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"Have you met with Mr. Shiraishi lately?" Godai asked.

"He dropped by a couple of weeks back. During my lunch break."

"Why?"

Yamada cocked his head to one side. "No particular reason. He was like, 'Just swung by to see how you're getting on.'"

"And what did you two talk about?"

"Nothing special. He asked me how it was going. It was Mr. Shiraishi who got me this job."

"What was your impression of Mr. Shiraishi? Was there anything different about him? Did he say anything that struck you as odd?"

Yamada tilted his head to one side and thought for a moment. "I can't be one hundred percent sure, but I did feel that he wasn't quite his normal self, like he had something else on his mind." Yamada waved a dismissive hand. "But that was just my impression. I may be imagining things. I don't want you attaching too much weight to that."

Yamada was clearly anxious about them taking anything he said as fact. Having been through the court system, he knew that irresponsible remarks could land you in trouble.

"You know what happened to Mr. Shiraishi, right?" Godai asked.

"Yes, I know." Yamada nodded, and his face seemed to stiffen.

"How did it make you feel?"

"How did it...? I was shocked."

"How so?"

"It just seemed so impossible. For Mr. Shiraishi to be murdered like that. Makes no sense. Why would anyone do such a thing?"

"Any idea who might have done it?"

"None." Yamada's voice was emphatic.

"Were there people who had it in for Mr. Shiraishi?"

"Dunno. Seems unlikely. I can't believe Mr. Shiraishi had any enemies."

There was genuine emotion in Yamada's voice. Initially, he had been reluctant to make eye contact; now he looked him straight in the face.

 
CHAPTER TWO

IT ALL STARTED with a phone call.

Someone reported a suspicious vehicle parked on the street. According to dispatch center records, the call came in at 7:32 am on November 1. The caller was a security guard at a company near Takeshiba Pier.

There was a navy-blue sedan parked illegally opposite the elevated Yurikamome driverless train line.

A couple of traffic cops were sent to the scene. The case was elevated to the Criminal Investigation Department after they'd found a corpse in the back seat of the car. The dead man was dressed in a dark gray suit and had been stabbed in the stomach. He hadn't bled profusely, perhaps because the murder weapon was still in the wound.

His wallet hadn't been taken. It contained around seventy thousand yen and a driver's license.

His name was Kensuke Shiraishi. He was fifty-five years old and lived in Minami-Aoyama. According to his business cards, he was a lawyer with an office near Aoyama Boulevard. No cell phone was found.

When an investigator called the family, they were about to file a missing person's report. He had a wife, who was a year younger than he was, and a daughter, who was twenty-seven. Shiraishi hadn't come home after leaving the previous morning and was unreachable. The two women came to the police station. When they were confronted with Shiraishi's body in the morgue, they wept as they confirmed his identity.

According to his wife and daughter, Shiraishi had both a smartphone and an old-fashioned flip phone. He used the flip phone for work and the smartphone for staying in touch with his family. The murderer seemed to have made off with both devices. While the flip phone was completely offline, the smartphone was still on the network.

They quickly pinpointed the location of the smartphone using GPS data. It was found near the Sumida River Terrace, a walkway parallel to the river just beneath the embankment. There was blood on the phone and spatter on the ground nearby. His flip phone was not found.

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