“Absolutely not.” Namiki shook his head. “I’m more committed than ever. I intend to go through with this.”
“Now you’re talking.” Tojima grinned, before his expression relapsed into seriousness. “There’s something else I want to make clear. Regardless of whether we intentionally kill Hasunuma or just cause his death by mistake, the police will launch an investigation when they find his body. They may well figure out that liquid nitrogen was used, so we need to take steps to preempt that.”
“How?”
“When Hasunuma’s body is found, the first person that the police will suspect is you. You don’t have easy access to liquid nitrogen, so they’ll start sniffing around my factory. The factory has security cameras. If they find any footage of me driving out of the place, they’ll assume I’m transporting the liquid nitrogen cylinder.”
“That’s no good,” Namiki said. “I don’t want you getting in trouble, Shusaku. I’ll transport the liquid nitrogen myself.”
“Are you a total idiot?” Tojima spat out the words. “I’m the boss of the damn company. What’s the problem with me going to my own factory? There isn’t one. I can cook up a thousand reasons for being there. You do it and you might as well shout from the rooftops, ‘Hey, it’s me. I did it. Arrest me.’”
“Okay. But you can’t go directly from your factory to Hasunuma’s place, either. There are security cameras all over town. You only need to get caught on one of those and it’s all over for you.”
“You’re right. Security cameras are a major pain in the ass. The special twenty-liter container for the liquid nitrogen will be big and heavy. We’ll need a vehicle to transport it. We should expect the police to review all the local security-camera footage to find the vehicle we use. I’ve also heard rumors about this recent innovation — something called N-System. The police can use it to track vehicles in the most incredible detail — car type, the routes they take...”
“Then I should be the one who transports the stuff. I’ll take care not to kill Hasunuma; and if I do slip up and accidentally cause his death, I’ll do the right thing and turn myself in.”
Tojima clicked his tongue loudly.
“Didn’t you listen to a word I said? I don’t want you to go to jail. And regardless of how careful you are, whether or not he dies may be beyond your control.”
“Maybe...”
“We need to use our brains. Let’s assume that the police do figure out that we used liquid nitrogen. Okay. We need to anticipate their thought processes and outsmart them.”
“Outsmart them? How?”
“Give me a day.” Tojima held up a finger. “I’ll come up with something.”
The two men met the following day. Tojima was looking rather jaunty.
“The police are sure to think that whoever did it used a vehicle. We want to outsmart them, so—” Tojima paused for dramatic effect. “We need to transport the liquid nitrogen without using a vehicle.”
Namiki’s eyes widened.
“You said the container was big and heavy? So how are we supposed to move it? If we push it around on a handcart, every man and their dog will see it.”
“That’s why neither of us can do that particular job.”
Namiki swallowed. “You want to involve more people?”
“There are plenty of people who are more than happy to help. We need only ask. I’m sure you can think of a couple yourself.”
Namiki knew Tojima was right. The Niikuras and Tomoya Takagaki appeared in his mind’s eye.
“Provided we make it crystal clear that we don’t intend to kill the guy, they’ll be happy to help us. I’ll speak to them, Yutaro. You don’t need to do a thing. All you need to do is get yourself over to Hasunuma’s place on the actual day.”
“What are you going to do? What’s the plan?”
“The less you know, the better. All I’ll tell you is: We’ll do it on the day of the parade.”
Yutaro was stunned.
“The day of the parade? Why choose a day when there are so many people around...?”
“That’s what makes it such a good day for it. There’s one thing I need to ask you. This guy Masumura — what does he want to do?”
“He says he wants to be with me. Wants to be there when I interrogate Hasunuma.”
Tojima shook his head. “That’s not an option,” he said. “If Hasunuma dies, the police are sure to suspect foul play. And if they detect the sleeping medication in his system, they’ll start wondering who got Hasunuma to take the stuff and they’ll start looking into Masumura’s background. I know it’s unlikely, but if the investigation leads back to Masumura’s connection to Yuna Motohashi, the police will leave no stone unturned. We need to prevent that by creating an alibi for Masumura. I’m not talking about a false alibi. I mean a genuine, perfect one.”
Namiki saw that what Tojima was saying made sense. If the police made up their minds that Masumura had nothing at all to do with the crime, their investigation would never make any progress.
Despite feeling a little guilty about it, Tojima relayed their decision to Masumura. He was half expecting him to get angry, protest that it wasn’t fair, and say that if that was what they were planning, he’d have been better off acting alone.
Masumura, however, was very amenable.
“That’s fine with me,” he said. “I don’t care if they send me to jail, but that doesn’t give me the right to force the same thing on Mr. Namiki. I fully understand that preventing suspicion from falling on me is crucial to this plan. I’ll create an alibi by going somewhere public while you put the screws on Hasunuma.
“But I do have one condition,” continued Masumura.
“At present, you don’t plan to kill Hasunuma. If you still feel that way after going through with the plan, can you leave the sliding door latched shut when you leave the scene? I want to be free to do what I want to do after that.”
With the latch down, Hasunuma wouldn’t be able to open the door. Weakened by oxygen deficiency, he probably wouldn’t have the strength to break it down, either. He would be trapped inside.
Tojima didn’t need to ask what “doing what I want to do” meant.
“I’ll stab him to death. Then I’ll turn myself in to the police. The investigation won’t go anywhere near Mr. Namiki. The whole thing will be nice, neat, and wrapped up with a ribbon.” As Masumura said this, there was a fresh, eager look on his face.
That was how the plan came together. All that was left to do now was to wait for the day of the parade.
Namiki was ignorant of the plan’s ins and outs. Tojima was the only person with a grasp of the plan in its entirety. Namiki had some vague idea of who might be helping, but he couldn’t be sure.
He suspected that Tomoya Takagaki was one of their accomplices. There was little chance that Tojima hadn’t approached him.
When Namiki looked at the young man and saw his face, which still had all the simplicity and candor of a child, he felt guilty about getting him to participate in an act of cruelty. Takagaki probably felt that he had to help because of Saori. In his heart of hearts, though, he probably wanted nothing to do with the plan. It was that realization that prompted Namiki to tell Tomoya that it was okay for him to forget about Saori and that he wouldn’t regard him as coldhearted for doing so.
Namiki wanted to say something similar to the Niikuras, but he never got the chance.
The day of the parade arrived. Namiki was on edge from the moment he woke up. “I’m going to go to Hasunuma’s place this afternoon. I’m not going to kill him, just get him to tell me the truth,” he told Machiko. He didn’t go into any detail about the plan. He would tell her what he’d done when it was all over.