Lord of All Things Read Free Page A

was. And how her long black hair shone! She looked like an angel by daylight as well. What was her name, he wondered? And what did she do inside all day long?
    She started to move. She scampered over to the bins that stood in a corner between the house and a sliding gate, lifted one of the lids, and flung the plastic bag inside. A moment later she was back inside the house.
    Hiroshi slumped back, disappointed. That had all been too quick. He hadn’t even seen her face properly, since she had been glancing in all directions. What was in the bag that she had thrown away so furtively? He could find that out, if he was brave enough. And having waited this long, he would be stupid not to be brave.
    Hiroshi jumped up, slipped his shoes on, and ran out of the apartment. He knew every nook and cranny of his neighborhood, of course. And he had walked all the way around the embassy countless times. There was a huge, green sliding gate at the main entrance with spikes on top, behind which the French flag was visible on a pole. Beyond the gate to the right was a street that led to the Meguro toll road, so narrow that a car could only just go down it. It was a lane really, flanked by houses and their little front gardens on one side and the embassy wall on the other. It was an old wall, with a great fringe of spikes on the top. No point trying to climb that.
    But there was one spot where the wall curved slightly inward to leave room for a huge, old tree. It was easy enough to climb up between the trunk and the wall, and he was hidden from sight, too. Up at the top, the frame that held the spikes in place had rusted away a bit because it was always damp from the tree, and a piece of the framework had snapped. Someone small enough, like Hiroshi, could wriggle through.
    Of course, it wasn’t allowed. He knew that. You needed special permission to enter the embassy compound, and you had to carry a pass with you when you did. Mother had a pass, written in Japanese and French, saying exactly where she was allowed to go inside the building, which in her case was limited to the laundry room and housekeeping areas. But he didn’t actually plan to enter the compound. Just a little bit. Right on the edge. He would just have a look to see what the girl had thrown away, and then he’d slip away.
    Well, if he were honest, he had to admit he’d been here often enough. He couldn’t resist the challenge—over time he had explored the whole compound. It wasn’t difficult, given that there were trees and bushes everywhere where a child could hide easily enough. The only tricky bit was keeping out of the way of all the cameras. His mother would be dreadfully angry if she ever found out. The hardest part was getting down to the ground on the other side of the wall. It needed a rope, which had to be left hanging from the spikes so that he could climb back up again later.
    The embassy garden was like an enchanted otherworld. It was strange to think only a wall divided it from the everyday world. But Hiroshi didn’t have time today to revel in the enchantment. He had to hurry—for all he knew, the garbage was just about to be collected. He slipped between the compound wall and a little, low, windowless building that must have had something to do with the heating, since a tangle of white metal pipes led out from it in all directions. From there he scrambled through the bushes until he reached the edge of the patch of lawn where he had seen the girl standing in the rain. He peered up at the windows. Was there somebody there? He couldn’t see anyone. He scurried across the lawn and the narrow strip of fine, white gravel in front of the building, lifted the lid of the second garbage bin from the right, and fished out the orange supermarket bag. Then he scuttled back to the safety of the bushes with his prize. The whole operation had lasted less than twenty seconds.
    Full of curiosity, he opened the bag. A doll? The remains of a doll, rather. Odd. He had