Chapter 203 - Name and Reality 126 {154 Solo} (365-366: The Reason for the Gap in Time)
"Why didn't you tell Sada's family or the police at that time? You had received a letter that even contained reasons that could be inferred as a dispute with Isaka, so if you had told us including that, the police's response might have been different, you know?"
Yoshimura's tone was clearly that of someone suppressing anger. In fact, if they had seen the content of Sada's letter, it would have been clear that it was not just a simple dinner for financing between Sada and Isaka, and the reason for the disappearance should have been more suspected of criminality.
On the other hand, even if that were the case, since Isaka had sufficient suspicion at the point of financing in the first place, but the investigation was practically stopped due to Oshima's intervention, there was a part where Nishida and the others could not clearly assert whether the situation would have fundamentally changed even if Boss had testified and submitted the letter as evidence.
"Certainly, as Yo-chan says, thinking back now, it might have been better to report to the police or the family at that time... But you see, I had strong feelings toward the police back then..."
Boss's expression when he spoke that far was truly bitter, but he continued.
"I tried confirming with a station attendant I knew, and he said the old man at the inn called Shinoyama nearby had contacted them saying 'He was staying at our place,' so I thought there was no need for me to go out of my way to identify myself, and I just kept quiet. After that, I hurried back home, turned the house upside down looking for the letter, and when I looked at it again, I thought, 'As I thought, wasn't he erased by Isaka?'..."
To this statement by Boss,
"When you say you had feelings, did something unpleasant happen with the police?"
Nishida asked.
"Yeah. It's that story about the naval mine accident where Inazo-no-tou-chan died... I was a kid then, but I could hear the adults' talk well... The Station Chief of the Engaru Station at the time decided to go out of his way to do the explosion disposal on the beach, right? On top of that, he mobilized the local fire brigade (Author's Note: accurately, the civil defense corps), gathered spectators, and then that pathetic display... Inazo-no-tou-chan, on top of being made to die in the line of duty, was a member of the Station Chief's staff from an outsider's perspective because he was a police officer. Even after he died, all sorts of accusations from the local people were thrown at my mother... If the Station Chief hadn't done something unnecessary, and if Inazo-no-tou-chan hadn't been a cop, my mother might not have had to suffer. On top of that, after that, I only saw cops who were noisy about trivial things like stupid speeding violations or parking violations for cars customers parked in front of the shop. I'm not in the mood to cooperate with the police at all."
The story Boss told as if spitting it out was something they mostly grasped from the special feature article in the Doho about the naval mine accident written by Takeshita and from Oshima's testimony regarding the immediate aftermath of the accident during interrogation, so there were parts where they could sympathize with Boss's feelings.
At the time, the bereaved families of the local civil defense corps and others who were caught in the accident lost their breadwinners and struggled in hardship thereafter. At the time of the accident, the police officers who were at the scene were victims and, at the same time, received considerable bashing from the locals as being on the side of those responsible.
"Does that mean that even after meeting us, in your heart, you always looked at us with those eyes?"
Yoshimura was speaking in a way that was obviously shocked rather than asking, but,
"It's true that at first, when I heard you were cops, there's no mistake that I didn't think very well of Yo-chan and the others. But you see, after I came to know everyone's character, it's a natural story, but I was made to realize that there are good guys among cops too, and I came to change my thinking. That was around '94."
He was excused by Boss and seemed to calm down a bit.
"Well, if it weren't for that, there's no way you would have cooperated with our investigation back then."
Nishida also said so, but in fact, in 1995, the investigation starting from Yoshimi's accidental death, which was the beginning of the case, would likely not have progressed without the information brought by Boss. However, although it was a case of getting what he deserved, there was the irony that it also led to Boss strangling his own neck in the end...
"It's as Nishida-san says. If I thought you were enemies, I wouldn't have cooperated at all... Well, in the end, that might not have been good for me, but that's fate... However, I couldn't say anything about the Sada matter... Because I was extorting Isaka with that... I feel sorry about that. But it's not an excuse, as I said about fate earlier, in the back of my mind, there was also a bit of a thought that if it was found out while I was cooperating, that would be that... Well, I don't think you'll believe me since I kept extorting money after that too, though..."
