The Last Train

Chapter 5

Chapter 5Hiroshi pulled open his office door to the lingering smell of disinfectants. The room was large, but windowless, and had been used to store cleaning supplies until cleaning was outsourced to a company. The smell built up every time he closed the door for long and greeted him when he came back to the room, located between two floors of the back stairwell in the Central Police Agency Second Annex.

Despite the smell, and the isolation, he felt comfortable, as if the room were another skin. Two large desks, plenty of shelf space, and a small chair that unfolded out into a comfortable-enough futon mattress took up most of the room. The centerpiece of the room was his coffee machine, which he used all day and most of the night.

Takamatsu’s chief, Hiroshi’s chief as well, told him that conversations in English with overseas police departments would be impossible in the regular offices. So, the chief requisitioned the room to give Hiroshi his own workspace. His exile from the bustling homicide department in the main building, with its unaired smell of tobacco and nervous sweat, was a boon. He was the only detective at any level to have his own office—the ultimate Tokyo luxury.

When he took the job, in a bid to support Linda and himself, he skipped most of the regular training and went straight to work using his English and the accounting degree he acquired in the States. The former financial detective, hopelessly disorganized and barely competent in English, quit, or was fired, and Takamatsu—an old family friend he barely remembered—got him the job.

Linda hated Hiroshi’s job once it became clear the temporary police job he took to support them was going to be full-time plus overtime. She had taken a job teaching English, which she felt was beneath her. It was exhausting and led her all over the city, moving all day from company to company, while Hiroshi was stuck in his office.

Her photo came up on his smartphone the next morning by accident. Every time one of her pictures appeared, when he pressed a wrong button, or looked for something else, he thought of Linda’s departure. They were waiting for her flight at Narita Airport sitting silently on chairs in the departure lobby when he got a work call. The last words she said to him were, “Turn that f*****g thing off.”

She was back in Boston, their relationship turned off. Hiroshi was not good at turning anything off. He stayed at the job.

Hiroshi’s basic unit inside the large homicide department was, so far, just Hiroshi. His office was quiet enough that he could talk with people all over the world, anytime he needed, and he could even take a nap whenever he felt like it. He could sleep overnight in his office, too, which, after Linda left he did more and more. He took long walks in the city by himself in the middle of the day. It cleared his head and gave him a chance to work through the details. He got used to the solitude.

Hiroshi spent most of his time tracking down foreigners who absconded with business profits, refused to pay child support, defaulted on loans, ripped off elderly investors or fled ongoing investigations. He worked more closely with his counterparts in London, Paris, New York, and Hong Kong than with anyone in homicide. It was safe and clean work, entirely different from the work at the train station the night before.

The possibility of extraditing the people he investigated back to Japan was remote, since Japan had few such treaties with other countries. Those countries didn’t want to send their nationals to Japan, even with a lot of evidence. So, with most cases, Hiroshi satisfied himself by letting his work add to their cases. He rarely saw anyone caught or prosecuted. It felt like playing long-distance chess, with a stalemate every time: warrant issued, pending arrest, filed with the court, no trial.

He never imagined he would love pulling apart the tangles of a Ponzi scheme, dismantling an investment pyramid, or unmasking the subtleties of embezzlement cases. He would become so immersed in the scamming techniques, he would lose track of time. Linda accused him of being obsessive-compulsive, and he knew she was right.

The rest of the time she accused him of drinking too much, something that also emerged after a few months into the job, but was the first time in his life he drank much at all. When all the detectives worked together to track someone or seize evidence under search warrant, it was hard to beg off from drinking afterwards. He’d lost most of his Japanese groupthink over the years in Boston, but back in Tokyo, he felt the need to keep good relations, which meant accepting the obligation of drinking with the other detectives.

Coming home late, and none too sober, was not a cultural practice Linda adapted to. She would be waiting at the door in one of her kimonos, calmly, quietly demanding an apology or explanation or something she could get angry at. Hiroshi could never find the right way to explain where he’d been or why. That he had to work and the work involved drinking with colleagues was such a basic Japanese concept, he couldn’t put it into words. Linda would demand an explanation, not get one, and then storm off to bed to get some sleep before dawn.

