End of the World Blues

CHAPTER 59 — Thursday, 5 July

The shuttle bus from Narita Airport was a quarter full, as always. A Korean boy with spiky hair sat at the back, pointedly ignoring signs not to use his phone while the bus was in motion. Leaning against him was a Japanese girl lost in admiration, but the boy was still embarrassed enough to be angry about something that happened earlier.

A customs officer had pulled him out of a queue in arrivals and unpacked his luggage with excruciating slowness, carefully unfolding each item of clothing as the line looked on. It had been all the boy could do to bow when she let him go.

Rain hammered the bus, obscuring its windows. Behind the downpour hid trees and houses, a waterlogged crocus bed looking like a tiny paddy field. Half-seen factories stood back from the motorway, screened by sodden banks of earth. Just another summer’s day in Tokyo, with its heat hanging on the edge of tropical.

Soon the bus would reach Odaiba and the artificial islands built to house Tokyo’s overspill. Some of this area was still poor, but most had spawned wild architecture and ever-more-expensive shopping malls. It was the same city, Kit told himself. He’d been in love with its anonymity from the moment he first arrived; its anonymity and ability to change so fast it always remained the same.

It still was that city, but he was going to abandon it all the same, once he’d done what he came to do.

Having wrapped themselves around each other, the teenage couple behind him fell asleep, lulled by the warmth and that weird jet-lag dilation which means one’s mind has trouble catching up with its owner after a long flight.

Kit’s fake passport had carried him through customs. He suspected he had the Korean boy to thank for that. So disapproving had the smartly dressed young officer been at the couple who’d preceded him that she gave Kit little more than a glance.

“Are you carrying drugs?”

Kit had shaken his head firmly.

“Why are you here?”

“Holiday,” said Kit. “I’m only here for a week. At the Shinjuku Hilton.”

The officer nodded, as if this was where she’d expect someone like Kit to stay, stamped his passport, and motioned Kit through. Both questions had been in English and Kit had been careful to answer the same way.

The hand in his pocket had been borderline rude, but he was gaijin, and besides being regarded as ill bred was infinitely better than having a Tokyo customs officer wonder why his little finger was missing.

No Neck answered the phone on the first ring, his wide-cheeked face scowling from Kit’s tiny screen. As Kit watched, the man dragged a smile from his memory. “Media liaison,” he said.

“What?”

“English language liaison. 47 Ronin. How can I help?”

“It’s me,” said Kit, flicking his Nokia to visual.

There was a sudden silence. “Benny?” said No Neck. “From the Times?”

In the split second before Kit decided to ask No Neck what the hell was going on, something about the old Rebel’s eyes told him to shut the fuck up and listen instead.

“Liked your last story,” said No Neck, his voice matter of fact. “You might also want to look at these. Oh, and Tetsuo says he’s been offered cash for news of Kit Nouveau. And we’ve got a herd of rain-sodden lawyers down here trying to serve Mr. Nouveau with cease and desist orders…”

“Cease and desist what?” demanded Kit.

No Neck laughed. “You name it,” he said and broke the connection. The URLs that No Neck sent led to a dozen different sources of news, all carrying the same story. It wasn’t the lead (because that was the stand off between China and Japan), or even the second story (which alternated between storm warnings and unrest in Chechnya), but it was usually fifth or sixth and registered a respectable number of hits.

Stand off in Roppongi. Hammerfest Hells Angels stand by Japanese “brothers”… That was from Aftenposten, the Norwegian daily. The Washington Post was more circumspect. Tokyo mayor bides time. “Civil matter,” he states. Opposition disagrees.

The occupation of a building site in Roppongi was now entering its tenth day. Questions had been asked in Japanese parliament. Several purchasers of the high-end apartments to be built on the site had already pulled out.

Pirate Mary’s was described as a biker club house, a bar owing more to Irish myth than any reality, and a soi-disant watering hole for Tokyo’s self-proclaimed anarchic elite. (Battered & Bruised’s travel editor had been refused entry about six months before.) If anyone remembered a woman had died there they forgot to tell their readers.

Having checked the sites, Kit abandoned the protection of a Shinjuku bus shelter and braved the rain for a narrow doorway between electronic screens. Café Rikishi’s windows had been sacrificed for profit, the advertising bringing in almost as much a week as selling beer made in a month. Besides, those who used the café were unlikely to miss daylight; they came for the chanko-nabe stew, the beer, and the memories it brought of a city only they remembered.

If the air outside was hot and wet, the café was worse. So humid was the tiny bar that condensation dripped like rain from its ceiling and ran in rivulets down black-painted walls. An old man in a sodden pork-pie hat sat at a table with five dead Kirin bottles in front of him. When not wiping sweat from his brow or gazing mournfully at his empty bottles, the old man shredded a damp napkin to make perfect paper moths.

“Ito-san,” said Kit, bowing deeply.

Mr. Ito grew up in Shitamachi, a working class area destroyed in the fire bombing of Tokyo, and his generation kept a rigid demarcation between public and private behaviour—his shock at seeing Kit was quickly disguised.

Of course, maybe he was too drunk to recognise Kit at all. It could have been the shock of seeing a rain-soaked foreigner that Ito-san discarded, one brave or stupid enough to invade the sticky gloom of a café under the Shinjuku railway line.

Since Café Rikishi was barely larger than a broom cupboard, its crowd consisted of the owner and Mr. Ito, Kit, and a vast Korean mechanic who was stripping a Yamaha clutch at a table in the corner. When it became obvious he was not required to heave the gaijin back onto the street, the Korean went back to his gears.

“Mr. Ito.”

“Nouveau-san.”

So he had been recognised.

The old man stared at Kit, somewhat owlishly. “You know,” he said, ripping a strip from his paper napkin and rolling it between his fingers. “People said…”

“I’d left Tokyo?”

Mr. Ito twisted off another strip of napkin and folded both strips together, placing a tiny paper rifle on the table. “You’d met with an accident.”

“Hardly,” said Kit. “I’ve been on holiday.”

Mr. Ito allowed himself to look doubtful.

“Let me buy you a beer,” Kit said, ordering two Kirin, and remembering to use enough polite form to make his request acceptable. The ex-Sumo behind the counter glanced at Ito-san, who nodded.

All Sumo learned to cook, as did dervishes from half a world away, Zen and Sufi both considering it no stranger to look for truth in a bubbling pot than anywhere else. Kit had no idea if dervishes ran restaurants, but half the Sumo in Japan opened cafés as soon as the time came for them to hang up their ceremonial aprons.

The bottles of Kirin were so cold that steam from the chanko-nabe condensed across their sides and began to trickle into damp circles. When Mr. Ito returned his bottle to the table, he was careful to place it exactly inside the mark it made.

“Another?” Kit asked.

Mr. Ito nodded. “And maybe food?”

The stew was hot and filling and took the edge off the beer. It tasted of soy, garlic, and rice wine, daikon and shimeji mushroom mixed with burdock root. The chicken and tofu were near perfect, the chrysanthemum leaves still slightly chewy. The udon came separately, in its own tiny bowl.

“Gochisosama deshita.”

Kit’s simple thank you earned him a slight nod from the ex-Sumo, who then swept crude chunks of tofu into boiling broth. Obviously enough, the tofu wasn’t really diced crudely, merely chopped in a fashion designed to look crude.

After a third bottle of Kirin, Mr. Ito decided it was time to face whatever brought the Englishman to this café. So he sat back on his stool and signalled that Kit had his full attention. This involved little more than a slight change of expression and a relaxing of Mr. Ito’s shoulders.

“That night,” said Kit.

Mr. Ito nodded, not needing Kit to specify which one.

“I have a question about the afternoon.” Kit had been thinking hard about this. Look for the money, Mary had told him. Odds on, that’s your motive.

The insurance on Pirate Mary’s was limited to what was required by law. So far as anyone knew he and Yoshi were married; he’d thought so himself. Even gaijin in Japan got to inherit from their partners. The price of Yoshi’s work might have doubled in the week following her death, but most of it was held in trust or owned outright by museums. It seemed a poor motive, assuming her death had been anything other than an accident.

Only the building value of the land made sense. And Kit needed Brigadier Miles to come through with a name on that. In the meantime…Kit had been landing at Narita when he remembered something Ito-san said.

“I was wondering,” said Kit. “About that afternoon. You said you saw a car?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Ito, “and a policeman.”

“In uniform?”

Mr. Ito shook his head. “No, but he said he was police.”

“Can you remember how this man looked?”

Small, neatly dressed, somehow amused? The expression that always came to mind when Kit thought about Oniji-san. The face he’d seen the first time Mr. Oniji walked through the door at the hospital and police officers stepped aside to let the oyaban see the foreigner who’d been fucking his wife.

