atake thought he'd heard wrong when a new detective came into the interrogation room and introduced himself. 'Kinugasa,' he said, 'from Central Investigation.'

'What do you mean, "Central Investigation"?' he said. 'What's this all about?'

'What do you think it's about?' Kinugasa laughed. He was stocky and tough-looking, with those staring eyes detectives seemed to have - not Satake's favourite type. 'I want to ask you about another case we're working on.'

'What other case?' They'd already held him for over a week on nothing more than suspicion of operating an unlicensed gambling establishment, and now the big boys from Central were checking in. What did they want? He had to admit, they had him spooked, but he couldn't let them know that. 'What does Central want with a small-time gambling charge? What other case?'

'A little murder and dismemberment,' Kinugasa said. Pulling a disposable lighter from the pocket of his faded black polo shirt, he lit a cigarette and took a long, appreciative drag as he watched Satake's reaction.

'Dismemberment?'

'You look a bit worried,' he said. Satake was wearing a blue shirt that Reika had sent him. He didn't much care for the colour, but the black silk shirt he'd been wearing when they arrested him had been soaked in sweat.

'Not particularly,' he laughed.

'Not particularly what? You don't have much to laugh about, asshole. So start talking.' Kinugasa exchanged a weary glance with the other detective from the Shinjuku station. 'Or are you so used to being in the slammer it doesn't even bother you?'

'Now hold on a minute,' he interrupted. 'I don't have any idea what you're talking about.' This was getting serious. It hadn't been a real raid at all. He'd been convinced all along that they were just making an example of him because his club was making money; but now it began to dawn on him that Central had planned the whole thing. Somehow, without realising it, he'd wandered into some kind of deep shit, and he was sure that it wasn't going to be easy getting back out.

'Don't give me that crap,' Kinugasa said. 'You remember a guy named Kenji Yamamoto who used to come into your place? Well, he's the victim. Don't tell me you didn't know that.'

'Kenji Yamamoto? Never heard of him.' Satake cocked his head to one side and stared back. From the window of the interrogation room, the Shinjuku skyscrapers were visible, and between them the tall strips of summer sky. Satake shut his eyes, blinded by the brilliant light. His apartment was somewhere nearby - how he longed to get out of here and hide himself away in his own dark room.

'Then maybe you recognise this?' said Kinugasa, taking a grey jacket out of a wrinkled department store bag that lay on the desk. Satake nearly choked: it was the jacket he'd told his manager to get rid of on the night of the raid.

'I've seen it. Some guy left it at the club.' He swallowed. So someone had cut up that idiot. He vaguely remembered the reports in the newspapers and on TV mentioning the name Yamamoto. The outline of what they were thinking began to take shape. He looked up to see the detectives smirking at him.

'So tell us, Satake. What happened to this "guy"?'

'How should I know?'

'You really don't know?' Kinugasa gave a high, almost girlish laugh. Shithead! Satake thought, a rush of blood making his head spin; but the self-control he'd learned since getting out of jail helped steady him.

'I really don't,' he said, managing to sound half-convincing. Kinugasa pulled a notebook from his bulging hip pocket and slowly began flipping the pages.

'We have several witnesses who saw you and the victim going at it outside the door of Playground around 10.00 p.m. on the night of 20 July - a Tuesday, if I'm not mistaken. They saw you kicking him down the stairs.'

'That's... more or less what happened.'

'More or less. And what happened after that?'

'I don't know.'

'You do know,' said Kinugasa. 'The guy disappeared. What we want to know is what you did after the fight.' Satake searched his memory but came up blank. He might have gone straight home, or he might have hung around a while at the club. He decided the latter option sounded more promising.

'I had work to finish up, so I went back in the club.'

'Not according to your employees. They told us you left right after dealing with Yamamoto.'

'Is that right? Then I must have gone home to bed,' said Satake. Kinugasa folded his arms, apparently amused.

'So which was it?'

'Home to bed.'

'But they told us you always stick around until the place closes. Why would you leave early that one night? Doesn't it strike you as a bit strange?'

