Year of the Talking Dog: A Hana Walker Mystery (The Hana Walker Mysteries Book 2) (6 page)

The man clambers over the sofa and unsheathes a silver blade from the end of his stick. The gleam of the steel is matched by the gleam in his eyes which dart around the room like a Terminator looking for a target. He grabs the laptop with one arm but that isn’t all he’s after. It dawns on me too late that his target is me. I know I should jump, but I can’t make myself do it. He raises his blade above his head. If he brings it down, there is nothing I can do to stop him. I feel a force on my shoulders. It’s Mr 7-Eleven. He pushes my leg from the window sill. I lose my balance and topple backwards, head first through the window.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I scream as I tumble down the chute. It only occurs to me once I’m in the chute that it’s supposed to be tied to the ground. I pick up speed and there’s nothing to stop me. I’m sure I will die. I will break my neck hitting the concrete. My shoulder grazes the side of the building and I go head over heels. The sound of air rushing outside and my arms and feet brushing against the tarpaulin, like sliding too fast down a rope. My hands and feet warm from the friction. Then they hurt. But if I don’t stick them into the sides of the chute, I will surely die. I stick my elbows and feet out like a starfish and I slow my fall. I’m getting the hang of it now. I can see the bottom of the chute. I’m going to make it even without the stick men.

My hands graze along the pavement. And then I’m on the street, in a crumpled mess with my legs in a ball. My knees smack me in the jaw.

But I make it. I smile. Maybe the masked man will come down the chute after me? Is he crazy enough to? He may be but he was too fat to make it though the window. I hear the scraping of tarpaulin and look up but it’s the chute falling from above. It has come unstuck from the window. It falls beside me in a pile. No masked man. But now I’m out on the street. How long before he catches up with me? No one is running out of any buildings. It’s raining. No one is looking up, and if anyone on the street saw what just happened, they’re keeping it to themselves. But what could I say to them if anyone did? How could I explain what I don’t understand myself? I should just run off, but where to?

I’m in a quiet street, it must be late. Only a few people are out with their umbrellas up. There are no shops to duck into. There’s a Tokyo Metro sign. The entrance to the underground. There has to be another way out of here. Has to be. But it’s a long street and no cars or any alleyways to run down. And my boots are back in the manga café entrance hall. The masked man could find and kill me in seconds if I don’t get out of here. After my father was crushed by a train, I swore I was never going to ride a train ever again. From now on I walk, no matter what. But the glint of the man’s eyes and the steel blade was too close. Stay above ground and get slashed or head under the city. I shiver. It has to be the underground.

Once down the steps under the lit Metro sign, it’s very narrow and steep. I can feel my chest constricting the further I get underground. Warm, stale air rushes up from the corridors below me and a wave of nausea comes over me as I smell the shochu breaths, the sweat on salaryman heads and the smell of something else. It’s a smell from back in Ishinomaki. The stink of rotting flesh, the stagnant seawater from a tsunami that has picked up everything that was in the sea and on the shore and dumped it all around. It’s the same smell here in Tokyo only when it hadn’t been raining for weeks and then a little rain reignites the smell. In the same way Uncle Kentaro gets even drunker if you give him a glass of water after an all-nighter. I try to control my breathing. But I know I’m panting and my palms are wet on the rusting steel banister.
 

I look back up the staircase behind me but see no one as the concrete steps disappear into the light from the roof of the shelter over the hole in the ground. I can’t believe I have come this far down. A shape darts in front of the lights behind me. I turn forward and will myself onward despite my protesting muscles. I hear footsteps behind me. Women’s heels clattering two steps at a time.