Mr. Ito leaned back to think. Had he been in a chair this would have been fine. Unfortunately Ito-san sat on a stool, and for a moment Kit thought the old man might topple backwards. All that happened, however, was that Mr. Ito lurched forward again as if on a spring, and finished up with his elbows on the table.

Mr. Ito was drunk and slightly scared, which made Kit remember something else. So far as Ito-san was concerned Kit had knifed a homeless man and left his corpse against a cemetery railing. And that meant Mr. Ito believed his beers were being bought by a killer.

Kit could understand how that might make him nervous.

“Was he small, this man…smaller than you?”

Mr. Ito shook his head.

“Are you sure?”

“He was big,” said Mr. Ito. “Like a Russian, and broad here.” He touched his shoulders, indicating width…“That’s the truth,” Mr. Ito added, seeing the doubt on Kit’s face.

“Japanese?”

Mr. Ito appeared to think about that. Although it turned out he was considering, not whether the man was Japanese but what kind of foreigner he might be.

“Like me?” Kit asked.

A shake of Mr. Ito’s head.

“What then?”

“Maybe half Korean,” Mr. Ito said finally. “But dark.”

No one Kit knew came close to fitting both parts of that description. “You’re certain about this?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Ito. “Broad, bear-like, half Korean…” His words were loud enough to disturb the ex-Sumo behind the counter, who glanced across, considered things carefully, and went back to dicing tofu.

Oh well…

“Thank you,” said Kit, pushing back his stool. “Let me buy you a beer before I leave.” He waited for the huge ex-Sumo to sweep diced scallions into his bubbling pot and reach for a note pad.

Seven beers, two bowls of chanko-nabe—the seaweed crackers obviously came free. Sliding 5,000 yen onto a small white tray, Kit took his change. It was as he turned to go that Mr. Ito looked up from his final beer.

“The other man was Japanese,” Ito-san said.

Kit sat down again.

“What other man?”

“The one in the car.” Mr. Ito thought about it some more. “Three men,” he said finally. “Two in the car, one outside.”

“The big man, he got back in the car?”

Mr. Ito shook his head. “No,” he said. “He arrived in the car and then the car drove away. This was in the afternoon, before…”

“What were the two like?”

“One was young,” said Mr. Ito. “A chimpira.” He used the expression with disgust, as if things had been different in his day, which they probably were. Baby gangsters didn’t dress like cut-price Hollywood stars for a start.

“And the other?” Small, neatly dressed, somehow amused?

“Swept back hair, expensive watch,” said Mr. Ito. “You know the type. Almost a yanqi, but older. Pale suit. Quite tall.”

Pale suit?

“This man,” said Kit. “Did you get a good look at him?”

Mr. Ito nodded. “I see most things,” he said. “Sometimes I see more things than exist, often many more things.” Sitting back, he shook his head, as if aware he probably shouldn’t have said that.

“Cats talk,” said Kit. “Girls disappear into thin air. For the last five days I’ve been throwing dice that don’t exist, waiting for a winning number. I look into shop windows and see the reflection of someone else…”

“Ahh,” said Mr. Ito.

“I’m going to describe someone,” said Kit. “He’s tall, quite thin, and has high cheekbones, a pointed chin, and dyes his hair, which is swept back and slightly grey at the temples. He’s Okinawan, so his skin is dark.”

“Is this man real?”

“Yes,” said Kit.

“Good,” Mr. Ito said, “because he sounds like the man in the car.”

CHAPTER 60 — Thursday, 12 July

It took Kit five days to decide he should call Amy, ten minutes to argue himself out of that idea, and another three days to conclude his first decision had been right. In that time he changed hotels, followed the bozozoku stand off in Roppongi, and worked his way through Neku’s translations of the original police papers, which she hid behind a site supposedly dedicated to a history of Emily Strange.

Neku wrote him e-mails, which Kit stopped collecting when he remembered Brigadier Miles and her comment about how Kit’s name first came up on an international database. No one in England had his new number and he’d locked number display/caller ID before phoning No Neck that first time, but Kit still changed his phone twice, dumping the second of three phones in the bin without having used it once. It didn’t make much sense to him either.

The city looked the same and Kit looked different. The changes from London had rubbed off on him, his clothes were less formal, and he found himself looking at Tokyo through the eyes of someone who’d forgotten how to belong.

So much of how he defined himself had relied on Yoshi. With Yoshi gone, he’d begun to re-define himself, without even realising it. He checked into three different hotels and was taken for a tourist in each. At the Akasaka Prince he bought a hotel yukata, using it at the Shinjuku Hilton when he discovered the only thing on offer was a fluffy white robe. He might be assimilating, but things hadn’t yet gone that far.

As he sat in the executive lounge on the thirty-seventh floor of the Hilton, looking out over one of the greatest night views in the world, while an Australian girl and her boyfriend huddled in front of a blaring laptop to watch children’s films and polite middle-class Japanese families talked quietly, Kit decided he really needed to know why Amy had gone to bed with him. Maybe it just happened without reason.

Since a sign on his table banned the use of phones, Kit took himself out of the executive lounge and then, as an afterthought, out of the hotel altogether and into a taxi that was waiting at the door.

It was the day the BBC’s news site announced that the Metropolitan police had issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Flyte, a society drug dealer and ex-advertising executive. Mr. Flyte was wanted for the murder of Armand de Valois, whose exact profession was left unspecified.

An ex-chief from intelligence was quoted saying she doubted Mr. Flyte would ever be caught. Apparently, Brigadier Miles was allowed to say this, because she’d retired five years earlier. All her counterpart at the Met was prepared to say was he couldn’t comment on individual cases, particularly when the question was speculative.

Evening in Tokyo translated as lunchtime in London and Amy was at her desk. Kit only knew this because he could hear the clatter of printers and the rattle of a train through an open window.

“Amy Avenden,” she announced, and Kit realised his phone still had its ID lock in place. When Kit kept silence, Amy repeated her name, slightly more forcefully.

“It’s me,” he said.

She was about to ask who the fuck me was, because Kit could hear her draw breath and then she knew. It said something for her discretion that she didn’t immediately say his name, although she did ask the obvious.

“Where are you?”

“In Tokyo,” said Kit, wondering if it was wise to answer. Although anyone who understood street noise would know he was in Japan from the sing-song jingle activated every time someone walked past a shop door. And anyone who understood jingles could tell he was outside a shop in Akihabara, Tokyo’s electric town, where Kit intended to replace his phone the moment this conversation was done.

“Yes,” Amy said. “That’s where Kate said you’d be.”

“Kate?”

“She called, to see if we’d heard from you. Apparently the kid’s worried.”

Kit took a deep breath.

“Things have changed at this end,” said Amy. “The Brigadier…”

“Did a deal,” Kit said, finishing the sentence for Amy, then wondering if he was right. “I read about the warrant,” he added. “It’s why I called.”

Silence, then more silence. He’d offended her, again. “It’s not my only reason,” said Kit. “But I do have a couple of questions. Are the police going to be waiting for me if I come back to the UK?”

“You deserted,” said Amy. “What do you think?”

“Brigadier Miles offered me a deal.”

“If you helped us.”

“I did help,” Kit said. “I got the kid back and de Valois won’t be troubling you. I even left the drugs there for you to find.”

Amy laughed. “Fuck,” she said. “You’re impossible. What was the other question?”

“Why did you go to bed with me?”

“Shit,” said Amy, and for a moment Kit thought she’d broken the connection. “I’m at work,” she said. “All work calls get recorded. That’s just gone on my record.”

“What’s the answer?”

“I was drunk. It was stupid. I’d broken up with Steve the week before. You were available.”

“That’s all it was?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” said Amy. “I like you, alright? God knows why. People make mistakes. You were my biggest, both times.”

“But we didn’t…”

“No,” she said. “We didn’t. If we had, then I doubt we’d be having this conversation. Anything else you want to know?”

She gave him the name Brigadier Miles had produced, offering to spell it out if Kit needed, but he already knew how to spell Tek Tamagusuku.

“You know him?” said Amy; it was only half a question.

Tall, quite thin, with high cheekbones, a pointed chin, and dyes his hair… “Yes,” said Kit. “I know him.”

Amy seemed surprised when Kit apologised. “I mean it,” he said. “I fucked up, both times.”

“What are the chances of you not fucking up a third time?”

Kit laughed, mostly at himself. “Better than they were,” he said. “Much better. Can I ask a favour?”

“What?”

“Would you thank Charlie for the dice and send my love to the kid? Say I hope she’s okay.”

“Why not tell her yourself?”

“If I call that number,” said Kit, “someone at this end might link us. I want to keep her out of this.”

