Tokyo Nights E-Book

Jim Douglas

• Herausgeber: Fledgling Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Charlie Davis, a modern-day heretic, ditches his past and rushes into a picaresque journey through the glistening nights of Tokyo and the desolate wilds of northern Hokkaido. But the past is not so ready to ditch him; wistful private investigator Colin McCann, hired to look into the death of a wealthy businessman's daughter, has a few hard questions for Charlie and won't give up until he's got answers. And he's not the only one on Charlie's trail. Enter a world of empty orchestras, night butterflies, polite assassins, decadent TV celebrities and a pit-bull called Marvin. Tokyo Nights is a quest and an investigation into what we have become, a dark parable, a wake-up call to the dead 21st century obsessed with compromise, safety and longevity, and a novel that celebrates the excitement and energy of a culture like no other.

Leseprobe

Firstly, and especially, we would like to thank our publisher Clare at Fledging Press for her patience and fortitude that provided wings for this book to fly and Sally Homer for making the flight path possible. Thanks to Sue Ellis who was our first reader and was invaluable in tightening up what was then a loose snarl. In addition, thanks are due to friends who read the book at the initial stages of production – Michael Bickett, Andrew Robinson, Pete Gisborne, my sister, Jane Hickey, Mike Foley, Jennifer Owens, John Pugh and Phil Beadle – for their incisive and varied comments that helped to strengthen the book.

An appreciation is more than due to the writers ofPuff the Magic Dragon– Leonard Lipton and Pete Yarrow – who, with marvelous generosity, allowed us to use this seminal and outstanding song in a chapter of our book.

Personal thanks are owed to Phil whose encouragement and help throughout our long friendship has bolstered the journey and whose dogged friendship keeps me at large.

And to Sally, too, for everything. The book is an ode to Japan and we wish to thank all our friends here who brought the scenery to it, inspired us and were with us in the neon nights of the drink, laughter and gaiety that stirred this book into existence.

Thanks also to Charlie Cubbit, Helen Greensides, Tommy Saunders, Katz, Tomo, Yuka, Emichan and Tomochan.

Gratitude also to Barry Eisler, author of The Rain series of crime novels. We read his advice on how to publish this genre of fiction and found it down to earth,

salient and to the point.

Finally, I wish to thank my friend and co-author Douglas Forrester who sadly and tragically died before seeing his work and dream become a published novel.

Thankfully, his loved ones, Victor and Moira, his parents, and his wife, Shoko, will.

This brings me some solace. Without Doug I would still be writing poems to birds and demons in a Spinoza trance inside my urban cell to which he came with beers from

Belgium and French cheeses that we consumed before getting our heads together and down to work.

For Douglas.

With Gratitude and Memory

Contents

PART 1 - TOKYO

Streets Broad and Narrow

The Concrete Haystack

Tiananmen Tankman

Guinea Pig

Yin or Yang

The Greatest Happiness Principle

Aftermath

Hard Times

The Tin Drum

Greetings from Torquay

Punchy Drunk

The Mandrake and the Mannequin

Karaoke Night

Hunky Dory

Bespoke Coffee

Swanning About

PART 2 - XANADU

Welcome to the Pleasure Dome

Minder

Titanic

Guernica

Massive Attack

Stocktaking

That's Entertainment

Commuters

Squatter

PART 3 – HOKKAIDO

Day Two - November 1st

Panties & Fish Nets

These Gods

The Emprty Orchestra

The Room at the Sheraton

Day 3 - November 2nd

Prey and Mantis

The Art of Shedding

Snakey

Parlour Games

Gypsy Moth

Drift Ice

Day 4 - November 3rd

Jousting

Leviathan

Loch Rannoch

Thawing Out

Under the Diamond Sky

Silencer

The Undead

The Dimming Light of the Fire

PART 4 - COSMOS

Hieronymous Bosch

Drifting

Sea Change

The Letters

Life Up Your Heads, O Ye Gates

Charlie Davis adjusted his cap, tilted it, and grinned. He wasn’t unhappy with the man in the mirror nor with the light spring in his heels. It was his first day off in a long time and he had slept most of it to ready himself for the coming night. Thus far the new life had been all work and getting acquainted. Twilly had aged and done what is called ‘well for himself’ here, putting together quite an enterprise.

“Just the surface is all you’re getting now, mate. But there’s candy and lots of it. Play it right, Charlie boy, and some of it’s for you.”

The quarters were spick and span and he had the evening in front of him. He felt grounded but not entrenched. The basics had been laid down and from here it was all about living. From a second-hand bookshop in Kanda he had picked up some Japanese verse by Basho, who he had heard of, and Santoka, who he hadn’t. He liked it. The elements at work in the words weren’t literary, more ordinary – or what he thought the ordinary should be. Ideas formed; he would travel through Japan as they had done – with little – find out and be found out. It would be exhilarating.

He gathered up his cards from the tatami flooring and wrapped them in a handkerchief. Twilly had apologized about the place, “Get you something better later pal. Not like you ain’t use to slumming it, though.”

