‘Yoshi!’
I woke sitting bolt upright. I looked beside me to see Tomoe staring up.
‘Who’s Yoshi?’
‘Ah, no one,’ I said, settling back.
‘You seem very excited about no one,’ she said, thrusting a hip into the evidence.
‘It isn’t anyone. I don’t think. I was just dreaming—’
‘I know you were dreaming. I’m wondering who you were dreaming about.’
‘I don’t— It was just a stupid dream about—’
But she had already turned away. I was too drowsy to protest any further and drifted back to sleep. When I woke up she was gone.
I called her that evening.
‘Hi,’ she said, her voice devoid of warmth.
‘Hi.’
There was a pause.
‘You’re not really pissed off at me for dreaming about a geisha, are you?’
‘How do I know it’s a geisha? How do I know you haven’t met another girl?’
‘For god’s sake, Tomoe,’ I said, exasperated. ‘Go and get a picture of us. Then tell me if you really think you’re the one who needs to worry about being two-timed.’
Something in my voice must have sounded genuine because she giggled.
‘Geisha turn you on, do they?’ she asked. ‘Is it the heavy white make-up? You know they used to blacken their teeth? Do you want me to blacken mine – would that turn you on?
‘She wasn’t like that in the dream and I’m happy with your teeth the way they are. Although, fix me up with a nice geisha girl and you never know … Maybe I’d get a thing for the kimono and tabi socks and trade you in.’
‘Oh yeah, we could send you back in time to when they’d never seen a gaikokujin before, you’d like that,’ she teased, using the polite form for foreigner. ‘Oh, Rei, Rei! Big gaikokujin man.’ She dropped an octave. ‘Oh, you like my loving, geisha girl? Call me Raging Rei!’
‘So, are you going to stop being moody with me then?’ I asked when I’d stopped laughing.
‘I’ll stop being moody with you. Come round, I was about to watch a film.’
Things seemed to go back to normal for a week. But they didn’t stay that way long. When Tomoe appeared as a stranger at my door again, it wasn’t a flood of tears that disturbed me but the lack of any emotion at all. Getting an explanation was no less challenging than it had been when she’d arrived upset before.
‘Please, just hold me,’ she said in a small voice borrowed from someone else. ‘I need you to hold me.’
‘Tomoe,’ I coaxed as I held her tight. ‘Tell me what’s wrong. I can’t do anything to help you if I don’t know.’
‘I went to the yakuza offices,’ she said flatly.
‘You did what?’
I thought a moment.
‘They have offices?’
‘Yes.’
It was the kind of conversation that needs one side to drive.
‘But you think these people killed your father. Why did you visit them? They could just as easily have hurt you.’
I stopped and lifted her head from my chest so I could look in her face.
‘They didn’t do anything to you did they?’
‘No. I’m OK.’
‘Sweetheart, you say you’re OK but you don’t look it at all. You keep turning up like this and I sit here like an idiot because I’ve got no idea of what’s happened or what I can do. Please, let me help you.’
She looked at me and I could see a hint of the Tomoe I knew behind her eyes.
‘I’m sorry. Nothing happened, I promise. You don’t have to worry about me like that. But I heard things about my father, things that were really difficult to hear.’
Her voice caught.
‘They’re going to take years to come to terms with. I want to talk to you about them, I really do, but I can’t, not now, I just can’t—’
A lone tear struggled from her eye and wound a melancholy trail down the contours of her face.
‘Please, hold me like you love me. Don’t let go.’
It was the last I was to see of her for nearly three weeks, weeks in which she was apparently occupied by work – a poetry convention in Kobe followed by an ukiyo-e exhibition in Osaka – but I suspected were spent tracking her father’s killers. Seemingly indestructible, she was the Tomoe I knew again, but she wasn’t inclined to talk about work or investigations when we spoke on the phone.
‘Oh, Ray-kun, please – I’m either working my fingers to the bone or being bored to death by earnest academics. Just talk to me about nothing. Please?’
