Curt was thoughtful. ‘I must let Professor Gates know. Doubt he’ll have seen anything like it.’

‘Can I use your phone?’ Rebus asked.

He knew one person who might know about the Yakuza - she’d seemed knowledgeable about every other country’s criminal gangs. So he spoke to Miriam Kenworthy in Newcastle.

‘Tattoos and missing fingers?’ she said.

‘Bingo.’

‘That’s Yakuza.’

‘Actually, it’s only the top bit missing from one little finger. That’s done to them when they step out of line, isn’t it?’

‘Not quite. They do it to themselves as a way of saying they’re sorry. I’m not sure I know much more than that.’

There was the sound of papers being shifted. ‘I’m just looking for my notes.’

‘What notes?’

‘When I was connecting all these gangs, different cultures, I did some research. Might be something on the Yakuza ... Look, can I call you back?’

‘How long?’

‘Five minutes.’

Rebus gave her Curt’s number, then sat and waited. Curt’s room wasn’t so much an office as a walk-in cupboard. Files were stacked high on his desk, and a dictaphone lay on top of them, along with a fresh pack of tapes. The room reeked of cigarettes and bad ventilation. On the walls: schedules of meetings, postcards, a couple of framed prints. The place was a bolt-hole, a necessity; Curt spent most of his time elsewhere.

Rebus took out Colquhoun’s business card, tried home and office. As far as his secretary was concerned, Dr Colquhoun was still off sick.

Maybe, but he was well enough to visit a casino. One of Telford’s casinos. No coincidence surely ...

Kenworthy was good as gold.

‘Yakuza,’ she said, sounding like she was lifting from her script. ‘Ninety thousand members split into something like two and a half thousand groupings. Utterly ruthless, but also highly intelligent and sophisticated. Very hierarchical structure, almost impenetrable to outsiders. Like a secret society. They even have a sort of middle management level, called the Sokaiya.’

Rebus was writing it all down. ‘How do you spell that?’

She told him. ‘Back in Japan they run pachinko parlours - that’s a sort of gaming thing - and have fingers in most other illegal pies.’

‘Unless they’ve lopped them off. What about outside Japan?’

‘Only thing I’ve got down here is that they - ship expensive designer stuff back home to sell on the black market, also stolen art, ship it back to wealthy buyers ...’

‘Wait a minute, you told me Jake Tarawicz started out smuggling icons out of Russia.’

‘You’re saying Pink Eyes might connect to the Yakuza?’

‘Tommy Telford’s been chauffeuring them around. There’s a warehouse everyone seems interested in, plus a country club.’

‘What’s in the warehouse?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

‘Maybe you should find out.’

‘It’s on my list. Something else, these pachinko parlours ... would those be like amusement arcades?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘Another connection with Telford: he puts gaming machines into half the pubs and clubs on the east coast.’

‘You think the Yakuza saw someone they could do a deal with?’