Freshly washed and dried, Katsuro sat on the balcony of his suite with his laptop balanced on his knees. He was staying in the Soori Bali, one of the most expensive hotels on the island. His father was paying for it and Katsuro knew that the old man would not bat an eyelid at the cost. It was some distance from Kuta, and the journey back last night had not been helped by his stopping at a pharmacist to get some dressings for his cuts and scrapes and to stock up on painkillers.

Katsuro sipped his coffee and considered his options. He had no idea where Sakura was, or the location of the drugs. He had undertaken dozens of jobs for his father since he had started his work for the Nishimoto-kai, and, in over a decade of travelling around Japan and outside it, he could not remember anything that had gone this badly wrong. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, a disaster.

And he needed to fix it.

He picked up his phone and tapped out a message before putting the phone back on the glass table at his side. A moment later, it rang.

The male voice sounded cautious. “Yes?”

“I need you to find the owner of a vehicle for me,” Katsuro said, closing his eyes and thinking back to the events of the previous day. “Can you do that?”

“No,” the voice replied. “But I might know someone who can.”

For a price, Katsuro thought. He would end up paying two people for the information, one of them earning a hefty mark-up for very little effort or risk, but that was nothing new. It was, to an extent, how his world worked. The cost of doing business. The man he was talking to was a policeman. Mid-level and nearing retirement with no chance of promotion. Men like him were always amenable to arrangements like the one that Katsuro had proposed.

“It’s a white Toyota Hilux, registration B1042PJ.”

“How quickly do you need it?”

“I need it now,” he said.

“I’ll see what I can do,” the policeman said. “Do you have an email I can use?”

Katsuro read out a temporary Gmail address.

“I’ll be in touch.”

* * *

Katsuro had only a few minutes to wait. He heard the ping of an incoming email and opened his Gmail tab. He clicked on the attachment in the email and saw the detail page of an Indonesian driving licence. On the right-hand side of the licence was a fingerprint, but it was the left-hand side that Katsuro was most interested in. Above a printed barcode was a photograph of a woman sitting against a dark blue background. She was good-looking, appeared to be in her mid-forties, and was staring at the camera with a faintly amused expression as if the photographer had caught her unawares. Katsuro reached out his index finger, tracing the name above the photograph.

Victoria Deschamps.