Lady Joker, Volume 1 by Kaoru Takamura (lightest ebook reader .txt) 📕

Finally, what was their motive? If the perpetrators’ ultimate aim was money, why choose such a high-risk scheme as kidnapping? The end result would be the same had they abducted any other executive, so why did it have to be the president?

Technically Goda was the designated investigator at his precinct, but as the guy who had been chucked sideways from the MPD to a local department, this entire past year he had not received a single call to report to Investigation Headquarters. This time, even if he were to be pulled in because they were short-handed, the only tasks that might trickle down to him would be either canvassing the vicinity on foot or searching for evidence. Even as he contemplated all this, it was his natural tendency to keep turning the pages of the financial report pamphlet to learn more, however mechanically, about Hinode as a company.

First, he checked the important figures in the management index. The company’s sales revenue for 1993 was 1.35 trillion yen. For consolidated accounts it was close to 1.6 trillion. The company’s operating income was 77 billion. Net profit was about half that amount. Total assets were 1.2 trillion. Equity ratio, 47 percent. One share of their stock cost 10 yen. Number of employees, 8,200. Each and every number told the same story—they were a behemoth, “the bluest of blue-chips”—but how they could yield 1.35 trillion by peddling two-hundred-yen-or-so cans of beer—with a high liquor tax, to boot—was not something he could readily fathom. These figures were from two years ago, so now they would have swelled even more.

Next, he turned to the section on the 105-year history of the company. Even before the war, the company already had four factories, and after the war ended they steadily expanded with more factories, branch offices, and sales offices, while aggressively making headway in developing technological fields such as pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, state-of-the-art medical treatment, and data network systems—the corporation’s ultimate goal of diversification gradually came into focus for Goda.

Once he had scanned their current stock condition, he saw that Toei and several other major city banks as well as life insurance companies dominated the list of their biggest shareholders, as expected, and their aggregate covered 27 percent of shares outstanding. The company’s stock price had remained stable even after the economic bubble burst, and their dividend payout ratio had maintained the high rate of 25 percent.

Then he turned to their current executives. He quickly familiarized himself with the names of the thirty-five executives under the president and the multiple titles they held, such as general manager of beer division and general manager of business development. Perched at the top of the list, Kyosuke Shiroyama was described as a graduate of the faculty of law at the University of Tokyo. Judging from how, after he joined the company in 1959, he had risen to general manager of beer division after years of working as a sales manager and then a branch manager in Sendai and Osaka, he had clearly been in the sales trenches all along. The world of selling things was the furthest from what a detective knew, and as Goda stared at the name—Kyosuke Shiroyama—he allowed himself to wonder what kind of man Shiroyama was. Guessing from the appearance of his home and the impression made by his wife and son, Goda reasoned that Shiroyama must be a rather modest and conservative individual.

On the other hand, the vice president he had spoken to on the phone, Seigo Kurata, also held the title of general manager of beer division, so there was no doubt that Shiroyama and Kurata were the most closely connected among members of the board of directors. Thinking Kurata might be the one to prod, Goda briefly recalled the voice of the seemingly complicated man he heard on the line.

Moving on to the index of their various business sectors, Goda found their company organizational chart. Beneath the shareholders’ meeting was the board of directors and board of company auditors; then beneath that the president and the management council. The company, with various departments such as general affairs, human resources, accounting, public relations, data network development as well as a planning office, secretarial office, and a consumer advisory office was as common as could be, with the business itself divided into beer, pharmaceutical, business development, laboratory, and the like. However, although the company was pursuing diversification, when he looked at the figures of each primary business sector, beer still counted for 96 percent of sales.

As Goda skipped over a few pages to look at performance details, a voice nearby asked, “Interesting?”

He looked up to see Osanai, an inspector from Burglary Investigation, casting a sullen gaze his way. Osanai had been on duty tonight, but when the call came in from Sanno Ni-chome, he happened to be in Omori-Minami where a robbery had taken place, so he had missed the chance to be first on the scene in Sanno Ni-chome. His look conveyed that he would not soon forget this resentment.

“I guess. The names of the beers I drink every day are all here,” Goda said in response. “Hinode Lager, Hinode Supreme, Supreme Draft, Limelight Diner . . .”

“I doubt you drink beer,” Osanai scoffed, and Goda ignored him after that.

It was true that the familiar brand names were listed on the page, which reported this quarter’s business conditions, along with the sales performance for each product. The current situation for liquor sales—affected by last year’s increase in the liquor tax, which had caused every company to raise prices across the board, the intensified discounting at mass retailers, and Limelight’s full-scale entry into the market—seemed to indicate that the things were not in fact so easy for the company. Despite this, thanks to the steady performance of their two pillars—the lager and the supreme—as well as their efforts to stabilize the cost of raw materials and to streamline their distribution, Hinode’s operating income for 1993 had apparently sustained a slight increase over