Year of the Talking Dog: A Hana Walker Mystery (The Hana Walker Mysteries Book 2) (23 page)

By the time I see the lights of Aunt Tanaka’s shack at the bottom of the hill beneath Uncle Kentaro’s shrine, I have the outlines of a plan written on my smartphone.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The 7:04 Tobu Skytree Line train pulls out of Kita-Senju station on time with only half the seats taken.
 

The train is on street level, running somewhere between the speed of a
mamachari
shopping bicycle and a delivery van. Only neither of these things is anywhere to be seen. An old man walking, but no other signs of life. Here, all around are non-chain stores. A shop made of wood selling futons. A faded sign for a bakery, but, judging by faded paint, none of these looks like it’s ever seen much in the way of business. Then the train rises up to third-floor level and we speed along the tracks elevated above the road below. At a left turn, I glimpse Skytree. Then it vanishes behind the sparkling pine floors of an empty apartment. Nobody home.

Now a chirpy automated recorded message in English and Japanese. Tokyo Skytree stop. Disembark here for the Skytree. It’s a new station, though like any other in the Tokyo area, it has ticket gates and yellow grooved pavements to guide the blind. Though why would blind people want to visit Skytree for its views of Tokyo?

I find the disabled toilet and shut the door, catching my breath in the seconds of absolute darkness between closing the door latch and the LED light flicking on. Sometimes seconds can last a lifetime. I think there’s still time for a
natto
rice ball in whatever time remains of my life. I bought one from the convenience store by the station, but now my hands are shaking, and I realise it’s not from hunger. But I eat anyway. I will need all my strength. I watch the tendrils of fermented soy beans ooze out of the rice and hang in my mouth. Really not bad, once you get used to it.

 
I wipe the sticky ooze of
natto
off my hands, then kick off my black canvas lace-ups, slip out of my shorts and T-shirt and unfold the uniform of a Skytree cleaner that Emi had left in Uncle Kentaro’s guest room. 

It’s a heavy cotton job that would have been out of date in the 1950s. A lime-green dress with a pattern of lemon yellow triangles topped off with a 1920s hat with a band. Isn’t cleaning toilets for a living hard enough without having to wear such a hideous outfit?

But as I tie my hair back and tuck it under the hat, hide my nose and chin behind a flu mask, there is no sign of me. Not my hair, my figure or my mouth. Apart from the black socks, there’s nothing left of the old Hana. In the mirror, a Skytree employee stares back at me. I have to be convincing or else it’s all over.

I turn the corner and I can see Skytree, a giant syringe piercing the sky. I have to crane my neck back and hold on to a wall to stop myself from collapsing. And I have to go to the top? I take a deep breath. I get in line for an escalator that goes up four floors to the base of the tower. I lodge myself behind a man and in front of a woman. They might be a couple or might not, but they are standing close enough that I can fool myself into not feeling that I’m doing a solo climb of a mountain that I’ll fall off at any moment.

I bow my head apologetically, and we make our way up the escalator. Awkward. They share a disapproving glance but say nothing. I close my eyes until I feel the pressure of the man’s back disappear and I guess we’ve reached the top. The fourth floor opens out onto a concrete courtyard. I push my way through crowds of families and still more men in dark suits and women in grey skirts and black stockings and sweaters. Suitable colours for a funeral.
 

It’s still three hours until the official opening of Skytree, but here are thousands of people with nothing to do but wait outside for the lifts to open, just as Uncle Kentaro predicted. Japanese, he said, will always arrive early. But nothing had been arranged to entertain the crowds and there’s nowhere for them to sit or anything for them to do, just as Uncle Kentaro also predicted. I scan the crowds for the masked man. There are plenty of people wearing masks, but none with a heavy-duty round mask.

Security guards stand to attention. There are the usual retirement-age guards, dressed in crisply ironed slacks with peaked caps. They look like extras in a movie about the American Civil War. But there are other guards too. Two by each of the four glass door entrances to the Skytree tower. They wear black suits and white shirts with red ties. They are armed with walkie-talkies, but stand silently. There is something about them. A look, a coolness, that says they are not here to check ticket stubs.

