Customer questioned over Lucie

Japanese police searching for the missing British woman Lucie Blackman are investigating the disappearance of two other foreign women who vanished in Tokyo at around the same time, a newspaper reported yesterday.

Japanese police searching for the missing British woman Lucie Blackman are investigating the disappearance of two other foreign women who vanished in Tokyo at around the same time, a newspaper reported yesterday.

According to the Sankei Shimbun, the two women were living "in similar circumstances" to Miss Blackman, who was working as a hostess in the Casablanca nightclub in Tokyo's Roppongi district when she disappeared. The report also says that the police are questioning a male customer of the Casablanca who behaved "suspiciously" at around the time of her disappearance. It was after leaving her flat for a meeting with a club customer that Miss Blackman disappeared on 1 July this year.

In 1998 a Canadian hostess also vanished in Roppongi, but yesterday's report is the first suggestion that any other foreign women have disappeared in Tokyo more recently. Police spokesmen last night would neither confirm nor deny the report which, if true, represents the most significant progress so far in the investigation.