Ito-san's quiet beat

Ito-san keeps the little police box at the corner, where the most serious crime in living memory was an umbrella taken by mistake and returned the same afternoon, with a note.

So when he calls at the café “on official business”, the whole street gathers. The business: Kuro, the neighbourhood's large black cat, has not been seen at the police box for two days. Ito-san wishes it noted that he is not worried. He would simply like the matter investigated.

The investigation lasts four minutes. Kuro is on the café's sunniest windowsill, where he has been for two days, having conducted his own inspection of the premises and approved them.

There follows a delicate territorial matter — the windowsill being, by treaty, Matji napping ground — resolved in the traditional way: the cat takes the sun, the Matji take the cat, and by evening all five are asleep in one warm heap. Ito-san files his report: case closed, everyone home, nothing to police. His favourite kind.