So this is how I die, minutes after midnight on reclaimed land somewhere south of Tokyo bay. I sneeze, and the swelling in my right eye throbs and nearly ruptures. Sunday, 17th September. I cannot call my death unexpected. Not after the last twelve hours. Since Anju showed me what death was, I have glimpsed it waiting in trains, in elevators, on pharmacist's shelves. Growing up, I saw it booming off the ocean rocks on Yakushima. Always at some distance. Now it has thrown off its disguise, as it does in nightmares. I am here, this is real. A waking nightmare from which I will never wake up. Splayed on my back, far from anyone who knows me, my life bar at zero. My body is racked and I am running a temperature as high as this bridge. The sky is spilling with stars, night flights and satellites. What a murky, gritty, pointless, unlikely, premature, snot-sprayed way to die it has been. One bad, sad gamble that was rigged from the beginning. Very nearly my last thought is that if this whole aimless story is to go on, God the vivisectionist is going to need a new monkey for his experiments. So many stars. What are they for? September. I cannot call my death unexpected. Not after the last twelve hours. Since Anju showed me what death was, I have glimpsed it waiting in trains, in elevators, on pharmacist's shelves. Growing up, I saw it booming off the ocean rocks on Yakushima. Always at some distance. Now it has thrown off its disguise, as it does in nightmares. I am here, this is real. A waking nightmare from which I will never wake up. Splayed on my back, far from anyone who knows me, my life bar at zero. My body is racked and I am running a temperature as high as this bridge. The sky is spilling with stars, night flights and satellites. What a murky, gritty, pointless, unlikely, premature, snot-sprayed way to die it has been. One bad, sad gamble that was rigged from the beginning. Very nearly my last thought is that if this whole aimless story is to go on, God the vivisectionist is going to need a new monkey for his experiments. So many stars. What are they for?

Wednesday afternoon, I go to the bank near Ueno station to pay for my ads in the personal columns. The bank is a ten-minute walk down Asakusa Avenue, so I borrow an orphaned bike the company car of the lost property office. It is too decrepit for anybody to ever want to steal, but saves my lunch break nearly a quarter-of-an-hour walk down a busy road hot with fumes and the dying summer. No shade in Tokyo, and all the concrete stores the heat. I park the bike outside and go in the bank is busy with lunch-time, and burbling with a million bank noises. Drones, telephones, computer printers, paper, automatic doors, murmurs, a bored baby. Using an ATM to pay for Plan D is cheaper as long as I don't make a single mistake typing in the long string of digits, otherwise my money will go flying into the wrong account. I am taking my time. A virtual bank teller on the screen bows, hands clasped over her skirt. 'Please wait. Transaction being processed.' I wait, and read the stuff about lost cards and cheap credit. When I next look at the virtual bank teller she is saying something new. I gag on disbelief. 'Father will see you shortly, Eiji Miyake.' I treble-check the message is still there. I look around. Somebody must own this practical joke. A bank teller stands at the head of the row of machines to help people in difficulty, and she sees the look on my face and hurries over. She has the same uniform and expression as her virtual co-worker. I just point dumbly at the screen. She traces her finger across the screen. 'Yes, sir. The transaction is now processed. This is your card, and don't forget to keep your receipt safe and sound.'

'But look at the message!'

She has a Minnie Mouse voice. '"Transaction completed. Please take your card and receipt." No problem here, sir.'

I look at the screen. She is right. 'There was another message,' I insist. I look around for a practical joker. 'A message with my name on it.'

Her smile tightens. 'That would be most irregular, sir.'

People in the queue are tuning in. I flap. 'I know how irregular it is! Why else do you think I...' A uniform in a yellow armband arrives on the scene. He is only a couple of years older than me but he is already Captain Smug, Samurai of Corporate Finance. 'Thank you, Mrs Wakayama.' He dismisses his underling. 'I am the duty manager, sir. What seems to be the trouble?'

'I just transferred some money-'

'Did the machine malfunction in any way?'

