Chapter 4

Goro unlocked the shutters of Misono Home Centre at twenty to ten, ten minutes after the time painted on his window, and gave the two figures on his doorstep the look of a man who has found something unpleasant on his shoe.

The office was a narrow ground-floor shop on a side street five minutes from Urawa-Misono Station, wedged between a pachinko-parts wholesaler and a noodle bar that had closed for good. Handwritten listings covered the windows so thickly that the morning sun came through only in strips. Photographs of tired apartment blocks curled at their corners. Years of cigarette smoke had stained the ceiling the colour of old tea, and the air conditioner in the corner rattled like a bucket of loose bolts without making the slightest difference to the heat. A young woman in a pale blue uniform set down two paper cups of barley tea and slipped away without a word.

Goro dropped into a cracked imitation-leather chair and lit a cigarette. He was a thick-necked man of about fifty, with a stubbled chin and a shirt collar that looked as if it were slowly strangling him. He tapped a gold-plated ballpoint against the edge of his desk and studied his visitors the way a fisherman studies a pair of tired fish.

'Right. The Akiyama place.'

Eichiro had worn his grey hotel suit and carried a clear plastic folder in both hands, like a man who had been told to bring documents and had no idea which ones. A damp handkerchief was already balled in his fist.

'That's right,' he said. 'And this is Hisa Tomoya, who's advising me on the business.'

Goro looked at Tomoya properly for the first time, taking in the thin neck, the cheap white shirt and the plain black trousers. 'Advising. How old are you, son? Seventeen?'

'Nineteen.' Tomoya bowed from his chair. 'Hisa Tomoya. Pleased to meet you.'

'Hm. Well, Mr Hisa, I hope you learn fast.' Goro dragged a yellowed floor plan out from under a stack of folders and flattened it with his palm. 'Akiyama Press Works. Forty years of metal stamping, until the car-parts maker who bought everything he made moved its production to China and Akiyama was left with a building and a loan. You've got the workshop at the front, a hundred and forty square metres. And you've got the warehouse annex behind it, three hundred and twenty-five, with two loading docks and a yard. Four hundred and sixty-five altogether. One lease. The owner won't split it.'

Eichiro leaned forward. 'The listing only mentioned the workshop. A hundred and forty square metres, at a hundred and eighty thousand.'

'The listing is an advertisement,' Goro said. 'The whole site is two hundred and fifty thousand a month, and frankly, that's a gift.' He exhaled a long grey plume. 'I'll be straight with you, because I like you. You seem like a hardworking man. I've got a logistics firm from Kawaguchi coming at two this afternoon. They want the lot for a distribution depot. I'm showing you first as a courtesy. If you can't go to two-fifty today, I have to give it to them.'

Eichiro's handkerchief went to his forehead again. Goro watched the movement with something close to relish. Tomoya saw it too, and he saw how the broker's shoulders loosened a little, the way a shark's must when it catches the first thread of blood in the water.

Tomoya sat very still and fixed his dark eyes on the greasy face across the desk. He pushed past the rattle of the air conditioner, past the smoke, past the dry hum of the shop, until the room dropped away and a thin electrical buzz took its place. Then the voice came, faint and echoing, as if from the far end of a corridor.

Hook, line and sinker. The old fool's going to crack. That concrete box has sat there rotting for two years. Akiyama rang me last night, practically in tears. The bank wants the arrears cleared by the end of the month or it calls in the whole loan, and then it's the auction. "Take anything over a hundred and fifty, Goro, anything, just stop the bleeding." And he needs the cash in his account by three, before the counter shuts. So if I squeeze this one up to two-fifty, that's a hundred thousand a month over the floor, and my commission jumps with it.

There was no logistics company from Kawaguchi.

Tomoya let the connection go and leaned forward with his elbows on the scarred wood.

'We'll offer a hundred and fifty thousand a month,' he said. His voice was flat and unhurried, like a man reading out a bus timetable. 'A ten-year fixed-term lease, with the rent frozen for the whole term. Subletting permitted without any separate consent from the owner. We only need the workshop at the front. We'll find a use for the rest.'

