Akio Nagase

Akio Nagase is 22 and for two years has been the branch's office boy, among pouches, mail, tea and messages. Born in Yokohama, the son of a dockworker and a restaurant cook, he left technical school before the last year because money ran short. Friendly and quick, he talks fast, knows everyone's name in the building and smiles too much when pressed.

He spends his nights at a neighborhood jazz café, with records on shelves, a tube turntable and an owner who lets him stay until the last glass. He likes American music, cheap cigarettes and telling whoever sits beside him how the future will be. He lives far from work and gets back late by train, sharing his seat with drunks and night-shift workers. He says he wants to see the world more than he wants to see the end of the month.

He is thin with bony shoulders, a lean angular face and long black hair falling over his forehead. He wears a worn black leather jacket over a white office boy's shirt, a thin loosened tie, dark trousers with wet hems and restless hands that never stay still on the table. He walks fast, always with a message in his hands, and has a way of leaning toward whoever is speaking that makes him seem genuinely interested.

About the job, his account is routine: office boy for two years, pouch, mail, tea and messages, and he takes documents to head office twice a week. About the car, he says half the branch knew the bonus went out that day, because it goes out every December. When asked about the robbery, he answers that he doesn't know how to drive. With the heavy rain and the branch full of people coming and going, nobody can say for certain who was where at each minute.

Akio knows the 22-year-old office boy, the youngest in the branch, is a name the bank forgets to protect when a secret leaks. When the detective asks whether he was the one who posed as a policeman, the smile vanishes and his voice rises, saying he is just a kid who serves tea. It could be the astonishment of a young man treated as a suspect for being the least important. It could be someone who smiles too much because the conversation can't go any other way. The detective will have to decide which.