He was and he liked it. He owned little and had brought less. The mind was the best carrier for anything of worth and the rest was just baggage. Putting the final touches to his raiment he slipped on a light silk scarf and, leaving the door unlocked, headed for the station and the big city.

The force of the night dazzled him as he stepped from the kerb into the fray of the street.

Not knowing where he was going, he just walked – staggering and stalling, feeling like a Gulliver among these people, not because of his size but because of his difference. He bumped into a crush of drunken salarymen and apologized. They laughed, said, “Hello to you,” bowed and swayed away. Rail-thin flame-headed boys in pipe-slim suits flickered around like fireflies. As always he took particular notice of the talent. The birds of big cities come in all varieties, none of which he had seen in finer plumage or with a better scent and promised flavor than these.

Spying a kiosk, he went to buy cigarettes. The girl smiled and tipped her head to one side like a marionette and pointed to the wrong pack. He noticed that her nails were long and adorned with some enamel embossed pattern. ‘Okay,’ he motioned, as she finally located the right pack. At a smoking corner he lit up to watch the street life and feel the nicotine calm his pulsing being.

Many of the women were deeply daubed and the glister of the artificial excited him. They had been worked by some great god to fall down here and were garbed in outfits that sparkled and shone, perching themselves on heels of scimitar sharpness, painting themselves to absolute perfection. But then look: a piggy geisha with huge thighs thumping past provided an alternative narrative. There were ladies of the office too, with a porcelain and delicate attractiveness, dressed less extremely but still sumptuous. He was humming and basking in this wonderland, the new reality that had entered him, filling up the emptiness with unfathomable and dimensionless possibilities. He could be something again here; perhaps better, perhaps worse, a fabric newly spun and tailored. He felt a new kind of estrangement and a curious dissolving of self, as if the lights that sparkled and the hieroglyphs that gleamed and burned catered as an erasing force. Looking up at the sky he could see no sign that he was on the Earth. The stars had vanished and there was no moon, no orientation or way for man to steer his craft, or himself, home. ‘Suits me, man,’ he thought as he took a final drag. Here he was cast naked into the blinding lights of the unknown, adrift in the music and sights of an everyday carnival, one quite normal for them, but not for him. It was a second life and he would embrace it.

He weaved through a stream of bodies so dense as to be discomforting, then turned into an alleyway full of cafés and bars. Climbing a flight of stairs, he entered one of them and was greeted with silence. The place was tiny, just barstools and a counter, an older lady with a chalk face and two young dolled-up women staring vacantly at him. Men in suits sat in front of them, some red-faced. Smoke hit him as it passed through the bar lights in blue rivulets. He smiled but the chalk face motioned ‘No entry’ with an X made by her two index fingers and a stern visage.

Davis continued further down the alley and came to a place that hailed him better, as a lady held up a finger and pointed to a seat in the corner. He took it and was given a menu in Japanese, but without looking at it he made a gesture, raising his arms and pushing out his palms.

“Please, sake, nihonshu?”

The lady gave a slight bow and soon returned with a small jug and a tiny cup along with a dish that contained what looked like miniature whole baby fish. He poured out a measure and took a hit then refilled. This bar was also small but the clientele more varied. In here nobody looked his way and he felt almost betrayed, but soon the potion kicked in, and with it a mood of reflection. He finished the small flagon, then another, and retraced his steps, heading for the main drag, walking on neon. The sake lifted him like an ichor of the gods: the fish had been rank but he had devoured them out of propriety.

Weaving through a litter of young, happy drunk people he found himself back at the station and decided to head for a different part of the city. The seats on the train were mostly taken and he found himself standing near the doors, sipping the can of lager he’d bought and casting his eyes around the carriage. A young girl in office clothes was crashed out comatose, head forward, resting on her chest, face curtained by the fall of her hair.

Two men in matching suits boarded in a hurry, nodding in some rite of affirmation. An announcement came across the tannoy that he guessed signaled departure. He closed his eyes and felt a shudder as the train began to move. He didn’t really know where he was going and the lightness of that pleased him.

She was hard to miss, parting the people like an infernal Moses, gazing into her sparkling mobile phone, fingering the screen as she swayed down the lurching carriage. Her hair was ash blonde streaked with purple and her skin as smooth and brown as milky coffee. She advanced slowly and stopped at the corner opposite

Davis, then turned her back to the carriage, facing the window and her own reflection.

Davis shifted his position to best view her profile and thought about making a move but he was frozen, unable to act, too mesmerized to do anything. Then the train halted and as the passengers shifted position she turned and their eyes met. He glanced away momentarily but when he looked back she was in front of him. He gazed into her glittering blue eyes and they stared back and held his. People got on the train and pushed forward and Davis found himself crushed against her. She was smiling playfully and holding her phone against her chest.

“What number?”

Davis shrugged against her shoulder. “I don’t have a number.”

She tutted at him, “No good. Okay. Take with me.”