Boss also affirmed Nishida's thinking and, at the same time, seemed to have a kind of halfway resolution that if he was caught because his cooperation backfired, he would accept it.
"So, even if Boss thought Sada had likely been finished off by Isaka, if the extortion of Isaka Daikichi by Boss started from around the summer of the following year, '92, as far as we grasp, can you tell me what on earth happened in the meantime?"
Here, Nishida tried to correct the course.
"To be honest, even if Sada had been killed by Isaka, I thought it was a pity in its own way, but at that time, I had no intention of doing anything directly. I didn't want to cooperate with the police, and I didn't want to get involved in troublesome things. You understand my feelings a bit too, right? Not all of it, but some. Besides, it was a time when I was worried about whether to close my shop and become a hired chef at some restaurant, so my mind was going in that direction too."
"Eh? You were planning to close Yusen?"
When Yoshimura involuntarily reacted to Boss's confession,
"Yeah. To be honest, I was thinking about it seriously,"
he answered softly.
"Why was that? It's not like customers weren't coming in, right?"
Nishida asked suspiciously.
"I was working hard to provide things cheaply to the customers and make them happy, but after all, various strains took their toll... That said, it would be bad to raise prices, and I got stuck in a rut in my heart."
He replied.
In fact, Nishida had felt since he first visited with Yoshimura and the others that Yusen's menu was considerably reasonable considering the taste and ingredients. Even though he sometimes procured seafood from his cousins and others, Nishida had to admit now that he had been pushing himself quite hard.
"Good grief, how stupid. Someone who complains about a slight price increase isn't a customer to begin with, frankly speaking."
Yoshimura rebuked Boss's strange good-naturedness in a way, but since that very Boss would commit a terrible misdeed immediately after, there must have been a lament for that gap.
"However, when it came to the summer of the following year ('92), Boss ended up extorting Isaka Daikichi—or rather, sending a letter to Isaka making it look like it was from Sada. What kind of change of heart was there for that?"
Ignoring the frustrated Yoshimura, Nishida repeated almost the same question due to the development of the story.
"That is..."
When he said that, Boss said,
"Sorry, but let me have a smoke,"
and took a cigarette out of the case on the low table and lit it. The white smoke Boss exhaled moved forward slightly, then immediately rose slowly toward the ceiling, repeatedly losing its shape midway.
The analogy that "life is like bubbles (utakata)" is often said, but now, the cigarette smoke disappearing before his eyes also felt like bubbles to Nishida. In his life as a police officer and a detective up to now, it went without saying that there were many times he felt bad being involved in a case, but he had never faced a suspect while harboring such complex emotions as today.
After a total of seven years, and practically one year and two months of concentrating on the investigation, a conclusion that could not be called despair but was not happy was waiting beyond the successful resolution of the series of cases. Unfortunately, if you called it fate, that's what it was. He wished that what was happening before his eyes today, right now, was a momentary illusion like bubbles. At the moment he began to harbor such a thought, Boss crushed the cigarette into the ashtray and opened his heavy mouth.
"I think it was around early summer... Among my regulars who still come often, there's a president of a small construction company called Matayoshi Kogyo. That person has dealings with the Isaka Group, or rather, enters for construction as a subcontractor, and I'd heard bits and pieces about the Isaka Group from long ago. So, according to what that Matayoshi-san said, the president of another construction company also doing subcontracting work had dabbled in stocks of a real estate company or something during the bubble and lost big. Due to cash flow issues, he negotiated to have the accounts receivable for construction costs before the due date paid by the Isaka Group as soon as possible. However, even though it was before the due date, Isaka's president—that is, Daikichi—refused it, and that company went under and fled in the night... That company also had considerably long dealings with the Isaka Group, and even if the bubble had burst, the Isaka Group, which should have still had leeway, should have been able to pay about 10 million normally. He was grumbling that there's no mistake they contributed to the Isaka Group getting big until then... So, hearing that story, I also felt a kind of righteous indignation, or something like that? I got really angry. A feeling of wanting to punish him a bit gradually reared its head. There was the possibility that Sada was erased by Isaka, and if Sada's story was true, there was also the anger that my gold dust had been snatched away."
