She entered what she took to be Quartizon’s boardroom. There was a large table, glass-topped and steel-legged, with pale leather swivel chairs spaced around it. There was no other furniture. Decoration was confined to a number of maple-framed oil paintings of abstract colour washes.

There was a second broad-shouldered man standing just inside the door. He glanced round at Wada, then looked towards the figure sitting at the far end of the table.

Wada had seen Hiroji Nishizaki’s photograph in photocopies of grainy newspaper articles stored by Kodaka in the kage-boshi file. They’d been taken when he was a younger man. She knew the year of his birth – 1945, Showa 20, the year of Japan’s great humbling – and she therefore knew his age. His large, pugnacious face, with bags under the eyes like bruises, a nose that looked as if it had once been broken and sullen teak-brown eyes under a widow’s peak of unnaturally dark hair, somehow suited him better at seventy-four than it had in middle age. He gazed at her expressionlessly, then gave a heavy-lidded nod to the man behind her, who left the room, closing the doors quietly behind him.

Nishizaki was wearing a pinstripe navy blue double-breasted suit, a crisp white shirt and a scarlet tie. However old he might be, he conveyed an impression of restrained power, of seething energy – or anger – barely held in check. He neither smiled nor scowled. He didn’t get up and he didn’t invite her to sit. She knew she must appear small and insignificant in such a room. But she didn’t feel it.

She wondered if she should speak first, since Nishizaki showed no sign of saying anything. She decided not to. If silence was a test, she didn’t intend to fail it.

At last, Nishizaki spoke. ‘Why do you not use your husband’s name?’ he asked, forming the words slowly. ‘It is expected of a widow as of a wife.’

‘I am not here to discuss my husband,’ she replied coolly.

‘They tell me he took twelve years to die.’

‘His killer took twenty-three years. If we are counting.’

‘You are not a respectful woman, are you, Wada?’

‘Are you a respectful man, Nishizaki-san?’

‘Perhaps you can teach me to be.’

‘I doubt I can teach you anything.’

‘So do I.’

‘I am here to—’

He held up a hand, interrupting her. ‘I know why you are here. Driscoll – or perhaps we should call him Ellery – has chosen you as his … emissary. A strange choice. But he is a strange man. Loyal for more than forty years. Then … disloyal.’

‘Will you hear his offer?’

‘Is it worth hearing?’

‘I believe it is.’

He nodded. ‘Then speak.’