Richard Lloyd Parry
Ichikawa

Four days after the murder of Lindsay Hawker, the British teacher found strangled in a Tokyo suburb, Japanese police raided a suburban sex motel yesterday in a vain search for the Japanese man suspected of killing her.

A team of twenty officers took up positions around the Hotel Chateau, a “love hotel” in Nishi-Funabashi, east of Tokyo, where rooms are rented to couples by the hour. They were following up a reported sighting of Tatsuya Ichihashi, a 28-year old doctor’s son in whose home Lindsay’s body was found buried in an earth-filled bath. After a 45 minutes search of the premises, broadcast on Japanese television, they emerged frustrated, seemingly no closer to finding their quarry than when he escaped from under their noses on Monday night.