Out of what? Amy clearly wanted to ask, but Kit was gone. Tossing his Nokia into a nearby bin, he fought his way into the crowded chaos of an Akihabara electronics boutique and bought himself another.

CHAPTER 61 — Friday, 13 July

Yuko’s house was impressive, apparently. A copy in concrete and glass of a traditional Okinawan building, complete with red tiles on the roof and ceramic shisa lions guarding its rafters. Kit had never been. Yoshi and her sister always chose times to meet when he was teaching or buying stores for his bar.

Everything he knew about the Tamagusuku family home he knew from Yoshi. It was big, the garden had its own waterfall and the gates were rather vulgar; although Yoshi had always been careful to blame this on Mr. Tamagusuku and his southern heritage.

The house phone was gilt and alabaster, originally 1950s French, but refurbished by Mitsukoshi before being sold to Mr. Tamagusuku. It sat on a marble table by the front door, or so Kit had been told.

As he sat in yet another café, nursing a cappuccino and watching morning commuters stream in the thousands out of a West Shinjuku metro entrance, he imagined Yuko Tamagusuku putting down her own coffee. Or maybe he’d got that wrong, perhaps she was handing her baby to the nanny and walking slowly to the phone as Kit counted the rings, wondering how many could go by before he had to accept she was…

“Yuko,” said Kit, caught by surprise. “It’s me.”

He listened to Yoshi’s sister struggle to put a name to his voice.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Who is this?”

“Me,” said Kit. She got it then. “No,” he said. “Don’t put it down.”

Picking up again was Yuko’s big mistake. If she really wanted to ignore him she should have left the phone ringing.

“We need to talk,” said Kit. He waited for a click, for the tone which would follow. It said something for Yuko’s manners that she let the silence continue.

“Talk,” she said eventually.

“I know why Yoshi died.”

“That’s no mystery,” said Yuko, voice cold. “You abandoned her to the fire. I wouldn’t be surprised if you did it on purpose.”

“Yuko!”

“Everyone knew you didn’t love her anymore. All you really cared about was the bar and your mistress…”

So Yoshi had known about Mrs. Oniji. What’s more, she’d told her sister. “I’m sorry,” said Kit, bowing to his phone from instinct.

At the next table a Japanese boy glanced up, caught Kit’s glare, and hastily buried his head in an electronics catalogue. A second later he carefully extracted the exact change for his coffee and left the café.

“What are you sorry for?” said Yuko.

“Mostly for not being the person Yoshi thought I was. It was hard,” he added. “And it got harder.”

“You knew who she was when it started. She showed you her studio and her…” Yuko’s voice faltered. “Her equipment. You let my sister fall in love with you, then you abandoned her to a burning building and saved yourself.” Yuko was crying, her words no longer clipped with anger but swallowed along with her tears.

“It wasn’t like that.”

“What was it like?”

“I was already outside when the bomb exploded.”

“The what…?”

“There was a bomb,” said Kit. “Something basic, like phosphorus and plastique packed in a cola bottle and detonated by walkie talkie.”

“No,” protested Yuko. “It was an accident. I’ve seen the police report. You didn’t even try to save her.”

Taking a deep breath, Kit said, “I swear, I was already outside. No one could have saved Yoshi. The blast ripped my bar apart. She would have died instantly and so would I,” he added, admitting it to himself for the first time.

“Not true.”

“Yes,” said Kit. “It’s entirely true.”

Yuko fought her tears. When she finally broke her snuffling silence her words surprised Kit. “You lasted longer than her first husband.”

“God,” said Kit. “She’d been married before?”

“Yoshi never said?”

“No,” he said. “I had no idea.”

Yuko sighed. “Call me back later,” she said. “I need time to think.”

CHAPTER 62 — Saturday, 14 July

The waves were high by the time Kit’s taxi reached Kamakura. Families clung to their spots on the beach, but the atmosphere was sullen and no one seemed to be enjoying themselves. As Kit cleared a long stretch of sand, the rain arrived and people began to fold beach blankets and tidy away picnic ware.

“Storm soon,” the taxi driver said.

“Hai,” said Kit, nodding.

The driver smiled. Having decided Kit was new to Tokyo, he’d been busy pointing out shrines, famous buildings, and women in kimonos ever since they left West Shinjuku. He’d even tried to teach Kit a traditional song about Lord Tokugawa, who turned the swampy village of Edo into his capital.

The directions Yuko had delivered to the Hilton were for a new marina on Enoshima, an island opposite the Oriental Miami, the most popular of the bathing beaches on the Shonan coast. She made no mention of the fact that Kit was staying at the hotel under another name.

“Here,” said Kit, indicating a road-side bar, where two Japanese boys were buying Pink Health, one of the newer amino-acid drinks. A double surf board rested against a road sign beside them.

“See Myo-on Benten,” said the driver.

Kit looked blank.

“Goddess of karaoke and rock stars, many arms and very nude, also white and very detailed. You can see her…” The driver shrugged, leaving the rest to Kit’s imagination. “Very famous,” said the driver. “Also lucky.”

Having thanked and paid his driver, Kit thanked him again, promised to keep the Benten statue in mind, and watched the car pull away. It left him standing in the rain, along with the surfers and a handful of tourists preparing to cross the bridge.

“Oxygen?” asked Kit, nodding to a small silver tank resting next to the upturned surf board.

The younger of the two boys wore his hair like a Shinjuku Yakuza, but his accent belonged in Tokyo’s western suburbs and he’d probably spent most of that morning just getting to the beach. “Emergency flotation,” he said, patting the tank.

“Emergency…?”

“Yank the cord and whoosh.” Unrolling a wafer-thin orange wet suit, the boy indicated a puffy white strip running along the spine and across the shoulders. “Latest thing,” he said, “very expensive.”

Nodding, Kit smiled his approval. And that was the way the three of them passed onto the bridge, talking and smiling, under the lazy eye of a local policeman, whose attention centred on an Australian girl in sodden tee-shirt and high-sided briefs.

No picking wild flowers. No unguided cave trips. No dropping litter. No public indecency of costume. In English the rules were blunter than their Japanese equivalents, though the message was the same. The Australian girl’s outfit just about obeyed the law.

“There’s going to be a bad storm,” said Kit, repeating what he’d been told by the taxi driver.

“Cyclone,” said one.

“Typhoon,” said the other.

Both grinned. “It’s going to be extreme,” they said together, then laughed at what was obviously a tag line or shared joke. “Everyone’s here,” said the first, indicating other surfers lugging boards or heading towards the bridge. “The call’s been going out all morning. We want to get in the water before the police arrive.”

Fantastic Far View of Mount Fuji. By the time Kit and the two boys reached a teriyaki restaurant just beyond a botanical garden, the rain had stopped and the café’s canvas awning was dripping lazily onto the tiles of a small terrace. The far views of Fuji-san might well have been wonderful, but they were also obscured by cloud.

With its cafés and tourist shops Enoshima island reminded Kit of Mont St Michel. Small islands off a mainland, their causeways hidden at high tide. Although in the case of Enoshima the bridge had dealt with that particular problem. And tourists, lots of tourists.

“It’s busy,” he said.

Both boys grinned. “This is deserted,” they said, almost in unison. “The storm warning has kept most families away.”

Kit left them at the Fantastic Far View, paying the bill for three take-out teriyaki before he said goodbye. He’d arranged to meet Yuko at 2 pm and it was now fifteen minutes after that. It was time Kit worked out exactly what he was going to say.

Your husband did it.

Tamagusuku-san killed my wife. No, I have no real proof.

Even marinas in Japan had league tables to establish their status, and the new marina on Enoshima island was one of Tokyo’s most exclusive, a sign at the entrance announced this fact. As did the uniform of the guard who stalked out to meet Kit, once it became obvious that was where he was headed.

White gloves, a dark blue uniform, and an officer’s cap with high brim and a glistening gold and enamel badge, the guard’s uniform was designed to impress and reassure in equal measures. The centre of the man’s badge mirrored the emblem on the gate, a yacht silhouetted against a blood-red sun.

“Your business?”

Kit stared at the guard, and kept staring until the man finally blinked. Then Kit waited for him to ask again, using polite form. When Kit replied it was in near-fluent Japanese. His business, however, was his own.

“Suijin-sama?”

The guard gestured towards a far jetty in answer to Kit’s question.

It would be. Named after a water god, the Suijin-sama had steel masts and gleaming brass work. The hull was black, with a white strip around the top, so it looked from the gateway like a floating tray of Guinness. A smartly dressed woman with shoulder-length black hair stood on deck, staring towards Kit. Her nod ordered the guard to let him through.

Maybe it was looking identical that had forced the Tanaka twins to be so different in the choices they made. This woman wore Yoshi’s face and body, but the expression of distrust was entirely her own. Yoshi would never have revealed herself to that extent.