'A message flashed up on the screen. A personal message. For me.'

'What leads you to conclude the message was for you, may I ask, sir?'

'It had my name.'

Captain Smug puts on this troubled frown from a training seminar. 'What did this "message" say exactly, "sir"?'

'It told me my father wanted to see me.'

I feel housewives in the queue bristle with curiosity and turn to one another. Captain Smug does a passable imitation of a doctor humouring a lunatic. 'I think it might be more than possible that our machine uses characters that may be somewhat tricky to read.'

'I don't work in a bank but I can read, thank you.'

'But of course.' Captain Smug eyes my work overalls. He scratches the back of his neck to show he is embarrassed. He glances at his watch to show I am embarrassing. 'All I am saying is that either some misunderstanding has occurred here, or you just witnessed a phenonemon which has never before occurred in the history of Tokyo Bank, nor, so far as I am aware, in the history of Japanese banking.'

I put my card back into my wallet and cycle back to Ueno station. I am so on edge all afternoon that Mrs Sasaki asks what the matter is. I lie about feeling feverish, so she gives me some medicine. During my tea break I use the ATM in the station which gives balance statements but which does not take payments. Nothing unusual happens. I search the faces of lost property customers for knowing glints. Nothing. I wonder if Suga did it. But Suga doesn't know about my father. Nobody in Tokyo knows about my father. Except my father.

Riding the submarine back to Kita Senju, I look around. Paranoia, but. No drone catches my eye, only a little girl. Walking back from the station, I catch myself looking in the road mirrors for stalkers. In the supermarket I buy a fifty-per-cent-off okonomiyaki and some milk for Cat. 'Buntaro,' I think while I queue. I got my capsule because a relative of my guitar teacher in Kagoshima knows a friend of Buntaro's wife could he have found out about my father? But what sort of video shop owner is powerful enough to use ATM screens as a personal telegram system? Some sort of unholy alliance between Suga and Buntaro? I get back to Shooting Star to find my suspect on the phone to his wife, running his hand through his thinning hair. They are talking about kindergartens for Kodai. He nods at me and makes a nagging goose with his hand. I watch a scene or two from a horror movie called You Go to My Head You Go to My Head. A cop is on the trail of a psychic killer who discovers his victims' darkest fear, and murders by trapping them in appropriate nightmares. 'I know what you're thinking, lad,' Buntaro says, putting down the receiver. 'Kodai isn't even born yet. But these places have waiting lists longer than Grateful Dead guitar solos. Get into the right kindergarten, and the conveyor belt goes all the way up to the right university.' He shakes his head, sighing. 'Listen to me. Education Papa. How was your day? You look like you had your bone marrow sucked out.' Buntaro offers me a cigarette and strikes himself off my list of suspects. Unlikely as it seems, the sole remaining candidate is now the likeliest: my father. What are we up to now? Plan E.

On Thursday lunch-time I go back to the same branch of the same bank to try out the ATM again. The same woman is on duty she avoids eye contact the moment she recognizes me. I insert my card, type in my PIN, and the virtual bank teller bows. Look! 'What dark room has no exits, but only entrances into rooms darker than the one before? Father waits for your answer.' I search for meaning is this some sort of warning? I look around for Minnie Mouse, but Captain Smug has been lying in wait for me. 'Another inexplicable message, sir?'

'If this isn't an inexplicable message' you sarcastic bastard; I rap the screen with my knuckles 'then give me another name for it.'

'Oh dear, sir, not exactly Bill Gates, are we? Perhaps the message was telling you that you lack the funds necessary to complete your transaction?' Of course, the screen has returned to normal: my pitiful bank balance. I look around is somebody watching? Erasing the message when a witness comes up? How? 'I know this looks weird,' I begin, not sure how to continue. Captain Smug just raises his eyebrows. 'But somebody is using your ATM to mess your customers around.' Captain Smug waits for me to go on. 'Shouldn't that worry you?' Captain Smug folds his arms and tilts his head at an I-went-to-a-top-Tokyo-university angle. I storm off without another word. I cycle back to the lost property office, as suspicious of parked cars and half-open windows as yesterday. My father was influential enough to have his name left off my and Anju's birth certificates, but surely this is in another league. I spend the rest of the afternoon attaching labels to forgotten umbrellas, and weeding out the ones we have held for twenty-eight days for destruction. Might my stepmother be somehow trying to intimidate me? If it is my father, why is he playing these pranks instead of just calling me? Nothing makes sense.