The ballpoint stopped tapping. 'Excuse me, son? I've just told you I've got a logistics firm who—'

'There isn't one,' Tomoya said, without raising his voice. 'That building's been empty for twenty-four months. A property that's really in demand doesn't sit on the portal since the summer of 2004. The owner is behind with his loan. If he misses another payment, the bank takes the lot. He needs money now, and a hundred and fifty thousand a month is roughly what it takes to keep the bank quiet. We take a dead listing off his hands. You close a lease before lunch.'

Goro's jaw sagged. A fat worm of ash dropped from his cigarette onto the blotter. The smugness drained out of his face and something nearer to fear moved in behind it.

'I don't know who's been talking to you,' he said slowly. Dull colour was climbing his neck. 'But we don't run a charity here.'

'Nobody's been talking to me, Mr Goro.' Tomoya let a little puzzlement into his tone. 'You asked for two-fifty, and you don't believe it yourself. It's on your face.'

For a moment nobody spoke. The air conditioner clattered on. Then Goro slapped both hands flat on the desk, hard enough to make the barley tea jump.

'Fine. You want a ten-year lock, rent frozen, at rock bottom? Then I want a deposit to match. Five hundred thousand yen, in cash, on this desk, by three o'clock today, because that's when the landlord's bank shuts. Not a cheque, not a promise, not "I'll nip to the cash machine". Cash. Or the whole thing is dead, and you can take your coffee somewhere else.'

He folded his arms. He had made it sound like a threat, and he expected it to break them. Two men who had walked in with a plastic folder and a damp handkerchief could not possibly have half a million yen on them before lunch.

Eichiro put his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket and drew out a thick white bank envelope. 'Five hundred thousand,' he said. His voice was steadier than his fingers. 'Counted twice at the counter in Ōmiya, when it opened at nine.'

He laid it on the desk between the ashtray and the barley tea.

Goro stared at it. He picked it up, thumbed through the notes and counted them a second time, licking his finger. Then he grunted, opened a drawer, and the envelope disappeared into it.

'I'll have the contract drawn up,' he muttered, not quite meeting their eyes. 'Fixed-term, ten years. I'll insert your subletting clause. I need the owner's seal on it, and I have to read you the explanation of important matters, because the law says I must. Come back after five and you'll get your keys.'

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The noon sun beat down on the pavement of the side street, and the traffic on the main road roared by in waves of exhaust and heat. Eichiro stepped out of the shop and leaned against the brick front of the building, running a hand over his thinning hair. For a while he said nothing at all.

'Tomoya.' He was looking at the ground. 'That was the deposit, and with the agent's fee and the first month's rent, it comes to nearly eight hundred thousand yen. Add what I paid out this morning to clear Lumina's arrears, plus the hundred thousand I gave Tanaka, and I'm down to about a million and a half of the four million I promised myself.'

Tomoya turned to look at him.

'The builders alone will want two,' Eichiro went on, his voice tight. 'The machine you've set your heart on is seven hundred thousand by itself. Then tables, beans, the licences. And I told you, four million is my limit. The house and my pension are all I've got to retire on, and I'm not borrowing against either of them. So we've got a ten-year lease on an empty concrete box, and nothing left to turn it into a café.'

Tomoya didn't flinch. A thin, cold smile crossed his face, and he straightened his collar.

'Don't worry about the equipment, Mr Eichiro. Go back to the hotel. Clock in and act normal. I'm on the lounge this afternoon.'

Eichiro frowned. The boy's calm was starting to unsettle him as much as the money.

'Rich people throw away expensive things every day,' Tomoya said, looking towards the glass towers on the far skyline. 'I'll find what we need.'

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At two o'clock, in the corridor behind the service lift, Tomoya had checked his phone, a cheap prepaid one he'd bought on Wednesday after showing his driving licence at the counter, as the new law now required. The City of Saitama had posted a notice on its website. It was written in the dry language of a bus timetable: a revision to the land-use plan in the Misono district. By half past two, he guessed, every estate agent on the south side of the city would be ringing round every owner in the area.

