Less Than Human (23 page)

The truth hit her as though she’d swallowed a lump of ice.

It’s not the most important thing in the world.

She gulped the jagged lump and activated her computer automatically, pushing her bag to one side. It felt heavier than usual.
A strange coincidence … In the apartment earlier when Taka pushed her, she’d knocked her bag onto the floor, and the manga
she’d bought earlier must have fallen out. Man had picked it up instead of her own book and taken it. Eleanor found Mari’s
book farther under the table. The shop covers were similar, and Eleanor might easily have mistaken them herself. So Mari now
had her copy of the last volume of
Journey to Life.
And she …

When she opened Mari’s book she couldn’t help laughing. She now had a copy of Volume One in the same story. Perhaps Mari remembered
their conversation on Sunday. The thought comforted her. She had reached her niece, in a small way.

She realized she was staring at mail from Akita.


Sender: A


Subject: Re: Discussion


McGuire-san


I am delighted that you have decided to meet with me. Please do not be concerned about your response to my earlier query.
We shall discuss this further when we meet. I suggest tonight at six. I will book a table at the restaurant Higo beside the
games plaza 3 at Umeda.


A


Eleanor didn’t want to meet Akita that night. Why couldn’t the man phone her? And she found the tone of the mail overbearing,
without being able to pinpoint anything. Still, if they met at six, she’d be home by nine, which would please Masao. He said
he’d call her if he heard anything about Mari.

She sighed and replied that she’d be at the restaurant at six. Akita had always been abrupt. In their first days at the company
he had been the only other new recruit who gave her no concessions or even special looks because she was a foreigner. He treated
her, like he treated everyone else, as a potential rival or, if they turned out to be unworthy of rivalry, with disdain. Eleanor
was able to keep up with him and therefore received grudging acknowledgment that deepened into tolerance.

Voices rose in the main office, then dropped again. Something sounded wrong. She poked her head around the filing cabinet.

The five members of the Robotics Department who weren’t in the lab gathered around Kato’s desk, Kato’s thin neck and shiny
scalp just visible in the middle. The admin assistant, a young woman named Kimura, perched on the desk corner. Kimura wore
the demure blue uniform required of administration employees, but she still managed to look frivolous.

“… left the year I was recruited,” Kato was saying. He looked up over and saw Eleanor. “Chief, you knew Nakamura-san, didn’t
you?”

Eleanor opened her mouth, shut it again while she gathered her thoughts. The others waited expectantly.

“It’s been in the news?” She left her alcove and came to stand with them.

They all nodded.

“It must have happened just after he called you on Monday night,” said Kato.

“Oh, that was Nakamura?” One of the others in the Sam team wrinkled his forehead with the effort of remembering.

Eleanor hadn’t told them she went to Zecom, and she didn’t think the police would want her to start now.

“The news said it was probably an intruder,” said Kato, glancing at the screen.

“Their security can’t be up to much,” grunted someone else.

Kimura touched a handkerchief to moist eyes. “He was always willing to stop and chat,” she sniffed. “Even after he left here.”

That’s why he never got any work done, thought Eleanor. Then Kimura’s second remark registered. “What do you mean, ‘after
he left here’?”

Kimura lowered her handkerchief and stared back at Eleanor with mascara-smudged eyes. “When he came to get his mail.”

“What mail?”

Kimura glanced at the others as if asking what the fuss was about. “The letters and stuff that got sent here. He didn’t want
us to forward them on, so he came to pick them up. He always brought some sweets or crackers for the mail room staff, and…”

Eleanor blanked out the rest of Kimura’s words as she reached over and opened a line from Kato’s desk.

“Mail room? This is Supervisor McGuire, Robotics Department. Do you have any mail kept for an ex-employee named Nakamura Shigeo?”

The mail room clerk said he’d check.

“You think the police might want to see those letters?” ventured Kato.

“I’m sure they will,” said Eleanor. And so did she.

I
shihara hadn’t expected Sakaki to run.

The manager pointed out Sakaki’s skinny, overalled figure on the other side of the factory, walking toward the exit. The manager
shouted his name and waved. Sakaki started running. Ishihara cursed and sprinted after him down one of the aisles, found his
way blocked by machines, and fumbled for his phone. Sakaki disappeared out the loading bay doors.

Ishihara’s phone was buzzing already.

“Ishihara here.”

“This is Constable Taji. We’re holding one male who was running out of the building. Is he connected with the case?”

“Hold him there, I’ll be right out.” Ishihara let out a breath of relief and picked his way between benches and machines,
wiping sweat from his face.

“What’s going on?” said the manager beside him. He was a thin, middle-aged man with the expression of one who expects and
gets the worst.

“Your man Sakaki has a guilty conscience.”

“Can I do anything?”

“Not now.” Ishihara inclined his head to soften the directive and closed the door firmly behind him.

Sakaki stood in the parking space in front of the building, between the local constable, who’d met Ishihara when he arrived,
and the constable who came in the car with Ishihara. A truck was just pulling out, leaving the air thick with exhaust fumes,
which seemed worse in the heat.

The sun seared their necks and shoulders, but Ishihara didn’t suggest they go inside. The less comfortable Sakaki felt, the
more likely he was to talk.

The manager peeked out the doorway, but Ishihara waved him back inside.

“We’ll be there in a minute,” he called. Then to Sakaki, “Why did you run?”

Sakaki kept his eyes down. He looked worse than he did on Saturday—his face was drawn and unshaven, and his blue overalls
were filthy. He hunched his shoulders and thrust his hands deep into the overall pockets. “Didn’t want to get into trouble.”

Ishihara lit a cigarette and, as if on second thoughts, offered one to Sakaki. The beat constable looked on, interested, while
the West Station constable stared into space.

“Why should you get into trouble?”

