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

“How can you be sure that Steve is dead?”

“We are sure. His wallet had his gaigokujin card.”

“Shouldn’t you do a DNA check or something?”

“That’s for the movies.”

“But he can’t really be dead. We’re meeting today. We’re going to walk through Yoyogi Park. I’m going to look at his new painting and go for coffee. We’re moving to England. He’s going to open a gallery in Brixton and I’m going to be a web journalist and we’re going to…”

“The deceased died instantly from his injuries suffered from falling into the path of the train,” Detective Watanabe flips through his notebook. “A salesman, Kubo-san, 57, on platform 3, saw him behaving strangely. He tripped and fell off platform 4 onto the tracks of the Omiya Express Line. The driver of the 23:12 Express to Omiya had only a few seconds warning. He sounded the train horn, but there was…a collision.”

I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to think. Detective Watanabe closes his notebook.

“Maybe I shouldn’t say this. It’s terrible. Horrible. But, you are young. And you can carry on with life. Kemp-san was…unlucky. Please mourn him. But even more, please don’t stop your life.”

I sit forward in my chair. “He was my life. He gave me a way to live. Since the accident.”

“Accident?”

I bow my head. Do I really want to talk about this to a detective? What can I say? I hardly understand it myself. It was hard enough losing my Japanese Momma to stomach cancer just when I started junior high school here. Then when my English Dad was struck by a train, I didn’t have anyone. Just a drunken friend of the family, Uncle Kentaro, who gave me a roof over my head. But Detective Watanabe didn’t need to know all that.
 

“I fell off a bridge.”

There is a road bridge over the Teganuma lake in Abiko. It was easy to lose your balance. I’ve done it before, falling into the lake below. Only this time when I lost my footing, I wasn’t that bothered by what happened to me. And after I woke up, much later when my bones had mended, I made a decision. I was going to get away from Japan, get away from where everything had gone wrong. Return to my roots, explore my own country that I’d yet to set foot in. Start again. But to do that I decided I needed to become more English, less Japanese. That meant shutting down my Japanese side. I decided I wouldn’t speak Japanese anymore.
 

The doctors said I was suffering from trauma, that my sudden loss of Japanese was not exactly a result of brain damage, more something they called “psychosomatic”. Uncle Kentaro said that was medical talk for making it up. But to me it’s just another way of saying “determined.” I was determined to be someone else. With Uncle Kentaro’s help and my Dad’s life insurance, I was allowed to do media studies at a college and now with Steve, I have a real chance to become that someone else in a country where I belong. Where I fit in. It’s what Dad would have wanted.

“It can’t be Steve, it has to be someone else. Foreigners all look alike to the Japanese, don’t they?”

The detective looks at his hands, but says nothing.
 

Then I have a thought. “Don’t you need someone to identify the body? If I could look at the body, I could tell if it really is him or someone else…”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea. There’s nothing to identify. But he died instantly if that helps.”

“But I need to know that it really was him.”

“I understand. I can promise you that the identity of the body is not in doubt. It’s Kemp-san. I knew as soon as I saw you. This was on his finger.”

He takes a plastic bag from his jacket pocket. It contains a signet ring.

An identical match is on my hand.

I find I can’t control my breathing.
 

Detective Watanabe is speaking, talking about shock and how there is nothing anyone can do about accidents in life and that time heals all and then he’s asking if I know where I want to go now, what I will do now. And I find myself thanking him, saying I’ll walk back to the Shibuya Station to get my suitcase. He offers to take me to the dorm room. I thank him. But I don’t live there anymore. I don’t live anywhere anymore. All I have is a key to my dead fiancé’s flat, a suitcase in a railway locker, and my phone.

CHAPTER THREE

“Hello? This is Steve.”

“Oh my God, am I glad it’s you. You won’t believe where I am and what they said happened to you…”

“Sorry, what?”

“I’m outside the Kōban in Shibuya and they said you had been killed. But they have your gaijin card and your ring…”

“Hah, ha. Just kidding. I’m either mixing watercolours or throwing paint at a canvas right now. Or procrastinating terribly.”