The Executive Lounge on the fiftieth floor was nearly empty at that hour. The lunch crowd had gone, and the evening guests had not yet arrived. Rain-coloured light lay across the leather armchairs, and the only sound was the hush of the air conditioning and the occasional chime of ice in a glass.

At a corner table behind the pillar, Arata Kensuke sat bolt upright with a tall, thin man beside him. The thin man had slicked-back hair and rimless glasses and wore a silk suit so sharp it seemed to have been cut with a razor. Tomoya recognised the name from the reservation sheet: Kousaka Tajiro, Head of Acquisitions. The table in front of them was buried in blue architectural schematics. Arata's face was flushed dark, and he was jabbing a thick finger at a grey rectangle on one of the drawings.

Tomoya carried two glasses of iced water across on a silver tray with his head bowed, the picture of a good ghost. He set a coaster in front of Arata and placed the glass dead centre.

'You,' Arata snapped, without looking up. 'The shaky one. Hisa. Water for Mr Kousaka as well.'

'Certainly, sir.' Tomoya turned and bowed. 'Plain, Mr Kousaka, or with lemon?'

'Plain,' Kousaka said, not lifting his eyes from the plan.

It was only one word, but it was enough. Tomoya placed the second glass with a careful hand, stepped back, and let his gaze rest on the side of Arata's head.

The lounge dissolved. The hum rose, thin and electric, and then the voice swam up out of it, clear and close, and furious.

Damn it. Damn it. We were at Goro's office at noon for the Akiyama place, same as the others, before the notice went up. And his girl tells us it was let at ten. Ten! Some old man with a handkerchief signed a ten-year lease two hours before we got there.

Tomoya's hand stopped over the pitcher.

Mitronix's engineers need that building. Their lab equipment ships out of Penang next month, forty containers, and it lands at Yokohama on the fifth of October. They need a base within the district before the research centre goes up. Floor strong enough to take a hundred tonnes. Three-phase power. Two loading docks and a yard for the lorries. Veeroc's design team will be crammed in beside them. I've been round every shed in Misono, and it's the only one that fits. The owner wanted to sell, but the bank's consent would take weeks, so a lease was the only thing quick enough. If the base isn't ready on the first of October, the penalty is three hundred million yen, and the Mitronix board will take the whole project to Gunma, where they're already offering free land.

Kousaka has my authority for up to ten million to settle it. Ten million is nothing. Three hundred million is the end of me. Goro will give up the leaseholder's name for a bottle of Hennessy and fifty thousand in an envelope. Kousaka finds the old man tonight. Whatever he asks, we pay it.

Tomoya poured the last of the water with a perfectly steady hand, bowed to the table and retreated into the shadows. His pulse was calm, and it was moving very fast.

He had not simply rented a building for a coffee shop. By pushing Goro's hand a few hours early, he had accidentally bought the choke point of a hundred-and-fifteen-billion-yen project. He held the one piece Arata could not do without. Arata did not yet know who held it. In a few hours, he would.

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Arata and Kousaka left at half past four, still arguing in low voices.

As soon as the lift doors had closed behind them, Tomoya crossed to the hostess's lectern. Miss Ishida was at the far end of the room, rearranging a bowl of lilies. The reservation book lay open under the brass lamp, and Tomoya didn't have to look hard. Table 12. Arata Real Estate, Acquisitions Dept. Booked by: Kousaka. A mobile number sat beside the name, written in a neat blue hand. He read it once, and it stayed in his head like a nail.

He walked down to the staff corridor, to the house telephone beside the service lift. He dialled the extension for Banqueting. Eichiro answered on the second ring.

'Mr Eichiro. Change of plans.' He didn't wait for a greeting.

'Tomoya? Are you on your break?'

'Put on your best suit. The dark navy one you keep in your locker for funerals and VIP banquets. Bring the copy of the lease from this morning, and collect the keys from Goro at five, as agreed. Then be at the warehouse by half past. Stand outside, by the fence.'

