Year of the Talking Dog: A Hana Walker Mystery (The Hana Walker Mysteries Book 2) (19 page)

I feel the cold of the flimsy aluminium doorknob. It turns, no problem, and I open the door and slip into darkness.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

I can hear nothing but my own heart beating. I see a narrow corridor, but beyond that nothing. I wait for my eyes to adjust to the dim light. Stacks of broken chairs with missing arms and, propped against the wall, steel tables with sawn-off legs. I shuffle down the corridor, and then I can make out the sounds of a building site. I hear the electronic whine of a drill or a screwdriver. Hammering and a muffled scream. The hairs on the back of my neck bristle. An urge to turn and run overcomes me, but I tell myself to stay. The man down the stairs may come back, so I can’t go back to the stairs. There is no place to run to. So I walk on.

There are plain, unpainted plasterboard doors off the corridor. If this is the new wing of the hospital it’s certainly not ready. A thick layer of dust covers everything. Not the kind of place a patient would expect to make a full recovery.

 Another yelp.

And sobs. Like a dog with a cut paw. I put my ear to a door but hear nothing. Then drilling. And then sobbing. And a single word. Spoken, not screamed. But desperate all the same:
 
“iie.” I know that much Japanese. It means “no”. I’m not ready to deal with no, not on these terms. It’s the easiest thing in the world to say “yes”. Japanese say “yes” all the time. They never say “no”. “I see,” “That’s interesting,” “I understand,” all sound like “yes” in Japanese, but actually mean “no,” “I don’t like it,” “I will never agree.” There really isn’t any need for such a direct word as “no.” So to hear it spoken, softly, matter-of-factly, makes my palms sweat.

“No.”

Just to hear it is enough to make me doubt everything I think I know. I look behind me and can’t make out where I came in. I step away from the doors and walk further trying not to touch anything. But I shuffle forwards. I bump into a stack of wood and stub my toe on something cold and metallic.

 I stumble. My hand pushes against an unpainted wooden door and I fall into the room. I yelp. A splinter has lodged in the flesh of my thumb, and I know I need more than my teeth to pull it out. And something else. My hand touches something wet and sticky on the door. There is the same orange light bathing everything in a half-glow like I’m on a submarine, only this is a hospital, isn’t it? I hold my hand up to my eyes to get a better idea of where I am. Hairs and dust are stuck to my hands in a sticky, dirty film of ooze. In this light it looks a brownish-orange. But I know what it is.  Blood. And it’s not my own.

 “Welcome, Hana.”

A voice from the end of the corridor where I entered, but it’s so dark in here that all I can make out is the shape of a large man. The masked man. The voice is smooth and deep,
 
like something out of Hollywood.

“Are you American?”

“You might think so. I’ve spent years learning American English. But I could never eat hamburgers or hot dogs. And they say we eat dogs. But we eat the best food in the world, simply the best.”

“We?”

He slips a mask off his face and lights a cigarette. His mouth is lit up for a moment. He has pock-marked skin and is maybe in his 50s. He’s wearing a dirty lab coat.

“Shouldn’t your lab coat be clean?”

“It’s my work coat, to keep my civilian clothes clean. It doesn’t matter if it gets a little human tissue on it.”

“Is this some kind of workshop? It’s the dirtiest hospital ward I’ve ever seen.”

“Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you. It’s the dirtiest hospital ward possible, and it’s a workshop of sorts. You see the subjects we perform procedures on are not supposed to make a full recovery. In fact…” he breaks off into a giggle, “that would mean we’re doing something wrong.”

“I’m sorry, I’m a little slow, what do you mean?”

“Now, now, Hana. You do yourself a disservice. You have been far from slow. For a half-breed girl you’re pretty smart. I think in fact you may have some Korean blood in you. We’ll find out.”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“No matter.”

 A cockroach scurries across the floor.  

He pins it with his stick, then kneels and grabs it in his other hand. He opens his fist enough to reveal it to me. It’s flapping, legs wriggling, but he has it firmly in his grasp.