“Take?”

“Me.”

The train jerked over points and he felt his body push against her breasts, partly shielded by a black lacy bikini top. He nodded and grasped her hand. “Where?” She stared back at him through her mask of cerulean eyelids and spider-legged lashes like he was stupid, and said again, “You take me.”

He nodded and passed her the can of Malts he was drinking from.

This was Davis’s odyssey and it was a far better one than what had been before. He knew only illumination could come of it, here in waves of light made by the forces of men. All and every element was at play here and at grief, buzzing and shaking with doomed but celebrating wings, like a giant cicada in the dark light of a Tokyo night.

The speeding train took Colin McCann and all the other red-eyed, tired and crumpled travellers from Narita International Airport – a concrete slab deposited in the countryside of Chiba – to Shinjuku in northwest central Tokyo. He rubbed the three-day stubble on his chin and pulled the rumpled trousers from his crotch. ‘Long journey’, he thought. ‘Long journey, for what?’

It was his third visit to Harold Philips’ big Victorian house in Altrincham that did it. Philips didn’t smile much but when he saw the look on McCann’s face, he chuckled. It wasn’t a pleasant sight. “Don’t look so shocked Mr. McCann. Next logical step.”

“That’s… a long way Mr. Philips. And no guarantee I can actually find him. And even if I do, no guarantee I’ll get any useful information from him either. A needle in a haystack, and it might not even be the right needle. Jesus, it might not even be the right haystack!”

“But it is something. And it’s not taken you long to find out some strange inconsistencies regarding our daughter’s death already. I knew I was right … I could feel it. Even a cynic like yourself must admit it’s worth chasing up, Mr. McCann. Even if it is all the way to Japan.”

He held his hands out, palms open. His eyebrows were raised. It was almost a Gallic shrug. “I am not ungenerous when I see results; of course all your expenses to Japan will be paid, and for the unexpected trouble this causes you, I’m willing to recompense considerably more than the original sum agreed. You said yourself the information you received from that little prick you talked to seems to hold up.”

For a few seconds Philips had seemed almost in a good mood but his face darkened, the jowls shook and the eyes were fierce. “I do not give up, McCann. Not in business, and certainly not when my family are involved. I saw that Davis scum once with my Natasha, and I should have ripped his fucking head off right then and there. He doesn’t touch my daughter and walk away scot-free.”

Philips breathed in and out deeply. The darkness subsided slightly. “It seems that your business and mine are not quite as far removed as I had first supposed. Money talks. And your little squealer has furnished enough information to merit… shall we call it an unexpected business trip?”

McCann’s turn to shrug, “All we’ve got is the name of the guy who is friends with Davis and runs a private language school in Japan. I’ve run his name past my sources and it’s good. And I’ve looked up the language school. It checks out as well, and the owner’s name and face match. Personally, I think you’d have to be insane to think that alone is enough information to merit a trip half way across the world. But it’s your money, Mr. Philips. Let’s be clear though – I can’t guarantee anything.”

“It is a lead. In two weeks you have come up with a better lead than the police have in four months. Put yourself in my shoes. How could you live with yourself, knowing that you hadn’t done everything possible to determine what caused the death of your daughter?”

McCann thought about that for a few seconds. Out the window behind Philips he could see leaves spiraling off the trees towards the ground, dropping one by one.

An announcement, first in gobbledygook and then in a clear, robotic American English, pulled him back to the present. ‘Serves you right for taking this on in the first place’, he thought. ‘Should have stuck with the regular work.’

He considered the phone messages he had received in the two days before leaving for Japan – two simple, regular jobs. One low-level fraud, and a suspected adultery – a tasty divorce case from Hillary, Moss, Weston and Partners, his best clients. He had had to turn both of them down to follow up this lost cause. He ran his hands through his dishevelled hair. After twenty hours of non-stop travelling it needed a wash.

“Why the hell did I get myself into this?” he muttered, a little too loudly. The man in the seat across glanced up from his newspaper at him. An Asian face in a slim, dark grey suit.

As sharp as the folds of his paper. Unruffled.

McCann staggered off the train at Shinjuku Station into a cacophony of movement and noise. He travelled light, and wheeled his small Samsonite suitcase through the blur of people as he tried to get out onto the street. It was a huge, confusing maelstrom of shops, noise, escalators and passageways leading off in all conceivable directions. Everything gleamed in the fluorescent light. He struggled out the station into the grey twilight. It had stopped raining.

Though dog-tired and desperate for a shower and a sleep, he couldn’t resist a short walk around before heading to his hotel. It was a sensory overload of sights, sounds, smells and above all energy, the energy of fourteen million people in perpetual motion, unwilling, unable to slow down or stop.

Buildings everywhere: massive business skyscrapers; smaller concrete office blocks covered in pipes and air conditioner units like barnacles stuck to a ship’s hull; quirky designs at odd angles; tiny noodle shops slipped in between crazed-looking square block buildings spewing noise and flashing epileptic lights with huge neon signs saying ‘Happy Pachinko’ beside ten foot tall green-haired cartoon girls dressed in leather hot pants and blue thigh-high boots.