“I was here when Mito died.” Sakaki accepted the cigarette. His hands shook. “I came in that night to ask Mito for a loan.
I knew he wasn’t likely to give me one, but I had to try. He never spent money, the tight bastard. I stayed behind in the
locker room after my shift finished, thinking what to say to him. I must have fallen asleep.”

“For how long?” said Ishihara.

“Until after three-thirty … All right, I had a couple of beers. I thought I needed some help before talking to Mito. You don’t
know what a self-righteous bastard he was.”

Ishihara had met a lot of Happy Universe members and thought he could guess, but didn’t say so.

“Anyway, I washed my face and went to talk to Mito. He wouldn’t lend me anything, then he had the cheek to give me a sermon.
At five o’clock—I noticed the time because I could get breakfast near the station—Mito looked at the monitor and said something
like ‘that’s funny.’ I said ‘what’s up,’ and he said ‘hang on, the welder’s stopped, I’ll be back in a tick.’ He went over
to the welder…”

“Which one?”

Sakaki stared. “The one that hit him, of course. I was nearly at the door by then because I wanted to get away from him. He
was looking at the controller. When I next looked around, he was on the ground, and the welder’s arm was shaking.”

He took a pull at the cigarette, then another. “I hit emergency stop on the line and ran to see him, but he was already …”
He threw the cigarette on the ground and swallowed several times.

“Didn’t any of the alarms go off?” said Ishihara.

Sakaki shook his head.

“What did you do then?” Ishihara said. A pity there weren’t any witnesses to back up this story.

“I left. I couldn’t do anything for Mito, could I?” said Sakaki defiantly. “I didn’t want anyone to see me there.”

Ishihara ground his cigarette butt out on the concrete with his heel. “Why didn’t you tell us this before? You could have
saved us a lot of trouble. I could charge you with obstructing an investigation.”

“Who cares?” said Sakaki. “Telling you isn’t going to repay my loan.”

“You shouldn’t take out loans if you can’t repay them,” said the local constable disapprovingly.

“That’s what Mito said.” Sakaki glared at them all. “Everyone knows that, but nobody tells you how to get out of repayment
hell once you’re in there.” The words burst from him. “You don’t know what it’s like. I borrow from A to pay B, then from
C to pay A, and it never ends.”

He folded onto a concrete block, as though his legs had given way, and put his head in his hands.

“Declare personal bankruptcy,” suggested Ishihara. “It’s about all you can do.”

Sakaki didn’t look up. “Some of my creditors don’t listen to the courts.”

Ishihara sighed. “You’re sure the robot moved by itself?”

“I’m sure.” Sakaki’s voice was muffled.

“Take him to the station,” said Ishihara to the constables. “He’ll make his statement there.”

In the tiny office, the manager was talking on the phone, no video. Ishihara sank into a chair beside a low table without
being invited and breathed the cool air with relief.

Certificates and group photos covered the walls, most of the photos taken in front of the factory. Three desks were crammed
into the narrow space. A door at one end bore the sign
PRESIDENT’S ROOM.

“A man called Noda,” said the manager to the other end of the conversation. He raised his eyebrows at Ishihara, who opened
his palm in a go-ahead gesture.

“No, we hadn’t seen him before,” continued the manager. “His rego number was … hang on.” He tapped the keyboard beside him
and read a number from the screen.

Short pause.

“Well, we couldn’t know that. I suppose it’s a matter for the police, then.” He looked over at Ishihara, then continued. “There’s
a detective here now.”

Ishihara pointed to himself and raised his eyebrows in query.

The manager offered him the handset. “It’s an engineer from Tomita Electronics. She says someone from another company sabotaged
their robot the other day, when it hit Mito.”

It was McGuire. “Nakamura was the technician who serviced the Zecom robot the week before the accident,” she said. “He gave
a false name, and when he serviced the Zecom robot he attached the device to our robot. I think that allowed him to send a
signal and operate it long-distance.”

“How do you know?” said Ishihara.

“We found one of his backup files.” She didn’t sound as pleased as he’d expected.

“Does it tell you how he did it?”

“Not in detail, but it might tell you who killed him.”

“Are you at Tomita?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be right over.”

He cut the connection and turned to the manager. “Thanks for your help. We may soon know more about Mito’s death.”

The manager ran his hand over his balding head. “It’s not going to stop the line again, is it?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“And what about Sakaki? Is he under arrest?”

“No, but you should know he’s heavily in debt,” said Ishihara.

The manager grimaced. “We know that. And we’ve been missing petty cash for a while now. But we’ve got no proof, and I don’t
like dismissing a man who’s obviously in trouble.”

No wonder the company was going down. Soft, that was their problem. They should have got rid of Sakaki years ago.

“I’ll be sending a detective over here with some photographs,” he said. “He’ll ask your staff if they recognize the technician
from Zecom.”

“Right.” The manager half raised his hand and turned away, preoccupied again.

Ishihara read the first three lines of characters on the screen and reached for his phone. Beside him, McGuire swiveled her
chair and exchanged glances with her boss, who stood inside the doorway of the lab.

“Hello, this is Ishihara of Osaka West. Put me through to Inspector Mikuni.”

The constable on the other end of the line didn’t argue.

“Mikuni. What’s up?”

“Your Zecom murder. We’ve got a suspect.”

Mikuni’s fuzzy image lunged for a pen, knocked a wad of paper to the floor, and cursed. “Okay, go ahead.”

“I’ll send you the evidence by courier. Basically, Nakamura was blackmailing his boss, Yui, about something called a …” He
squinted at McGuire’s computer screen.

“Integrated interface system,” supplied McGuire.

“Integrated interface system. It looks like Yui got the basic research for this system from someone else, then used it or
was planning to use it in Zecom products. Nakamura found out and blackmailed him.”