“Fantastic creatures. I love them. Simply the best. They are six times more resistant to radiation than humans. And yet we spray them with insecticide, bait and starve them in traps, or crush them beneath our feet. Unbelievable. And yet they are still with us, no matter what we do to them. Although…” he takes his cigarette and burns the roach’s antenna, “…this particular one…” he flips it onto its back, keeping its body pinned between thumb and forefinger. Its legs are running frantically. He puts down his cigarette and pulls off a leg, flicking it onto the floor, “…will keep fighting, it’s been programmed by instinct to never give in. Its constituent parts…” he teases free another leg and sticks it back in the hole where the previous leg had been. And it moved in unison with the others, before falling to the ground, “…are designed to keep going until…” he takes his cigarette and stubs it through the centre of the cockroach “…every last part is destroyed.”

He squeezes his fingers until the roach breaks in two.

The two parts stop squirming on the floor.

“Why did you do that?”

“To prove a point.”

“That you like being cruel to insects?”

“That the individual is expendable and yet…” he nods over to the floor. A few more cockroaches are moving about in the half-light, “…plenty more where they came from.”

“Who are you? Did you kill my fiancé?”

He sucks on his cigarette and blows smoke into the air. “I’ll make a deal with you. I will answer every question you have. I will give you evidence and prove to you what happened to your fiancé. You will know the truth and you will be free to get on with your life, on one condition. That you tell no one else the truth. That really would be a win-win situation, wouldn’t it? Think carefully. I’ll only make this offer once.”

I slink down onto the floor. I have to think what to do, but I’m lost. I stammer: “I don’t, I don’t know what you’re up to. But you cannot keep secrets. You can’t kill people in Japan and get away with it. It’s just not possible. I’ll never make a deal to keep the truth secret.”

“Secrets? You don’t have secrets. Your email is stored in the government’s files. Your smartphone tells me wherever you are. And don’t think that I can’t find out who your friends are, what you and Firefly say to each other online. You have no secrets. But I do.”

“You’re talking about North Korea.”

He laughs.

“No, I’m talking about you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Ah, the convenient response when your cherished beliefs are challenged.”

“No, I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“That’s the best way to keep a secret. Don’t go online. There is nothing more sinister than being offline, no? No one can see you. There are no cameras that can be hacked here. There are no digital trails. The best security is an open door. Bolt it shut and someone will want to come in. Keep it open and no one will want to come in.”

“I did.”

“You did, yes. But how do you know that was not part of the plan?” He starts choking, but then I realise that he’s laughing.

“You mean this is part of the plan? For me to discover your secret workshop?”

“I don’t wish to be braggadocious, but it hardly makes a difference. This whole floor does not exist. You couldn’t convince anyone that we’re really here. Even if you had some electronic device, you can’t get a signal here. If anyone gets wind of what we’re doing, we could just move. There are no records, there is nothing for anyone to store or use against us. If you don’t exist digitally, you don’t exist”

“I exist.”

“Are you sure about that?”

He stands up. He stubs his cigarette out underfoot and puts the mask back on his face. And as the light falls on him, I recognise him. He’s the masked man in a pinstriped suit. He stares at me. I stare back at him. His mask is neither a flu nor a hay-fever mask. It’s a round heavy-duty one.

“Why are you wearing that mask?”

He doesn’t respond. But he doesn’t stop staring at me and makes no move to look away. He just stares at my face. I can’t tell what he’s thinking behind his mask. It’s completely round with a steel clip over the bridge of the nose. The last time I wore one was to keep out the stench of rotting fish and much worse after the tsunami in Ishinomaki.
 

His eyes crease and I can’t tell if he’s smiling or scowling. Then he springs forward. I feel his hand grab for my wrist, and I’m too slow to react.
 

The masked man holds my hand in a vice-like grip and yanks me closer to him. A pain shoots though my shoulder as he twists my arm. I wheel around and shove my free hand out above me where I think his head is, but my hand flies harmlessly into the air.

