Chapter 26: The Autopsy of a Mummified Corpse

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East Japan Railway Company, commonly known as JR East, was one of the colossal enterprises carved out of the gigantic monopolistic conglomerate that had been Japanese National Railways. It was a railway company whose primary operating territory covered the Kanto and Tohoku regions of Japan. JR East operated sixty-nine lines with a total railway mileage of 7,457.3 kilometers, carrying an average of 17.1 million passengers every day. It was Japan’s largest passenger railway operator and one of the world’s five hundred largest companies, generally ranking around four hundred and fiftieth place.

Its principal business consisted of what were known as the “main lines” and the “Shinkansen.” The main lines primarily served shorter-distance transportation within the Tokyo metropolitan area, while the Shinkansen provided long-distance electric rail service. The thirty million people living in the greater Tokyo area relied heavily on these two modes of transportation for the vast majority of their journeys.

Although Uesugi Muneyuki personally detested being crammed into trains and subways, he had to admit that, faced with the transportation demands of Tokyo’s thirty million residents, JR East’s approach was the correct one.

In addition to learning from the former Soviet Union, China had also borrowed extensively from Japan’s systems of main lines and bullet trains in planning its major cities. Public transportation planning involving buses, subways, railways, and bullet trains ensured that the enormous populations of its major cities could travel conveniently and commute to work each day.

The United States, by contrast, had taken an entirely different approach. Because of its vast landmass, sparse population, and history of westward expansion, most American cities—apart from older East Coast cities such as Boston and Philadelphia—had designed their public transportation around highways in the city centers and residential suburbs. As a result, local residents needed to drive whenever they wanted to do anything.

They had to drive to meet friends, drive to go shopping, drive to eat out, and even drive simply to wander around.

The United States had the means to adopt such a model because it was relatively wealthy, wages were high, and automobiles were inexpensive. There was also the influence of numerous corporations lobbying Congress. But that model could not be applied universally. Any urban plan had to suit the conditions of the country in question.

An enterprise ranking among the world’s five hundred largest companies could not possibly remain unresponsive when something like this happened. By the time Uesugi Muneyuki and Ikeda Erena arrived, the electric train repair depot in Shinagawa Ward was already packed with people.

A crowd of elderly spectators had gathered at the entrance, chattering animatedly about the incident. Dozens of reporters thrust microphones toward the mouths of the JR East officials present. Seven or eight police cars were parked nearby, while more than twenty ordinary police officers had formed a human barrier and stretched yellow crime-scene tape across the area. Auto mechanics, police officers, and company executives had gathered together with grim expressions, discussing what had happened.

“Good afternoon, Director Minami. I’m Kishida from the Asahi Shimbun. What are your thoughts on the discovery of the body? Does this prove that JR East was negligent?” A reporter in his thirties, dressed in a suit, fought his way to the very front.

“I’m Kobayakawa, a reporter from the Yomiuri Shimbun. Director Minami, how does JR East intend to handle this incident? Will you conduct a comprehensive inspection of every train on the main lines and the Shinkansen?”

“I’m Okamoto from the Daily Telegraph…”

“I’m Yamato from Economic Weekly.”

“I’m Imaizumi from Weekly Bunshun. You must give the entire public an explanation!”

The reporters swarmed the JR East representative at the scene, making the world-class corporation look exceedingly awkward. The man at their head, Director Minami, was around fifty years old. His black hair had been combed slickly back without a strand out of place. He had a broad, square face with a full forehead, and his complexion was as dark as ink. He stood there without saying a word.

At that moment, Uesugi Muneyuki arrived. He got out of the car carrying a briefcase, while Ikeda Erena stepped out beside him in her police uniform. The people around them immediately surged forward.

“Excuse me…”

“Police!” Ikeda Erena had always hated situations like this. Without hesitation, she produced her police identification booklet.

“Make way, make way!” Inspector Moritsugu of the Shinagawa Police Station appeared. He was around fifty, approximately the same age as the old man Tanaka, not particularly tall, and slightly thick around the waist from middle-aged weight gain. He wore the same slicked-back hairstyle, while his sharp, serious eyes were currently filled with worry. The moment he saw Uesugi Muneyuki arrive, he hurriedly dispersed the crowd and came before him.

“You’ve come at just the right time, Uesugi. We’re all counting on you.”

“What’s the situation?” Uesugi Muneyuki asked with a frown.

A line of uniformed officers from nearby police boxes opened the yellow tape and cleared a path for him. Erena followed closely behind with quick, mincing steps.

What a direct young man!

Inspector Moritsugu had intended to introduce Uesugi Muneyuki to the JR East executives first, but from the look of him, Uesugi clearly wanted to examine the corpse before doing anything else. The inspector could only hurry after him.

