hen Shuhei Matsumiya reached the crime scene, one side of Nihonbashi

Bridge was closed to traffic. The one-way street that runs parallel to the

river had been blocked off completely and a uniformed policeman was

directing the traffic. On the far side of the street, there was a line of TV

camera crews.

There weren’t many bystanders about. The victim had been rushed to

the hospital and there were no visible traces of the crime, so there was

nothing to stare at even if you happened to be walking in the neighborhood.

Matsumiya had a sense of something like anticlimax. He’d been expecting

to have to push his way through crowds of gawkers.

He was putting on gloves and an armband when someone slapped him

on the right shoulder. It was Kobayashi, the squad leader. His eyes were

narrow and his chin came to a sharp point.

“Oh! Evening, sir.”

“Poor Matsumiya, always the unlucky one! Bet you were out on a

date?”

“What makes you think so?”

“You were in high spirits when quitting time came around. It was

written all over your face: ‘Thank God I didn’t get picked for extra duty.’”

“I’m sure you’re happy enough too, sir, when you’re on call and

nothing comes in. You get to spend some time with your family.”

Kobayashi snorted derisively.

“You should have seen my daughter’s face when the call came in. She

was thrilled at the idea of not having to see her dad’s miserable mug for an

evening! My wife was there and she had the exact same expression on her face. Believe me, Matsumiya, if you get married and you have a kid and

that kid’s a girl, the moment she goes to junior high school she’s lost to you

forever.”

Matsumiya grimaced. “I’ll bear that in mind,” he said.

They nodded to the officer responsible for guarding the crime scene

and entered the area that was off-limits to the public. No one from the

Forensics team was there. Dispatch had made it clear that the actual crime

had taken place elsewhere.

Matsumiya, who was in the Homicide Division of the Tokyo

Metropolitan Police Department, had been relaxing at home when he’d

gotten the call. Most of the other officers there must have been ordered out

long before he arrived. After all, a man had been stabbed in the center of

Tokyo and the attacker was still unknown. The emergency deployment

order had been issued not only to everyone in the local precinct but to all

the neighboring precincts as well. Matsumiya assumed that checkpoints

would have been set up on all the main roads connected to the bridge.

Matsumiya and Kobayashi looked over at the neighborhood police

station at the far end of the bridge. The duty officer there, a man called

Yasuda, had discovered the victim.

Officer Yasuda looked around thirty years old. He had a strained

expression on his face and, moving rather stiffly, he came over to greet the

men from TMPD Homicide. The hand with which he saluted them was

trembling slightly.

“Our unit chief will be along in a moment. You can give us a full

account then. For now, I’d like just a simple overview.” Despite this,

Kobayashi got Officer Yasuda to provide a very detailed account of what

had happened. Matsumiya stood off to one side and took notes.

That’s odd, Matsumiya thought as he listened to Yasuda’s account. He

didn’t have any problem with the fact that the victim had kept moving even

after being stabbed in the chest. Various possibilities suggested themselves:

maybe he was trying to flee from his attacker, or perhaps he was looking for

help. In that case, though, why had he staggered past the police station?

That was the first question that Kobayashi, who must have had the

same doubts, put to Officer Yasuda. The officer tilted his head to one side.

“I have no idea. He went right past it without so much as a glance. At

the time, I just assumed he was weaving around because he was drunk.”

If the victim had come up from behind before walking past him, then

all Yasuda would have seen of him was his back. It was reasonable enough

for him not to have realized that something was wrong.

“Perhaps he’d lost so much blood that he was barely conscious. He

may not even have noticed that there was a police station,” Kobayashi

ventured.

Unit Chief Ishigaki and the other members of his team arrived soon

after. Before getting Officer Yasuda to talk him through the events, Ishigaki

got everyone together. “I’ve been told the victim didn’t make it,” he said.

“That means that this is now a murder inquiry. The deputy commissioner

and the director are now over at the Nihonbashi Precinct station. If the

current deployment doesn’t result in the quick capture of a suspect, I expect

them to activate the mobile unit. I hope you all understand that.”

After they had all listened to Officer Yasuda’s account for a second

time, Fujie, the unit chief of the Nihonbashi precinct, came over to greet

them. He was a thin man, somewhere north of forty.

