where a woman with a sick-as-death complexion in nightclothes could blend into the background.I do not have time to tell you much about the years that followed. I lived for a year in women’s refuges, cheap hotels. My bank accounts were in false names. The meaning of my life had become the search for my son. My ex-husband was now a ghost I never thought of. I hired a private investigator to investigate the Yakuza branch that had incarcerated me. The investigator returned my advance one week later – he was warned away. Out of sympathy and guilt, he ended up hiring me as a secretary/accountant. This was a smart business decision, because three-quarters of his customers were women wanting their husbands trailed to fatten divorce settlements. They preferred discussing the sordid details with another woman. As with gynaecology, so for marital infidelity. They recommended our agency to their friends, and business thrived. I began accompanying my boss on fieldwork. Women are virtually invisible, even to the most paranoid of men. (Furthermore, I discovered that the brothel organization had deleted every computer reference to me and my son. I enjoy the privileges of being a non-existent woman.) My life in the brothel had hardened me as deeply as it had scarred me. After three years my boss offered me a partnership, and when his cancer finally killed him I took over the business. All this time, I was researching the organization that had killed Makino Matani and her son, and created Kozue Yamaya. It is gargantuan, nameless, and many-headed. It has no name. Its membership is in excess of six thousand. I swung introductions to its leaders, even invitations to the weddings of their children. I entered its employ as a freelance researcher. My status as a semi-insider gave me greater access to its secrets, and deflected suspicion.My son was murdered in order to sell his organs to extremely rich, desperate parents of the élite in Japan. The home market is most lucrative, because the parents will pay for pure, home-grown stock, but the export market to eastern Asia, North America and Russia is also significant. This fate is shared by the children and eventually the women enslaved in the brothels. The disk I have enclosed in this package contains the names, digital images and personal histories of the men who head this organization; the law enforcers who protect them; the surgeons who carry out the work; the politicians who blanket the operation; the businessmen who launder the money; the men and customs officers who freeze and transport the organs.Tomorrow is October 2nd. It is the day I plan to go public. I shall hand my data over to my contacts in the police and the media. One of two things will happen: the media will scream, and Japanese public and political life will be hit by a vice scandal which will send shock waves from hospitals in Kyushu to the parliament building; or I shall be killed by those I seek to expose. If the latter comes to pass copies of this disk and letter to be sent on to an audience I have selected for widely differing reasons.Understand this: you are holding a letter from a dead woman. My revenge on the men who abduct women and children to harvest their organs failed. My hope and life’s work are now in your hands. Act with your eyes open, as your conscience dictates. I cannot advise you – my best attempt has already failed. The Yakuza is a ninety-thousand strong state within our state. If you attempt to use ordinary police channels, you will achieve only the issue of your own death warrant. You are holding a high card for a very dangerous game into which you never asked to be dealt. But for the repose of the soul of my son Eiji Matani, who was killed by these people, and for countless others, past, present and future, I implore you to act.Please.Kozue Yamaya
Why me? Her son and I share a name with the exact same kanji – ei for incantation, ji for earth. I never encountered this combination before, but this alone cannot account for Kozue Yamaya putting me on her trustee list. I sift my memory of the time we met for clues, but find none.
No way to find out, either.
I call downstairs. ‘Machiko? Any big stories in the paper today?’
‘What?’ says Machiko, ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t heard?’
‘What?’
Machiko reads from the front page: ‘“Top Politican in