Marks no Yama – Episode 1 Synopsis

Episode 1: The cases

A skeleton is found in the woods of Kitadake in Yamanashi prefecture. There are few personal effects and the identity of the body is not known.

Sometime later, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police is notified of a burglary at the household of Asano Tsuyoshi, the director of Asano General Hospital. Although Asano had an item stolen from his study and is clearly shaken by the incident, he covers it up and insists it was a case of mistaken identity rather than a burglary. However, his wife discovers his dead body hanging in the study not long after the episode.

At that same moment, Hatakeyama Hiroshi, a former gang member of Serizawa-kai’s Fujita-gumi, is found murdered in a quiet housing estate in the metropolis. Assistant Inspector Goda Yuichiro of the First Investigative Division’s Seventh Section is put in charge of the case. He tracks down Hatakeyama’s movements while alive, but cannot get hold of any clues besides the fact that Hatakeyama had kept 50,000 yen in cash hidden in the apartment of his live-in girlfriend, Nishino Fumiko. In the midst of this, the team gets a breakthrough. It is learnt that a middle-aged man who owns a crocodile skin wallet had taken a taxi to Fumiko’s apartment on a night two days before the murder.

Among the people who emerge in the investigation is the lawyer Rinbara Yuzo, who had been in charge of the trial of Hatakeyama’s previous offense … However, Rinbara says he had gone on a business trip to Iwate on the day Hatakeyama was killed.

Then, the murder of Matsui Koji, a bureaucrat from the Ministry of Justice, takes place. Oddly enough, Matsui’s body is transferred to the medical examiner’s office before the detectives arrive at the scene. Goda seeks the opinion of a trusted medical examiner who confirms that the wound Matsui sustained is remarkably similar to the Hatakeyama case. Both victims have a hole of about 1 cm in diameter on the head and it looks like the cases are developing into serial killings.

But Goda receives an incomprehensible order from his boss, Hayashi Shozo, who conveys the orders of the top brass “not to conduct a joint investigation”. At the same time, prosecutors from the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor’s Office, including Kano Yusuke, who had been in the same year at university and is also the older brother of Goda’s ex-wife, Kiyoko, turn up at the headquarters of the investigation task force. Goda attempts to get information from Kano. However, he is rejected and told to “obey orders from above”. The investigation becomes extremely difficult … …

Nemoto Asami, a journalist with Shukan Choryu, has been collecting information regarding the bribery charges of Saeki Shoichi, the president of Saeki Chuo Construction. But her article’s speculation about Saeki Chuo Construction’s ties with the yakuza draws a complaint from the construction company when published, and she is ordered to pursue the Hatakeyama murder case by her editor-in-chief, Takizawa Kanji.

Meanwhile, a mysterious youth called Mizusawa Hiroyuki, who sometimes has nightmares of “dark mountains”, is released from a medical facility and goes to stay with his lover, Takagi Machiko, a nurse.

Giving himself the name ‘Marks’, Mizusawa makes a phone call to Rinbara. As a horrified Rinbara stares at the package sent by ‘Marks’, Mizusawa demands 10 billion yen, with the threat “If you’ve one less person, it will just increase the burden on your surviving buddies …. …!”

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