaido on the twentieth of January. He says they were in different carriages, but Yasuda dropped by to see him from time to time. If we need someone to corroborate this, we’re to speak to a Hokkaido government official named Katsuzō Inamura, who was sitting with Ishida after the two of them happened to board the train together at Hakodate. At some point after the train had passed Otaru, Yasuda came to say goodbye because he was getting off at Sapporo, the next stop. Apparently, that was when Ishida introduced Inamura to him. Inamura should remember the encounter. That was the gist of Ishida’s message.’

‘Really sticking up for Yasuda, isn’t he?’ said Mihara.

‘That’s one way of looking at it. Though he probably just wants to show his willingness to cooperate with the police, seeing as he knows Yasuda is under investigation,’ replied Kasai with a smile. Mihara knew what the smile meant.

‘What’s his relationship with Yasuda like?’

‘Well, we’re talking about a businessman and a government official – you know how that usually works. Plus, there’s the fact that Ishida is a prime suspect in the bribery scandal. We haven’t uncovered any shady deals between the two yet, but Yasuda has been doing plenty of business with the ministry, so I imagine he’s been sending Ishida gifts on all the appropriate occasions. Going to all this trouble to defend Yasuda might well be Ishida’s way of saying thank you.’

Kasai cracked his knuckles.

‘But then, none of that makes much difference if he’s telling the truth about the train. I did send a telegram with some questions for this Hokkaido official, just in case, but I’m sure his answers will match Ishida’s statement. In other words, it looks like Yasuda really was on the Marimo on the twenty-first of January.’

Here was yet another witness confirming Yasuda’s presence on the train. Mihara, exhausted, took his leave.

It was just past noon. Mihara went to the cafeteria on the fifth floor of the police headquarters. It was a large hall, about the size of a department store restaurant. Bright sunshine slanted through the windows. Mihara didn’t feel like eating, and instead ordered some tea. He sat down, took a sip, then opened his notebook and wrote the following.

Yasuda’s trip to Hokkaido:

1. Passenger form filled out in his name for the Seikan ferry. (No. 17. Connects with Marimo in Hakodate.)
2. Statement from Division Chief Ishida.
3. After the train had passed Otaru, Ishida introduced Yasuda to a Hokkaido government official.
4. Yasuda met Kawanishi at Sapporo station.

Mihara looked at what he had written and plunged into thought. These four points seemed like so many layers of unbreakable bedrock. And yet break them was exactly what he wanted to do. No – what he needed to do.

He could find no connection between the Satsuma, which left Hakata at 7.24 on the morning of the twenty-first, and the Marimo, which arrived in Sapporo at 8.34 in the evening of the same day. It was a puzzle with no solution. In other words, there could be no connection.

And yet it was an undeniable fact that Yasuda had appeared at Sapporo station.

Mihara, his head in his hands, must have read this list a dozen times before he noticed something strange.

Inamura, the Hokkaido official, met Yasuda after the train had passed Otaru station. Supposedly, Yasuda had stopped by their carriage to say goodbye to Ishida. But why hadn’t he visited their carriage earlier?

Ishida, Inamura and Yasuda had all been on the same train from Hakodate, even if Yasuda was in a separate carriage. If, as Ishida claimed, Yasuda had been dropping by ‘from time to time’ to say hello, why had Inamura only met him after Otaru?

Mihara got out his train timetable and saw that it was a five-hour journey between Hakodate and Otaru on an express train. If Yasuda was on such good terms with Ishida, it seemed inconceivable that he had stayed in a separate carriage for five straight hours, as if they were perfect strangers. Come to think of it, why hadn’t he taken a seat in Ishida’s carriage? They could have whiled away the long journey in conversation. Even supposing he hadn’t wanted to impose, it still seemed bizarre that he hadn’t shown his face once during those five hours.

Strictly speaking, Inamura was the only impartial witness here. And he was the one who only saw Yasuda after Otaru …

Then a thought flashed through Mihara’s mind.

What if Yasuda boarded the Marimo at Otaru?

This would explain why Inamura saw Yasuda only after the train had passed that station. It would also explain why Yasuda had been in a separate carriage: he didn’t want them to see him boarding at Otaru. Then, once the train set off again, he could have strolled into the carriage, greeted Ishida and Inamura and, in so doing, convinced the latter that he had been on the train all the way from Hakodate.

