Chapter 3 Chapter Two: The Mystery of the Paper Ball

At 3:00 p.m., Nakamura Police Department Assistant from the Metropolitan Police Department's First Search Division went to Minami Tama Police Station to listen to the case report.And meet two witnesses.He knew Tajima.In a previous case, Tajima had questioned him as a reporter.Nakamura was dumbfounded by him. "This time I am a witness, not a reporter. As a citizen, I must fully assist the police." Tajima said. "I can only believe half of it." Nakamura said with a wry smile.He knew that the Nitto Daily, which Tajima belonged to, had sent a newsletter on the first page of the Evening News today.Ordinary citizens do not play such tricks.The reporter must have called the newspaper behind his back.However, judging from the testimony of Tajima and Yamazaki Masako, Nakamura thinks it is credible and did not make up anything.

What the victim said before his death caught Nakamura's attention.Tajima said the man made a "tian" sound before dying.Whether it is a person's name or something else is unpredictable. "Did the victim want to name the offender at the end of his life?" If so, that matters.Of course, the word "tian" alone does not constitute a name. "天", "点", "店", "展", "典" or "Ten" in English are all homophonic to "tian".If it's a person's name, maybe it has something to do with "Heaven", Zhong Lin thought. "Tian" is not much in surnames, but there are still some.Among Nakamura's distant relatives was an old man named Tento Tokutaro.All in all, we must investigate the situation of the people around the victim, and we must pay full attention to the word "tian", Nakamura thought.

The murder weapon used by the criminal also attracted Nakamura's attention.This is no ordinary dagger.The two edges are as sharp as a sword.It is about twenty-five centimeters long and has hand guards.It is not so much a dagger as it is a dagger.Also similar to the tip of a spear.The blade is painted jet black. Criminals may not choose the weapon they want and forge it themselves.Forging a murder weapon is as easy as it gets.Maybe there are unspeakable difficulties in it, Nakamura thought. Nakamura was puzzled as to why ink should be applied to the blade.Inked, indeed, the dagger no longer gleamed.However, if you want to make the dagger not shine, wouldn't it be the same to insert it into the scabbard?

The handle of the dagger bears the marks of a file.After fingerprint identification, only the victim's own fingerprints were found, which may be the fingerprints left by the victim when he pulled it out from the chest. Based on the testimony of Tajima and Yamazaki Masako, Nakamura imagined the scene when Hisamatsu was attacked: Hisamatsu and the criminals walked towards Sanjiao Mountain.Did the culprit kill Jiu Song intentionally or on a whim?Nakamura thinks the former is more likely.It's unbelievable for a person without killing intent to hold a dagger painted with ink.Moreover, there is no need to bring a mountaineering knife for the 200-meter-high mountain.Maybe the criminal tricked Hisamatsu into the bush tunnel, stabbed the dagger into his chest by surprise, and then fled in a panic towards the train station.Hisamatsu staggered and walked in the opposite direction, begging for help.Maybe he was asking for help from Tajima and Masako who were walking in front of him.

Nakamura spread out the Nantama map, thinking about the prisoner's escape route. ①Take the Keio Line directly from "Sacred Sakuragaoka" Station to escape. ② Deliberately walk one or two stops, and then escape on the Keio Line. ③Escape by bus in the direction of Hachioji. ④ Escape by self-provided vehicles (including motorcycles and bicycles). ⑤Minami Tama happens to be bordered by Kanagawa County, and it is possible to walk seven or eight kilometers to sneak into Kanagawa County. ⑥In addition to the Keio Line, there is also the Nanbu Line (Kawasaki←→Tachikawa) nearby.It is also possible to escape by walking to the nearest Minami Tama Station on the Nambu Line and then taking the Nambu Line.

Investigate this and you'll find clues.Around 12:00 noon, there are few passengers, and those who behave abnormally will attract the attention of the flight attendants or bus conductors. Nakamura commissioned the Nantama Police Department to investigate the above situation, and returned to the Metropolitan Police Department by himself. After Nakamura returned to Tokyo, he brought the experienced criminal Yabe to visit Aobazhuang.Aobaso is located between Yotsuya Sanchome and Shinanomachi.The area is mostly tenements painted with plaster.Qingyezhuang is one of them. Nakamura and Yabe criminals, led by the housekeeper, entered Hisamatsumi's hut.

