The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.
Mark Twain
ePub
A4Chapter 3
W
hen Shuhei Matsumiya reached the crime scene, one side of NihonbashiBridge 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.