It was as though the thick fog surrounding Mihara had finally been pierced by a faint light in the distance, revealing vague forms all around him. He felt almost giddy.

4

And yet it seemed impossible for Yasuda to have boarded the train at Otaru. In order to reach the station in time, he would have needed to leave Hakodate even earlier than the Marimo. From the perspective of the timetable, that seemed impossible.

But the idea that Yasuda had boarded the train at Otaru had taken hold of Mihara now. He had no idea how it was possible, but he sensed some hidden truth lurking behind these facts.

He took another sip of his tea, which was now quite cold, and left the cafeteria. His surroundings seemed indistinct, as if he were dreaming. He walked down the stairs in a daze.

Why would Yasuda have boarded the Marimo at Otaru? What was so important about that particular station? These questions looped around Mihara’s mind like an endless refrain.

To board at Otaru he would have needed to travel on an earlier train than the Marimo. The previous train was the Akashiya, which left Hakodate at 11.39. Before that were two local trains and the first express train of the day, which left at six o’clock, but boarding any of those would have been an even more impossible feat.

Whatever it took, Mihara needed to place Yasuda at the scene of the double suicide in Kashii between ten and eleven o’clock on the evening of the twentieth of January. The precise reason could wait; for now all he cared about was pinning Yasuda to that location. But to get from Hakata all the way to Hokkaido, Yasuda’s only option would have been the express to Tokyo at 7.24 on the morning of the twenty-first. The more Mihara thought, the more impossible it all seemed.

‘Unless he had wings, there’s simply no way he could have reached Hokkaido in time.’

As Mihara murmured these words to himself, he stumbled on the stairs – and not because they were poorly lit. He almost cried out in astonishment. Why hadn’t he thought of this earlier?

His ears ringing, he dashed back to his office and, with trembling fingers, flicked to the back of the train timetable, where he found the schedule for Japan Airlines. He checked the flight times for January.

Fukuoka 08.00 → Tokyo 12.00 (Flight 302)

Tokyo 13.00 → Sapporo 16.00 (Flight 503)

‘There it is!’

Mihara took a deep breath. There was still a buzzing in his ears.

Travelling by plane, Yasuda could have left Kyushu at eight o’clock in the morning and still have reached Sapporo at four o’clock in the afternoon. Mihara felt like slapping himself. How could he have forgotten the new passenger planes? He had been overly fixated on the trains, and the 7.24 Satsuma from Hakata had seemed like the only possibility. But now, at last, the fog had cleared.

Mihara called the airline and asked how long the bus from Chitose airport to downtown Sapporo took.

‘Around an hour and twenty minutes. Then it’s a ten-minute walk to the train station,’ came the reply.

An hour and half after four o’clock: Yasuda could have reached Sapporo station by five thirty. The Marimo arrived only at 8.34 in the evening. What had Yasuda done during those three hours?

Mihara looked up the trains from Sapporo to Hakodate.

There was a local train that left Sapporo at 5.40. Sliding his finger down the page, he saw that it arrived at Otaru at 6.44. Then he checked the other direction. The Marimo, which left Hakodate at 2.50, arrived at Otaru at 7.51 – one hour and seven minutes after the train from Sapporo. Yasuda would have had a leisurely wait at Otaru station before boarding the Marimo and travelling back to Sapporo. He must have met Inamura soon after getting on the train.

Now it was clear why Yasuda had appeared in the carriage only after Otaru. Rather than wasting three hours in Sapporo, he had jumped off the airport bus and hurried to the station to catch the train to Otaru which left ten minutes later.

Yasuda had used these brief windows of time – ten minutes in Sapporo, and an hour and seven minutes in Otaru – to miraculous effect. Mihara was reminded of the four-minute interval at Tokyo station. He had to admit it: Yasuda was a genius at manipulating time.

Mihara went straight to Kasai’s desk and, showing him the timetable, explained his discovery. His voice was trembling. When he had finished, Kasai looked steadily at him, his eyes gleaming with an excitement that could almost have been mistaken for anger.

‘This is excellent work, Mihara!’ he said. ‘Simply excellent,’ he repeated, the words seeming to tumble out uncontrollably. After a pause, he went on: ‘So you’ve broken Yasuda’s alibi. Wait – is it odd to call it an alibi?’

