Chapter 210: Property

Chapter 210: Chapter 210: Property

The Osaka company produced its June expense records at 4:52 on the nineteenth of December, eight minutes before the court’s deadline. They filled two boxes, delivered by courier to Shirai’s office in Chiyoda. Somewhere in the first box, on a single sheet, was the sixteenth of June.

Shirai found it at 7:20 that evening and called Hirose. Hirose called Haruki at 7:40.

"It’s there," the old lawyer said. His voice was very flat. "The claim. Shinkansen, Shin-Osaka to Hakata and back, on the sixteenth of June. A café near Hakata Station, two coffees. The claimant is Saito K., approved by I. Reiko." He paused. "The purpose line is different."

Haruki sat very still on the crate in front of his desk.

"Different how?"

"The photocopy from Singapore says Client meeting, Hakata," Hirose said. "The original the company has produced to the court says Client meeting, Hakata — property acquisition (Fukuoka residential portfolio)." A pause. "The same form, the same signatures, the same date stamp. Someone has added four words to the purpose line, in what looks like the same handwriting."

"They changed it."

"They changed it," Hirose agreed quietly. "Or they’ll say the photocopy we have is incomplete, that it was copied before the purpose line was finished. Expense forms are often filled in over several days." He was quiet for a moment. "Saito-kun, if he’s asked on the twenty-second, will be expected to confirm that he went to Hakata to look at apartment buildings and bought two coffees for a property agent."

They met at Hirose’s office that night at nine. The tea shop below was closed and dark. The small room above it was lit by a single desk lamp and smelled of cold barley tea.

There were five of them: Hirose at his desk, Shirai on the floor against the filing cabinet in his good grey suit, Hayama on the edge of the filing cabinet with her notebook, Haruki on the folding chair by the window, and Sugiura, who had come from Nerima because Hirose had called her, with her new notebook on her knee.

Shirai had brought both documents. He laid them side by side on Hirose’s desk under the lamp: the photocopy from Singapore, and a court-certified copy of the original the company had produced.

They were identical except for four words. Hayama leaned over the desk and read both three times, then laid a ruler beneath the purpose line on each, and said nothing at all.

— property acquisition (Fukuoka residential portfolio).

"We can prove they’re different," Shirai said. "That’s simple. Lay them side by side in front of the judge, and any child could see it." He paused. "What we can’t do is say where the photocopy came from without saying who gave it to us."

Nobody spoke.

"If we produce the photocopy," Shirai said carefully, "the respondents’ lawyers will ask the court to require us to disclose its source. They’ll argue that a document of unknown provenance can’t be relied on, especially one that contradicts the company’s own original. And the court may agree." He looked at Haruki. "Then we’d have to say that it was handed to us in a coffee shop in Singapore by a member of the fund’s advisory board, in breach of his board’s confidentiality."

"Ishikawa," said Sugiura quietly.

"Ishikawa," Shirai agreed. "Whose name would then be in a court filing, in Tokyo, as the source of the evidence against the fund he sits on. Three weeks before the Crownless trailer airs nationally." He was quiet for a moment. "The fund would know within a day. And the prosecutors who referred him in May would know too, that he’s been handing out the fund’s internal documents."

Haruki didn’t say anything for a long time.

He thought about a man in a white shirt with his sleeves rolled up, climbing the stairs into a lantern shop. I won’t come to Tokyo. I won’t give a statement to the court, or to the police. Not yet. I’m not brave enough. He thought about the three lines he had written in a letter. I won’t promise you anything. Not even silence.

He had meant it. He hadn’t promised.

But he had also learned something, from that same man, through Kanzaki, on the ninth floor above a moat. The people who matter should hear the truth first.

"I want to tell him," he said at last.

Everyone looked at him.

"Before we decide," Haruki said. "If we use it, his name goes in the filing. He should hear that from us before he reads it in a court document." He looked at Shirai. "How long do we have?"

