Read Year of the Talking Dog: A Hana Walker Mystery (The Hana Walker Mysteries Book 2) Online
Authors: Patrick Sherriff
Year of the Talking Dog: A Hana Walker Mystery (The Hana Walker Mysteries Book 2) (25 page)
CHAPTER FORTY
The bacteria is in the curry. I have to find the rest of the curry. I run away from the man. He jabs his sword-stick at me, but I’m away before he can get up.
I burst through the kitchen swing doors. I count six people working in the kitchen. All are wearing the white overcoats, shower caps and white masks of the food professional. The virus would be all the evidence needed to get the police on my side, but I have to get rid of it all.
And then I see it. A cook is bending over a vat. Steam is rising, he’s stirring the mixture, but keeping an eye out on the cafeteria.
“Hey, you!” I shout at the man. “Stop! Terrorism!” I doubt anyone knows what I’m saying, but it’s enough to startle the cook. I charge at him. He sees me and backs away, flying out of the kitchen doors into the restaurant. Strange. I’m not that scary am I? I get to the curry vat. I turn the gas off. I try to knock the vat onto the floor, but the handles are too hot, and I can’t hold it for more than a second.
Then something hits my legs. I try to keep my head and, as I turn around. I wonder if the masked man has got me. I don’t see him but suddenly I’m lying on the floor, I can’t seem to move. I look up and see the masked man hovering above me. He has flicked a switch in his stick and the blade retracts. I look down at my legs, I can’t feel my legs.
“There’s no more running for you,” he says. He grabs my hair and rams my face against a metal cabinet. My jaw explodes with pain. I feel like I’ve lost a tooth. I look for it on the floor. But I wince. He hasn’t let go of my hair and hurls my head against the steel door again.
I spit blood onto the floor.
I can’t see anything now, just a blur of colours, most of them red. I can’t move and something is choking me, maybe my own blood. I can barely breathe. I think this is it. I can hear something. It might be shouting in the distance or talking close by, I’m not sure.
Then I know what it is. It’s laughter. The masked man is laughing.
I spit out a glob of blood from my mouth. “Hurl my head against the wall if you like, but just don’t make me watch you enjoying it.”
He laughs some more. I feel his grip loosen slightly on my scalp. I blink hard, try to clear the fog from my brain and my eyes. I can’t be sure, but I think his stick is lying on the ground.
I make a grab for it with my outstretched fingers. I can barely reach it. I can’t make my legs work, but I crawl along the ground and flay my arms out.
There is shouting in the kitchen now. The man lets go of my hair.
He reaches for his stick but the handle is centimetres from my hand. I lunge and I grab it. With my last ounce of strength, I ram the end of the stick into the steel handle of the vat above me and push my body against the stick.
It works. The vat of curry splatters across the floor.
Then it’s the man’s turn to scream. He’s trying to ladle the curry back into the vat with his bare hands, but it’s too hot and he slips over in the spilled curry.
“It’s over, masked man. You lose. You lost to a half-breed and a girl. I win-win.”
He screams at me, and I brace myself for a final blow as he tries to kick me but I feel nothing. Then I can’t believe my eyes. Someone has pulled the masked man’s arms behind him and is pulling him away. There are people in uniform all around the kitchen, and one I think I know.
Detective Watanabe steps forward. He shakes his head at me.
“I’m sorry,” I splutter out, but he doesn’t seem angry with me. In fact, he’s smiling. I try to speak, but I’m feeling faint. I manage a whisper. He raises his eyebrows, then puts his ear close to my mouth. I repeat myself:
“Curry’s off.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The light from a warm spring day makes the bag of liquid hanging from a hook beside my bed glisten.
Drip, drip.
I watch it drip down the plastic tube. The tube goes under the bedclothes, slithers out between the sheets and then disappears behind a fishnet bandage around my wrist
I make a quick inventory of my assets. All limbs intact. I can feel my legs and arms. There’s a dull pain in my head and my vision is blurry, but on the whole it could be worse.
