Sakura thought quickly. If the police did not have the drugs, then where were they? The only explanation was that the nurse or the doctor had taken the packages after drugging her in the hotel room, then reported her to the police to get her out of the way. Or perhaps someone at the hotel had called them?

“I don’t know what you mean,” Sakura replied, her voice breaking.

“We find one packet,” the man said. “But there are more—yes?”

That was smart: whoever was responsible had left a little of the heroin to incriminate her and then taken the rest. Her thoughts went beyond her immediate difficulties, severe though they were, and on to how Takashi and Katsuro would react. How was she going to get Yamato back if she didn’t deliver the consignment? Takashi had a reputation for making people disappear—especially people who had crossed him—and if he thought that she had taken the packages herself, then he would surely kill her son and then her.

Sakura felt fresh tears. “What’s going to happen to me?”

“Tomorrow, you in court for charge and sentence. Then, prison.” The policeman’s face had hardened, any trace of sympathy disappearing when he realised that Sakura wasn’t going to tell him anything about the location of the narcotics.

Sakura’s voice quivered as she tried to assert herself. “Lawyer,” she whispered before repeating herself in what she hoped was a more confident voice. “Lawyer. I want a lawyer.”

The policeman laughed. He left the cell and slammed the heavy metal door behind him.

She pulled her legs up onto the concrete bed and curled up into a ball, wrapping her arms around her knees. She couldn’t stop thinking about her son: the party they had thrown for his third birthday, when Miyasato had given him a wrestling figurine that he had ordered from America. Sakura had had no idea who the comically muscular figure was, but, from the look of utter joy on Yamato’s face when he’d opened the present, she had seen that he was special in some way to him. The memory triggered others—Christmas, reading to him before he went to sleep, pushing him on the swings at Higashi-Shinagawa Park—and fresh tears fell down her cheeks.

She jumped as the hatch in the door snapped open. She looked up to see an arm extended through it, a plastic cup of water in its hand. She got to her feet, still dizzy, and started to walk across the cell to take it when the hand turned over and poured the contents of the cup onto the floor. Sakura watched the water run toward the drain. A cruel laugh came through the hatch before it was slammed shut.

35