Yuko Tamagusuku didn’t offer to shake hands or even bother to walk down to meet Kit, she just stood at the top of the gang plank and scowled.

“Yuko,” said Kit, when he reached her.

After a second, Yuko nodded.

Their exchange was watched by a small man near the wheel. Unlike Yuko’s husband, who habitually wore expensive suits and still looked like a chimpira pretending to be a Yakuza grandee, this man wore his like he meant it. A ruby ring glittered from one little finger and his watch was a Seiko, with a heavy gold bracelet, half a dozen dials, and three winders. It was a point of principle for senior Yakuza to wear only Japanese clothes, jewellery, and watches. Although what really gave the man’s status away was a tiny and understated lapel pin.

What looked silver was platinum, and what looked like enamel was ruby, pearl, and emerald, cut to fit and framed by the tiny circle of the pin.

Kit bowed.

The man bowed back.

“My uncle,” said Yuko. “Nureki-san.”

A couple of teenagers appeared. The crew, Kit imagined. At least, they wore striped jerseys, blue chinos, and deck shoes with rope soles; but they fumbled raising the sail and after a second the man waved them away and pushed a button on a console in front of him. Winches turned and the sail began to raise itself.

“My sons,” he said. “You’re Yoshi’s English friend?”

“Husband,” said Kit.

Mr. Nureki raised his eyebrows. “More of that later,” he said. “First we need to discuss her lamentable death.”

On the jetty below, the guard with the strange uniform had already unhooked a bow rope. Once the rope was discarded, Yuko’s uncle tapped his console to winch it in.

“Wait,” said Kit. “I just need a quick word with Yuko.”

“Too late,” said the man, glancing at the sky. “Already the weather warning says stay in harbour. The rains will be back, worse next time. And besides”—he paused—“you believe my niece was murdered. Is that true?”

“Yes,” said Kit.

“Then the conversation should not be quick.”

Turning away, Nureki-san tapped two more buttons, checked a readout on a tiny screen, and spoke softly into a microphone. Engines fired into life below Kit’s feet and the Suijin-sama began to turn itself.

“This yacht,” said Mr. Nureki. “Self steering, self navigating, gyroscopically balanced. You could send her round the world and she’d come back undamaged.”

“Impressive,” Kit said, wondering how much was true.

“Pointless,” corrected Mr. Nureki. “Such technology steals all purpose from our lives.”

The ocean hosted a battle between the rain, the wind, and the waves; as torrential downpours tried to hammer flat seas that the wind kept scooping into white-capped peaks. Kit could see how belief in the nature gods might make sense. If he’d been a fisherman or farmer, he’d have been praying to the kami too.

Visibility was almost zero.

Actually, it was zero. So hard did the rain beat into Kit’s face that the only way he could stand its sting was to close his eyes and hunch his shoulders. Of course, he could always have faced in the other direction.

“You,” shouted a voice. A hand tugged at Kit’s arm, turning him. “Yuko says come below.” It was Tsusama, the eldest of Mr. Nureki’s sons.

“I’m fine,” insisted Kit.

“You’re sodden.”

“That’s not a problem.”

“Suit yourself.” The boy shrugged, then hesitated. Glancing round, he checked they could not be overheard. Since his words were ripped by the wind from his mouth almost before he could say them his caution seemed almost comic.

“Did you love her?”

“What?” Kit demanded.

“Yoshi. Did you love her?”

“Yes,” said Kit. “I did. A lot, just not very well.”

Tsusama nodded. “Yoshi was my cousin,” he said. Kit and the boy looked at each other and then the boy headed inside, scraping water from his hair. Whatever Tsusama said, Kit was left alone after that.

An hour later, with the wind less fierce, the torrential rain reduced to a drizzle, and the clouds almost empty, the yacht reached a line of green hills rising steeply from the sea. A length of beach could be seen to the north, but most of the coastline seemed to be wilder, with inlets and coves guarded by dark rocks.

“Boso-santo,” said Tsusama. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Nureki-san’s eldest son was back. “We’ve been coming to the area my entire life. Yoshi used to visit as a child. Well, she did according to Father. That was before I was born.”

“What happens now?” Kit asked.

Tsusama shrugged. “Not my decision,” he said. “All the same you might want to get changed before you meet the high council.”

“Die smart?”

The boy grimaced, then patted Kit on the shoulder. “Yeah,” he said. “Something like that.”

A cupboard built into the bow of the Suijin-sama seemed to contain nothing but suits. A roller drawer above held neatly stacked shirts and a chrome rail inside the door hung with ties. Someone had even put silk socks into pairs next to the shirts.

Shaking his head, Kit said, “I don’t get it.”

“What’s to get? Take a suit.”

Kit did as he was told, choosing black, because all the suits his size were in black. He matched the jacket to a black tee-shirt, which was probably meant to be a vest but was what he could find. He kept the shoes he’d been wearing.

“No gun?” asked Tsusama.

In stripping to change Kit had revealed his lack of weapons.

“Why would I carry a gun?”

Tsusama shrugged. “I just thought,” he said. “You know…” He nodded towards Kit’s recently severed finger. “You were like us.” The idea of Mr. Nureki’s son considering any foreigner like us was so bizarre Kit wondered if the boy was mocking him. And then he realised something far more frightening. Tsusama was serious.

“It happened in London.”

“You owed a debt?”

“I paid a price.”

“There’s a difference?”

“Oh yes,” said Kit. “A big difference.”

“And this man you paid. Was he happy with the price?”

It was Kit’s turn to shrug. “I doubt it,” he said. “He died before I could ask.”

A single jetty jutted into the sea. Sun and rain had bleached its surface to a washed-out grey that designers around the world tried endlessly to imitate but never quite got right. It took years of weathering to achieve that effect. And though rain had darkened the wooden walk-way its planks were already patchy where the puddles had begun to dry.

A narrow path wound between twisted pines beyond the jetty. About half way up, a huge boulder broke through the dark and gritty earth and forced the path to change direction. At the top, four vermillion-painted cypress trunks formed a perfect torii gateway.

“We’re at a shrine?”

“Among other things,” said Tsusama.

“What other things?”

“We have houses,” the boy said. “A temple and family shrines. This is where we meet. There are rules…” He hesitated.

“That sometimes get broken?”

“Only once,” said the boy. “The cost was terrible.” Glancing at his watch, Tsusama nodded to himself. His father and brother had gone ahead, accompanied by Yuko. Tsusama was to deliver Kit to the ryokan exactly an hour later. This would allow sufficient time for the high council to meet. He was not to think, however, that the council met on his behalf. Their meeting and his presence on the island were coincidence.

The quietness is misleading, Mr. Nureki had told Kit. We are all in the eye of a terrible storm. Kit was still wondering if the man meant it figuratively, literally, or both.

“How long have your family owned the island?”

The boy smiled. “Not my family,” he said. “All of us, all the families, and this particular island is new.”

“Really?” Kit looked at the rocks, the dark volcanic sand of the little beach, and the worn path leading to where black-eared kites soared above the battered torii. The broken earth was sticky with rotted pine needles, ruts in a track leading to the jetty suggested generations of carts unloading cargo. If its newness was true, the island was a masterpiece.

“Seven years,” said Tsusama. “Mr. Oniji bought a strip of cliff and had this island built half a mile off shore. It took three months to sink the foundations and another eighteen to landscape the island and erect the shrine, torii, ryokan, and houses.”

“But that’s old,” said Kit, nodding towards the distant torii.

A smile was his reply. “Eleven hundred years,” he said. “Probably the oldest now existing. Mr. Oniji found it in Honshu.”

“And the temple?”

“From Sapporo. Also most of the houses, although Tamagusuku-san insisted on shipping his own from Okinawa.” Something clouded the boy’s eyes and he turned away, their conversation over. At 6.35 pm exactly, silence having filled the remaining minutes, Mr. Nureki’s son checked his watch one final time and indicated the path.

“Go now,” he said.

Pine needles still crunched where heavy branches had kept the worst of the rain from reaching the ground. Mostly, however, the needles just slid wetly, like scabs of ground breaking free. Kit stopped at the torii to clap once and bow to any kami who might be watching. Behind him he heard Tsusama do the same.

CHAPTER 63 — Saturday, 14 July

In 1997, “Beat” Takeshi directed a film about an ex-cop. He wrote the script, took the leading role, produced the film, and included his own paintings as props to make visual points about life’s strangeness.

A drop-out from university, whose nickname came from his days as a comedian in a Tokyo strip joint, Takeshi called his film Hana-Bi, which means fireworks, but uses a word that breaks into fire and flower.

