Year of the Talking Dog: A Hana Walker Mystery (The Hana Walker Mysteries Book 2) (12 page)

The old man is still polishing the white and pink of the Sakura Kindergarten bus that glistens behind a rusting iron gate in a driveway barely big enough for a car, let alone a bus. He’s been at it for 30 minutes when he downs his yellow cloth and walks across the street to an vending machine. He puts three coins in the slot and presses the iced green tea button. I wait until I hear the clunk of the can hit the tray then I cross over the road and put my money in. I press the same button.

“Oishii,” I say. Delicious.

He grunts.

I smile. And beckon to Firefly to come over.

The old man starts to walk back to his bus.

“Just a minute! Wait, please, er, chotto matte, onegaishimasu.”

The old man stops and waits for Firefly. I nod to Firefly to say what we’d agreed. That I had grown up abroad and was just back in Japan. I was trying to find people I had known before I moved. Did he happen to know a young girl called Aoi Ishihara, must have been 15 years ago?

That’s what I think I told Firefly to say, but as I watch him stumble through the words, scratch his head and look at his shoes and blush, pointing at me, he’s as genuine as a can of Royal Milk Tea.
 

The old man stops drinking his iced tea and looks me over. I wonder if he’s checking the story out against my appearance. Sure, my story is flimsy, but I’m the right age. I could have known Aoi. I feel like I do.

I could see him taking a swig of his tea with an air of finality. Break over. I’m not fooling the old man. I don’t have anything else to try, so I try the truth.

I speak aloud as I type. “Actually, none of that’s true. What’s true is I’m trying to find what happened to her. All I know is she disappeared one day 15 years ago as a five-year-old while waiting for the school bus.”

He waits long enough to read the translation then walks back to the bus, without speaking.

I type again, “Please, I have no personal connection with her, but I think her disappearance is related to the death of my fiancé.”

I show the translation to Firefly. He looks confused, but speaks slowly to the old man. The old man picks up his cloth, and says a few words back to Firefly.

I look for a clue to the meaning from Firefly, but he doesn’t do or say anything. I type furiously.

“I’ll follow any clue to find who killed my fiancé. So, please, if you can remember anything from then, please tell me.” 

The old man glances at the screen translation. I have no idea if it makes any sense, or even if it does, if he would respond to me.

He crushes his green tea can under his foot. He speaks to Firefly, but he doesn’t say more than a sentence. From his tone, it’s all he’s going to say, too. He offers a polite smile but turns his back on us and returns to his polishing.

Firefly says “Arigatou
gozaimashita,” thank you very much, but in the past tense. I bow my head to the old man, repeat what Firefly said and we retreat away from the Kindergarten.
   

“What did he say?” I type.
 

“NOTHING. THEN HE SAY ASK HER FATHER AT SAINT CHRISTOPHER.”

“What does that mean?”

“Wakanai,” I don’t know, he says.
 

Then Firefly types: “HE ASKS. WHY YOU ASK SAME QUESTIONS AGAIN BIG MAN IN MASK ASKED ONE WEEK AGO?”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I sit in silence with Firefly in Mister Donut. He’s wearing the blue and white striped uniform of a Lawson convenience store clerk. I’m crying.

“WHY DO YOU CRY?” he translates on his phone.

“Maybe lots to cry about.”

“NO ONE REASON?”

“Smoke in this doughnut shop.”

“YOUR FIANCÉ?”

“Yes.”

“YOU LOVED HIM?”

I want to get angry, but it’s a fair enough question. I say nothing.

“YOU LOVE HIS BODY?”

I get halfway through typing an angry what-kind-of-a-question-how-dare-you kind of comment, then I delete it. It might be a direct question or just the translation program. Instead I type: “Good question. I haven’t seen his face in a month. I can’t even remember what he looks like without checking photos.” I try to remember his touch. I remember the smoothness of his hands, but the smooth motions he used to stroke my shoulders and arms were a painter drying his brush of excess water on a piece of scrap paper. I realise I haven’t phoned his mobile to listen to his voice in a week.
 

“DID HE LOVE YOU?”

“He loved painting. That was his passion. I’m not even sure now what he really felt about me.”

