Year of the Talking Dog: A Hana Walker Mystery (The Hana Walker Mysteries Book 2) (7 page)

I open both eyes fully. He isn’t there. I ease my head off the drunk.

The tramp’s eyes are open but fixed on some point in the distance. He’s reading a public information poster across the aisle warning women not to put makeup on while sitting on the train.

He turns his head and looks at me. 

“Please do it at home,” he says, reading the English slogan at the bottom of the poster. He brushes his shoulder.

I take a breath of air. I think I’m going to make it.

The carriage door swings open and the masked man is there. 

His eyes are glassy. His mask hides his mouth. But I see the mask moving in and out as he breathes. He reaches for something by his side. He strides straight towards me.

CHAPTER TEN

There is no time to think.

I bolt. I’m throwing myself into gaps between people and squeezing my arms in like I’m pot-holing. He’s coming for me, behind me. 

The train is slowing, suddenly everyone is standing up. I’m stuck in that mass of people. Hundreds of people all standing at once. There is no way I can resist the flow. I’m lifted off my feet as the crowd pushes toward the door and the cooler air of the station wafts in as we fall out of the train. I gasp for air and am relieved, but then think: if I’m being released onto the platform with everyone else, so is the masked man. I look around but can see only shoulders and home-made signs. It’s some kind of protest

“Hey!”

I grab a paper placard on a stick and run, swept forward by the crowd and am propelled toward the street. At the top of the stairs, there are so many people going through the ticket gates that no one even notices an English girl pushing her way through the barriers, just a hair’s breadth behind the guy in front of her.

I see the sign of the station just as I leave it, Nagatacho, the home of the Japanese parliament. I go with the flow of protesters. They are all ages, many nationalities, but mostly Japanese old people. I’m with a man with grey hair and in a business suit. He smiles absently at me and my sign. I smile back. I look at the placard I’m holding.

It’s in English.

“No Nukes.”

Out on the street, dark blue police buses with wire meshes over their headlights and windows line the streets with no space between the bumpers. We are hemmed in to the metre-wide pavement. At the intersections, police with caps on look like soldiers. But they don’t have their guns out, instead they all carry long sticks, like broom handles. They stand in line keeping the protesters from going anywhere near the building across the street. But that is where everyone is looking.

Except me. I hold my placard in front of my face and look over my shoulder back at the stream of protesters coming out of the station. I can’t see the masked man. A man with a megaphone is trying to get the crowd to sing. In English.
 

ALL WE ARE SAYING

I have to think of a plan. I can’t think of anything, so I do the next best thing. I get my phone out.

IS GIVE PEACE A CHANCE

“Uncle Kentaro...?”

ALL WE ARE SAYING

“Hana, are you out partying? Shouldn’t you be looking for a job?”

IS GIVE PEACE A CHANCE

“I have a big problem.”

ALL WE ARE SAYING

“Are you at an anti-nuke demo?”

“Yes, I think so, but that’s not important…”

IS GIVE PEACE A CHANCE

“I think it’s pretty important. Nuclear power. It’s an important issue. But you have to focus on what’s important to you.”

ALL WE ARE SAYING

“I am. I’m in danger Uncle Kentaro.”

IS GIVE PEACE A CHANCE

“Do you have any idea what shutting down nuclear power has done to this country’s balance of payments?”

ALL WE ARE SAYING

“I don’t care about balance of payments. My life is in danger.”

IS GIVE PEACE A CHANCE

“Your life is more in danger from all the pollution and increase in greenhouse gasses than the threat from nuclear...”

ALL WE ARE SAYING

“No. My life is in danger right now, I need your help...”

IS GIVE PEACE A CHANCE

“North Korea is more of a danger than nuclear power. At least to their own people.”

ALL WE ARE SAYING

“I’m being followed by a masked man with a sword. I think he’s going to kill me. Maybe he’s from North Korea. I need your help. I’m all alone.”

IS GIVE PEACE A CHANCE 

“If you’d just speak Japanese, Hana, you wouldn’t find yourself in such predicaments.”

The man with the megaphone takes a break.

“Uncle Kentaro, please, you must take me seriously, you don’t believe me, do you?”

“That all this, this chase you are on, this mission to find a missing killer, it’s all nonsense, you know. Admit it, there is no masked man, it’s all in your head.”

I’m not sure if my mouth drops open, but I’m speechless for a second. How can he doubt me? Has he always doubted me?  

“It’s not my imagination. I didn’t imagine being chased here by a masked man. I didn’t imagine jumping down an emergency chute for my life.”

“Listen to yourself, Hana. ‘For your life?’ You hate heights. You never take lifts, let alone escalators and you’re too scared of going underground because of what? It’s all very Freudian, you know.”

“I know I sound crazy, but I’m not going mad. And there is a crazy guy after me who probably wants to kill me all because of something I’m not supposed to know.”

“Not supposed to know? There’s a mountain of things I’m supposed to know, but don’t. If there’s anything I’m not supposed to know, I don’t know what it is, or if I ever did, I don’t know now, you know?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I know I sound mad, but I’m sure I’m on to something here. The letters A.O.I. in a picture and now the masked man chasing me.”

“Listen to yourself, for a minute, would you? Letters? Masked men? I think you are imagining things, everything will be all right. All I’m saying, is give peace a chance...”

I feel myself getting redder in the face.

“How did I end up here if I’m making it all up?”

“What do you...”

“I came by train, Uncle Kentaro. Underground train. Would I do that if I didn’t think my life was in danger?”

“The mind is a powerful thing. I don’t know what’s going through yours.”

More drops of rain fall on my head. 

“Can’t you just believe me? If you weren’t always so drunk you might be able to give a damn about other people? Do you ever think about anyone else or just where your next drink is coming from?”