“It happened like this…”

Inspector Moritsugu’s account differed little from the information Ikeda Erena had received. The Shinagawa police obviously lacked the means to resolve the matter. All they could do was question the employees one by one, then deploy a large number of officers to search outward from the location where the body had been discovered.

Naturally, they had found nothing.

Uesugi Muneyuki’s appearance also caused an uproar among the surrounding crowd.

“The forensic examiner is here! The forensic examiner is here!”

“Let’s see what he has to say.”

“That forensic examiner is awfully young. And who’s the female officer beside him? What a beauty. Is she mixed-race?”

“Goodness, she’s so tall. She doesn’t look Japanese.”

“Those breasts are huge… Is she really a police officer?”

The whispers around her made Erena extremely uncomfortable. Her lovely features grew even colder. The tall beauty deeply regretted coming in a police uniform paired with a skirt and stockings. If she had known there would be so many people here, she would have felt far more at ease in a suit with trousers.

Yet as she watched Uesugi Muneyuki speaking with Inspector Moritsugu, Erena felt that she truly was in the middle of official duty.

Fine. She would just have to endure it.

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Erena knew that the detectives surrounding them had already recognized her. Wherever her gaze passed, those officers instinctively retreated. She tried asking them a few questions, but not one of them answered.

Her emotions tangled between frustration and dejection. In the end, she simply stood behind Uesugi Muneyuki, half a step away, making it clear that she was with him.

“All right, I understand. We’ll begin the examination now.” After hearing the full account, Uesugi Muneyuki knitted his brows tightly. He intended to try something first.

“Please, we’re counting on you.” Inspector Moritsugu edged closer and lowered his voice. “This matter could have a tremendous impact. You have to consider the transportation needs of the thirty million people in the greater Tokyo area. If the entire train system has to be inspected, service will have to be suspended for at least a full day. Traffic throughout Tokyo would grind to a halt. This concerns the interests of the public, so please proceed carefully.”

“…I need to examine the body first. We’ll discuss the rest once I know what happened.”

Uesugi Muneyuki’s eyes shifted slightly. He did not answer directly.

The examination came first.

And so, beneath the gaze of hundreds of onlookers, with the long lenses and microphones of more than a dozen media outlets trained upon him, while dozens of police officers and mechanics watched from nearby, and under the complicated, warning-filled stares of the JR East director and the chief of the Shinagawa detectives’ division, Uesugi Muneyuki began his examination.

The remains measured only sixty centimeters in length. They consisted of part of the torso and the right leg. Most of the body had turned completely black and dehydrated. Fragments of clothing still clung to the surface, but overall, the surviving remains had undergone both mummification and adipocere formation.

Hmm. Closed fractures. The victim had indeed been struck and killed by a train.

Uesugi Muneyuki turned the remains over and continued examining them.

The corpse was extremely thin, with abnormal depressions in numerous places.

Indentation edema?

Uesugi reached out and probed the remains. He found such edema in several places on the skin. After examining the victim’s fingernails, he formed a vague hypothesis.

The victim had probably fallen onto the railway tracks and been severed on the spot by a train. Part of the body had been thrown clear, while another portion had become attached to the underside of the train.

But this was also a mummified corpse…

Uesugi Muneyuki fell into thought.

As mentioned earlier, a body required specific conditions to become mummified or form adipocere. Otherwise, it would simply decay.

All right. The suspicious points had been summarized. The next thing to do was…

Clenching his right fist, Uesugi Muneyuki activated the power of the Azure Radiant Stone and attempted to awaken the dead soul.

A mummified corpse that appeared to have been dead for many years actually reacted. A vague dead soul, dressed in the clothes of a construction worker, barely managed to take shape. It seemed about to say something to Uesugi Muneyuki, but dispersed on the wind when its strength ran out.

It could still barely take form?

Adipocere. Partial remains. Indentation edema caused by malnutrition. Closed fractures. Railway tracks.

Various clues frantically rearranged themselves in Uesugi Muneyuki’s mind until they reached the final detail: the construction worker’s clothing.

“Uesugi, have you figured anything out?” Seeing Uesugi lost in thought, Inspector Moritsugu approached him and asked, “This is already a mummified corpse, so that should mean the victim died a long time ago, shouldn’t it? Tanaka once told me that mummified bodies usually meant the victim had been dead for many years. And judging from the circumstances, could this have been a suicide by jumping onto the tracks?”

Ikeda Erena and Director Minami also instinctively came closer.

“No. This person died recently.” Uesugi Muneyuki immediately contradicted him. “Not only did he die recently, he almost certainly died within the past three weeks. And this was not suicide!”

What?!

The moment those words were spoken, Director Minami, who had been hoping Uesugi would declare it a long-standing case of suicide by jumping onto the tracks, turned even darker.

The situation was developing in a very unfavorable direction.

He immediately signaled Inspector Moritsugu.