'I was tired, so I went home and went to bed early.' That was the truth. He remembered now that he'd felt pooped after the runin with Yamamoto and had gone straight home without checking in at either club. He'd fallen asleep watching TV. It would have been better if he'd stuck around Playground, but it was a bit late now for regrets.

'Were you alone?'

'Of course.'

'And what made you so tired?'

'I was at a pachinko place all morning and then chauffeured one of the girls at the club around. I had a meeting with Kunimatsu, the casino manager - it was a full day's work.'

'And what was the meeting with Kunimatsu about? About how to get rid of the victim, wasn't it? That's what Kunimatsu told us.'

'That's ridiculous,' said Satake. 'Where do you come up with this stuff? I run a nice little club and a casino, end of story.'

'Don't fuck with me!' Kinugasa bawled, suddenly turning nasty. 'Nice little club and casino, my ass. We know about your record, about that woman you raped and murdered. How many times was it you stabbed her? Twenty? Thirty? And the whole time, you were fucking her brains out. Am I right? That how you get your jollies, Satake? You're a freak, you are. I nearly threw up just reading the transcripts. How the fuck did an animal like you get out after just seven years? Can you explain that to me?'

Satake could feel the sweat begin to well out of every pore on his body. The lid on his private hell, the lid he'd worked so hard to keep shut, was being pried off as he watched. The face of the woman in her death throes came back to him. The old, dark dreams that he'd thought were dead crept up his spine like an icy hand. 'That make you sweat?' Kinugasa said. 'Make you hot?'

'No... it's just that... '

'Spit it out. You'll feel better.'

'You're barking up the wrong tree. I'm a changed man.'

'That's what they all say. But in my experience, men who kill for pleasure don't stop after the first time.'

For pleasure? The words hit Satake like a sledgehammer, but he returned Kinugasa's taunting, come-off-it look. It wasn't for pleasure! he wanted to scream. The pleasure had come from sharing in the woman's death. At that moment, he'd felt nothing but love for her. That was why she was the only woman he'd ever have, why he was bound to her for life. He'd taken no 'pleasure' in killing her; what he'd felt couldn't be explained away by a single word. But how could he explain?

'You're wrong,' he said, staring down at his lap.

'Could be,' said Kinugasa. 'But we're going to do our damnedest to prove we're right. You don't have to tell us a thing.' He patted him on the shoulder, as though patting a dog. Satake twisted away to avoid his meaty hand.

'I really didn't do anything,' he said. 'I just warned the guy to keep away from the club. He'd fallen for my top girl and he was following her around. I told him to leave her alone. This is the first I've heard about what happened to him.'

'Maybe your "warning" is different from other people's,' said Kinugasa.

'What do you mean?'

'You tell me. What did you do after you beat the shit out of him?'

'That's ridiculous.'

'What's so ridiculous? You kill a woman, you're a pimp, and you beat up your customers. Is it so hard to imagine you might chop them up, too? And you've got no alibi either. You're the one who's ridiculous.' When Satake said nothing, Kinugasa lit another cigarette. 'Satake/ he hissed, blowing smoke in his face. 'Who'd you get to do it?'

'Do what?'

'You've got those Chinese guys working in your club. What does the Chinese mob charge for a job like that? What's the going rate these days? Finger-sized bits - like so much sushi - what'd they charge you for that?'

'You're out of your mind,' said Satake.

'The weeklies are saying it costs around ¥100,000. That sound right to you? At that rate, you could get ten guys hacked up on just what you walk around with.'

'I don't have that kind of money,' Satake laughed, amazed that the cop could be so unrealistic.

'You drive a Benz, don't you?'

'That's just for show. But I wouldn't throw away my money on something as stupid as that.'

'You might if you realised what would happen if you're convicted of murder again. This time around they'll go for the death penalty.' When he saw how serious Kinugasa was, Satake knew he'd already decided he was guilty. They really believed he'd killed a man and had somebody cut him up. How was he going to get out of this? Not without a lot of good luck. The spectre of a tiny prison cell made him prickle with sweat again. Noticing how uncomfortable he was, the other detective, who had been quiet so far, spoke up.

