Chapter 119 - Name and Reality 42 {70 Solo} (160–161: Isaka Masamitsu's Monologue 7 — Regarding the Blackmail of Daikichi in '92)
"And that brings us back to the story from around the autumn of '92, which was the catalyst for you taking over the Isaka Group... and is also the starting point of this statement. I think it's quite a hassle to repeat stories similar to what you've already told, but there are parts I want to hear in detail, so I'm sorry, but I'd like you to answer properly."
When Nishida made that request,
"Yeah, I know. I've talked for this long, so it's not much trouble now. Ask me anything,"
Masamitsu said, looking straight at Nishida with a frank manner.
"Then I'll do so without hesitation! Do you have any detailed information on what the blackmail letters were like? You said that initially, they were in a format that pretended Sada was still alive?"
"Exactly as I said... At first, it seems it didn't feel like a threat. It was apparently from someone claiming to be Sada Minoru, who had been killed by my old man and the others, with a text that suggested 'I am alive.' My old man was shaken, so he apparently tore it up before I could see it, and since I didn't see the letter itself, I don't know the details of the text. He said he did the same with the letters that came after that."
Masamitsu said, looking truly regretful.
"Even so, a letter from the supposedly dead Sada is impossible chronologically, but why did he think it was possible? Leaving aside the details, can't you tell me to some extent?"
When Yoshimura asked for an explanation,
"There were interactions with my old man that only Sada would know, a handwriting that resembled the letters from when he was blackmailed by Sada while he was alive—which was in my old man's memory—and, was it a copy of the letter said to have been written by Sada Toru, the same one Sada Minoru had given my old man during the blackmail... I'm not very confident in my memory of that time, so please forgive me on that point. As for the letters from Sada Minoru, as I said earlier, he had disposed of them, so the story was only based on my old man's memory."
He explained.
"If you remember that much, it's a passing grade. I see... so there were three reasons for him to judge it so."
While thinking that, Nishida and Yoshimura felt both convinced and that things had become troublesome. This was because the elements that caused the misunderstanding of Sada Minoru's survival were more specific than they had previously assumed.
If Masamitsu's story—or rather, Daikichi's story—is true, then on the premise that a copy of Sada Toru's letter was enclosed, there is a high possibility that the sender was someone close to Sada Minoru, who was the owner of the original letter. Shinoda and Kitagawa also had copies of the letter they had taken from Sada Minoru's body, but the possibility of them blackmailing Daikichi again after 1992 was quite low, and moreover, it could be said there was almost no meaning in doing it in such a way. If that's the case, the first ones to be suspected are, after all, Sada's bereaved family. Takeshita, in the investigation back in '95, unlike Nishida and Yoshimura, had initially suspected that possibility if Daikichi was being blackmailed.
However, Nishida felt that no such inclination could be found among them, starting with his wife Akiko, his son and daughter, and including his older brother Sada Yuzuru and his wife. If that is taken as true, then it was completely unimaginable how the copy of the letter ended up in the hands of the sender of the blackmail letter.
And then there's the issue of handwriting. Since the old letters from Sada Minoru had already been disposed of, even if the comparison was only based on Daikichi's memory, he had been blackmailed by Sada Minoru in the past, so it must have left an impression. If that's the case, it seems safe to trust that point to some extent as well. At the same time, that story also brought to mind that the sender was someone close to Sada Minoru, but like the letter, it was hard to imagine whose doing it was.
But the biggest problem was that the sender seemed to know about the interactions between Daikichi and Sada Minoru. This could only be Assemblyman Matsushima, who was present at the dinner in Kitami where the two met directly and who was later killed, or someone around Oshima who might have obtained a certain amount of information.
Regarding Sada's bereaved family, they shouldn't have known the fine details of the interactions with Isaka Daikichi, and for Nishida, they were still worthy of trust, so this point served as material to reinforce Nishida's thinking.
And, not to mention those around Oshima, there should have been no reason for Matsushima in 1992 to blackmail Isaka Daikichi, who was a fellow member of the Oshima camp. Furthermore, even if Shinoda and Kitagawa had been instructed to kill Sada, it was certain they didn't know about Daikichi's pre-war murder until they obtained the letter from Sada's body, meaning they didn't know the fine details of the interactions with Sada.
These three factors that caused the misunderstanding were all elements that strongly made him misunderstand that the sender was the supposedly dead Sada Minoru, but for that reason, when thinking about the true identity of the sender, it also made it quite difficult.