“You took quite a beating.”
I know this voice. I blink to focus and try to follow where the words are coming from. It’s Uncle Kentaro’s voice, I’m pretty sure. I strain to turn my head to look at the chair beside my bed.
“Wha…” is all I can manage, my mouth barely opens.
“Take it easy, Hana. Your jaw is broken. The doctors had to wire your teeth together so it can heal. Until then, you’ll have difficulty talking or eating, but you will make a full recovery. In a month or so.”
I try to make a sentence but find I can’t make my body do what I want it to. My teeth really are wired shut. I can just move my lips. I think for a moment. I manage one word.
“Aoi…?”
Uncle Kentaro pats my hand.
“She’s alive. After Detective Watanabe got your email, the cops raided Liberty Pachinko. They found her weak and chained up. The masked man had left her to die. She’s with Dr Ishihara now. They have a lot to catch up on. I don’t know what kind of life they can piece together, but, well, they have a chance. Thanks to you.”
I would smile, if my teeth weren’t wired together. I nod. I concentrate on forming words. I make my tongue make the sounds they need behind clenched teeth. If I speak slowly and simply I can make myself understood.
“The masked man?”
“Detective Watanabe is taking care of him. Child abduction and plots to poison people would normally get him a hanging sentence. Turns out the masked man is the second cousin a couple of times removed of the leader of North Korea, which complicates matters. You know, diplomatic immunity and all that. But the media have been all over the story. Someone in the police has been leaking information to that NHK reporter. Abduction of a Japanese kid and attempted mass murder don’t play well with the public, you’ll be happy to know. Anyway, he’s nothing for us to worry about now. Which brings me to this.”
Uncle Kentaro pulls out a white envelope emblazoned in jet black Japanese, written from top to bottom. Along the bottom edge is scrawled in English in cheap ballpoint pen, “Olivewalker Hana.”
I groan. “Detective Watanabe?”
Uncle Kentaro nods. “Open it.”
Inside is a handwritten note in Japanese and a receipt with lots of numbers. At the bottom is more kanji. It looks like a bill for an expensive soba noodle shop. I look questioningly at Uncle Kentaro.
“It’s your reward. You found Aoi and reunited her with her father. It’s your money.”
“How much…?”
Uncle Kentaro looks at his hands and sighs. “It’s ten million yen. Two or three years’ salary for most people. It’s more than enough to get you a plane ticket and get set up in England, if… if that’s what you still want.”
I nod.
“Or it would be enough to get your own place in Japan. You could finish your journalism studies.”
I nod.
Uncle Kentaro perks up. “If that’s what you want to do, you really could. Or,” and he cracks a broad smile, “there are worse ways to make a living than teaching English in Japan. With the reward money, you could set up your own school. You could make a future for yourself here. Firefly would like that. I would like that. What do you say?”
A Carpenters song drifts into my head.
Close To You
. It makes me feel sick. But that’s how I once felt about natto, and it’s funny what you can get used to.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I’d like to offer my heartiest thanks to the beta readers Shard Aerliss, Carl Brotherstone, Dan Ryan, Lynwen Davison, Michael Gillan Peckitt, Molly Helene Kruko and Rod Van Meter who laboured through an unedited earlier draft of the book. Their comments were invaluable and improved the story immensely. My thanks are also due to novelist Simon Lewis. Read his thriller
Bad Traffic
which Elmore Leonard called “inspired”. Really, he did, and it is. Also, thank you Margaret Jull Costa, Ben Sherriff, Sandra Barron and editor Nancy Reed Imai who corrected more errors than Hana Walker could shake a katana at. Thanks also go to my wife, whose indulgence makes all of this possible. And thank you for making it this far. If you’d like updates on my progress on the third Hana Walker mystery or any of my other projects, sign up for my
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ALSO BY PATRICK SHERRIFF
Half Life: A Hana Walker mystery
The Zen of Ranieri; An Adult Colouring Book
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