Non-Stop Till Tokyo (7 page)

This
wasn’t
my fault. This was Kelly’s fault for starting it, and the yakuza’s fault for everything they’d done. It wasn’t just their brutality to Noriko, but the other damage. Making Mama-san betray me. Making Yoshi lose his job, making him feel worthless. Making Yukie do whatever she’d had to do. They spread ruin and corruption into everything they touched. And, I had decided, I wasn’t just going to sit there and take it.

But now, on the coach, I realised that was exactly what I was going to do.

What else was there? Yoshi was right. I had nothing to give the police, and I’d only bring down more hell on my head—and maybe Noriko’s—if the yakuza knew I was talking to them. My only hope was for the yakuza to realise I wasn’t their enemy.

I’d spent a couple of years as a hostess, ingratiating myself with people I didn’t like, smiling at unfunny jokes and unwanted come-ons, open racism and mindless lechery. I’d made any number of repugnant people think I was their friend. I’d just have to be the Mitsuyoshi-kai’s friend too.

Though, a little part of my mind murmured, if an opportunity to screw them over
did
come up…

About half an hour before Matsumoto, I turned up the pitch of the conversation, bringing it on to lively stories and family anecdotes that I borrowed from Noriko and Yoshi, and by the time we arrived, Ito-san was rocking with laughter. I timed a story so that I was still telling it as we got off the bus, and she was chiming in with encouraging noises, with “eeeeh” and “is that so?” like a perfect stooge, and as we trotted away up to the main street, anyone watching would have sworn we’d been friends for years.

I ditched her at a Mister Donut, where I removed the bandage in the bathroom, and changed quickly into a white roll-neck top and jeans that cheered up the brown coat and boots a bit, and my normal-sized sunglasses instead of the awful Yoko Onos. Casually trendy, that was my look for the day. My phone rang while I was changing, but the caller didn’t leave a message. I didn’t recognise the number.

Matsumoto has a gorgeous setting, a flat plain ringed with the distant Japan Alps in a magnificent stretch of white peaks, and it’s a shame they built the town out of concrete and grey tile. There are a few older buildings, one-storey wood constructions and so on, and I guess it’s pleasant enough in a same-as-everywhere-else way, but it’s really just another Japanese provincial town, except for the castle.

Matsumoto-jo is picture perfect, set in a moat amid grounds planted with pines and cherry trees, and I found myself wishing the cherry blossom was out, because this was a castle built to float over clouds of pink
sakura
flowers. It’s set on a stone foundation, sloping out of the moat, and it’s on about five levels, with dozens of pointed gables and sweeping tiled roofs, shining dark grey tiles jutting over white walls, and it’s just impossibly lovely. I trotted towards the red arched bridge that crosses the moat, checking my watch—a bit past ten—and my phone rang.

A mobile number I didn’t know was showing, and it looked like the one that had called me before. Yukie, maybe, or Taka’s friend?

“
Moshi-moshi
,” I said.

They hung up. I blinked a bit, and the phone rang again, and as I answered, I remembered that Yoshi had told me to get another phone.

“There, with the orange handbag,” said a faint voice down the line—not directly to me, but to someone else away from the receiver, just before the line went dead again. I swung around, eyes wide and searching, and there they were. Two big men, about thirty feet away. Heading for me with fast strides, one putting a mobile away. Shiny suits, brutal faces, and one of them had a bleached cockatoo crest of hair.

I dropped my clothes bag and ran like hell.

I’m no jogger, and they were always going to be faster than me. I sprinted anyway, heading down a side street, and took a couple of quick turns, hearing feet pounding after me. There were people about, but not enough to help, not enough to put them off. I lengthened my stride, arms pumping, thighs screaming, and headed back up towards the main street. A huge figure loomed out at the end of it, and something in his stance made me change direction, cornering round a side street and feeling my ankle almost twist under me.