After Boss said that, he clenched his fist.
"So, you wrote a letter pretending that Sada, who was likely dead, was alive..."
"That's right, Yo-chan! If a letter comes from a man you're supposed to have killed, you'll be surprised, right? So, I imitated the handwriting of the letter that came from Sada and made a text to Isaka like 'I'm actually alive' to threaten him. I also wrote in that Sada and Isaka met on the day of the postmark date in the letter and talked about Mende's (T/N: my father's) child. Imitating the handwriting was useful because during my apprenticeship at the restaurant in Abashiri, I was made to practice the menu by the head chef and was trained to write by looking at samples. In the first place, a chef has to have good handwriting to move up, so I practiced thoroughly from brushes to pens. The fact that Sada himself had quite fine handwriting actually made it easier to imitate. And I made a further copy of the copy of the letter Sada sent me, which he said his older brother wrote, and put it in."
Boss was being restrained because of the situation, but it seemed to the two that he was speaking a bit proudly. And Nishida had also felt that the handwriting on the menu hanging on the wall was good since he first entered Yusen, but he hadn't thought for a moment at that time that it had been useful for such a thing.
In '87, when Sada Minoru first extorted Isaka Daikichi by letter, copies of the deed and Toru's letter were enclosed. In the '92 letter from Boss, a copy of Toru's letter (accurately, a further copy) was enclosed, and along with the handwriting and the outline of the dinner, it could be imagined that it had a considerable impact, combined with Masamitsu's testimony.
At the same time, when he obtained the testimony from Masamitsu, he hadn't thought that deeply at the time about why there was no copy of the deed in the '92 extortion letter, but now that it had turned out like this, it was a very clear answer (foreshadowing later).
"But Boss, you didn't have confirmation that Isaka had seen Sada's writing style, did you?"
When Nishida confirmed,
"Yeah. Certainly, I didn't have that. But if Sada was extorting Isaka, there was a possibility he was exchanging documents or taking memorandums somewhere, and well, that didn't have much meaning. However, since I knew the date Sada and Isaka met from the letter, that was enough."
He answered.
In fact, since Masamitsu had testified that Sada had first sent a letter to Isaka, Isaka should have known Sada's handwriting as Boss had read, and that had increased the credibility of Boss's bluff.
"You sent letters like that several times?"
Yoshimura questioned.
"I don't remember clearly, but I probably sent them about two or three times like that? Then, about two weeks after the first letter, when President Matayoshi came to the shop, he said, 'Lately, Isaka's condition is strange. He's aged considerably, and he doesn't have that greasy, glaring feeling he used to have.' I was convinced that he had definitely killed Sada and my letter was hitting him quite hard. I should have stopped there, but with the shop's cash flow issues, I guess I was tempted... On top of that, if Sada's story was true, there was something I was originally supposed to receive from my father, and that had been snatched away by Isaka, right? I had it in my head that it would be excusable to recover at least that much."
Certainly, in terms of money, it was unavoidable that Boss misunderstood that he had a "loan" to Isaka, as long as he didn't grasp the truth. However, he chose extortion as the means of recovery, and as an absolute fact, Isaka had at least kept the gold dust without exchanging it for Boss's sake, so this matter could never be justified. However, neither Nishida nor Yoshimura touched on that—no, they couldn't touch on it—and moved the story forward.
"The reason you demanded 2 million in the first extortion was influenced by the estimated amount written in this letter from Sada, wasn't it?"
"Yo-chan, there's that, but also, when I set up my mother's grave, I didn't have much money, so I set it up with cheap stone. The temperature difference here in Engaru is extreme, right? So within twenty years, cracks appeared in the stone, and I'd been thinking for a long time about setting it up again with a new one... Since good stone costs several million, I asked a stonemason I knew, and he told me, 'If you have 2 million, I'll procure a particularly good one for you,' so there was that too."
They knew from the transfer destination of the extorted money that it had been used for his mother's tombstone, but the two learned that the use had been clear from the beginning.
Foreshadowing later
Revised Edition: Name and Reality 42 (At the beginning)
https://ncode.syosetu.com/n5921df/119/