Chapter 65 - Light and Shadow 44 {Combined 46/47} (215-216, 217-218 Infiltrating Charmant)
After that, while having some idle talk, since they had heard the story through, Takeshita and Kurosu decided to withdraw. The time was already past 3:00 PM. The old man Koshiba probably had bad legs, so he saw them off while remaining seated in the drawing room, and it was the housekeeper who had greeted them who saw the two to the entrance.
Here, Takeshita asked in a low voice,
"I'm very sorry to ask, but is Koshiba-san's wife healthy?"
"No... A few years after I started working here, about 20 years ago, she passed away."
"I see... Since I didn't see her, I thought she might be hospitalized or deceased... What about his children?"
"That is... He had two daughters, but both of them, within the last five years..."
"I see... I'm sorry for asking such an unpleasant thing."
Takeshita apologized frankly.
"He was always a man who bragged a lot, but after losing his wife and then his daughters, I feel his difficult side has become stronger. I wonder if it's not just a matter of age, but that he's lonely..."
Listening to the housekeeper's words, the two put on their shoes, bowed deeply, and left the entrance.
"Senior Staff, why did you ask that?"
Kurosu asked with a curious face after they had walked for a while on the narrow road with no proper sidewalk, typical of Tokyo.
"It has nothing to do with the case. It's just that, from what we talked about, he wasn't as bad a person as the taxi driver said, so I wondered if there was a reason he came to be thought of that way..."
"I see... Even so, hearing that kind of thing, well, living a long life isn't necessarily a good thing, is it? Especially for men."
Kurosu said that, stopping for a moment and looking back slightly at the way they had come.
"That's true too."
Takeshita said in a volume that Kurosu could barely hear, and then, confirming a taxi was coming from behind, he raised his hand as if nothing had happened.
"Sorry, but to the Prestige Station Hotel."
As soon as he got into the taxi seat, Takeshita told the driver the destination, and,
"Eh? What about Meiho University? Is it impossible today?"
Kurosu asked.
"It's already 3:00, right? There are things I want to do before we stake out Takagaki at that Charmant place, and I want to summarize Koshiba's story. There's also something I want to ask the Team Leader."
While Takeshita was replying a bit grumpily, the driver confirmed,
"Prestige Station Hotel, is that right?"
"Ah, that's fine."
He gave a polite smile as if to cover it up, and the car headed for the hotel.
Upon returning to the hotel room, he first reported the investigation details from the morning to Sawai in Engaru. Sawai, having already sent them to Tokyo with full delegated authority, didn't offer any particular opinions and gave Takeshita words to the effect of "do as you see fit."
After that was finished, he contacted Nishida, who was at the investigation headquarters in Kitami. Since he had just received a contact earlier, he could have waited until after going to Charmant, but Takeshita had something he wanted to confirm after hearing Koshiba's story.
First, he explained in detail the story he heard from Koshiba, and then he conveyed to Nishida what he had thought. As for Nishida, there was not much room for major doubt regarding Takeshita's logical reasoning. However, Takeshita's speculation that an "encounter" with Isaka might have been involved in the process of Kuwano Kinya becoming Tadokoro Yasuo and then Oshima Kaiji, and in Oshima's early transformation, was quite interesting to Nishida as well.
Also, although it wasn't related to the main thread of the case, the term "Kaito-ism," which represented the character of Oshima's "mentor" Kaito Takumi, left a strong impression on Takeshita, so he conveyed that to Nishida too. Nishida also generally knew the public evaluation of a man named Kaito Takumi, but he came to recognize again from Takeshita's story that it was something that made a close acquaintance say that much.
"By the way, there's something I definitely want the Team Leader to confirm."
"What is it? Tell me anything."
"It's about Isaka... Since Kuwano and Isaka were working together in Ikutahara, I think there's a high possibility they naturally knew about each other's origins to some extent."
"I see, now that you mention it, there is that possibility."
