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

by Patrick Sherriff

  I look at his uniform. Perhaps I’m talking to the wrong person. But I have to make him understand, or else no one will be able to get it. Although I wasn’t sure I got it. Like trying to translate something. You can only translate the words if you know the meaning in the first language. Without meaning, you are lost. I can’t find the meaning to anything that has happened to me since Detective Watanabe first called me to his police station. But I have to try.

  “Detective, this is the best that I can figure out: the masked man is involved in some kind of plot. He’s probably a North Korean agent. It has something to do with the medical experiments that the Japanese government carried out during the Second World War. I don’t know how all the pieces fit together, but I must be getting close because the resistance is growing. It has something to do with wrist tattoos. The waitress had one. And it’s related to a missing girl called Aoi. Does that make sense?”

  “Very clever,” he says. But he says it like he doesn’t think it’s very clever at all.

  “But then why are you still alive and not dead?”

  “What?”

  “If your theory is true, why didn’t this mysterious masked man kill you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What would be the point of tattooing people?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Would you ever get any proof.”

  “I don’t know.”

  I think some more. I’m not making any headway.

  “I don’t have all the answers. In fact, maybe that’s why I wasn’t killed.”

  “You are telling me that you were saved because you don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “Yes, exactly, Detective Watanabe.”

  “Exactly, Walker-san.”

  “But if I’m so wrong, why am I here? Why am I a threat? Why are you here? Why have you handcuffed me to the bed? If I’m so wrong, why bother with me?”

  “Well, for one thing, I’d like to know why you injected yourself with amphetamine.”

  “I didn’t, the waitress did.”

  “I see. But you had the syringe.”

  “I took it to find out what it was. Thank you for giving me that information. Why do you think I’m a suspect rather than the victim?”

  He’s silent.

  But then something else bothers me. I look over at the empty can of coffee. Who drank it? Not me, I was unconscious. Not Watanabe, he says he doesn’t drink sweet coffee.

  “Who else was here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Here in this room. Beside my bed.”

  “It’s not important. Nobody.”

  I remember now how he likes to conduct interviews. I have a go. “Nobody? Or nobody important? They are two different things. Think about your answer, Detective Watanabe. Let’s go over it again, shall we? Nobody, or nobody important? Which is it? Perhaps if you tell the truth it will go better for you. Admit just a little of the truth and I’ll let you go from here.”

  “You are a tricky one.”

  “You say that like you know me.”

  The smile on his face fades. “I have your best interests at heart.”

  I’ve heard that before. It’s the speech I heard when I was told I couldn’t continue at school, that I’m not cut out for the life I thought was mine, that I’m only good for cleaning up after other people. I don’t know much, but I know when I hear those words they are not true.

  “That’s a lie. You’re a liar or else you actually believe that, which would make you stupid. Which are you? A liar or stupid?”

  He looks at his shoes. So. Not stupid, but lying all the same. He says nothing.

  “To say nothing means you have no respect for the person you are talking to. But I don’t think you’re that stupid or disrespectful. So. You must think I’m just a child, not worthy of respect?”

  He continues looking at his feet, no change in his expression. But he chews his lip as if he wanted to say more but somewhere his brain is telling him to be quiet. He has my best interests at heart.

  “You’re not levelling with me because you think I’m crazy.”

  “You need help.”

  “I do. It would be great if the police would help me. If the police would find a girl who has been missing for just about as long as I have been alive.”

  “You’re the girl who needs help, medical help. And if you want to solve a problem, the first thing you have to do is admit there is one.”

  “What?”

  “Admit there is a problem.”

  “I do have a problem.”

  “Good. That’s a good start.”

  “I have a problem with a cop who thinks I’m crazy.”

  He sighs. “It’s very complicated. But it’s a matter of case-by-case. If we follow the rules exactly, there is no room for the right decision. Do you know what I mean Hana? Complicated.”

  “No. It sounds simple enough to me. Somebody decides I’m crazy and you are happy to go along with it. It’s easier that way than doing your job. Decide I’m crazy and you have solved the case without having to investigate anything. I see.”

  “You’re very persuasive, Hana. But you must know you’re not seeing things straight. Think about how it looks from where I’m sitting.”

  “You are not even sitting. You are leaning back in your chair with your boots still on.”

  “OK, Hana. You want to know what I really think? I think you have a crazy half-baked theory about the war, North Koreans and tattoos. I think you saw a leaflet and invented this whole story. You are joining the dots but you are making patterns that only you can see. There is not a shred of evidence.”

  “If you helped me, I could find some...”

  “Listen to yourself. That’s not how it works. You are inventing things inside your head. And you are a danger to yourself and to others. You jumped down the side of a building. You caused a national incident at the Budokan hall, you invaded a newspaper office. All that is forgivable, but when you start threatening people with knives and seeing murders that haven’t happened, that’s when I have to step in. You want to know what I really think is going on?”

  “No.”

  “You have had a terrible time. You are not over your father’s and mother’s deaths. But you can’t face that so instead you are living in this fantasy world.”

  “This is for your own good. To calm you down.”

  A doctor appears with a syringe and he’s holding up my handcuffed arm.

