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  'I don't believe you,' Kuniko muttered.

  'What did you say?' Masako asked.

  'I said, "I don't believe you." I mean, this hasn't really bothered you at all, has it?' Kuniko was frowning in disgust.

  'Who says it hasn't?' Masako shot back. 'But what bothers me more is someone who would run up a mountain of debt, drive around in an imported car, and then have the nerve to come to me for a loan.' Almost instantly, Kuniko's small eyes filled with tears. She usually wore elaborate make-up, but there'd been no time for that this morning. Oddly enough, her bare face looked younger and more innocent as a result.

  'You think so?' she managed to say. 'But I'm still not as bad as you. You did this willingly, but I was tricked into it.'

  'Really? Then you don't want the money?'

  'No, I want it. I'm screwed without it.'

  'You're screwed anyway,' said Masako, 'whether you make your payment or not. I know. I've seen lots of people like you.'

  'Seen them where?'

  'In my old job,' Masako said, looking calmly at her. A woman like this deserves what she gets, she was thinking.

  'And just what was your old job?' Kuniko said, unable to hide her curiosity.

  'None of your business,' Masako told her, shaking her head.

  'Now she gets mysterious all of a sudden.'

  'Just drop it. If you want the money, then take the bags.'

  'I'll take them, but if you ask me, there are limits as to what a person can do.'

  'I like that, coming from you,' Masako laughed. Kuniko seemed about to answer, but something - perhaps the thought of the yakuza who would be coming to see her - made her hold her tongue. Her tears had dried and, in their place, sweat was dripping down her nose. 'You helped us because you wanted the money. That makes you as guilty as the rest of us, so stop acting so priggish.'

  Kuniko started to speak but the tears came welling up again and she fell silent.

  'Sorry to butt in,' said Yoshie, her eyes puffy with exhaustion, 'but I've got to be getting home. My mother-in-law must be awake by now, and I've still got a lot to do.'

  'Okay, Skipper,' said Masako, pointing at the bags of bones and flesh. 'I hate to ask, but could you take a few of these with you?' Yoshie grimaced.

  'But I'm on a bike. I can't just load them in the basket. How am I going to hold my umbrella?' Masako glanced out the window. The rain had stopped, and there were patches of blue sky. It would get hot again in no time. They would have to get rid of the bags soon or they'd begin to smell. The intestines had already been half-rotten.

  'It's stopped raining,' she said.

  'But I just can't,' Yoshie protested.

  'Then how are we going to offload them?' Masako asked, folding her arms and leaning against the tiled wall. She turned to look at Kuniko who was still standing in the changing room. 'You take some, too,' she said.

  'You want me to put them in my trunk?!' Kuniko gasped.

  'You bet I do. Are you telling me your car is too fancy?' Why did they seem so dense, she wondered. 'This isn't like the factory where you can punch out the minute the shift is over. You aren't finished here until you've found a place to get rid of these so they'll never be discovered. Then you'll get paid. And if somebody does find out about them, we have to be sure they can't be traced to us.'

  'I wonder if we can trust Yayoi not to talk,' said Yoshie.

  'If she does, we can say she was blackmailing us.'

  'Fine, then I'll say that you were blackmailing me,' said Kuniko, determined to stir things up again.

  'Go ahead. Then I won't have to pay you.'

  'You really are horrible, you know that?' Kuniko said, stifling a sob, before thinking better of it and changing the subject. 'You know, I think it's so sad - about this poor man. And you don't seem to feel a thing. I can't believe it!'

  'Will you shut up!' Masako bellowed. 'It has nothing to do with us! It's between Yayoi and him; and anyway, it's over.'

  'But I can't help thinking,' Yoshie put in, her own voice growing emotional, 'that he might even be glad that we did this to him. I mean, when I used to read about these dismemberings, I thought it sounded terrible. But it's not really like that, is it? There's something about taking somebody apart so neatly, so completely, that feels almost respectful.' Here she goes again with her self-justifications, thought Masako. But even so, she had to admit that there was something proper and orderly, almost satisfying, about finishing filling the forty-three bags. She looked at them again, lined up neatly on the bath-tub cover.

  After taking off the head, they had removed the arms and legs and then cut them up at the joints. Each foot had been divided into two parts, with the shins and thighs also being cut in half, making a total of six pieces and six bags per leg. The arms had been divided into five bits. As they were bagging them, it occurred to Masako that there was an outside chance that the hands would be found, so she'd had Yoshie slice off the fingerprints, as if she were shaving sashimi. In the end, they had twenty-two bags from just the arms and legs.

  It was the torso that had presented the real problems and had taken the most time. First, they had cut it in half lengthwise and removed the organs. These alone had filled eight more bags. Then they'd sliced off the flesh and separated the ribcage, sawing it into neat rounds. Twenty bags, all told. When you counted the head, it came to a total of forty-three bags. Ideally, they would have made even smaller segments, but the work had been unfamiliar and had taken more than three hours. It was after 1.00, and they had reached the end of their time and energy.

  Everything had gone into city-approved garbage bags, and these had been sealed and the tops folded down to double the thickness. Then they put each bag in a second one so that the contents were no longer visible through the opaque plastic. If nobody realised what was inside, the bags would simply be incinerated along with the rest of the garbage in Tokyo. The one drawback was the weight of the bags, which were a little over a kilogram each. To avoid attracting attention to the unusual contents, they took the precaution of mixing up different parts of the body: an organ with a piece of leg, a shoulder with the fingers. Kuniko had made a fuss about it, but Masako had insisted that she help with the bagging. Yoshie suggested that they wrap the parts in newspaper first, but then they realised that a particular edition of the paper could probably be traced to a specific neighbourhood or district, so they gave up on that idea. But even after the whole body was packed up, the problem remained: where were they going to dispose of the bags?

  'Since you're on your bike, you take five,' Masako told Yoshie. 'Kuniko, you take fifteen, and I'll do the rest, along with the head. Wear gloves so you don't get fingerprints on them.'

  'What are you going to do with the head?' Yoshie asked, looking uncomfortably at the largest bag. Even concealed by the plastic, it was still recognisable for what it was, sitting almost regally on the lid of the tub where they had left it when they first cut it from the body.

  'The head?' Masako said, imitating Yoshie's reverent tone. 'I'll bury it somewhere later. I don't see any other way of getting rid of it. If they find that, we're in big trouble.'

  'Once it's rotted, it won't matter,' said Yoshie.

  'But they can identify it from dental records or something,' Kuniko put in, trying to sound knowledgeable. 'That's what they do in plane crashes.'

  'Anyway, make sure you take the bags somewhere far from here, and don't leave them all in one spot. And be sure no one sees you,' said Masako.

  'So it'd probably be best to do it tonight, on the way to the factory,' Yoshie said.

  'But the cats and crows might get at them if they sit all night,' said Kuniko. 'Wouldn't it be better to do it early tomorrow morning?'

  'As long as you find a place where nobody keeps track of the garbage, it doesn't really matter. But make sure you get as far from here as possible,' Masako repeated.

  'Masako, there's just one more thing,' Kuniko added, almost timidly. 'I was wondering if we could get our money today - just fifty thousa