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

the previous year. Incidentally, the total volume of beer sold in one year was 3.45 million kiloliters. Unable to grasp such a number quantitatively, Goda reached over to the blackboard behind him and did a bit of long division to figure out how many large bottles this could be converted to, but the number he came up with—5.45 billion—was all the more incomprehensible to him.

Goda wiped away the number with the eraser, and went back to patiently turning the pages. In the section on sales performance, there was a chart explaining their distribution channels, how the product flowed from primary wholesalers to secondary wholesalers before it got to retailers, until finally reaching drinking establishments and consumers. The words “drinking establishment” caught his eye, and as he wondered what proportion of total sales was beer sold on commercial premises, and had just started to flip around the pages when the door to the CI office opened.

Deputy Chief Inspector Katsuhiko Dohi stuck his head in the opened doorway and fixed his saucer-like eyes on Goda nearby. Goda glanced at the time—12:50 a.m.—and with every eye in the CI office on him, set down the pamphlet and walked out into the hallway.

As soon as Goda was in the corridor Dohi demanded, “Two guys from SIT are downstairs. You were at MPD so you should recognize them. Go ask them when the brass are coming down here.”

This spring, ahead of his compulsory retirement next year, Dohi would be promoted to the rank of chief inspector, having assumed that title after his time as inspector in Burglary Investigation. Stubbornly earnest, his face managed to be both complex and dull at the same time—as if all the good and bad of his generally lackluster police career were cobbled together in his expression. As long as nothing was on the blotter he would laugh and say this was his last year, he had nothing to worry about, but when push came to shove, he was a cop, always wringing his hands and trying to gauge his superiors. Even now, his demand was born of his conscientious desire to deliver even a fragment of news to the superintendent and chief inspector, who were anxious about the lack of information.

Goda answered, “Yes sir,” headed downstairs, where there was no one at the back door, and after stepping outside to take a deep breath of air, he returned directly to the third floor and told Dohi, “Apparently they don’t know yet.”

With the addition of Dohi, the CI office was now even more claustrophobic; the majority of those inside had their arms folded and eyes closed, while a few of them had a newspaper or magazine spread open in front of them, with the earphone for the scanner in their ear, as Goda returned to his seat and resumed leafing through the pamphlet back in his seat. Tonight of all nights the police phone didn’t ring even once; every now and then the siren from a patrol car or ambulance speeding along the Dai-ichi Keihin or Sangyo Road echoed as if from a faraway world.

Goda moved on to the section for the so-called cost of goods sold on the profit and loss statement, tracking his eye across the heading for each figure for the current quarter—manufacturing costs, three hundred fifty billion; liquor tax, seven hundred billion. From time to time he looked up at the clock and, listening to the sound of the rain falling on the pavement outside, thought about how it must be snowing in the countryside and the mountain regions by now, imagining the cold that the victim and the perpetrators must be feeling, wherever they were. With the passage of time, however, the visceral sensations that he had first experienced when the incident occurred were starting to wane.

At half past one in the morning, those who had been listening to the investigation radio looked up and murmured to one another, “Sounds like they got an eyewitness who saw a car . . .”

Goda, Dohi, and even those who had been dozing off pricked up their ears at once. “What’s the location?”

Someone spread open the map. “Number twenty-one at the cul-de-sac. Katsuichi Sasaki, seventy-six years old . . .”

“It’s here,” said someone near the map.

“Circle it in red and put it up on the board!” barked Dohi, and the residential map was promptly taped to the black board.

“Time witnessed, around 10 p.m. Witness saw the car from the second floor of his home. Color was either navy or black. A van or possibly an RV. Make and model unknown, license plate unknown . . .”

That was the extent of the information from the wireless, and the twenty-four officers, who had perked up somewhat, sunk back into their seats. Since the details from the car eyewitness were unknown, this seemed unlikely to lead to a clue. Nevertheless, number twenty-one bordered number sixteen to the north, and if there had been a car lurking on the cul-de-sac just before the incident occurred, the likelihood of it being connected was about fifty-fifty. Goda considered this, his partially deflated hope suspended in midair.

At the exact same moment, he again recalled the copy of the dispatch record from the police box in his pocket and felt convinced of the need, while the officer’s memory was still fresh, to calculate the precise, minute-by-minute route that the patrol car had taken before and after 10 p.m., but that thought too hung in midair.

The hands on the clock pointed to just before two in the morning. Goda turned back to the next heading on the profit and loss statement, details regarding sales costs and general administrative costs. Just as he registered the number twenty-five billion listed under advertising costs, a commercial for Hinode Lemon Sour flickered through his mind—a strange beast dancing along to a gamelan under a moonlit night.

久保晴久　Haruhisa Kubo

Two-oh-two a.m. Appearing in the press conference hall on the ninth floor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, the director of Criminal Investigation, Tsuyoshi Teraoka, took