Signs all over the place, lit up in red, yellow, blue and white; some on gigantic billboards atop the skyscrapers, others on massive digital screens clinging to the sides. In English he read: MMC, Sony, Takashimaya Times Square, Hitachi. At ground level, a mishmash of digital displays and lighted signs advertised stationery shops, bars, a myriad of restaurants, bookshops, and coffee shops, the occasional English word peppering the Japanese hieroglyphics and catching his attention. There was plastic food in windows – so realistic McCann had to double-take to check it wasn’t real – showing everything from noodles suspended in mid-air on chopsticks held by invisible hands, to large glasses of beer, complete with frothy head and simulated frosting on the glass, looking so tasty they made McCann’s mouth water.

Rows and rows of taxis, almost identical four-door box saloon Toyotas and Nissans – some black, some apple green and banana yellow – picked up a dark blue and grey stream of salarymen, the monotones punctuated by the occasional older lady or backpack-wielding Western couple, and whisked them off into the flow of trucks, buses, private cars and motorbikes roaring round the main arteries of Shinjuku Dori and Yasukuni Dori. On McCann’s left, a chemist’s shop, its wares spilling onto the street: energy drinks made from the alchemy of ginseng and nicotine placed beside hand cream and shampoo. The owner was engaged in aural mortal combat with a staff member from a mobile phone shop on his right. Each was screeching ear-splitting slogans at the passing stream of commuters through megaphones. The two voices melded with each other and with the Euro-beat techno music being blasted out from another nearby shop into a jumble of white noise that almost physically knocked McCann reeling. The commuters seemed not to even hear, pushing relentlessly towards or away from Shinjuku station.

He decided to eat something before attempting the daunting task of making his way through the crazy maze of streets and people to wherever his hotel was, and settled on a cheery looking burger shop. The comforting familiarity of an English menu set out on a large easel by the window, with pictures of western fast food reassured his jet-lagged mind and already travel-sick belly.

Inside, the decor was what he supposed to be a Japanese take on a 1950’s American diner. The stereo seemed to be playing the entire Beatles back catalogue, which was annoying when it was Twist and Shout but cheered McCann up when replaced by Helter Skelter. He moved to the counter, where a lovely girl of about eighteen greeted him with a dazzling smile and something in Japanese. McCann responded back with the best face he could muster. He was delighted; how could he not be? At this the girl’s grin broadened to Cheshire cat proportions and she said to him, “Are you English menu?”

“Yeah, please.” Things had started well, he felt like a teenager at the school disco who has just been asked to dance by the hottest girl in the year. ‘How could anyone look so happy to be working in a burger joint,’ he wondered.

In an attempt to show some sense of recognition of his new surroundings, he chose the teriyaki chicken burger. Amazingly lager was also on the menu, so he asked for a glass and she beamed at him some more. Confused but massively cheered up, he found a place to sit. The meal was brought to him a few minutes later. It was good and he ate ravenously.

Wiping his mouth and hands with a paper napkin, he took a glug of lager, rummaged around in his travel bag for his iPhone, and pulled up the digital notepad filled with names, memos, dates and staccato comments; his memory jogger.

Scrolling through the file, he stopped at Carl Pounder. A psychic pain shot through his left leg. No danger of forgetting that bastard in a hurry.

The lock clicked and the chain unzipped. The door opened with a stench of occupancy and Mr. Carl Pounder – laughing about something – grabbed his dog by its nail-studded collar and hauled it back into the house. The tenant had the shadow mark about him, something that hid there and waited. A hand was offered and McCann shook it. It was calloused and gripped hard and for too long. McCann looked at the man’s eyes and they were insensate too: a grey blue. Pounder was not tall and had the look of a shaved weasel about him. A wall of heat hit McCann as he entered; the central heating gasped. Pounder indicated that McCann should sit at the kitchen table.

“Me name’s Carl. Want a brew?”

“Bit early, isn’t it?”

“A cuppa, mate.”

“Oh. Sure.”

Pounder was shirtless and barefooted and moved well, as if in a semi-glide, cat-like.

“That’s Marvin, by the way. The most useless fuckin’ pit bull in England.”

“He a pedigree?”

“Not exactly but his old man was a ripper. Game as they come. Christ knows how he begat that piece of shit.”

McCann patted the dog’s head and sat back down. It was time for work.

“Why you leaving, Carl?”

“Cash flow, mate. Lost me job and that.”

True enough. Since the incident the police, anxious to be seen doing something useful, had busted some dealers and Pounder was one. His main job had been to launder stuff; pick it up from meeting points on the hill and redirect it, bagged and ready, to the metropolis. The police had caught him in the act and he was on bail, likely to go down for a spot of hibernation. There was a silence as the gas hissed under the kettle in the other room. McCann blankly considered Pounder’s shifty-looking face.

