Chapter 211: The Black Diary

Chapter 211: Chapter 211: The Black Diary

Saito Kenji climbed the stairs to Hirose’s office above the tea shop at 8:58 on Saturday morning. He was two minutes early, with a small black diary in his coat pocket and no lawyer of his own. At the top of the stairs, he stopped, because the girl who drew flowers was sitting on the floor by the wall.

Morikawa Sayo had come because Hirose had asked her. He asked whether you were still in Tokyo, the old lawyer had said on the phone at 6:50. You don’t have to come. But I think he wants to say something to you, and I think you should decide whether to hear it.

So she had come, on the first train from the business hotel near Kichijōji where she had been staying since the hearing. She had brought her canvas bag and nothing else. She sat on the floor by the filing cabinet with her knees drawn up, where she had sat the first time she climbed these stairs with a grey binder against her chest.

Saito stood in the doorway and looked at her.

He wasn’t wearing his grey suit. He was in an ordinary dark sweater and trousers, with his hair less carefully combed than it had been in the court corridor. There were shadows under his eyes. Without the suit, he looked like what he was: a tired man of thirty-seven who had not slept for a week.

"Morikawa-san," he said.

She didn’t answer.

"I apologized for the noise," Saito said. "In June. At the café." He was quiet for a moment. "I should have apologized for the envelope."

Morikawa looked at him for a long time from the floor.

"Yes," she said at last. "You should have."

Hirose didn’t let him sit down at first.

"Before you say anything," the old lawyer said, from behind his desk, "you need to understand what I am and what I’m not. I represent five young artists who have given evidence against the company you worked for. I can’t represent you. I can’t advise you. Anything you say in this room, I may have to repeat to a court." He took off his glasses. "If you want to tell me something, I’ll listen as a witness. If you want legal advice, I’ll give you the name of someone who can give it, and you should go to them first."

Saito stood very still in the doorway.

"I’d like the name," he said. "And then I’d like to tell you something anyway."

Hirose looked at him for a long moment over his glasses. Then he wrote a name and a telephone number on an index card and held it out. It was a former colleague, he said, retired from a large firm, who had defended people in exactly Saito’s position for thirty years and who didn’t frighten easily.

Saito took the card. He put it in his breast pocket, very carefully.

Then he took out the small black diary and laid it on the corner of Hirose’s desk.

"The sixteenth of June," he said. "I’d like you to read it before I say anything else."

Hirose read it. Then Shirai, who had come at nine with his box of files and was sitting on the floor against the filing cabinet, read it. Then Hayama read it three times, with her ruler under the line.

Hakata. Café near station, 11:00. Morikawa S. Bring envelope. Apologize for the noise.

It was in black ink, in Saito’s small, neat, very ordinary handwriting, on a page that also held a reminder about a dental appointment and a note to buy yuzu cakes on Friday.

There was nothing about property, or apartments, or a Fukuoka residential portfolio.

"I’ve kept a diary every day for thirteen years," Saito said quietly. He was still standing in the doorway, because nobody had asked him to sit. "Since I joined Theseus. Every meeting, every dinner, every café. Ishimura-san taught me to. She said a good associate never forgets who he met, where, and what he gave them." He almost smiled. "I think she forgot she’d taught me."

Nobody said anything.

"She called me on Friday," Saito said. "Last Friday, on the platform at Iidabashi, after I resigned. She said the June expense claim would say property acquisition, and that I’d be asked to confirm it in court. She said I only needed to say it was property." He looked at the diary on the desk. "I said I’d think about it. Then I let the train go."

"Why?" asked Hirose.

Saito didn’t answer for a long time.

When he did, he wasn’t looking at Hirose, or at the diary, or at Shirai on the floor with his box of files. He was looking at Morikawa Sayo, who was still sitting by the wall with her knees drawn up, watching him.