And yet, what a thirteen-year-old Kit took from the film was not the lyricism of its camera work, nor an awareness that its script was so spare Hana-Bi could almost qualify as a silent movie. He took the image of Beat Takeshi as ex-cop Nishi, his face impassive and his eyes hidden by dark glasses.

Kit was reminded of this as he entered the ryokan, a lovingly restored country inn. And he was reminded of how hard it could be to tell senior police officers, politicians, and Yakuza grandees apart. So many dark suits, so many pairs of dark glasses, all those impassive faces.

He smiled.

Mr. Oniji, Mr. Nureki, and Mr. Tamagusuku sat at a side table. Tsusama and his brother stood behind them, both stony faced and obviously on their best behaviour. A couple of older men, who looked like senators or titans of industry, sat at another table. And on a chair between the two tables sat an old man with thinning hair. All of the men except the last wore dark suits; he had a simple yukata and rope sandals.

Kit bowed.

“You smile?” The old man lifted his head. Obviously wondering what this stranger found so amusing.

“What else is there to do?” asked Kit.

The man nodded. “You may sit,” he said. When Kit remained where he was, the old man sighed.

“I am Osamu Nakamura…”

The kumicho. The man Mr. Oniji advised and Mr. Tamagusuku obeyed. A man linked to the collapse of a major bank and the building of a bridge between Tohoku and Hokkaido, a project so grandiose no one had dared complain for fear of being regarded as unpatriotic.

An earthquake had seen to the bridge, along with the cranes, the bulldozers, and most of those recruited for the project. The last thing anyone heard, the kumicho had been too ill to appear at a court hearing. So his lawyers had demanded the trial relocate to Sapporo, where he lived. Somewhere in the middle of this muddle, the case collapsed.

“I’m glad to see you’ve recovered,” Kit said.

The old man laughed.

“You know why you’re here?”

No, he could honestly say he didn’t. Kit could take guesses, but few of them seemed likely and most were frankly improbable. Yuko had sold him out, this much seemed obvious. Apart from that…

“Your friends have been causing us trouble.”

“My…?”

“The 47 Ronin,” he said sourly. Someone snorted at the name, only to apologise before the old man could turn to see who it might be.

“You know about this, of course.”

Did he? Kit nodded. “Someone destroyed their bar,” he said. “My bar. Then Tamagusuku-san tried to steal my land. The bozozoku occupied the site to stop the developers moving in.”

“It’s not…”

Osamu Nakamura held up one hand to still Mr. Tamagusuku’s protest. “So,” said the old man, “you organised this protest.”

Kit shook his head. “I didn’t even know it was happening.”

Mr. Tamagusuku snorted.

“That’s what this is about?” said Kit. “A bunch of bikers who want their bar back? That’s why you’ve brought me here?”

“No one brought you here,” said Mr. Nureki, glancing at Nakamura-san to check he was authorised to speak. “As I understand it, you wanted to visit my niece Yuko. When she refused, you said the meeting could be anywhere she chose, that she could bring anyone she trusted. Well, she trusts me. And I trust this council.”

“You present a problem,” said the old man. “This does not make us happy.”

No shit, Kit wanted to say.

“The choice is yours. You can be the solution or remain the problem. Either way, this matter will be solved.”

“Let me guess,” said Kit. “You want me to stand down the 47 Ronin, tell them all to go home?”

The man nodded.

“And why would I do that?” asked Kit. “Even if I could stand them down, which is doubtful. These people are a law unto themselves.”

Like you, he thought.

“Because this situation is not good for any of us,” Mr. Oniji said. His glance at the kumicho was part apology, part unspoken plea—Let me handle this. “You know how these things work,” said Mr. Oniji. “Tokyo is bidding for the Olympics. This kind of conflict is bad for everybody.”

“It’s the camera crews,” said Kit, realising the obvious. “So long as they remain you can’t move the Ronin.”

“The press won’t remain forever,” said Yuko’s husband, his voice hard.

“But until they leave,” Kit said, “you’re fucked.” Looking round the low ryokan he saw impassive faces stare back. “Where’s Yuko?” he demanded.

“Why?”

“Because I came here to talk to her.”

“You can talk to me,” said Mr. Tamagusuku. “If you say anything of interest I’ll be sure to tell my wife.”

There was one door into the inn and an internal door to the kitchens. That made two ways out at the most, in a room full of hardcore Yakuza, all of whom he could assume were armed.

“You’re smiling again,” said the kumicho.

“Just thinking,” Kit said.

“About what?” Nakamura-san seemed genuinely interested.

“Among one’s affairs should be no more than two or three matters of what one calls great concern…”

The old man smiled.

“Hagakure,” said Mr. Oniji; he sounded surprised.

“This,” Kit said, “is one of those matters. There are things my wife would want her sister to know.”

“She’s not your wife,” said Mr. Tamagusuku. “Under Japanese law unregistered marriages are invalid.”

“You were married?” asked Mr. Nakamura.

“In San Francisco,” Kit said. “Fifty-five dollars, cash in advance. It worked for us.”

“But Yoshi Tanaka never registered it here?”

“So I gather.”

“And this is what you wanted to tell Yuko?” The kumicho sounded puzzled. “That you were married to her sister?”

“No,” said Kit. “Yuko knows that already. I mean to tell her who really murdered my wife.”

A dozen people started talking at once and fell silent the moment Osamu Nakamura slammed his hands together, the clap beginning in noise and ending in total silence. “There was no murder,” he said. “A gas canister exploded.”

“It was a bomb,” said Kit.

The old man shook his head, though when he spoke his voice was softer, almost regretful. “No one doubts that you loved Yoshi.” Glancing at Mr. Tamagusuku, he dared the younger man to disagree. “But there was no bomb.”

“Mr. Oniji knows it was a bomb.”

“No bomb,” said Mr. Oniji.

“You told me it was.”

Mr. Oniji shook his head. “I made an error,” he said. “An antiquated heating system exploded. It was an accident. I’ve seen the final report.”

“May I sit?” Kit asked.

Win first, fight later.

He took the stool indicated and buried his head in his hands, trying to arrange his thoughts. When he looked up, the whole room was watching him. Without knowing it, certainly without intending to, he’d got their total attention. He also had his final answer.

“Mr. Tamagusuku tried to have me killed,” said Kit, his voice calm. “When that failed, he planted a bomb.”

“Enough,” said Yuko’s husband, pushing back his own chair.

“Sit down.” The old man’s voice filled the room. Tamagusuku-san ignored him, and Kit caught the exact moment Mr. Oniji and Mr. Nureki exchanged glances. Not clever, thought Kit, watching Mr. Tamagusuku stand alone, his hands bunched into fists.

“I couldn’t work out how he could bring himself to murder Yoshi,” said Kit. “Even if that meant getting rid of me. Only Yoshi’s death was a mistake, wasn’t it? You believed Yoshi was with Yuko. So when the first attempt failed…”

“What attempt?” asked the kumicho.

“He sent a hit man.”

Mr. Tamagusuku’s first blow caught Kit in the shoulder, freezing his arm. The second just missed his throat and would have landed, if the kumicho’s bodyguards had not dragged Tamagusuku-san off in time.

“I…know…nothing…about…a…hit man.”

“What about a bomb?” asked Mr. Oniji, shrugging when everyone in the room turned to look at him. “Just asking,” he said.

“Well?” demanded the old man.

Mr. Tamagusuku hesitated.

It was enough.

Stepping forward, Kit kicked Tamagusuku-san hard between the legs, and would have kicked again, if not for the bodyguards. When they yanked Kit away from Mr. Tamagusuku, they were less gentle than when it was the other way round.

“Take him outside,” said the kumicho.

And as fingers locked onto his elbow, Kit realised the old man had been talking about him. “Wait,” he said. “Please let me say something first.”

“No.” The kumicho’s voice was firm. “This is not about you anymore. You will wait outside while we make our decision.”

“One moment, if I may?” said Mr. Oniji. He turned to Kit. “How many people have you told about this?”

It was a question with only wrong answers.

“None,” Kit said, and watched Mr. Oniji smile.

The last of the black-eared, high-circling kites had abandoned its kingdom to the stillness of the coming storm. Shingle shifted slightly as it was lapped by waves, and the Nureki boys looked at anything and everything except the man they were meant to be guarding.

It was hot, because Tokyo Bay in July was always hot, so the boys pulled at their shirt collars and played with their ties. After a while they held an intense and private discussion that resulted in them both removing their jackets. And through all of this the two boys clutched their guns clumsily, sometimes forgetting to keep the muzzles trained on Kit at all.

He was grateful for that.

Having sunk towards the Izo headlands, the sun vanished behind Fuji-Hakone, and Kit sighed and smiled. Staring at an unseen mountain, while thinking precisely nothing, Yoshi would have been proud of him.

“You’re wanted,” said Tsusama.