However, regarding the person who had blackmailed him, Nishida had doubts about whether the Isaka Daikichi of that time had not considered the possibility of it being Sada Minoru's family, so he thought he should check with Masamitsu just in case.
"Didn't your old man think that the one sending the blackmail letters was Sada Minoru's family? Considering the situation, wouldn't that be the first thing to come to mind?"
He checked. Then,
"Looking at the situation, that's the first thing you'd think, but it seems my old man thought it unlikely that the family, who apparently knew about the relationship between him and Sada just before the disappearance, would go out of their way to do something like this after five years had passed."
He explained.
It seems that from the voluntary hearing at the time of Sada Minoru's disappearance in 1987, it had been leaked from the investigation side that the hearing was being conducted because Sada's family recognized that Minoru and Daikichi had been in contact just before then.
Certainly, using that as a reason to exclude the bereaved family from the list of candidate senders makes sense, and even if he tried to think about the sender now, a conclusion wouldn't suddenly emerge. Nishida decided to avoid going deeper into this for the time being as well.
"I understand. I'll set that story aside for now. So, in the '95 investigation, it was confirmed that on August 10, 1992, your old man called Shinoda, who was at a construction site in Yubetsu Town, and there was some kind of quarrel between the two. Based on Shinoda's phone conversation at that time—although we only have a rough grasp of it—we believe your old man wanted to confirm, just to be sure, whether Sada Minoru, whom the three of them—Motohashi, Kitagawa, and Shinoda—had cooperated to kill and bury, was truly dead. And we assume a scenario where Shinoda, while thinking it was completely impossible for Sada Minoru to be alive, reluctantly went out to the mountains of Ikutahara to check the body... Have you heard anything about this?"
Nishida asked again.
"Does that mean that back in '95, you had investigated my old man's actions from several years prior to that extent, and yet it took this long to finally arrest us... Well, that's fine. Yes, that's right! My old man apparently made him go check."
Masamitsu was amazed, though in a different sense than before—in a bad way this time. However, perhaps he couldn't forgive that remark,
"That's because we couldn't act as we pleased because of the pressure from Oshima and you guys!"
Yoshimura said, unable to hold back his anger even while trying to suppress it. But starting such a thing now wouldn't lead anywhere. For the time being, it could be said that the confirmation for the deduction regarding Shinoda's actions had been obtained.
"That aside, we believe that when Shinoda checked Sada's body, he murdered an unrelated young man who happened to be there and witnessed it. Have you heard anything about that from your old man or anyone else?"
Nishida tried to confirm what he had deduced, or rather, was convinced of, from previous investigations. Regarding that point, although the pickaxe seen as the murder weapon and the wound on the young man Yoneda's skull matched, no other direct information or evidence had emerged, so he had only been able to speak in conjectures. For Nishida, it was a point he had been curious about for a long time and wanted to clarify the facts of somehow.
"My old man mentioned that too... He apparently received a report from Shinoda, who had returned to Kitami after checking Sada's body. He told me just like that. After receiving the report from Shinoda that Sada was definitely dead, his relief was short-lived; when he heard that story, even my old man's remaining conscience apparently wavered at the fact that a completely unrelated person had been sacrificed. My old man had no hesitation in crushing his enemies, but... Between the letter from the person claiming to be Sada and the two events of that day, it was more than enough to worsen my old man's physical and mental condition... It was certain that Sada was dead, but because there was someone who somehow knew that Sada had been murdered and was sending such letters, that point hadn't been resolved at all."
Masamitsu answered plainly but clearly.
"I see. So it put a burden on his heart in two ways..."
There must have been a decline in mental and physical strength due to aging, but Daikichi, who seemed unrepentant about the murder of Sada who blackmailed him or the murder of Takamura who killed his protégé Mende before the war, felt something about the appearance of a "ghost" and the murder of a person unrelated to his interests. This made Nishida feel once again the complexity of human psychology. And when Masamitsu first spoke about Daikichi's mental fatigue accumulating, he said "coupled with other things," and Nishida and Yoshimura realized for the first time here that those "other things" referred to the innocent young man Yoneda being killed by Shinoda as a bystander.