'Now? Why?'

'Someone's coming to push you out of it,' Tomoya said quietly. 'Do exactly what I message you. Read it on the train. Don't improvise.'

'Tomoya, how do you know?'

'The lounge, Mr Eichiro. The walls have ears.'

He hung up and sent four short messages from his prepaid phone, typing with his thumbs. Then he fed a coin into the payphone beside the lift and dialled the mobile number from the reservation book.

It rang twice.

'Kousaka.'

Tomoya dropped his voice an octave. All the youth went out of it, and what remained was cool and level. 'Mr Kousaka. I represent Origin Holdings. We hold the lease on the former Akiyama press works in Misono. I understand your company missed it this morning.'

There was a pause. 'Who is this?'

'The leaseholder will be on site from half past five. He's prepared to discuss terms.' Tomoya talked straight over him. 'After six, he has a logistics firm from Kawaguchi coming to see the site.'

He hung up before Kousaka could draw breath.

His hands were perfectly steady. It was only afterwards, as he looked at them, that he noticed how hard his heart was pounding. Origin Holdings did not exist, and he had given no name. Kousaka would assume the broker had been talking, and brokers always talked. Goro's own lie had come full circle, and now it was working for Tomoya.

He had been gone eleven minutes. On his way back through the service door, he passed Kaito polishing a decanter. The head waiter glanced at the clock, then at Tomoya, and said nothing at all.

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Eichiro had never been so uncomfortable in a suit he liked. The navy wool was thick and heavy, and by the time he reached the end of the cracked road behind Urawa-Misono his shirt was stuck to his back.

The Akiyama Press Works stood at the very end of a lane of weeds and broken tarmac, behind a sagging chain-link fence. A half-rubbed sign hung crooked over the gate. Behind it rose a grey hulk of concrete and corrugated steel, two roller shutters rusted halfway up their tracks, and beyond the roofs to the east the floodlight towers of Saitama Stadium stood against the sky like a row of enormous lampposts. The sun was low and orange. Cicadas shrilled in the dry grass. The keys Goro had handed over at twenty past five lay cold in Eichiro's trouser pocket, and Goro had looked at the suit and asked if somebody had died.

Eichiro stood by the fence and read the messages on his phone again. There were four of them, short and numbered. He had read them four times already.

At ten past six, a black Toyota Celsior with tinted windows came crunching down the lane and stopped a few metres from the gate.

The man who stepped out of the back seat wore a silk suit that looked as if it had been cut from the evening itself. He was thin and sharp-eyed, with rimless glasses. He walked up to the fence and looked Eichiro over from his thinning hair to his shoes, and then he smiled, thin and predatory.

'You'll be the leaseholder. Kousaka Tajiro, Head of Acquisitions, Arata Real Estate.' He gave a small bow. 'Let's skip the preliminaries. You beat us to the broker this morning, and I congratulate you. But a man in your position doesn't need four hundred and sixty square metres of warehouse.'

He took a chequebook from his breast pocket.

'Two hundred thousand yen, here and now, to walk away from the lease. A tidy profit for a morning's work.'

Eichiro's phone buzzed against his thigh. He drew it out and glanced down as if checking the time. The screen said: He'll try cash first. Don't take it. Offer the sublease. He slid it back into his pocket, squared his shoulders and pushed his voice into something steady.

'I'm not breaking the lease, Mr Kousaka. We're opening a café in the front of the building.'

Kousaka laughed shortly. 'A café. Here. You'll be bankrupt in a month.'

'Perhaps.' Eichiro held on. 'But the site is four hundred and sixty-five square metres and my plans need only a hundred and forty. The back three hundred and twenty-five, with both loading docks and the yard, I'm prepared to sublet to Mr Arata's firm. I imagine it would suit an engineering base very well.'

The smile went out of Kousaka's face. He stared at Eichiro, running the sums behind his glasses. The space fitted.

'And the head lease permits subletting?'

Eichiro opened the plastic folder and drew out the copy. 'Clause nine,' he said. 'No separate consent from the owner is required.' Tomoya had fought Goro for that clause for ten minutes that morning.