"Looking at how Oshima went to Abashiri while harboring anxiety, and then ran for election and later seemed to regret it, if my reasoning is correct and Oshima and Isaka encountered each other during the election period, I'm thinking that maybe Oshima hadn't speculated that Isaka was in Kitami. I believe Isaka started the Isaka Group in 1950—err, Showa 25—so he should have already been a resident of Kitami by the time Oshima returned to Hokkaido. However, if he didn't know that, I thought it would be better to check Isaka's place of origin... Judging from the labor situation in Ikutahara, although there's a high possibility he was a drifter in his youth, at least in the place of birth on the family register, it should be linked to the actual one."
"In other words, the residency history of Isaka that the Kuwano of that time had heard didn't link up with the Kitami-Abashiri region, so he thought he wouldn't be found out if it was Doutou?"
"Exactly!"
Takeshita raised his voice.
"However, if we check the family register, it will be at the Kitami City Hall, so Isaka might find out later."
Nishida conveyed his concern, but immediately,
"No, no, it's already obvious that the investigation has reached Isaka, so there's no need to worry about him finding out now..."
He immediately retracted his statement.
"So, can I ask you to do that?"
Takeshita repeated his request without commenting on Nishida's "delusion" one by one.
"Understood. It's a bit tough today, but I'll manage it by tomorrow evening."
"I'm counting on you. Also, I've decided not to go to Meiho University today after all. There's not much time left until we go to Charmant."
"That can't be helped. I'll leave it to your pace."
"Yes, I'll take you up on that."
Takeshita said that and laughed, then hung up the phone.
As soon as he finished reporting, Takeshita spent about two hours skimming through the books he had bought. It's impossible to grasp everything. He just wanted to get an overview so that if he encountered Takagaki, it could serve as a starting point for a conversation. Kurosu went to pick up a certain item he had ordered from a shop near the hotel before leaving in the morning, and after returning, he prepared by alternately reading the books Takeshita wasn't reading.
On that day (November 16), after 8:00 PM, there were two figures in Shinjuku Golden Gai who seemed to be "up-from-the-country" types looking for Charmant. They had heard the general location from Nishida, but it was only hearsay, and the actual appearance was different from what they expected, so they were a bit lost.
"Ah, found it! It's here."
Kurosu pointed to a shop with a somewhat dingy exterior.
"Yeah, this point is just as I heard,"
Takeshita also muttered as he opened the shop door.
"Welcome."
A low voice came from the middle-aged bartender at the counter. This was also as he had heard from Nishida beforehand. He believed the master's name was Saito, but for a stranger to suddenly call out to him would only make the other party wary.
"Well, for now, two whisky and waters, two fingers each."
They sat at the counter while taking off their coats.
"It's your first time here, isn't it?"
While glancing at them to confirm, the master asked.
"Yeah, I'm in Tokyo on a business trip. I wanted to see what Golden Gai is like, so I brought my subordinate along to take a look, though I wouldn't call it just 'window shopping'."
"Is that so... It's quite cluttered, isn't it?"
He asked with a wry smile.
"Well, I'd heard about it to some extent, so I thought it would be like this."
"If that's the case, then fine... By the way, why our shop out of so many? It's not particularly close to the entrance, nor does it stand out. Well, occasionally there are customers like that who just drop in."
Takeshita was a bit bewildered by the unexpected turn of the conversation. He hadn't anticipated an ordinary person who would "pursue" them this much. He hadn't heard from Nishida that he was this type either. No, in Nishida's case, he had actually talked to them after inferring various things from the conversation between Nishida and Yoshimura, so he might have been a person with this "tendency," but Nishida, who told him, must not have imagined he would ask so bluntly.
"No, not for any particular reason, just somehow..."
Takeshita tried to be vague.
"No, it doesn't really matter... Around last month, two people wandered in too. I think they said they were detectives. It wasn't for some investigation or anything, that seemed to be by chance too."
Since he suddenly brought up a topic that was likely about Nishida and Yoshimura, the two flinched, although they weren't doing anything particularly wrong.
"Ho. Such a thing happened..."
While he was saying that, Saito served the two their whisky and waters. Then he began chatting with another customer.
"It feels a bit different from what I expected. I got a bit flustered."
Kurosu whispered to Takeshita.
"Yeah, I got a bit flustered too,"
Takeshita also responded. However, if the two of them just drank by themselves, they wouldn't be able to gather information. The two timed their move.
"Master, a gin and tonic!"
"A highball for me."
