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  That woman had been ten years older than Satake at the time. But he'd been wrong to think she'd died all those years ago; she hadn't, she'd been living here in secret, in this dull, dusty suburb under another name. Masako Katori. She had felt it, too. She had started to ask if they'd met before, and that gave him his first glimpse of a crack in her hard protective shell. Fate, he whispered.

  He thought back to that hot summer day, seventeen years ago, when he'd first seen the other woman on the streets of Shinjuku. Someone had been luring girls away from the clubs and massage parlours run by his gang. Whoever it was - and the person was rumoured to be a woman in her thirties who'd once been a hooker herself - was a slick operator. Satake had been violently offended by the idea that it was a woman jerking them around. In order to catch her, he had spent a good deal of time and energy planting bait - in the form of girls he trusted - around the neighbourhood; and at last he hooked her. She'd arranged to meet one of his decoys at a certain cafe. It was a muggy evening, with rain threatening.

  He had watched her from the shadows as she approached the place, holding back so as not to scare her off. Her outfit was too flashy: a sleeveless blue mini-dress of some glossy synthetic fibre that clung to her slim figure so closely it made him hot just looking at it. She had white sandals on her bare feet; the nail polish was chipped and peeling. Short hair, and a body so thin he could see the strap of her black bra through the armhole of her dress. But the eyes told him he was looking at a strong, resourceful woman. And the eyes saw through him, spotting him almost instantly. She turned away from the cafe and ran off into the crowd.

  Even now, after all these years, he could see the expression on her face at the moment she realised who he was. After a flash of anger at having fallen into his trap, she sneered at him, signalling her determination to escape. Despite the danger, she'd still found a few seconds to insult him; and it was that fleeting look that had set off an explosion in him. I'll track you down! I'll catch you and shake you like a rat till you're dead, he'd sworn. When he had laid the trap, he'd had no intention of killing her. He'd planned just to nab her and scare her a bit. But that look had released something in him that had lain hidden until then.

  He'd been shocked even then at the way his excitement had mounted as he chased her through the streets. He knew he could simply catch up with her, but that would have been too easy. Better to reel her out, lull her into a sense of security, and then grab her. That would prolong the agony, make it all more interesting. As he loped through the warm, humid dusk, pushing past people on the street, his mood grew darker and more violent, his hand itching to grab her hair and drag her down from behind.

  The woman was getting more desperate. She dashed through the traffic on Yasukuni Avenue and dodged down the stairs into a basement shopping arcade. She must have realised that she would be walking right into his back yard if she'd headed for Kabuki-cho. But he knew all of Shinjuku like the back of his hand. He pretended to let her slip away and then plunged into an underground garage. By running at full speed through a passage under the Oume Highway, he came out at the opposite end of the arcade; and just as she was emerging from a restroom where she'd hidden, sure that she had lost him, he grabbed her arm from behind. He could still remember the feel of her bare skin, damp with sweat from her dash through the summer streets.

  Caught unawares, she turned on him with pure hatred and hissed, 'Fucking bastard! What a lousy trick.' The voice was low and raspy.

  'You didn't think you'd get away, did you, bitch?'

  'You don't scare me,' she said.

  'Oh, but I will,' he said, nudging his knife into her side. He had

  to fight the urge to stab her on the spot. As the blade poked through her dress, she seemed to understand what he had in mind and fell silent. She allowed herself to be led back to his apartment without any tears or pleas for her life. He held her arm to keep her from running off again, aware of how little flesh there was on the bones inside. The skin on her face, too, seemed paper thin, but her eyes shone with light, like those of a stray cat. He could use a woman like this, find pleasure in her resistance; but he was startled and confused by these unfamiliar feelings. Women had been nothing much more than tools for his pleasure, so he'd always preferred them pretty and submissive.

  When they reached his apartment, it was like a steam bath. He turned the air-conditioner to its coldest setting, drew the curtains, and turned on the lights. While the room was cooling down, he beat her about the face. He'd wanted to do this from the moment he'd seen her. As he hit her, instead of begging for mercy she seemed to grow more angry and defiant; and her hatred made her all the more attractive to him. He wanted to go on hurting her for ever. Finally, when her face was swollen beyond recognition, he tied her to the bed and raped her - over and over again; he never knew how long they stayed there, with only the sound of the airconditioner groaning in the background.

  Their bodies were smeared with sweat and blood. The leather belts binding her wrists cut into the skin, sending new trickles of red snaking down her arms. As he sucked at her swollen lips, his mouth filled with the metallic taste of blood. At some point, the knife he had used to prod her in the arcade appeared in his hand. He was inside her, his lips pressed to hers, when she suddenly cried out. At that moment the hatred seemed to drain from her eyes and she surrendered to him, but he was overcome with grief and frustration that he couldn't get deeper into her. He realised that he was stabbing the knife into her side. From her screams, he could tell that she had reached her climax, and he came inside her with a rush of intense pleasure.

  It had been hell on earth. He stabbed her body here and there, then worked his finger into the wounds. But the more he tried to find a way in, the more impossible he realised it was. He held her then, wild with frustration and desire, willing their flesh to melt together, seeking a way to crawl into her, whispering all the while that he loved her, he loved her. And as they lay there, joined together in this bloody union, hell had gradually become heaven. But heaven or hell, it was a moment only the two of them could understand, a thing nobody else could presume to judge.

  The experience had changed him. The person he'd been before vanished without a trace, and a new one appeared in its place. The woman had been the dividing line between the old Satake and this other one. He had never expected to meet anyone like her. She was the one thing he hadn't planned on, the one factor he couldn't control - in short, his fate. And now the cold, dark vision of her that he'd felt creeping up his spine began to fade; and in its place, Masako Katori seemed to reach out to him, beckoning him toward heaven .. . and hell.

  -

  As he stared up at the stars, he could imagine her, still working the line at the factory; he could picture her lonely figure as she moved about the cold concrete floor. Inside, she was probably feeling relieved, even a bit proud of herself for having fooled the police just as the other woman must have congratulated herself on giving him the slip. But she wouldn't celebrate for long. He was sure those watchful eyes would flash with the same kind of fury when he finally caught her. Blood would pour down her hollow cheeks when he beat her. As the memory of her eyes, squinting from the glare of his flashlight, floated up before him, he could feel himself honing his desire, sharpening his murderous instinct like a blade ground against a well-oiled whetstone.

  He imagined how Masako must have mobilised their little group to help the wife get rid of the body. The wife lacked the guts and brains it would have taken. Satake had quickly lost interest in her as soon as he'd discovered the connection with Masako. He had no further use for her - except as a source of insurance money. He might have known to expect no more from the wife of a creep like Yamamoto. He didn't give a shit about their little domestic drama, the quarrels, the murder, the remorse. He didn't give a shit about any of them. Nothing shut down his emotions like contempt.

  Now that he had found Masako, he'd all but forgotten why he'd been looking for revenge in the first place. He reached his hands ov