He pauses. Raindrops trickle down my face. When he comes back on the line, he’s reasonable and calm.

“I’m no psychoanalyst, but your story. I mean, it’s all a bit far-fetched isn’t it? If something sounds implausible and highly unlikely then it probably is. Especially when there is a simpler explanation. Simple is best you know.”

“Yeah? What’s the simple explanation? That I’m an idiot and just made it up? I don’t believe it. Sometimes the simple explanation is just plain wrong. My Dad didn’t slip and get hit by a train; he was pushed. You can spend your whole life believing the simple truth, and the simple answer is true 100 percent of the time until the moment it isn’t and then you realise everything you thought was simple was actually a lot more complicated. I may be confused but not about this, Uncle Kentaro.”

“You are no idiot, but you’ve been through a lot.”

“Yeah, with you.”

“No, your mother and father. And the accident. It’s understandable that you might get a little…confused. It’s great that you are loyal to Steve’s memory. I get that, that’s what makes you special. You have that ability to care and do the right thing. It’s admirable, really. But please listen to yourself.”

I want to bite his head off and tell him how wrong he is, but I have to admit I do sound crazy.

“Maybe I’ve made a few too many assumptions...but I didn’t choose any of this, it chose me. But now it has, there’s nothing I can do, I must find answers.”

The man with the megaphone starts up again.

ALL WE ARE SAYING

“Uncle Kentaro, I don’t have time for this. Will you help me or not?”

“You know I love you, Hana, but this craziness has to stop. Give this craziness up.”

IS GIVE PEACE A CHANCE

“I can’t. Not until I have answers.”
 

I hang up. I look behind me. Crowds of people, but no one I recognise. And no masked man. But for how long? I push my way forward past people, just hoping the masked man is far behind. I cry. I cry for myself, for my position. What am I going to do? Where am I going to go? And without Steve, my world is nothing. No future in England. No way to get there. Without Uncle Kentaro’s help, no future in Japan. But here I am. I know no one from my school days. I have email addresses of ex-classmates, but after my parents died, I dropped out of school. I don’t have anything in common with anyone I used to know. Uncle Kentaro had got me back on my feet. But I hadn’t bothered to get to know anyone in college. I was moving on, ready to move back to England, my homeland. What do I need with Japanese ties now? So now, I’m completely on my own in someone’s convenience store jacket, who may or may not be on my side.

That is all I have.

Though I’d not had a proper conversation with Firefly, he had saved my life without a moment’s hesitation, put himself in danger without a thought for himself, and given me the jacket off his back. A clown jacket with a name tag, but still...

The crowd jostles forward, and I’m pushed from behind. We’re forced into single file. We’re being shepherded into the single stairs towards a lit sign for the Hanzomon underground line. There is no way out. Buildings on one side and police and dogs snarling between the black buses that pen us in from the roadside. And now there are stairs sinking into the ground. I don’t have a choice. I follow the crowd.

I look behind me. Elderly men with straw hats on, overweight middle-aged women fussing with their shopping bags, skinny guys with placards, but I don’t see any crazy masked man with a sword-stick. I wonder about Firefly. Would I recognise him if I saw him again? And I think about Steve. Is he really dead? Is this some elaborate game? Or had he got cold feet about getting married and run off? That wouldn’t be like him. Would it? Not the Steve I know. He looks uncared for, but he’s sensitive and alive to the world. He’s an artist in love with discovering the differences between light and dark. He can’t live without me. That was who I had fallen in love with. Or thought I had fallen in love with. Maybe there is no such thing as love? Perhaps we are all lost sheep looking for...

I smack my sign into my head, I lower my placard and realise I hit the grey raincoat of the man in front of me.

“Excuse me!” I blurt out.

He nods at my apology.

The line has stopped. Maybe the train station is full. There are so many people after all. We can’t all squeeze in, can we? There is nothing to do but stand there. In a line of sheep. With a wolf coming after me. And then I see something that smacks me in the head harder than my placard.

Ahead of me, squeezing himself through the oncoming crowd of people, going against the flow, is Firefly. He’s easing himself through the stalled people in front of me. Then he’s staring right at me.

“Hello,” I stammer. “How did you…? Why did you…? What…?”

He says nothing, he bends his head and looks at the ground. He mumbles something I don’t understand. I shrug. He shrugs then gestures, hitting his palm with a finger. I raise my hands upwards in an I-don’t-know-what-that-means motion.

Raindrops flick off his hands. They are rougher than Steve’s. He bows his head more formally now, like what he’s going to do causes him great pain. He points at the jacket that I’m wearing.

“You want the jacket back? But it’s raining.”
 

But I don’t really have any say in the matter. I start to take it off, slipping my right shoulder out of it. I lean the sign board between my legs.

He shakes his head and hands like he accidentally set a bomb off. No. He points again at the pocket of his jacket. He reaches in delicately and pulls out the electronic gizmo and shows me the button. Then he gets out his smartphone. It shows a map and a flashing red button in the centre of it. He holds the two and looks between them and me.

“When I pressed the button it sent a signal to your phone, and you followed the signal to me.”
 

He stares at me blankly.

I find my phone and type in “It’s a homing device,” and hit translate. I show the screen to him.

He smiles, then types and shows me his screen.

“IT’S CHILD TELEPHONE.”

“You have a child?” I type.

He laughs. And types.

“I HAVE JACKET. I LOSE JACKET ALWAYS.”

It’s my turn to smile.

“Did the man with the sword hurt you?”
 

He considers that, then types.

“HE TOOK MY LAPTOP. BUT HE NOT INTO ME. HE BIG WANT YOU. WHY?”