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  'I suppose so, but neither of our families was in favour of our marriage, so I haven't seen much of them over the years.'

  'Would you mind telling us why they were against it?' Kinugasa asked.

  'I'm not sure I know myself,' Yayoi said. 'I guess my parents made it clear they weren't very fond of Kenji and that made his mother angry. . . .' The truth was that Yayoi had never got along with her mother-in-law and there had been very little communication between them. Even now, she was dreading her arrival and the fuss she would make. Yayoi even wondered whether the hatred she'd ended up feeling for Kenji wasn't due partly to the fact that he was that woman's son.

  'But why did your parents dislike your husband?' Kinugasa asked.

  'That's hard to say.' She hesitated a moment. 'I'm their only daughter, and I guess they must have had high expectations of the man they wanted me to marry.'

  'Probably so,' Kinugasa said. 'Especially since their daughter is such a good-looking woman, if you don't mind my saying so.'

  'No, it wasn't that,' she said, as if stating a known fact.

  'No? Then what was the reason?' He had suddenly adopted a fatherly tone. Go ahead, he seemed to be saying, you can tell me anything, anything at all. Yayoi had been feeling more and more uncomfortable as the interview had progressed into areas she hadn't anticipated. They seemed to be interested in every aspect of her relationship with Kenji, and they were developing a picture of them as a couple and drawing conclusions from it.

  'My husband was fond of gambling before we got married,' she said. 'He bet on horse races, bike races, that kind of thing. He'd even had loans to cover his gambling debts, but he paid them off. My parents found out about it and said they were against us getting married. But he gave it up as soon as we got involved.' The two men exchanged a glance at the mention of gambling, and Kinugasa's next question had a new intensity.

  'And recently?'

  Yayoi wondered for a moment whether she Should tell them about the baccarat. Had Masako said not to mention it? She couldn't remember. She paused, afraid that if she told them about the gambling they'd find out that he'd been beating her up.

  'Go on,' Kinugasa urged. 'You can tell us.'

  'Well... '

  'He'd started again, hadn't he?'

  'I think so,' she said, shivering slightly. 'He mentioned something about "baccarat".' Although she didn't know it yet, this one word would prove to be her salvation.

  'Baccarat? Did he say where he'd been playing?'

  'I think it was Shinjuku,' she said in a small voice.

  'Thank you,' said Kinugasa. 'We appreciate your telling us this. I think now we're sure to get his killer.'

  'I wonder . . .' Yayoi stammered, sensing that the questions were coming to an end, '. . . do you think I could see my husband?' Neither detective had mentioned the subject of viewing the body.

  'We thought we'd ask your brother-in-law to identify him, but I'm not sure it would be a good idea for you to come along,' Kinugasa told her, fishing some black-and-white photographs out of an envelope in his briefcase. He held them close to his chest like a poker hand, and selected one to put down on the table in front of her. 'If you're really considering going, it might be a good idea to have a look at these before you decide.'

  Yayoi reached out and gingerly picked up the picture. It showed a plastic bag and a lump of mutilated flesh. The only thing recognisable was a hand - Kenji's hand - with the pads of the fingers sliced off in blackened circles. She gasped, and for a moment she was overcome with loathing for Masako and the others. This was just too gruesome. She knew she'd killed him, and then asked them to get rid of the body; she knew she was being unreasonable. But now that she saw Kenji's disfigured body with her own eyes, she couldn't stop the wave of indignation that swept over her. Tears welled up in her eyes and she buried her face in her arms.

  'I'm sorry,' Kinugasa said, patting her gently on the shoulder. 'I know this is hard, but you have to be strong. Your children are going to need you.' The detectives seemed almost relieved to see the tears. A moment later, Yayoi looked up and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She felt utterly lost. Kuniko had been right when she'd told her that she couldn't possibly understand. It was true, she couldn't. It had been simpler to tell herself that Kenji had just gone off somewhere.

  'Are you all right?' Kinugasa asked.

  'Yes, I'm sorry.'

  'We'd like you to come down to the station tomorrow,' he told her, standing to leave. 'We've got a few more things to go over.'

  'Of course,' Yayoi murmured. There was more? When would it stop? But even now, Imai was looking slowly through his notebook, still sitting there in front of her.

  'I'm sorry,' he said, glancing up, 'but there's one thing I forgot to ask about.'

  'Yes?' she said, eyeing him through her tears. He studied her a moment.

  'About what time did you get home from the factory the morning after your husband disappeared? Could you run through that day for us, please.'

  'I finished work at 5.30, changed, and got home a little before 6.00. '

  'Do you always come straight home?' he asked softly.

  'Usually,' Yayoi said. She was conscious that she still hadn't recovered from the shock of the pictures and needed to choose her words carefully. 'Sometimes I stay and chat with friends for a while, but since Kenji hadn't been back that night, I was worried and came right home.'

  'Of course,' Imai said, nodding for her to continue.

  'Then I napped for a couple of hours before I took the children to the day-care centre.'

  'It was raining, wasn't it? Did you take the car?'

  'No, we don't own a car, and I don't drive. I take them on the bike.' She noticed another quick exchange of glances. The fact that she had never learned to drive was going to be to her advantage.

  'And then ... ' Imai prompted.

  'I got back here around 9:3 0 and talked to one of the neighbours for a while out by the garbage bins. I did the laundry and cleaned up around the house, and then around 11.00 I fell asleep again. At 1.00, there was a call from my husband's office saying he hadn't shown up for work. I was stunned, to say the least.' As she ran through all this again, the lines flowed smoothly; she began to relax, and she realised how wrong she'd been to resent Masako, even for a moment.

  'Thank you,' Imai said, closing his notebook with a snap. Kinugasa had been standing impatiently with his arms folded. As she followed them to the entrance and watched them scuff back into their shoes, she could sense that their suspicions were fading again, giving way to a new wave of sympathy.

  'We'll see you again tomorrow,' Kinugasa said before shutting the door behind him. When they were gone, Yayoi looked at her watch. Kenji's mother and brother would be here soon. She swallowed, steeling herself for her mother-in-law's tears. But now she could use her own tears as a defense. This interview with the detectives had been a good rehearsal for what was to come. The tension and confusion seemed to have melted away. Suddenly realising that she was standing just where Kenji had died, she gave a little jump.

  DARK DREAMS

  1

  Another blazing afternoon. Mitsuyoshi Satake stood looking out through the blinds, arms folded across his chest. From his secondfloor window, the city outside seemed to be divided between the places brilliantly lit by the midsummer sun and those sunk in shadow. The leaves on the trees lining the road seemed to glow, the area beneath them just a smear of black. The figures of people hurrying along looked luminous, trailing dark shadows. The white lines of the crosswalk warped in the heat, and Satake flinched at the sight of them, remembering the unpleasant feeling of one's shoes sinking into the hot asphalt.

  Just in front of him loomed the cluster of skyscrapers near the west exit to Shinjuku Station. The vertical strips of cloudless blue sky between the towers were almost too bright to look at, and he closed his eyes; but the image lingered on his retinas. He closed the blinds and turned away, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dimmer light. The apartm