Timing it for when the master had finished a part of his conversation with a regular customer, the two placed their orders. He skillfully made each order and handed the gin and tonic to Takeshita and the highball to Kurosu.
"Here you go!"
"By the way, Master, do you have any snacks?"
"Yes, we have nuts, snacks, salami, and so on."
When Kurosu asked, he answered nonchalantly.
"Ah, I'm not looking for something stylish like that; do you have any komai (T/N: saffron cod)?"
The subordinate immediately moved into the planned "action."
"Komai? No, we don't have that here. Even so, are you from Hokkaido?"
The master fell perfectly into the "trap" Takeshita and Kurosu had planned beforehand. Komai is a synonymous term for a delicacy often eaten in Hokkaido, and it's also the name of a small fish in the cod family. Dried ones are prized as snacks for alcohol or as treats, and they are eaten with mayonnaise or shichimi chili pepper. It's a type of dried fish not well known outside of Hokkaido residents.
"Eh, how did you know?"
Kurosu asked innocently.
"Well, you can't get komai in Honshu—no, 'naichi' (T/N: some older Hokkaido residents call Honshu 'naichi,' but the reality is there are almost none after the 2000s). That's a dried fish unique to Hokkaido."
He answered. Of course, they knew that perfectly well. The plan they had worked out beforehand was a success. All that was left was to proceed according to plan.
"I see. I didn't know since it hardly ever comes to Honshu."
"So, where in Hokkaido are you from? Are both of you?"
"Well, we work for a food wholesale company in Sapporo, but I'm from Iwamizawa, and this guy is from Otaru."
As expected, they avoided the place name "Engaru" that Nishida had already spoken to the master Saito, and answered by changing it to Iwamizawa, where Takeshita was actually born, and Otaru, Kurosu's actual hometown.
"Iwamizawa and Otaru... I've never lived in Iwamizawa, but I lived in Otaru for a period in elementary school. My father was a teacher, so because of that..."
"Master, you're from Hokkaido too?"
Kurosu skillfully entered the conversation.
"That's why I talked about komai, right? I was in Hokkaido until high school."
"Is that so! That really makes me feel a sense of kinship. Well then, to celebrate our chance encounter, I'll treat the master, so let's have a toast! Master, you have something to drink too."
Prompted by Takeshita,
"Then, I'll have a highball."
He responded with a smile. And as soon as he made the highball,
"Cheers!"
The three clinked their glasses.
"By the way, what brings you to Tokyo?"
"We're with a food-related wholesale company, and we're here to develop some new clients. The economy in Hokkaido isn't good either, so the company policy was to take the plunge and come to Honshu..."
Since he had already decided with Kurosu what kind of disguise to use, he was flustered by the unexpected flow at first, but Takeshita was able to handle this part calmly.
"You're not very familiar with Tokyo, are you?"
"Yeah, it's my first time coming here, so it's quite a struggle..."
"That's true, if you're doing something like door-to-door sales in an unfamiliar land, it must be tough."
The master expanded the conversation while sipping his highball, going along with the false setting.
"Well, yeah... But everything I see is new and fresh, I feel like I'm on a school trip. Actually, it's my first time in Tokyo since my school trip."
"Even if you say that, Sapporo is a big city too, isn't it?"
"No, the scale is different!"
Kurosu said in an unusually exaggerated tone, but it wasn't necessarily humility.
"Now that you mention it, the scale of the city is indeed on a different level. Since I've lived here for over 20 years, I might have become numb to it myself..."
Adding the personal information about the master he had obtained from Nishida beforehand, Takeshita felt a sense of melancholy in that statement too.
"20 years... Has Tokyo been a good city for you, Master?"
"Hmm, I wonder. It feels like a city where countless dreams and their 'mukuro' (T/N: corpses/remains) live on, looking back."
Because he used a quite literary expression in response to Kurosu's question, Takeshita reflexively,
"That's good..."
He groaned.
"No, it's not at a level where I should have you say that."
The master put the glass to his mouth as if embarrassed.
"By the way, I heard that Golden Gai is a place where famous people come, and I was looking forward to it; do you have customers like that here too?"
"Well, there are some literary bars here and there. Well, our shop isn't basically a shop with that kind of customer base, unfortunately."
