COVER

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Goddard’s first novel, Past Caring, was an instant best-seller. Since then, his books have captivated readers worldwide with their edge-of-the-seat pace and their labyrinthine plotting. He has won awards in the UK, the US and across Europe, and his books have been translated into over thirty languages. In 2019 he won the Crime Writers’ Association’s highest accolade, the Diamond Dagger, for a lifetime achievement in Crime Writing.

ALSO BY ROBERT GODDARD

Also by Robert Goddard

Past Caring

In Pale Battalions

Painting the Darkness

Into the Blue

Take No Farewell

Hand in Glove

Closed Circle

Borrowed Time

Out of the Sun

Beyond Recall

Caught in the Light

Set in Stone

Sea Change

Dying to Tell

Days without Number

Play to the End

Sight Unseen

Never Go Back

Name to a Face

Found Wanting

Long Time Coming

Blood Count

Fault Line

Panic Room

One False Move

The Wide World trilogy

The Ways of the World

The Corners of the Globe

The Ends of the Earth

DEDICATION

For my mother-in-law, Thelma North

ONE

UMIKO WADA WASN’T a private detective. she just worked for one. She answered his phone, managed his accounts, kept his records, talked through problems with him, greeted his visitors, fetched him bento-boxed lunches and made him tea, which he’d taken to drinking virtually all day now he’d supposedly given up smoking.

The sign on the door of the seventh-floor office in the Nihonbashi district of Tokyo where Wada spent her working days described it as the premises of the Kodaka Detective Agency. But there was only one detective in the agency: fifty-eight-year-old Kazuto Kodaka. There’d been several detectives, apparently, when Kodaka senior was in charge. But his son preferred to operate alone. What would happen if and when his body collapsed under the strain of his unhealthy habits and chronic overwork was easy to predict. Wada would need a new job. Which wasn’t a happy thought. She liked this job. It suited her.

She always thought of herself as Wada rather than Umiko because that was how Kodaka referred to her. It had seemed disrespectful at first. Now she was rather fond of it. It reinforced an image of herself she’d honed over years of being alone. Simple, strong, independent. That was Wada. Umiko was a girl she’d once been. The Wada she’d become was nearly forty-seven, though she looked younger, probably because, as her mother regularly reminded her, she’d never had children to raise and worry over.