Chapter 72 second quarter

Three years ago, Imaeda stayed in the company "Tokyo General Research", which specializes in investigating corporate or personal information. It has 17 offices across the country, and Imaeda serves the Meguro office.The characteristic of the company is that most of the clients are enterprises, and the contents of the commission are all-encompassing, ranging from the performance and operation status of potential cooperative enterprises, to whether there are headhunting companies poaching their own employees, etc., etc.There was also a commission to investigate which female employee the young president had an affair with. Later, it was found that the four female employees who belonged to the company's board of directors were all involved by the young president. Imameda and others who were in charge of the investigation could not help but smile wryly.

The task entrusted by the man who claims to be a person related to Tozai Denso Co., Ltd. is also quite strange. He hopes to investigate a product of a certain company.The company is a software development company called Memorix, and the product is the metal processing expert system software that the company is promoting strongly. In other words, this commission is to investigate the development process of the software, as well as the resumes and personal relationships of the main developers. As for the purpose of the investigation, the client did not elaborate, but one or two can be vaguely glimpsed from his speech.Dongxi Denso seems to believe that the software is stolen from their own internally developed system, but it is difficult to prove it only through product comparison, so they want to find out the software thief.The client believes that there must be internal accomplices in order to steal the software of East and West Denso. As long as the person in charge of Memorix R&D is investigated, the intersection with East and West Denso should be found.At that time there were about twenty investigators in the Meguro Office, half of whom were assigned to this work, and Imae was among them.

About two weeks after launching the investigation, they had an overview of Memorix.The company was established in 1984, with Toru Anzai, a former program engineer, as the president.Including part-timers, there are a total of twelve system program engineers.It is mainly to accept the entrustment of customers and carry out research and development of various programs in order to pursue enterprise development. The metal processing expert system developed by the company does have many doubts, the most important of which is the huge technology and data sources related to metal processing.They claimed to the outside world that they had cooperated with a solid metal material manufacturer in the development of the software, but the results of detailed investigations by Imaeda and others showed that the software had already been developed, and the metal material manufacturer only confirmed it.

The most likely scenario is the theft of past customer data. Memorix has cooperated with many companies and has the opportunity to get access to technical information from all parties, which naturally includes relevant materials on metal processing. However, such possibility is extremely low after all.Because Memorix has signed several standardized and detailed contracts with customers in terms of information management, if Memorix employees take out or leak data without permission, once discovered, Memorix must pay a huge fine. Therefore, it is reasonable to speculate that Tozai Denso's software was stolen. Memorix has absolutely no connection with Tozai Denso, and Tozai Denso's software never left the company.Even if there is a significant similarity in software content, Memorix can still claim that it was purely accidental.

After an in-depth investigation, a man was finally identified. This man's title is: Memorix's chief researcher, named Yuichi Akiyoshi. This person joined Memorix in 1986. As soon as he joined, Memorix suddenly started research on metal processing expert systems.In the following year, the research and development work was preliminarily completed, and the speed was beyond normal. Such research usually takes three years no matter how short it is. Could it be that Akiyoshi Yuichi brought the basic data of the metal processing expert system to Memorix?This is the inference of Imaeda et al.

However, with regard to Akiyoshi, their investigations failed to reach the point. He lives in a rental apartment in Toshima Ward, but is not registered in the area.Imameda and others investigated Akiyoshi's address before moving in through the apartment property company, but they did not expect it to be in Nagoya. The investigator went there immediately, only to see a tall building standing tall like a chimney.Investigators inquired nearby, but could not find out whether someone surnamed Akiyoshi lived in the building before construction started.The result of the inquiry to the district office was the same, and Akiyoshi Yuichi's household registration was not there.In addition, the guarantor who Akiyoshi filled out when renting a house lived in Nagoya, but his residence was empty.

Who is Akiyoshi?To find this out, they conducted the most basic of investigations, continuous surveillance. While Akiyoshi was away, they set up two bugs in his apartment in Toshima District, one to listen to the house and the other to listen to the phone.At the same time, except for registered mail and time-limited mail, almost all mails sent to him were opened and inspected, and then resealed and put back in the mailbox.Of course, the information obtained by this method cannot be used in court, but it will be of great benefit in identifying him. Akiyoshi seems to only come and go between the company and the house.No one visited his residence, and there were no phone calls worth investigating.Or rather, hardly even a telephone.

"What's the fun of this person being alive? It's so lonely." The man in the same group as Imao once said looking at the window of the room in the camera.At the time, they were sitting in a van disguised as Chiraishan's van, with a camera on the roof. "Maybe he was running for his life," said Imameda, "so he kept his name incognito." "Such as killing someone?" The partner laughed. "Maybe." Imae replied with a smile. Soon, they find out that Akiyoshi will be in contact with at least one person.Once when he was staying in the house, there was a harsh sound, which turned out to be a paging.Imae tensed his nerves and focused on the headset, thinking that Akiyoshi would call.

Akiyoshi, however, left the room and walked straight out of the apartment building.Imaeda and the others hurriedly followed behind. Akiyoshi stopped in front of the public phone outside the Tobacco Hotel, made a call, said something expressionlessly, and did not forget to pay attention to his surroundings during the conversation, Imameda and the others could not get close. This happened several times.After the paging rings, Akiyoshi will definitely go out to make a call.Since he never used the phone in the house, Imaeda thought he had found a bug, but if so, he would have removed it.He may have developed the habit of using public phones for all important calls, and even if he calls a public phone, he never stays in one place, but changes to a different phone every time, so the precautions are quite thorough.