“YOU BLAME HIM. YOU ANGRY HE LEAVES YOU.”

“No,” I say. That’s not it. That’s not it at all. Can’t be. I shake my head. “What about you, Firefly?”

“I DON’T LOVE STEVE.”

I laugh.

“No. But why are you helping me?”

“THE MASK MAN STOLE MY LAPTOP.”

“It was so important to you?”

He shrugs.

“Help me find Aoi, and I’ll help you find your laptop. And I thought it was just because you liked me.”

“I DO LIKE YOU.”

“Really?”

He blushes. A waitress swings by and pours water in Firefly’s glass and tops up my café latte.

Firefly types. “FIND CONNECTION, FIND AOI. WHAT WE KNOW?”

“His name is Ishihara or Ito,” I say.

“WHAT IS A SAINT CHRISTOPHER?”

“He’s the patron saint of travellers.”

“WHAT IS A PATRON SAINT?”

“I have no idea.”

Before I can think about it, he’s on my smartphone, typing frantically. I’m quiet and for a time all I hear is the sound of my smartphone making typewriter noises until I reach over and turn the volume off. He has somehow changed all the text into Japanese and is speaking into it words and phrases in Japanese. His fingers glide over images. He’s enlarging small details and shrinking maps. He’s hovering over Japan, America, the UK, and then he’s back staring at black-and-white pictures of old Tokyo.

“What…?”

He shakes his hand. I walk up to the counter and stare at the doughnuts. There are dozens of varieties: pink ones, chocolate brown pies with coconut flavouring, old-fashioned burnt ones and twists. I could do with none of them. I settle on a cream puff but realise I shouldn’t waste my money on it, or else I’ll have to take on students sooner than I want to. Which is never.

Firefly looks up. His head darts around the room like a startled pigeon until he locates me, then he smiles a not-happy grin. I sit.

He’s typing and then he hands me the phone.

It’s a website. Everything is in English.

“Welcome to St Christopher’s, serving the medical needs of the foreign community in Tokyo since 1947.”

Then Firefly clicks on the about page and its address comes up. 10-1 Akashi-cho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo.

“So?”

He clicks back though a dozen websites on the phone to an article in Japanese with black-and-white pictures of unsmiling Japanese in white coats and some in military uniforms. One is standing in the centre with a sword held in front of his body. Some kind of salute. The caption says he’s Shiro Ishihara, head of the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department based in Pingfang, China, 1935-45.

“OK, you’ve lost me.”

Firefly pulls up another website. “Wartime files and records on controversial Unit 731 released to medical researchers exclusively at a Tokyo Research organisation.”

I look at him blankly. He types and an English page pops up with an address. 10-1 Akashi-cho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo.

“So they have records from the war at St Christopher’s. Some of the records come from this unit 731. And this is connected to Aoi because…?”

I don’t have a chance to translate my questions, Firefly has the phone in his hands.

He shows me a directory of doctors at St Christopher’s. He scrolls through the list and highlights one.

Dr Ichiro Ishihara. Clinical geneticist at St Christopher’s, an adjunct assistant professor at Shanghai School of Medicine and Chair of the Asymmetrical Biodiversity Studies and Observation Group in Papua New Guinea.

He stares at me, waiting for me to shout Eureka! But I’m still staring in bewilderment at the cream puffs. Should I have bought a twist perhaps?
 

“GIRLS SO SLOW!!!” Firefly types. He turns over the soggy napkin under my latte and opens it out, writing around the top of the wet ring in the centre of the napkin in neat English letters: Unit 731 + Ishihara + documents + St Christopher’s, then along the bottom of the ring Ichiro Ishihara + Aoi + St Christopher’s + documents.

Then in the centre of the napkin, he writes “Steve?” and shrugs his shoulders.

“I don’t know either, but…” I put my finger on the name Ishihara under the coffee ring. “Let’s ask him.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Dr Ishihara? Dr Ichiro Ishihara?”

A man is standing behind a desk overflowing with files and papers, littered with coffee cups and ashtrays. He’s staring out of the fourth-floor window. He’s dressed in faded green canvas combat trousers and a mauve T-shirt featuring a map of the United States with every state written in English. His hair is receding, his belly is expanding, he’s wearing glasses. I have my doubts about his hearing. I repeat my question.

