with all of them. But one person bothered him a little, a man introduced as the head of the Takeda Firm. Glancing at his face as they exchanged cards, Tachibana had the feeling they had met before, though the name, Kisuke Takeda, did not ring a bell. He was a man of strong features and solid build, a little over sixty, with his scalp visible through thinning hair, neatly parted on the side.
Something must have struck Takeda as well, because he looked strangely at Tachibana, and his hand seemed to be shaking as he received the card. But his greeting itself was perfunctory, which seemed to indicate that he did not, after all, think they had met. At the time, Tachibana thought they must have been mistaking each other for someone else, or had perhaps just met somewhere in passing. But later he found himself unable to forget Takeda. Something about the man kept on bothering him. From time to time during the party, he glanced at Takeda, often to find that Takeda was looking at him. When their eyes met, both of them would quickly look aside. But after several such incidents, Takeda suddenly disappeared from the party.
"Is something the matter?" asked Shimizu, coming over to fill Tachibana's wine glass. "You don't look like you're having a good time."
"Oh yes, I am," replied Tachibana, putting on a smile. "By the way, who exactly is that gentleman, Kisuke Takeda?"
"I say, you do have an awfully good eye, don't you? That fellow is right at the center of the financial world of northern Nagano Prefecture. He's got especially strong ties to Representative Shishido. Fact is, Shishido is reluctant to show himself at the head of this golf course business, so he's using Takeda as a sort of front. They say this Takeda has a lot of power behind the scenes in Nagano politics. We'd better get him on our side, too."
"I see," said Tachibana absentmindedly, gazing in the direction in which Takeda had disappeared.
At about nine that morning, five co-eds got off a bus at the Imai bus stop. They had come from Nagoya the day before last, and had been staying at a tourist house in Kinasa, shut in by the rain. Now they were finally out to take the hike they had been waiting for, though they had been told that the mountain trail might still be impassable. They wanted at least to get far enough to see the Demoness Maple's Cave.
After walking for twenty minutes from Imai, they came to the Ashitagahara information sign, located on a rise that gave a good view of the scattered houses of upland farmers. The sign said that the Demoness Maple had use to come here every morning because it reminded her of her native Kyoto. Another twenty minutes or so beyond that, walking uphill along a narrow farm road, they reached the Arakura Campground, on a pleasant plateau surrounded by white birch and larch trees. Normally it would have been covered with tents and lively with crowds of young people, but they had all been chased away by the three straight days of rain. After a brief rest in the office at the campground entrance, the five girls started out for the Demoness Maple's Cave. Just two-hundred meters along the trail was a sign which told them that this place was known as "Poison Plain" because it was here that the Demoness Maple had served poisoned sake to the enemy general, Taira no Koremochi.
"Plain, huh? Must be talking about you, Miyuki," said the girl first in line, making a malicious pun as she started out again. She took one step and fell down with a little scream.
"See? Say things like that and you get what's coming to you," said the leader, coming over to help her up.
"Over there, over there," whispered the girl, pointing at something as she reached for the hand offered.
Just twenty or thirty meters ahead of them, against the base of a thick tree, a man was sprawled as if dead drunk, in a sitting position on the bare ground. He was dressed in a well-tailored summer suit, but it had gotten all wet and hadn't had time to dry out.
The leader gasped. One by one, the other girls froze in their tracks as they reached the spot. Taking strength in numbers, though, they did not flee.
"He's dead, isn't he?" whispered one of them.
"He can't be!"
"Ssh, he'll hear you!"
But the man could not hear them. His hearing, along with all of his other senses, had long since ceased to function.
"He is dead!" declared the leader, her voice hushed.
The girl on the ground pulled herself slowly to her feet, her legs very weak.
"Don't run!" appealed the leader feebly, as one of the girls started to do so. But the rest of them panicked and followed suit. The girl who had just gotten up fell again as soon as she started down the slope. Her comrades left her sitting there covered with mud, cursing through her tears at their retreating backs.
Contacted from the campground office, the local patrolman rushed there. Reassured by the sight of him, the girls managed to collect themselves after their headlong flight and lead him and the two men from the office back to the scene. Even the mud-smeared girl, who had finally come in, sulking, joined the others at the last moment, afraid to be left alone.
The patrolman requisitioned all the rope in the office and asked the other two men to carry it. Some distance before they reached the body, he stopped everyone, then went on alone, his billy club at the ready. Having made sure the man against the tree could do him no harm, he bent over for a closer look.
The suit was certainly out of place for the scene. Though a soaked mess, it and the tie both were obviously very expensive. The man looked like he had been all dressed up for a night on the town. He appeared to be about sixty. His head was sunk on his chest and his thinning hair was hanging down over his forehead. His face, the nape of his neck, the backs of his hands—all exposed skin was blotched with death, and the odor of decay was already about him. It was obvious that he had been dead for some time.
The patrolman came back to the others and cordoned off the area by looping the rope around the surrounding trees. Leaving the two men from the campground on guard, he took the girls back to the office.
Nagano prefectural police headquarters received the first report at 10:20 A.M. Inspector Takemura was about to get into the car with his usual driver, Kinoshita, when he was stopped by Miyazaki, his superior, the head of Investigative Section One.
"Takemura, you ride with me, will you?"
"Oh? Are you going too, sir?" Takemura thought it strange that the head of Section One himself should be going out on the first report of the discovery of a body. Something must be up, he figured, but he got in beside Miyazaki without asking what.
As soon as they started, Miyazaki got on the radio to Nagano Central Station, in whose jurisdiction the body had been discovered. "Get this to all investigators headed for the scene in Imai, Togakushi Township. When they get there, they are not to approach the body, but are to see to it that the area is not disturbed. Under no circumstances is anyone to do anything until Inspector Takemura and I arrive."
The bewildered Takemura finally asked, "Something up?"
"Yeah." Miyazaki's long, narrow face became even longer and narrower as he pursed his lips and wrinkled his forehead in a deep frown before continuing. "You see, this body that's been found in Togakushi, there's a possibility that he may be a VIP."
"A VIP? Who?"
"We're
