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Chapter 24
atsumiya was on his way to see the fourth person on his list when Kaga
called him. It was a little after five p.m. He hadn’t managed to extract any
genuinely useful information from any of the three people he’d interviewed
so far. It was all very well to classify them as acquaintances of Fuyuki
Yashima, but they’d often been work colleagues briefly or had a quick chat
after a job interview. They’d exchanged contact details but nothing more.
Matsumiya was walking as he took the call. “Hi there. Did you find
anything?”
“I don’t know yet. Where are you now?”
“I’m in … Kameido, I think,” said Matsumiya, looking around.
“Perfect. Ditch your inquiries and come give me a hand.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Bring me Ms. Nakahara. There’s something I need to ask her.”
“Hang on a second. Bring her to you? Where am I meant to go? Where
are you?”
“I’m in a bookstore.”
“A bookstore?” Matsumiya came to an abrupt stop.
Kaga gave him the name of the place. It was a well-known bookstore
in Nihonbashi.
I can see the logic, Matsumiya thought. There weren’t that many
places where men with time to kill could go. A café was about the only
other option, but Fuyuki Yashima was probably too broke to go to cafés by
himself. Browsing books and magazines had the merit of being free. The
notion that Yashima had been in a bookstore was a thoroughly credible one.
“What do you want to question her about?”
“You’ll find out when you get here. See you later.” Kaga ended the
call.
Self-important ass—cursing under his breath, Matsumiya raised a
hand to hail an approaching taxi.
Kaori Nakahara was at home. Possibly because she wasn’t wearing
makeup, she looked rather pale and sickly. When Matsumiya told her he
needed her to come with him right away, she reacted with puzzlement.
“If you plan to question me about the incident, I’m afraid there’s
nothing more I can tell you.”
“That’s not what we want. We need you to verify something.”
“Verify?” The expression on her face was as despondent as ever.
“There’s a chance,” said Matsumiya, who was getting increasingly
desperate, “that it will clear your boyfriend of suspicion.”
Her eyes opened wide. “Prove his innocence, you mean?”
“I can’t go that far. It’s no more than a possibility.”
Kaori took a deep breath and looked hard at Matsumiya. “Can you
wait ten minutes? I need to get ready.”
“No problem,” Matsumiya replied.
When Kaori was ready, Matsumiya hailed a cab and they headed to
Nihonbashi. On the way, Kaori again asked what it was they wanted her to
verify. Matsumiya could understand why she was so jittery.
“I don’t know the details. Detective Kaga will meet us there.”
“Detective Kaga…”
“He mentioned that you two bumped into one another last night. What
did you talk about?”
“Nothing much. Tricks for winning tickets for advance movie
screenings, stuff like that.”
“Tricks?”
Kaori ran through her conversation with Kaga. As Matsumiya listened
to her, the penny finally dropped. Having confirmed from the cocoa
evidence that Fuyuki Yashima hadn’t been in the café with Takeaki Aoyagi,
he had inferred that he must have been in a bookstore instead.
They reached their destination and got out of the taxi. Matsumiya
phoned Kaga and then led Kaori toward the entrance. The surprise on her
face as she looked up at the building was clear.
Kaga appeared at the door. He nodded at Matsumiya and apologized to
Kaori for dragging her there.
“You really think you can prove that my boyfriend is innocent?”
“I don’t know yet. Anyway, come this way,” Kaga said. He walked
into the store with her and Matsumiya followed.
They passed through a door marked “Employees Only” into the backof-
house area. Threading their way along a passage piled high with
cardboard boxes, they reached a small room. The walls were completely
covered with monitors and a middle-aged security guard sat in a chair.
“Oh, CCTV.” Matsumiya realized what Kaga was trying to do.
“If someone was in Nihonbashi and wanted to visit a bookstore, this
place would be their first port of call. The security cameras don’t have
complete coverage, but if he was in here for two hours, we can reasonably
expect him to show up in one of the feeds.”
“I can see that. Still, it’s quite a store. They must have a ton of
cameras.”
“They certainly do. I went through all the footage from six thirty to
eight thirty p.m. on the day of the incident and my eyes are killing me.”
Kaga massaged his eyelids with his fingertips.
Matsumiya looked hard at his cousin, who was a few years his senior.
In the Homicide Division, Kaga had a reputation as a shrewd operator. He
was definitely that, but his greatest asset was his almost scary level of
tenacity.
“What was it that you wanted Ms. Nakahara to look at?” Matsumiya
asked.
“Yes—could you play that footage we found?” Kaga said.
The security guard pressed a few buttons on the machine. The image
on the monitor closest to him changed to a still image. A number of
customers were standing in front of a magazine rack reading the magazines.
Since the majority were women, Matsumiya inferred that it was probably
the women’s magazine section.
“Ready, Ms. Nakahara? We’re going to run the footage. Tell us if you
notice anything.”
Kaori edged closer to the monitor.