Kit blinked.

“Take your time,” he suggested.

Nodding his thanks, Kit straightened himself and led the way back to the ryokan, hearing the boys whisper behind him. He entered the room first, with his head up and his expression firm. Kit had his own thoughts about what was coming. And any hope he might have was killed by the expression of regret on Mr. Oniji’s face.

“We have reached our decision.”

“Hai.”

“Don’t you want to know what it is?”

Accept that you are dead already. Kit shook his head. “Would my knowing change it?”

He wrote the words Osamu Nakamura dictated, signing away all rights he might have in the building site in Roppongi, then wrote a shorter note to No Neck, putting the bozozoku’s real name on the front and adding, By Hand. Someone would deliver it to the 47 Ronin in the morning.

“Now stand over there.”

The orange rope with which they tied his hands was nylon, meant for a use other than this, and burned as it dragged across his wrists. Tsusama tied the knots clumsily, refusing to look at Kit. His younger brother held the gun. This was their first real job, Kit could see that in their eyes.

“It’s all right,” said Kit.

Opening his mouth, Tsusama promptly shut it again. Although he nodded to show that he’d heard and understood what Kit said.

“You know what must be done?” Mr. Nakamura asked.

Tamagusuku-san nodded.

“Rip him open first.”

“Of course.” Mr. Tamagusuku sounded irritated.

“We don’t want…”

“I know,” said Mr. Tamagusuku. “We don’t want some idiot fisherman netting his bloated body.” This was not how one talked to a high oyaban, but the world was changing, this world as much as all others.

“See to it,” Nakamura-san said.

On Kit’s way out of the ryokan he was stopped by Mr. Oniji, who stepped in front of him and just stood there, scowling. Behind Kit, Mr. Tamagusuku sighed.

“You’ve been an idiot,” Mr. Oniji said.

Kit nodded. He didn’t doubt it. There were a hundred things he would do differently given his life over again. A mere handful he’d keep the same. It was the handful which let him look Mr. Oniji in the face.

“I imagine,” said Mr. Oniji, “you know what this is for.”

Sucker-punching Kit in the gut, Mr. Oniji chopped him across the neck and dropped him to the floor. And then, kneeling on his victim’s chest he slammed a final punch into Kit’s kidneys. While Kit did his best not to vomit, and fought the fingers reaching for his testicles, Mr. Oniji used his other hand to flip open Kit’s jacket and tuck something into his trouser pocket.

It felt like a knife.

CHAPTER 64 — Saturday, 14 July

He was being drowned by slow degrees. Kit had a vague memory of pissing himself about an hour earlier, the urine warm as sea water and infinitely more welcome, proof that he remained alive.

Sometimes it was getting hard to tell.

He lived in the snatches between worlds, this one and others far stranger. Occasionally he’d refocus and the wind direction would have shifted or the waves risen higher. If Tamagusuku really wanted to drown him the man should have used longer rope, because the one tied to the rail of Suijin-sama was just about short enough to keep Kit’s head clear of the waves.

Unless, of course, Tamagusuku didn’t really want to drown Kit at all. Maybe the little shit just wanted to torture him.

Yes, that would be it. Obvious really. Having killed Yoshi, bombed Pirate Mary’s, and shopped No Neck to the police as the most likely suspect, Yuko’s husband was now busy…

Oh for fuck’s sake, said a voice. Are you just going to whine?

Kit opened his eyes.

Well, are you?

Spray whipped his face as Kit glanced round, cursing the rope and the waves that stopped him from holding his head steady. Darkness was all he saw. Not even a light from the boat, which had run blind from Tokyo Bay. Certainly Kit saw no one close enough to speak. Assuming any voice could be heard above the howling wind and rain.

Tsusama and his brother, their father, and most of the others had been left behind. Though the boys had protested for form’s sake, it was not very hard, and when Yuko’s husband flatly refused to have them aboard, something very close to relief appeared in their eyes. They’d had trouble enough looking Tamagusuku in the face since bombs had been mentioned in the ryokan.

Let the grown-ups negotiate what came next.

The only surprise was the sudden appearance of Yuko, who arrived on the rickety jetty just as the boys were turning to go. Smiling at Tsusama, she patted him on his arm and indicated the path. “Hurry up,” Yuko said. “Baba’s about to serve supper.”

She waited as two silhouettes turned on the path to see if she was still there. A quick wave from both and they were gone. Yuko smiled, though the smile barely reached her eyes.

“Why are you here?” Tamagusuku asked.

Yuko stared at him. “Why do you think?” she said, stepping around both Kit and her husband.

“Wait,” he demanded.

“No,” said Yuko, turning to glare. “My sister is dead,” she said. “I’m going to see this through to its end.”

“Ask your husband how Yoshi died,” said Kit.

She slapped him.

Yuko and Tamagusuku left Kit bound on deck. Of course, since his hands were already tied with orange cord, all Tamagusuku had to do was secure Kit’s ankles to the railings, while Yuko held a gun to his head.

“I’ll be back later,” Tamagusuku promised.

Later turned out to be five minutes. Which was exactly how long it took Yuko’s husband to put the propellers into reverse, back his yacht from the jetty, and turn it to the open sea. This time round, the Suijin-sama made no pretence of running under sail.

“You’ve got an hour,” he told Kit, lashing one end of a tow rope to the railings and threading the other through Kit’s bound wrists. Having knotted that end, Tamagusuku knelt to unbind Kit’s ankle.

“An hour to do what?” asked Kit.

“Whatever.”

“Personally,” said Yuko, “I’d recommend prayer.”

And so he trolled like fish bait behind the Suijin-sama. Dragged into rising waves for the time it took to turn himself, which lasted only as long as it took for the water to turn him back again. The sea was warm. Almost as warm as the springs in which he and Yoshi had bathed in the first year they were together. In the days when either of them cared about stuff like that.

It might have been better if the sea was cold. Cold water leached body heat until the brain shut down, a more attractive option than being dragged from the ocean like some thrashing tuna and gutted alive.

“I couldn’t save her,” Kit told the waves. “I couldn’t…”

Except he could.

All he ever needed to do was get home in time. The bar would still be burned, Kit would be dead, but Yoshi would undoubtedly be alive. So simple. She would have been at her sister’s, admiring the new baby.

Oh, for fuck’s sake, said the voice. Enough…

Kit reopened his eyes.

Tears and snot and tiredness closed his throat. Every muscle in his body ached from fighting the rope and the waves. He found it hard to believe that he was still alive and part of him wondered if being alive was even true.

“Where are you?” Kit demanded.

The voice sighed.

“Okay,” he said, spitting water. “Who are you?”

Who the fuck do you think I am?

“Don’t know.”

“I am a cat,” said the voice. “As yet I have no name.” Oh, for fuck’s sake. Who do you think it is?

“Neku?” said Kit.

CHAPTER 65 — Saturday, 14 July

One shoe was gone, water filled his pockets, and his jacket had bunched at the shoulders to make a chute that yanked him back as the yacht dragged him forward. Climbing the tow rope was technically impossible, Kit was pretty sure of that. At least it was while his wrists remained lashed together with cord and friction spun his body in the water like bait for some monster beneath the waves.

Work on it, said the voice.

“I’m trying,” Kit said, but he was talking to himself.

By twisting his hands he could stress the orange cord binding them. Nylon stretched when wet and lost some strength. Sisal, on the other hand, just got tougher. He had Yoshi to thank for that piece of information.

The flesh on his wrists was blood raw, but Kit twisted his hands anyway, and having twisted them once did it again and again, until he could feel skin rip and the rope’s sodden nylon fibers begin to loosen. It didn’t matter if he cried, because there was no one to see and besides the waves washed away his tears. Anyway, it was just pain, nothing serious.

“And again,” Kit told himself.

And again.

If he pretended his wrists belonged to someone else, then twisting them until the sky red-shifted and blood drummed in his ears became almost bearable. He just pretended not to feel what he felt. And when that became impossible, he let himself taste the red-shift and kept twisting anyway.

Yoshi had found purity in the middle of such behaviour. All Kit could find was pain, except not even that was true, because he found something else, something Kit should never have let himself lose.

He found himself.

Twisting his wrists until the bones locked and almost cracked, he forced the cord to stretch. “Harder,” said a voice, and it was his. The skies shifted a final time and Kit wrenched a hand free, only just grabbing the tow line in time to stop a wave from tearing him loose. When Kit twisted this time it was to wrap the line safely around one wrist, so he could hold himself in place.

“Climb now,” Kit told himself.

And he did, not giving himself time to wonder how it should be done. He felt, rather than saw, the sea change texture as he approached the propellers. Holding the tow line with one hand, Kit took a deep breath and reached as high as he could with his other hand, yanking himself up and over the wash.