Friday is pay-day for us probationary employees recruited in the middle of the year. The bank is packed I have to wait several minutes to get to a machine. Captain Smug hovers in the wings. I pull my baseball cap down low. A woman with ostrich feathers in her hat keeps sneezing over me, and groaning. I insert my card and ask for 14,000 yen. The virtual bank teller smiles, bows, and asks me to wait. So far so normal. 'Father warns you that your breathing space is all used up.' I am expecting this: from under the visor of my cap I study the queue of impatient people. Who? No clue, no idea. The machine shuttles my money. The virtual bank teller bows again. 'Father is coming for you.' Come on, then! What else do you think I am in the city for? I drum the the virtual teller with the bases of my fists. 'You aren't from Tokyo, are you, sir?' Captain Smug is at my shoulder. 'I can tell because our Tokyo customers usually have the manners to refrain from assaulting our machines.' 'Look at this! Look!' I show him the screen and curse. What did I expect? 'Please take your money and remove your card.' It beeps. I know if I say anything to Captain Smug, or even look at the guy, I will be seized by an urgent desire to make him hurt, and I don't think my cranium could take another head-butt less than seven days since the last. I ignore his vexed sigh, take my money, card and receipt, and walk around the bank lobby for a while, trying to meet stares. Queues, marble floors, number chimes. Nobody looks at anyone in banks. Then I notice Captain Smug talking to a security man, and glancing in my direction. I slink off.

Between the bank and Ueno is the seediest noodle shop in all of Tokyo. As Tokyo has the seediest noodle shops in Japan, this is probably the seediest noodle shop in the world. It is too seedy even to have a name or a definite colour. Suga told me about it it is as cheap as it should be and you can drink as much iced water as you want, and they have comic book collections going back twenty years. I park my bike in the alley around the side, smell burnt tar through the fan outlet, and walk in through the strings of beads. Inside is murky and fly-blown. Four builders sit around four greasy bowls in silence. The cook is an old man who died several days ago. The single round light is dappled with the bodies of dead insects, and the walls are decorated with spatters and dribbles of grease. A TV runs an old black-and-white Yakuza movie, but nobody watches it. A gangster is chucked into a concrete mixer. Fans turn their heads, this way and that. With a shudder, the cook reanimates his corpse and sits up. 'What can I do for you, son?' I order a tempura-egg-onion soba, and take a stool at the counter. Today, the message said. This time tomorrow I will know everything whether this Plan E is the true lead, or whether it is yet another dud. I must keep a lid firmly on my hopes. My hopes boil over. Who else could it be, but my father? My noodles come. I sprinkle on some chilli pepper and watch it spread among the jellyfish of grease. Tasted better, tasted worse.

Outside in the glare, the bike is missing. A black Cadillac takes up the side alley, the sort that the FBI use for presidential missions. The passenger door inches open and a lizard pokes his head out short, spiky, white hair, eyes too far apart that can do 270-degree vision. 'Looking for anything?' I turn my baseball cap around to shade my eyes. Lizard leans on the Cadillac roof. He is about my age. A dragon tail disappears up one arm of his short-sleeved snakeskin shirt, and a dragon head twists out of the other.

'My bike.'

Lizard says something to somebody in the Cadillac. The driver's door opens, and a man in sunglasses with a Frankenstein scar down the side of his face gets out, walks around the back of the Cadillac and picks up a mangle of metal. He brings it around to me and hands it to me. 'Is this your bike?' His forearms are more thickly muscled than my legs and his knuckles are chunky with gold. He is so big he blocks out the sun. In shock, I hold the metal for a moment before dropping it.

