nly scaring her was boring.

Satake was in the roof garden of a supermarket across from the station. The place was nearly empty, perhaps due to the cold, cloudy weather, or because the store was losing customers to the huge supermarkets being built further out in the suburbs. A few parents with small children were milling around the little playground, and a boy and girl of high-school age were necking off in a corner. Otherwise, it was empty.

For some time, he had been standing looking at the makeshift pet shop next to the game arcade. The five dirty cages out in front were occupied by drowsy puppies and kittens, common breeds that had been around the shop too long and seemed a bit large for their cages. As he peered in at them, cigarette in hand, they shrank away. He remembered how Anna had accused him of treating her like a lapdog. For just a moment, he missed the smooth skin and perfect features of the woman he'd turned into the top girl at Mika. The top pet in the shop.

Anna herself had known that once she'd realised this, she would never be able to keep that position, however hard she tried. That was just the way things worked. She'd been so popular precisely because she hadn't known she was a pet. But it was all over the minute it dawned on her, and there would always be a shadow of self-awareness from then on. It was a quality that was essential in a woman for a man to fall in love with her; but men who were only interested in buying a woman's body hated it with a vengeance. They wanted good looks untouched by any selfknowledge; not a cat but a kitten. This was why he'd been willing to spoil and flatter Anna, hoping to keep her in the dark - and why it was so ironic that falling in love with him had been her downfall. Anna seemed to be doing fine at the bar she was now working in, but that would only last another six months at most. He felt sorry for her, but the feeling was much the same as the pity he felt for the cats and dogs in these cages. He poked a long finger in between the bars, but the puppy backed away trembling.

'Don't be afraid,' he told it. It was boring when they sucked up to you, cringing and crawling all over you. On the other hand, if they were too trusting, they were just stupid. That was the thing about pets: they were either fawning or stupid. Suddenly fed up, he walked away from the shop. He poked his head into the empty, gaudily lit arcade next door, then walked through the small roof garden. The grey, seedy city stretched away toward the Tama Hills. A dump, Satake thought, spitting on the artificial turf. The lovers in the corner and the parents by the playground looked at him in dismay.

Masako Katori hadn't shown up at the factory for the past four days, not since he left Kuniko's Golf in the parking lot for her. Maybe she'd quit. But that would be deeply disappointing. He'd been so excited to find a woman he thought had nerves of steel, but if a little trick like that sent her running, she was useless to him. In the end, would she be just as scared of him as everybody else? Had he been fooling himself that night on the way to the factory, thinking she'd felt something - an affinity?

He turned back toward the pet shop. The dogs and cats followed him with their pathetic eyes. He had a feeling that something was beginning to wither inside him, and he took the stairs down from the roof in a hurry. As he ran, his pulse quickened, his body remembering the excitement of that summer evening when he'd chased the other woman through Shinjuku. The look on her face had thrilled him beyond anything he'd ever known. But with Masako he felt disappointed, angry. He wanted to hurt her, not just snuff her out the way he had the fat one. Was it a mistake to think that he'd been fated to meet her? The hands in his pockets clenched into fists.

At a pachinko parlour by the station, Satake hit the jackpot three times with the same machine, which was the maximum allowed by the rules. Before leaving, he kicked the thing hard, and an attendant came running after him to complain.

'Sir!' the man called.

'What?' he said, turning to face him. The menace in his look made the man stop short. Satake took three ¥10,000 bills out of his pocket and threw them down on the sidewalk, then watched, scowling, as he picked them up. There was enough of Yayoi's money to allow this sort of gesture. He wasn't playing pachinko for the money anyway.

A head of violence was building in him. It seemed strange that you could kill someone and then become more violent still, but in the past few days he had been so full of impatient rage he felt it was about to spill out of him. At the same time, there was another part of him that was coolly observing his own progress toward eruption.