The blood was roaring in my ears, and someone was shouting but I couldn’t hear what. The air was too damn cold for running, hurting my chest, and though the fear was giving me strength, it wouldn’t last.
Oh God, oh God…

They were gaining on me, and I was running with a desperation I’d never known. I went round a corner and there was a chain-link fence ahead, and a truck blocking the left-hand end of the street with a delivery. I should have gone for it, squeezed through, but I went the other way, and round a corner, and it was a dead end, full of garbage bags and empty boxes and closed-up restaurants and deserted bars.

I spun round, and they were in the mouth of the alley.

“What do you want?” I panted. “Leave me alone. I’ll scream.”

“Don’t make any noise,” said Bleach Job, and he opened his suit jacket and I saw he had a gun.

My legs gave way, just folded under me. I sat down hard on the cold, rough concrete and realised it was over. I’d lost.

“Get her,” said the other man authoritatively. Bleach Job let his jacket fall closed and started to walk to me. There was a taste of blood and rust in my mouth. I shut my eyes.

“Hey.”

It was a deep rumble of a voice from behind the yakuza, and when I looked up, the alley was actually darker, because the gigantic figure was blotting out the light. Bleach Job and his boss turned, and the vast shape hunkered down into a wide crouching stance, and there was a slight but utterly unmistakable side-to-side sway in the motion that made my mouth drop open.

I wondered if I was hallucinating. Bleach Job and the boss were staring, frozen in astonishment. And then, as the boss began to speak, the big man exploded at them.

It’s the only description. He accelerated like a cannonball, nought to sixty in about a tenth of a second, and he literally charged over the boss, knocked him down with an easy slap and trampled over his chest as he came at Bleach Job. I was trying to shout that the goon had a gun, and Bleach Job was trying to draw it, but by the time either of us was halfway there, the big man had swept up Bleach Job with a hand like a ham hock and body-slammed him against the alley wall. He drove his other fist into the goon’s stomach, and the man doubled over, retching explosively, and the giant caught his yellow crest of hair and used it to force Bleach Job’s head down as he brought his own knee up to meet it.

He turned back to the other guy, who was choking on the ground. I had thought the yakuza were large men, but the giant picked him up one-handed, looked calmly at him for a second, and headbutted him. There was a crunch, and scarlet blood flew from the goon’s nose, then the giant gave him a casual slap that sent him ricocheting off the alley wall.

I pushed myself off the ground, shaking, as the giant prodded the unconscious yakuza with a foot. He turned to me, and we stared at each other.

He wasn’t Japanese. He looked Pacific Rim—Hawaii, Samoa, something like that. It was the eyes and the broad nose and the darker skin tone, and the fact that he was the tallest man I’d ever seen, that gave it away.

And he was bulky, really wide. He was too big even to guess, but it had to be way over three hundred pounds. Most of it was clearly muscle, though, and the rest he carried well, and he really wasn’t anything like fat enough for what I’d just seen.

“You Ekudaru Keri?” he rumbled. Japanese order and pronunciation of my surname, but a Western “r”, and Western manners, come to that.

“Yes,” I said. “And you’re Chanko-san.”

I might have guessed.
Chanko-nabe
is the dish sumo wrestlers eat to maintain their impossible bulk: a massive protein feed of chicken and pork and tofu and seafood in tangy broth, with noodles and vegetables and rice to fill any gaps. He didn’t have the topknot, and he didn’t have the oversized-baby fatness, and he wasn’t dressed in kimono as
rikishi
, sumo wrestlers, should always be when they aren’t in a loincloth, but the pre-attack sway and the serene expression as he’d stomped the goons flat told their story. He was—he had been—a
rikishi
.

He crouched down to take the yakuzas’ guns and mobile phones. The guns went into his huge black baseball jacket, and the mobile phones he stamped on, crunching them underfoot like cockroaches, then picking out the SIM cards from the wreckage and pocketing them. I stared at him.