"Because I read Chapter sixty-seven," he said. "Of Threadless Gate. In August. Everyone in the industry read it. The letter to Sora." His voice was very quiet. "And then I read Crownless Chapter eight, the letter she wrote. The mother, telling her son to break a man’s crown." He paused. "I’d handed her an outline that said TBD, and a brief from Osaka that said make it a fight. She wrote avenge us, because that was what I’d asked for." He swallowed. "And the boy whose outline it was wrote nobody needs to pay."

The small office was completely silent.

"I’ve been very good at my job for thirteen years," Saito said. "I’ve never once written anything of my own. I only carried other people’s envelopes." He looked at Morikawa. "I sat on the platform at Iidabashi last Friday and realized that if I said property in court, it would be the first thing I’d ever written myself. And it would be a lie."

Morikawa spoke for the first time since he came in.

"What will you say instead?" she asked.

Saito looked at her for a long moment.

"The truth," he said. "To my own lawyer first, on Monday. Then to the police. Then to the court, in a declaration, if the judge will accept it." He looked at the diary on Hirose’s desk. "That’s the original. There are thirteen years of them in my apartment. They’re all exactly like that, with every café and every envelope."

Shirai, on the floor, had gone very still.

"Thirteen years," he said slowly. "Of Ishimura Reiko’s meetings."

"Of mine," said Saito. "Hers are in them. I never wrote down anything I didn’t see." He paused. "I’m not doing this to be forgiven. I don’t expect to be. I’ve read Sugiura-san’s notebook. I know which names I’m in it beside."

He turned toward the door. Then he stopped, with his hand on the frame, and looked back at Morikawa one more time.

"Your florists," he said. "Two rivals, one street. I read all of it, in March, before I gave you the outline. I wanted to know whose hands I was hiring." He hesitated. "Chapter twelve is the best thing in it. Someone should have told you that a long time ago."

"Someone did," said Morikawa quietly. "Two years ago. On a card."

Saito looked at her for a long moment. Then he nodded once, very slowly, as though that were the only possible answer, and went down the stairs.

For a long time after he had gone, nobody in the small office said anything.

Then Shirai, still sitting on the floor with his box of files, let out a long breath.

"We don’t need the photocopy," he said slowly. "Not for Monday. If Saito-san’s lawyer files a declaration with the original diary entry, it contradicts the company’s own record in Saito-san’s own handwriting." He looked up at Haruki. "We never have to say where the photocopy came from."

Haruki didn’t answer immediately. He was thinking about a fax machine in a convenience store at ten past midnight, and four short lines to Singapore.

I’m telling you first. Not asking.

"He’ll still know we had it," he said quietly.

"He gave it to you," said Hirose. "He’ll be glad you didn’t have to use it." He paused. "Or he’ll be disappointed. With men like that, I’ve never been able to tell."

The answer came that evening, at 7:40, through Aya.

The fund’s Singapore office had faxed a single page to Yamashita’s Rookie Development division, addressed to Fujimori Aya. It was the only fax number in Japan, apparently, that Ishikawa Kōji still trusted. Aya read it on the ninth floor above the moat, in an empty office, and called Haruki at once.

"It’s three lines," she said. Her voice was unsteady. "In red. I’ll read it exactly."

Thank you for telling me first.

Use it if you need it. I’d rather be named in a Tokyo court than let her change four words and win.

I hope you won’t need it. — I.K.

Haruki sat on the crate in front of his desk with the phone against his ear and didn’t say anything for a long time.

"We don’t need it," he said at last. "Saito brought his diary this morning."

Aya was quiet on the line.

"Then write and tell him," she said. "He’ll want to know. I think he’s been sitting by that fax machine all day."

[Saito Kenji — Statement (as witness, not client): Diary entry (June 16) contradicts altered expense claim. 13 years of diaries (incl. Ishimura’s meetings) in his possession. Will provide to own counsel, police, and court.]

[Counsel referral: Hirose’s former colleague (criminal defence).]

[Effect: Singapore photocopy no longer required for Dec 22 hearing.]

[Ishikawa Kōji (fax via Fujimori Aya): "Use it if you need it. I’d rather be named than let her change four words and win." — Not required.]