"This is a story I heard directly from Shinoda after my old man's death. Along with the report that Sada's body was there, he was apparently shown the letter that came from Sada by my old man before it was torn up. At that time, Shinoda said he was furious, thinking, 'Why was he fooled by such a bluff?' After all, because my old man made him go check Sada's body, he ended up committing murder with his own hands. He was full of grudges toward me, the son... However, even if he said that, from my old man's perspective, because the interactions between him and Sada were clearly described, it seems he couldn't make such a calm judgment. There might have been the issue of age as well."
Masamitsu wore a wry smile, perhaps remembering that time.
"Was the content that crude? But even in the story just now, it was full of elements that would cause a misunderstanding, right?"
Nishida had a major doubt after hearing Masamitsu's new recollection.
"It seems it's true there were parts that made my old man misunderstand, and rather than the content being crude, I think Shinoda said something like, 'If the Sada we killed were really alive, there would be more descriptions of the situation when we tried to kill him, but there's none of that. No matter how you look at it, he should have been able to tell that someone else who knows that the Sada who was blackmailing the old man went missing after meeting him is writing it while pretending to be Sada'... He said it didn't write at all about Motohashi or Kitagawa, who were together, and it was just content to the effect that the old man, who was being blackmailed, tried to kill Sada but 'I am still alive.'"
"In that case, it means it was content that included information only Sada should know, but was ignorant of the information of the murder itself... Naturally, the story of Oshima didn't come out either?"
Nishida summarized it himself, noting that if you combine the stories of Daikichi and Shinoda, that's the conclusion you reach.
"That's probably it... I heard it was only blackmail against my old man."
Masamitsu nodded several times.
"The sender doesn't seem to be Sada's family, and it's almost impossible for it to be Shinoda or Kitagawa... In that case, I wonder whose doing it is..."
Yoshimura also summarized it again, but since no good ideas seemed to come to him, after saying that much, he just kept saying "hmmm." For Nishida, identifying the sender of the letter was like grasping at clouds at this point and a waste of time, so just as before, he tried to move the conversation further, setting aside Yoshimura's contemplation.
"And, the body of Sada that Shinoda confirmed, Shinoda hid it in a different place immediately after murdering the young man named Yoneda. Did your old man hear about that from Shinoda?"
"I didn't hear it directly from my old man, but after I became president, when I confirmed with Shinoda and Kitagawa whether the matter of Sada was really okay, Shinoda must have said he hid it in a more difficult-to-find place, so there's no doubt Kitagawa knew. I remember it being a story that was also conveyed to my old man."
With this answer, it was confirmed that Kitagawa, who was on a long-term business trip to the United States at the time, had grasped not only the tragedy of the young man Yoneda but also the new body disposal site for Sada Minoru from Shinoda. In other words, regarding the fact that Sada's body at the "Remote Grave Marker" could not be found, Kitagawa, like Shinoda, had absolute confidence since he didn't touch it at all even when he was searching for Yoneda's body as a ghost.
"Did you hear about Shinoda losing Kitagawa's watch, which he had been wearing by mistake, when he went to check?"
Nishida's next question came because he had heard an anecdote from Mita, who was the vice president of the Isaka Group in '95, when he was asking about the time Shinoda lost his watch, saying that "it turned into a big fuss involving the people in the company." However,
"I haven't heard anything about that story from either my old man or Shinoda,"
He was flatly denied. Of course, it might just be that he hadn't heard, but it was undoubtedly a very disappointing answer. However, as if he saw Nishida's disappointment,
"However..."
He added.
"Hmm? 'However,' what?"
Nishida leaned forward slightly and urged him to continue.
"Kitagawa at least knew about it as of '95, that's for sure. Of course, he would have heard it before Shinoda died, so it must have been from before then. In the first place, probably, didn't Shinoda tell him while Kitagawa was in America? In fact, in '95, Kitagawa himself came to ask, 'When Shinoda committed a murder, he lost the commemorative watch with my name on it that I got from the company somewhere, and it would be bad if that turned up with the body of the man Shinoda killed, so let me search for a while.' So as for that story, it's certain that Kitagawa knew about it."
Hearing this statement, it became clear that Isaka Masamitsu had grasped in detail from the beginning the reason why Kitagawa was appearing near the Jomon Tunnel night after night. He said that he had given prior permission for the "search activity" of Kitagawa, who, having sensed the movement of the Jomon Tunnel Research Group, had no choice but to worry about the existence of the watch that had been taken by mistake and then lost at the scene (in reality, it had been stolen by an Isaka Group worker at the Yubetsu Town construction site).