“Within three weeks? That’s impossible, isn’t it, Uesugi? If the victim died within the past three weeks, why would the body have become mummified?” Inspector Moritsugu’s expression grew troubled. “And if it wasn’t suicide, where is your evidence?”

“As for the evidence, we can first establish one thing.” Uesugi Muneyuki pointed at the remains. “The trains are inspected once every three months, correct? So we can be certain that no body was found on this train before three months ago. Isn’t that right?”

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At that, neither Director Minami nor Inspector Moritsugu could object. JR East’s internal inspections and the Shinagawa police investigation both clearly established that nothing unusual had been discovered during the inspection three months earlier.

“The workers may have overlooked something, but that isn’t important. What matters is why you believe the victim died within the past three weeks.” Director Minami was visibly losing face. His voice turned stiff. “Do you think this is some kind of classic detective mystery? We need evidence. Where is your evidence? This is JR East, not a mystery novel!”

“The evidence is actually very simple.” Uesugi Muneyuki understood now.

Both the Shinagawa police and JR East wanted him to provide a simple conclusion: suicide by lying on the tracks.

But this was obviously not suicide!

As that thought occurred to him, anger surged through Uesugi Muneyuki’s mind.

Why did these Japanese people always try to blame everything on suicide or disappearance whenever something happened?

Such a mentality was absolutely intolerable!

“Look here. These are the victim’s toenails.” Uesugi Muneyuki’s temper had risen, and his tone grew sharper. “Do you see? The outer portions of the toenails are covered in grime and grease, while the parts closer to the roots are relatively clean?”

“The reason is simple. After death, neither fingernails nor hair continue to grow. Yet during examinations, we sometimes find that nails which had already been clipped appear to have grown longer, or that hair which had been cut has extended by another fraction. This is not because the body is still alive. It is because, after the body loses moisture and shrivels, the hair and nails that had been concealed beneath the skin become exposed.”

Uesugi Muneyuki spoke with absolute certainty.

“If the victim had been dead for a long time, the inner portions of the nails would also have become dirty. But they haven’t. That alone proves that this person died recently.”

“As for why I say three weeks, that is also simple. Pay closer attention to the weather forecast. The last rainfall occurred three weeks ago, and there has been no rain since. The air has remained dry, preventing the body from decaying. In humid conditions, decomposition would occur before mummification.”

“So there is no doubt. This is the body of someone who died within the past three weeks. For some reason, the victim’s body was severed by the wheels. Part of the remains became stuck beneath the train, where they were subjected to what amounted to a constant gale of winds equivalent to Force Seven or Eight as the train sped through Tokyo day after day. That was what turned the remains into a mummy.”

Uesugi Muneyuki finished speaking calmly.

The entire scene fell silent.

The onlookers outside, the dozen or more reporters, the surrounding police officers and workers, Director Minami, and Inspector Moritsugu—all of them, the two men who most desperately wanted to keep the matter from becoming serious—opened their mouths, yet could not produce a single rebuttal.

To reconstruct the circumstances surrounding the death from nothing more than a surface examination, and to present his reasoning with such logic and evidence, made Uesugi Muneyuki seem almost divine in the eyes of those around him.

More importantly, Uesugi Muneyuki had invoked the manifestation of Ragaraja. As he recounted what had happened, his mind was free of distraction, his concentration absolute. Empowered by the golden body of the manifestation, his clear and resolute words seemed capable of piercing heaven and earth.

After that explanation, everyone present—the police and all the others—had unconsciously begun to believe Uesugi Muneyuki. Only Director Minami continued muttering, “But, but, Doctor, JR East received no accident reports within the past three weeks. Are you suggesting that we’re responsible?”

“That’s right. We also received no missing-person reports.”

At those final words, Uesugi Muneyuki opened his eyes. Hearing Director Minami’s last stubborn objection, he gave a soft laugh.

“Yes. Why didn’t you receive any accident reports or missing-person reports? Why, indeed?”

“The answer is very simple. Someone concealed the report.”

The words caused an uproar.

Every JR East worker at the scene, along with Director Minami, flushed bright red.

What did this young man think he was doing?!

Was he trying to accuse one of the world’s five hundred largest companies all by himself?

How audacious!

But Uesugi Muneyuki clearly had no intention of yielding. He stood there with his hands behind his back, facing the hundreds of people at the scene.

The man believed that his duty was to make the truth clear. He failed to notice the shock and astonishment on the face of the tall beauty behind him.

Erena could only think that fame was never undeserved. Seeing was indeed better than hearing a hundred descriptions. After witnessing Uesugi Muneyuki’s deductions from beginning to end, the sharp brown eyes of the tall beauty grew increasingly gentle. Their brilliance flooded her pupils until only Uesugi Muneyuki’s sturdy back remained reflected there.

Her blood raced. Her face flushed hot.

Now that was what a proper man was supposed to be~