“The statements of the witnesses confirm that the victim spoke in a Tohoku dialect, but what about the accent of the assailant?” the chief asked. “The man with the victim, the one we are assuming is the murderer, is the person who asked the victim about Kameda. Though he spoke in standard Japanese, the bar hostess said there might have been a slight northeastern tone to his words. From the content of their conversation, it would seem likely that they knew each other from their hometown in the northeast, rather than having met in Tokyo.”
The investigation team reached a consensus on these two points and agreed to proceed on these assumptions.
One week passed and the identity of the victim was still unknown.
The name Kameda was no doubt quite common in the northeast. Finding every person with this name would be tedious, but it was decided to undertake the search. Headquarters asked the Northeastern District of the National Police Agency to locate every person named Kameda within the jurisdictions of the prefectures of Aomori, Akita, Iwate, Yamagata, Miyagi, and Fukushima.
Residents along the Mekama and Ikegami lines were questioned. Since the victim appeared to be a day laborer, investigators reviewed all records of the daily job placement officers in the vicinity. The inexpensive apartments and inns that might have housed the victim were also checked thoroughly. No one fitting the victim’s description turned up. From the violent nature of the murder, headquarters had suspected that the murderer would have been splattered with quite a lot of blood. Every taxi company in Tokyo was notified to see if someone fitting such a description had been picked up as a passenger, without result. The murderer might have hidden somewhere, washed his clothes, and then escaped on an early-morning train. Inquiries made of the train conductors were fruitless. The area surrounding the scene of the crime was combed. There were many vacant lots full of weeds, in which, it was thought, the murderer might have hidden. But no objects related to the murder were found.
Responses to headquarters’ request to the Northeast District bureau of the National Police Agency for lists of persons named Kameda started trickling in:
“Kameda Shuichi, Kameda Umekichi, Kameda Katsuzo, Kameda Kameo…” Kamedas living in villages all over the six prefectures were listed. There were thirty-two men named Kameda living in northeastern Japan. Headquarters requested that local police forces check out each of these men. Five days later the last responses were received. All thirty-two Kamedas said that none of their family, relatives, friends, or acquaintances was the victim.
“I don’t have any idea what to do now,” said the perplexed chief of investigations. “The problem may be that we have limited the search to the northeast Tohoku region. The mutual friend named Kameda may not be from that region. He could live in Tokyo or in western Japan.”
The team decided to ask the newspapers to stress the name Kameda in articles and to refer replies to the police. But there were none.
The movements of the victim and the murderer before their arrival at the Torys bar were still under investigation. Day after day weary detectives trudged from place to place making inquiries, and came back to headquarters tired out. When detectives were close to capturing a criminal, their expressions were bright no matter how fatigued they were. But when there was no clue, they just looked exhausted.
Imanishi Eitaro was one of these worn-out policeman. The forty-five-year-old detective was hesitant even to return to headquarters for a cup of tea. He was in charge of making inquiries at the cheap apartments and inns along the Ikegami Line. For the last ten days he had walked that area. Again, today, he returned to headquarters without any leads.
At the daily meeting the investigation team reviewed information brought back by the detectives, but there were no developments. The mood in the meeting room was one of intense frustration, of futility.
It was nearly midnight before Imanishi reached his home that night. Through the slats of the front door he could see that the lights had been turned off. The door was locked from the inside because he hadn’t been expected. He rang the buzzer. The light went on inside, and his wife’s shadow was cast across the glass door.
“Who is it?” his wife asked.
“It’s me.”
The door slid open and Yoshiko appeared in the shadows.
“Welcome home,” she said.
Imanishi entered and slipped off his shoes. Over the past few days, his heels had become worn and scuffed, so his shoes tilted awkwardly on the stone stand. From the two-tatami-mat entry, he entered directly into the four- and-a-half-tatami-mat room. There were three futon mattresses laid out on the tatami. The face of his sleeping son peeked out of one. Imanishi knelt down and tapped his son’s cheek.
“Don’t wake him up,” his wife scolded gently, standing behind him.
“I haven’t seen my son awake for ten days.”
“Will you be late again tomorrow, too?” Yoshiko asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
Imanishi walked into the next room and sat down.
“I guess you’d like something to eat?” Yoshiko asked.
“Just some tea over rice would be fine,” Imanishi answered.
“I’ll warm up some sake.” Yoshiko smiled and stepped down into the kitchen.
Imanishi rolled over on his stomach and unfolded the newspaper. He closed his eyes. He could hear sounds in the kitchen, then he dozed off for a while.
“It’s ready.” Yoshiko shook him to wake him.
When he looked up, the table was set with a warmed carafe of sake. His wife had covered him with a blanket while he was asleep. He threw it off and sat up.
“You must be very tired,” Yoshiko said as she lifted the sake to pour it.
“I’m exhausted.” Imanishi rubbed his eyes.
He drained the cup and picked at the salted fish set out for him. “It tastes good. Why don’t you have some, too?” He handed his sake cup to his wife.
She drank just enough to make him feel comfortable and returned the cup to him.
“It still isn’t solved?” she asked.
“Not yet.” Imanishi shook his head as he drank another cup of sake.
Since he had been assigned to the Kamata case, he had come home late every night. Yoshiko was more concerned about her husband’s accumulated fatigue than about the solution to the case. She looked up at him and said, “The newspapers say that you’re searching for a person named Kameda. You still haven’t come up with anyone?”
Yoshiko almost never asked him about the cases he worked on. He made it a point to try not to talk about work at home.
“Mmm,” Imanishi responded noncommittally.
“I wonder why nothing comes up when there is so much written about the case in the newspapers?”
Imanishi did not respond to this either. He had no desire to talk over his work with his family. Yoshiko had once pressed him about a case he was working on. Imanishi had scolded her, saying she shouldn’t pry into cases under investigation. Since then, she had been more reserved. But her curiosity about this case made her forget. Yoshiko asked, “Are there many people named Kameda?”
“I guess it’s not that common a name.” Imanishi felt that he couldn’t scold his wife tonight, but he continued to give vague answers.
“I went to the fish store to run an errand today and checked their telephone book. There were a hundred and two Kamedas listed in the Tokyo telephone book,” she said. “A hundred and two isn’t that large a number, but it’s not that small either.”
“I wonder,” Imanishi mumbled, as he reached for the second carafe of sake.
He was tired of hearing the name Kameda. No one could appreciate the effort headquarters was making to find this man. Tonight, he wanted to forget about the case and go to sleep.
“I wonder if I’ve gotten a bit drunk.” His body felt warm.
“You’re so tired that the alcohol has hit you very quickly.”
“Maybe I should eat after this one.”
“There isn’t much to eat. I didn’t know whether you’d even be home tonight.”
“That’s all right.”
Yoshiko went to the kitchen again.