Who dialed his pager?It was the biggest mystery of the time. But before the mystery was solved, things went in another direction.Because Akiyoshi has taken a puzzling action. First, on a certain Thursday, Akiyoshi came to Shinjuku after get off work on a rare occasion.In fact, this is not rare, because it is the first time since Imaeda and his party started the investigation.Akiyoshi enters a cafe next to the west exit of Shinjuku Station. There, Akiyoshi meets a man.The man is about forty-five years old, with a thin build, expressionless face and unpredictable thoughts.When Imaeda saw that person for the first time, he felt uneasy in his heart.

Akiyoshi took a large envelope from the man, and after confirmation, he handed the man a small envelope in exchange.The man pulled out the contents of the envelope, which was cash.The man counted quickly and stuffed them into the inner pocket of his jacket, then took out a piece of paper and gave it to Akiyoshi. It must be the receipt, Imae reckoned. Akiyoshi then talked to the man for a few minutes while standing up.Imameda and his partner tracked separately.Jinzhi and Akiyoshi found him and went straight back to his residence. The person followed by the partner, after investigation, is the president of the detective agency that opened an office in Tokyo. Although he is called the president, there is actually only one employee whose wife is also an assistant. As expected, Imaeda was not surprised, because the man had an aura unique to his peers. Imameda wonders what Akiyoshi is investigating through the detectives.If it is a detective agency related to Tokyo Comprehensive Research, it is not unthinkable.However, Akiyoshi hired people who were freelancers. If he was a little careless when contacting him, he would be found out, and the consequences would be disastrous.Jinzhi decided to continue to lock Akiyoshi for the time being, and they monitored the apartment as usual. One Saturday, Akiyoshi acted again.I saw him dressed casually in a sweatshirt and jeans, and Imaeda and his partner followed him.Akiyoshi's back exuded an unusual aura, and Imae had a premonition that this was not a simple outing. Akiyoshi changed trains and got off at Shimokitazawa Station.He glanced around with cold eyes from time to time, but he didn't seem to realize that he was being followed.He was walking around the station, holding a small note in his hand, checking the house signs from time to time, and Imaeda speculated that he was looking for a certain house. Before long, he stopped.The location is in front of a small three-story building next to the railway, and it seems to be a suite apartment for single people. Akiyoshi did not step into the apartment, but into the cafe opposite.Imameda hesitated for a moment, and asked his partner to enter the cafe. He estimated that Akiyoshi might meet someone here, and he himself went to a nearby bookstore to wait. An hour later, the partner came out of the cafe alone. "He didn't make an appointment," said his partner, "he was spying, and he must be watching the people living there." He raised his chin towards the opposite apartment. Imaeda thought of the former detective. Could it be that Akiyoshi is asking someone to investigate the people who live here? "Then we have no choice but to stay here," said Imaeda. "OK." Imameda sighed, looked for a public phone, and asked the office to drive over.But before the car arrived, Qiuji left the cafe. Imaeda looked over to the apartment to see a young woman walking towards the station, golf bag in hand.Akiyoshi followed the woman more than ten meters away, and Imaeda followed Akiyoshi. The woman's destination was the Eagles Golf Driving Range, and Akiyoshi also entered the field, this time Imameda followed. Jinzhi continued to observe and found that the woman had entered the golf classroom.Akiyoshi watched her go in as if confirming it, took a golf course introduction and left.He did not go to the practice field again that day. Imaeda investigates the woman and immediately finds out her identity.Her name is Misawa Chitoru, and she works for a talent dispatch company.Jinzhi and others inquired about the company and learned that she had been dispatched to Dongxi Denso.Thus, Akiyoshi and Tozai Denso were finally connected. Imameda and his party took advantage of the victory to pursue and continue to lock on Akiyoshi, convinced that he would contact Misawa Chitsuru sooner or later. However, things developed in an unexpected direction. Akiyoshi, who had not moved for a period of time, went to the Eagle Golf Driving Range again on a Saturday, just before the golf course that Chitsuru Misawa participated in.Akiyoshi did not approach Sanze, and was still watching secretly. Soon, Chito Misawa sat next to a man and chatted intimately, like a couple. At this point, Akiyoshi left the training ground, as if his purpose was to confirm this scene with his own eyes. As a result, this was the last time Akiyoshi approached Misawa Chitsuru.After that, he never went to the stadium again. Imaeda and others investigated the man who had a good chat with Misawa Chito.The man's name is Gao Gongcheng, an employee of Dongxi Denso, and belongs to the patent department. They thought there must be something strange, so they investigated the relationship between the two and the relationship with Akiyoshi.However, the results of the investigation did not find any clues related to the misappropriation of software. The only finding was that the married Gao Gongcheng seemed to have an extramarital affair with Misawa Chitsuru. Soon, the client filed a request to suspend the investigation.It's no wonder that the investigation fee keeps increasing, but no useful information can be obtained.Tokyo Comprehensive Research handed over a thick stack of reports to the client, but the other party did not know how to use it.Imao guessed that most of them were sent directly to the shredder.