Namiki looked at Machiko in astonishment. Her bloodshot eyes had a glazed look. That’s about more than one little cup of sake, Namiki thought.
“We’ll go along with whatever you decide to do. Whatever it takes to avenge Saori. Natsumi would agree, I’m sure.”
Namiki shook his head, took a swig of sake, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I don’t want you two involved. Whatever has to be done, it’ll be me who does it.”
“Yutaro...”
“Except that, right now, I’ve got no idea what to do. You got any good ideas?”
“Of how to get Hasunuma to come clean?”
“Uh-huh.”
Machiko put down her cup and tilted her head to one side. “That’s a tough one.”
“Tell me about it. It’s something neither the police nor the prosecutor managed to do.”
“In the old days, they would have just tortured him. You can’t get away with that nowadays.”
It was just a throwaway comment, but it lodged in Namiki’s mind.
Torture?
Now that was something worth thinking about. When it came to interrogating suspects, there were strict new rules to prevent the police from being overly aggressive. But if they were the ones doing the interrogating, they could use all the unlawful techniques they wanted.
Intimidation alone wouldn’t be enough. If the best Namiki could do was to brandish a knife, Hasunuma would laugh in his face. And if it came to a hand-to-hand fight, he stood no chance of winning. He would probably be the one who ended up getting stabbed.
How about drugging him with sleeping medication, tying him up, and then threatening him with a knife or something? With Masumura’s help, that could be doable.
But when he ran the idea by Machiko, her reaction was less than positive. Hasunuma, she felt, was hardly the sort of person to be cowed by something like that.
“‘You want to stab me, go ahead and stab me; you want to kill me, go ahead and kill me.’ That’s probably how he’d come back at you,” she said.
Namiki agreed. She’s definitely right, he thought. He also knew in his bones that he wouldn’t be able to follow through and kill Hasunuma, no matter how much he taunted him.
He was checking the food in the restaurant freezer the next morning when he remembered something Shusaku Tojima had told him: an episode when one of his workers who’d been handling the liquid nitrogen in a small and badly ventilated room had almost suffocated.
According to the man’s own account of the experience, his head had started to hurt, he felt dizzy, and fell to the floor. But the real terror only came after that, when he found himself unable to move, despite knowing the danger he was in.
Sounds good to me, Namiki thought. Masumura had mentioned that Hasunuma lived in a small room with no windows. They could lock him in, then pump the liquid nitrogen in, little by little, through an aperture. As his discomfort increased, Hasunuma would realize that they were not making empty threats. Once he was in terror of his life, he would have to tell them the truth about Saori’s murder when they pressed him for it.
Namiki quickly contacted Masumura and shared his plan with him.
“I like it.” Masumura was enthusiastic. “Poison-gas torture. I think it could do it. Getting hold of liquid nitrogen isn’t that easy, though.”
“Any idea how we could get some?”
The two men discussed the plan in great detail. They examined Hasunuma’s room while he was out. They initially thought they would need to drill a hole in the sliding door to pump in the liquid nitrogen, but when they removed the metal door handles, behind them they discovered a square hole that went right through the door.
“We’ll need a funnel that’s exactly the same size as this hole,” Masumura said. “A bit of nosing around and I should find one easily enough.”
They had settled on the method they were going to use. The next problem was getting hold of the liquid nitrogen.
Namiki got Tojima to join him for a drink at one of their favorite bars to discuss the problem. When Tojima asked what Namiki wanted the liquid nitrogen for, he didn’t believe Namiki’s explanation about “one of my nephews needing it for a home science experiment.”
“You may not know it yourself, Yutaro, but your eyes are all bloodshot and you look like a total wreck. I know you’re planning something.”
“No...”
“You can’t pull the wool over my eyes. We’re old friends.” Tojima lowered his voice. “Are you planning to bump off Hasunuma?”
Before Namiki could even formulate a reply, Tojima plowed ahead. “That’s what I thought. You’ve got to let me help you. I won’t do a thing unless you’re completely up front with me. Well?”
Namiki shook his head.
“I’m not planning to kill the guy. And I don’t want to involve anyone who’s not connected to Saori.”
“Not connected?” Tojima raised an eyebrow. “You want me to thump you, Yutaro?”
With a sigh, Namiki told his old friend about the plan that he and Masumura had devised together.
“Sounds rather complicated,” said Tojima, slightly dismayed. “Still, I think it’s basically a sound plan. You’ve got to do something pretty brutal to get a man like Hasunuma to confess.”
“Can you provide the liquid nitrogen?”
“Leave it to me. From what you’ve told me, twenty liters should be enough. With the right kind of container, you can transport it by car.” Tojima paused and a thoughtful expression came over his face. “There’s one thing I have to ask you. What are you going to do with the guy after you’ve got his confession? You said you weren’t going to kill him. What, so you’re going to terrorize him till he comes clean, then leave him with his life?”
“I... I really don’t know. We’ll just have to see how it goes on the day. It depends on what Hasunuma says, I suppose.”
Namiki was just being honest. He genuinely had no idea what he might do. If anger took over, then perhaps he would keep going until he’d killed Hasunuma. Perhaps reason would intervene and stop him from going too far. Either scenario was plausible.
“Listen, Yutaro,” said Tojima. “I’m quite happy to kill him. The thought of a scumbag like that simply being alive is enough to poison my life. I want to kill him. I do mind you doing it. I don’t want you to go to jail.”
“Believe me, I don’t want to go to jail. We need to be careful not to overreact, whatever Hasunuma says.”
Tojima looked angry.
“That’s not what I meant. Feel free to overreact and kill the guy. That’s not a problem. It’s natural. What I’m saying is that if you do end up doing that, then I don’t want you to go to jail for it. Oh, and one more thing: Hasunuma may well die even if you don’t intend to kill him.”
“What do you mean?”
“That liquid nitrogen is quite hard to handle.”
Tojima spelled out the risks: how a small amount of liquid nitrogen vaporizes into an enormous quantity of gas; that breathing it in directly causes rapid oxygen deficiency; that people who transport the stuff never travel in the same elevator with it, because it’s continuously vaporizing even when stored in a special container, and so on and so forth.
“What I’m trying to say is this: While you may plan to pump just enough liquid nitrogen into the room to scare the living daylights out of Hasunuma, the tiniest error in quantity could easily kill him.”
Namiki’s anxiety returned when he heard that.
“What’s wrong? Have you lost your nerve?” Tojima asked. “Do you want to pull out?”