The twenty-fourth anniversary of the attack had passed now as well, again unremarked upon in the offices of the Kodaka Detective Agency. Spring was advancing. Cherry blossom viewing spots in Kitanomaru Park were hard to come by. The world went on its way. It was business as usual.

Until it wasn’t.

Wada made most of Kodaka’s appointments for him. Most of his office appointments, anyway. He fixed personal rendezvous for himself. An unenthusiastic convert to modern technology, he recorded these in an old-style pocket diary and insisted Wada keep a paper diary for the office as well. He made occasional joking references to his reluctance to embrace paperless procedures, though Wada suspected he was also worried about the security of information committed to the virtual world. And there was no doubt many of his clients valued security so highly that his old-fashioned methods appealed to them.

That Friday, when Wada reached the office, she was mildly surprised to see an afternoon appointment with someone identified only by the hiragana み and た written in the diary in Kodaka’s inelegant hand. It must have been made after she’d left the previous evening. She mentioned it to him when he arrived. He was looking far from spruce but by no means unusually dishevelled. All she learnt from him was that み た was one Mimori Takenaga, her name recorded in traditional albeit abbreviated style with the surname first and the forename second.

‘She caught me on the telephone just before I left last night,’ Kodaka explained.

‘Husband trouble?’ Wada enquired.

‘Not the way you mean.’

And that was that. He didn’t elaborate. And Wada didn’t press him to. That was one of the things that made them a good team.

Mimori Takenaga arrived promptly at four thirty. She was a woman of about Wada’s own age, but smaller and more delicately built. She would have looked perfect in a kimono, whereas Wada, on those ever rarer occasions when she wore one, felt lumpy and awkward. In the fashionable western clothes she was actually wearing, Mrs Takenaga looked smart and affluent but somehow ill at ease. There was an impression of someone playing a part she wasn’t suited to, which the large, well-filled Mitsukoshi carrier bag she left in the waiting area failed to dispel.

She was closeted with Kodaka for about an hour, their voices reaching Wada as an indistinct murmur often drowned out by the telephone or traffic noise from the street below. The length of the consultation suggested the matter was both delicate and complicated. Kodaka asked for tea halfway through and Wada only caught a brief snatch of the conversation as she delivered it. Her curiosity was aroused, but she had no difficulty hiding it. Hiding her feelings came easily to her.