The Investigation Read Online Free PDF Page B

traitor.
    Maeda paused and rifled through his pockets. He pulled out a lighter, shining in his heavy palm, and lit a cigarette. ‘This was Sugiyama’s. Take it. You’ll need it.’ He
took a deep drag. ‘Without Sugiyama, there’s nobody to act as censor. There’s already a backlog. For the time being, you’re it.’ He flicked white ash from the tip of
his cigarette.
    I was horrified. I felt like Abraham having to kill his own son. ‘There are well-qualified guards with more experience than I. And I don’t know what censorship entails.’
    ‘As far as I’m aware, you’re the right man. You have skills they don’t have.’
    ‘What are they?’
    ‘I looked at your records. You were not only a liberal-arts student, but you’d won a prize in the Emperor’s national essay contest. You can find subversive ideas between the
lines.’
    I understood what Maeda wasn’t saying. There was a hierarchy in the world of guards; exchanges and vigilant competition, surveillance and jealousy, plots and conspiracies helped a guard
rise through the ranks. Nobody wanted to sit in a back room like an old man and flip through prisoners’ letters all day. Maeda was boosting my ego to force me to do work nobody else wanted to
do. But I didn’t want this, either. I tightened my grip on the lighter. ‘But I’m supposed to settle Sugiyama’s affairs and investigate his death.’
    ‘Nobody told you to find the murderer,’ Maeda scoffed. ‘That would be impossible. You just have to tie up any loose ends before this gets out. We can’t have detectives
from the Special Higher Police poking around. But censorship is different. You can do it.’
    Maeda didn’t really seem to want me to conduct a thorough investigation; he was tying me down with censorship duties so that I wouldn’t have enough time even to think about the
murder. They must be trying to hush the whole thing up. Why else would the warden entrust me with this investigation?
    ‘The censorship rules are simple,’ Maeda explained. ‘I don’t have to tell you to burn letters not written in Japanese, right? If you’re not sure, just burn
everything. Every last page. Understood? Now, get yourself to the inspection office.’
    I realized I didn’t have a choice. I suddenly resented Sugiyama; if he hadn’t died, this wouldn’t be my problem.
    The inspection ward was at the end of the corridor. I opened the heavy, squat door to step into Sugiyama’s isolated world. I ducked to go through; a narrow hallway was on
the other side. I took a few steps into the darkness, then saw a door to the left. I unlocked the padlock and pushed it open. It was an interrogation room, fitted out with an old wooden desk and
two chairs. Sugiyama must have interrogated the authors of seditious writings and the owners of banned books here. At one end was a leather-covered metal chair – a torture rack. I closed the
door and locked it. Another door led to the library, filled with wartime citizen-action guides, manuals on how to increase industrial production, educational books emphasizing the duties of the
Emperor’s subjects. The inspection office was at the end of the hallway. When I unlocked the big, heavy padlock and opened the door, the scent of paper and dried ink seeped out. I was
suddenly overcome. I’d yearned for this musty old smell of dust hovering in the air; I’d been desperate to fall asleep over print. I walked dreamily between the narrow bookshelves. A
wooden desk stained with blue ink held the tools of censorship: knife and scissors, magnifying glass and tweezers, red pens and an assortment of dictionaries – Japanese, English, Chinese
characters and Korean.
    I noticed a shelf lined with files marked ‘File Room Log’, ‘Prohibited Writings Log’, ‘Censor Report’, ‘Log of Documents to Incinerate’. I opened
the censor report. Sugiyama had written down the details, pinpointing problematic sections in the prisoners’ writings. The titles of