“Play it,” Kaga said.
The image started to move. Nothing much was going on: one woman
would drift away from the rack, and another would wander over and take
her place.
After a few more moments, Kaori gasped.
“Pause it,” Kaga said.
“There. I think that’s Fuyuki.”
Matsumiya peered at the part of the screen she was pointing at. There
was a man about to pass behind the women standing at the magazine rack.
He was captured from behind and at an angle, so his face was hard to make
out, but the resemblance to Fuyuki Yashima was undeniable.
“Play it again,” Kaga ordered the security guard.
The footage played again from the beginning. After watching it a
second time, Kaori nodded her head emphatically. “That’s definitely him.”
Matsumiya felt a surge of warmth. There was a time stamp in one
corner of the image. It read 19:45. That was when Takeaki Aoyagi had been
in the café—meaning that whomever he had been with, it wasn’t Fuyuki
Yashima.
“Could you run the next set of footage?” Kaga said. His calm voice
contrasted with Matsumiya’s excitement.
A new sequence started. “That’s Fuyuki,” Kaori said after a moment
or two. Matsumiya recognized him as well. He was plucking a magazine
from a shelf. Unfortunately, his back was to the camera, but you could
recognize him from the clothes he had on.
Although this supposed Fuyuki Yashima stayed where he was for over
twenty minutes, he never once turned to face the camera before moving on.
“This is the final bit of footage.”
The location in this footage was different from the other two, with
very few people and bookshelves on both sides. Clearly, this wasn’t one of
the heavily trafficked floors with magazines on sale.
Matsumiya gasped. A man had walked into the frame. His back was to
the camera, but it looked like Fuyuki Yashima again.
The man stopped, stood there, and picked several books off the
shelves on the left side of the screen. From time to time, you could glimpse
his face in profile. He looked like Fuyuki Yashima.
The man eventually wandered off without buying anything.
“That’s Fuyuki. I’ve no doubt about it,” Kaori declared categorically.
Kaga nodded. “You think so? If you’re that sure, then you’re probably
right.”
“Is this enough to prove his innocence?” Kaori looked at Kaga
beseechingly.
Kaga didn’t reply. He glanced at Matsumiya. “Take Ms. Nakahara
home.”
“Why?” Kaori’s voice rose. “I’m here because you told me I could
help prove my boyfriend’s innocence.”
Kaga looked at the floor, exhaled, then fixed his gaze on her. “Proving
anything takes a great deal of hard work. I need you to understand that.”
Kaori said nothing.
“Take her home,” Kaga repeated.
Matsumiya led Kaori out of the room. She didn’t say a word and Matsumiya couldn’t think of anything to say. Kaga was right. The last thing
they wanted to do was to raise the young woman’s hopes.
“I’ll take it from here,” said Kaori as soon as they were outside the
bookstore.
“Are you sure? I’m happy to see you home.”
Kaori shook her head. “Seeing as I’m here, I think I’d like to walk
around. This is the last part of town my boyfriend was in.”
“Ah … yes, of course.”
“Detective Matsumiya.” She looked at him with avid eyes. “Do
whatever it takes to sort this out. I’m relying on you.” She bowed deeply as
she said this.
“We’ll do our best,” he replied. Cliché or not, he was sincere.
He watched the young woman walk down the street before going back
to the security guard’s room in the store. Kaga was sitting in front of the
bank of monitors.
“You didn’t take her home, then?”
“No. She said she wanted to take a walk around. So, what do you plan
to do with this footage?”
“Take it back to the task force, obviously. I don’t think it’s enough to
change the higher-ups’ minds, though.”
“How so?”
Kaga looked at the monitor in front of him. “We have no proof that the
man in this CCTV footage is Fuyuki Yashima. I thought he resembled him,
which is why I got Ms. Nakahara over here for confirmation. Even if she’s
prepared to state that it definitely is him, that doesn’t actually constitute
proof. She’s not a third party.”
Matsumiya stared at the monitor. “There aren’t any images where his
face is clearer?”
“I’ve checked all the footage. The sequences I showed you are all
we’ve got, I’m afraid.”
Matsumiya bit his lip. There was a freeze-frame on the screen. It was
the final scene and showed Yashima replacing a book on the shelf prior to
walking off.
Matsumiya had a sudden idea. He jabbed a finger at the monitor.
“Fingerprints! If we dust all the books in that shelf, maybe we’ll find
Yashima’s prints!”
“That’s certainly conceivable.”
“Which floor is this? We need to collect all the books. God, I hope no
one’s gone and handled them or bought the darn things. Come on, what’s
the floor number?”
“Keep your hat on. The evidence isn’t going anywhere.”
“Yes, but—” Matsumiya was protesting when the words stuck in his
throat. Kaga had pulled a paper carrier bag out from beneath the table. It
was full of books. One of them was a volume called The Best 100 Japanese
Sci-Fi Movies.
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