Кэйго Хигасино - The Name of the Game is a Kidnapping

Juri snapped her fingers. “Ships.”

“Not bad.” I nodded. This girl really was sharp.

“When we made the first call,” Juri said, “we went to Yokosuka and had them hear the whistling. It was so they’d think the hideout was near a harbor, right? Then now too, wouldn’t it be good to have the same thing?”

“You’re right. But if you say you always heard it, that would be unnatural. The criminals would definitely have been wary of that. You heard it once or twice, but it sounded distant. That’s what you should tell them.”

“Got it. Will that do on the sound front?”

“Just ship whistles and nothing else would be weird. The sound of cars passing by, let’s add that too. Because places where you can’t hear that are rare.”

“Ships and cars.” Juri had on her game face.

“All right, the cool woman isn’t the only person you met. We need at least one more person to come on stage. That’ll be the man.”

“I know. The principal perpetrator who took the ransom.”

“Principal perpetrator? That’s quite a tongue twister. But he’s exactly that. You’ve been forced to work with that perpetrator at least three times. Once was the time you initially called. The police will probably ask you to talk about that in detail.”

“This has become really tiring.” Juri made a dejected face and scratched her head.

“Those guys are desperate. The ransom money was just whisked away, okay? Forgive them for interrogating you.”

“Sure. So, how should I explain it?”

“You say that you were told to call home. At that time, you heard the voice of the lead perp. Like with the cool woman, the police will probably ask what kind of voice he had.”

“Who should I make it this time? How about Masaharu Fukuyama?” Her eyes lit up. She must have been a fan.

“In my mind he’s in his forties, though. Is there a person you can think of?”

Juri moved her pupils around before slapping her knee. “I think the homeroom teacher I had my senior year in high school was around that age. He doesn’t have to be famous, right?”

“Works for me. Well, that covers the first call. The next part is a little difficult. It’s the Hakozaki conversation. That time, there’s no way you didn’t leave the hideout, so the police will probably be persistent.”

“I guess ‘I don’t know anything’ wouldn’t pass muster?”

“But you still had your blindfold on. Additionally, they put headphones on you. Loud music was playing from them. It was obviously an arrangement on the criminals’ part to keep you from hearing extra sounds. They had you get in the car like that and took you somewhere. You don’t need to know too much about the place. You couldn’t see or hear, so who’s to blame you? There, they finally took off your headphones, but the blindfold stayed on. Eventually, the man gave you detailed instructions. Like I did then. You did what the man told you and talked to Katsutoshi Katsuragi on a cellphone.”

“That time, you wrote what I was supposed to say on a note, though. If I were blindfolded, that wouldn’t work.”

“You were parroting the lines. You repeated exactly what the man said to you.”

In any case, the police would probably check on the hotel we had used. There was no place else where you could monitor Hakozaki Junction. Plus, you could get to the guest floors of that hotel from an underground parking lot via an express elevator. Even if you were leading a girl who was wearing a blindfold and headphones, you could get through without anyone wondering about her strange getup.

The police would probably go to inquire at the hotel, but the staff would never figure out who we were. We’d left nothing they could latch on to.

“And lastly, the time we got the ransom money.”

“Once again, I had a blindfold and headphones on when I was put in the car.”

“Right. However, this time, you tell them you stayed inside. You were forced to call on the cellphone like that.”

“Without going anywhere?”

“You felt that the car was constantly moving. Sometimes it stopped, but not for long. The police will interpret that as the criminal group traveling along the expressway while giving instructions for seizing the ransom. They won’t be able to tell from where the group was watching Komagata PA or the whole expressway.”

At that point, I heaved a sigh.

“That’s it for you aiding the culprits.”

“But actually there was one more time. A key part — my role in receiving the ransom.”

“You didn’t go as yourself, did you?”

“I did as you told me. I put on the plainest clothes ever, and you saw how I could change my makeup.”

I nodded, satisfied. “That’s fine then. That wasn’t you. The woman named Matsumoto that Nakamura from Nissei Auto’s Mukojima branch handed the cargo to was simply someone else. Her hair was long, and she had sunglasses on.”

“A woman like this,” Juri put on a wig that was by her side, and dark sunglasses.

“Not even the slightest resemblance to Makiko Esumi,” I said with plenty of sarcasm, taking the items away from her. “We’ve got to dispose of these too. And the burner. What else do we have to dispose of—”

“Probably our history.” Juri looked into my eyes as she said that.

Two full days had passed since we’d obtained the ransom money. There was no change in the bills. I timidly tried touching them with my hand, but nothing strange happened. It seemed no trap had been set.

I put my thirty million yen into a grocery bag. “This is my cut. That makes the rest of it all yours.”

Juri laid her eyes on the tabletop and breathed a small sigh. “It’s pretty cumbersome. And it looks heavy.”

“It means we had that big of a match.”

I passed a department store paper bag to her. She started putting the bills into it. Two hundred seventy million yen. It really would be quite heavy.

“What should I do with this money?”

“You can do whatever you want with it. It’s yours. But you shouldn’t use it in a flashy way.”

Juri shook her head. “That’s not what I mean. I can’t just carry this money home. Am I going to keep it in a coin locker or something? And then get it after things have cooled down?”

“Coin lockers are dangerous. If by chance they find the key, then you’re done for. And we don’t know how long it’ll take for things to cool down. Once the storage time has passed, it’ll be opened. Game over.”

“Then what should I do?”

“Do you have a sanctuary somewhere? A convenient place where only you go and only you know of? If you have a place like that you can store it there for a while.”

After thinking for some time, she grinned. “There’s just one place. A good place.”

“Where?” As soon as I asked her, the answer came to me, and I frowned. “You want to say this condo, but we can’t do that. After getting you back safely, we won’t ever get in touch again. We said so from the beginning, remember?”

“But there’s no other good place.”

It seemed she really had set her sights on my room. “Okay. Get ready to go out.”

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll know if you follow me.” I stood up. “Don’t forget the two hundred seventy million yen.”

I left my room and headed to the parking lot. I looked at the clock. It was nine thirty at night.

“Hey, where are we going? You can tell me, can’t you?”

“Yokosuka.”

“Yokosuka... again?”

“You said that you had that friend who went to America, right? Was her name Yuki? We went to erase your message.”

Ah , comprehension finally came over her face. “So we’re going to hide it in Yuki’s room.”