“Hard times right enough.”

“Well you must be doing alright, mate. Wot you do, like? Just a sec, kettle mad for it.” McCann let the seconds tick and waited as Pounder went back to the kitchenette, turned off the heat and opened the cupboard for cups. It struck McCann that Pounder had one eye on him all the while. When he looked up with a furrowed brow from the tea cups,

McCann answered.

“I am a private investigator.”

If Pounder was spooked he didn’t show it. He continued dipping the teabags in the cups and came towards the table with the tea and a bag of sugar.

“I don’t take sugar, Carl. You do, I presume.”

Pounder slid gracefully into the chair opposite McCann. “What the fuck you want?”

“To help you Carl, and for you to help me. A deal shared, a negotiation agreed on, a win-win situation for both the gents involved.”

He took a wad of notes from his pocket and keeping his eyes on Pounder placed them on the table. Pounder remained silent, calmly rolling a cigarette and giving McCann the cold glacial eye.

“How’s Charlie, mate?”

Pounder blew nicely spun rings of smoke at McCann. “There’s a lot of Charlies pal. You’re a bit of a one your fuckin’ self.”

McCann picked up the notes that were new and clean and almost gleaming with greed and strummed them. “Fresh, Carl. Your name written on them, except for these two.” McCann took two fifties from the bunch. “Fly away Peter, fly away Paul. You know that game, Carl? It’s for kids. Sometimes the birdies fly away and some of them come back. Other times all the birds fly away and don’t ever come back. Which game does little Carl want to play?”

Pounder’s gaze had stirred and a look approaching curiosity had entered into it. Perhaps the predator had scented blood.

“Look Carl, let’s have a real brew. You get the glasses. I’ve got the hooch.”

Pounder watched McCann extract a bottle of Macallan from his bag. He let out his breath and grinned. “Alright, could do with a nip of that. Ain’t got no glasses like. Bottle alright?”

Bottle it would have to be then. McCann watched him empty the whisky bottle to below the neck and wondered how well Pounder could handle the booze, and if the drink would work in his favour or not. Pounder had pushed the chair back from the table and had moved to the edge of it, shoulders hunched but loose and elbows at rest on his knees; a stance coiled for adversity. He looked hard, and he was. It wasn’t a pose.

“I fought middle, Carl. Read about you. Welter, wasn’t it?”

“Still fuckin’ is.”

Pounder handed the bottle to McCann, held onto it briefly and then released it. “Don’t like your type but the money looks aright. So what the fuck you want?”

“I told you. Where’s Charlie?”

The room would have been silent if not for the dog that was pacing back and forth in excitement, as if it felt the tension filling the darkening room and the murmur of coming violence. Pounder slowly stood up, moved to the side and twisted fast, punting the dog with a hard right kick. Marvin snarled but backed off, whimpering, into a corner.

“You should leave Marvin alone lad. It’s another mongrel we’re interested in. Charlie Davis. Where is he? Where’s he run off to?”

McCann took another nip of whisky. Careful son, he was thinking, just enough to relax the nerves. You’ll need them supple, for here is a contender and you never were. The afternoon light was dimming and given the circumstances of the undercurrent present, it was with some gentility that McCann handed back the bottle. Pounder breathed, sat back down, took another hearty slug then slammed down the bottle in the centre of the table. He was a man marked by the look of never getting ahead beyond anything but a few steps in front of him. He spoke slowly and made his accent more pronounced, as if mocking the gap between the classes. “Charlie fucked off after the trouble at the hippy do. Owed me money and that, but he done a runner.”

McCann smiled and raised his eyebrows. “You were best mates. Where did he run to?”

“No idea, man. London maybe. The cunt grassed me up.”

McCann stretched his arms and laughed. “Closing time, Carl.” He hoped he looked hard but knew he was just heavy. All the same he had to appear dangerous, intimidating and real, no matter how he felt. Part of the job. He took the notes and halved them. “Don’t mind if I smoke as well, do you Carl?” In the silence McCann lit up and blew blue smoke into Pounder’s face. “Camel Lights, on the doc’s advice. A shite smoke, but a smoke.

You’ve got until the end of this smoke.”

Pounder played with a pinkie ring and first lowered his head then raised it up like a marlin, sword first, jaw hooked.

“Okay. I got names for you.”

McCann picked up his coat. “You got fairytales Carl. I want one name, Charlie Davis’, and a place, and it better be the right one.”

Pounder’s restless vibe varied like the clouds rumbling across Pendle Hill outside. Now he faked indifference, made to ignore McCann, began to roll another cigarette, his head bent over the job, frame taut like steel or glass in the dark blue light cast by the window. The dog was also quiet, still waiting. It was almost dark. Pounder was lighting up and focused on his first drag.

