Sakura smiled weakly at him, and he saw her lips were dry.

Milton got to his feet. “I’ll get you a glass of water. As long as you promise not to run away.”

“I promise,” she said.

“And then you can tell me again what’s going on.”

22

There was a plastic cup on the bathroom sink, and Milton peeled off the shrink-wrapped cover and filled it with water from the tap. He looked in the mirror and took a moment to confirm to himself that he was doing the right thing. It was possible that Sakura was lying to him—God knows he’d been fooled by pretty girls before—but he didn’t think so this time. She had been out of her mind on the plane, in no fit state to spin a false tale. He was not prepared to take everything that she said at face value, and he would have questions for her that she would need to answer, but, for now at least, he was prepared to stick around.

“He wanted to be an accountant,” Sakura said as Milton handed over the plastic cup.

“Who did?”

“Miyasato. My husband.” She took a sip of the water and then licked her lips. “Thank you.”

“Miyasato was your husband?”

She took another sip and put the glass down on the bedside table. “Yes. He died last year.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. What happened to him?”

She paused, perhaps choosing what she would tell him and what she would keep for herself. “They killed him.”

She looked at Milton, her brown eyes damp and full of pain. Her voice caught in her throat, and when she reached out for the glass on the table, her hand was shaking.

“Who did?”

“His own family. His father gave the order; his brother, Katsuro, did it.”

“This is to do with the yakuza?”

“The Nishimoto-kai.”

The name was unfamiliar, but Milton knew what the suffix denoted. Kai meant ‘group,’ and, when combined with a family name, it signified a criminal clan.

“I’ve been to Tokyo before,” he said, thinking back to when he had helped solve one of Ziggy Penn’s problems that had, he recalled, also involved a pretty woman. “I know a little about the yakuza.”

“The Nishimoto-kai used to be powerful. Takashi and Hachirō Nishimoto were in charge. Takashi is the father of Miyasato and Katsuro. Hachirō is my father.”

She made herself comfortable on the bed, examining the cannula in her arm with a frown as she did so. Milton frowned; why was the daughter of one of the clan leaders being forced to be a drug mule?