I lunge towards the ticket gates. It’s only now that I remember you are supposed to have a ticket or a pass card. I have nothing. I just run through. The ticket gates slam shut in front of me, leaving a few centimetres gap, and when I push hard, the gates give enough to let me through. A siren blares and a red light revolves beside me, I see movement out of the corner of my eye -behind the glass of the guard’s office. The red lights reflect off the glass. He is tall with an Adam’s apple that I can see moving even before I hear him speak. He’s adjusting his hat and opening the door. I hurtle down another escalator, two or three steps at a time. There's no one around, but I can hear a train pulling in to the platform. It’s one of those platforms stuck between two tracks. Trains for both directions are there. The doors of both trains are open. I have no idea which direction I should take, or even which line it is, it doesn’t matter: just get as far away from here as possible. Right or left. I choose right, skipping over the yellow braille paving for blind people marking the edge of the platform. I push my way through a small crowd of passengers, the ones who are running late for a night out or are coming back early from one. Much like me, neither group really wants to be there. But they’re on their way somewhere. I get on the train and walk through the carriage. What if the guard stops the train to look for me? They can probably do that. There is a mass of announcements. I can’t make out anything. Then in English: Warning, doors about to close. This is the train bound for Kuki. This is a Hanzōmon Line train. This train is bound for Kuki, calling at Nagatacho. The guard is talking to a stationmaster. There is another announcement: this train is going to be delayed. Not this train though. That train. The one on the other tracks across the platform. I’m on the right train then. Doors now closing. Doors now closing. And I think: I’m safe. I can get away. The train will pull away and the guard and the masked man will be left on the platform.

The train lurches forward. I sit on the heated train seat with my soggy feet up, like a cat in from the cold. I’ll miss my boots. I absently toy with the plastic name tag on my chequered convenience store jacket. I have time to think a little. A new thought. What about the 7-Eleven guy? Was he after me too? He had saved me. Or had he tried to harm me? He was left with the masked man in the room. Was he trying to kill me too? He’d pushed me out the window head first. But that act had saved me. Always assuming the masked man had been about to kill me. How had the masked man found me? Nobody knew I was there, except me and Steve’s voice mail.

I look at the name tag pinned on the front of the jacket. Kanji with “Hotaru” spelled out in English letters. I run Hotaru through Google Translate. FIREFLY. Had Firefly tipped the masked man off about my location? If he had wanted to do me harm, he could have when I slept. But he hadn’t. He’s on my side. I’m pretty sure of it.1 He’s just a nice guy, like Steve.

The train goes round a bend and I can see down the whole length of the carriage and through the open doors of two more. The train straightens up. I see a man in a green-grey suit and wearing pink socks. He’s striding down the aisle, righting himself as the train lurches from side to side. He has something in his hand. A black stick?

I see him. The masked man. I daren’t look again, but I have to, just to be sure I’m not going crazy. So I look down the carriage. Now I can’t see him anywhere.

CHAPTER NINE

The masked man must be making his way through the carriages, searching for me. I have to get off the train. We are moving. Maybe he won’t see me? If I run, he will see me for sure. But there are too few people in this carriage, he’s bound to see me if I stay. I have no choice but to move further down the train. I jump up and slip forward against the arm of a woman in a kimono.

She glares at me.

I bow my head in apology. I hurry through the carriage doors without looking back. The next carriage is a little busier. Almost all seats are taken. There are dozens of people standing too. There is one spare seat. I race to sit down and make it before anyone else standing notices it. I sit. It’s a blue and silver seat. An old man stands in front of me and glares at me. He points behind me. A poster has a picture of a teenager with headphones on sitting in a “silver seat” while an old guy with a walking stick and plaster on his leg is forced to stand. I glare back at him. Then I see his leg. He has a plaster on, just like the poster behind me. Oh, man. Other people are staring at me, but I’m used to people staring. You don’t walk around with red hair in a black-haired world without getting used to being stared at. No, that doesn’t bother me. Just that the old guy looks like he’s in some kind of pain. 

“Excuse me,” I say. And stand up. He sits down and I try my best to dart down the carriage. It’s standing room only, if that. Pushing my way through means squeezing my body through, brushing up against the backs of salarymen in suits. I feel sick. But I force my way through. The alternative means facing the masked man.

