Lady Joker, Volume 1 Kaoru Takamura (ereader ebook .TXT) 📖

hear what the guy had to say, just in case. I think that was around the middle of November. An inspector named Takahashi from White Collar Crime and a detective named Handa who had been transferred over from Violent Crime went out first thing in the morning. They returned that evening, and they had arranged for the sender of the letter to come to the police station the next day so they could take down his statement. But that night the sender killed himself.”

“What was the name and occupation of the sender?”

“He was a dentist in Seijo. I’m sure you’ll find him if you look up Hatano Dental Clinic in a Setagaya phone directory from 1990. He had lost his son in a car accident a month prior, and I heard he had a nervous breakdown, convincing himself that his son had been the victim of employment discrimination during the hiring process at Hinode. I believe Hinode eventually retracted their complaint.”

“This tape you mentioned—the audio recording of a letter that was sent to Hinode after the war—whose letter was it?”

“Well, that much, I don’t . . .” Kitagawa responded vaguely. Kubo saw him hesitate and pressed on, “I’m sure it appeared in the official record.”

“Since the accused passed away, there was never an official record but—” Here Kitagawa paused and glanced over at Takeuchi. “Can I share this bit?”

“I told you, you can trust Kubo-san.” Takeuchi reached for some amaebi with his chopsticks.

Kitagawa lowered his voice a little and continued: “After the complaint was retracted, that inspector I told you about—Takahashi—made a written record of the conversation he had with the dentist—the sender of the letter—during the one and only time they met. I filed it in the register. There’s no mistake about that, since I did it with my own hands. I remembered the case when I heard about this abduction incident, so I called the Shinagawa Police Department and asked them to take a look at the book. But they told me the MPD had already come and taken it.”

“Meaning Investigation Headquarters already have the 1990 case in mind?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe.”

“Kitagawa-san, do you remember what was in Takahashi’s written record?”

“I do but, sorry, I’d rather not say.”

“Yamashita said it was something to do with discrimination,” Takeuchi said, helping out.

“Yes, that’s true, but what’s more important is how on earth the dentist got hold of the letter sent to Hinode right after the war . . .”

“You mean there’s an issue with where it came from?”

“You could say that.”

“Does it have to do with burakumin?” Takeuchi probed lightly.

Kitagawa smiled wryly in return and shook his head. “It’s more your métier, sir.”

“Oh, really? Kubo-san, it’s the corporate extortionists.”

“I see . . . That would explain why Investigation Headquarters hauled off the record book so quickly.” Kubo nodded, but his mind was a tangle, as if he had unwrapped a furoshiki cloth and could not figure out how to tie it back up again. Hadn’t his superior Negoro also told him, just that afternoon, that an anonymous tip they received over the phone had to do with discrimination involving Hinode and a labor dispute after the war? Could this anonymous letter that had been recorded on the tape in 1990 be connected somehow?

In any case, if the dentist had received the letter from corporate extortionists and members of the BLL had nothing to do with the 1990 case, it became certain that Hinode had been under some kind of threat, that maybe extortionists had attempted to blackmail the company at the time. It was also obvious that the extortionists were underlings with ties to the Okada Association.

However, a general notion had started to take shape over the last three days that the abduction of Hinode Beer’s president was not entangled with the shady underworld. If that were true, talk of the complaint case from 1990 could turn out to be a swing and a miss, but in any case, it nagged at Kubo that the shadow of discrimination seemed to flutter over a blue-chip corporation like Hinode.

Kubo pondered such things as he refilled the glasses of his two cohorts with Hinode Supreme. His own glass, on the other hand, was only half drained.

“Come to think of it, sir, since even I know about the 1990 case, there must be plenty of officers who are aware of it, too. Takahashi passed away last year, but I’m sure anyone who worked in Shingawa’s CID back then knows about it . . .” Kitagawa began again.

“I bet only a handful know what really happened,” Takeuchi responded, ever the superior. “Yamashita, at least—he had no idea.”

“I guess you could be right. The ones who knew were Takahashi and me and . . .”

“What about that Handa you mentioned? I’ve never met him.”

“Oh, him . . . I don’t think he’d get it either, now that you mention it. He was transferred over from Violent Crime and handled the case with Takahashi in the beginning, but he was completely useless when it came to the law. Takahashi begged the chief inspector to give him another partner and that’s when Yamashita took over . . .”

“You can’t expect a guy from Violent Crime to know commercial law, right?”

“True, true.” Kitagawa laughed.

At a lull in this exchange between colleagues, Kitagawa took the beer bottle and refilled Kubo’s glass. “As we were saying, other newspapers might already be onto the 1990 story,” he said dutifully. “If so, I do apologize.”

“No, no—there’s no need to worry about that. It’s a complicated story and I’ll need to back it up, so I probably wouldn’t be able to write about it any time soon. That’s something I ought to tell you up front,” Kubo said, making excuses for himself as well.

“That’s no problem. It’s not my story to break, so it’s up to you whether to write it or not. Aside from that, this sashimi is amazing!” Kitagawa said in the daft, cheerful way characteristic of precinct policemen, and eagerly wolfed