‘No. Think about it: there’s no longer anything stopping Yasuda from being at the scene of the suicide,’ explained Mihara.

‘Right. And if there’s no reason he couldn’t have been there …’ began Kasai, drumming his fingers on the desk. ‘Does that mean it’s possible he was there?’

‘I think it does,’ said Mihara, a note of triumph in his voice.

‘Well, now you need to prove it,’ said the chief, looking directly at Mihara again.

‘I can’t, not just yet. Give me a little more time,’ replied Mihara, looking worried again.

‘Still a lot you need to clear up, isn’t there?’

‘Exactly.’

‘For instance, you haven’t cracked that alibi completely,’ said Kasai, a troubled expression on his face. Mihara knew immediately what he was referring to.

‘You mean Ishida.’

‘Yes. Ishida.’

They met each other’s gaze for a moment. It was Kasai who looked away and broke the silence.

‘Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.’ The chief sounded elusive. Mihara sensed this was not the time to talk about Ishida. That could wait until later. Such was the wordless agreement that formed between them.

‘Even setting that to one side, we still have a mountain to climb. What about Yasuda’s passenger form on the ferry? That’s more than just a witness statement: it’s hard evidence.’

This was true. That form had been responsible for Mihara’s crushing defeat at Hakodate station. Strangely, though, he no longer felt so disheartened. Yes, that sturdy-looking wall still blocked his path. But it no longer intimidated him.

‘Don’t you worry. I’ll find a way.’

Kasai laughed for the first time. ‘Raring to go, I see! You’re a changed man from when you got back from Hokkaido. All right then – snap to it, Inspector.’

As Mihara made to leave, Kasai raised a hand to stop him. ‘Funny, isn’t it? Ishida went to all that trouble to cover for Yasuda, and now look where it’s got him!’

5

Mihara was sure he had found the weak link in Yasuda’s carefully constructed Marimo story. Now he just needed to prove it. He began jotting down his plan of attack:

Ask Japan Airlines for names of passengers who, on 21 Jan., booked both the 8 a.m. flight from Fukuoka to Tokyo and the connecting flight to Sapporo.

Wait a minute, thought Mihara. Yasuda’s story was that he left Tokyo by the Towada Express at 7.15 on the evening of the twentieth. He would therefore have needed to stay in Tokyo until at least the afternoon of the twentieth. Knowing he would be investigated at some point, he wouldn’t have been so careless as to be completely absent from Tokyo that day. He must have shown his face somewhere, perhaps at his office. But if he’d taken a train from Tokyo to Hakata in the afternoon, he’d never have made it to Kashii in time. Here, too, he must have travelled by plane.

Mihara checked the airline schedule again. The last flight from Tokyo to Fukuoka took off at 3.00 and landed at 7.20. It was a thirty-minute drive to Haneda. It would have seemed entirely reasonable for Yasuda to leave his office just after two o’clock, perhaps saying he had other business to attend to before his evening train from Ueno.

He decided to write down all the trains and planes he suspected Yasuda had taken.

20 January

3 p.m. dep. Tokyo Haneda → 7.20 p.m. arr. Fukuoka Itazuke

(Went to Kashii, then probably spent the night somewhere in Fukuoka)

21 January

8 a.m. dep. Itazuke → 12 p.m. arr. Haneda

1 p.m. dep. Haneda → 4 p.m. arr. Sapporo Chitose

5.40 p.m. dep. Sapporo (local train) → 6.44 p.m. arr. Otaru

7.57 p.m. dep. Otaru (Marimo Express) → 8.34 p.m. arr. Sapporo

(Met Kawanishi in waiting room of Sapporo station)

21–4 January

Stayed three nights at the Marusō inn in Sapporo, then returned to Tokyo.

There, thought Mihara. But as he scanned and re-scanned this itinerary, a question formed in his mind. Why, in his telegram, had Yasuda insisted that Kawanishi meet him in the waiting room? If Yasuda had in fact boarded the Marimo at Otaru, why not tell Kawanishi to meet him on the platform and thus ensure he was seen actually leaving the train? Instead, he had specifically requested to be met in the waiting room. Yasuda was normally so meticulous that there had to be a reason. But, try as he might, Mihara couldn’t work it out.

