CASE 1. The Fake Detective (5)
“Haven’t you seen it in the newspapers at least once? The rare drug scandal that shook the Capital. That… was my doing.”
The man in the flat cap was horrified.
“I-I’ll report you to the police.”
“You, reporting me? I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“Because,” the swindler said, a wicked smile spreading across his face. He looked like a cat watching a mouse’s reaction after cornering it.
“You’re my accomplice.”
“Me? No, I just carried the luggage—.”
“Right. That luggage. There were drugs inside it.”
His mind went blank.
“You moved that stuff. You left your fingerprints all over it. The Capital police are already searching for the owner of those prints. There are plenty of witnesses who saw you loading the cargo, and there’s the railroad freight waybill you signed yourself. Yes, the signature you wrote with a forged name.”
His opponent, Tom Chapman, shook his head as if he were genuinely concerned for the mouse.
“Fortunately, it seems the investigation hasn’t reached this rural village yet, but if you draw the attention of the police, you’ll be the one taken away, not me. Shouldn’t you be careful?”
“…I only moved the luggage. I’ll just tell the police the truth.”
“Tell them the truth? Haha, I’m sure your neighbors will testify, won’t they? They’ll talk about how you started wearing that fancy hat right after that day, and how your family suddenly had expensive new clothes.”
The man in the flat cap turned pale.
Everything he said was true.
More than a few colleagues had envied his new hat. He had even bragged that it was a gift from becoming friends with a successful businessman.
If he came clean now and said it was payment for moving luggage? If he claimed he received such an excessive reward just for moving something for a short time?
If he said he had simply been foolish and tricked…
‘It’s no use. No one will believe me.’
The man was naive, but he wasn’t an idiot.
“Tell me. What on earth do you want from me?”
The other man laughed, spreading his arms as if he had been waiting for that question.
“It’s not hard. It’s the same as last time. Just help me with a small task. You’ll be handsomely rewarded. And nothing will happen to you, your precious wife, or your lovely daughter who just turned six.”
The mention of his family made his skin crawl.
“…What do I have to do?”
The man asked with his head bowed, no longer daring to resist.
It was a complete surrender.
“After that, I ended up moving like a puppet according to his words.”
After saying that much, the man in the flat cap looked at me with wonder.
“But to think you deduced all of this. How, just how did you find out?”
“Hmm.”
I thought about it for a moment and then spoke honestly.
“I didn’t know that much.”
“Excuse me?”
I mean, I’m not some god of deduction, how could I deduce all that? The only thing I was certain of was that the man in the flat cap was cooperating with and being used by the culprit.
After that, I just nodded while listening to the story the man in the flat cap spilled out.
“I didn’t know the specific circumstances, but the fact that you were being used by that swindler wasn’t that hard to figure out.”
Didn’t his wife already suspect her husband was being manipulated by some con artist-like character?
“Even on the way home with me, you emphasized that you had to find the money within a certain time. When it seemed like you wouldn’t find it, you even spoke as if you would make an extreme choice, leaving your wife and children behind.”
It wasn’t even certain that the money wouldn’t be found yet, but to react like that only a few hours after losing the money? Something was strange.
It was a reaction as if he were terrified.
And most decisively.
“I heard it. ‘Swear that if you take this money, you will never show your face in front of my family again.’ Was that it? It was a great line. I thought you were the protagonist of a movie, no, a play.”
“Ah, was it that?”
Even though I gave him a compliment, the corners of the man’s mouth drooped. What? Was he disappointed because there wasn’t a grand deduction show in the midst of this?
“Anyway, since it’s come to this, I’ll tell you everything. What that man made me do was—.”
“Ah, I know that for sure, so you don’t need to explain.”
A deduction show. I can do that if I set my mind to it.
It was finally time to restore the detective’s honor.
“He wanted you to keep the money for him. And then return it whenever he wanted.”
“How did you know that too…?”
The man marveled, then stiffened his expression as if he wouldn’t be fooled.
“Did you hear that too? Did that swindler tell you everything?”
“Of course not. It was the result of a simple deduction.”
I didn’t miss the chance to act pretentious and began my explanation.
“The first time I felt something was off was when we were trying to go home after the incident ended.”
“When we were going home? At that time… I don’t think there was anything?”
“That’s exactly it. That was what was strange. The streets were empty.”
“That’s because… my house is at the end of the road?”
“No. Your wife said most of the stolen money was borrowed from neighbors. If that were true, would it make sense for people to stay quiet when they heard all the money they lent out was stolen?”
