“What’s the story about?”

“A marriage.”

“Whose marriage?”

“Mine,” said Neku, “to the son of a lizard prince.”

Kate raised her eyebrows. So Neku told Kate how she met Kit a second time on the streets of Roppongi, when he gave her a coffee one morning, because it was raining.

“Because it was raining?”

“That’s what he said.”

“And when was this?”

“Last Christmas,” said Neku. “He brought me coffee every day after that, and often daifuku cake. Stuffed with sweet bean curd,” she added, when Kate looked puzzled. “I came to rely on it. The days Kit forgot I went hungry.”

“You couldn’t just beg?”

“Maybe that would have been better,” Neku admitted. “Less trouble for everybody, but it seemed wrong.” She told Kate how she’d actually had a coin locker stuffed with millions of dollars she was unable to use. And how taking coffee from Kit had somehow felt different. “Anyway,” she said. “I saved his life from an assassin. So that was repayment.”

“Seems to be catching.”

“What is?” asked Neku.

“Wanting Kit dead.”

Neku shrugged. “He was fucking the wife of a gang boss and bikers used his bar to deal drugs, plus lots of uyoku felt Yoshi Tanaka should be married to someone Japanese. Then there’s chippu he owed to the local police and unpaid bills from a Brazilian transvestite who mends his motorbike. It could have been anyone.”

Kate laughed. “You tell a good story,” she said. “Almost as good as Patrick. All the same, I’d like the real story next time.”

After lunch, Kate carried her own plate to the sink and ran it under cold water, leaving it to dry on a wire rack. It was the action of someone grown used to living alone, life reduced to simple habits. Neku did the same for her own plate, Kit’s plate, and the plate on which she’d put the tomatoes, washing each before placing it next to the plates already there.

Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water… Neku found it hard to remember which actions carried weight and which got lost as static and dust in the slipstream from other people’s lives.

“I’m going for a stroll,” said Kate. “You can keep looking,” she added, speaking to Kit. “But there’s no trunk here and no tuck box. Mary didn’t go to that kind of school.” And, with this, Kate headed for the kitchen door.

Neku made to follow her.

“Neku,” Kit said.

“What,” said Neku, “I’m not allowed to take a walk too?”

CHAPTER 39 — Thursday, 28 June

Cars locked up the M25, London’s orbital. They crawled towards turn offs, negotiated endless road works, and slid gratefully away, like single fish leaving a shoal as they finally headed home to leafy and not-so-leafy suburbs. About ten minutes short of his own turn off, Kit spotted a BMW up ahead and thought no more about it, filtering through the gap between the BMW and a white van.

As he did so, an arm reached through the driver’s window and fixed a blue light to the roof. Sirens blipped and the BMW would have remained trapped in molasses-slow traffic if Kit hadn’t obediently pulled over.

“Licence…”

Kit had already removed his helmet and dark glasses, so he smiled and nodded politely. “I’m sorry. Is there…”

“Licence,” said the man.

“Of course,” said Kit. Without hesitation, he unzipped a side pocket and flipped open his wallet, offering the man a small square of plastic. The only instantly recognisable words were Kit Nouveau, everything else was in Japanese.

“What’s this?”

“My licence.”

The policeman turned over the square of plastic. It was obvious from the irritation on his face that he found the vehicle categories outlined in kanji on the back equally incomprehensible. At least the front had a photograph of Kit, a reference number, and something that looked like an end date.

“Where’s your international permit?”

“I don’t need one,” said Kit, careful to keep a smile on his face. “This is good in the UK for a year.”

“Great,” said the man. “I’ve got myself a lawyer.”

“Not at all.” Kit shook his head. “But I checked with the British embassy in Tokyo before I left.” As a lie it was next to impossible to refute, and besides, Japanese driving licences were legal in the UK, everyone knew that.

“What about her?”

Before Kit had time to answer, Neku produced a red and gold passport and handed it over. As an afterthought, she remembered to execute a small bow. A smile was fixed firmly on her face.

“How long’s she been here?” demanded the policeman.

“Almost a week,” said Kit.

“And when she’s due to leave?”

“Soon,” he said, pretending not to notice Neku’s frown.

“Wait here,” the man ordered. A few minutes later he was back. Without a word, he returned Neku’s passport and the Japanese licence taken from Kit, then nodded at the bike. “You can go.”

Car after car had been crawling past even more slowly than traffic conditions demanded, as drivers braked slightly to stare in vague interest at whatever was happening. When the policeman raised his head to stare back, a handful of faces immediately looked away.

“Come on,” Kit told Neku, putting on his helmet and waiting for her to do the same. “Let’s go home.” He turned the Kawasaki in a slow circle and touched his rear brake as he reached the unmarked police car, slowing slightly to peer inside. Two men sat in the front. The one who’d just demanded sight of Kit’s licence and Sergeant Samson, the police officer from three days before.

“Evening,” said Kit, and left the Sergeant to his calls and the numbers he’d been reading to someone over a car radio…

Every city has its own night noises. The talking police cars in Tokyo. A fog horn from a freighter heard between New York’s rumble of trucks. The braying of a tethered donkey in Tunis.

In London the late sounds were composed of lorries, banging doors, and people fighting in the streets. At least, that was how it sounded to Kit as he lay awake and listened to the hours crawl by as slowly as that evening’s traffic on the M25. It was noisy, if less noisy than Sophie had said.

As well as using the mews to piss, drunks stopped off to try their phones or slumped half conscious against a wall, waiting for a call to remind them where they were meant to be. Couples dipped into its depths to kiss or fuck or squabble away from the main street. A typed note in a plastic folder—nailed to a door just under the arch, where it could be read by street light—assured johns that no prostitutes worked from any of the flats in Hogarth Mews.

According to Sophie, a couple of Estonians had started conning tourists in Soho by giving them a key and an address in Hogarth Mews, with a promise that young and beautiful East European girls would be waiting. A Glaswegian trio tricked into visiting the nonexistent brothel had been angry enough to kick down a door.

For all this, Hogarth Mews was a good address. A quick look in the window of a local estate agent had told Kit just how good. Not central Tokyo prices, of course, because few cities in the world had anything approaching those, but Mary had still left him a flat worth more than he’d earned in the previous ten years.

And staring into the half darkness, Kit just wished he knew why. Apology, guilt, some weird attempt to make peace? Any of those would have worked, if only things had been the other way round. If he’d been the one offering Mary everything he owned.

Kit was still worrying at this question when he heard the door from the roof garden open and then the sound of Neku’s key in the front door of the flat. This was not unusual. Neku often passed ghost-like through the hall on her way to get a glass of water or use the bathroom.

Only this time she stopped outside his room.