Lines of people stand around. Men with megaphones are ordering people to do something, but nobody is doing anything other than stand around. Women in high-pitched voices shout into rolled-up paper funnels. Everyone is shouting at once so I can’t work out what people are supposed to do, but it involves standing in line to get pieces of paper to stand in other lines.

A guitar riff cuts through it all.   

Half-a-dozen people form a circle around an amplifier and an old man. He clicks his fingers and shakes his hips like an old rocker. His quiff is jet black. The music is old-fashioned
, like World War II dance music but with an electric guitar. The lyrics are in English. Something about the time and clocks and rocking around them.
 

He’s working the audience, gazing into the eyes of the people around him. Is he looking for a volunteer? Nine, ten, eleven o’clock, twelve o’clock. More people gather in a circle as he struts around. He seems to be singing the words and playing all the instruments but he’s just one man. I can’t tell if he’s going to keel over or wow us with the splits, it could go either way. He has a surly sneer and playful eyes. He does the splits and the audience claps, less out of embarrassment that he might hurt himself and more out of surprised respect. For a man in his 50s, Uncle Kentaro can still cut it.

The music keeps blaring, more of a crowd gathers. A guard at the nearest glass door speaks into his walkie-talkie. I wonder if the guards will shut the music down. What if the masked man is there? He could be among the crowd, watching me. I take in everyone around me. I can’t see anyone wearing that kind of paper mask. But four of the men in suits approach Uncle Kentaro.

The old man doesn’t care. He turns up the music. He skips around the circle that has gathered and picks out a volunteer. The volunteer shuffles his feet but looks down with his back bent. He looks like he’s about to burst into tears. He’s not a natural dancer. Uncle Kentaro spins him around as if he was a woman in a flowing dress, only he keeps stumbling. His face is a bright red. The crowd laughs nervously. It’s ridiculous, a 50-year-old man wooing a shy computer-geek boy.

A man in a suit bends over and turns off the music. He shakes his hand at the old man, telling him to clear off and stop causing a scene. Then a gasp from the crowd. The computer geek is lying on the ground holding his head. Blood is pouring from his head through his fingers. At first, some in the crowd laugh. They think it’s part of the act. Did anyone see what happened? But they soon realise it’s not an act. It’s some kind of accident. Three men in suits huddle over the geek on the ground. He stands, wobbling on his feet. They take him through the glass doors. A first aid office is behind the security cordon. He’s ushered into the room, and the door slams shut. A man in a suit tells Uncle Kentaro off. He bows his head and stares at the ground, then tries to follow the volunteer into the building, but no one is going to let him in.

I catch his eye. He bows deeply to the men in black, with a goofy smile on his face. The cops let him go. Maybe they think his smile is as an expression of extreme embarrassment. But I know what it is. It’s Uncle Kentaro’s pride. He’s smiling because he managed to distract four guards and get Firefly into Skytree without a ticket. But he was supposed to get in
with
Firefly. He was going to make sure I wasn’t crazy, and that there is a plot to kill millions. He was going to help me confront the masked man. But he’s out and only Firefly is in. This is not how I wanted things to go. And I still have to get in. And in time to save Aoi.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

I skip through the crowds to the main entrance. I can hear Uncle Kentaro arguing with the guards. He wants to be let in to check on Firefly, but he’s making no progress. This isn’t part of the plan. The plan is for Uncle Kentaro to get in and then, together with Firefly, we’ll find a way to search the place for the general. But now? Now it’s just Firefly in the sick room and me.

In front of me is an old guard in a peaked cap, the black-suited guys are dealing with Uncle Kentaro. I approach a metal-detector. On the other side are the lifts and the sick room. I have no idea if my pass is up to date or if I have to give a password. All I know is that if I don’t make it in, the whole thing is over.