“Know any numbers any more? Or does your phone remember for you?” he sang, answering my unasked question. “Sang” because though his accent was reasonable, his intonation was far too heavy, stressing key words and going up and down in a way Japanese speakers simply don’t. The deep boom and rhythm made him sound like an opera star. He had the figure for it.

“Okay.” He heaved himself upright. “Let’s go.”

I stared up, biting my thumb. “Um. Excuse me, but who are you?”

“Chanko.”

I’d told him that name. “Do you mind telling me who sent you, please?”

“Who do you think?”

I backed away a step. “Look, I just want to be sure you’re not—” I gestured at the slumped yakuza.

He frowned at me. He had the face for that as well: heavy, slanting eyebrows. “What, I’m a bad guy, this is a trick?”

“Well, yes,” I said, feeling just a little stupid.

He folded his huge arms and angled his broad chest forward a little, and I felt like I was standing under one of those gigantic temple Buddhas.

“Right,” he rumbled. “So, what are you going to do about it?”

I set my teeth, then converted the grimace into a tremulous smile and a soft pity-me voice. “I’m sorry to offend you, Chanko-san, but it’s been a very frightening time for me. Please could you kindly put my mind at rest?”

His big face went still, stony, and I was irresistibly reminded of the Easter Island statues.

“Taka sent me,” he said shortly. “That what you want?”

“Thank you. Please excuse me if I was rude.” I offered him an appeasing smile. “Thank you for helping me.”

He didn’t look impressed. “Come on.”

We picked my bag up where I’d dropped it—of course it was still there, I’d have been astonished if it were stolen—and hurried through town to where his car was parked. It was a big saloon, but he filled it.

“Where are we going?” I asked, strapping myself in.

“Away. Drive, get some lunch, you tell me what you want to do. First thing, let’s get out of this place before anyone finds the yaks.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

We were on the motorway before he spoke again. “So, you want to get out of Chubu province or to leave Japan or what?”

“I want to get as far away as I can. I can’t leave Japan, though, I don’t have my passport.”

“Good to remember when you’re going on the run.”

“I didn’t
go
on the run, I got
sent
on the run. It wasn’t my idea.”

“Sure it wasn’t,” he said flatly.

“It wasn’t! Chanko-san, this whole thing is a mistake—”

“Look, Taka asked me to get you out of trouble, so I will. Don’t give me the sob story, I don’t want to hear it. Just the basics, so I know who we’re running away from and what they want to do.”

He sounded completely uninterested, but I’d spent two years manipulating male egos, and there was definitely anger bubbling deep down there. I wondered why.

“I hope this isn’t inconvenient for you, Chanko-san?” I ventured.

“Hell, no. I’ve got nothing better to do than play chauffeur for a hooker. Nothing at all.”

It took me a few seconds to catch my breath. It wasn’t just calling me a prostitute: everything he said was in an offensively casual speech form that radiated contempt. I said carefully, “I’m a hostess, Chanko-san. Nothing else.”

“Yeah, sure. I don’t care, okay? Just give me the story. And without any—” He snapped his fingers with a sound like a slamming door, searching for the Japanese word. “Personal judgement of you.”

“Self-justification, would you mean?” I asked sweetly.

“Yeah. Thought you’d know the word.”

You arrogant tub of lard
, I thought.
You patronising swine
.

“Of course, Chanko-san,” I said.

I gave him a brief outline of what had happened. He stared through the windshield a bit. Then he said, “Again.”

I started again. He stopped me when I got to the bit about Kelly getting me to interpret. “Say that again.”

Evidently he was stupid as well as rude. I said it again.

“So you got her to get—I mean, she took the interpreting job—gave the job—” He made a slight noise of annoyance, and I could have slapped myself. He was getting tangled up in the complex grammar of giving and receiving and getting-someone-to-do, which is notoriously hard for non-native speakers. I’d realised Japanese wasn’t his native language of course, but I’d simply not registered that he might be having difficulties, since he’d spoken in pretty good Japanese throughout.

“Would you prefer it if we spoke in English?” I suggested politely.