Often, he wasn’t drinking, but the time difference calling overseas investigators meant he had to stay at work late. He couldn’t explain that to her, either.

Hiroshi could understand now how her loneliness piled up with boredom at teaching and the pressure of adapting to a new culture. He knew she felt the oppressiveness of being a woman in Japan—especially a foreign woman—so much so that the pressure pushed her to action, and she left. When she did, she handed the loneliness to him.

***

Hiroshi cranked up the coffee grinder, tired after being out so late with Takamatsu the night before. The taste of the sake lingered in his mouth. The loud grind of the machine helped wake him up and restore his energy.

The files from Takamatsu were already on his desk. Another folder contained a printout from the text messages on the victim’s cell phone, but it was hard to read, with numbers and symbols riddling the messages. He would have to use a yellow highlighter to get through the mess.

He flipped through the body photos as fast as he could and closed the folder.

He popped the DVD of the train station’s camera footage in his computer. The first two seconds showed a large man listing drunkenly beside a woman—nothing more.

A second image showed the escalator, but the camera was aimed at the opposite escalator, and only captured the back of the head of the man and the woman. She was tall, with long black hair and dark-colored clothing—maybe with him or maybe not.

After a scramble of dead time, the next shot caught the man’s slip-ons—soft leather, designer brand—and the sashes from her sandals, wrapped around her legs. After that, there was only the platform.

Photos of the contents of the dead man’s wallet showed all the meishi shop cards from high-priced restaurants in Azabu, Daikanyama and Ginza, credit cards and ATM bankcards from Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ Bank and from Mizuho Bank. The meishi cards formed a trail of people he met and shops and restaurants he went to and wanted to remember. The foreigner shopped for himself and probably lived alone, evidenced by well-worn discount point cards for coffee, CDs, DVD rentals, bread, and two up-market grocery stores, Kinokuniya and National Azabu.

The last photos from the wallet were meishi from clubs in Roppongi. Hiroshi guessed they were exclusive hostess clubs because of the names—Pink Rose, Enjoy, Ransom, White Leather—quite a collection. People at the clubs would remember the dead man clearly, but would not talk. People at the stores would talk, but not remember him.

Like most foreign executives, the dead man probably lived a comfortable life, especially with the “hardship pay” foreign companies dished out. If he committed suicide, he hadn’t gone on a mad spending spree before the end. The hundred thousand yen, in cash, now soaked with dried blood, would have covered a big night out in Roppongi. His bankbook showed the usual automatic payments, in and out.

Hiroshi’s cell phone rang again.

“Hai? Yes?”

“Takamatsu said you should attend a funeral, at Yushima Tenjin Shrine. Not far from Ochanomizu station.” It was one of the secretaries, but he wasn’t sure which one. He didn’t recognize her voice.

“Takamatsu told me to tell you. The funeral is for, I don’t know how to pronounce it, Steve Deveaux or something, the guy hit by the train last night,” she said.

“I’ll meet him there?”

“He said it’s better if you go alone.”

“Why isn’t he going?” Hiroshi asked.

“He said it will be in English,” she said. “He has some photos he wants you to take with you, to see if they show up at the funeral.”

“Who?”

“Acquaintances of the deceased, I guess.”

“Why doesn’t Takamatsu check these people out?”

“He said to tell you, though I hate to even repeat this, but he thinks all foreigners look alike.”

Hiroshi let out a sigh. “Where are the photos?”

“I’ll bring them over in a few minutes. I want to get out of the office and the long walk over to your place is a good chance to escape.”

“What does he want me to do at the funeral?”

“He said you’d know.”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“He also said to meet him tonight at Roppongi.”

“For what?”

“You’ll have to ask him. But I can guess,” her voice held no hint of amusement.

“Tell Takamatsu he owes me.”

“He owes everybody,” she said.