Rules of the Hunt (70 page)

Fitzduane, fighting hard to suppress nausea, walked to the tank and
looked through the glass.

The water inside was pink and streaked with long strands of crimson.
 
In it, Adachi's naked body was suspended like
some giant medical specimen in a container.
 
Entrails drifted from it.
 
As
Fitzduane watched, the body moved slightly in the current of the oxygenating
system.

It was without question one of the most horrific sights he had seen in
his life.
 
It was the stuff of the worst
nightmares, and it was real.

This man had been his friend.
 
He
wanted to cry out loud.

Chifune stood beside him, her face immobile, and then she swayed.
 
Fitzduane caught her as she crumpled.
 
He held her, and she seemed to regain
strength.
 
Her face was a mask.

Fitzduane, with Chifune at his side, waked back to where the Spider and
Adachi's father stood.
 
"How do you
know about the Eel?" he said.

The Spider made a gesture toward the farther recesses of the
aquarium.
 
"We found the Eel back
there," he said, in a voice of barely controlled rage.
 
"One of my officers knew he was an
informant.
 
He had been shot once in the
head.
 
No evisceration, no removal of
clothes, no fish tank.
 
That charade was
reserved for the superintendent.
 
The
informant, having lured Adachi-
san
to
his death, was merely executed.
 
He had
outlived his usefulness."

"Why was Adachi-
san
stripped?" said Fitzduane, and then answered his own question.
 
"They were looking for something.
 
The question is — did they find it?"

"I have already ordered the superintendent-
san
's apartment sealed," said the Spider.
 
He looked at Chifune.
 
"Tanabu-
san
, I would appreciate it if you would search it first.
 
You knew him well."

Chifune nodded in acknowledgment, and then the Spider indicated that
Fitzduane should go too.
 
Help
her,
help us, the Spider's eyes pleaded.

Aware that time was
critical,
they made it to
Adachi's apartment in less than twenty minutes.
 
There was a police guard on the door when they arrived, but as soon as
they ascended the stairs and entered Adachi's living room, they knew they were
too late.

The apartment had been methodically ripped apart.
 
The systematic nature of the destruction made
it seem, for some reason, even more distressing.
 
This was not the casual vandalism of a
burglar.
 
This was the cold-blooded
clinical dissection of their victim's home.

Walls and ceilings had been opened up and the wood and plaster swept into
tidy piles.
 
All the furniture had been
taken apart and the pieces stacked.
 
The
floor had been raised.
 
Electronic
equipment had been taken apart.
 
All
bedding and clothing had been slashed open and cut up and then stacked.

Chifune surveyed the damage as if mesmerized, then suddenly darted into
the bedroom.
 
"I know where,"
she said.
 
"I know what he would
have done."

Fitzduane followed her slowly into the bedroom, respectful of the fact
that he was an intruder, but
also
 
wanting
to give support.
 
In truth, he could have done with a friendly
shoulder himself.

The implacability of these people was terrifying.
 
Always they seemed to be one step ahead.
 
Steadily, their pursuers, despite all their
resources, were being whittled down.
 
One
of the most powerful men in
Japan
had been murdered and the bloody trail of death never seemed to stop.
 
Their opponents were people who considered
themselves above the rule of law.
 
Adachi, a senior officer of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, had
been slain with contempt.
 
No one was
safe.

Chifune gave a cry of anguish and then fell to her knees, her hands
scrabbling for something.
 
Pieces of
multicolored plastic were thrown up on the bed and then she started to arrange
them, crying softly all the while.
 
The
shape of a parrot emerged, and then Fitzduane could see that it was a
clock.
 
A rather ugly
clock.

Chifune looked up at him and gestured wordlessly at the pieces of the
clock, and Fitzduane understood.
 
The
attackers had got everything.
 
Whatever
was hidden in the parrot was long gone.
 
Every facet of Adachi's life seemed to have been ravaged.
 
He had been killed, stripped, eviscerated as
if in an abattoir, and then his home and his personal possessions had been
destroyed.
 
He had not just been
killed.
 
He was being erased.
 
His killers were without pity, arrogant beyond
belief.

Fitzduane took Chifune in his arms and held her.
 
With her defenses down, she felt slight and
vulnerable.
 
At first she just pressed
against him, seeking reassurance from the warmth of his body, and then she
started to shake and sob, and then terrible anguished cries came out of her.

Fitzduane held her and stroked her, and long minutes passed and then it
was over.
 
She pulled away and then
kissed him on the forehead and went into the bathroom to wipe her eyes.

The Spider and Yoshokawa stood in the living room when Fitzduane came
out.
 
Clearly they had been there for a
little time.
 
Both wore expressions of
concern and grief.

"Tanabu-
san
?" said
the Spider.

"She'll be..."
 
Fitzduane
started to say, and then realized that he did not know what to add except
platitudes.
 
This was a wound that ran
very deep.
 
Chifune was as resilient as
anyone he had ever met, but this was something, he felt, against which she had
no defenses.
 
This was the death of
someone she had loved.
 
She would not
recover from this loss easily.
 
Nor was
it something she would ever forget.

Chifune emerged from the bathroom, her face washed and her composure
restored, and only spots of water on her blouse betraying her recent outburst.

The four stood there in the wrecked room and there was an awkward
silence, and then the Spider started to speak.
 