There are two rooms in the house, one with six "tatami mats" and the other with three "tatami mats".Kitchen and toilet are all available.The furnishings in the room are very elegant. "What did Hisamatsumi do before?" Nakamura asked the administrator.The administrator is a middle-aged woman in her fifties.She felt no sorrow for Hisamatsu's death.Perhaps Hisamatsu was not popular during his lifetime. "Working at "Reality Weekly". But he is not a regular employee. He writes articles and sells them to the newspaper. What is this called?" the administrator said.

"Contribution." "Yes, contribute. However, recently he stays at home and does nothing." "I'm idle, but I live a very luxurious life." Yabe criminal said to Nakamura after scanning the room. "Look, the camera, the stereo, the wardrobe full of suits, the high-end table..." "I heard he makes money by doing bad things," said the administrator.Nakamura and Yabe criminal looked at each other. "What bad things did he do?" Nakamura asked. The administrator blinked a few times and said, "I don't know the details. I heard that he wants women to 'pay tribute' and blackmails others."

"Blackmail someone?" "Yes. He told me that everyone has privacy. Once someone else's privacy is captured, it can be turned into money." "He used the evidence obtained from the interview to carry out extortion." Nakamura looked at Yabe criminal and said. "That's probably why he was killed." There are two dozen copies of the same magazine piled up beside the table.Nakamura flipped through it casually.On the cover was a picture of a woman in a red petticoat.The woman's tired look is a visual reflection of the magazine's content.On the woman's shoulder, there is a line of words printed prominently, "Exclusive news, the love journey of an actress and a man." Published by Real Agency, it is called "Real Weekly".Nakamura rolled up one of them and stuffed it into his pocket.

"I'll go to the real society once. You continue to search here." Nakamura said to Yabe criminal. The Real Society is located on the third floor of an old house in Kanda Ward.It was past 6:00 pm when Nakamura arrived there, and the lights and doors of many rooms had been turned off, and the buildings were empty.Only a small room next to the "editing room" was brightly lit and full of voices. After Nakamura knocked on the door, a tall man in a beret came out and answered it.Nakamura showed his police ID, and the man was taken aback. "Please come in." There were also two young men in the room, both of whom had tired looks on their faces.There are several empty bowls stacked on the table.The ashtray was full of cigarette butts.

