Year of the Talking Dog: A Hana Walker Mystery (The Hana Walker Mysteries Book 2) (8 page)

“I don’t know.” And then I type: “He maybe killed my fiancé. Who is he?” I type.

He frowns when he sees the translation.

“BAD MAN.”

“Who are you?”

“GOOD BOY.”

I type again. “I’m in so much trouble and I don’t know what to do.”

“I HELP.”

“Thank you. But why?”
 

He points at his name tag. But doesn’t speak.
 

“Firefly. I worked it out already. Pleased to meet you, Firefly, I’m Hana.”

He blushes. Then the blood drains from his face. He points over my shoulder. I turn. A large man in a mask is pushing his way through the line of protesters a hundred metres behind us.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I type. “Do you know a way out of here? Please.”

Firefly studies the screen then when he has the translation, nods.

He offers me his hand.

I wonder what he has in mind, but with the masked man bearing down on us, I grasp it. He drags me forward and we clamber through the people in front of us. He bows an apology to each person we cut past and before I know it we are in the crowded underbelly of the station. For a moment the thought of being underground gets the better of me and I feel like puking, but through it all he holds my hand. And I realise he isn’t dragging me further into the underground system, instead he leads me to another exit, one not so crowded and then we are racing up the steps to the outside, a different exit further away from the parliament and the protesters. I don’t look behind me, but we both know we must hurry. When we reach street level, he lets go of my hand. I wipe my clammy palm and blush at the thought he has saved me once again, and I still don’t know why.

We race along the wet streets. Firefly is faster than me. I realise it’s my soggy socks that are holding me back. I slip them off and drop them in the unburnable section of a waste bin outside a convenience store. I run barefoot. My feet are cold but without the socks at least I can move. It’s not long before we are in parts of Tokyo I’ve never been to. Not the Tokyo of winding streets, boutiques and bars that I used to go to with Steve. This place is less beautiful. Less quirky. A train rattles over our heads. Cars race past us on an orange and grey motorway, and we pass businesses lit up with yellow light bulbs and no neon. It’s like I have wandered round the back of a film set and found that the high-tech promise of Tokyo is actually held together with cardboard and wooden painted props.

“Where are we?” I type.

“MIDDLE,” he types.
 

Beyond the asphalt buzzing with black Toyota and Nissan taxis, a stone wall made of grey square blocks stacked like a stone wall in the Cotswolds, only this wall had been built behind a moat of green water. It could withstand giants. There is a double wooden and wrought iron gate the height of an apartment building.

He types. I hit translate.

“IMPERIAL PALACE.”

OK. I’m intrigued. If we could cross the motorway, swim the moat, storm the castle and speak nicely to the emperor, maybe we’d be safe.

Firefly just stands there. If he has a plan, he isn’t trying to tell me what it is. The rain is not letting up. We stay where we are until the rain is pouring down my head and face and onto my shoulders. He grabs my hand and we run through the now teeming rain again away from the motorway. We are outside a convenience store. Firefly runs in and in seconds emerges with a pair of socks and disposable foldable slippers for me. They make me look like Aunt Tanaka ready for bed, but I can’t deny they are a whole lot better than nothing. I bow my head in thanks and Firefly smiles.

We move on. We find ourselves on a ridge looking down at the moat. The palace is the other side with the moat between us. We run beneath the silhouettes of the bare cherry trees that line the ridge. The homeless have covered their things with plastic sheets against the rain.   

The streets are busier now, even in the rain. A sea of plastic umbrellas bobbing along. I see a broken one by the railings and think it’s better than nothing. We share it and most of the water drips onto Firefly. In a minute we are by a stadium in front of the grounds of the imperial palace.

He points at the stadium and types.

“BUDOKAN,” and then “CONCERT.”
 

I type “Tickets?”

He shakes his hand, no.

I look at him quizzically.

He types.