'It was, yeah.'

Lizard tuts. 'People are such mindless vandals, ain't they?' Frankenstein shunts my ex-bike aside with his foot. 'Get in.' He jerks his thumb at the Cadillac. 'Father sent us to pick you up.'

'You came from my father?' came from my father?'

Frankenstein and Lizard find this funny. 'Who else?'

'And did my father tell you to trash my bike?'

Lizard hoicks and spits. 'Get in the car, yer lippy cock-wart, or I'll break both yer fucking arms right here, right now.' Traffic drags its heat and din to the next red light. What choice do I have?

The Cadillac purrs over the Sumida river bridge on air cushions. The tinted windows retune the bright afternoon, and the air-con chills the inside to fridge-beer temperature. I get goose bumps. Frankenstein drives, Lizard is in the back with me, sprawled pop star fashion. I could almost enjoy the ride if I weren't being abducted by Yakuza and if I weren't going to lose my job. Maybe I could find a phone and call Mrs Sasaki to say... what? The last thing I want to do is lie to her. Mrs Sasaki is okay. I tell myself these things are trifles my father has sent for me. This is it. Why am I unable to get excited? Northside Tokyo slides by, block after block after block. Better to be a car than a human. Highways, flyovers, slip roads. A petrochemical plant runs pipes for kilometres, lined by those corkscrewing conifers. A massive car plant. Acre upon acre of white body shells. So my father is some kind of Yakuza man. Makes sense, sort of. Money, power and influence. The white lines and billowing trees and industrial chimneys are dreamlike. The dashboard clock reads 13:23. Mrs Sasaki will be wondering why I am late. 'Any chance I could make a phone call?' Lizard gives me the finger. I push my luck 'All I-' but Frankenstein turns around and says, 'Shut the fuck up, Miyake! I cannot stand stand whinging children.' My father gives me no status. I should stop guessing, sit back and wait. We pass through a toll-gate. Frankenstein moves into top gear and the Cadillac eats the expressway up: 13:41. The buildings get more residential, and densely pyloned mountains shuffle this way. On the right the sea pencils in the horizon. Lizard yawns and lights a cigarette. He smokes Hope. 'Travelling in style, or what?' says Frankenstein, not to me. 'Know how much one of these babies costs?' Lizard toys with a death-head ring. 'Fuck of a lot.' Frankenstein wets his lips. 'Quarter of a million dollars.' Lizard: 'What's that in real money?' Frankenstein thinks. 'Twenty-two million yen.' Lizard looks at me. 'Hear that, Miyake? If yer pass yer entry exams, slave in an office all yer life, save your bonuses, get reincarnated nine times, yer'll be able to zip around in a Cadillac too.' I stare ahead. 'Miyake! I'm talking to yer!' 'Sorry. I thought I had to shut the fuck up.' Lizard whistles and a switchblade knife hisses open. 'Watch yer lippyliplip' the knife flashes at my wrist; the blade slices through the casing of my wristwatch and scrapes through its innards 'fuckhead.' The knife is spinning back in his fingers. Lizard's eyes flare, daring me to open my mouth. He wins his dare and laughs this scratchy, staccato laugh. whinging children.' My father gives me no status. I should stop guessing, sit back and wait. We pass through a toll-gate. Frankenstein moves into top gear and the Cadillac eats the expressway up: 13:41. The buildings get more residential, and densely pyloned mountains shuffle this way. On the right the sea pencils in the horizon. Lizard yawns and lights a cigarette. He smokes Hope. 'Travelling in style, or what?' says Frankenstein, not to me. 'Know how much one of these babies costs?' Lizard toys with a death-head ring. 'Fuck of a lot.' Frankenstein wets his lips. 'Quarter of a million dollars.' Lizard: 'What's that in real money?' Frankenstein thinks. 'Twenty-two million yen.' Lizard looks at me. 'Hear that, Miyake? If yer pass yer entry exams, slave in an office all yer life, save your bonuses, get reincarnated nine times, yer'll be able to zip around in a Cadillac too.' I stare ahead. 'Miyake! I'm talking to yer!' 'Sorry. I thought I had to shut the fuck up.' Lizard whistles and a switchblade knife hisses open. 'Watch yer lippyliplip' the knife flashes at my wrist; the blade slices through the casing of my wristwatch and scrapes through its innards 'fuckhead.' The knife is spinning back in his fingers. Lizard's eyes flare, daring me to open my mouth. He wins his dare and laughs this scratchy, staccato laugh.