Time to act. McCann threw his coat over Pounder’s head and dropped onto him, knocking him to the floor and hammer-thumping him to the head. Pounder twisted and slipped but McCann had him smothered and hurt. He kept the coat over Pounder’s face with his left hand and thumped him with the right. “Submit time, Carl?” He was trying to sound more convincing than he felt. No answer. He hit him again and just managed to avoid Pounder’s attempt to leg-grip his neck. But Pounder wriggled out of his clasp and let him have two ferocious but uncontrolled swings, catching him on the neck and the back of the head. McCann gasped and heaved the smaller man down onto the floor again, using his big body to pin Pounder down; it was like trying to wrestle with an octopus. They smacked into the table; something fell off it and there was a breaking sound. McCann’s legs scrambled for leverage but could only uselessly kick something behind him. A crisp, hard kidney punch almost winded him but gave him the boost of adrenalin he needed for five quickfire hits, and then he knew the other was really hurt. He forced his whole weight down on Pounder, who finally grunted a submission. McCann released him. Pounder got up slowly. His face was bruised and reddened, his eyes outraged. “Put the fucking money on the table.”

“Yes, Carl. As you say. Now where is he?” McCann tried to get his breathing under control and eyed a bemused-looking Marvin, who had strangely sat throughout the dramatics without a sound or motion.

Pounder paused, rubbed his aching body, retrieved his cool and his cigarette from the ashtray, drew, exhaled, and through the smoke said, “Japan. He’s in Japan.”

Dripping with sweat McCann backed out and slowly took the stairs. Pounder had scared him. He was shaken alright, but it was done now and he had what he wanted. He was looking forward to the drive home, and the view of the dales of Yorkshire looming above the ground mist. One down. He hit the bottom floor and stepped out.

The dog came at him like a torpedo but from a distance. Pounder was a hazy figure in the dimming smoky light and McCann could hear him laughing. The animal moved fast for a creature of such bulk and McCann backed into the building, keeping the door slightly ajar and readying himself for the dog’s attack. It was a heavy steel fire door and if he timed it right the brute would go for the gap and he would crush its head with repeated slams. The dog’s speed increased and McCann braced himself for the canine tank to fly, but nothing impacted. Marvin screeched to a halt before the door, raising dust and barking, then just sat down, turning his head to the side, and looking at McCann with a kindly, ‘What’s next?’ expression.

What’s next was Pounder, who was on his way hissing curses and spitting. McCann turned and went for Pounder again, stepping over the dog and slamming the door behind him, throwing his extra weight into the offensive, knowing the other’s skill would overcome him if he didn’t use the next seconds to his advantage. The contact first went McCann’s way and Pounder was stopped in his tracks with a hard right, but he danced back with stealth and started bobbing. McCann had never faced a kick boxer before and Pounder seemed to know it as he kept his distance, circling and throwing kicks to the shins and calves. McCann knew how to avoid punches but not kicks and he could quickly feel his legs weakening. He went forward and at Pounder, throwing hooks, and caught him hard again, but not hard enough. Pounder backpedalled once more, composed himself and resumed kicking, then switched styles and moved in punching, fast steady punches flying at angles into McCann’s body and face.

In return McCann let go two lefts that glanced, threw a right that missed and was clocked by an uppercut. Two straight rights followed, jabs, but hard as only a southpaw can throw them. Then came a huge right. He saw it and his nose was saved but the impact put him down as it connected to his ducking skull.

McCann had little left and Pounder was howling, “Get up you cunt! Sometimes birds fly back and sometimes they…” The boot caught McCann in the chest, direct to the sternum. He was helpless, panting and spitting blood. McCann’s lungs had given up; all he had left was willpower but he felt himself sliding downwards. He tried to balance himself and grab Pounder by the balls when he felt the horror of the dog move in. Its hind leg scraped his face and he could feel its breath in his nostrils as he brought his hands up to protect his face. Then he waited for the fangs to strike and fix and begin ripping his hands to shreds. Somehow he had to protect his throat; it was the waiting game now. But all he could feel was the softness of the dog’s tongue and all he could hear was a concerned whimpering coming from the dog’s throat. But then the dog yelped and the voice of Pounder screamed at it and he laid in with hard kicks, “Out of the way you fuckin’ useless hound!” Sensing a space McCann removed his hands and saw that Marvin had Pounder by the calf and was biting deep into his flesh. Pounder went down and tried to grab the dog by its back legs but failed as the dog used its instincts to protect the tender parts and twist beyond the reach of the man. McCann stood up to a spinning world and knew he had to act fast. He smacked Pounder hard then took the boot to him. Again and again he kicked, even once losing his footing as Pounder caught his leg. But he kept kicking and Pounder got weaker and McCann went down hammer punching Pounder’s face until he felt the other lose consciousness. The dog still held fast to his master’s ankle and McCann could see blood around the trouser hem. Struggling for breath and in considerable pain, McCann carried out a brief damage assessment. The prognosis was – he’d live.

