Chapter 158 - Name and Reality 81 {109 Alone} (258–259 Takeshita's Speculation on Motohashi's Psychology 1)
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"...I'm counting on you for this too. This time it's an old man named Yukihashi in Kobe."
"An old man in Kobe, is it... Kobe is a place I'm unexpectedly unfamiliar with, so to be honest, even if it's Oyaji's request, a ready acceptance is tough this time..."
"Even if you say that, I'll be in trouble too! This time the story involves a turf war for our Goda Shokai, so it's absolutely necessary to get rid of him. I have no choice but to ask you!"
"Being relied upon is a great honor, but if I fail, it might cause trouble for Aoi too."
"Even so, you're supposed to be expelled, so that point is safe, right? Besides, Tabata is also giving me his opinion that we have to consider having you return depending on your work soon."
"Uncle Tabata is!? ...That's honestly a welcome story for me. However, that's exactly why I hesitate to accept with a half-hearted feeling."
"Anyway, for my part, there's no better person than you!"
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The conversation was recorded from the middle, likely because it was an incoming call from Takigawa, but at this point, the conversation between the two cut off for a while. It was silent, but Takeshita had the illusion that a strange tension was being transmitted to the listener, even with a time lag of more than ten years. And the talk resumed from Motohashi.
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"...Well, if Oyaji goes that far, I'll accept this time. However, if the gun is the same, the cops will definitely have caught on from the rifling marks. The more I repeat it, the higher the risk of getting caught becomes, so please keep that in mind."
"You haven't changed the gun?"
"Even if I'm basically doing it at point-blank range, if it's not something I'm used to handling, it's too dangerous to help! Not only is failure not allowed, but Oyaji should know that things like accidental discharges are the most dangerous."
"I suppose..."
"Anyway, please keep that in mind."
"I understand well. Also, the down payment and reward will be as before. Since I asked for the impossible, I'll make the down payment 200 and the success reward 600. I'll have it ready by the day after tomorrow."
"Thank you very much."
"Then, I'm counting on you! I'm expecting great things."
"Understood. I'll do my best to live up to your expectations."
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"...What the hell is going on that nothing is moving even after it's become! When are you going to carry it out!"
"Oyaji! That old man Yukihashi, for someone who's supposed to be retired, he's incredibly active and goes out a lot, and his behavior patterns are often unreadable! I have to observe a bit more."
"When will you know?"
"This isn't something that's decided by my convenience."
"Yukio, for the sake of your future too, it's better to get rid of him as soon as possible, you know?"
"I know. I'll need you to wait at most another month or so."
"A whole month!? Aren't you observing a bit too much?"
"To finish him off for sure, it's a period that's absolutely necessary. There's a housekeeper and such, so I have to avoid involving them."
"Just get rid of the help along with him!"
"...No, no, if I involve unnecessary people, it just increases the elements for getting caught... Not only is there a possibility of failing to finish him off, but as the number of targets increases, the possibility of the time until I escape being taken increases."
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Motohashi was giving those kinds of justifications, but Takeshita speculated that he probably sincerely didn't want to involve unrelated people.
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"If you go that far, it's true I have no choice but to leave it to you... but I need you to do it as soon as possible."
"I'm well aware of that."
"Umu, sorry for taking up your time."
"No, no... Well then, I'll contact you again if anything happens."
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"...What's the situation?"
"I haven't reached the point where I can decide on the execution date, but it'll probably be one of the Fridays."
"Friday? Can you do it within this month? I have to do something about the time limit you told me before, after all."
"..., I'm thinking of either Friday the 19th or the 26th."
"The 19th or the 26th? It's a promise!"
"I'll manage somehow."
"I'll be waiting for the good news! Right, I'm hanging up."
"Excuse me."
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And that was the end of the recorded conversation. After this, Motohashi would murder the elderly former company executive and then be arrested in a form close to a de facto surrender. Because the conversation ended so abruptly, it was difficult to immediately connect it with the "upheaval" that followed.