“…!”
“It’s not that people weren’t aware of the incident. You said when the commotion first broke out with cries of ‘there’s a thief,’ the townspeople flocked over.”
They went inside because they were worried about their own houses? They were told to go inside even from the house that was robbed, and the weather happened to be gloomy with intermittent rain, so they just waited at home for the incident to end?
That could be possible. That is, if the stolen money wasn’t theirs.
“Out of curiosity, I did some investigative questioning. I soon learned an interesting fact.”
Everyone knew the man in the flat cap had gone from house to house to borrow money. Many people said something big would happen soon since he borrowed a huge sum of money.
But there was no one who said he came to borrow money from them, nor anyone who actually lent him money.
“Isn’t it interesting? It’s certain the money isn’t yours, and rumors are rampant that you borrowed a large sum, yet no one actually lent it to you. There wouldn’t be that many people to borrow money from in this quiet village. Then where on earth did that money come from?”
There was only one person to suspect.
“A suspiciously wealthy businessman. No, a swindler.”
I nudged the fallen man’s body with my shoe.
“It was money this man left with you from the beginning. Wasn’t it?”
“T-that’s right. He handed me a pouch of gold coins and documents, saying to keep the money safe.”
“What was the nature of those documents?”
“Business investment documents.”
The man showed me the documents. The moment he pulled them out, the smell I had caught in the afternoon became much stronger.
‘As I thought…’
Holding my internal conviction, I skimmed through the contents of the documents the man handed over. The investor was listed as the client, and the target of the investment was… an unfamiliar business name I had never heard before.
‘It’s probably a paper company.’
“He told me to just keep the money for a certain period and then return it on the date he wanted. By signing those documents, it looked like I was lending him the money on the surface. I couldn’t understand why he wanted such a thing at all, but he promised that if I did, he would never show his face in front of me or my family again. I didn’t even know if that promise was true… but I couldn’t refuse.”
“The promise was probably sincere.”
I said, glancing at the fallen shadow.
“You probably would have never met again. This man likely planned to leave for a foreign country as soon as he got the money, living under a different name and identity.”
“Does the detective have some idea of what’s going on?”
The man seemed to have no idea what this person’s purpose was. Then again, would a man from such a backwater village ever encounter such a thing?
‘This kind of scam is much more developed in the neighborhood I originally lived in than in this town.’
“It’s obvious. It’s money laundering.”
“Money laundering…?”
I took a piece of paper out of my pocket. It was a paper I had been carrying since the moment I arrived in this village.
“I’m almost certain… but would you take a look at this?”
On the paper, a man’s description was drawn in large letters.
“Is the man in this drawing the same as this man lying in front of me?”
“That’s…”
The man in the flat cap looked at the drawing intently, swallowed hard, and said solemnly.
“It’s too dark to see well.”
Damn it.
“…Crumbly gray hair and green eyes. And a man in his 20s with a fierce, cat-like gaze? Additionally, he’s objectively quite handsome, but there’s a comment that he wears a nasty, mean-looking smile.”
“Yes! Yes, that’s right. That’s exactly how he looked to me.”
The man said that and then muttered curiously.
“But why do you ask that without checking for yourself…?”
And then, before I could answer, he reached his own conclusion and nodded.
“Ah, I see. It would be hard to recognize such a swollen face.”
…Did I hit him a bit too much?
Since everything looks black to me, I have no way of knowing how much the opponent is injured.
“Ahem, anyway, that’s not the important part.”
I cleared my throat and continued speaking.
“The important thing is that this man is a famous criminal named Tom Chapman.”
“Ah, I heard it from him directly. That he’s a swindler and a drug trafficker…”
“As you heard, he’s also a prime suspect in the drug scandal that was a hot topic in the Capital recently.”
However, because of that incident, Chapman was caught.
“Articles about him were published in the newspapers every day, and a high-intensity tax investigation began. It was only a matter of time before he was confirmed as the culprit. If Chapman had kept that money, he would have had no choice but to go straight to prison.”
To pretend to be innocent, he had to hide the money.
No, just hiding it wasn’t enough. He needed money laundering so thorough that no one would suspect him even after he retrieved the money.
“The cleanest way is to use a third party with a clear identity who is unrelated to the crime.”
The more ignorant they are about finance, the better. They had to be naive enough to be easily manipulated as told.
It’s better if they’ve lived in one village their whole life and have many people to vouch for their identity. If they have a family to hold hostage and they love that family, it’s the icing on the cake.