Lurching towards his car, he got in, scrabbled around for his keys and started the engine. He could see the inert figure of Pounder as he twisted the mirror. He put his foot down and almost didn’t see the dog. Marvin was in front of the car. And Marvin was smiling, through bloodied fangs and with the look of one pleased with himself. McCann pressed the horn and edged forward but the dog wouldn’t budge. Marvin just repositioned himself like the tank man in Tiananmen Square. McCann swore at the stupidity of it. He opened the passenger door and the dog hopped in, looking at McCann with a satisfied smile.

McCann looked back in a daze.

He stopped the car some way out of Pendle, retrieved a water bottle from the back seat and splashed it on his face, trying to clean the cuts and make himself less noticeable. The whole time the dog was watching him. McCann looked at Marvin, cupped his palm and poured a little water out for it to drink. The dog seemed grateful and gave a little bark.

“Thanks Marvin.”

The dog boomed out a bigger response. They drove off towards home and neither of them noticed the rolling hills of the dales or much else for that matter. But a sense of good future communications had perhaps been established.

McCann absent-mindedly looked out at the darkening evening and massaged his temples with his right hand. His brain was fuzzy and the heaving mass of people outside was not enticing him to leave his temporary haven, but he needed to find his hotel and rest. He sighed, stood up and glanced once more towards the girl at the serving counter. For a second their eyes met and she smiled briefly; so natural it stopped his heart for a beat and he felt a pang of sadness for all the things that weren’t going to happen in this life, or any other.

He had booked himself into the Happy Sunshine Hotel Shinjuku – stupidly cheerful and compared to the other options, cheap enough. He pulled up the map on his iPhone, trying to equate the icon marking the hotel with his current location. He followed the crowds back towards the monolithic Shinjuku station and walked for a few minutes in a vaguely northeastern direction. The hotel was somewhere between Shinjuku Sanchome station and the main road, Yasukuni Dori, but incredibly most of the streets were unnamed and although fairly sure he was in the correct area, he walked round and round the labyrinth of narrow, bustling alleys with a gradually increasing sense of fatigue and frustration. Even the map on his smartphone seemed to be playing games with his mind. Three times he wheeled his seemingly heavier and more cumbersome travel case from the station along Yasukuni Dori, bumped into people, turned down one of the multitude of side streets to his right, got hopelessly lost, and ended up back at the station. Passing the same jewellery shop again and again was starting to piss him off. He would have to ask for help.

Approaching the man closest to him, who was wearing a business suit and carrying a briefcase, McCann pointed vaguely at his phone map. “Emm, excuse me…”

The man bustled straight past him, head down, appearing to not even hear him. He cursed himself, thinking he should have asked the girl in the burger shop. Next up, a woman of about thirty-five . Smile, Colin… “Excuse me…”

The woman, startled, looked up at him quickly, gave him a body swerve worthy of an American football wide receiver in full flow, and disappeared into the crowd. McCann shook his head and giggled to himself exhaustedly. Back near the East exit of the station again, comparing his online map with the large tourist one, he heard a sing-song female voice behind him. “Hello. Can we help you?” It was sweet and slightly shy, like a talking baby chipmunk in a Disney cartoon. He turned round and saw a young couple, perhaps university students, standing arm in arm, smiling at him. Their heads were cocked to one side, interested. Trainee scientists in lab coats with clipboards observing an experiment? McCann was starting to get the floating feeling: dislocation of time and space.

He blinked, smiled, spoke. “Actually, yes. I’m looking for a hotel and I’m having a terrible time finding it.”

“Hotel? Can you show map?” It was the young man who spoke. The chipmunk girl was looking at her boyfriend, obviously delighted that he was taking on the Good Samaritan role.

“Umm, this one, ‘Happy Sunshine Hotel Shinjuku’.”

The couple briefly discussed it together, comparing the map with the phone and pointing.

More big smiles. “It is okay! No problem! Achi desu ne. Sugu soko desu yo.”

They walked back towards Yasukuni Dori.

“You are American?”

“No, English.”

“Oh! England! I like The Beatles.”

“Yeah, they seem to be very popular here. They were playing Beatles stuff in the burger shop.”

Blank looks. Empathetic, almost apologetic smiles. “Sorry. English, no.” The couple talked quickly together then laughed. The Good Samaritan tried again.

“England. Soccer?”

“Yeah, I suppose I like football.”

“Manchester United?”

“Ha! Actually I live very near Manchester. Near. Close.”

“Manchester,” the young man nodded his head thoughtfully. “David Beckham – now ojisan, no more soccer, but still very cool!” Thumbs up.

McCann’s turn to laugh. “Yeah, but my Dad took me to watch Aston Villa. He wasn’t a Man United fan. Aston Villa. Charlie Aitken, Gordon Cowans, Paul McGrath ... you probably don’t know any of those lads, eh?”

“Nan te iutteta?”

“Mattaku wakkanai! Do you like Japan?”

“Well, I just got here, but so far yes. Good!” McCann’s turn to give the thumbs up.

The girl spoke, “You are cool!” then laughed and playfully slapped her boyfriend on the arm. He laughed too. “This street, hotel. Look.”