“GREAT PEOPLE. HIDE IN GREAT NUMBER OF PEOPLE.”

This sounds like a bad idea. But I have no ideas myself.

“OK,” I say.

We are near the Kudanshita subway entrance, the pavements are heaving with middle-aged men with cameras and glow-sticks. We join the tail end of a line of men walking up the hill and shuffling through one of the giant wooden and iron gates that are pinned open. We pass through the musty entrance, and the rain stops falling. Then we emerge out into crowds of more men milling around the stadium.

I get my phone out to ask who is playing, when I see a T-shirt stand. Every shirt has a picture of dozens of Japanese school girls making peace signs at the camera. Or V for victory.

Among the stream of concert-goers is the only woman not trying to sell something. She has a notepad. A cameraman is filming the people she interviews. A dozen fans form a circle around her.

“I can get us in,” I say.

I push through the group and smile at the woman.

“Hi! I’m a big fan! I came all the way from England to see the band!”

The woman speaks to me in Japanese and then English: “You want interview? You speak Japanese?”

I put my arm around her neck.

“Well, no, I don’t speak Japanese. But my friend Firefly over there does.”
 

The cameraman looks at the woman then at Firefly. Firefly folds his arms and turns his back on us all. He looks at the ground. I pull the cameraman’s arm, bringing him toward Firefly, but he pulls his hand free. The cameraman and woman talk in Japanese. They look at my socks and slippers. She puts on a sad face. “No, no. Thank you.”

“No problem, thanks for your time,” I say, then walk past Firefly and nod at him to follow. He seems as eager as me to get away.

“Thank you,” I say to him.

I type:

“Now we can get into the concert.”

Firefly looks at the screen like it’s broken. While they were busy deciding whether to film us I lifted her ID card from around her neck and took the press pass clipped to the cameraman’s belt.

We run around the outside of the building. Queues of people are flooding in. T-shirt sellers and some tough-looking security men. I check what I took from the woman. It has a blurry picture of the woman, the letters NHK and the words “PRESS PASS” in English. I can’t make out anything else. The cameraman’s looks nothing like Firefly, but it is at least a photo of a Japanese man.

I give Firefly his pass and put mine around my neck. I flash my pass at the security guard and he waves me through. Firefly hangs back and seems reluctant to come in. I shout at him. “Come on, cameraman,” and he follows me, showing his pass. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t look the part, doesn’t even have a camera: he has paperwork.

We are under the stage. I can hear muffled chants, stamping and claps. But it’s safe here. There are checkpoints. There’s no way a man with a sword can just walk in.

There’s a bench beside an ashtray stand. I sit down and gesture to Firefly to sit next to me. His eyes are darting around but he doesn’t lift his head. He looks so out of place I’m worried we might get thrown out. I have to distract him.

“Hey, what does A.O.I. mean?” He looks at me blankly. I type the letters into the phone without the full stops.

“AOI IS BLUE,” he types back. “AND…”

“And?”

“GIRL.”

“A girl?”
 

Some official-looking people start shouting. A man with ID and a woman with immaculate make-up are beckoning to us. I gather something important is about to happen. A girl? We walk over to them, and I remember we are supposed to be professionals. I pick up the pace and Firefly does his best to keep up with me. Firefly nods his head to the two as they say something to us both. I just duck my head and hold out my press pass, but keep moving. The two look at each other but I don’t catch the meaning. The band might be on stage and we are supposed to do something? Film them? We run breathlessly along smooth, cold, concrete floors. The whole building is throbbing with the dull thuds of stamping and clapping from above. The occasional teenage scream pierces our bunker, but the beige, the concrete floors and the unheated chill make me think of only one thing, the room where they put my mother’s body. We were in elevator three, a back route near the service doors. I’d waited there with her body as we had waited for my Dad to show up to finish the paperwork, which, without my mother to interpret for us, became my job.

The house lights are still up. A raised runway projects out from the main stage towards a smaller stage in the middle of the arena.