“See,” he said.

It took Kit five minutes just to stop shaking. Five minutes in which he lay on the darkened deck gasping, as rain lashed his face and the sky rocked from side to side. And then Kit rolled onto his side and forced himself to his knees, digging into his trouser pocket.

The knife’s sheath was sodden but its blade was razor sharp and slick with grease. So sharp in fact that Kit sliced skin while sliding it under the orange rope to free his bound wrist. Tossing the scrap of nylon cord after the tow line, he set his shoulders against the wind and raised a hand to keep the spray from his eyes.

All he needed to do was cross the ten or fifteen paces from the stern to the door of Tamagusuku’s cabin without falling, slipping, or dropping the knife. That had to be possible…Each step was made hard by exhaustion, and harder still by the shifting deck. As Kit got closer, the height of the cabin began to protect him from the spray, though the deck still shifted and a curling wind tried to drag him from his feet.

What now? he wondered.

Knock?

Well, why not…

Hammering on the door, Kit waited. When no one answered, he knocked again, much harder.

“Who?”

Kit laughed. Who the fuck did Tamagusuku think it was?

He stabbed his knife into the door frame for safe keeping, hammered one final time on the door, and spun sideways, a split second ahead of Tamagusuku’s first shot, slivers of cypress scything through the space where he had been standing.

One bullet down.

Instinct alone had saved Kit. Leaning forward, he smacked the door, dropped flat, and rolled away, flailing for a grip to stop himself from sliding over the side.

Two, three.

Another couple of stars stood next to the first in the once-perfect door. Much more of this and Kit would be able to see what he was doing.

“Tamagusuku,” yelled Kit, dragging himself back to the cabin. “Are you there?”

Four, five, six…

With the sixth shot a cross brace in the door itself gave up the battle and a top panel dropped free, whipped away by winds and tossed over the side. So much light was released that Kit had to shut his eyes.

“Yuko,” he said. “We need to talk.”

Another shot, seven.

“There’s nothing to discuss,” Tamagusuku shouted.

“It’s not you I want to talk to. Don’t you think it’s time Yuko knew the truth?”

A shot splintered frame near Kit’s hip. Eight shots in total…“I’ll take that as a no,” he said.

“What truth?” Yuko demanded.

A quick burst of Japanese, low and intense, came from within the cabin, almost swallowed by the wind.

“Tell me,” Yuko yelled. “What truth?”

“About Yoshi…”

Tamagusuku’s protests were harsh now. His voice loud enough to compete with the exploding spray and the whistle of metal hawsers leading to high empty spars.

“I have the right to know,” yelled Yuko.

“Your husband,” Kit shouted, and felt the world twist sideways and the stars flare. Grabbing for the knife that was still stuck in the door frame, Kit held himself up for as long as it took to pull the blade free.

The ninth shot had written itself across the inside of Kit’s eyes.

Empty fingers told Kit he’d lost his knife, which was sliding like him across a slippery deck. This was shock, he realised. Black sky where the cabin should be, rain in his face, and a jagged spike of wood jutting from his ribs.

The bullet had missed, the door frame it demolished had not.

Glancing beyond the spike, Kit found himself staring at rapidly approaching railings and felt his body change direction as one foot hit an upright and his whole body spun towards the waves beyond. His slide was broken by a wire he grabbed without even realising.

As the Suijin-sama crested a wave, the deck rolled and it was movement enough to tip Kit back under the wire. He slid wetly, breaking his slide just before he crashed into the side of the cabin.

Tamagusuku was five paces away, staring towards the stern. Yuko stood behind him, holding a whisky bottle. All either had to do to see Kit was turn round.

“You’ve killed him.”

“That was the plan.”

“But, I wanted to hear…”

“I told you,” Tamagusuku said fiercely. “Whatever he said would be lies.” His gaze swept across the door-lit gloom of the stern. “We’ll tell Nakamura-san I sliced the man open and threw him overboard.”

Kit took that as his cue to crawl backwards into shadow. Only moving again after Yuko and her husband entered the cabin. The wind had lessened, the waves were less extreme, the rain however fell as hard as it ever had, washing blood down his shirt as Kit moved slowly towards the door.

“But what if the body…”

“It won’t,” said Tamagusuku. “The waves will sweep it out to sea. Besides, Mr. Nakamura won’t remain a problem for much longer.” He paused, almost willing Yuko’s question.

“Why?” she asked finally.

“Because I’m taking over.”

“This is agreed?”

“Not yet,” said Tamagusuku. “But it will be. I’ll give Kabukicho to Mr. Oniji. Mr. Nureki can have the fish market and the container port.”

From the safety of his new hiding place, Kit considered this before gripping the jagged spike jutting from his ribs: He could remove it or not. One of those would be the right decision. Unable to decide which, he let it be.

He breathed deeply while Tamagusuku tacked a square of cloth across the broken door. He breathed deeply and considered his options. There was, Kit had to admit, a sense of relief in discovering that he didn’t have any. All that remained was to go on.

Dragging himself all the way round the outside of the cabin, so he could approach its door from the other side, Kit took up his position. Only this time when he hammered it was with an outstretched arm, using the heel of his one remaining shoe.

Silence.

Kit gave it five seconds, then hammered again. Inside the cabin Tamagusuku swore.

“Yuko,” Kit said, voice raw. “Your husband killed Yoshi.” He sounded like a ghost, even to himself, but then he felt like one too. “An accident,” said Kit. “But it still happened.”

“How, an accident?”

“He meant to kill me,” shouted Kit, clinging to the side of the cabin. “But I was late getting home. So Yoshi stayed. You were right,” he added. “It was my fault, but your husband planted the bomb.”

Inside the cabin, someone killed the lights and when the door banged open Tamagusuku’s silhouette held a gun. A. 38 calibre, to judge from the slightness of the damage to the door.

“I did not plant a bomb.”

“Oh no,” said Kit, “that’s right, you didn’t. You had your bodyguard do it.” He watched Tamagusuku turn to find the source of Kit’s voice. Watched as the man raised his pistol.

“Do it then,” Kit said, stepping away from the cabin. “But you’re too late. Yuko knows now.”

“Enough.”

“It’s the truth,” said Kit, watching Yuko appear in the broken doorway behind her husband, still clutching the Suntory bottle.

“Yuko, if I could change it all I would.”

“It’s a lie,” Tamagusuku shouted.

“Ask him where he was.”

“She knows where I was. In London. I brought her presents.”

“From Mitsukoshi,” said Kit. “He’s lying. If he was in London how come he was seen watching my bar?”

“When?” she demanded.

“About eight hours before Yoshi died.”

“Who saw—”

“Yuko, enough.” Tamagusuku was furious, too furious. “He’s a liar. I’m not having this discussion.”

“You already are,” Kit said. “So tell me one final thing. Why send a hit man if you’d already decided on a bomb?”

“I didn’t…”

“The homeless man,” Kit said. “With the shabby suit and the expensive knife, a gun and a Taser. All that hardware can’t have come cheap.”

“I know nothing about this,” said Tamagusuku, and the weird thing was Kit believed him. He’d bombed the bar all right, but the thug who came after Kit that night was the lid to a whole other can of worms.

“What man?” said Yuko.

Both Tamagusuku and Kit ignored her.

“Look at you,” said Tamagusuku, “you’re dying. All I have to do is wait, then tip you over the side.”

“We die every day,” Kit said. “It’s called being human.” Taking a stumbling step towards Tamagusuku, he watched the other man steady his automatic.

“Yoshi,” said Kit, taking another step. “I’m sorry.”

Tamagusuku fired.

Kit must have imagined the click of an empty gun, because wind through the rigging would have drowned any noise that subtle. Yuko’s husband slapped his gun, as if it had jammed, firing again. Tamagusuku was about to pull the trigger a third time when Kit reached for his throat.

“Wait,” Yuko said.

“Too late,” said Kit, tightening his grip.

The protest was slight, but Tamagusuku very definitely shook his head. Grabbing the jagged spike of wood still sticking from Kit’s chest, the man twisted, and gulped air as Kit screamed.

Expecting the man to ram home the spike, Kit pushed at Tamagusuku’s wrist and accidentally helped Yuko’s husband do what he’d always intended, rip free the splintered piece of door.

Kit crumpled.

“Wait,” said Yuko. “I want to talk to him.”

“No,” Tamagusuku said. “Not this time.” Kneeling on Kit’s chest, he reversed his gun and raised his arm, ready for a final blow.

“You killed her,” whispered Kit, and the darkness he awaited never fell. Because in that moment Yuko stepped forward and slammed her whisky bottle hard against the side of her husband’s head. When the bottle didn’t break, she hit him again.

“Yoshi was my twin,” Yuko said.