  “Dr Ishihara? Why are you here?”

  “This is sedative to calm you down. This would have been easier if you had been asleep, but don’t move. I don’t want to miss a vein.”

  I can’t move. I’m shocked. Why is he here? What are they going to inject into me?

  Dr Ishihara rubs my arm with alcohol and feels for my vein then takes out the syringe and drags it across my arm, about to pierce the skin at the elbow. I yank my hand away, I scuttle it along the rail. Dr Ishihara is surprised and he drops the syringe onto the bed. With my free left hand I grab for it wildly, but Detective Watanabe is too quick for me. He reaches for it and he has his thick hand over it before I can grab it. He smiles. He’s sneering at me, at my helplessness. “I have your best interests at heart,” he says.

  I feel anger welling up inside me. I push my free hand down onto Detective Watanabe’s and lean all my weight onto it. The smile leaves his face. “What have you done?” he says, but I can’t tell if he’s talking to me or Dr Ishihara. His eyelids flutter and then he collapses onto the bed. The syringe has punctured his skin.

  Dr Ishihara rolls the detective’s hand over and pulls out the syringe. The syringe is half empty. Detective Watanabe must be half full. The doctor says something under his breath in Japanese, but he’s not talking to me or the detective. He looks worried. But he doesn’t say anything else. He runs from the bed for the nurse’s station. He could come back with another syringe or an army of doctors and nurses.

  Think, Hana, think. I need the
key to these handcuffs. I go through Detective Watanabe’s pockets. There’s a mobile phone and a plastic packet of breath freshener mints. But no key. There are no keys on his belt buckles. The only other pocket is under his body. I push him to roll him over, but he doesn’t budge. In any second Dr Ishihara could be back. I have to act now.

  I scrunch myself up in a ball against the railing where my hand is cuffed and kick the detective’s body with both feet. It works, but too well. I can see the pocket, but now I can’t reach it with my free hand. But I can with my foot. I slide it into the pocket and try my best to wrap my toes around whatever is in there. It feels like a key. I look around. There are raised voices out of sight down the corridor. I pull my foot out and I have my big toe through the ring of a set of three keys, all different sizes. Think Hana. Think. The keys slip out of my grasp and clatter onto the floor. Too much thinking, not enough doing. But now the keys are close enough for me to reach with my hand. I grab them. My face is level with Watanabe’s. He’s shaking his head from side to side gently. But I have to admit his breath is minty fresh. In a moment he will come to. I run my hands over the keys. They all look weird. I select the weirdest. It doesn’t really look like a key, just a piece of metal. It slides into a hole in the side of my cuffs. They spring open. Nifty.

  A groan from under the bed. Detective Watanabe. I grab his nearest hand and slap the open cuff onto his wrist. The other is around the bar of the bed. Click.

  He says something in Japanese. Then he’s standing. He focuses on me and tugs helplessly at his cuffed hand.

  “Hana. Don’t do this. Let me go. Give me the key.”

  “I’m sorry, detective, but this is for your own good. I have your best interests at heart. You’ll be safe here, this is a hospital.”

  In seconds the whole hospital will be after me. I run to the window. It’s safety enabled. It only opens a crack, barely enough to squeeze my arm out, let alone my whole body. But wide enough to drop the handcuff keys out. I toss them.

  How can I get out of this hospital ward without being seen or stopped by an army of people with my best interests at heart? I don’t have any way to smash my way through the glass. I’m only wearing a hospital gown. In an emergency everything would be shut down. And locked tight. Unless there is an earthquake or a fire. Then patients would have to escape immediately. I can’t do much about an earthquake, but maybe I can do a fire? Won’t they unlock the doors for a fire? There is only one way to find out for sure.

  I don’t have a lighter. But I do have an empty can of coffee. I swipe it from the bedside and look for a fire alarm. There is one on the other side of the ward. I smack the can against the glass to set it off.

  There is a crack of glass, then nothing. Then a siren goes off and bells ring. I try to open the window, but still it’s locked. What is the point of having an automatic system if, when an emergency happens, you can’t get out? But first I have to get away. I run to the nurse’s station. Dr Ishihara is not there, no one is, but the lift is coming. A bell dings and the lights flash. The lift is here.

  I’m ready to run at whoever is there or else pretend to be a patient going for a walk, whatever I have to do to get away. The doors open. Then my mouth.

  “What…? What are you doing here?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Firefly looks at the floor. Shock stops me where I stand. He shuffles from one foot to the other.

  I thought he was my friend?

  I turn and run. I swing open a door round the corner from the lifts. It’s a stairwell. People are walking down from floors above. If everyone is going down, I should go up. I skip two steps at a time and push my way through the nurses and cleaners coming down the stairs. A nurse holds my arm at the elbow and says something to me in Japanese, but I pull my arm free and I keep going up. Flight after flight until no one is coming down the stairs. The sirens are still going off, but not on these floors. I can’t hear anyone coming up after me. If Firefly is following me, he’s keeping his distance, which is just as well as far as I’m concerned. I turn the handle on a door, but it won’t open. I go on further until one final door with a no admittance sign except in emergency. This is an emergency. I lean all my weight on the cold steel bar and the door shudders open into the night sky. I walk out and the wind rushes through my hair. I feel gravel under my bare feet. The door slams shut behind me. The outside air is a relief, but my legs buckle, and I’m overcome with shaking. I must be on the flat roof. The roof? My legs lose all strength. I collapse onto my knees. I daren’t look around. The wind billows through my gown. Anything stronger and I just know I will be blown over the edge. Now what?