There is a hip-hop soundtrack, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a show going on. Instead, it looks like a fashion shoot. Some very tall, snooty woman is wearing grey and black clothes. She strides down the runway to the little stage and sneers at the audience. She puts one hand on her hip, turns and marches back. She must not like her dress. I don’t blame her. It has a whole chunk cut out of one side and the material is so thin, you can see her white bra through her red knitted top. No wonder she’s in such a bad mood. She flounces back to the other wing and then when she isn’t in view of the audience, she hurries down the stairs. Then more models. Each is wearing something not quite right. There is a wad of material missing from the chest or belly or the skirt has a great big hole in the front or side or back. They all look thoroughly miserable. I turn my attention from the stage to the audience, looking for any sign of the masked man. There are many men. Many with masks on. There are a loud bunch of men in the crowd standing around the raised stage. And there are others, older men who must be in their 40s, wearing messages in kanji on their heads.
 

The lights go down and the stadium roars. Firefly jumps and holds my arm. Glow sticks wave in the darkness, piercing the bad air of a stadium of salarymen. Then two dozen girls file past us and run onto the stage, waving like schoolgirls spotting a panda or a foreigner.

The tune is familiar. And the poses, too. I must have seen them when they were advertising coffee or something. Then the spotlights are on them and they strut to the music like children who have over-rehearsed for the school play. They are dressed in golden shirts, black-and-white mini skirts and gold high heels. They all have microphones, but I can’t tell who is singing, or if any of them are really singing. It could be a backing tape; I don’t see any instruments or a band. A movie camera on a little track beside the stage goes up and down following the girls as they prance forward as one, and then the crowd releases a throaty roar as they form a circle on the little stage.

More dancers file past me and then the whole troupe of them, four dozen teenagers shimmy back and forth showing their legs to a stadium of men. Firefly doesn’t know where to look. Neither do I. I wonder what their names are. What kind of a name is Aoi? Blue? Just as sensible a name as Firefly, I suppose. But who is she? And why did Steve write her name on the sketch? Then strobes begin flashing ultra-violet light. They pick up anything made of white and turn it into dazzling reflections. People’s shoelaces, T-shirts and hair bands. And a mask.

Someone in the backstage behind me and Firefly is wearing a mask. I look again. Tall. Male. Close. He’s coming for us.
 

A flash of light dazzles me.

I look away and back again. A silhouette is running at Firefly. I push him to the ground. And I see two hazy eyes. A mask. And a blade raised above my head. I roll to one side and feel the air rush as the blade lands beside me. I jump to my feet and run. Away. The only place there is any chance of not being followed. I run straight for the stage. The next moment I’m in a sea of light surrounded by darkness. I’m on stage and look behind me. The masked man hasn’t followed me onto stage, I don’t think, but to be sure, I head for the centre of the stage.
 

I look around me. Lights like UFOs stare me in the face piercing through the dark of the stadium. I try to do what the others are doing, which is smiling insanely and wiggling one leg to the beat of the music. I can do that. I move to one side and hope that my intrusion will be forgotten about. But the camera keeps zooming past me. I look up on the screen behind the stage. I try to see if I can see myself from this strange angle. It takes a while to figure out. Then it hits me. I’m being videoed and my image beamed onto screens at the back of the stage and on the right and left.

The camera is off me now as the core group of dancers are walking around in a circle on the centre stage, flashing their legs again. But I’m not looking where I’m going and I crash into one of the singers. Her microphone flies from her hand onto the stage but there is no change to the soundtrack, her voice continues singing. Two men in black run from where I entered the stage. I pick the girl up, mumble “sorry”, and spin round looking for another exit. There is shouting all around the stadium. I run for the other side of the stage but trip over the track for the camera and fly straight into the lens. I’m about to pick myself up when a dozen men’s hands grab me. I’m heading to the nearest stage exit and my feet don’t even touch the ground.