* * *
The Roppongi District hadn’t changed that much in the six years since she’d last been there. It still smelled of grilled yakitori and hot, damp concrete. She had the taxi—a self-driving pod, naturally—pull up in a narrow alley she had last visited many years before.
In Dutch’s experience, Muto’s death notices came in threes. The first, left on a target’s pillow as they slept, would terrify them into submission. The second arrived with a phial of poison, indicating that the target should do the job themselves rather than endure the awful anticipation of the third, and final, notice, left on their bloody corpse.
That Muto had sent someone to kill Dutch outright rather than warn of her impending doom went to prove how really, truly pissed-off she was. Either that, or the woman’s sense of the dramatic had diminished with age.
The taxi trundled away after she had disembarked. People hurried past the mouth of the alley in bright-coloured shoals, heads down to avoid the rain. She located by memory a narrow doorway between a tattoo parlour and the entrance to a hostess club and made her way up tiny, cramped steps to the third floor. She pressed an ear against a door and heard a series of explosions and popping sounds overlaying peppy video-game music.
Dutch slid the katana out from under cover of her jacket, then stepped back before kicking the door hard. Its cheap hinges gave way on the third attempt.
The one-room apartment on the other side was tiny and cramped, its walls covered with pictures torn from games magazines and manga books. A heavy-set man in his mid-thirties, naked but for a pair of shorts, stood gaping at her. A computer screen still ran some techno-pop video game, and she saw a bucket under the chair where he’d been sitting. Dutch wrinkled her nose, smelling urine and body odour, and swallowed back a rush of phlegm.
‘Fuck me,’ she said, stepping towards the fat man with the tip of the sword aimed at his chest, ‘aren’t you a little old for this, Hiro?’
Hiro staggered back from her, his face twisted up in terror, and almost kicked over the bucket beneath his chair. He raised his hands and made little panicked sounds that caused his jowls to quiver. Then, at last, recognition lit up his eyes.
‘Dutch!’ he croaked in surprise. ‘It’s you? I thought—!’
He caught himself, but not quite in time.
‘That they put me in jail?’ she asked, coming closer. ‘Or that someone killed me?’ She lifted the tip of the sword until it touched his quivering chin. ‘Which?’
‘She—Muto—I—’ He gulped hard, moving back up against a wall beside the computer as he struggled to avoid the blade. ‘I—I didn’t know you were back.’
‘Bullshit,’ she hissed. ‘You’re the one who figured out I was back in Tokyo, aren’t you?’ She nodded at the computer. ‘Still her little pet hacker.’
He stared at her. ‘What? No, I had nothing to do with that. I mean—’ he halted.
She moved the point of the sword down to his belly button. ‘Imagine the mess,’ she said in a low voice, ‘if all this fat and guts got spilled on the floor. What were you about to say, Hiro?’
‘No, please.’ He made a whimpering sound and dropped to his knees. ‘We were friends. You don’t need to do anything like that.’
‘We were never friends,’ she reminded him. ‘Who’s the guy you sent to kill me in the hotel?’
‘Private contractor,’ Hiro said in a rush. ‘That’s all I can tell you. Even I don’t know his name—he’s one of Miyoko’s personal contacts.’
‘How did Muto know I’d be in Tokyo?’
‘I swear I don’t know! She told me, Dutch. I don’t know where the information came from!’
She felt sure the little shit was lying, but she didn’t have the time to figure out the truth: not with the time-trials mere hours away. She kicked him hard in the crotch and his face turned purple. He slid onto his side, gasping, his hands reaching down to try to shield himself.
‘Tell you what,’ she said, staring down at him. ‘Your chances of staying alive go way up if you tell me exactly what I want to know. Understand?’
He nodded frantically. ‘Whatever you say, Dutch.’
She smiled with grim pleasure. ‘I want the car.’
He blinked. ‘I—what car?’
‘You know which one,’ she snarled. ‘The Coupé. I want to know where she’s keeping it.’
His eyes grew round. ‘No,’ he said, his voice rank with desperation. ‘I can’t do that. You know Miyoko Muto. Whatever you do to me, she’ll do worse if she finds out.’
‘Well, since you’re such an elite fucking hacker, you’d better make sure she doesn’t find out—not unless you want your guts to wind up in that bucket of yours.’
* * *
It took a few minutes, and she watched him like a hawk the whole time, but soon enough she had both the address of a warehouse where Madame Muto stored some of her vehicles and the combination number for a safe in which, Hiro rushed to inform her, the Coupé’s car keys were locked. She used a bunch of computer cables to tie him up before gagging him with a half-rancid T-shirt she dug out from a pile in a corner. Then she headed back out, the sword once again wrapped up in her jacket, and caught another taxi halfway across town.
On the way, she used the taxi’s comms service to send a message to Nat care of the hotel, then sat back, brooding as the city sped by.
* * *
She found the warehouse down a side-street in Ikebukuro. Dutch stood next to a noodle stall on the opposite corner from the warehouse entrance, pretending to study the menu, and saw a single guard standing next to the ground-floor entrance. Metal steps above the entrance gave access to an upper floor.
The guard regarded Dutch with suspicion when she walked towards him. She played the naive gaijin to the hilt,
