Prologue

The limousine slid to a halt under a patch of bluish light. All the street lights in Tokyo were the same cold blue. At least they were in this part of the city.

                As the young woman waited, its window slid down.

                ‘Konbanwa,’ said a voice.

                Good evening.

                The man was well dressed and his suit obviously expensive. He had that slightly strange orange hair some Japanese men go for. Chapatsu, she thought. That was the term for it.

                ‘Konbanwa,’ she replied.

                Leaning forward, he clicked a button on the dash and one of the car’s rear doors swung open to show her black leather seats inside. A bunch of orchids lay on the back seat. He had music playing. Something she vaguely recognised.

                Harajuku girls – Gwen Stefani.

                Maybe it was a joke.

                As the blonde girl began walking, the car started up again. The puddles of light faded to darkness and back, marking her progress along the alley. She could hear other music from a pachinko parlour. The arcades were meant to shut at midnight. Somehow, the ones round here always found a way to stay open.     

                ‘Come on,’ he said.

                The blonde girl hesitated. 

                Glancing around, she saw she was alone.

Tourists thronged a street running parallel. She could see their faces through a gap between a garage and the side of a restaurant. The gap was blocked with plastic sacks of rubbish waiting for the morning collection.  She could see their faces, but that did not mean they could see her.

                As she walked, the limousine kept pace. The man inside was leaning over now, looking worried. He felt she should have accepted his invitation. 

‘Please,’ he said. ‘Get in.’

Should she?

                Problem was she already knew the answer to that.

                Soba noodles, thought the girl, as she passed the back window of a kitchen, her heels clicking on the lid of a drain. There were no sidewalks in this alley, only doors that fed direct onto the street, a couple of old motorcycles and a truck piled high with orange cans of butane.

                She knew this area well, its sounds and its smells. A clutch of narrow streets selling overpriced street food to executives and politicians searching for memories of a Tokyo that vanished when they were still boys.

                As well as hole-in-the-wall taverns and noodle bars, there were expensive restaurants, an all-night chemist, a pizza joint run by a Korean, and a Vietnamese tattoo parlour that hadn’t been open in all the months she’d been working here. Then there were the clubs.

                At least twenty of them, usually on a third, fourth or fifth floor. One was walled entirely with mirrors, another had red leather banquettes, and one featured a special room exclusively for VIPs. None really catered for tourists, but then few foreigners had the courage to brave the lifts that led into an older Japan altogether. She wasn’t the only Western woman to work the clubs. Although she was one of the youngest.

                Ahead of her stood a tee-junction. One direction fed back to the little ladder of streets that made up this area; the other led to one of Tokyo ’s famous raised expressways. That was where they’d be heading.

                ‘So,’ he said. ‘Are you getting in?’

                She nodded, and reached for the already open door.