Fitzduane held up his hand for silence.
 
In it was a plaster-covered, miniature black rectangle with a hair-thin wire
protruding from it.

The
Spider,
puzzled for a moment, put on his
reading glasses and took the small object and examined it more closely.
 
Almost immediately, he gave a nod of
comprehension.

They left the bugged apartment and by mutual agreement headed immediately
to police headquarters.
 
It was now after
four in the morning, and the streets of
Tokyo
were as quiet as they ever get.
 
It
started to rain, and that added to the somber mood.

Chifune stared straight ahead as Fitzduane drove, but her hand rested on
his thigh, not in a sexual gesture, but merely as if to seek reassurance.
 
From time to time, she shivered.
 
Fitzduane glanced at her with concern,
debating whether he should stop the car and put his jacket around her, but the
journey was short and soon she would be in warmth again.

They assembled in the Spider's office around the huge conference table,
and tea and other refreshments were brought.
 
The Spider also poured four large brandies.
 
Chifune demurred at first but then drank, and
some color came back into her cheeks.

It was strange, Fitzduane thought, that although there had been no
discussion of why they had assembled, all knew why they were there.
 
Adachi's death had marked a turning
point.
 
There was now a common imperative
for immediate and drastic action.
 
Adachi's death was not going to go unavenged.
 
It was not merely a police matter.
 
It was personal.

The Spider began the discussion.
 
"Adachi-
san
and I met
yesterday," he said heavily, "and I think you should know what
transpired."

"The superintendent was determined to solve the Hodama murders.
 
He clung to this objective, despite all
else."

"Immediately following the Hodama killings, the evidence pointed
toward the Namaka brothers.
 
First of
all, a Namaka identity pin was found in the cauldron itself, and then a series
of other clues were discovered, all of which pointed towards the Namakas.
 
The puzzle was the motive.
 
Hodama was the Namaka's political mentor and
had been such for many decades, so why would they turn on him after all this
time?
 
And then some tapes were found and
they purported to show that there had been a falling-out between Hodama and the
brothers and that he was going to abandon them politically.

"On the face of it, the steady buildup of evidence against the
Namakas was damning, but Adachi-
san
was not convinced.
 
Instinct is an
important part of a good detective's skills, and Adachi-
san
's instincts told him that something was wrong.
 
He would have been delighted to bring down
the Namakas, but he felt that, paradoxically, the one crime they were innocent
of was the Hodama affair.

"The aspect of the case that caused Adachi-
san
most concern was the manner of Hodama-
san
's death.
 
Of course, the
method could have been an attempt to confuse the investigators, but overall,
murder by boiling someone while still alive was such a horrible technique that
the superintendent felt it must be personal and that the true motive for the
killing was revenge.

"A great many people had reason to be revenged on Hodama-
san
, of course, but Adachi-
san
focused on the flaws, in the chain
of evidence involving the Namakas, as he saw them.
 
Investigation here showed a common
denominator.
 
In virtually every case,
there was a Korean connection.
 
Eventually, it looked to the superintendent as if a Korean or someone
with strong Korean connections was behind the hit.
 
Accordingly, he narrowed his search to
looking for such a person or organization
who
might
harbor a grudge against Hodama, even from many years ago.
 
He further qualified that by looking for some
particularly vicious incident.
 
Some action that would result in a response as excessive as that
meted out to Hodama-
san
.

"Adachi-
san
's search was
not easy.
 
The postwar period was a
confused time, and initial record-keeping left much to be desired.
 
Additionally, Hodama was rarely involved
directly in violence.
 
Almost always, it
was his practice to have such acts carried out by intermediaries, and, of
course, in the early postwar years his favorite enforcers were the
Namakas.
 
Later on, the Namakas also
became too respectable for much direct involvement and they, too, started to
use someone else for their dirty work.

"The superintendent was eventually pointed towards Katsuda and his
organization, when an elderly sergeant he had worked under told him the story
of a rival Korean gang being burned to death by the Namakas at Hodama's
instigation.
 
This was the kind of crime
Adachi-
san
was looking for.
 
Here was the motive, and it came clearer when
it transpired that a survivor of that Korean gang, Katsuda-
san
himself, was now running the second-largest
yakuza
gang in
Japan
.
 
In other words, Katsuda not only had the
motive but he also had the means.
 
The
Hodama attack smacked of a well-drilled
yakuza
operation, the kind that only one of the larger organized-crime groups could
mount.
 
Naturally, the Namakas could have
carried out such an exercise, too, but at least Adachi-
san
now had another suspect and one that, in his judgment, made
more sense.

"The superintendent's suspicion of Katsuda was further reinforced
when an informant, generally known as the Eel and an expert in some of the murkier
depths of the financial world, told Adachi-
san
that a major move against the Namakas was being made by various institutions
backed by Katsuda.
 
Of course, it could
have been coincidence or Katsuda merely seizing the opportunity to avail
himself
of the power vacuum caused by Hodama's death, but
all in all it seemed to Adachi-
san
on
the balance of probability that Katsuda was the man.
 
Apart from anything else, further
investigation revealed that the scale of the financial assault on the Namakas
could not have been mounted without considerable preparation, arguably a matter
of months, and yet these moves by Katsuda were initiated within hours of
Hodama's death.