Xanadu, way out beyond Tokyo bay, is having its grand opening today. Bunting flutters over the expressway exit, a giant Bridgestone airship floats above the enormous dome. The glands in my throat start to throb. Valhalla opens in the new year, and Nirvana and its new airport monorail terminus are still under construction. The traffic slugs to a crawl. Coaches, family wagons, jeeps, sports cars, coaches queue bumper to bumper through the toll-gate. Flags of the world hang limp. An enormous banner reads 'Xanadu Open Today! Family Paradise Here on Earth! Nine-Screen Multiplex! Olympic Pool! Krypton Dance Emporium! Karaoke Beehive! Cuisine Cosmos! California Lido! Neptune Sea Park! Pluto Pachinko! Parking space for 10,000 yes, 10,000! automobiles.' A motorbike cop waves us into an access road. 'Cadillacs get you in anywhere.' Lizard stubs out another Hope. 'One of ours,' says Frankenstein as the window slides down. 'The good old days are back. Before your time every fucking cop in the fucking city recognized us.' The Cadillac veers up a slope straight into the sun, tinted by the windscreen into a dark star. Over the top we enter a building site, walled off from Xanadu by a great screen of metal sheeting. Gravel piles, slab stacks, concrete mixers, unplanted trees with roots in sacks. 'Where are all the happy workers?' asks Lizard. 'Holiday for the Grand Opening,' says Frankenstein. Rounding a block of Portakabins comes Valhalla. This is a dazzling black glass pyramid built of triangles rising from building rubble. The Cadillac drives down a ramp into shadow, surfing to a halt in front of a barrier arm. A porter slides open the window of his box. He is about ninety and is either drunk or has Parkinson's disease. Frankenstein's window lowers and Frankenstein glowers. The porter repeatedly salutes and bows. 'Open,' growls Frankenstein, 'fucking sesame.' The arm rises and the porter bows out of sight. 'Where did they dig him up?' asks Lizard. 'The pet sematary?' The Cadillac cruises into the black, reverses and halts. I feel a lurch of excitement. Am I really in the same building as my father?

'Out,' says Lizard.

We are in a basement carpark smelling of oil, petrol and breeze blocks. Two Cadillacs are parked alongside ours. My eyes need more time to adjust it is too dark to see the walls, or anything. Frankenstein pokes me in the small of my back. 'March, cub scout.' I follow him a ball of dim light flickers on and off. A round window in a swing-door. Beyond is a gloomy service corridor smelling of fresh paint and echoing with our footsteps. 'Hasn't even been built yet and the lighting's already fucked,' notes Lizard. Other corridors run off from this. It occurs to me to be afraid. Nobody knows I am here. Wrong: my father knows. I try to fix landmarks in my memory right at this fire hose, straight on past this notice-board. Frankenstein halts by a men's toilet. Lizard unlocks it. 'In you go.'

'I don't need the toilet.'

'It wasn't a fucking question.'

'When do I meet my father?'

Lizard smirks. 'We'll tell him how eager yer are.' Frankenstein foots the door open, Lizard clamps my nose and shoves me in the door is locked before I regain my balance. I am in a white bathroom. The floor tiles, wall tiles, ceiling, fittings, sinks, urinals, cubicle doors everything is snowblindingly white. No windows, no other exits. The door is metal and unkickdownable. I bang on it a couple of times. 'Hey! How long are you going to leave me in here?'

Behind me a toilet flushes.