He followed the pointing arm. Sure enough, in front of him the bland concrete block of the ‘Happy Sunshine Hotel Shinjuku’ and the name clear in English. He’d probably walked right past it three times. More smiles, handshakes, small bows.

“You are okay now?”

“Yes! Thanks so much for your help. Arigato! Sayonara.”

“Oh! You speak Japanese. Great! Ja, gambatte. Goodbye.”

The automatic doors slid open and McCann made his way to the front desk, where a man and a woman looked industriously busy typing on computers and moving bits of paper around. “Irashaimase,” they said in unison, straightening behind the desk like junior officers ready for inspection by a visiting general. McCann responded by mumbling his third and final Japanese word; “Konnichiwa.” Smiling uncertainly at them, he pulled the crumpled internet reservation printout from his jacket pocket. “Ummm…”

“Good evening, sir. Do you have a reservation?” The man’s English was smooth but seemed unnecessarily grave.

“Oh, yes. McCann, for three nights.”

He was shown to his room, put his case down beside the cheap desk and chair in the corner and flopped onto the bed, exhausted. Then he opened the fridge, took out a can of Asahi Super Dry and drank it as he lay there, propped up on pillows, flicking through TV channels that offered noise and colour but meant nothing to him.

He thought about mailing Philips just to let him know he had arrived, so he pulled out his phone again, but his mind was wandering and the room was swaying vaguely, like a pleasure boat on a tiny pond. One of Japan’s infamous earthquakes already? His eyes rolled in his head and he felt a strange static buzz somewhere at the back of the optic nerves and in his ears. Not an earthquake, he guessed. Exhaustion, disorientation and jetlag. He needed to shed his travel skin, both the metaphorical and the literal dust of the road. The moulded plastic shower room was cramped and utilitarian, but the hot water running over him made him feel human again. Then he had a second Asahi, crawled into bed and was asleep in seconds.

McCann was falling into the bed, or perhaps the bed was falling through the floors of the hotel. The sheets were clingy and crumpled and sticking to him, trapping him, twisting around his body. His head was roasting hot, his throat desert-dry. His tongue was stuck to the upper palette of his mouth. Pounder was a huge Jolly Green Giant, hands on hips, throwing his head back and laughing like a demon, and Marvin was roaring towards him, jumping at his neck, fangs bared, and he was turning to run, turning in treacle, so slowly he was never going to get away, turning in a dream…

He opened his eyes. Something had awoken him but it was no longer there. He rolled onto his side. The blue-green glow of the digital clock said 21:44. The room was like a furnace and the air was dry and stale. The window refused to open so he snapped on the air con and exhaled. He needed a glass of water desperately; took the two steps to the bathroom, gulped down a glass from the tap, tepid and chemical-tinged, and returned to the bed, puffing the pillow and sitting up.

Now he was wide awake. There were some miniatures and more beers in the mini bar, so he grabbed one of each, and seeing with pleasure the ashtray that adorned the table, took a pew on the edge of the bed.

His head was empty at first, then thoughts and images drifted in – he remembered observing Japanese women on the plane as the craft had risen into the blue stillness and transported him beyond what he knew, towards what he didn’t.

They were a group of four, about forty-five years old and all dressed with ladylike elegance and economy. He understood not a word of their conversation but paid attention instead to nuance, pitch and timbre. The language rattled on sing-songy, but was punctuated by pauses of “ano” and full-stopped by a snapping sound he heard as “neigh!” He watched the posterior of one who made for the toilet and it was flat and lean below slim but shapely hips. The others kept talking and neighing and incongruously sipping beer. They reminded him of puffins, with their large pale heads, striking outlined eyes and trim, neat little bodies. They kept smiling and bobbing their heads in jovial agreement with each other. All of them were carefully and tastefully made up but their demeanors seemed fixed and somehow fake. Fake – was that it? Or excessively mannered? Or was it something different?

Thoughts drifted on with the airliner; he was talking with the passenger beside him, a lean, older businessman from South Wales.

“So it’s your first time in Japan? Oh, you’ll love it. I lived there for years. Going back to visit a friend in Osaka. Worked together in a trading company in Kobe for twenty years. Great guy. He has some really marvelous stories about all sorts of stuff: a hilarious one about when he used to be a celebrant, back in the nineties. He almost managed to marry the wrong people by mistake.”

McCann turned away from the puffins and looked at his fellow passenger.

“Celebrant? What’s that?”

“Wedding celebrant. Pseudo-Christian weddings. They need a Westerner to dress up in the robes and act like a man of the cloth. Wave a Bible, do the, ‘I now declare you man and wife,’ kind of thing. Don’t need to be religious. Only two requirements for that job: One, speak some Japanese. Two, don’t look Japanese. White face good, black face good – any face good except an Asian face. Doesn’t fit the exotic image. So that was his weekend job, acting as a Christian priest – he made quite a lot of money at it, I believe.”

McCann smiled, incredulous. He mumbled to himself, “Fake…”

“But that’s Japan for you. It’s … different.”