The answer went in a different direction than Takeshita had expected, so it became a bit of a hassle. He thought the name "Takagaki Shinichi" would come up here, but he might have hesitated because while he's famous in the category of journalists, he might not be in the category of "famous people."
"But 'basically' means it's not like there are none at all, right?"
In a sense, he desperately tried to make a correction.
"Yeah, well, I wouldn't say there are none... I don't know if you know him, but among famous journalists or non-fiction writers, a person named Takagaki Shinichi comes by quite often."
"Eh? Takagaki Shinichi, as in that Takagaki Shinichi who appears on Saturday Project!?"
Since he reacted with a tension unusual for the normal Takeshita, he saw Kurosu next to him slightly trembling while looking down to suppress his laughter, but he continued regardless.
"Yes, yes! Ah, you know him. That's good."
"Know him? I've even read several of his books!"
"Heh! You're quite a fan. You've even read his books. Ah, wait a moment."
Saying that, he took something from the shop shelf and placed it in front of Takeshita.
"These are copies Takagaki-san left here with his signature when he published books."
The books placed on the counter in front of him were "Nagatacho VS Kasumigaseki: Jouhou Sousha," "Ryoushuu: Don no Igen," and "Hyogo-kenkei: Yodomi no Honshitsu." Among these, the only one Takeshita and Kurosu had obtained at the secondhand bookstore was "Ryoushuu: Don no Igen." It was a work that didn't have a premium. He hadn't checked the publication dates, but he guessed they were the three latest ones.
"How about it, are there any you've read?"
"Err, I've read 'Don'..."
"The other two are quite good too. By all means!"
The master said that, picked up the books, turned his back, and put them away. After confirming he had finished putting them away, Takeshita spoke up again.
"By the way, you said he comes by quite often, but how has it been lately?"
"I believe... he should have come about 10 days ago. At that time, he said he was going to Okinawa for coverage... Since he said he'd stay for a few days for coverage, won't he come again soon? Not just when he's away for coverage in the countryside, but even when he's in Tokyo, once he enters the writing phase, there are times he doesn't come for weeks, so I can't make any promises."
"I see. Since I'm in Tokyo, I wonder if I can meet him."
"How long are you staying?"
"The deadline is, well, the company told me to aim for around November 25th..."
"I see, you're staying for quite a while... Well then, if you'd like, shall I contact you if Takagaki-san comes? If you're staying that long, I think there's a high possibility you can meet him."
The master's words were a proposal that was exactly like a "godsend," even more than Takeshita and the others had imagined.
"Ah, could you do that? That would be a help. Then, could you contact me on this mobile phone?"
The business card he handed over was one he had ordered from a shop before going to the Ward Office and had Kurosu pick up earlier.
It was a business card in the name of "Kanezane Food Products, Sales Department, Senior Staff, Takeshita Shoichiro, Mobile Phone..." He had set the company phone number to the landline of Takeshita's younger brother's house in Sapporo. He had a landline, but since he was hardly ever home, he would almost never answer. He had taken the name "Kanezane Food Products" exactly as it was from the company Sada Minoru had managed, which had already gone bankrupt.
"Understood. So if he comes, I just need to call here?"
"That's it. I'm counting on you!"
Takeshita said that, and then for about an hour, he drank alcohol with Kurosu "with peace of mind." He might have gotten a bit carried away because there were things he had seen through the interview with Koshiba.
On Friday, November 17, Nishida and Yoshimura were at the Kitami City Hall. Of course, the purpose was to check the family register of the Isaka family. Under the pretext of checking the family register of the son, Masamitsu, they investigated the Isaka family's register. As a result, Isaka Daikichi—no, Tasuke—was born in Taisho 9 (1920) in Matsumae Town (Author's Note: It was Fukuyama Town until 1940. Renamed after that) in the southern part of Hokkaido, and in December of Showa 22, a new family register was created in Kitami City (Author's Note: In 1942, it transitioned from Nokkeushi Town to the Kitami city system) with him as the head of the household due to marriage.
The son, Masamitsu, was born in Showa 24 (1949). And in the same year, it seemed the name change from Tasuke to Daikichi was approved. Considering that the Isaka Group was established in Showa 25, he might have changed his name to boost morale for that, or the birth of his son might have been the trigger.