'Who's there?'

A cubicle door unbolts and swings open. 'Thought I recognized that voice,' says Yuzu Daimon, doing up his belt. 'What timing. You caught me in mid-dump. So what are you doing in a bad dream like this?'

Yuzu Daimon washes his hands, watching me in the mirror. 'Are you going to answer my question or am I going to get the silent treatment until our prison guard comes along to take me away?'

'You have a nerve.'

He shakes his hands under the dryer but nothing happens, so he dries them on his T-shirt. Its picture shows a cartoon schoolgirl lowering a smoking gun; her speech bubble reads So that's what it feels like to kill So that's what it feels like to kill... I like it I like it. 'I get it. You're still sulking about the love hotel.'

'You are going to make one great lawyer.'

'Thanks for the non-compliment.' He turns round. 'Are we going to keep up this period of mourning or are you going to tell me why you are here?'

'My father brought me.'

'And your father is whom?'

'I dunno yet.'

'That seems rather careless of you.'

'Why are you here?'

'To have the shit kicked out of me. You may get to watch.'

'Why? Did you maroon them in a love hotel?'

'Pretty funny, Miyake. It's a long story.'

I look at the door.

'Okay.' Daimon perches on the washbasin. 'Sit on any chair you like.'

There are no chairs. 'I'll stand.'

The toilet cistern stops filling and the silence sighs loudly.

'This is an old-fashioned war of succession tale. Once upon a time there was an ancient despot called Konosuke Tsuru. His empire had its roots way back in the Occupation days, in outdoor markets and siphoned-off cigarettes. You don't happen to... ?' I shake my head. 'Half a century later Konosuke Tsuru had progressed to breakfast meetings with cabinet members. His interests span the Tokyo underworld and the Tokyo overlords, from drugs to construction a handy portfolio in a country whose leaders' sole remedy for economic slumps is to pour concrete down mountainsides and build suspension bridges to uninhabited islands. But I digress. Konosuke's right-hand man was Jun Nagasaki. His left hand man was Ryutaro Morino. Emperor Tsuru, Admiral Nagasaki and General Morino. Are you with me so far?'

I give the patronizing slimer a slight nod.

'On his ninety-somethingth birthday Tsuru receives a massive heart attack and an ambulance ride to Shiba-koen hospital. This is February of this year. A delicate time Morino and Nagasaki were played off against one another by Tsuru as a check on his underlings. Tradition would demand that Tsuru name a successor, but he is a tough old dog and vows to pull through. Nagasaki decides to usher in his manifest destiny seven days later by staging his Pearl Harbor not against Morino's forces, which are on red alert, but on Tsuru's, which believed themselves to be sacrosanct. Over a hundred key Tsuru men are wiped out in a single night, all within ten minutes. No negotiation, no quarter, no mercy.' Daimon shoots me with his fingers. 'Tsuru himself managed to get himself lugged out of hospital one rumour says he was battered to death with his own golf clubs, another rumour says he got as far as Singapore, where a relapse caught up with him. He's history. By dawn the throne was Nagasaki's. Any questions from the floor at this point?'

'How do you know all this?'

'Easy. My father is a bent cop in the pay of Nagasaki. Next.'

A blunt answer from a slippery liar. 'What are you doing here?'

'Let me go on. If this was a Yakuza movie, the Tsuru faction survivors would team up with Morino and stage a war of honour. Nagasaki broke the code and must be punished, right? Reality is less exciting. Morino dithers, losing valuable time. The Tsuru survivors work out which way the wind is blowing and surrender to Nagasaki's offer of amnesty. They are promptly killed, but never mind. By May Nagasaki not only has Tsuru's Tokyo operations under his thumb, but the Korean and Triad gangs too. By June he is helping to choose the godfather of the Tokyo governor's grandchild. When Morino sends an ambassador to Nagasaki proposing they divide the kingdom, Nagaski sends the ambassador back minus his arms and legs. By July Nagasaki has the lot, and Morino has sunk to scaring brothel owners for insurance money. Nagasaki is content to watch Morino go extinct, rather than dirty the sole of his boot by stamping on him.'

