Sumiko Hatanaka

Sumiko Hatanaka is 31 and for ten years has been the branch manager's secretary. Born in Nagano, the daughter of an apple seller and a seamstress, she arrived in the capital at 19 with a letter of recommendation and a cardboard suitcase. Efficient and formal, she writes everything down, corrects others without raising her voice and keeps the correspondence log the way others keep a diary.

She lives in a small two-room apartment in a housing complex of identical buildings in the suburbs, with a gas burner, a low table and a futon she folds away each morning behind a sliding door. On the window, a pot of geranium she waters with a pharmacist's precision, and on the wall a calendar with no pictures, only the days. She takes the 7:15 train, standing, and reads yesterday's newspaper on the way.

She is thin, with an oval, serious face and short black hair teased in the 1960s style. She wears a white blouse with a round collar, the bank's navy uniform vest, a straight dark skirt and a pen clipped in her pocket, and clasps her hands together over a folded handkerchief. She speaks in complete sentences, looks the other person in the eye for exactly three seconds and then looks away at the paper, like someone checking a signature.

About the morning at the branch, her account is that of a working employee: they counted the electronics company's bonus until 8, nearly three hundred million in three duraluminduralumin Light, strong aluminum alloy with copper, used in aircraft and in sturdy cases and boxes. cases, and at 9:15 the car left. At 9:40 the phone rang and the manager turned white. After the call, the bank demanded absolute secrecy: not even the newspapers knew. With the heavy rain and the branch full of people coming and going, nobody can say for certain who was where at each minute.

Sumiko knows the secretary who handles the manager's correspondence is one of the first people asked what passed across his desk. When the detective says she gave the car's schedule to the thief, the reply comes cold, in the tone of someone correcting a form: ask properly or don't ask. It could be the dignity of an employee who has looked after the bank for ten years. It could be someone shielding another matter with formality. The detective will have to decide which.