“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.