He walked through a deserted shopping arcade, his shoulders hunched, his mood sullen. The new storefronts were flimsy and artificial, while the older ones seemed dark and depressing. He was hungry, but he didn't feel like eating. Tonight, again, he had nothing to do but leave the Golf in the lot and wait for Masako. He went back to the supermarket and found the car. Opening the door, he looked in at the jumble of cassette tapes and shoes; he had left Kuniko's mess just as he'd found it. A ruined pair of shoes discarded on the floor on the passenger side reminded him particularly of her, and he stared at them with loathing. The ashtray bore the only evidence that the car had a new driver: the butts were Satake's brand now, and he emptied the m out regularly.

If he drove around these neighbourhoods long enough, he was bound to run into Masako sooner or later. He would like to see her face when he did. If she'd really quit the factory, he had little choice but to trawl for her like this, though it was a dangerous, obsessive business. He remembered how she'd looked when she pulled into the parking lot and found Kuniko's car there. For just a moment, her face had frozen, and then gone blank, as if nothing had happened, but the tightened lips betrayed her. He'd seen the reaction, even from the guardhouse. When she got out of the car and walked around the Golf, she'd been even more shocked to see the way it was parked, just as Kuniko used to leave it. He knew because she hadn't been able to hide the tremor in her voice when she'd come to ask him about the car. Just the right note of fear. He laughed quietly, remembering. But fear alone wasn't enough. Or, rather, fear was fine as long as it didn't lead to cringing and pleading. He thought of the dogs at the pet shop, and the ugly way Kuniko had begged for her life. Suddenly repelled, he threw her shoes out of the car, sending them bouncing off the stained concrete.

***

He pulled into Kuniko's parking space at the apartment building and was just locking the door when a young woman, who had apparently been waiting for him, came trotting over. He didn't recognise her, but from the apron and sandals he could tell she must be one of the housewives there. She had no make-up on her face, but her hair was pushed up and damp with mousse, like a wig put on in a hurry. Satake thought she looked awful.

'Do you know the lady who owns this car?' she said. 'Jonouchisan?'

'Of course I know her. I'm borrowing her car, aren't I?' He knew that the longer he used the Golf, the more likely he was to get questions like this.

'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to suggest...' She blushed, having apparently drawn her own conclusions about his relationship with Kuniko already. 'It's just that I haven't seen her around lately.'

'I'm not sure where she's gone myself,' he said.

'But you're using her car?' the woman said, looking at him curiously.

'I got a job as a guard at the factory where she worked. When we realised we were living in the same building, she asked me to look after the car while she was away. It's not like I asked her.' He dangled the keys in her face, making sure she could see the initial K on the key holder.

'I see,' the woman said. 'But I wonder where she's gone.'

'I suppose she's just off on a little trip. I doubt it's anything to worry about.'

'But she hasn't been home in days, and I couldn't get in touch with her about her turn cleaning up the garbage cans. Her answering machine is on all the time, and no one's seen her husband either.'

'She quit at the factory,' Satake said. 'Maybe she went home to her family.'

'And you're using her car while she's gone?' the woman said, a note of suspicion again in the question.

'I'm paying her for it,' he said.

'Oh, I see,' she said, stiffening slightly at the mention of money. Satake found this amusing. She lived off her husband's salary, but she didn't like anything as tacky as money coming up in the conversation.

'Sorry,' he said, pushing past her. 'I'm in a hurry.' He decided that from now on he would have to stop using the car except when he was going to work. As he came toward the building, he noticed a middle-aged man in a new raincoat standing next to the mailboxes. His first thought was that he might be a cop, but after studying him out of the corner of his eye as he walked by, he decided he didn't have a cop's eyes. A salesman, he guessed, as he watched him checking the names on the mailboxes; but when he saw him stop at the box for number 412, Satake stepped into the elevator.

After he got out, he checked to make sure the elevator didn't go back to the first floor, then walked slowly along the passageway, ducking his head into a cold north wind. But as he approached the apartment and was taking out his key, he looked up to see a young man standing in front of his door. The man was dressed in a short white down jacket and purple pants, and his hair was dyed orange-brown. Satake saw him shoving something into his pocket - a cell phone, probably. He didn't like the look of this one bit.