Kousaka read it twice. The phone buzzed again.

Now. Don't blink. Don't fill the silence.

Eichiro looked him in the eye. 'Three hundred thousand yen a month for the sublease. And because carving the building up is a major inconvenience to my own operations, I'll need the usual key money.'

'How much?'

'Four million yen. Today.' Eichiro heard his own voice shake and carried on regardless. 'Or you go back to Marunouchi and tell Mr Arata you lost the site.'

The silence stretched. Cicadas filled it, and the Celsior's engine ticked as it cooled. Kousaka's jaw worked. He glanced at his watch and then at the dark bulk of the warehouse. Whatever else he was thinking, Eichiro could see it all arriving in his face: he could not return to the Marunouchi office empty-handed.

He drew a company cheque book from his briefcase, the kind acquisitions staff carry precisely for moments like this. He uncapped a pen and filled in the amount on the bonnet of the Celsior. Four million yen was a rounding error beside three hundred million, and he knew it. He pressed his company seal into an ink pad and stamped it. Then he tore the cheque out and wrote a short memorandum on a sheet from his notebook: the sublease was to take effect once the cheque cleared, and the formal contract would follow on Monday. They both signed it.

'Monday,' Kousaka said, getting back into the car. He did not look at Eichiro again.

The Celsior reversed down the lane, and its tail lights shrank and disappeared round the bend.

Eichiro stood where he was for a long time. Then he sat down heavily on an upturned crate by the gate, staring at the piece of paper in his hands.

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Tomoya came round the corner of the fence at twenty past eight, still in his black waistcoat under a thin jacket, straight off the train from Tokyo. The sky over Saitama had deepened to bruised purple, and the streetlamps were flickering on, throwing yellow cones across the broken tarmac. Eichiro was still sitting on the crate with his hands shaking.

Tomoya looked over his shoulder. It was a company cheque, with Arata Real Estate Co., Ltd. printed in the corner and a red seal pressed across the signature. Across the centre, in a neat hand, was written ¥4,000,000.

Kousaka had understood precisely what losing the lot would cost him, and it wasn't only the project. It was his own position. Four million yen was a rounding error. He had drawn up the memorandum on the bonnet of his car.

'I can't believe it worked,' Eichiro whispered. His voice shook. He looked up, somewhere between awe and disbelief. 'He just handed it over. Four million yen. I've never held a cheque for that much in my life.'

'Pay it in first thing on Monday,' Tomoya said, 'and it'll clear by midweek. And declare it properly, every yen. Rent and key money are income. We're going to be honest with the tax office, Mr Eichiro. It's the one thing we can't afford not to be.' He took the cheque and looked at it again. 'Look at the numbers. We pay Goro a hundred and fifty thousand a month for the whole site. Arata is paying three hundred thousand for the back half. So after the landlord's been paid, we're a hundred and fifty thousand a month ahead before we sell a single cup. The front of the building costs us nothing.'

Eichiro looked up at the dark warehouse, and the size of it finally seemed to sink in.

'And four million in cash on top.' Tomoya tapped the cheque. 'That's the La Marzocco. That's the Ethiopian beans. That's the builders, who can strip the front room and turn it into something people actually want to walk into.'

Eichiro swallowed. 'Tomoya. Who is Origin Holdings?'

Tomoya looked at him blankly for a moment, then smiled. 'Nobody,' he said. 'Yet.'

A thin buzz cut through the evening. He took his phone out of his pocket and glanced at the monochrome screen. It was a news flash from the Nikkei Net mail service, a single line of text: Mitronix Semiconductor to build ¥115bn R&D centre in Saitama's Misono district.

He looked up from the screen. In front of him lay the dusty, empty warehouse, but he was seeing something else: pale wood and black steel, a roaring espresso machine, and a line of young engineers with laptops stretching out through the door. A cold smile settled on his face.

'Let's go shopping, Mr Eichiro,' he said, and put the phone away. 'We've got a coffee empire to build.'