He would worry about that later. What he needed now was evidence of Yasuda’s movements. He wrote down the following:

1. Check the Japan Airlines passenger lists for those days. (Also find out if anyone saw him taking the taxi to Haneda airport, or on the bus from the airport in Fukuoka or Sapporo – although the amount of time that has passed will make this difficult.)
2. Investigate the inns in Fukuoka where Yasuda may have stayed.
3. Find out if anyone saw Yasuda on the local train from Sapporo to Otaru, or at Otaru station, where he waited over an hour for the Marimo to arrive.

Mihara didn’t hold out much hope for the third option. He decided it would probably come down to number one or two.

He gathered his things and left Tokyo Police headquarters. Outside, it was as just as bright as before. Ginza was full of people, the harsh sun bleaching their faces.

He walked into the Japan Airlines office and spoke to the domestic flights manager.

‘Do you still have the passenger lists for January?’

‘January of this year, I presume. Yes – we keep them for twelve months.’

‘I need to know the name of a passenger who booked flight 305 to Fukuoka on the twentieth of January, as well as flight 302 to Tokyo and flight 503 to Sapporo on the twenty-first.’

‘So all those bookings would be for the same person?’

‘Yes.’

‘Really getting around, weren’t they! We don’t get many people travelling like that, so this shouldn’t take long.’

The employee brought out the airline’s passenger records and turned to the twentieth of January. Flight 305 had made a stop in Osaka, with only forty-three passengers travelling all the way to Fukuoka. On the twenty-first, there had been forty-one people on the flight to Tokyo and fifty-nine on the flight to Sapporo. Tatsuo Yasuda’s name was nowhere to be seen on the lists. Nor did any particular name occur more than once.

Mihara had expected Yasuda to travel under an alias, so it came as no surprise that his name wasn’t here. But he was shocked by the fact that none of the one hundred and forty-three names on the lists matched any other. How was that possible?

‘Can passengers travel without making a reservation?’

‘Not usually. Even buying a ticket the day before can be difficult. You have to book three or four days in advance to be sure of a seat.’

These three planes formed an indispensable part of Yasuda’s itinerary. Without them, he could never have connected with the Marimo on the twenty-first. He must have secured his seats personally, several days in advance. Even if he had used a fake name, it ought to appear on all three lists. But no matter how carefully Mihara looked, he found nothing.

‘Thank you. Could I borrow these lists for a few days?’

Mihara wrote the clerk a receipt on one of his cards, then took the lists and left the office. He felt dejected; his earlier excitement had vanished. He walked to his usual café, where he sat with a coffee, pursued by his own thoughts. This can’t be, he repeated to himself. It just wasn’t possible.

He left the café and began making his way back to Tokyo Police headquarters. At the Hibiya intersection, he found himself waiting at the pedestrian crossing. Traffic streamed past. The signal was taking a long time to change. Mihara stared vacantly at the different vehicles driving past. Perhaps it was the very dreariness of the scene that spurred his thoughts, because just then, he let out a gasp.

What an idiot he’d been! Yasuda didn’t need to use just one fake name. He could have booked his flights under a series of different aliases. Instead of visiting the Japan Airlines office in person, he must have sent a series of individuals to order his tickets. He could travel to Fukuoka as Mr A, back to Tokyo the next morning as Mr B, and then on to Sapporo as Mr C. With an hour between his flights at Haneda, he would have had plenty of time to board the next plane as a new passenger. It had been foolish to assume that just because Yasuda travelled on all three planes he would need to travel under a single name. Why hadn’t he thought of this earlier? If he hadn’t been in public, he would have slapped himself. I must be going soft in the head, he thought.

The signal turned green, and Mihara set off again.

Somewhere in these lists, he thought, there will be at least three fake names. Each will be a stand-in for Yasuda. We’ll have the names and addresses on the lists checked: surely, three of them will turn out to be false.

Mihara looked up as he walked. For the first time, he felt that he could glimpse the path to victory.

6

Back at headquarters, Mihara reported to Kasai, who immediately agreed with his plan.

‘Right then. A hundred and forty-three names, did you say?’ he said, eyeing the lists. ‘More than half from the Tokyo area, and the rest in the country … For the ones in Tokyo, we’ll send our own detectives. For the others, we can ask the local police to make enquiries.

These arrangements were immediately put into action. The detectives scribbled down their assigned names and addresses in their notebooks.

