Chapter 200 - Name and Reality 123 {151 Alone} (358-360: Returning to Kitami and Heading for Interrogation)
The following day, Monday, October 21st. Unlike yesterday, which was sunny, it was overcast, but the temperature felt almost the same. From the morning, the two were on the campus of Shoyo University in Sapporo, having used the subway. It was also Takeshita's alma mater, but they were visiting the laboratory of a professor named Taguchi, who researches Ainu culture. They had first gone through Takekuma and asked his sister, who was currently enrolled, to make an appointment with Taguchi in advance, and the visit was to confirm the talk about the Ainu language.
"Without a doubt, 'Memu' means a spring or a place where water wells up, and the pronunciation is the same as 'Men.' It's just as Takekuma-kun said. She studies hard, so she has accurate knowledge, and I wish you would have trusted her."
The statement from the professor, who appeared to be in his mid-50s with white hair and glasses, sounded less like he was vouching for his student's knowledge and more like he was saying, "Don't involve a specialist like me in such a trivial matter."
"It's not that we didn't trust her knowledge, but for the investigation, we have to consult a specialist with a certain amount of authority. It's problematic if it's just a student... Besides, hearsay through her brother, who is a detective, is weak."
Nishida made persistent excuses, but it was true that when treating someone as a criminal, regardless of whether the knowledge turned out to be correct or not, they couldn't afford to be swayed by information from someone who was barely more than an amateur. Clear corroboration is necessary. Just saying "I confirmed it in a dictionary" is not enough. However, as for this "Memu," even if they were to prosecute, it was a matter that wouldn't involve the examination of evidence in court at all, and was merely an aspect of "making a clean break" for Nishida and Yoshimura...
"Is that really going to be such important information?"
Taguchi, who hadn't been told how this story related to what case, didn't hide the fact that he was not just half-doubting but considerably questioning Nishida's statement. In response, Nishida said firmly,
"It's more for the background of the case than for the prosecution, but that's correct."
With that, Taguchi finally settled it by saying, as if to say do as you please, "Well, if you say so, it doesn't matter to me."
"And while we're at it, there's one more thing I'd like to ask you, if you have the time?"
When Nishida spoke further, Taguchi said, "If it's about my field of expertise, please feel free," but by then, he didn't hide his blunt attitude, as if to say, "Just finish up whatever it is quickly and let me get back to my work."
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After finishing the hearing of necessary matters in Taguchi's laboratory, Nishida and Yoshimura thanked Takekuma's sister, who saw them to the gate, and then took the subway to Sapporo Station. Then they took the Okhotsk No. 3 on the way back to Kitami.
Nishida and Yoshimura's reasoning about how the meeting between the Boss and Sada Minoru became involved in the subsequent incident had progressed considerably, but that also meant that the time until they would prosecute Aida Izumi, also known as the Boss, was drawing closer by the minute. During the journey, they didn't exactly have a pleasant chat, but they weren't silent either; they had intermittent small talk about things other than the investigation. It could be said that was the only way to distract themselves.
After 2:00 PM, the Okhotsk No. 3, having finished crossing the pass of the Higashi-Daisetsu mountain range, slid into the platform of Engaru Station and stopped for a few minutes for a change of direction and a change of drivers, so Nishida and Yoshimura took that time to get off onto the platform and breathe the fresh outside air. To the front right of the platform toward Kitami, the Ganbo-iwa, the symbol of Engaru and the origin of its name, stood as if boasting its majesty in the overcast sky.
Since being assigned to the Engaru Station, and after leaving Engaru and being further attached to the Kitami Regional Headquarters, Nishida had looked at this Ganbo-iwa many times. In the midst of eternal nature, there was obviously no visible change in the Ganbo-iwa itself as it simply continued to stand, but Nishida's state of mind and position when looking at it had changed in various ways like the four seasons.
Now, looking at the Ganbo-iwa from the platform, Nishida's heart was cloudy like the weather and cold like the temperature. And when he returns to Engaru in a few days to interrogate the Boss, or perhaps to arrest him, with what state of mind will he be looking at the Ganbo-iwa then? The feeling of being able to imagine it and the feeling of not wanting to imagine it were clashing within Nishida and likely within Yoshimura as well.
However, the two didn't even meet each other's eyes, and after each did some light knee bends on the platform, they exchanged only the words "It's cold" and "It is" in front of the door to return to the train, and hurried from the deck into the warm passenger cabin. Immediately after, as the Okhotsk No. 3 slowly left the platform of Engaru Station, Nishida felt a strange illusion that the vibration of the diesel engine, which should have been the same as always, was shaking his body strongly from under the seat, and he was bewildered. And the impression was that it took an unusually long time to get from Engaru to Kitami. It was also strangely mysterious that he had almost no memory of the Jomon Tunnel, which they must have passed through, perhaps because he had been lost in thought.