'Are you Sato?' the man said, apparently sure of the answer to his own question. This obviously was not a cop. There was no mistaking the look of a yakuza. Satake ignored the question and moved forward to open the door, wondering how this one was connected to the guy downstairs. But as he reached for the doorknob, he found that it was covered by some kind of black fabric. The man watched in silence, suppressing a laugh.

'What the fuck?' Satake muttered.

'Take a good look,' his visitor said. The blood rushed to Satake's head when he realised the black material was Kuniko's panties, the ones he'd used as a gag on her.

'Did you do this?' he said, grabbing him by the collar of his jacket. But the man seemed unimpressed, and just chuckled softly, his hands still in his pockets.

'Not me. They were there when I got here.'

Then it had to be Masako. Releasing him, he pulled the thing off the doorknob and stuffed it in his pocket. The fabric was cold from hanging in the wind.

'It wasn't me,' the guy repeated, prodding Satake in the side. 'And where d'you get off shoving me around?'

'What do you. want?' Satake said, pushing him back.

'To show you this.' He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and stuck it in his face. It was a promissory note from a place called Midori Credit for a loan of two million yen to Kuniko Jonouchi.

'What's this got to do with me?'

'You're down as co-signatory, and this Jonouch i woman skipped town.'

'I don't know anything about it,' he lied - but he knew he'd been outmanoeuvred. There was no way that a loan shark would lend that much to Kuniko, so the whole thing must have been cooked up to get back at him. These punks would now be on his case, prowling around the building, drawing attention to him.

In a suddenly much louder voice, the man said, 'What d'you mean, you don't know anything about it?' A door opened just down the passage and a woman poked her head out. She watched them nervously, which was obviously the effect his visitor had wanted. 'Then what's this?' he said, holding out the paper again and pointing at the space for co-signatories. 'Yoshio Sato' was neatly stamped in it. Satake smiled.

'That's not me.'

'Then who is it?'

'How should I know?' Just then, the elevator opened at the end of the passage and the man who'd been standing by the mailboxes moved toward them. Obviously, he and the punk were working together.

'My name's Miyata,' he said when he reached them. 'I'm with East Credit. Our client Jonouchi-san is a bit behind on her car payments, and we heard she's disappeared.'

'Am I guaranteeing that, too?' Satake said.

'I'm afraid so,' he told him. Satake cursed, wondering how many more guys like this would be coming around. He was probably co-signatory now on a whole stack of loans. Masako, most likely with help from Jumonji, must have faked the papers and handed them over to their pals in the credit racket; then put out the word that Kuniko had disappeared, setting the dogs loose on him.

'Okay,' he said. 'I guess I don't have much choice. If you could just leave the paperwork, I'll see what I can do.' Apparently reassured by this sudden change in attitude, they both held out copies of their contracts.

'But when do we get the money?' the younger one said.

'I'll make the payments in a week at most.'

'If you don't, I'll be back with some friends and next time we won't be so sociable. You can count on it.' They weren't usually so heavy-handed on the first visit, Satake thought. Jumonji must have got hold of the toughest outfit he could think of.

'I get you,' he said. As they'd been talking, several more neighbours had come out and were watching from a safe distance. The two men seemed satisfied that they'd managed to put him on the spot this way. With a nod to Miyata, Satake opened the door and slipped inside. The younger man tried to peer in, but he shut it firmly behind him before turning on the light. When he looked through the peephole, they were gone.

'Shit,' he muttered, throwing Kuniko's underpants on the floor and kicking them away.

In the meantime they'd be watching him, pinning him down. Worse still, the other people in the building would start watching him, too. The woman in the parking lot had probably been talking to one of the men, and that had made her nosy. He could afford a few million yen to pay off the loans, but he couldn't afford to stay in this apartment now that the neighbours were on the alert; and Masako would have known that the credit companies would follow him to the factory if he didn't pay up, putting an end to his little game there.