Then he has an arm around my neck, and is squeezing me close to him, lifting my feet off the ground. I smell sweat and blood. I wriggle my arms and legs desperate to find something to rest my weight on, but I can find nothing. I don’t know how long he holds my neck, but I can see stars and my hearing drifts in and out of focus. Then it stops. I can’t breathe. I feel faint. Then I’m free and gasping for air. I smell something rotting. Something spicy. Then I’m falling to the ground. The masked man is standing over me. I can’t make out his features. Everything is a blur. I see a mask. I feel a hand caressing my hair, then I can’t move; a great weight is on my back and chest. Something covered in cloth is in my mouth. It tastes salty. It’s wriggling about in my mouth. His finger in a glove? The last thing I remember is latching my teeth onto the cloth and trying to break it off. If it was his finger at least I could leave some teeth marks if not any permanent damage.

Then nothing.

CHAPTER THIRTY

I’m lying on something hard and cold. It feels like an overturned fridge, or the steel counter of a restaurant kitchen. My vision is hazy, five bright lights bear down on me. The room is white. Metal knives hang from the ceiling and walls, glistening in the light. But there is no smell of cooking, no onions simmering or garlic frying like with Aunt Tanaka’s house special ramen. There’s no smell at all, but my nose is burning. And there’s a numbness in my throat like someone has scraped it out with sand paper. I have a headache. My right wrist hurts. I have no idea if it’s day or night. It’s bright. I’m under a spotlight. The masked man is talking. I try to tune in to what he’s saying. He’s wearing a different mask. A surgical mask. He has a metal tray like a dentist, but there are no drills, just a selection of knives, needles and syringes.

“You’re having trouble with your deliverables.”

“My what?” I manage.

“Your deliverables. Don’t you speak English? Your deliverable outcomes. You thought you would be streamlining the funnel, not entering a bottleneck.”

I can turn my head from side to side. I can’t see very much around me but I try my best to focus on my surroundings. Perhaps it’s a kitchen after all and not a hospital. No matter how I move my head I can’t see any funnels or bottles.   

I try to sit up but can’t move. My legs and arms are bound. He watches me squirm.

“You have a lack of depth in that space.”

“What space?”

“The escape space. I’m afraid we’ll have to decline to proceed along that avenue.”

“Are you speaking in code?”

“Code? Ha! You don’t even recognise your own language. We are speaking the language of business, are we not? Isn’t English the language of international trade and commerce? The language of the globalised international community? I’m just running the idea up the flagpole and seeing who salutes it.”

“Nobody speaks like that.”

“Really? I must have a word with my teachers. Perhaps their textbook is out of date.”

I strain my neck and look down the length of my body. My arms are bound with the kind of tape Aunt Tanaka uses to pick up cat hairs from the sofa. My shins are taped to metal clasps on the edge of the steel table. Like the handles on a flat iron pan that Aunt Tanaka uses for frying
yaki
soba noodles. So, it’s a kitchen, not a surgery? But what are the syringes for?

“There is no flagpole in this kitchen,” I say.

He laughs.

“You are having problems leveraging your downsides, thinking outside the box. Use blue-sky thinking.”

I don’t even bother looking for a box. I have a pretty good idea that there is no blue sky in this room. Anyone who thinks so must be either drunk or crazy. The masked man does not appear to be drunk. He’s laughing a lot, but he’s not really having a very good time. And even doctors who own their own surgeries can’t show up to work drunk. 

So, I’m pretty sure now I’m dealing with a madman. Uncle Kentaro says if you try to reason with a crazy person, you’re the one who goes crazy and the crazy one just enjoys the attention. Though he’s usually talking about Aunt Tanaka. He says the best approach is to agree to everything she says, let her think that what you want to do is her suggestion and get as far away from her as possible. This seems like the best advice for my situation. But getting away from this mad man is not going to be easy.