"The hearing is on the twenty-second," Shirai said. "We’d have to file any new evidence by the twenty-first, at noon."

"Then I’ll write tonight," said Haruki.

"He won’t get a letter in two days," said Hayama. "Not to Singapore."

"Then a fax," said Haruki. "To the fund’s office. Addressed to him. Aya-san has the number."

"Everyone at the fund will see it," said Shirai.

"Then it’ll be a short fax," Haruki said.

Sugiura had been silent the whole time, with her hand flat on her closed notebook. Now she opened it to the fourth page, with its single line in near-black blue ink.

Singapore, November 24. He gave them the names.

She looked at it for a long moment.

"He knew," she said quietly. "When he handed it over. He knew what it would mean if we had to use it." She looked up at Haruki. "He reads everything. He’ll have known the company would change the original. He gave it to us anyway."

"Then why tell him?" Shirai asked. "If he already knows?"

"Because it’s his name," said Haruki. "Not ours."

He wrote the fax on the crate in front of his desk at 11:40 that night, on a single sheet of plain paper, by hand. It was very short, because everyone at the fund would read it.

Ishikawa-san,

The original has four words the photocopy doesn’t.

If we show the court both, they’ll ask where the photocopy came from. We would have to answer.

I’m telling you first. Not asking.

— A.H.

He faxed it from the convenience store by Koenji Station at 12:10 in the morning, to a number in Singapore Aya had written on a slip of paper. The machine whirred and beeped and printed a small confirmation slip. He folded it and put it in his wallet, beside an index card in near-black blue ink and a list of five needs.

Then he walked home through the cold and sat on the crate in the dark.

At 1:20, he wrote to Helsinki, because it was early evening there and because of number one.

I faxed Ishikawa. The company changed the expense report. If we use the copy he gave us, his name goes in the court filing. I told him before deciding.

Yui’s reply came in four minutes.

Did you ask him what to do?

No, he wrote. I told him. It’s our decision. But it’s his name.

There was a longer pause this time.

That’s the most honest thing you’ve ever done to someone who hurt you, Yui wrote at last. Telling him first, without asking him to make it easy for you.

Then:

Are you going to use it?

He looked at the two sheets of paper Shirai had left with him: the photocopy from Singapore and the certified original, identical except for four words.

I don’t know yet, he wrote. Hirose-sensei says we have until noon on the twenty-first.

Then you don’t have to know tonight, Yui wrote. Go to sleep. It’s one in the morning. I can tell from your typing.

He didn’t sleep. But he lay down on the floor in front of the open bedroom door, with the doorframe and its fourteen pencil lines faint in the light from the street. He stayed there until the window turned grey, thinking about a man in a white shirt reading a sketchbook for fifty-two minutes below a lantern shop. He had stopped longest at a doorframe.

The phone rang at 6:40 the next morning, the twentieth of December, a Saturday.

It wasn’t Singapore.

It was Hirose. His voice was very strange, very quiet and completely awake, as though he hadn’t slept either.

"I’ve just had a call," the old lawyer said. "At six. From a man who said he needed to speak to a lawyer, and that it couldn’t be his own." A pause. "He said he’d been sitting in his apartment in Ichigaya since a train left Iidabashi Station without him on Friday morning. He said he had a small black diary he thought I should read."

Haruki sat up very straight on the crate.

"Saito," he said.

"Saito Kenji," said Hirose. "He’s coming to Kichijōji at nine." He paused. "He asked me one question before he hung up. He asked whether the girl who draws flowers was still in Tokyo."

[Court production (Dec 19): June 16 expense claim — purpose line altered: "+ property acquisition (Fukuoka residential portfolio)."]

[Fax to Singapore (Dec 20, 00:10): Sent. "I’m telling you first. Not asking."]

[Saito Kenji — Requested meeting with Hirose Kenzō (Dec 20, 09:00). Bringing: diary.]