“What?”

“So if you’d like to leave your name and number I might get back to you. After the tone. You know.”

I stop in the street. Bloody voice mail.

I’ve only just got my suitcase out of the locker. I think he’s going to be here to help me. Then I think, I’m being selfish. He’s not here because he’s dead, right? But he can’t be dead, not like this. I don’t know what to say. Here I am, talking with my fiancé. Who might be messing around. But also really might be dead. What do I say?

I hang up. Someone is watching me. I look around. The scramble crossing at Shibuya is heaving as usual, even though it’s a Sunday. A sea of dark bobbing heads with sprinkles of bleach blondes, mousy reds and golden browns, like it was autumn, not spring. Half are wearing hay fever masks strapped to their faces. A few salarymen and many high school girls in uniform. With my red cloth suitcase I struggle across the road through the waves of people. My suitcase has a strap and two wheels on the back corner, but it’s too heavy for the wheels to turn properly and as I pull it I groan as much as the wheels. My hand is burning red from the effort and I’m only halfway up the hill from the Shibuya Hachiko exit, having to dodge out of the way of faster kids with little bags not weighed down with everything they own.
 

A short stocky woman weaves past me through the crowds. She has bad skin, green tights, a green tube dress and a green foam crown. In one hand she’s holding a long stick with a torch. I follow the curve of her hips and watch the slither of skin between the tights and the dress disappear into the crowd. There was something about the way she walked that didn’t quite fit in. She walked like a man. But there’s nothing unusual about cosplayers in Shibuya, and this one is no exception: she was wearing a hay fever mask.

Steve’s flat, my flat, is just ahead. Turn right at Tower Records, go under a rail bridge and walk up a steep hill. I hate his flat except for about 15 minutes a day. It’s tiny, no more than one room, a kitchen sink and a toilet, concrete grey and walls as thin as paper like every flat I’ve ever seen in Tokyo. But at sunset the room is bright with yellows and reds and everything that once was grey is now golden. The balcony, useless for drying clothes, suddenly becomes the most beautiful place to be. If you don’t look down. Lit up like that by the ball of fire in the sky, you see past the dirty watercolour paints in wine glasses and takeaway boxes strewn across the floor and really believe it’s what Steve calls it, an artist’s studio. But then the sun disappears behind the skyscrapers of Shinjuku and all that is left are dirty wine glasses and empty takeaway boxes.

I tap the four digit code into the building and ram my shoulder up against the stiff glass door until I feel the click of the latch give way and I haul the case through the doorway. I’m in the empty lobby, sweating and pressing my thumbs into my raw palms. Of the 24 tin pigeonholes for mail, half are overflowing with bright adverts for loan offers, karaoke shops and pachinko parlours. I peer into Steve’s. I don’t have a key but you can squeeze your fingers into the gap for letters and pull out anything. I unfold the only pieces of mail in there, a glossy leaflet for a 24-hour-manga café and another with a picture of a woman in green and an address and business name, Liberty Pachinko. And in bright red letters, “Let’s Play!” I screw them both up. I want to toss them on the floor, but I smooth them out and stuff them in my back pocket to throw away when I find a bin.

The suitcase. I should take it with me to the ninth floor, but I’m not good with lifts, and my hands can’t take the weight of it up the stairs. I wheel it under the mail slots. I pass the lift with a shudder and start up the concrete steps. After one flight I’m out in the open as the staircase winds around the building. I feel the chill of the air, the smell of mould on the stucco walls. On the second floor the smell of fat frying on a gas stove and soy sauce boiling is so strong I could sit down and tuck in to the fried eggs right there on the stairs. By the ninth floor the smell of breakfast is gone. I make it around the last corner of the stairs without looking down. Now I just have to survive the outside walkway. I pass the lift and doors to three flats. Steve’s place is the fourth door along. The last but one of the single apartments. He’s written his name in katakana as you are supposed to do on the outside of the door, but the slip where his name should be is empty. The wind must have blown it out. But I can’t see it along the passageway. I feel in my pocket for the spare key Steve secretly made for me. I slip it into the barrel of the lock in the steel handle.

