umonji woke up with his arm tingling. He slid it out from under the woman's slender neck and flexed his fingers. Woken by the sudden movement, she opened her eyes and looked at him from under her impossibly thin eyebrows - the face uncannily like a child's and a middle-aged woman's at the same time.

'What's the matter?' she asked. He looked at the clock by the bed: nearly 8.00 a.m. The summer sunlight was already streaming in through the thin curtains, heating the air in the small bedroom.

'Time to get up,' he said.

'No,' she murmured, clinging to him.

'Don't you have class?' She was probably still in her first year of high school - a girl, really, not a woman at all - but he was only interested in the young ones, so to him she was a woman. 'It's Saturday,' she said. 'I'll just skip it.'

'But I've got things to do. Get up.' The girl scowled a moment and then yawned. As she did so, Jumonji glanced at the inside of her mouth. It was pink; in fact her whole childish body was a study in pink and white. Taking a last, lingering look, he pulled himself out of bed and turned on the air-conditioner. A tongue of stale, dusty air licked his face. 'Make breakfast,' he told her.

'No way,' she mumbled.

'You're a woman, make me something to eat.'

'I don't know how,' she said, a hint of a smile playing around her mouth.

'Dope. That's nothing to be proud of.'

'Don't call me a dope,' she pouted, taking a cigarette from Jumonji's pack. 'You old men all sound alike.'

'Old?!' he barked, cut to the quick. 'I'm thirty-one.' She gave a snicker.

'Like I said, old.'

'Well, how old is your father?' he asked, thinking this would prove that he was still young. He was beginning to get annoyed.

'Forty-one.'

'Just ten years older than me?' he said, suddenly feeling his age. He went to take a piss in the bathroom and then wash up. He thought she would at least have put the kettle on by the time he'd finished, but when he opened the door, her dyed, honey-coloured hair was still spread out across the sheets.

'Get up!' he shouted. 'And get out of here.'

'Asshole!' she shouted back, kicking her plump legs in the air. 'Dirty old fart.'

'How old's your mother?' Jumonji asked suddenly.

'Forty-three,' she said. 'A bit older than my dad.'

'Women are useless after twenty.'

'You're screwy,' she told him. 'My mother's still young - and beautiful.' Jumonji laughed, feeling as though he'd somehow scored a point by having no interest in older women. It never occurred to him that his attitude was itself childish. Ignoring the girl, he lit a cigarette and picked up the morning paper. As he sat down on the bed, she scowled at him with a very grownup look, reminding him again how much he disliked older women. He wondered how this one would look in a few years' time, trying to imagine her mother's face. Taking her chin in his hand, he lifted her head and stared into her eyes. 'What?' she said. 'Don't do that.'

'Why not?'

'Stop it. What are you looking at?'

'I was just thinking that you'll be old too someday.'

'So what?' she said, shaking free from his hand. 'Why d'you have to be so mean this early in the morning? It's getting me down.'

Forty-three. Masako Katori, whom he'd seen yesterday for the first time in years, must be about that old. She was as thin as ever and even scarier than before, but he had to admit she made a strong impression.

***

Masako Katori had worked for T Credit and Loan, which used to be in Tanashi City. 'Used to be' because it was one of those places that had specialised in real-estate loans during the boom years and had been eaten up by a bigger company when most of its accounts proved uncollectable after the bust. Back then it had subcontracted collections to the security firm Jumonji had been working for at the time. He had vivid memories of Masako from his frequent visits there.

She was always at her computer terminal, neatly dressed in a grey suit that seemed to have just come back from the cleaners. She didn't wear flashy make-up the way the other women in the office did, or flirt with visitors. She just sat there and worked. There was somethin g about her that seemed serious and unapproachable, though it was probably this professional manner that made the guys in his own company, at least, respect her.

Jumonji had little interest in the office politics of the place in those days, but he did remember hearing rumours that Masako, who had been there for over twenty years, had become something of a pain - and that she was likely to be laid off soon. His instincts told him there was more to it than that. There had always been a barrier around the woman that kept other people at a distance, a sign that marked her as someone at war with the world. It was perhaps only natural that he, as an outsider and something of a hired thug, should be able to read the sign. Birds of a feather, they always say. And people who couldn't read the sign made a point of picking on her, it seemed.

But what really puzzled him now was what Masako Katori was doing hanging around with a loser like that Jonouchi woman.

***

'I'm hungry.' The girl's voice interrupted Jumonji's train of thought. 'Let's go get something at McDonald's.'

'Hang on a minute,' he said, opening his forgotten newspaper.

'You can bring that with you,' she suggested, wrapping her arms around him.

'Shut up,' he said, twisting away. The headline on the lead story had caught his attention, particularly the mention of Musashi Murayama. He read the account of the dismembered body found in a nearby park, stopping when he came to the words 'his wife, Yayoi'. Where had he heard that name? Wasn't that the name on the guarantor's contract? His memory was vague since Masako had retrieved the contract before he'd had a chance to check up on the woman, but he was almost certain that had been the name.

'Yuck!' said the girl, who had been reading the paper over his shoulder. 'I was just in that park. How gross!' She tried to snatch the paper away. 'There's this skateboarder who kept telling me to come watch.'

'Shut up!' he said, pulling the paper away from her and starting to read the article again from the beginning. He remembered that Kuniko Jonouchi had said something about working the night shift at a boxed-lunch factory - the same place this Yayoi Yamamoto worked. She must be the one on the contract. But why was Jonouchi asking the wife of a murdered man to be the guarantor on her loan? The whole thing sounded fishy. It seemed likely that Masako had gone out of her way to get the contract because something had happened to the wife - and like an idiot, he'd just handed it over.

'Shit!' he said aloud. He read the article again. Since the victim hadn't come home on Tuesday night, the police suspected that he was murdered that day and his body was cut up soon afterward. But they hadn't identified him until last night. If that was the case, then maybe Masako had just been worried about the man's wife and wanted to help her out, as a friend. There was nothing particularly strange in that. But why had Jonouchi gone to someone whose husband was missing to ask her to guarantee her loan? And why had the wife agreed? If your husband's missing, you ought to be too worried to think about anything else. And what was Masako Katori really up to in all this? She wasn't the type to lose much sleep over other people's troubles. A cloud of questions swirled in Jumonji's head.

He'd have to look into the matter, he thought, tossing the paper on to the dusty carpet. The girl, a bit intimidated by his manner, had been watching him quietly. Now she reached out timidly for the paper and began scanning the TV listings. His mind was elsewhere as he watched her. He'd caught the smell of money and it excited him.

Young people these days borrowed money from the nearest cash machine, and that meant the loan-sharking racket had just about played itself out. His Million Consumers Centre probably wouldn't last another year, and he had pretty much decided that he'd have to start an escort service to make ends meet. But now this... He felt as if a great big roll of cash had suddenly dropped in his lap. He took a deep breath.

'I'm hungry,' the girl whined, another pout forming on her lips. 'Let's go eat.'

'Okay,' he said. 'Let's go.' His sudden change of mood seemed to surprise her.