‘If they have a phone at their home or office, call them. The main thing is to make sure they were on that plane!’

Next, Kasai turned to Mihara. ‘Even if this works, we’re not out of the woods yet.’

‘Right. There are still the passenger forms for the ferry.’

That unbreakable barrier still hadn’t moved an inch. It seemed to rear up imposingly, blocking Mihara’s path. But now a doubt flitted through his mind. Wasn’t it odd that with both the ferry and the planes, it was the passenger list causing the problem? What if this was just another illusion, and the apparent similarity was luring him into another misapprehension?

Noticing Mihara’s troubled expression, Kasai asked: ‘Something the matter?’

But Mihara changed the subject. ‘What about our other problem?’ he asked.

‘You mean Ishida? Well, as it happens, I met with an investigator from the public prosecutor’s office yesterday,’ said Kasai in a low voice.

‘The investigation’s turning in circles, Mihara. Sayama’s suicide has put a real spanner in the works. You see, assistants like him are the fixers of the workplace. They’re the ones the division and section chiefs rely on to actually get stuff done. The higher-ups are too busy scrambling up the career ladder to ever learn much about practical matters, but if you’re an assistant section chief, that’s all you’ve ever done. You’ve learned all sorts over the years, like a seasoned craftsman. Of course, the trade-off is that your career hits a ceiling. All you can do is watch as younger, better-qualified university graduates leapfrog past you. You’re resigned to your lot. You might be raging on the inside, of course, but you can’t let that show if you want to work in government.’

Kasai took a sip of the tea that a detective had brought him.

‘But say your superior takes a shine to you – now, that’s exciting. Suddenly you’re given a tantalizing glimpse of a world you’d long assumed was out of reach. Promotion is on the cards again. So you work hard, you do your best to please them. But what’s motivating your superior? If they end up promoting you on the basis of your expertise, then wonderful. But if they’re only taking you under their wing in order to use you, then the whole thing’s a con. You see, no matter how much of a big shot they become, they’ll always need a safe pair of hands. That’s why they’re showering you with attention – because merely ordering you about wouldn’t be half as effective. Now, the assistants know all this, of course, but, out of a desire for advancement more than self-preservation, they do as they’re told. I suppose that’s human nature. In fact, these sorts of bonds are what hold these government offices together in the first place.’

The chief propped his elbows on the desk.

‘It’s the same in this case. Everything converges on Sayama. It seems he was quite the skilled operator. His suicide has blown a hole in the public prosecutor’s investigation. In reality, it was Sayama who formed the invisible link between all the senior officials. He was the linchpin. With him gone, they’re tearing their hair out at the prosecutor’s office. He left a gap behind that seems to get wider and wider the more they investigate. Meanwhile, the higher-ups will be breathing a sigh of relief.’

‘And I imagine Ishida is one of them?’ asked Mihara.

‘Oh, he’ll be the most relieved of all! In any case, assistant chiefs tend to be dutiful subordinates – just the type who might commit suicide to save their ministry in its hour of need. Whenever there’s a suicide in a major corruption case, it’s always someone of Sayama’s rank.’

‘So you’re saying his death fits the pattern?’

‘Well, normally they commit suicide on their own, but in his case there was a woman. That’s unusual. Puts a bit of a romantic spin on things, doesn’t it?’

Kasai fell silent. Mihara knew what he was thinking but said nothing. He realized now that the public prosecutor, the superintendent in charge of the investigation, and Kasai himself were all on his side. This gave him courage.

Later that day, Mihara had another look through the file on Sayama and Toki’s suicide. He combed through the crime-scene report, the autopsy results, the photographs and the witness statements, scrutinizing every detail. A man and a woman had drunk juice laced with cyanide; then they had died at each other’s side. He had looked through these documents dozens of times. There were no new revelations to be found here.

And yet Yasuda had gone to such lengths to ensure there were witnesses to the couple’s departure from Tokyo. More than anything, Mihara needed to work out what role he had played in all this.

Three days later the investigation into the aeroplane passengers was completed. There wasn’t a single false name among them. Every passenger on the three lists was a real person, and all one hundred and forty-three of them had insisted there was no mistake: they had been on the plane.

Mihara was dumbfounded. Once again, he held his head in his hands and despaired.