CHAPTER 66 — September

The report in the Asahi Shimbun was suitably restrained. Under a heading Yacht Lost in Storm, Untimely Death, it ran a photograph of the Suijin-sama. A smaller picture, set to one side, showed a serious-looking Tek Tamagusuku, wearing a dark suit, with his hair swept back and slightly grey at the temples. The caption announced, Family in mourning. Irreplaceable loss to Japanese business, says Kisho Oniji.

A small feature on page three mentioned that the Suijin-sama was one of thirteen Japanese-registered vessels lost in the typhoon, although it was the only one lost near Tokyo Bay. An editorial, opposite the Letters page, put shipping losses in the context of wider damage, while the financial pages dealt with the implications of that damage for world risk/insurance ratios.

In passing, the feature mentioned an interview with a Texas-based academic denying Asia’s worst typhoon had anything to do with global warming.

Local news shared space with stories from the wider world. A bomb blast in Baghdad, tension on the Chinese/Russian border, more riots in Mexico City, a possible, very tentative cure for breast cancer.

But the news that really interested Kit concerned the 47 Ronin. Men from the construction company had worked alongside bozozoku clearing rubble from Roppongi’s streets, busily photographed by what remained of the camera crews. When the clearing was done, neither bikers nor builders returned to the site, and neither was prepared to say how such an agreement had been reached.

“What happened?” asked Kit.

No Neck laughed. “Someone made a call to someone else, you know how it goes…Everything comes right if you wait long enough.” At his shoulder, Micki grinned, quickly covering her mouth with one hand.

Micki and No Neck had arrived with a huge pile of newspapers, going back weeks to the night of the actual storm. Being No Neck, he also carried a crash helmet and wore a ripped tee-shirt reading, Where are we going? And why am I in this hand basket?

“You’re lucky to be alive,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Kit. “I know.”

“And you look like shit.”

“Tommy…” It was weird to hear No Neck called by his real name. Weirder still that he smiled sheepishly at the girl who used it. If No Neck didn’t look out, his real name was going to prove catching.

“You look good,” Micki said.

“No.” Kit shook his head. “Tommy’s right, I look terrible.” He’d seen himself for the first time in a mirror that morning. His hair was greyer than he remembered and getting thin. Pretty soon he’d need to get it cropped. But then, pretty soon he’d need to do a lot of things, so he might as well start now.

“About the bar,” Kit said.

“Pirate Mary’s…”

“No,” said Kit. “That name’s dead. You’ll need a new one.”

“Me?” Tommy looked puzzled.

“The site’s yours,” Kit said. “Just as soon as I sign the paperwork.”

“Fucking hell,” said No Neck. “You serious?”

“Yes,” said Kit. “Very. I can even recommend a bank who might help you raise funds for rebuilding.”

“Except I’m Australian,” said Tommy. “I mean, I’m grateful. But you know what they’re like about that.”

“Put the land in Micki’s name,” said Kit, glancing between them. “And then make bloody sure you register the marriage.”

Micki grinned.

It was, Kit had to admit, a relief when the two finally left, all smiles and hands in each other’s back pockets. Kit would have suggested they get a room, but his advice would have been completely redundant. From the way Micki and No Neck were glued to each other on the way out he imagined that was exactly where they were headed.

Kit was in the hospital ward he’d occupied before. The same cherry tree grew beyond its window, though the blossom was long gone. Behind the cherry, stood another just beginning to bloom.

“Autumn flowering,” his nurse had said. It seemed he was to get blossom after all. Two tubes fed into Kit’s wrist and electrodes read off his heart beat. He’d only recently got rid of the last catheter. This time round, the medical assistance had definitely been needed, Dr. Watanabe had been very clear about that.

The sliver of door frame had skewered his diaphragm. A little higher and Kit would have suffered cardiac tamponade, the membrane around his heart filling with enough blood to stop that organ from pumping. If not for Mrs. Tamagusuku’s quick action in staunching the wound Kit would be dead. It was, the doctor stressed, unwise to have been yachting in such weather.

A handful of cards sat on Kit’s bedside table. Some were obvious, like the one from Micki and No Neck, others less so…Mrs. Oniji’s card, delivered that morning, had been a surprise, its reference to Neku unexpected. There was even a card from Yuko. A simple snow scene in black ink on white paper, drawn with three quick flicks of the brush. Kit had been busy admiring it for most of an afternoon before he realised she’d drawn it herself.

The Suijin-sama had run aground and been broken by waves. Everyone knew the story. How Yuko Tamagusuku had left her dead husband to drag a badly injured guest into the dinghy with her. Not everyone agreed with her decision but all were impressed by her bravery and the fact she fought to keep the foreigner alive.

A knock at Kit’s door announced the arrival of Dr. Watanabe, or so he believed, until it opened to reveal Lucy, the nurse who’d removed stitches from his face three months before. “You have another visitor.”

“Aren’t visiting hours over?”

Lucy nodded.

A minute later an orderly came by to swap the high-backed chrome and leather chair in the corner for something simpler. At the same time, a second orderly removed Micki’s flowers and replaced them with lilies. By the time the hospital administrator arrived to check the room was ready, Kit already knew who his visitor would be.

“How are you feeling?”

“Better than I deserve,” said Kit.

Mr. Oniji smiled. “An interesting choice of words.” Indicating the recently installed chair, he said, “May I?” And Kit found himself apologising for not having already asked the oyaban to sit.

“You got my letter?”

Kit had. It contained the paper he’d signed relinquishing all rights to the site in Roppongi. It had gone wherever shreds of paper go when flushed down a Tokyo toilet.

“And they’re treating you well?”

He nodded.

“Good,” said Mr. Oniji. “I told them to give you the best.” He glanced round the room, nodding at the flowers and smiling as he noticed the blossom in the courtyard outside. And then Mr. Oniji’s eyes alighted on a picture frame half-hidden behind cards on Kit’s bedside table.

“If I may?” he said. Taking the picture to the window, Mr. Oniji looked at it very carefully. A minute or so later, he put it back.

“Very pretty,” he said slowly.

“Yes,” said Kit, “I think so.”

“Anyone I know?”

“My daughter,” Kit said.

The photograph showed Neku in grey skirt, white blouse, and navy blazer. The uniform of a school near Seven Chimneys. She looked very serious and ridiculously neat. Someone had styled her hair close to her head, gamine, Pat would probably call it. A smaller picture tucked into the frame showed her with her arms round Charlie, their smiles turned to the camera.

New term, announced Pat’s scrawl on the back of the picture. Me with Charlie, read Neku’s neater hand, in tiny letters across the rear of the snap. Her get-well card simply said, Am fine, hope you feel better. A friend will call.

A letter had been tucked inside. The letter was short, the spelling random. In the ten weeks she’d been living with Kate and Pat her tastes had obviously changed. Gone was the Hello Kitty note pad and in its place a flimsy sheet of onion-skin paper, with a gold moon printed at the top.

I’m in a band, wrote Neku. We’re really good. Well, we will be. I’ve got Mary’s old room and we’re going to paint it purple next weekend. We is me, Charlie and Billie, the drummer. I do bass, Billie keeps forgetting to hold onto his drum sticks and Charlie can actually play—guitar, keyboard and violin!

Kate says we have to practice in the garage and Pat says he doesn’t mind where we practise as long as we get better, I’ll burn you a CD. Kate sends her love. Pat says hello and I say goodbye, for now…

Only, maybe Neku’s tastes hadn’t changed that much. She’d signed her letter with a sketch of a cat.

“I didn’t know you had a daughter,” said Mr. Oniji.

“She’s living at her grandparents’ until I get home.”

Mr. Oniji nodded. “I see,” he said.

And then Mr. Oniji didn’t say very much for a long time. So Kit listened to the cars in the street and watched sun turn a hospital wall from yellow to pink and finally to a pale and flintish blue.

“You know,” said Mr. Oniji. “She looks very like a child I used to know. Her name was Nijie Kitagawa.”

“The daughter of a friend?”

“An enemy,” said Mr. Oniji, his face hardening. “Who nearly cost me my life, also those of my colleague Mr. Nureki and his eldest son.”

“Do I want to know what happened?”

“Many people died.” Mr. Oniji’s voice was flat. He glanced at Kit, considering. “They were not good times.”

“You make it sound like history.”

Mr. Oniji tapped the photograph. “Maybe it is,” he said. “At least, maybe it should be. But, you know…one member of that family took something belonging to me.”

“A case,” said Kit.

Mr. Oniji went very still indeed.

Looking from Mr. Oniji to Mrs. Oniji’s card, Kit smiled. “It might be worth trying the station lockers at Shinjuku Sanchome,” he said, reaching into his pajama pocket for a key. “I believe you have three days.”