I pull open the door at the end of the carriage and push my way through the concertina into the next carriage. It’s even more packed. I take a deep breath of warm air and move in. People are standing three deep. Men in suits, a couple of high school girls in cardigans and short skirts, boys dressed in black with their hair shaved for baseball, girls with soft toys dangling from their school satchels. But nowhere to sit. Nowhere I can hide. Then I see an empty seat. It isn’t a blue and silver seat. No one is sitting there. I look around. It isn’t next to a foreigner, but no one is sitting there. I sit, only then do I realise why it had been left. The seat stinks of shochu alcohol. The stench is coming from an old man next to me. His hair is matted. He’s humming to himself. And to the rest of the carriage.

I put my hand in my pocket. There’s something in there. Plastic, round, the shape and weight of a small pear. I can’t make out what it is but it has a grey digital screen like a calculator and a single round button moulded into the plastic. I press the button. The screen lights up and I hear dialling. I try to turn the thing off, but there is no off-button. I stuff it back in my jacket pocket and smother the speaker with my hand.

I think about changing carriages. Maybe there’s a guard? Are they at the front or the back of the train? I risk a glance over my shoulder down the carriage where the masked man would be coming from. I can’t see anything through all the bodies. Think. Maybe I can…

“Excuse me.”

“Yes?”

It’s a woman sitting on the other side of me with grey hair and an oversize red paper bag with rope handles and an Italian name in fancy lettering on her lap.
 

“Are you an American person?”

“Er, no, I’m not.”

“Are you free?”

“I’m kind of busy.”

“I’m a Japanese. I’m fine. I’m an English student.”

“Right.”

I feel the train slowing. Everyone standing pushes their weight back on their heels. The train is coming to a stop. I can’t tell if the doors open on the left or right of the train. I prepare myself to run to the nearest door. But as I look out the condensation on the windows, I see only tunnel.

The doors on the right, furthest from me, open. A river of people gets on. There’s no way I can push my way through. And still they stream on. People of all ages.
 

I look down the carriage. People are shuffling out of the way. There is murmuring. A few disgruntled shouts and movement. Is someone pushing their way though? I catch a glimpse of a hand. It grabs a woman and pulls her to one side. There is shocked silence. Nobody does that. Even on a packed train.

“I’m very pleased to meet with you.”

Think.

“It’s lovely weather we have been having, don’t you think.”

“Think, yes.”

Think.

I have to blend in. I can’t be recognised. Stop moving and you become invisible. Don’t attract attention to yourself. Like having a conversation in a foreign language on the train. That’s not a good thing.

“I have lived in Tokyo for a very long time. I respect mental doctors, don’t you?”

“What?”

“Mental doctors are very fine people. Mental doctors are better than other doctors. Other doctors can see only what is wrong on outside. But mental doctors can see what is wrong on inside of heart. Are you a mental doctor?”

“No. A journalism student.”

“Oh, a writer! A writer! I respect writers. They can see what is wrong on inside of heart. Like mental doctors.”  

I can’t think of anything. This is it. The masked man is going to be on me in a moment and will recognise me in an instant. I scrunch my eyes shut and push my hands in the jacket pocket. I feel some paper and string. A mask. A flu mask. I put the mask on. Instantly, I’m a Tokyo commuter with a bad case of flu, or who hasn’t had time to put her make-up on or who is just plain shy. What does it matter? You’d have to look very closely to see my eyes are wrong and my hair naturally red, not dyed to look not-black. And there is only one thing for it to disappear properly on a Tokyo commuter train. I have to fall asleep.

I flop my head onto the shoulder of the old drunk. I don’t know if it’s really hiding me, but my action at least makes the woman stop talking. There is shuffling nearby. I dare not open my eyes. I let my hair fall over my face. Somebody stands on my toe. I bite my tongue. There is a commotion in front of me. Someone is really heavy on my foot, but I don’t move a muscle. Then the weight comes off. The carriage door beside me opens and shuts. I crack open an eye. People all around are looking at each other. I dare to squint open both eyes. The man isn’t there.