  I stay on all fours and breathe. I try to get my thoughts together. There is one way out. The window cleaners. Every tall building has a window-cleaning platform. I have no way of controlling the winch myself. But who am I kidding? I’m too scared to even look over the edge. There is no way down and no other exit on the roof.

  I scoot back toward the door to the stairway. I think about Firefly. He must have found me unconscious in the underground station and called an ambulance. But why was I taken here, to St Christopher’s, as there are dozens of hospitals closer to Shibuya? And why was I handcuffed? Surely Firefly would have objected? Did he get Dr Ishihara to treat me? But Dr Ishihara has nothing to do with emergency medicine, and everything to do with dangerous diseases.

  Firefly had looked down at the floor when I saw him. He knew he had done something wrong, that he was guilty about something. He couldn’t have turned me in, could he? I weigh up the facts in his favour: He had fought to protect me in the restaurant. He saved me from the masked man. He helped me find Dr Ishihara in the first place. He connected everything together, uncovered links to Unit 731 and got me medical treatment now. All because he wants his computer back? Just because he likes me? Does he have my best interests at heart? Words are only words, but we don’t have more than a handful in common. If I could only communicate properly with Firefly, climb over the language barrier, I might be able to figure him out.

  The door swings open and Firefly steps out onto the roof and turns to me. He looks concerned, but not scared. Behind him, out steps Dr Ishihara with a new syringe. So, they are both in this together. I’m sitting with my back to the wall next to the door, the only way down. The only safe way down, that is.

  Dr Ishihara steps forward.

  “Now Hana, you should face true facts. You don’t see things so straight. Let me give to you sedative and you can get treatment you need. You not think rationally. Please trust me here. I have best interest at heart, but you have to stop this dangerous game. You stop right now before you or someone be hurting. You are suffering from paranoid schizophrenic delusions, result of severe trauma. You are seeing conspiracies where there are none.”

  “That can’t be. This is some kind of trick.”

  “Exactly what a paranoid schizophrenic would say, think about it. Your perception, your way of seeing things. You can’t trust your own eyes and you can’t trust connections you think you are making.”

  “Are you saying I’m mad? That I’m not really here, that we’re not really on the roof?”

  “We really here all right. We really on roof. It’s really dangerous. Hotaru, Firefly, as you call him, is really here. He really is your friend, but this conspiracy, this search for a killer, is nonsense.”

  “Steve isn’t really dead?”

  “I’m sorry, he really is dead. You need to calm yourself down and then we can treat you. I’m your psychiatrist, and that’s what we’ve been working toward since you first came to me seeking help after the death of your mother. The unfortunate death of Steve has caused this episode, this major relapse. It’s important that we get your balance back before you cause yourself big, big harm.”

  “You are not Dr Ishihara, the grandson of the Unit 731 commander who butchered thousands? You are not researching contagious diseases?”

  He laughs a not happy laugh and shakes his head. He says more to me i
n Japanese but I don’t understand what he’s saying.

  “Why are you speaking Japanese to me? I don’t speak Japanese.”

  “But you do. This is part of the psychosis. You have convinced yourself that you can’t speak Japanese, but you can. Think about it. Your mother was Japanese and you went to Japanese schools through your childhood. How could you not speak Japanese unless your psychosis, that is, your illness brought on by trauma, is convincing you that what is true is not really the truth? But think about it logically. What you imagine to be true cannot possibly be. If there is any truth to your perception, there must be some objective evidence. Something, anything that you can show to somebody else to prove any part of your conspiracy holds water. Yet there is no evidence, is there?”

  I crouch and pull my knees up to my head and wrap my hands around my legs. What he says sounds so off the wall that it can’t possibly be true. And yet, he’s right, that would answer every concern. That I just imagined myself into this mess. If I hadn’t, where was my evidence?

  “No evidence is there? If there was, I’d love to see it.”

  I think. I raise my head from my knees.

  “Dr Ishihara. You’re my psychiatrist? You’re a trained psychiatrist and that’s all you do?”

  “Yes, that’s what I do. Nothing else.”

  “You’ve never been to Shanghai or Papua New Guinea for research?”

  He laughs his sad laugh again. “No, Hana. It’s amazing the detail that the brain can provide to make you believe something, but it simply isn’t true.”

  Details. Names and numbers.

  “Show me your business card. I picked one up in your office, the first time I saw you. At least, what I think was the first time we met. Show me that you are a mental doctor, not a disease specialist and I will come with you.”

  He takes out a business card. I snatch it from his hand. I look at the card; it’s his business card with Japanese on one side and English on the other. I hold it up so he can read the Japanese and the English is facing me.

  Dr Ichiro Ishihara