Katsuro turned round and picked up his bag from where he had left it in the well behind the driver’s seat. He pulled out the Glock 17 pistol that he had collected from the long-term storage locker he rented in Seminyak. He pulled down on the slide lock lever and it did not budge, confirming it was installed in the proper orientation. He pulled the trigger and cycled the slide quickly, satisfying himself that the reset was working properly and that the trigger safety had engaged. He pulled the trigger again, holding it to the rear of the pistol before cycling the slide to check the reset again. He went through the rest of his checks, making sure that the firing pin was safe and that the recoil spring didn’t need replacing. The pistol was old, and he couldn’t vouch for the reliability of the man from whom he had purchased it on the island the first time he had visited to deliver Sakura’s drugs; he would be especially thorough. His final task was to take a fully loaded magazine and slot it into the pistol.

He took out his phone and composed a message to his father.

I have her.

It wasn’t entirely true, but that was just temporary. It would be true soon enough.

The phone buzzed with a reply.

The packages?

Katsuro paused for a moment before replying, considering his best response.

Not seen.

He was composing a follow-up with a request for instructions when the phone buzzed again.

Find them and deliver them.

He nodded.

And then?

His father’s reply came quickly.

Clean up your mess, Katsuro-chan.

34

Sakura knelt on the bare concrete floor, bent at the waist with her arms wrapped around her midriff. A drain was just in front of her face, set into the centre of the cell. It was at the lowest point of the floor, with the concrete angled toward the grate to make it easier to hose down. She retched again, but, apart from a small amount of bile, there was nothing left in her stomach to vomit up.

Hoping that the nausea had passed, she struggled to her feet and, bracing herself with an outstretched arm against the wall, she made her way to the concrete slab that passed for a bed. It was bare, too, just like the floor. The cell was ten feet by ten feet. There was the bed, a forbidding metal door, and a bare bulb inside a wire cage on the ceiling. On the opposite side of the wall from the door was a barred window that was not much more than a narrow slit. There was no toilet; she guessed that the drain in the floor was used for that.