Lady Joker, Volume 1, Kaoru Takamura [best affordable ebook reader TXT] 📗

another step further away from both material and spiritual fulfillment, a bleak mood had latched on to his anxiety. Goda told himself once again, Apply yourself to the job and you’ll forget about it, and It’s all in your mindset, and tried shifting his thoughts to what he needed to do that night in preparation for tomorrow: make sure his suit was in order, polish his shoes, and so on. Since he’d be going to Hinode every day, he would need to change his shirts daily, so he figured he ought to buy some permanent-press dress shirts to make ironing easy, along with antibacterial socks, and on Sunday get his hair cut and file his nails . . .

As he considered these things, in another corner of his mind his thoughts seesawed at the realization that he was at a crossroads in his life. He knew better than anyone that he had always been a cog that did not quite mesh with the machine of the police organization, and that this time, he would need to give serious thought to whether or not he could adapt himself to the order and values of the police organization. Would he remain on the force and find a way to forge ahead somehow, or would he resign and become someone new entirely?

The option of quitting the police force failed to ring true, but the notion of such an alternative gave him room to breathe. Rather than going up to the CI room, Goda went out the back door of the police department and pedaled away on his bicycle. The darkness of the Omori neighborhood that night—past nine o’clock, the lights in the office buildings were already dimmed—looked like the sea onto which he would be setting out alone. There was nothing visible, no point for which to set his course, having just been cast away from Investigation Headquarters, but when he thought about it, this was a chance to set out toward new horizons he had been so desperate to know more about. The sea was sure to be bountiful, with unfamiliar things awaiting him—the prospect allowed him to feel a modest sense of liberation.

Goda crossed the road in front of the Denny’s restaurant and had gone about a hundred meters along the Dai-Ichi Keihin highway when he noticed a man climbing out of a taxi about ten meters ahead of him. Goda braked unconsciously, stopping his bicycle by the edge of the sidewalk. It was Noriaki Anzai, his colleague whom he had not seen in nearly a month—but he wondered why Anzai had gotten out of the taxi a hundred meters away from the police department. Preoccupied by this simple suspicion, Goda waited for him to approach before calling out, “Anzai-san.”

“Oh, it’s you,” Anzai said as he turned toward Goda, his face barely registering surprise. Anzai’s flat, fifty-year-old face was as guileless as they come, and yet tonight his greasy, exhausted complexion seemed tinged with excitement—almost like he was possessed. But a passing conversation on the street at night was not enough for Goda to be certain of this.

“I’ve been so busy lately. Tonight’s the first chance I’ve had to pick up the spare umbrella I keep at the department.”

“Where are you working out of these days?”

“Kabuto-cho. It’s outside my beat, so it’s as if I’ve been banished.”

“Are you looking into Hinode’s stock?”

“I can’t even be sure myself. I just pick up whatever evidence I’m ordered to get. How about you?”

“Still on the Nissan Homy.”

“This must just be what investigation is all about. It feels like guerilla warfare but I have no clue where the frontline is.”

Anzai walked off with those parting words, and Goda started peddling again as well, but a moment or two later it occurred to him that someone might have put Anzai in that taxi. It could have been a journalist, a stockbroker, or a gangster. Back when he had run into Anzai in the lavatory at the department, Goda had thought to himself that sooner or later Anzai, with his loose tongue, could be an easy mark, and perhaps his premonition had come to pass.

However, for the time being Goda would not have to bear witness to his senior colleague’s going off course. Nor would he need to serve as an outlet for Deputy Chief Inspector Dohi to vent his grievances, or have to put up with his colleagues like Osanai from Burglary and Saito from Organized Crime, with whom he didn’t see eye to eye. He wouldn’t have to look at the messy desks in the CI office. These thoughts gave him another taste of liberation.

After returning home, Goda took his violin and went to the park as usual. That night, on a whim, he brought his instruction book with him and played octaves—which were challenging for him—and practiced arpeggios. His bow control left something to be desired—every so often the strings emitted a noise that sounded like a chorus of frogs—but for about an hour he was absorbed in his playing, though the whole time his mind threatened to take flight. There seemed to be something he was forgetting, something lacking, something else he ought to be thinking about, or not thinking about.

Goda found himself staring at the figures crossing the park, which made him wonder when was the last time Kano had stopped by. Had it been Tuesday, or Wednesday? Was it last week when he mentioned that he had bought a car?

Goda went back home and dialed a number—it was rare for him to initiate the call. When Yusuke Kano, at his official residence for public prosecutors, realized it was his former brother-in-law on the line, he asked, “What’s the occasion?” as if slightly on guard.

“I got home a little early tonight.”

“I played golf today. Set a new record. Lost half a dozen balls.”

It had been a year since Kano had taken up golf, influenced by his superior at the special investigative division, but every time he mentioned it, he announced he