But it doesn’t turn.

I try again. Maybe I have the wrong flat. I have to be certain. I steady myself with both arms against the balcony wall and peer over the edge. My muscles spasm and, instantly, I’m filled with panic. I know that at that moment if I do not fall to my death, I will throw myself over the edge. I can see it. I can see the ground. Exactly where my body will come to rest. So far away, but so easy to reach if I lose my footing.

I close my eyes and shake my head. I scrunch myself up in a ball and rock myself against the wall opposite the balcony. But I know one thing. It’s the same terrifying view down I’ve seen before. This is the right floor and the right flat. I wait to gather my breath and focus. The lock. Try the lock again.

 
I do. No luck. I stare at the stainless steel lock. Has it been changed? Has my key been replaced? I look at both, but can’t see why I can’t make either work. I press the button. I hear the usual electronic imitation of bells going ding dong on the other side of the steel door. But there is no movement. No sound.

I bang on the door and call out: “Steve!” I do it all again.

I lean against the door and slide down to the doorstep. I look at the single window on the walkway. I know even if I could find something to unscrew the metal bars with I would still have trouble breaking the reinforced glass. And really, what is the point if Steve isn’t there? Nothing about today is making any sense. Like Steve has been erased from my life.
 

The last door in the row of five flats opens out a crack. A neighbour? I smile in his direction and bend my head in a sort of bowing gesture to mimic the Japanese when they are apologising for imposing or making too much noise.
 

He says something, but I can’t catch the meaning. All I can tell is the tone of voice. Not friendly, matter-of-fact. I push myself to my feet and walk to the door. I try to remember who it is who lives there. Steve says there’s an old man on his floor who plays 1940s big band music all day, but I can’t remember which side of him that is. He doesn’t even know any of the people, beyond the names on the doors. At least Steve can speak reasonable Japanese, better than mine. So I let him. And mine stays at the beginner stage.
 

As I reach the door, it clicks shut. I stand for a moment, unsure what to do. I study the name on the door. He has a name written in kanji, the Chinese characters that Japanese names use. That much I can figure out. But the two characters are a mystery to me. One of them looks a little like one of the characters in Aunt Tanaka’s name, but whether it’s the same and how you say it, I have no idea, really. It’s rude to knock on the door, but what else can I do? I look up and down the passageway. And look down at my feet.
 

I hear the sound of a chain being removed. I jump out of the way as the door swings out into the passageway.

An old man stands in the doorway. He has white hair, bloodshot eyes and is wearing a white vest. His chicken-bone arm props open the steel door. He speaks in stops and starts, but doesn’t say more than five or six words.

Me too: “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Japanese.”

He smiles. He shrugs. He pulls his arm in and the door eases back.

“Wait! Please!”

He cocks his head to one side.

I point to Steve’s place.

“Please. Have you seen Steve? The man? Do you know? I’m his fiancée. Er, his girlfriend.”

He shrugs his shoulders. He speaks some numbers, I think, then shakes his head.

I point at Steve’s place and hold both my hands with palms up and make a questioning face.

He shakes his hand the way Japanese do to mean no. And points downstairs. Then waves both hands about above his head. He shrugs his shoulders. I shrug my shoulders. He bows to me and smiles wearily. I bob my head in a little bow. He bobs his head to me slightly less than I do. And closes the door.

So.
 

There’s nowhere I can go and nobody I can ask to work out what is going on. Steve can’t be dead. But he’s making it hard for me to prove he isn’t. I have nothing to go on but the miming of an old man who may or may not like 1940s big band music. Think, Hana. He pointed downstairs so that’s where I’ll go. I pass the lift and take the nine flights of steps back down the stairs, carefully not looking at how high up I am and not thinking about falling or jumping. I look down at my feet and run my hands along the chipped walls on either side of me to steady myself. Back through the smells of mould, through the fried eggs.