WADA WAS ON the seven thirty train to exeter when it pulled out of Paddington station the following morning. She tried to read some more of The Makioka Sisters, but the news of Kodaka’s death had robbed her of her normal powers of concentration. The words on the page floated disobediently before her. The refuge she was accustomed to finding in Tanizaki’s writing was denied her.

She’d been tempted to travel to Exeter in search of Martin Caldwell the previous day, following his failure to meet her as arranged at the British Museum. But she’d decided she should wait in London for a message from him. None had come. Nor had there been any further news from Dobachi. The afternoon and evening had passed in an agony of inactivity. She’d tried not to think too much about Kodaka’s final moments, which had turned out to be impossible. Sleep had come late and fitfully.

Dawn, though, had brought clarity if nothing else. She wasn’t going to do what was easiest or, at least in the short term, safest. She was going to do what, in all the circumstances, she judged to be best. Because that was her nature. And fighting against her nature was, as she well knew, futile.

The English countryside rolled gently past the train window for the next two and a half hours. The final approach to Exeter took her through lush water meadows. The sunlit scenery, refulgent with spring growth, made her wish she and Hiko had seen more of England than London, Windsor Castle and Stonehenge during their whirlwind European tour all those years ago.

Once she’d arrived in Exeter, she followed directions on her phone from the station to Caldwell’s address, 18 Barnfield Hill. Even on foot, she was blocked and diverted several times by building work and found herself wondering why such an ancient city seemed still to be under construction.

Barnfield Hill itself was tranquil enough, though, a gently sloping road of detached villas that looked as if they dated from the nineteenth century, or maybe the early twentieth. Number 18 was large, red-bricked and bay-windowed like its neighbours, though not quite as well maintained, with window frames clearly overdue for repainting. A gentleman’s residence when originally constructed, no doubt, but divided into flats now. In one of which lived Martin Caldwell.

Wada walked up the brick-stepped path to the front door and inspected the bell-pushes. She pressed the one marked CALDWELL and waited, wondering if he would answer. There was a speakerphone next to the buttons. But it remained silent, even when she gave the bell a second, longer push.

Her intention, if she got no answer, was to press a few other bells until she did, then try to talk her way in and see where that took her. Before she could try the tactic, however, she heard someone walking up the path behind her.