'Why does none of this make the newspapers?'

'You straight citizens of Japan are living in a movie set, Miyake. You are unpaid extras. The politicos are the actors. But the true directors, the Nagasakis and the Tsurus, you never see. A show is run from the wings, not centre-stage.'

'Are you going to tell me why you ended up here?'

'I fell in love with the girl Morino fell in love with.'

'Miriam.'

Daimon's mask slips and for the first time ever I see his real face. The door bangs open and Lizard appears. 'Arewe comfortable, ladies?' He flicks open his knife, spins it, catches it and points it at Daimon. 'You first.' Daimon slides off the washbasin counter, still looking at me, puzzled. Lizard smacks his lips. 'The time has come to kiss yer oh-so-charming face goodbye, Daimon.' Daimon smiles in return. 'Is your dress sense a charity fund-raiser or do you actually believe you look cool?' Lizard smiles back. 'Cute.' As Daimon passes, Lizard whacks Daimon in the windpipe, grabs the back of his head and slams it into the metal door. 'I get such a hard-on from casual violence,' says Lizard. 'Say something cute again.' Daimon picks himself up, bloody-nosed, and stumbles into the corridor. The door is relocked.

Either I am losing my mind or the bathroom walls are bending inwards. Time bends too. My watch is dead so I have no idea how long I have been in here. Cockroach navigates the floor. I cup my hands and drink some water. I play a game I often play to console myself: searching for Anju in my reflection. I often catch sight of her around my eyes. I try this game: concentrate on my mother's face; subtract that face from my own; the remainder should be my father. Could my father be Ryutaro Morino or Jun Nagasaki? Daimon implied Morino brought us here. But he also implied Morino is washed up. Too washed up to own a fleet of Cadillacs. I suck a champagne bomb. My throat is sore. Mrs Sasaki will have decided Aoyama was right about me I am an unreliable dropout. Cockroach reappears. I suck my last champagne bomb. Lizard watches me from the mirror I jump. 'Here comes the moment you have been waiting for, Miyake. Father will see you now.'

Valhalla is one enormous leisure hotel. When it is completed it will be the plushest in Tokyo. Sugar chandeliers, milky carpets, cream walls, silver fittings. Air-cons are not installed, so the passageways are at the mercy of the sun, and under all this glass I am squeaking with sweat in thirty seconds. Thick smells of carpet underlay and fresh paint. On the far side of the building-site perimeter fence I see the vast dome of Xanadu, courtyards and even a fake river and fake caverns. The windows rob the world outside of all colour. Everything is in wartime newsreel tones. The air is as dry as a desert. Lizard knocks on room 333. 'Father, I got Miyake with me.'

I understand my stupendous mistake. 'Father' does not mean 'my father': 'father' means 'Yakuza father'. I would laugh if the afternoon were not now so dangerous. A voice rasps out a moment later. 'Enter!' The door is unlocked from inside. Eight people sit around a conference table in a spotless meeting room. At the head sits a man in his fifties. 'Sit the infant down.' His voice is as thirsty as sandpaper. Cavernous eye sockets, plump lips, mottled and flaky skin the sort used on young actors playing old roles and a wart in the corner of his eye bigger than a strayed nipple. My way-toolate fear was quite correct. If this troll is my father, I am Miffy the Bunny. I take the defendant's chair. I am being prosecuted by a group of dangerous strangers, and I don't even know what the charge is. 'So,' the man says. 'This is Eiji Miyake.'

'Yes. Who are you?'