My client was the perfect option for the swindler.
“That’s why you were used. While being framed for a crime that didn’t even exist.”
“A crime that didn’t exist? Are you talking about moving the drugs?”
“That probably wasn’t drugs or anything else.”
“What?”
To the surprised man, I pointed out the obvious facts.
“First of all, it’s impossible to move drugs by train. The railroad baggage inspection in the Capital isn’t that lax.”
That’s not all.
“In the first place, the dates are different. You said you met that swindler a month ago?”
“Yes. It was around then.”
“The drug scandal became a hot topic two months ago. A month ago, all existing smuggling routes were already blocked, making it extremely difficult to smuggle drugs into the Capital.”
“What? But in the newspapers…”
“You might not have known, but newspapers have something called an embargo.”
The media of this era was at the mercy of the powerful.
There was no telling how many people would try the same method if a drug smuggling article came out, so those who controlled the media wouldn’t have allowed the article to be published before they blocked the smuggling routes.
“By the time the smuggling article came out, the incident was already mostly wrapped up.”
“Such a thing…”
“Of course, Chapman was in a desperate situation.”
Chapman had to quickly find someone to hide the money. The problem was that Chapman didn’t easily trust people.
“He doesn’t trust anyone he can’t blackmail. His last three prison stints were due to the betrayal of subordinates he trusted.”
However, the people with clean records needed for Chapman’s plan usually didn’t have much to be blackmailed with.
Thus, Chapman came up with a brilliant idea. If there was nothing to blackmail them with, he would just create something—an absurd idea.
“He set up a fake crime from the start, targeting you. You were just dancing around on the board Chapman designed.”
The man was played from start to finish.
“What Chapman deals with is a synthetic drug in powder form. In excessive doses, it causes hallucinations, but usually, it makes one feel good as if drunk and clouds one’s reason. It’s often taken mixed with alcohol.”
“…?”
“Do you think you were really in your right mind the day you first met Chapman?”
“What? No way…”
“The day you first met, Chapman must have drugged your drink.”
“…!”
The moment he raised his glass, he had already fallen into a trap with no way out.
“I just thought the liquor was strong…”
“Had you ever rolled around in a flower bed drunk like that before?”
“No. That was the first time. I see. Because I took medicine, so…”
The client’s face looked as if he were completely possessed by a ghost.
“Giving you a huge reward and having you immediately change that money into expensive clothes was also Chapman’s move.”
He was likely aiming for two effects.
First, to create fake evidence that my naive client was the culprit. By showing him wearing expensive clothes overnight to those around him, he was tying him down.
Second, to ensure the client couldn’t return the money.
“If he had given you clothes from the start, you could just return the clothes. It’s the same if he gave you money.”
If he decided to return everything he received and go to the police station to report it, it would have been troublesome for Chapman.
So he gave him money first and induced him to squander it immediately. Choosing the item of clothing, of all things, was also very intentional.
“Clothing is the hardest item to turn back into cash among luxury goods. Unless it’s free or dirt cheap, who would pay a lot of money for clothes someone else wore?”
So even if the man in the flat cap changed his mind later, he couldn’t return the money. In the blink of an eye, he becomes an undeniable accomplice who shared in the criminal proceeds.
At least, in the mind of the man in the flat cap.
“In the first place, would fingerprints on train baggage, which naturally pass through dozens of hands, be evidence? What about a signature written sloppily while so drunk you couldn’t even control your body? No one can be locked up with that level of evidence. All that talk about you being an accomplice or being caught by the police was just a story Chapman made up to use you as he pleased.”
It’s all just a threat to ensnare a naive country man who fears the police.
“But the money laundering side is different.”
I looked at the man in the flat cap with a stiff face.
“If you had signed the business investment papers and handed over the money as that swindler told you, that truly would have made you a perfect accomplice with no way out.”
For the first while, the eyes of the investigation might not have reached this man. It would have bought Chapman enough time as he intended.
But after the investigation reaches its final stages and Chapman has run away with a laundered identity?
“By the time the police start doubting those business investment documents, Chapman will be long gone. But what about you? Will you be able to run away then?”
The answer was something he knew better than anyone. Because he was someone who had been rooted in this land his whole life.
I said coldly.
“Not only did you naively sympathize with Chapman’s fake crime at first, but you were also about to put your family in great danger by sympathizing with a real crime.”
The man lowered his head deeply with a pained look.
A heavy silence followed.