‘Go on, go on!’ Fandorin pressed him.
‘You and I were looking for three samurai. But the conspirators had planned their attack thoroughly. There was another group of six assassins. And perhaps there were others, in reserve. Why not? The minister had plenty of enemies. The important thing here is this: all these fanatics, no matter how many of them there were, were controlled from one centre and their actions were coordinated. Someone provided them with extremely precise information. The moment the minister acquired guards, the killers went into hiding. And as soon as His Excellency left his residence without any protection, they struck immediately. What does this mean?’
‘That the conspirators received information from Okubo’s inner circle.’
‘Precisely! From someone who was closer to him than you or I! And as soon as I realised this, everything fell into place. Do you remember the tongue?’
‘Which tongue?’
‘The one that was bitten off! I could not get it out of my mind. I remember that I checked the hami and the lace was perfectly all right. Semushi could not have bitten through it, and it could not have come loose – my knots do not come untied… This morning I went to the stockroom, where they keep the clues and material evidence relating to the case of the man with the withered arm and his gang: weapons, clothes, equipment used – everything we are trying to use in order to establish their identities and get a lead on their contacts. I examined the hami very closely. Here it is, look’
The inspector took a wooden gag-bit with dangling tapes out of his pocket.
‘The cord has been cut!’ Fandorin exclaimed. ‘But how could that have happened?’
‘Remember the way it was,’ said Asagawa, finally getting to his feet and standing beside the vice-consul. ‘I walked over to you and we stood there, talking. You asked me to forgive you. But he stayed beside the hunchback, pretending to check how well his binds were tied. Remember?’
‘Suga!’ the titular counsellor whispered. ‘Impossible! But he was with us, he risked his life! He planned the operation and implemented it brilliantly!’
The Japanese laughed bitterly.
‘Naturally. He wanted to be on the spot, to make sure that none of the conspirators fell into our hands alive. Remember how Suga came out of the shrine and pointed at the hunchback and shouted: “Hami!”? That was because Semushi was taking too long, he couldn’t bring himself to do it…’
‘An assumption, n-nothing more,’ the titular counsellor said with a shake of his head.
‘And is this also an assumption?’ asked Asagawa, holding up the severed cord. ‘Only Suga could have done that. Wait, Fandorin-san, I still haven’t finished what I want to say. Even when I found this terrible, incontrovertible proof, I still couldn’t believe that the vice-intendant of police was capable of such a crime. It’s absolutely beyond belief! And I went to Tokyo, to the Department of Police.’
‘What f-for?’
‘The head of the secretariat is an old friend of my father’s, also an old yoriki… I went to him and said I had forgotten to keep a copy of one of the reports that I had sent to the vice-intendant.’
Fandorin pricked up his ears.
‘What reports?’
‘After every conversation and meeting that we had, I had to report to Suga immediately, by special courier. Those were my instructions, and I followed them meticulously. I sent eight reports in all. But when the head of the secretariat gave me the file containing my reports, I found only five of them in it. Three were missing: the one about your servant having seen the presumed killer; the one about the ambush at the godaun; and the one about the municipal police holding the fingerprints of the mysterious shinobi…’
The inspector seemed to have said everything he wanted to say. For a while the room was silent while Fandorin thought very hard and Asagawa waited to see what the result of this thinking would be.
The result was a question that the titular counsellor asked, gazing straight into Asagawa’s eyes.
‘Why did you come to me and not the intendant of police?’
Asagawa was evidently expecting this and had prepared his answer in advance.
‘The intendant of police is a vacuous individual, they only keep him in that position because of his high-sounding title. And in addition…’ – the Japanese lowered his eyes, it was obviously hard for him to say something like this to a foreigner – ‘… how can I know who else was in the conspiracy? Even in the police secretariat there are some who say that the Satsumans are guilty of crimes against the state, of course, but even so they are heroes. Some even whisper that Okubo got what he deserved. That is the first reason why I decided to turn to you…’
‘And what is the second?’
‘Yesterday you asked me to forgive you, although you did not have to. You are a sincere man.’
For a moment the titular counsellor could not understand what sincerity had to do with this, but then he decided it must be a failure of translation. No doubt the English phrase ‘sincere man’, as used by Asagawa, or its Russian equivalent, ‘iskrennii chelovek’, as used by the secretary Shirota to express his respect for Pushkin, Martial Saigo and Dr Twigs, did not adequately convey the essential quality that the Japanese valued so highly. Perhaps it should be ‘unaffected’ or ‘genuine’? He would have to ask Vsevolod Vitalievich about this…
‘But I still do not understand why you have come to me with this,’ said Erast Petrovich. ‘What can you change now? Mr Okubo is dead. His opponents have the upper hand, and now they will determine the policies of your state.’
Asagawa was terribly surprised.
‘How can you ask: “What can you change?” I know nothing about politics, that is not my business, I am a policeman. A policeman is a man who is needed to prevent evil-doing from going unpunished. Desertion of duty, conspiracy and murder are serious crimes. Suga must pay for them. If I cannot punish him, then I am not a policeman. That, as you like to say, is one. And now, two: Suga has insulted me very seriously – he has made me look like a stupid kitten, trying to pounce on a ribbon tied to a string. A sincere man does not allow anyone to treat him like that. And so, if Suga’s crime goes unpunished, I am, firstly, not a policeman and, secondly, not a sincere man. Then who am I, if I may be allowed to ask?’
No, a ‘sincere man’ is what we call a ‘man of honour’, the titular counsellor guessed.
‘Do you want to kill him, then?’
Asagawa nodded.
‘Yes, very much. But I will not kill him. Because I am a policeman. Policemen do not kill criminals, they expose them and hand them over to the system of justice.’
‘Well said indeed. But how can it be done?’
‘I do not know. And that is the third reason why I have come to you. We Japanese are predictable, we always act according to the rules. This is both our strength and our weakness. I am a hereditary yoriki, which makes me doubly Japanese. From when I was very little, my father used to say to me: “Act in accordance with the law, and everything else is not your concern”. And that is how I have lived until now, I do not know how to live otherwise. You are made differently – that much is clear from the story of the hunchback’s escape. Your brain is not shackled by rules.’
That should probably not be taken as a compliment, especially coming from a Japanese, Erast Petrovich thought. But the inspector was certainly right about one thing: you should never allow anyone to make you look a fool, and that was exactly how the wily Suga had behaved with the leader of the consular investigation. A kitten, with a ribbon dangling in front of it on a string?