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Wednesday, October 23rd, at 2:00 PM. Stopping the car in front of "Yusen," Nishida and Yoshimura entered the shop, which had a sign saying "In Preparation" hanging on the door, and inside, Aida Izumi, also known as the Boss, was doing prep work. Seeing the two, he called out,
"Oh! If it isn't Yo-chan and Nishida-san. That's rare."
However, the vigor of the old days was not felt. The death of his wife, with whom he had been for many years, might have had an effect, but Yoshimura had heard that there was talk of closing the shop after his wife's death, and that might have also had an effect.
"I saw it in the newspapers and news. That Oshima and Isaka Daikichi... well, it didn't write Isaka directly, but I could tell right away. He was doing all sorts of things with him... You two are involved in the investigation of Oshima too, right?"
The Boss seemed to be watching the reports and brought up the topic himself. If the Boss hadn't done anything wrong, they could have given a light reply like, "I can't talk about the details, but yeah, something like that," but now that wasn't possible, which was truly empty. Nishida settled for a non-committal response.
"You two don't look energetic. You're tired from being busy, right?"
The Boss probed with a searching look.
"That's not it. Sorry to bother you when you're busy," Nishida responded, and the Boss lightly washed the knife he was holding, wiped the water off with a cloth, and said,
"You have gloomy faces. Doesn't look like a very good story," as he put the fillets of fish he had prepared into a pot. He seemed to have sensitively sensed something different from usual in Nishida and Yoshimura's attitude.
"Yeah, it's not a good story," Yoshimura also announced with a stiff expression. Hearing that, the Boss took off the headband he had wrapped around his forehead and came out from behind the counter.
"Doesn't look like the kind of talk to have here... Let's talk in the house."
Saying so, he guided the two from the shop to the house in the back. He seemed to have sensed from the unusual atmosphere that there was a very important talk.
Yoshimura seemed to have entered a few times, but it was the first time for Nishida to enter the Boss's house. It was small, but for a widower, the interior was tidy, and in the living room they were shown into, the family altar with the portrait of his wife who died in the summer caught his eye.
After pouring tea for the two sitting at the low table, the Boss started the talk.
"It's about Isaka, right?"
Being suddenly struck at the core, not only Yoshimura but also Nishida couldn't hide their surprise.
"You figured it out well," Nishida's words slipped out unintentionally.
"Yeah... Since seven years ago, I've been prepared for it to turn out like this someday... But it took longer than I thought... To be honest, I thought I might have gotten away with it, but you can't do bad things—the Sun is watching, as they say."
He replied calmly. However, since the two honestly didn't know how to start, the Boss's preemptive confession was a great help.
"When the bank account was frozen and I first saw the security camera image of the man who came in shouting, I thought it was a resemblance and neither I nor Yoshimura could believe it was the Boss himself. But when I realized that the account name 'Fukuda Fusajiro' was the real name of Kitaoji Rosanjin, whom the Boss admires, I unfortunately realized it was indeed him..."
When Nishida spoke while suppressing his emotions, the Boss said,
"Security camera, huh... Indeed, I went and complained a lot in my excitement back then... I shouldn't have gone out of my way to complain... Still, you noticed well that Fukuda Fusajiro was Kitaoji Rosanjin."
The Boss said so and quietly scratched his head.
"Shortly after meeting the Boss, I heard various things about Kitaoji Rosanjin, and then I happened to be in Sapporo when a small exhibition of Kitaoji Rosanjin was being held at a department store... To put it the other way, if I hadn't met the Boss, I probably wouldn't have gone in, but there I learned that Rosanjin was sent to the Fukuda family as an adoptee and temporarily used the Fukuda surname. That was suddenly remembered after seeing the camera footage. Until then, even when I heard the account name, I didn't feel anything at all... Human memory is a mysterious thing."
Nishida spoke about that flash of insight that had been inexplicable even to himself.
"I see... I might have told you two before, but the head chef of the kappou—or rather, the small restaurant—in Abashiri where I first apprenticed was a devotee of Rosanjin. I also just wanted to get a skill quickly and didn't enter this path because I truly liked cooking or aimed to be a chef, but while apprenticing, I learned its depth and began to truly devote myself to cooking. And partly due to the influence of the head chef, I came to adore Rosanjin. With that change in mindset, I decided to save separately from my small earnings to have my own shop in the future, and I gave the name for that account after Kitaoji Rosanjin so that I could become a full-fledged chef, if not a prominent one. Back then, they weren't as strict about identity verification as they are now... The reason I didn't make it a fixed-term deposit was because I figured I'd be withdrawing from it frequently when I ran short."
At that confession from the Boss, mixed with a wry smile, Yoshimura raised a question.
"If that's the case, why didn't you make the name Kitaoji Rosanjin?"
