Sign of the Dragon (Tatsu Yamada Book 1) by Niall Teasdale (e reader TXT) 📕

‘I-I-I-’

‘I think that’s a yes,’ Tatsu said. ‘We’ll get it, even if I have to go in there personally to find it, but Mister Maki’s going to tell us all about his management too. Aren’t you, Mister Maki?’

‘I-I-I-’

‘I’ll take that as a yes too.’

Chiba.

‘So, the manufacturing plant is gone,’ Tatsu said, ‘and so is a particularly nasty fuser snuff studio. We’ll have their entire distribution network destroyed in a couple of days, and their clients will need good lawyers.’

Sachiko’s nose wrinkled. ‘Snuff?’

‘Snuff. I watched some of it and then I had to scrub my brain with bleach. They’ve been kidnapping girls from all over the Tokyo–Yokohama region, locking them up underground, and using them for all sorts of “interesting” scenarios. Gangbangs were popular, and also about the least unpleasant thing they were up to. Would you believe there were women willing to pay to experience it from the girl’s side?’

‘Yes,’ Sachiko said flatly. ‘Nothing much surprises me at this point, but rape fantasy isn’t entirely uncommon and fuser lets you experience the reality without the danger.’

‘It’s a point. Anyway, that’s why we’re in the least offensive room here I could think of. Bondage scenarios are not high on my list of things to be involved in tonight.’

Sachiko smiled and stroked soft fingers over Tatsu’s cheek. They were in one of the medieval rooms in the Dream Castle; after sampling the output of the Nichibotsu gang’s studio, Tatsu had needed some stress relief. ‘I’m just glad you could get the time to be with me,’ Sachiko said.

‘There were four deaths and seven hospitalisations today,’ Tatsu said, ‘but they’re mostly being handled by other officers. Tomorrow I’ll be back to work trying to stop a full-scale gang war, but tonight… Tonight I needed soft and comforting.’

‘I can manage soft and comforting.’

‘Chase the nightmares away for me.’

‘No nightmares. I promise.’

‘That sounds like a tall order, to be honest.’

Sachiko’s hand slid downward across Tatsu’s chest. ‘No nightmares. Satisfaction guaranteed.’

Part Four: Tourists

Tokyo, Japan, 20th August 2099.

‘Ariella Ray,’ Tatsu said, ‘social influencer, fuser idol, and Chiba success story.’

Ariella Ray was now also a corpse. A posed corpse, lying on her large, sumptuous California King bed with her ankles secured behind her neck by a rope. It was, presumably, symbolic and the message from the killer added to that impression. Her past comes back to haunt her. She dies as she lived. The card had been held in Ray’s teeth.

‘I don’t get why this dragon killer chose her?’ Nakano said. ‘What does she have to do with organised crime?’

‘Nothing. Now. When she started out, she was Zima’s mistress. Off and on for about three years.’

‘I thought he liked them younger.’

‘She’s only twenty-five and this was a few years ago. She was maybe about fifteen when they started. When she got to eighteen, he cut her loose, but he liked her enough to stake her the money she needed to get her career going. Rumours persisted in Chiba that he was still backing her, but I doubt it.’

‘Right. Still seems tenuous.’

‘I’m not necessarily arguing. Look at her.’

‘I am.’ Nakano sounded less than pleased about that.

‘She was tortured. Multiple shallow wounds. Burn marks.’ Tatsu waved a hand at a knife lying on the floor, a large cook’s knife with no signs of blood on it. ‘I’m guessing the burns are from that. It wasn’t used to cut her. There are no serious wounds at all. I think she bled to death.’

‘I wonder whether that was intended, or a horrible disappointment.’

‘No idea, but he’s escalating in savageness and broadening his target base. This is bad.’

‘The media are going to be all over it.’

Tatsu nodded. ‘And that’s just one of the reasons this is bad.’

24th August.

Bad was not quite covering it. Tatsu stared at Commissioner Yamashita for a long second before responding to the order he had just given her. ‘There’s close to open warfare breaking out across the western end of Chiba, we have a serial murderer cutting people up with abandon, and I’m supposed to escort a reporter and her crew around that war zone for a week?’

Itsuki Yamashita was not a young man. Not too old either, but he had been on the job for a number of years and felt that his experience should earn him a degree of respect. He was forty-two, according to his bio on the TYMPD website, preferred wearing glasses to having his eyes fixed, and was not an unattractive man. He wore his pressed-within-an-inch-of-its-life uniform well over a body which had not seen excessive exercise in years. He had come up from the bottom, but that had been a while back, and all his experience came from Tokyo. His office was big, tastefully decorated, and should have belonged to the executive officer of a medium-sized business, not a cop. He had a big, solid-wood desk with a leather chair too.

‘Show some respect for your elders, Sergeant,’ Yamashita said.

‘You’re a little more than four years older than me, Commissioner.’

He coughed. ‘That is not the issue. Your disrespect is one of the reasons you haven’t been promoted above sergeant.’

‘That and me not wanting to be. I was basically forced to become a sergeant. Why are we pandering to a reporter from a network with known anti-refugee sympathies?’

‘We need good publicity. The death of Ariella Ray has brought the recent murders under the spotlight. Some of the streaming services have picked up on the gang violence in Chiba and stoked the idea that it may spill out into Tokyo. The public wants to know what we’re doing about this.’

‘So, tell them. Letting Haruka Yamauchi wander around Chiba with a camera crew is just going to make matters worse. She’s going to spin anything