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so much to him. Besides, if she should suspect him of having an affair - well, so what?
    Arranged neatly on the L-shaped table that dominated the room were all the implements Yoko needed to teach the day’s classes.
    ‘We’ll have to get you packed, then,’ she said with a natural, unforced smile. ‘Just be sure to keep in touch. I mean, don’t forget to call.’
    I won’t forget, Kawashima said, nodding. He walked into the bedroom and bent over the crib to peer at the baby. Lightly touching her downy cheek, he whispered, so Yoko wouldn’t hear:
    Everything’s going to be all right.

5
    FOUR DAYS LATER, KAWASHIMA was checking in at the Akasaka Prince Hotel. He used his JCB card and registered under his real name. It was a twin room with a view of Tokyo Tower in the distance, and he’d reserved it for a week. He’d never taken any serious vacation time before, and for that reason - and in recognition of his just having won the jazz festival account - the firm had immediately agreed to his request and even presented him with nearly nine hundred thousand yen in cash for expenses. His boss had joked, in typically poor taste, that the idea of observing salarymen was brilliant, but not to fall in love with one and end up with AIDS.
    Kawashima checked in shortly after noon and gave Yoko a call first thing. He could hear the babble of middle-aged women in the background and could almost smell the freshly baked bread. Neither Yoko nor anyone at the office had seemed the least bit suspicious of his motives. Come to think of it, he reflected as he sat back on the sofa and gazed out at the heart of the city settling into dusk . . . Come to think of it, somewhere along the line I became a man who never does anything people consider suspicious. Maybe something fundamental had changed since the old days - since parting with the stripper. He’d gone back to school, taken up drawing again, found a job and met Yoko, and he often felt as if he wasn’t even the same person he’d been as a teenager. But if he was someone different now, which of the two was the real him? They’re both the real you , some part of him whispered, but the rest of him wasn’t so sure. Sometimes the old and new selves seemed completely unrelated.
    Inspired by a magazine article he’d read and photocopied in the library, Kawashima had decided to buy a knife as well as an ice pick. The article was about a thirty-two-year-old ‘soap tart’ who’d been found murdered in a hotel room, with her Achilles tendons severed. An anonymous police detective had volunteered this explanation: ‘When you cut the Achilles tendon, the sound it makes is as loud and sharp as a gunshot. The killer must have known that and taken pleasure in it.’ Kawashima decided that before stabbing the victim’s stomach with an ice pick - or afterwards, if need be - he’d slice her Achilles tendons. He was curious what it would sound like exactly. And he wanted to see the expression on the woman’s face when it happened.
    Thinking about these things didn’t set his pulse racing or leave him staring into space, grinning and drooling. He experienced, rather, a sort of creative calm similar to his state of mind when pondering which photo to use for a poster. His heartbeat had been a problem during the ten days he’d lived in fear of stabbing the baby, but not since that night in the convenience store. Between the man who was coolly deciding to cut his victim’s Achilles tendons and wondering what it would sound like, and the man who’d smiled at his wife that very morning in a room saturated with the fragrance of freshly baked bread, there was clearly a gap. Exactly what the gap consisted of he couldn’t have said, but he knew there was one.
    He got up and closed the curtains. From his briefcase he took the magazine article, an S&M magazine, a weekly sex-industry guide, and a notebook. He sat down at the desk and began making notes in an attempt to marshal his thoughts.
    First of