The old guy stares at me. I just know he can see that I’m not 100% Japanese. I can’t convince him that I belong. You either have it or you don’t, and I don’t have it. He says something to me in Japanese. I guess that he means to see my pass. I give it to him. He looks surprised, like I should have handed it to him on a cushion or something, but he holds it as if it were a sample and scans it under a barcode reader. Then he looks at me intently. He sucks air between his teeth like Uncle Kentaro does when he’s bet on the Yomiuri Giants winning, but the Hanshin Tigers have just caught the whole team out. A bead of sweat runs down the side of my face and I know this isn’t going well. But I daren’t wipe the sweat from my face. Any show of fear and it’s over. He looks me square in the face and I just know he has seen me sweating. He knows something doesn’t add up.
 

“Chotto matte,” he says. Just a minute.

He walks away toward the security room. For a moment there’s no one on the door. I know when he returns, he’ll have another guard with him and I will be booted off the premises, and that will be it for me. And for Aoi. And maybe for everybody else.

I look around. There are other women in the same uniform as me. If I can look the part and just get though here, who’s to stop me? The old security guard is halfway across the carpeted lobby. He has his back to me. I think about running full pelt through the security station, but if I run everyone will see something is wrong.

No. I do belong here. Act like it and nobody will be the wiser. I grab my pass from under the scanner and stride over to the first aid room.
 

I pass by the double lift-doors and a door that opens onto the central shaft. That is the way to the first aid office. I try to open it. But it’s locked. There is a key pad and a magnetic strip. I swipe my cleaner’s pass and it flashes an instruction to me in Japanese. Perhaps it wants a PIN?
 
I have no idea what to type. I stare at the keypad and the door. If I could get through to Firefly, maybe we could make a run for the lifts?  

I hear a raised voice right behind me. It’s the guard. I can’t understand the words but the meaning is clear. It’s the voice of authority. I want to push him away. But I don’t. I’m a cleaner. This is how people talk to cleaners. I turn and face him and bow my head in apology. I’m careful not to make eye contact, but judging from his chin and the sound of his voice, he’s either about to have a heart attack, or hit someone. He barks at me several times and then falls silent. Perhaps he wants a response? I remember advice from Aunt Tanaka: always say yes at the first opportunity. You can always say no later. Say no at first, and you can never say yes again. At least, I think it’s that way round.

“Hai.”
Yes
.

This seems to work. He calms down a little and talks to me like I’m a naughty child. Which I suppose I am really. He pauses again.

“Hai,” I say.

He nods to a door I hadn’t noticed before. I hurry over there in a slow-run-quick-walk that people in Tokyo do when they are trying to show polite hurry. I turn the handle and it’s a broom cupboard. There’s a cleaning trolley with mops, dusters and plastic gloves and bags. I pull it out and follow the guard. He swipes his card and enters his PIN code and nods for me to go in. I make sure the door closes behind me. And to remember the keystrokes he made — 0522. I think about it. It’s not much of a code, it’s today’s date, May 22.
 

But there is no Firefly. Maybe they have moved him to a hospital or he has been found out. Think, Hana, think. It doesn’t matter, either way I’m on my own. We are two hours away from the grand opening. I must get to the top of the Skytree and figure out what the masked man has planned and stop him. Myself.

I take a few deep breaths. I tell myself I can do this. Then I open the door and wheel my trolley to the bank of lifts. There are four, each named for a season, each staffed by a woman in the same uniform. The queues outside the glass entrance doors to the lobby are getting deeper, but still they haven’t let anyone in. The old guard is hurrying over. I must get into the lift before he reaches me. If I start speaking bad Japanese, he’ll know something is up. I dash into the lift, but the lift girl doesn’t get out. She reaches for a walkie talkie. Behind her, back in the main entrance hall, the
 
guard is leading two secret-service-looking men to the lift. My lift. The lift woman reaches for a key in a control panel on the lift. I watch as she turns the key and the lift lights flicker. I have to act. This is my last second of freedom. I can’t let this person shut me down. I lunge forward, smack both palms into her back and propel her out of the lift. She goes flying forwards and crumples to the ground. There is a shout. From the old guard? I don’t have time to look. I reach the key, turn it anti-clockwise back to its original position and press the button to go up.