'Satake, has it occurred to you what this must be like for the guy's widow? She works nights in a boxed-lunch factory and still takes care of two kids.'

'His widow?' he muttered, remembering the woman he'd seen on TV. She'd been a lot prettier than he'd have expected a creep like that to be hitched to.

'Young kids,' said the detective. 'But you wouldn't understand, not having any of your own. She'll have it rough.'

'I'm sure she will, but that's got nothing to do with me.'

'Doesn't it?!' the man barked.

'That's right.'

'You can sit here with a straight face and tell me you're not somehow mixed up in this?'

'I'm telling you I didn't do anything and I don't know anything about it.' Kinugasa was quietly studying his reactions as the exchange dragged on. Sensing that he was being watched, Satake turned to stare at him. An idea was beginning to take shape in his head: maybe it was that woman, the wife, who had killed him. How could she be so calm when she'd just found out that her husband was dead and that somebody had made mincemeat of him? Something about that face on the TV had bothered him, like biting into a grain of sand in the middle of an oyster. He'd seen something written there, something you could never read unless you'd had the same experience - call it a sense of fulfilment. She had the motive. Her husband was running after Anna and spending all his time and money at Mika. He'd only had a glimpse on the tube, but the Yamamotos didn't seem rich. So naturally she'd have hated him.

'The wife,' he said aloud. 'What about her? Are you sure she didn't do it?'

This made even Kinugasa flip. 'You worry about your own sorry ass, Satake! She's got an alibi. My money's on you, all the way.'

So they've already given up on her, he thought, and this guy is looking for me to take the fall. He had to admit that it didn't look good. 'I'm sorry to disappoint you,' he said, 'but I really didn't do it. I swear to you.'

'Lying bastard,' Kinugasa roared.

'Fucking cop,' Satake muttered, leaning down to spit under the desk. While he was at it, Kinugasa caught him on the side of the head with a swing of his elbow.

'Don't mess with me,' the cop warned him. But Satake didn't need any warning: he knew they could pin anything on you if they wanted to. And this time the stakes were high: maybe even his life was on the line. He found himself shaking with rage and fear. If he ever got out of this place, he swore he'd get even with the real murderer. For now at least, he figured that had to be the wife.

He knew enough about how things worked to realise that this little affair would probably cost him both of his clubs, and the thought nearly killed him. He'd slaved away in the ten years since he'd got out of jail, built up so much, and now to get mixed up in something like this... He should have known that summer would get the better of him; it was in the cards, he'd seen it coming.

It suddenly seemed dark, and looking up he saw that a bank of black clouds had sprung up over Shinjuku. The leaves on the zelkova trees outside were rattling in the wind, a portent of an evening shower.

***

That night, in his cell at the detention centre, Satake dreamed about the woman. She was lying in front of him, a pleading look on her face. 'Hospital, hospital...' she seemed to be saying. He put his finger in the wounds he'd made on her body, sliding it in up to the knuckle, but the woman seemed not to notice and merely whispered over and over, 'Hospital.' His hand was drenched in blood. He wiped it on her cheek, and as he did so, he realised that the face of this woman, marked with her own blood, had taken on an unearthly kind of beauty.

'Take me to the... hospital.'

'They can't help you. It's over.' In response, the woman grabbed hold of his bloody hand with startling strength and pulled it toward her neck, as though urging him to kill her quickly. He stroked her hair instead. 'Not yet,' he said.

The look of utter despair in her eyes made his heart contract with both pity and delight. Not yet. You can't die yet. Not before we come together.... He held her tighter, his whole body slippery with blood.

He opened his eyes. He was dripping with blood - or so it seemed for a moment until he realised he was covered with sweat. He glanced over at his cellmate, a cheque forger, who lay rigid in the next bunk, pretending to be asleep. Ignoring him, Satake sat up in bed. It was the first time he'd dreamed of her in ten years, and it excited him. He could still feel her lingering nearby. His eyes searched the dark corners of the cell, eager to find her.