"Still, that Takigawa, his coarse language isn't that much, but as expected of the top of a huge yakuza organization, he has a way of speaking that makes you feel a high-pressure atmosphere between the lines... An atmosphere that doesn't allow for 'no' is oozing out even from a phone conversation. It seemed Yukio regretted the murder in the end, but did the coercion that made him regret it lead to him exposing things in this way?"
When Kuroda spoke first like that,
"I've never directly exchanged words with him either, but well, since he's a man who moves a yakuza organization of that scale, I think the pressure around there is in a different league,"
Kuboyama also followed, nodding.
However, as for Takeshita, that reason was likely different from the truth, and he had to correct it.
"I think the fact that Motohashi-san is bringing Takigawa's crimes to light like this now is almost certainly not the reason. Certainly, the fact that he was instructed to commit murder against his will might be a remote cause. But Motohashi-san himself, even if he felt pangs of conscience for the murder itself, it's a more correct recognition to say that he held his loyalty to Takigawa as something separate."
Being suddenly countered by Takeshita like this,
"Even if you say that, no other cause comes to my mind,"
Kuboyama said with a bewildered face.
"The key, in terms of order, is the second incident in 1987 among the series of incidents, we believe. As I said earlier, this incident was also the true purpose for which I was instructed by Nishida to come here for the investigation. And I'm convinced that the evidence discovered this time will also become a great achievement."
Saying so, Takeshita again opened the part of the note where the details of the Sada Minoru murder were written.
"The one where that Oshima was involved?"
Kuroda confirmed while watching him, so,
"Yes, exactly as you say. I think both of you probably haven't made a clear distinction, but actually, this incident is one with a completely different character from the other four incidents for which Motohashi-san was sentenced to death in court."
He told them.
"Ah? If I remember correctly, after Aniki's death penalty was decided, when he confessed everything he was involved in, was this the murder he newly confessed? I have some memory of something like that!"
"Now that you mention it, there was a bit of a complicated development, wasn't there, when Yukio confessed..."
Since Kuboyama noticed it, Kuroda's memory of that time also seemed to be revived.
"Exactly! You understood? Then it saves me the trouble of explaining in detail! After Motohashi-san's appeal was rejected and his death penalty was first finalized, it was for the other four cases, excluding this second incident that Oshima was involved in. As written here, regarding this second murder, because he buried the body in the mountains so the murder itself wouldn't be discovered at the request of Takigawa and Oshima, the police hadn't been able to find the body until just before Motohashi-san's death penalty was finalized. So, they couldn't conclude it was a murder, and until then, it was treated as just a missing person case."
Saying this, he gauged the expressions of the two to measure their level of understanding, and recognizing there was no problem, he resumed the talk.
"However, in the process of Motohashi-san confessing about the murder cases that were the subject of that verdict after his death sentence was finalized in September 1995, he further confessed even to this second murder case that hadn't been discovered. To be more precise, this confession was rather the true purpose of the series of confessions... So, it caused a huge uproar involving the Osaka Prefectural Police, the National Police Agency, and the Hokkaido Prefectural Police. By the way, in this case, a separate trial was held, and Motohashi-san was newly sentenced to life imprisonment. That said, since his death penalty had already been decided, it was practically meaningless..."
To this kind of explanation from Takeshita,
"So, how does that connect with this revenge drama of Yukio's?"
Kuroda asked a reasonable question.
"Regarding that, it's a bit of a hassle, so please listen carefully."
Takeshita prefaced it that way and began the explanation.
"First, before explaining this matter, there's a premise, so I'll explain that first. Around the early summer of 1995, when Motohashi-san was about to confess, the murder of a young man from Kurashiki who was attending a university in Kansai was discovered at the precinct where I was at the time. While investigating that, by early August, we had made a speculation that the fact that Sada Minoru had been missing from the autumn of '87 to the summer of '95 was somehow the cause of that young man being murdered in '92. To be specific, our speculation was that three years before 1995—that is, in the summer of '92—that young man happened to witness a certain man digging up the body of Sada Minoru, the second murder Motohashi-san committed in 1987, and that young man was murdered by that man for the purpose of silencing him. And the 'certain man' who committed that murder was, we believed, this man Shinoda in the diary, who was a further subordinate of the man named Isaka who had assisted Motohashi-san in murdering Sada in '87. To be precise, it's a man with this character."
