senior prosecutor. They were both of the same social class, their families knew each other, and both the prosecutor and the superintendent were graduates of Todai – TokyoUniversity. Even more to the point, they had both taken law degrees. That made them the cream of the crop. TokyoUniversity graduates constituted an elite, and the inner circle came from the law faculty. Todai alumni practically ran the country. Senior Prosecutor Sekine had not selected Superintendent Adachi by accident. The investigation of political corruption linked to organized crime was a tricky and dangerous business. It was essential to have people on your team you could trust and who were predictable. Sekine trusted Adachi to serve him well.
The prosecutor gave Adachi time to relax, collect his thoughts, and sip his tea. The policeman had just come from the crime scene and had supervised the removal of Hodama's body. He had had a long day, and his fatigue was showing.
'Hodama?' the prosecutor said, after Adachi had sipped at his tea.
Adachi grimaced. 'An extremely unpleasant business, sensei,' he said, 'a massacre. Everyone in the house was killed. The bodyguard in the front was shot where he stood. Two others died inside the house. The manservant was shot in the bathroom. Hodama himself was boiled alive in his own bathtub.'
The prosecutor made a sound of disapproval. 'Guns,' he said disdainfully. 'Guns. This is very bad. This is not the Japanese way.'
Adachi nodded in agreement but silently speculated whether or not the victim would have been any better off chopped to death with a sword in the more usual Japanese style. On the issue of being boiled alive, he thought a couple of 9-mm hollow-points were preferable any day of the week. Anyway, execution by boiling had not been much in vogue since the Middle Ages. The last person he had heard of being killed that way was IshikawaJoemon, a notorious robber. He had been a Robin Hood figure, supposedly robbing the rich and giving to the poor – less deductions for expenses. Hodama had not quite been in the same tradition.
'The method of Hodama's death,' he said. 'I wonder if that is indicative in its own right.'
The prosecutor shrugged. 'Let's not speculate just yet. First the facts.'
'We think the killings took place around seven in the morning,' said Adachi. 'Hodama was a man of regular habits, and the physical evidence would tend to support this. The police doctor cannot be quite so precise. He puts the time at somewhere between six and eight.
'The bodies were not actually found until 3:18 P.M.. Hodama normally received from 2:45 P.M. onwards. Today, the outer gate was not open and there was no reply to either the bell at the gate or the phone, so eventually a local uniform was called. He nipped over the wall to check out if anything was wrong and left his lunch all over the first body he found. They are not used to blood and guts in that part of the world.'
'So the Hodama residence was unguarded from about seven in the morning until after lunch,' said the prosecutor. 'Plenty of time to remove what needed to be removed.'
Adachi nodded. He knew exactly what the sensei was getting at. Hodama was one of the most powerful men in Japan, and a constant stream of visitors brought money in exchange for favors. The operation was extensive. There should have been some written records and considerable sums of money on the premises. The first question the prosecutor had asked when they had spoken by phone earlier in the afternoon was whether any records had been found.
'We went over the place again,' Adachi said. 'We used the special search team, optical probes, and all the gizmos. We turned up nothing written at all – nothing – but we found thirty million yen in a concealed safe.' He grinned. 'It was in a series of Mitsukoshi shopping bags.'
The prosecutor snorted. Thirty million yen – roughly three million dollars – was chicken feed for Hodama. As for the shopping bags, Japan was a gift-giving country and Mitsukoshi department stores were favorite places to buy gifts. Their elegant wrapping and ornate shopping bags were part of the symbolism. Shopping bags were also the containers of choice for carrying the large bundles of yen notes that were the preferred currency of Japanese politicians. He had heard that American politicians preferred briefcases.
'Do you have any leads so far?' he said.
Adachi took his time answering. He felt extremely tired, but the thought of a nice long soak in a hot tub was not as appealing as usual.
'The scene-of-crime people are still rushing round with vacuum cleaners and the like,' he said, 'but it does not look encouraging. We found a couple of empty shell casings and a neighbor reported seeing two black limousines arrive around seven in the morning. And that is mostly it.'
'Mostly?' said the prosecutor.
Adachi removed an evidence bag and placed it on the table. The prosecutor picked it up and examined it carefully. The he took a file out of his desk and opened it. He removed a photograph from the file and compared it to the object. There was no doubt. The symbol was the same. The object was a shasho – a lapel pin – of the kind worn by tens of millions of Japanese to identify their particular corporate or social affiliation.
The symbol on that particular pin was that of the Namaka Corporation.
'Namaka?' he said, puzzled. 'Where did you find it?'
'In the copper bath, jammed down by the wooden seat under Hodama's body,' said Adachi. 'Very convenient.'
The prosecutor nodded and sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. His arms were folded in front of him. He said nothing for several minutes. Adachi was used to this, and quite relaxed about waiting.
The telephone rang. The prosecutor took the call facing half away from Adachi, so the policeman could not hear much of what was being said. It did not seem to be a deliberate gesture, and after he put the phone down the prosecutor went back to his eyes-closed position. Eventually he opened them and spoke.
'This investigation will be difficult, Adachi- san,' he said. 'Difficult, complex, and quite probably dangerous. There is scarcely a politician or an organized-crime leader who had not had something to do with Hodama over the years. Whatever we find, powerful interests and forces will be displeased.'
He smiled with some affection, and then his expression turned serious. 'You will always have my support. But you must be careful who you trust. You must take the fullest security precautions. At all times, you – and your team – will be armed.'
Adachi's eyes widened. Although the uniforms were armed, he rarely carried a gun. It just was not necessary except in certain specific circumstances, and it was difficult to get his suit jacket to hang right with a lump of metal strapped to his belt. He said the Japanese equivalent of 'Holy shit!'
'One extra thing,' said the prosecutor. He pressed a button on his desk twice, and a buzzer rang in his assistant's office. 'Koancho will be involved.'
Adachi heard the door open, and he could smell her perfume before he saw her. Koancho's brief was internal security and counterterrorism. It was a mysterious and sometimes feared organization and officially reported directly to the Prime Minister's office, though there were links with Justice. It did what was necessary to preserve the constitution. Whatever that meant. It was not an organization that pissed around. It was small. It was effective.
'Involved how?' said Adachi.
'A watching brief,' said Chifune.
'Quite so,' said the prosecutor.
ChifuneTanabu bowed formally at Adachi, who had risen from his chair. He returned her bow.
'I think you two know each other,' said the prosecutor, 'and, I hope, trust each other. I asked specially for Tanabu- san.'
I know your lips and your tongue and your loins and every inch of your exquisite body, thought Adachi, but trust? Here we are in uncharted waters. 'I am honored, sensei,' he said to the prosecutor, but including Chifune in the remark. He bowed again toward her. 'It will be a pleasure,' he added, somewhat stiffly. He felt decidedly disconcerted.
Chifune said nothing. She did not really have to. She just looked at him in that peculiar way of hers and smiled faintly.
Adachi's apartment was not a ninety-minute commute away in some godforsaken suburb. It was a comfortable two-bedroom, one-living-room affair of reasonable size on the top floor of a building in the Jinbocho
