“Short legs. Tail of a lion. Bird feet. Doesn’t that look like a desperately constructed animal to you? The baku inhabit temple gates and pillars to keep the yokai away. Village pillars are usually made of wood but this one is concrete. What if Hiro replaced the old one when he came back from Lang Son?”

“You think he might have buried his treasure under the pillar?”

“At first, yes, I considered that,” said Siri. “With the type of metal detectors in common use the magnetic field is directed downwards. If the treasure had been in the ground the detectors would have found it. The reason I was so fixated on this photograph is that it didn’t seem right somehow. We know Satsai is of average height. He’s standing beside the pillar and I estimate there’s another two Satsais’ height before the top of the pillar—about five meters. When we saw it with him the other day, it would have been no taller than two Satsais, one on top of the other, if you know what I mean.”

“Not really.”

“The pillar is shorter now.”

“How can that be?”

“When we came to see Satsai on our second visit he was mending a piece of equipment: some sort of heavy-duty cordless saw. Now, if you’re cutting trees, a simple chainsaw would be sufficient, or an axe. That beast on his desk was for cutting metal and did you see any metal around there that needed cutting?”

“You think the treasure’s in the pillar?”

“It’s possible, and would have been simple enough to arrange. You’d just have to pour liquid cement into a wooden frame with a pipe through the center. The finished concrete structure would have a hollow channel running through it. You then melt down your treasure, be it gold or silver or whatever—and my bet is gold—and pour it into the hollow center. You erect your pillar, decorate it a bit, and all anyone sees is a tall concrete post in the middle of the square. It was the only thing to survive the raid. They burned everything else down searching for the gold. Nobody would think to look there. It’s the village secret. Whenever they need some funding for this or that project or disaster they just lop off a few centimeters from the top of the pillar. It would make sense that they used the gold to rebuild the village after the raid.”

“You’ve got a devious mind, Dr. Siri.”

“But it’s possible, right?”

“Absolutely. But that means Satsai was lying to us about not knowing where the treasure was.”

“Of course he was,” said Siri. “Wouldn’t you? His village had already been destroyed once. He knows someone suspects there’s a fortune in gold in or around the village. Someone knew about Hiro and his stash and his relationship with Satsai. I bet that someone was Yuki-san.”