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

he also seemed to have a hard outer shell that would make it impossible to intuit his exact character at first or second glance.

“I repeat. On Friday, March twenty-fourth, around 10:05 p.m, the president of Hinode Beer, Kyosuke Shiroyama, fifty-eight years old, was abducted by an unidentified person or persons in front of his residence in Sanno Ni-chome, in the district of Ota, and just a short time ago, at 6:28 a.m., Mr. Shiroyama was taken into protective custody by the staff of Fujiyoshida Police Department of the Yamanashi Prefectural Police after he arrived alone, requesting assistance, at the fire station along the Lake Kawaguchi bypass in the village of Narusawa, in the district of Minamitsuru, in Yamanashi Prefecture. . . . We interrupt our regularly scheduled broadcast to bring you this report on the abduction and unlawful confinement of the president of Hinode Beer.”

No one in front of the television uttered a single word. As the array of investigators expanded ever larger, they would have no choice but to depend on television and newspaper reports in order to gain a full picture of the incident that was not made available to each of them separately. Even Goda stared dumbfounded at the screen, as he wondered if it was too soon to show the face of the rescued victim he was desperately curious to see.

“I repeat. On Friday, March twenty-fourth, around 10:05 p.m, the president of Hinode Beer, Kyosuke Shiroyama, fifty-eight years old, was abducted by an unidentified person or persons in front of his residence in Sanno Ni-chome, in the district of Ota, and just a short time ago, after fifty-six hours, he was found unharmed and taken into protective custody in the village of Narusawa, in the district of Minamitsuru, in Yamanashi Prefecture. NHK has, until now, deferred reporting on the incident to ensure the safety of Mr. Shiroyama. Now, we go to our live coverage from outside of Hinode Beer’s main office in Kita-Shinagawa, in the district of Shinagawa, and outside of Mr. Shiroyama’s residence in Sanno Ni-chome, in the district of Ota . . .”

As the broadcast switched over, it showed the street in front of the forty-story Hinode Beer building. It was an ordinary building that he had seen numerous times before, but Goda’s eyes were drawn to it as if noticing it for the first time. The reporter, looking intent, began speaking, while a press corps had already formed a cluster behind him. The wind seemed cold, but the sky was clear.

“Since it is still early, there’s no sign of any employees coming or going just yet. Fifty-six hours ago, on Friday at 9:48 p.m., a company car with President Shiroyama inside left the entrance to the underground parking lot you can see over there, and arrived in front of his home in Sanno Ni-chome, in the district of Ota, seventeen minutes later at 10:05 p.m., where he was abducted by an unidentified person or persons . . .”

Next, the screen showed the street in front of the residence in Sanno Ni-chome, where a throng of media had already gathered. Barely a minute had elapsed since the press briefing and already lurking reporters from every media company had surrounded the front gate, where a uniformed police officer blocked the way. The trees sparkled in the early morning sunlight, worlds away from the landscape Goda had seen in the depths of the night on Friday.

“As you can see, this is a quiet residential street. At10:05 p.m. on Friday, President Shiroyama’s car stopped in front of that gate over there and . . .”

As he listened to the voice on television, once again Goda began to imagine the movements of the policeman who had patrolled the neighborhood on the night in question.

Late on Saturday night, after the investigation meeting ended, Goda had made up an excuse and snuck out of the police department, to see for himself how fast an officer on a motorcycle would have been going. He rode his own bicycle for two hours along the backstreets of the adjacent neighborhood Sanno Itchome, which wasn’t all that close to Shiroyama’s home. And last night, he secretly invited Senior Police Officer Sawaguchi from the police box in front of Omori Station out to dinner after his shift, treating him to sushi, and during the meal he inquired in detail about the route he took to the scene and the precise timing after he was dispatched there by the command center.

Once Goda had deduced the minute-by-minute locations of the motorcycle patrol and drawn up his own map, the results backed up his theory about how the perpetrators had abducted the victim without ever attracting the attention of the police. But how were the perpetrators able to trace the random patrol routes of the police?

The answer had to be the wireless radio. By now Goda was practically convinced that the perpetrators had ears on the department-level radio that the police listened to at all times. What’s more, considering that it was impossible for an ordinary person to intercept the police radio, which further scrambled a traditional digital signal, it was clear who was listening to the radio to carry out the crime that night—a police officer on active duty.

A police officer.

The shape of the words appeared out of the haze that had permeated his mind ever since he had arrived at the crime scene. However, the solid logic of it prevented Goda’s mind from proceeding further. He would have preferred to be unaware of it. In truth, Goda had already stopped thinking about it, simply and prudently shifting his brain to the allocated task before him. His ego no longer allowed him to make a disappointing mistake in a crime scene that was already disappointing enough—he wouldn’t give anyone in the police force more reason to look down upon him. Besides, come April, he would turn thirty-six—what else could he do with his life if he were to quit being a detective?

Goda stepped away from the television