Chapter Six: Speak of the Devil

The phone sounded as if it had been ringing for quite some time, and was getting upset about it.

He'd come in too quickly to see the receptionist, but she sounded pretty. "Kudou-san, you have a phone call from your brother Omi."

"I miss him," Youji said. "Put him through, please."

"Youji-kun." Omi sounded even more cheerful than usual, probably in case someone was still listening. "How's work?"

"The job's going well," Youji replied. "Made some good progress today. How's school?"

"We had a test today," Omi said. "Ken called from college. Did you two get in a fight?"

Youji winced. "It wasn't serious. We've both had worse."

"He said you hit him in the head."

One day, Youji thought, Omi would make a great mother. "It was the only way I could think of to end the fight," he said. "No one ever got around to teaching Ken how to pull his punches. He'd probably knocked them out already."

"Then next time maybe you shouldn't start, Youji-kun," Omi said.

"He's okay, though?"

"Of course he is, Youji-kun. Maybe you should try to keep in touch more. Aya thinks you should."

Youji smiled. "Tell her not to worry. I'll call her later."

There was a knock on the door so quiet he barely heard it. Someone could have stood out there for the whole of the conversation, listening. This was why when anyone from Weiss was on the phone, they were family.

"I've got to go," Youji said. "Tell Aya I'll call her soon."

Sakai was at the door. He looked damp and cold. He had a tremble brought on by too many cups of coffee.

"Come in," Youji told him. "You look like you need a drink."

Sakai didn't move. "Who were you talking to?"

"My brother," Youji said. "He gets worried when I tell him I'm going away on jobs. I think he thinks I'm going to end up on the news being fished out of the bay. He's a good kid but he's seen too many movies."

"Who's Aya?"

Youji smiled. "You've see her. She looks stunning in monochrome."

"Your girlfriend?"

"Yeah." Youji stepped aside and Sakai finally came in. "She acts tough but I know she worries about me. My brother's always nice to her. He won't be happy till I marry her."

"Does she know?"

"About Kritiker?" Youji laughed. "How stupid do you think I am? I told her the reason I was staying here was to find a girl from Kyoto whose parents think she's working in the Red Light District."

"Clever."

Sakai sat down on the bed. His hands were still trembling, and it wasn't from the cold. Youji poured him a generous slug of the whiskey. He sat in a chair and waited for Sakai to speak. He'd obviously spent the last few hours thinking. Too much time to think.

"Thank you," he said.

"You're welcome."

Sakai thought again. He wanted to ask a question, Youji could see it in his eyes. He didn't know if he wanted to know the answer. Sakai drank the drink.

"Have you ever heard of something called Weiss?"

Youji had known he might be asked that question. He'd hoped right up till Sakai had spoken the word that he wouldn't have to answer, but now he had no choice. The tightrope he was walking had suddenly got as thin as his wire. He had to answer without telling too much truth, but he knew he could only lie so much.

"What's Weiss?" Youji asked. "Do they have something to do with that kid?" He stopped, waited just long enough for a smart guy to put pieces together, then looked into Sakai's eyes and told the truth. "They kill people for Kritiker."

Sakai poured himself another glass. Up till now Youji had been worried about making him suspicious. He'd been a man walking across a frozen river watching and listening for any sign of a crack in the ice. Now he realised that after all this time, Sakai desperately needed to share who he was. The ice wouldn't crack.

"I've worked for Kritiker for over a year. I was approached after the case against someone I was investigating collapsed because no one would testify. I knew all along what I was helping them do, I never tried to fool myself. But after a while I got curious. I was able to look into four of the people I'd investigated for them. Two of them had been arrested, one on drugs trafficking charges even though he never went near the stuff, and one for illegal use of firearms. The other two were dead. The report said they had accidents, but I looked a bit closer and they weren't accidents. Buried deep in one of the police files was a report that when one of them had 'accidentally' strangled himself to death in his office, one of his security personnel, before he mysteriously passed out, had heard someone use the word Weiss. It was buried so deep I can't even prove it exists, so I knew it had to be important."

"I just kept track of the obituaries," Youji said. "I don't give a damn about whether I'm doing the right thing, I never did. But someday soon Kritiker is going to go to hell and I don't want to go down with it, so I'm going to take this money, take Aya and we're going to go and work for my uncle, who runs a photography business in Sydney. And when we get there I'm going to marry her."

"So why did you start?"

There were a thousand things Youji Kudou could have said to that. Stories from books, newspapers and films. None of them were too extraordinary for Kritiker. He could have told any of them and Sakai would have believed him. But he didn't. It was time for his confession. He told the truth.

"I went looking for a girl once. I found her. She'd fallen in with some bad people and tried to get out. She'd been beaten, raped, and finally strangled. They had a picture of her mother in the paper. I'll never forget it. The people who did it were never even questioned by the police. Afterwards, I was so angry that when I was offered a chance to stop it happening to someone else, I took it."

Both men fell silent. They nursed their drinks like old friends and digested what they had just heard. Youji had shared Sakai's danger and his pain. He knew he had his trust. Youji's conscience sent a shiver through him like a cold wind, but draughts are easy to ignore after a while.

"How are we going to get the money?" Youji asked eventually.

"Tomorrow I meet someone sent by the buyer to negotiate a price," Sakai replied. "If all goes well we make the exchange the day after."

"What if all doesn't go well?" Youji said, watching him again. "Why don't you send me tomorrow? I can negotiate as well as you can. I don't even know what we're talking about or where it is. The guy they send won't know any better either. They can't get information out of me that I don't have. You can trust me enough to know that I won't screw this up because otherwise I get nothing."

Sakai thought again. "Why don't you want to know what we're selling?"

"I don't care," Youji said. "I never did. Nothing matters but getting the job done."