“Dr Ishihara?”

“Hai,” he says, still staring out the window.

I see a pile of business cards on his desk. I pick one up. He glances in my direction and with a slight bow to Firefly, switches to English.

“Yes, it’s me. Can I…anything?”
 

I swap glances with Firefly. He was going to quiz him in Japanese, but now that Ishihara has opted for English it means I’m in the driving seat. Firefly nods back to me.

“I’m Walker, Hana Walker, I…” I freeze up. I had been ready to be completely honest, explain why I wanted to ask him all sorts of questions about his missing daughter, how the answers might be related to the disappearance of my fiancé. But something tells me to proceed with caution.

“I’m Hana Walker and, er, I’m doing some research.”

“Ah.”

He removes two full ashtrays from the desk and empties them into a waste bin. Then he moves the coffee cups to the window sill.
 

“Medical or historical?” he says.

“More historical than medical.”

“Oh.”

He turns away from us and returns to tidying his desk. He shifts a pile of letters and fliers to one side, then straightens manila files overflowing with papers. “If you want knowing about Unit 731 and my grandfather, I have nothing. Everything on Wikipedia.” He waves to the edge of his desk. If there is a computer on his desk it’s well hidden behind stacks of papers, pizza delivery fliers and advertising. I recognise one for Liberty Pachinko.

“Ishihara was your grandfather?”

“That’s why you’re here? That’s why anyone sees me, to add human face to monster. True? What he did to people in China horrific by objective standard, although I could argue US done worse, two wrongs not right. Nagasaki, Hiroshima. But I hope good come from research. He never convicted war criminal. That’s in Wikipedia, too.”

“I haven’t read the pages…”

“Probably wise. You can’t believe the internet. My father wanted nothing with past, his father’s past. The Ishihara family of Chiyoda village, my family, once big family. Had fields all around. Dirty hands, but we never left dirt under fingernails, you know? But in war, we lost it all. Grandfather. He was high up military man. Surgeon general served in Manchukoku. He met emperor two times. Did you know grandfather invented water filtration system? Wherever Japanese soldier go, he guaranteed good water, thanks to Ishihara water filtration method. So he saved two times as many lives as he took.”

“I see,” I say, but I can’t muster much interest

“You don’t see.”

“Actually, I’m more interested in you. And your daughter.”

His attention is fully on me now.
   

“What you say? Who are you?”

“I’m Hana Walker. This is my friend, Firefly.”

“What kind of name
Firefly
?”

“It’s Japanese.”

“What’s meaning here? You are not doing historical research. Are you reporter? What are you?”

“I’m nobody. But I’ll tell you the truth. My fiancé was crushed to death by a train. I don’t think it was an accident, but I can’t prove it. Yet. But for some reason he wrote your daughter’s name on the last painting he was working on. I don’t know why, but I have the feeling that if I find out, I can find out what happened to him.”

“Can’t help you.”

“Can’t or won’t?”
 

He drums his fingers on the desk.

“No desire to go over past again and again and again. You know my life for last 15 years? Not moment without thinking about Aoi-chan, what monster took her and how she suffer. You know what worry is? What it is to father? To mother? You any idea how much I question myself? How much I blame?
 
How much I search past to find whose fault, if there anything I or my ancestors did to cause disaster? Police question me. My marriage died. You know how to live after people accuse you of murder? People think guilty of killing own daughter? Staring in street by strangers is beginning. Then lose your friends and neighbours and hate by your own wife. All for something you have no understanding. I dedicate my life to finding what happen, I would do anything to go back that I undergo any trial if it brings Aoi-chan back and brings my life back way it was before she disappeared. I sit and share stories if it brings back Aoi, back from past and into living. I try to be good man now, if my past action or grandfather’s action cause disaster on my family’s head. Do you know what this is to my name? My wife’s family? Many losers and no winners in this game. But you know what I most want? The day my office door opens and someone is here to listen to what I done, they appreciated my virus research will one day do more to save lives than any that my grandfather took. That is my debt to Aoi-chan. What can you tell me that I not know? Nothing unless you did it yourself, but since she’s same age as you look, you can know nothing.”