Headhunters

Chapter Forty

Milton observed. He was on the opposite side of the road to the apartment block, on the same side as the Range Rover. Matilda was on the other side, walking in his direction. She crossed and approached the parked car. He watched as she leaned down at the driver’s window. Her long legs, bare in the cut-off denim shorts she was wearing, looked golden brown in the glow of the streetlamp overhead. He saw her beam her brightest smile at the driver and, as he turned to her, she leaned forward and rested her forearms on the sill of the window.

Milton set off.

He glanced inside the car as he approached. He couldn’t see any weapons. The two men were of modest height and build, average for Japanese. Matilda glanced up for the slightest second, but she did not betray him. She looked back at the driver and gleamed a bright smile that fixed his attention once again. She was flirting with them both, and they had taken the bait.

Milton reached the car. He opened the passenger-side door.

The man in the passenger seat turned.

Matilda reached into the car and seized the driver around the neck. She pulled, dragging him to the side so that his head was hanging out of the window. She held on. She wouldn’t be able to secure him there for long, but she didn’t have to. Milton just needed him to be temporarily disabled, and her efforts would be plenty enough for that.

Milton grabbed the passenger by the back of the head, drove his face down into the dash and then, as blood splashed down from his crumpled nose, he yanked him out of the seat and tossed him onto the street.

The driver forced his hand between Matilda’s arms and broke her hold. He jerked to the side and, as he reached for the dash to steady himself, Milton was sitting next to him.

His mouth gaped open; his outraged question went unasked.

Milton raised his arm and drilled him in the side of the head with the point of his elbow. His head bounced against the frame of the door and, when it flopped back toward Milton, he elbowed him again. His eyes rolled back as his head was sent back against the door for a second time and, finally, he slumped against it, unconscious.

The passenger was on hands and knees on the road outside the car. He had crawled forward a little so that he was between the door and the chassis. Milton reached over his body for the handle and slammed the door closed against the man’s head. It crunched unpleasantly, the man losing consciousness and dropping down so that he was sprawled on the asphalt, his chin propped up against the sill of the door.

Milton reached over and frisked the driver. He found a Sig Sauer 9mm and placed it on the dash. Then he opened the driver’s door and pushed the unconscious man out onto the road. Matilda took his place and started the engine.

“Well done,” he said to Matilda.

She looked at the two unconscious men and shook her head. It had taken Milton fifteen seconds to put them both out.

Milton stepped out.

“Keep the engine running.”

Ziggy had been watching from the balcony, just as Milton had instructed him to do. He had seen Matilda distract the two men, bending down at the window and saying whatever it was that she had to say. It had obviously worked. Milton had opened the passenger-side door and, a moment later, a limp body had been hauled out and dumped on the sidewalk. Matilda had grabbed onto the driver until Milton had dealt with him, too. And now, with the figures of the two men sprawled out on either side of the car, it was his time to move.

Milton had made it very plain that he wouldn’t have the luxury of time.

He collected his rucksack. It was very heavy. He had stuffed as much into it as he could: two laptops, an assortment of other kit, hard drives and cables. He swung it onto his shoulder and took one final look around his apartment. It had been good to him, one way or another. He would have liked to have been able to stay. Tokyo had been good to him, too. If it wasn’t for his stupid lust and greed, his egotism and his desire to demonstrate just how clever he was, he would have been able to stay here for as long as he liked. Not now, though. He had poisoned the city for himself, and now he was going to have to leave and never return.

He felt naked as he shut the door behind him. The dimly lit corridor, normally so familiar, now looked like it might hide more of the Yakuza who had been sent to find him. There were blind corners, niches and alcoves that would comfortably accommodate someone lying in wait for him…

Come on, Ziggy, he chided himself. There’s no one here.

He walked on, into the elevator lobby, and pressed the button to summon a car.

He thought of the man in the lobby. What if Milton was wrong? What if there were more of them, more than just that one man? What would he do then?

He jumped as the elevator chimed and the doors slid open.

There was nothing else for it. He couldn’t stay here forever, and if Milton couldn’t help him, he didn’t know who could.

He stepped into the lift.

Pressed the button for the ground floor.

Closed his eyes.

The concierge was a man named Arata. The corporation that owned the building was not a particularly generous employer, and Arata found it something of a slap in the face that he was paid a relative pittance to guard the apartments of people paid a hundred times more than he was. He smiled at them as they came and went, was pleasant and polite at all times, and cashed his cheque on the first Monday of each new month. He did his job. But, at the same time, he didn’t feel any compunction in accepting the ¥200,000 that the gangster had offered him when they came looking for the gaijin.

Arata recognised the picture of the man, but he did not know very much about him. He knew that he was a resident, but he couldn’t answer when they asked him what apartment he lived in. He said that he would keep an eye out on the CCTV. There were cameras on every floor and, he said, he would be able to at least tell them which floor the man could be found on. Perhaps he would get lucky and a camera would catch him coming out of his apartment. And he said that he had no issue with them stationing a man in the lobby with him.

There was the money, of course, and that was welcome, but he wouldn’t have been able to say no to their requests even if they had offered him nothing.

They were Yakuza.

You didn’t say no to men like that.

Arata was flicking through a comic book when the door to the lobby opened and a man came inside. Arata recognised him. He had been in and out before, earlier that evening, with a pretty blonde woman. They were both Westerners. The woman, he remembered, was especially pretty. Foreigners were not unusual in the block; it was popular with gaijin, the rich ex-pats who could afford the rent to live in a neighbourhood like this. These two didn’t live here, he was confident of that, and he assumed that they were just here to visit someone. He would have stopped them to ask them for their identities, but they had walked quickly through the lobby and were in an elevator before he had started out of his chair.

And moments ago, Arata had watched, his mouth falling open, as the man had reappeared through the entrance and walked straight to the leather banquette upon which the gangster was sitting. The gangster had swung around to look at him, but it was too late by then. The Westerner was onto him, standing over him so that it was impossible for him to get up. He had a pistol in his hand. Before Arata could say anything, he drew back his hand and pounded him in the side of the head with the butt of the pistol. The gangster flopped to the side, his legs jacked up and his head lolling against the cushion.

The man turned to Arata.

The elevator chimed.

A car pulled up outside the building. Arata recognised it. A Range Rover. It was the car that the Yakuza had been using.

The gaijin the gangsters had been searching for stepped out of the lift. He recognised him from the picture that the Yakuza had shown him. He was carrying a heavy rucksack over one shoulder.

The second man looked at Arata and put his finger to his lips. He turned away, said something in English to the gaijin that Arata couldn’t hear, and then led the way outside to the waiting car.

Arata stepped out from behind his desk and went to the window. The blonde woman from before was behind the wheel, waiting as the first man got into the passenger seat and the other man got into the back. The car pulled away and disappeared around the corner. Arata looked back at where it had been parked and, as he heard the groans of the man on the sofa, he saw the two bodies sprawled out on the road.