Of course, Kitagawa had an ironclad alibi for the murder of the young man Yoneda, as he was on a long-term business trip to America at the time, but even taking that into account, if the body or the watch were found, there was no doubt it could become an excuse for the police to make extra moves, such as a resurgence of Sada's disappearance case. On this point, Nishida and the others had also speculated during the '95 investigation.
"And so, at that time, you were allowing him what was literally 'executive attendance' (late arrival)?"
Yoshimura asked, based on Kitagawa's attendance situation at the time.
"Well, if it came out that the Isaka Group was involved in a murder case, it could cause various troubles for us too, and in the first place, I didn't expect Kitagawa to do the work of a Managing Director anyway, so I allowed it, saying, 'Go ahead as you please, do it thoroughly.' Well, in the end, it turned out it had been stolen by a former employee of ours, and I was relieved that it wouldn't be traced from there, at that time, that is,"
He said, emphasizing the "at that time."
On the other hand, as for whether Daikichi knew about the loss of the watch, it ultimately didn't become clear from Masamitsu's testimony. However, if the story from the Isaka Group's Vice President Mita was true, Nishida was satisfied himself that Shinoda likely explained it to Daikichi as well. The difficulty of backing up everything from testimony is something that, unfortunately, must be accepted since years have passed and the parties involved are dead.
"What happened after that? Another letter came, didn't it? Since it seems there was a demand for money."
In response to Nishida's question, Masamitsu showed hesitation for the first time. Since the interrogation had been proceeding smoothly, both Nishida and Yoshimura began to search for the reason for that silence, but he began to reveal the facts without much time passing.
"That's right... After a few letters pretending to be Sada Minoru came... was it the end of September? It suddenly changed to blackmail, or rather, a demand for money. I don't know if that was the purpose from the start, but there, my old man, after agonizing over what to do, asked me for advice over the phone, as I've already told you. Of course, as I've already said, I didn't think my old man had gone as far as killing someone, so I was shocked, amazed, and lamented. And from then on, it wasn't in handwriting but apparently became something using characters cut out from newspapers. Thinking about it that way, maybe they didn't intend to demand money from the start..."
"Didn't you keep that letter?"
"Yeah. Since he couldn't make it public anyway, there was no point because he couldn't give it to the police, so it seems he threw it away."
At that statement, Nishida clicked his tongue with a grim face. He wished that at least the letters that clearly had a criminal nature had been kept. Even with newspaper clippings, they can be a hint in an investigation.
"You said you advised him to pay at that time?"
In response to Yoshimura's question on behalf of the bitter Nishida,
"That's right. He had no choice but to pay for the time being, right?"
Masamitsu answered irritably this time.
"Do you know in what form and how much he paid?"
When Nishida continued to demand details,
"As far as I heard when I returned home immediately after, it was a bank transfer. The amount at that time was, I believe, two million..."
He answered.
"Bank transfer? That means the transfer destination was a pseudonym account, or rather, a fake account, right?"
To Yoshimura's natural question, since no extortionist would use their real name,
"My old man used a private investigator to look into the account name, but at least in the Okhotsk region, no such person was found. It must have been the name Fukuda... Fusajiro. It should have been the character for 'bunch' (fusa) as in grapes, then 'next' (ji), and then the character for 'son' (rou) often found in Taro... Anyway, even if someone has a weakness, no one is going to transfer money directly into an account with their real name."
He explained while blinking his eyes.
"That's an old-fashioned name. Age-wise, it sounds like a middle-aged to elderly man..."
Nishida stated his impression, but a memory suddenly came back to him.
"...Wait a minute! That's the name of the fake account for the Isaka family that Mr. Kurano mentioned seven years ago! I see!"
He said to himself and it clicked. Certainly, in the autumn of '95, after Motohashi's involvement in the murder of Sada Minoru became clear, Section Chief Kurano of the Kitami District Headquarters Section 1, considering the possibility that a reward had been provided by the Isaka family or the Isaka Group, had checked bank accounts where funds might have flowed.
In that process, he had found only one fake account that was thought to be for tax evasion by the Isaka family. And the name of that account should have been Fukuda Fusajiro. At the time, it was thought to be a fake account held by the Isaka family, but now it turns out it wasn't a hidden account for the Isaka family, but rather a fake account for the transfer destination to the blackmailer. Yoshimura and Masamitsu were taken aback by Nishida's behavior, but when he roughly explained the circumstances, they showed understanding for Nishida's conduct.