One part of me, admittedly the larger part, was happy to oblige as it meant I could keep my promise to Ernesto and avoid any follow-up calls. But I had to fight a sense of shame. She was my girlfriend. I surely should have been doing more.
‘New addition to the list!’ announced Johnny.
‘What’s that?’
He tutted in disappointment. ‘Come on, work with me, show some creativity. At least have a guess.’
I’d met Johnny on the plane. He’d interviewed with an English language school in London and flown over with twenty other teachers who happened to be on my flight. He was the same age as me but his decision to leave his job in IT had been out of boredom and solely his. Fifteen months in, he remained fascinated with the fūzoku, the sex industry in Japan, in particular the innumerable ways it catered to every fetish and whim.
‘OK, so it’s not the role-reversal club where the schoolgirls touch you up on the train?’
‘Old news. This is better.’
‘The peep room with the hole in the one-way glass where the manga character tugs you off after she’s stripped down?’
‘No, but come to think of it I haven’t been there for a while …’
‘Something to do with the places you get AV and ebicon girls?’ I asked, referring to the Adult Video stars and ‘event concierge’ girls who work the stands at motor, technology and other fairs. Both had major fan bases and, for those who could be persuaded to capitalise on their popularity, fees to match.
‘You’re getting warmer, but it’s better than that.’
‘Better?’
Johnny had referred to them as the epitome of an advanced capitalist society when he first heard of their existence. He’d been half-heartedly looking for a job that would enable him to appreciate this pinnacle of marketplace evolution ever since.
‘Better. They’re just prostitutes—’
‘That kind of comes with the territory with paid sex.’
‘Not necessarily. They’re at the luxury end of the market but that’s still all they are. I’ve found something different.’
‘So you’ve said. Do you want to just tell me what it is?’
His face lit up. ‘These are like the ultimate untouchables – in the good sense of the word – a super-select group, like Japanese supermodels. Except they’re more than just models, they’re the cultural elite, I don’t know, the biggest artists, writers or musicians, that sort of thing. Obviously, they’ve got to be fit as well.’
He warmed to the theme.
‘They’re so exclusive there are only a handful in the country and it’s impossible to know who they are. But the next time you’re watching TV and you see a particularly hot actress or singer, she could be one. And if you have the money and know the right people …’
‘And I suppose you do?’
‘I might not have the money – yet,’ he said. ‘But I’m getting close on the people front.’
I gave him a suspicious look. I was pretty sure he knew no one of significance in Japan, England or anywhere else.
‘You know Tom?’ he asked rhetorically of a friend we’d met in a bar. He was reasonably senior in an electronics firm and had been transferred from the States.
‘Well, the son of some politician or other – it might even be the home secretary – he started working for Tom’s firm last month. I went out with them at the weekend and this guy got completely wasted and told us about it. The thing is, they’re so exclusive that even though he’s the stinking rich son of some big-shot, he still can’t get a look-in. That’s how special these girls are.’
‘It’s a great idea but I don’t believe a word. He’s just a drunken rich kid taking the piss or trying to impress you.’
‘No, he was for real, I promise. He swiped a business card from his dad and tried to book a girl but he got totally stonewalled. Then they got on to his dad who gave him an almighty bollocking for even knowing they exist. Don’t look at me like that.’
‘Don’t blame me. Just because you fell for it doesn’t mean I have to.’
‘I swear, it’s completely legit. He even showed us the card. Thick cream paper, super understated with just the name and phone number embossed.’
He looked away dreamily, imagining the paradise just beyond his reach.
‘Tanzen,’ he murmured.
‘What?’
‘Tanzen. That’s what it was called. I just wish I’d been able to memorise the number.’
But I’d stopped listening. Having my blood turn cold seemed to have affected my ears. The name may have been new to Johnny but it was very familiar to me. What’s more, I already had the number. I just had to hope it was for a different Tanzen, because the one I knew was where Tomoe worked.