“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.