Saying that much, Takeshita pointed to the relevant part of Motohashi's diary and, at the same time, tore a piece from his memo pad and wrote "Shinoda" on it. Up to this point, the two seemed to understand and nodded lightly.
"However, the Shinoda in question had unfortunately already died at the time of the investigation in '95. So, Kitagawa, who was also a subordinate... oops, the character is accurately this Kitagawa. It seems Motohashi-san didn't correctly recognize the character, but well, that's unavoidable."
Saying so, since Motohashi had written "Kitagawa" (T/N: using a different 'Kita' kanji) in the note, he rewrote it as "Kitagawa" on the scrap of the memo pad from earlier to correct it, and continued the talk.
"So, we were trying to investigate that Kitagawa for a different incident to find out the truth behind the young man's murder and the truth behind Sada Minoru's missing person case. However, in the middle of the interrogation, he had a cerebral hemorrhage and fell into a coma just like that... Furthermore, in the autumn, it was judged there was almost no prospect of further recovery, and he died after the life support system was removed. Here, the case reached a complete deadlock. ...Are you okay so far?"
"Yeah, I can keep up somehow, for now. How about you, Kuboyama?"
Kuroda said so while checking with Kuboyama, to which he replied,
"I'm OK for now too. Even if it's only somehow..."
He said with a bit of a lack of confidence at the end.
"Then, the continuation. Isaka himself, who gave specific instructions for the murder to Motohashi-san, had also already died several years before this point, and by early August 1995, a situation had already been established where all the people directly involved in this murder, except for Motohashi-san, were either dead or in a coma with almost no prospect of recovery. By the way, we had long ago grasped that Oshima had applied political pressure saying 'Don't do anything unnecessary' when the police moved at the time Sada went missing in the autumn of '87. However, at the time, we hardly thought he was involved in the form of a 'request' for the incident..."
While saying so, Takeshita himself had somehow speculated that Oshima might be directly involved at the stage when he first got involved with Motohashi at the Osaka Detention House.
"Furthermore, the secretary named Nakagawa who met Motohashi-san at Kitami Station was not directly involved in the murder, and although he is alive, he hadn't even surfaced on the investigative lines at the time. However, only now has he been arrested in Kitami for a different murder case in which the aforementioned Oshima was arrested. In addition, regarding the man who took Motohashi-san to the coffee shop, he has also already died, but we suspect he was almost uninvolved, as he probably didn't grasp the details of the incident. To repeat, in short, the conclusion is that because all the people directly involved in the execution of Sada's murder had died by late September 1995 except for Motohashi-san, it was a state where there was no way to interrogate them anymore; that's how it was. Of course, since Kitagawa was in a coma, it was almost in that state as of August, as I said earlier... And as for the investigation, it had become a situation where it was tough to reach the facts unless Motohashi-san confessed the truth."
Takeshita said that much, gauged the situation of the two, and since there were no particular questions, he opened his mouth again.
"To go back a bit, as I said earlier, we suspected that the young man's murder and Sada Minoru's disappearance were connected somewhere. And as the investigation progressed little by little, it also became felt by us who were in charge of the investigation that Oshima's side had begun to interfere even in the investigation of that young man's murder; that was also in August '95. The investigation team increasingly began to suspect that Oshima was deeply involved in something and the incident. Even if they didn't think it was direct... Then, around the same time, it seems Oshima's side also began to contact Motohashi-san in the detention house through a journalist of the Tozai Shinbun with whom they had a close relationship. Feeling that our hands were... albeit gradually... closing in, they probably envisioned a form of nipping the dangerous buds in the bud by recommending certain preparations or schemes to Motohashi-san, whose death sentence was likely to be finalized in September."
"Nipping the dangerous buds?"
To Kuroda's natural question,
"I'll explain in detail later, but it's exactly about making Motohashi-san confess—no, making him confess—all the murders he was involved in. In that confession, it wasn't just that Sada's murder was included, but rather that was the true aim... It's fine if you don't understand well now. I'll do it in detail later."
When he gave that final reminder, both Kuroda and Kuboyama seemed dissatisfied, but they backed down for the time being.