Opening the closet, he pulled out the black nylon bag he'd brought with him from Shinjuku. He filled it with the bundles of money and the reports from the detective agency, and then, as an afterthought, picked up Kuniko's panties and shoved them in as well. His eyes swept over the empty apartment, settling on the bed next to the window. He'd dreamed of tying Masako there and torturing her... but it wasn't to be. Even so, he had a faint smile on his face. The pleasure he'd felt at finding her was returning; but stronger now, stronger even than what he'd felt the day he spotted the other woman on the streets of Shinjuku. He wanted to kill Masako even more than he'd wanted to kill the other one. And there was pleasure in that desire.

Leaving the light on, he took the bag and left the apartment. After making sure there was no one in the passage outside, he went down the back stairs. When he reached the first floor, he spotted the young guy in the down jacket standing a short way off, shivering in the cold as he stared up at Satake's window. Apparently reassured that the light was still on, the man dropped his scrutiny to watch a young woman just getting back from work. Satake, seeing his chance, ran behind the garbage shed, along a line of bushes, and out into the street. For the time being, he would have to find a hotel somewhere. He wasn't sure how long it would take them to figure out he'd given them the slip and come looking for him at the factory.

***

That night, he drove to work in a rented car. He was certain Masako would show up. By now she would have heard that her plan had been a success, and she'd come to see the results of her handiwork. He knew he would - and she was so much like him. He smoked a cigarette in the guardhouse, waiting for her Corolla to appear and wondering how she would look.

She arrived a little before 11.30, right on time. As he looked up, he caught a glimpse of her in the reflection from the headlights. Her face was expressionless as she drove past the guardhouse, and she made a point of not turning to look at him. Stuck-up bitch. She's probably thinking about all the trouble she caused me. His blood boiled with pure hatred and a perverse admiration for the way she'd managed to make him hate her. It made him feel dizzy.

He heard the car door slam and the sound of her footsteps on the gravel as she walked toward him. He left the shed and planted himself directly in her path.

'Good evening,' he said.

'Good evening,' she echoed, looking right at him. Her loose hair fell as far as the shoulders of a patched down jacket. There was a hint of a smile on her thin face. Solving the riddle of his identity and driving him out of his apartment had given her confidence. He forced himself to keep calm.

'Shall I walk you to the factory?' he asked, sounding almost respectful.

'No thank you.'

'It can be dangerous in the dark.'

Masako hesitated a second. 'You're the danger,' she said, taunting him.

'I'm not sure what you mean.'

'The game's over, Satake,' she said.

When he had hunted down that woman in Shinjuku, he'd felt an uncontrollable excitement; but this was different. This time he managed to contain his agitation, even though he felt it coursing through him, looking for a way out. The pleasure, deferred like this, was all the more acute.

'You're a tough bitch,' he said. Masako ignored him and set off toward the factory. Would she really risk walking all that way by herself? He followed a short distance behind, feeling as though he could almost hear her heart pounding, feel the tension in her shoulders. But she walked on in the darkness, refusing to show any sign of fear. He switched on his flashlight and lit up the ground a few steps ahead of her.

'I said I didn't want any company,' she said, rounding on him. 'I don't want to be strangled in a place like this.' He felt another rush of pleasure. How he hated her! And the feeling was so much stronger than anything he'd ever felt for beautiful Anna. Longing and hatred, linked somehow by the danger of self-destruction. What if he just grabbed her right now, knocked her out, and then killed her in the old factory? He toyed with the idea for a moment, but in the end it seemed a bit ordinary.

'This isn't quite the right setting, is it?' she said, as if guessing his thoughts. 'You want to make me suffer first. Why are you …?' The squeal of bicycle brakes interrupted her, and they spun around to see Yoshie pulling up behind them.

'Good morning,' she said. She glanced at the guard and then fell in step with Masako.

'Skipper!' said Masako. 'What are you doing here?'

'I wanted to see you. It's lucky I caught you.' Satake aimed the flashlight at her face for a second. She scowled in the sudden glare and glanced at Masako, who seemed to be grinning just outside the circle of light.