“Just finished an editorial meeting,” the man in the beret said, and handed him a business card.The name card says "Tomozo Yokoyama, Editor-in-Chief of Actually Weekly". "Our meeting is over, so feel free to ask. But if you ask me why I publish this kind of magazine, then I have no comment." "I don't know anything about publishing," Nakamura said with a smile. "Also, I don't want to know what kind of magazine your magazine is. I just want to know the situation of Hisamatsumi. He has been killed, do you know?" "I got it from the evening papers." "Does Jiu Song often contribute articles to your company?" "Yes, we often accept his manuscripts." "How long has he been with you?" "About four years." "How is this person?" "Very cowardly." Hengshan scratched his scalp and said. "He's useful to us, though. He's a prying man, and we've had a lot of interesting stuff from him." "Did you ever hear about him blackmailing people?" "heard about it." "Did you think he would do something like that?" "I'm afraid so. It's not very nice to speak ill of a dead man, but this man will do anything for money. I've suffered from it too." "What's up?" "Once he told us on the phone that we had an interesting material on hand. We believed it, so we vacated the page number and prepared to fill in his material. But we waited and waited until it was dark, but we still didn't see him send the material. Come on. Call him and ask him, he lied and said 'it wasn't finished', but in fact he thought it would be more cost-effective to sell the material to me than to us, so he sold it to me." "This is also a kind of blackmail." "That's right. I'm afraid I can't live such a luxurious life just by submitting manuscripts." "Do you know who killed Hisamatsu?" "This..." Hengshan thought for a while and said: "I don't know much about his private life, so..." "When was the last time you saw him?" "When will it be?" Hengshan cast a look of help to the editor next to him. "When was the last time Hisamatsu came?" "Three days ago," said a fat editor. "He came to collect the payment." "Yes, yes. Three days ago." Yokoyama nodded again and again, and then said to Nakamura, "I came to our office around 2 p.m. on the 12th." "What did you talk about then?" "No, we didn't talk. He waited silently for the accountant to write a check. He was bored and scribbled something on paper while he waited." "Where's that piece of paper?" "He crumpled it up and threw it in the wastebasket." "Which wastebasket?" "The wastebasket outside the room." Yokoyama added as if remembering something: "The wastebasket is full. It was emptied this morning." "Where is it?" "In the bin at the back of the building. Is this scribbled paper important?" "I don't know. However, when you scribble casually, you may reveal your true nature, and you may be able to discover Hisamatsu's thoughts from that piece of paper." "Then look for it." The cement bins are full of rubbish.As soon as the lid was opened, there was a strange smell.The four of them frowned, doing helpless things.Hands flipping through the trash can get dirty in no time.But nothing. The four of them buried their heads and fought hard beside the trash can for ten minutes. Hengshan caught a ball of paper between his fingers and said happily, "I found it." Nakamura took the ball of paper and unfolded it to see that it was manuscript paper with 200 grids.Use a ballpoint pen to repeatedly scribble a sentence on the paper: Angels became money. Nakamura read it several times.In the process of reading, I suddenly remembered the testimony of Nitto Daily reporter Tajima.Tajima said that Hisamatsumi said "Heaven..." before he died. Isn't this "Heaven..." an "angel"? Maybe Hisamatsu cheated money from the "angel", and now the "angel" has revenge. But what exactly is an "angel"? After thinking for a long time, I was puzzled.After returning to the Metropolitan Police Department, Nakamura consulted the encyclopedia dictionary: After Nakamura finished reading it, he was still very confused.The "angel" in "Angels Become Money" written by Hisamatsu may have more secular meaning than religious meaning.Perhaps a murder took place in order to fight for the pure gold angel statue.Did the "Maltese Falcon" (the movie "The Maltese Falcon", which describes the battle between spies) happen in real life?Nakamura thought to himself. After eight o'clock, Yabe criminal came back from the apartment in Samoncho. "This kind of work is too out of my temper." Yabe Criminal yelled at Nakamura.This judoka would rather fight a criminal than rummage through drawers. "I brought two things back. One is a passbook." "What's so rare about a passbook, I have it too." Nakamura muttered.He glanced at the passbook that Yabe Criminal handed over. "The total savings are 500,000 yuan. The amount is not large, but the method of depositing is very special." "That's right. I deposited it twice. On June 5th, I deposited 300,000 yuan, and on October 30th, I deposited 200,000 yuan." Nakamura said, looking at the passbook. "I always feel that the source of the money is unknown." "Perhaps it was extortion." "I thought so too. Did you find anything about angels in the room?" "Angel?" Yabe Criminal was stunned. Nakamura handed him the note that Hisamatsu had scribbled on and gave him a brief explanation. "Before you came back, I kept thinking about a question, what is an angel that becomes money? But I found nothing." "That's because there are all kinds of angels!" Yabe Criminal said: "Street angels, white angels, and angel fish." "Could it be that the angel fish turned into money?" "Angel fish is the cheapest fish among tropical fish, and I'm afraid they won't make a lot of money." "What's the use of an angel who can't turn into money?" Nakamura said with a wry smile. "What's the other thing you brought back?" Nakamura asked Yabe Criminal. "I don't know if it has something to do with the angel. There are several pictures of women in the drawer, and I took one. This woman may have something to do with Jiu Song." Yabe criminal took out a photo from his pocket and gave it to Nakamura.The girl in the photo is smiling.Although it is a black and white photo, it can still be seen that she has undergone careful makeup.She was pretty, and was about twenty-five or sixteen years old.One can tell at a glance that she is not an ordinary woman, maybe an actress. "She is as beautiful as an angel," Nakamura said. "what is her name?" "Don't know. The Administrator has seen her, but doesn't know her name." "Which one of you knows her?" Nakamura asked his colleagues in the office.Someone in the criminal world might recognize her if she had ever appeared on TV or in a movie, but Nakamura was a complete layman. The three criminals moved closer to look at the photo.Among them, criminal Miyazaki, the youngest, couldn't help but let out a "huh" when he saw the photo. "Do you know this woman?" Nakamura asked.Miyazaki scratched his scalp and said shyly, "This... I'm sorry." "It's okay, please tell me." Said Yabe, who was standing next to him. "I went to Asakusa to watch a striptease during my break the day before yesterday." Miyazaki said with a blushing face. "Watching striptease is not a bad thing. Especially young people. Is that woman a stripper?" Nakamura asked. "It seems that there is her in the Beauty's Seat Theater." "Looks like she's a dancing girl. Do you know her name?" "I don't know. But maybe her name is on the playlist. Where is the playlist?" Miyazaki rummaged through several pockets and finally found it.He took out a crumpled piece of paper.The photo of the dancing girl and the Roman word "BIJINZA" are printed on the paper.After checking the person's name and the title of the song on the back, Miyazaki said: "She is the dancer, and her name is Angel Kataoka." "Angel?" Nakamura asked loudly unconsciously.