I snapped my fingers again. “Call. Confirm his position.”
Juri pressed the redial button. It seemed she connected immediately.
“Where are you now?…Almost at Edobashi?”
I stood up and gave her an okay sign. She hung up in a hurry.
I stood at the window and double-checked the position of the video camera. I beckoned Juri over.
“Call in one minute. Instruct him to exit at Hakozaki. After that, hand the phone to me.”
“To you? You’re talking to him?”
“Yes. From there I’ll do the talking,” I said, nodding.
Exactly one minute later, Juri made the call. Next to her, I took a gas canister out from the bag.
“Hello, it’s me. Exit at Hakozaki. Uh, don’t hang up,” she added hastily and handed the cellphone over to me.
I waited one beat and took the phone. It ought to have been light but felt awfully heavy. My heart started racing.
I stood at the window and used one hand to put the cellphone to my ear; in the other hand I held the pair of binoculars. I had already started the video camera.
I saw a silver-gray Mercedes gliding down the slope. I couldn’t make out the driver. I looked at Juri, who was peeking at the video camera monitor. She just nodded. It was Katsutoshi Katsuragi’s car.
I put the gas canister up to my lips, sucked in the gas, and spouted in one go, “Stay on the expressway and get on the circling lane.”
Juri, who was listening right next to me, turned to me dumbstruck. I couldn’t blame her. I had abruptly let out a voice like Donald Duck’s. I hadn’t thought a helium-based toy that altered my voice would ever serve such a use as this. It was a party novelty I’d bought for some occasion or other.
Katsutoshi Katsuragi must have been stunned, too. “What did you say? Wasn’t I supposed to go to Mukojima?”
I breathed in the gas before answering, “Drive in the circling lane.”
“There’s an entrance to the Ginza district on the right. I don’t need to go in there?”
“Drive in the circling lane.”
At that point, I hung up the phone and gave it back to Juri. I monitored Hakozaki Junction through my binoculars. A silver-gray Mercedes went past. Several passenger cars followed. There was also a truck. And a taxi.
The Mercedes appeared again. Hakozaki Junction formed a small ring. If you didn’t take any of the exits to head to any district, you could just go round and round until your tank was empty.
After the Mercedes had appeared a third time, I gave my next instruction to Juri. With a surprised face, she pressed the cellphone’s redial button.
“Hello, it’s me. The deal is off. Go home and wait for the next contact….I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s happening, either.”
After hanging up, she glared at me. I was sitting on the bed.
“What the heck, why did you suddenly cancel the deal?”
“Suddenly? That was the plan all along.”
“All along. You were going to cancel anyway?” Juri came to my side and looked down at me. “What was all that trouble for?”
“Just figuring out the police’s movements.”
I stood up and stopped the camera I had left running.
Chapter 11
The screen displayed Hakozaki Junction. The silver-gray Mercedes kept driving past several times. Various other cars also drove through. However, the only car that was displayed more than once was Katsutoshi Katsuragi’s car.
“That’s weird. It really is only the Mercedes.”
Leaving the hotel room as it was, we had returned to the condo. Checkout was the next morning and I intended to do it then. If we checked out this evening, it would probably be suspicious to the hotel.
Juri was getting frustrated. “What the heck is weird? Just tell me already.”
“That the only car driving in the circling lane is the Mercedes is what’s weird. There ought to be more.”
“But there are. Trucks and taxis, there’s a ton.”
“Only once, though. The only car driving round and round in the circling lane is the Mercedes, there’s not one car among the others doing that.”
“That’s natural. The only car Papa was driving was the Mercedes.”
“But there should be a tail following that Mercedes. The police tail.”
Juri’s mouth half-opened. It seemed she’d finally understood my ploy.
“If there aren’t at least two or three of the police’s cars, even if they’re not following immediately after the Mercedes, that’s weird. If they don’t do that, they can’t instantly support him. But then, looking at this video, there aren’t cars that look like one. What’s going on?”
Juri tilted her head without answering, still looking at the screen. I didn’t think she’d have an answer to offer.
“There are a few things I can think of,” I said. “One is that for some reason or other, they didn’t have a police tail. In that case, they would be using an even better tracking method. For instance, an investigator was hiding in the Mercedes.”
“I wonder if there was one.” Juri’s face approached the screen.
“Let’s check.”
I chose an image from the video where the Mercedes’ interior was depicted most clearly and expanded it. The image was rough, but outlines were visible.
“It doesn’t look like there’s anyone in the backseat,” I noted.
“Might he have been hiding in the trunk?”
“That’s unlikely. A caddy bag and another bag with three hundred million yen were packed in there. Even if one person could fit, it’d be meaningless if he couldn’t move. It’s exactly why I instructed them to load the two bags in the trunk.”
Juri nodded, looking convinced. It seemed she had modified her opinion of me a bit.
“Hey, in books and movies, the police usually put a transmitter in the ransom, don’t they? Maybe they did that this time.”
“They may have deposited a transmitter,” I agreed. “But I doubt they’d rely on just that. Normally, they would always put a tail on, too. Or they would be watching from somewhere.”
“Maybe they were.”
“Impossible. We instructed him to go to the Mukojima Interchange. Why would they think to watch Hakozaki Junction along the way?”
“I agree, but…what do you think, then?”
“I don’t know, which is why I’m bothered by it. Where in the world could those police guys have hidden?” I lay down on the sofa.
In fact, there was one more thing I could think of. But it was so hard to believe, I couldn’t let it out of my mouth. It was that the police hadn’t made a move. In other words, Katsutoshi Katsuragi hadn’t notified the authorities of the incident. In that case, it wasn’t a mystery that only the Mercedes had come.
But was it possible? Of course, I couldn’t say it wasn’t. Even Katsutoshi Katsuragi was a father. Maybe he was thinking first and foremost of his daughter’s life and obeying that instruction not to tell the police.
But, I shook my head. He wasn’t that sort of man. He wouldn’t succumb to a simple threat. He would try to outwit the kidnappers no matter what and save his daughter too. In order to do so, he needed the police’s help. The police had to be acting in some way. As Katsutoshi Katsuragi went around Hakozaki Junction like a horse on a merry-go-round, they had to have been waiting with bated breath for the kidnappers to appear.
“Hey, so when is it?” Juri asked.
“When is what?”
“The real time we exchange me and the ransom. What else? Or are you still planning some dry run?” She stood beside me and spread her arms. Her tone was mocking. It seemed she didn’t like my way of doing things.