As Kawakami Noboru spoke, he smiled and wiped away tears that did not exist, then deliberately put on a grief-stricken expression. "After I'd finished cursing him out, I hung up—only when you called me again did I learn that poor Takai had actually suffered something like this.
"Though it may look like I have something to do with this accidental fall, Detective, get this straight: I never wanted to kill him. I'm just an innocent bystander."
"That certainly sounds innocent, but..." Jiang Xia turned to Hattori Heiji.
Understanding at once, Hattori Heiji picked up an Evidence Bag containing a phone and revealed the same sinister grin Kawakami Noboru had worn earlier.
Then, through the thin transparent plastic, he pressed the replay button.
A sentence brimming with Killing Intent immediately came from the phone—Kawakami Noboru's voice. Yet compared with how he sounded now, the voice on the phone was incomparably gloomy: "Goodbye, Takai. Once you get to the other side, apologize to Hiraya for me."
"..." Kawakami Noboru froze on the spot, his expression as though the already-flattened Takai had slapped him across the face from afar.
Jiang Xia looked at him and sighed, seeming somewhat sympathetic. "Before falling, the victim grabbed hold of the curtain and supported himself for a short while. During that time, he started recording and tried to throw his phone back into the room, preserving evidence that you had murdered him.
"Though that attempt failed and the phone struck the window before falling downstairs, fortunately, it was very durable. Your final words at the time were preserved exactly as they were in this phone."
"..."
Killing Intent, action... Reviewing his performance tonight, Kawakami Noboru finally went weak in the knees and plopped into a chair.
Hattori Heiji did not listen to the motive that followed.
While