When No Neck returned it was with four Kirin and a saucer of chili nuts. “The bastard didn’t even bother to come back,” he said, sounding more fucked off by that than anything else. “Just left me on the floor in my own piss…a uniform kicked me free. Gave me back my wallet, permit, and resident’s card and told me to behave myself in future. He looked about twelve…”

“It could have been worse,” said Kit. “They could have shipped you back to Sydney.” For reasons unspecified, the bozozoku had let it be known that returning home could be fatal.

“Ex-wife,” said No Neck, as if hearing Kit’s thought. “Turkish, big family, half a dozen brothers.” Reaching for the chili nuts, he emptied the saucer with a single scoop and swallowed the lot, pulling a face. “Her father hated how it began and loathed how it ended.”

“How did it start?”

“In a school gym.”

Kit looked at No Neck. “I was teaching,” said No Neck. “She wasn’t…”

It was a long story, not pretty and the only thing No Neck would say in his defence was that he’d loved the girl. She’d been six months under legal and he’d married her as soon as he was allowed. Things had gone downhill from there.

“You know how many bodies I buried in the first Iraq war?”

Kit shook his head.

“Nor do I,” said No Neck. “There were that many, kids and conscripts…we just bulldozed sand over the top. I always thought that was my worst and then Maryam announced she was leaving and taking the kids.”

He caught Kit’s look, the unspoken question. “I was drinking,” he admitted. “Spending too much time with the Rebels. Things were rough.”

“So you ended up here?”

“There are worse places,” said No Neck, glancing round. He nodded to a couple of bozozoku in the far corner. One was wearing a white headband with shades, the other just had the shades. “These guys are family,” No Neck said, thumping his ribs over the heart. “Know what I mean?”

The Australian was missing when Kit got back from taking a piss. Although Kit found him easily enough, over in the far corner with the guy wearing a headband. “Meet Micki’s brother Tetsuo. He’s going to help us shift that fence.”

Kit shook, trying not to wince at the other man’s grip.

“According to Tetsuo,” said No Neck, “someone out there is looking for you.”

“Police?”

Micki’s brother and No Neck exchanged glances. “No,” said Tetsuo. “A gaijin, someone like you…A woman.” He thought about it some more. “An old woman.”

“Has this woman said why?”

Tetsuo shook his head. “No,” he said. “She just said whoever finds you gets 500,000 yen. So if you want help tomorrow shifting that fence…”

The bozozoku escort was presented as a compliment, an honour guard to escort Kit and No Neck through the neon squalor of north Shinjuku. “Tell her I’ll come by the hotel for my money,” said Tetsuo, and No Neck nodded.

Like most bars in the city Pom Pom Palace had a lurid sign. Only this one was bleached almost white by time and advertised girls who probably hadn’t danced in years. A Korean in a shiny tuxedo opened a door at the bottom of some steps and began bowing them inside.

“You’re expected,” he said.

A girl was on stage under a single light. She wore a silver G-string and white gloves and was dancing, fairly badly, to “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine.” Half a dozen Italian tourists sat round a Formica table in front of the stage that looked as if it had been salvaged from a sandwich shop. They looked like they’d been expecting rather more for their money.

There was something intrinsically sad about Shinjuku. A vacuum-packed hollowness that no quantity of neon could hide. Roppongi was the same, only there the sadness was older and more Western. All that movement to so little purpose. A million strangers searching for a cure to the darkness behind their eyes in the void between someone else’s legs.

It could be on film, behind glass in a peek booth, printed out and pasted on walls; or it could be on stage under a single light, looking down at strangers, beyond caring why the strangers stared back.

“Rock ’n’ Roll Lies.”

Another band, another nearly forgotten track, another girl about to dance. Wrapping one arm around Kit’s shoulders, No Neck said, “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

“You knew about this?”

“Not until just now,” said No Neck. “Well, maybe a little…I’d heard someone was asking for you.” He shook his head sadly. “I mean, that’s not exactly news. But I figured…”

“You figured what?”

The huge Australian seemed embarrassed. “You know, someone wanted to finish what they started. Except Tetsuo says it’s not like that at all. This woman wants to hire you. And, God knows, you need something to stop you coming apart.”

“I’m fine,” Kit said.

No Neck sighed. “Take a look at yourself,” he suggested.

“So they found you…” The woman who stood up from the corner table looked her guest up and down as one might look at a cut of meat in the butcher’s before arguing about price. Which was entirely fitting because Kate O’Mally began life in a butcher’s shop, before her lack of squeamishness and facility with a blade let her move into more profitable areas, allegedly…

She looked older than Kit remembered and was wearing a tweed sports coat, utterly out of keeping with her surroundings. But then, Mary’s mother never had known how to dress.

The last time they’d talked, the woman had threatened to have Kit’s legs broken and his testicles crushed with pliers if he went near Mary again. Kate O’Mally had found her daughter bent over a lavatory, vomiting. Mary thought she might be pregnant.

As one half-naked girl replaced another on stage and silence stretched thin between No Neck, Kit, and Mrs. O’Mally, Kit finally remembered the woman’s promise of when they’d next meet.

“I guess,” he said, “this means hell’s finally frozen over.”

CHAPTER 19 — Wednesday, 20 June

Slung under a concrete overhang, in a building designed by Hiroshi Oe and built by one of his followers, the top-floor bar of Kate O’Mally’s hotel looked out on a handful of lanes running south from Akasaka Mitsuke. At first sight these looked to be a typically working-class jumble of thin alleys, short cross lanes, red paper lanterns, and a mix of ramen shops, chemists, and pachinko parlours. The kind of area that could be found almost anywhere.

Appearances were wrong. Akasaka was a favourite haunt for senior staff from Japan’s civil service, which explained the prices in some of the kaiseki ryori restaurants.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” said Kate O’Mally.

And Kit knew hell really had frozen over. The Kate O’Mally he remembered would never have bothered with small talk.

“Very,” said Kit. “I knew the wife of the man who owns most of it, once…”

Kate went back to her whisky. The bar in which they both sat was panelled in dark oak, had low leather sofas and coffee tables made from fat slabs of industrial glass.

As with most Tokyo hotels, the waitstaff were female and dressed with such discretion they were almost transparent with good taste. A heavy pall of cigar smoke hung cloud-like around them, from three cigars that had been whisked away the moment their stubs hit the ashtray in front of Kate.

“Sherry and vanilla,” said Kate, sniffing her glass.

It smelled like whisky to Kit.

So now they sat, not quite opposite each other. Their bowl of rice crackers was empty and the suits in the corner had abandoned their conversation for a club in one of the alleys beyond the main road.

Every so often, Kate would lean forward and then change her mind about whatever she’d been about to say. Having slipped another Cuban cigar from a leather holder, Kate sliced it with a silver cutter and lit it using a gold Ronson. She stubbed the cigar out within three puffs and it vanished a second later.