Death gives me a choice. A point-blank bullet through the brain or a thirty-metre fall. Frankenstein and the stage manager of this black farce are placing bets as to which I will choose right now. Beyond hope is beyond panic. Here comes the Mongolian, strolling up the unfinished bridge. My right eye is so swollen the night swims. Yes, of course I am afraid, and frustrated that my stupid life is ending so soon. But mostly I feel the weight of the nightmare, stopping me waking. I am cattle in a cage, waiting for the bolt through my skull. Why gibber? Why beg? Why try to run when the only escape is a drop through blackness? If my head survived the fall, the rest of my body would not. The Mongolian spits, and folds a fresh strip of gum into his mouth. He pulls out his gun. After Anju I dreamed of drowning several times a week, right up until I got my guitar. In those dreams I handled fear by ceasing to struggle, and I do the same now. I have less than forty seconds. I unfold the photo of my father one last time. Dad is still uncreased. Yes, we do look alike. My daydream was right in that respect, at least. He is fatter than I thought, but hey. I touch his cheekbone and hope, somewhere, he knows. Down below on the reclaimed land Lizard whoops 'A twitcher!' Bang Bang! Picking off the wounded is more interesting to him than how I die. 'Yer got the wobblies too, huh?' Bang Bang ! 'Guns! The ultimate fucking video game!' ! 'Guns! The ultimate fucking video game!' Bang Bang! One of the Cadillacs wheel-screeches into life. My father sits in the driving seat of the car in the photograph, smiling at whatever Akiko Kato is telling him as she gets in. A black-and-white day gone by. This is the closest we get. Stars.

'Who am I?' The Yakuza head repeats my question. His lips barely move and his voice is tone dead. 'My accountant calls me Mr Morino. My men call me Father. My subscribers call me God. My wife calls me Money. My lovers call me Incredible.' A ripple of humour. 'My enemies call me the stuff of nightmares. You call me Sir.' He retrieves a cigar from an ashtray and relights it. 'Sit down. Your trial is already behind schedule.' I do as I am told and look around at my jury. Frankenstein, chomping a Big Mac. A weathered, leathered man, who appears to be meditating, rocking very slightly to and fro, to and fro. A woman is using a laptop computer, pianist fast. She reminds me of Queen of Spades' Mama-san until I realize she is is Queen of Spades' Mama-san. She ignores me. To the left are three identikit men from the catalogue of Yakuza henchmen. A horn section on pause. Through an opening, visible out of the corner of my eye, a girl dressed in a loose yukata sucks a popsicle. When I try to meet her eye she retreats out of sight. Lizard takes the chair next to me. Ryutaro Morino watches me, over the pile of junk-food Styrofoam boxes. The sound of breathing, the creaking of Leatherjacket's chair, the tappety-tap-tap of the computer keyboard. What are we waiting for? Morino clears his throat. 'Eiji Miyake, how do you plead?' Queen of Spades' Mama-san. She ignores me. To the left are three identikit men from the catalogue of Yakuza henchmen. A horn section on pause. Through an opening, visible out of the corner of my eye, a girl dressed in a loose yukata sucks a popsicle. When I try to meet her eye she retreats out of sight. Lizard takes the chair next to me. Ryutaro Morino watches me, over the pile of junk-food Styrofoam boxes. The sound of breathing, the creaking of Leatherjacket's chair, the tappety-tap-tap of the computer keyboard. What are we waiting for? Morino clears his throat. 'Eiji Miyake, how do you plead?'

'What is the charge?'

Lizard's knife scores a deep cut along the table edge. It stops an inch from my thumb. 'What is the charge, sir sir ?' ?'

I swallow. 'What is the charge, sir sir ?' ?'

'If you are guilty you know the charge.'

'So I must be innocent, sir sir.'

I hear the ice-lolly girl in the next room titter.

'Not guilty.' Morino nods his head gravely. 'Then explain why you were at Queen of Spades on Saturday the ninth of September.'

'Is Yuzu Daimon here?'

Morino gives one nod, my face whacks the table-top, my arm is yanked above my head one degree away from snapping off. Lizard grunts in my ear. 'What d'yer suppose yer just did wrong?'

'Didn't answer the question.' My arm is released.

'Bright boy.' Morino blinks. 'Explain why you were at Queen of Spades on Saturday the ninth of September.'

'Yuzu Daimon took me there.'

'Sir.'

'Sir.'