In response, the Boss said, "Yo-chan. Even if it's a bank account, it would be embarrassing to use such a grand name! That's why I chose the most plain one, Fukuda Fusajiro. Besides, Rosanjin had a long period of misfortune from the time he was a kid due to family problems. That part overlaps strangely with me, who was born to my mother after my biological father ran away... Ah. I think I told you before about my father dying in a naval mine accident, but that was like a stepfather to me. We had various reasons for not registering, so he never legally became my father."
When he had explained that far, Yoshimura confessed,
"Boss, if it's that story, we already know quite a bit. That's because this spring, Takeshita-san was interviewing the fisherman who corresponds to your cousin in Saroma, from whom you get your seafood. There, because the Boss and Takeshita-san are acquaintances, he heard about those things. Of course, it's not that the other side was talking away because he liked to, but the purpose of the interview was the 60th anniversary of the mine accident, and the story apparently spread from there... This is also hearsay from Takeshita-san, so there are parts where the circumstances aren't clear."
"I see, so you knew from that... I had no idea Hisa-chan had talked to Takeshita-san. Well, that saves me a lot of trouble since I'm not good at talking. ...So, uh, how far did I get? ...Ah, I see. So, I felt a sense of shared fate with Rosanjin, who couldn't use the surname Kitaoji, which he should have used, for a while, and my life where I had to keep using my mother's surname, Aida, having been born as an illegitimate child... It might be rude to say we're similar, but in those parts, I felt for him... So, the reason I dared to use the name Fukuda Fusajiro for my account name was also because it was a symbol of the era when it wasn't Rosanjin's original name."
The Boss answered, and both Nishida and Yoshimura could accept that.
"I understand that well, but what was your relationship with the actual person, Fukuda Yoshio, with the same Fukuda surname, whose address you used for the account?" Nishida asked.
"Fukuda-san was... a customer who was a regular at the shop during my apprenticeship in Abashiri, a man who ran a daily sundries shop. It's a simple story: after I made the account, I begged Fukuda-san to let me use his address so that mail from the bank would reach me properly. However, since I hadn't been in touch with him, including exchanging New Year's cards, I didn't notice at all that Fukuda-san had passed away nearly three years ago and left it as it was... In the first place, since he had been living alone after his wife died, a letter or something from the bank didn't reach him, and it was discovered that the name was fictitious."
The Boss's tone became regretful. But immediately,
"Well, I suppose the Sun is watching after all..." he repeated the same thing as before. He likely had no choice but to accept it.
On top of that,
"Even Rosanjin, whom I say I want to emulate, wouldn't be happy if I were buying my own ceramics with money extorted from Isaka; he'd think I'm a scoundrel, right?" (Foreshadowing, mentioned later)
He laughed weakly and then voiced a question again.
"But why did the story of the fictitious account go to the police now, several years after that?"
"You saw in the news and newspapers that Isaka Daikichi's son, the current president of the Isaka Group, Isaka Masamitsu, was arrested for fraud in the summer, right? After that, because Isaka's father, Daikichi, was also involved in the murder of Sada, we were interrogating Masamitsu about that too. And in that connection, the story came out that he had been being extorted and had been transferring money for the murder of Sada until just two years ago. However, we had various things to do after that, so it was postponed until now, but since the matter of Oshima Kaiji and others has been settled to some extent, we were investigating the extortion case and... it turned out like this..."
Yoshimura explained the circumstances, though he faltered slightly at the end.
"It came out from Isaka's son... No, no, I'm in no position to blame him."
Although a bitter expression that seemed like it might lead to a grudge appeared for a moment, it immediately turned into a wry smile.
"However, I'll make it clear that Masamitsu had almost no desire for punishment and had no intention of filing a complaint if we hadn't moved," Nishida told him to avoid giving the Boss a misunderstanding.
"No, of course I don't intend to hold a grudge, as I just said," he was told in return.
"In actual fact, within less than a year, looking at the amount you were having him transfer every month, you made it quite cheap considering the Isaka family's economic power at the time, and you were donating to various welfare organizations and such, weren't you? Was it like an act of atonement?"
When Yoshimura asked, the Boss spoke slowly.
"There's no atonement while committing a crime, but it's a hassle so I'll explain it all later, but originally I had a strong feeling that Isaka had snatched away what I should have received, and that was, in a sense, a justification for my misdeed... On top of that, I have to admit that by sharing the portion I had Isaka transfer with people who were suffering economically just as I did when I was a kid, I wanted to lighten my sense of guilt."
Needless to say, the "snatching away" he mentioned he would explain later likely referred to the gold dust that was his original share of the inheritance from his father, Mende Shigeyoshi. From this statement, it could be seen that Sada Minoru and the Boss had been in contact and had heard the circumstances.
"Regarding that matter as well, could you tell us everything in order?" Nishida said.
"Yeah, now that it's come to this, I'll tell you everything. Ask me anything," came the somewhat resigned reply.
※※※※※※※ (Foreshadowing mentioned later)
Revised Version: Straying 8 (Near the very end)
https://ncode.syosetu.com/n5921df/21/