“We’ve located what appears to be the actual crime scene. It’s just one

block that way. I’ll show you.”

Fujie started walking down the blocked-off road that ran parallel to the

river, and Ishigaki and his team, along with Matsumiya, followed. The guys

from Forensics were spread out along the sidewalk to their left, hard at

work.

“They found blood dotted along the sidewalk. Not very large

quantities. The victim must have been bleeding as he was walking,” Fujie

explained.

Right up against the narrow sidewalk stood the headquarters of a wellknown

investment bank. You could feel the history emanating from the

façade of the building even in the darkness. What was the victim thinking

as he made his way along this street with a knife stuck in his chest?

“Not a lot of foot traffic here?” asked Ishigaki.

Fujie nodded in acknowledgment of Ishigaki’s question.

“I’m not sure about the daytime, but at night, no, not much. There’s

nothing here except that investment bank.”

“So no surprise that no one noticed our critically injured victim.”

“Precisely.”

“You managed to ID the victim, didn’t you? Have you notified the

family?”

“That’s been taken care of. They should be en route to the hospital

right now.”

The place Fujie led them to was just in front of an on-ramp for the

expressway. A footpath went down from the sidewalk and into an

underground passageway. The area had been cordoned off with crime scene

tape. The technicians from Forensics were bustling about energetically.

“As you’re probably aware, this underground passage takes you to the

foot of Edobashi Bridge.” Fujie was pointing downstream at the Edobashi

Bridge, the next bridge over. “The passage is short—just over ten meters.

We found bloodstains halfway along. And no further bloodstains have been

found beyond that point.”

“Making the midpoint of this underground passage the crime scene?”

asked Ishigaki.

“We think so,” said Fujie.

Matsumiya, after slipping on a set of shoe covers, went into the

passage with Kobayashi. Tape had been stuck to the ground to indicate the

area they could walk on, so they were careful not to stray onto the other

side.

At three meters wide, the passage was narrower than Matsumiya had

expected. It was also on the low side; a little jump was enough for a tall

man to touch the ceiling. It was ten meters long, as Fujie had said, and there

were traces of blood on the ground about halfway in. There wasn’t much

blood: just a blackish stain about five centimeters in diameter.

There was no other visible evidence of the crime. Matsumiya and his

companions went on to the far end of the passage, where Ishigaki and his

men were waiting. They found themselves on the sidewalk of Edobashi

Bridge.

Fujie consulted his notebook.

“As I think you’re all aware, Patrolman Yasuda of the Nihonbashi

Bridge police station called this in at precisely nine p.m. About four

minutes later, we activated an emergency deployment for the entire district.

We haven’t yet found anyone who reports seeing a suspicious person.”

Nodding his acknowledgment, Ishigaki scrutinized the area. “Wonder

what foot traffic on this bridge is like?” he asked under his breath.

“There aren’t many pedestrians at nine in the evening. And I don’t

think many people use the underground passageway either. As you can see,

though, there’s a high volume of vehicle traffic,” said Fujie.

There was an incessant stream of cars and trucks coming and going

over Edobashi Bridge.

“The victim managed to make it all the way to Nihonbashi Bridge

after being stabbed. What sort of time … do you think that would take?”

Ishigaki asked Matsumiya.

“Three, possibly four minutes under normal conditions. Given that

he’d been stabbed in the chest, I’d say it probably took about twice that

long,” he answered. He spoke circumspectly as he tried to picture the scene

in his head.

“Sounds about right to me. Let’s say it was roughly ten minutes …

With that much time, the attacker’s options for fleeing the scene are almost

limitless.”

“We’ve already contacted all the taxi companies,” Fujie said. “No

drivers report picking up anyone suspicious in this area.”

“He didn’t need to catch a cab,” said Kobayashi quietly, pointing to

the opposite bank. “If the attacker got to the other side of the river, it would

have been easy for him to escape.”

Matsumiya looked to where Kobayashi was pointing. There was a

pedestrian crossing just beyond the far end of the bridge. Even at this hour

of night, many people were still using it.

Kobayashi’s right, thought Matsumiya. If the attacker had managed to

blend in with the crowd, then they were really in trouble.