"I see. His place of origin is Matsumae... If he had heard such a story when they were working together under the old man Senzaki in Ikutahara, he might not have thought he was in Kitami..."
"According to Sada Yuzuru in Otaru, if they came to Otaru relatively early after the war and started panning for gold with Kuwano, regardless of how the two separated after that, he might have settled down in the vicinity of Kitami as it was."
As Yoshimura said, in terms of the distance between Ikutahara and Kitami, there was a possibility that he had stayed there and, after settling down, got married and created a family register in Kitami. However, if the two had thought deeply about the historical background at this time, and looking at the results of the two's investigation seven years later, Isaka Daikichi had not "stayed there as he was"... But it would be harsh to ask that of the two at this time...
Meanwhile, Takeshita and Kurosu in Tokyo were conducting inquiries at the registrar's office of the Faculty of Law at Meiho University, their alma mater. The primary goal was to check if any records remained regarding his educational background prior to that, in connection with his entrance qualifications.
Unfortunately, however, those did not remain. What remained were only his grades during his enrollment. As a result of having the university check various things, for the entrance qualifications of a person who graduated from an old-system middle school before the war, as per Koshiba's testimony, it seemed necessary to use a system called the "New-System University Entrance Qualification Certification Exam (Author's Note: Conducted from Showa 23 to 25)," the predecessor to the University Entrance Qualification Exam, so-called Daiken (currently the High School Equivalency Exam, so-called Kounin).
He entered as "Kuwano Yasuo" in the spring of Showa 25 at the time of university entrance. After that, he graduated as "Tada Yasuo" due to adoption. Of course, the staff at the registrar's office did not recognize that this Tada Yasuo was the current "Oshima Kaiji." However, when they lightly inquired about famous university alumni, Oshima Kaiji's name came up, so it seemed the fact that he was an alumnus was quite famous in itself. He himself listed it in the bulletin and didn't hide it at all, and the university side also seemed to have grasped it as "Tadokoro Yasuo," his current real name, although the name was different, not just "Oshima Kaiji."
In any case, since there are likely overwhelmingly more people who think his political name, Oshima Kaiji, is his real name, except for in his local area, the meaning of the laundering through the name change for ordinary people might not have been that great in the end.
"To trace Kuwano's tracks, do we have no choice but to go to Iwate again and search through the old-system middle schools that were in the vicinity one by one..."
In the university cafeteria, while taking a breather among students who were chatting—whether they had no lectures or were skipping them—Kurosu let out a long sigh.
"That might be the case ahead, but there's no point in thinking about it now. The next target is approaching and scouting Takagaki. First is how to handle that."
Takeshita demanded that his subordinate focus on the mission immediately at hand. Even so, as he saw the happy appearance of the students around him, he realized, albeit faintly, that the reason he felt irritated was not because he was anxious about the progress of the investigation, but simply because he had a longing for the youth and freedom of his own younger days.
*
In the afternoon, a major movement finally occurred at the investigation headquarters of the Kitami Station. Among the nurses at the hospital, a story came out that they had witnessed Hamana, the Union Leader of the Kitami Kyoritsu Hospital where the incident occurred, entering the private room of the victim, Matsushima, several times at night.
Originally, the Union Leader and Matsushima were old acquaintances (that was also the reason for his admission to Kyoritsu Hospital), but there seemed to be no need to meet outside of visiting hours, and it was information that should have come out much earlier, but it seemed they had been careless because it was quite a long time ago.
They said they finally remembered it because after the murder case, the usually reasonably cheerful boss Hamana was strangely dark and his complexion was bad.
Since it was still unknown who had planted the wiretap, this new information held the potential for the case to start moving again. On the other hand, because the existence of Kitamura's tape had not been made public to the entire investigation headquarters, they had not yet shared the fact that a wiretap had been planted as a whole.
However, in the Kyoritsu Hospital case, as one of the options for the investigation policy, they had already suggested the possibility of some kind of wiretapping to the investigators even before the existence of the tape became clear, in connection with the Sada Minoru murder case, so after deciding to interview Hamana voluntarily, they contacted him and asked him to comply with the interview.