Half Life: A Hana Walker Mystery (The Hana Walker Mysteries Book 1)

by Patrick Sherriff

  “It’s a family business.”

  “Right.”

  He patted his jeans pocket, and pulled out a wad of paper: “American Express Travellers’ Checks. We can go to the bank right now, I can cash these, or I can sign them and hand them over to you.”

  “I wouldn’t know what to do with all those zeroes. No time, we’ve got a train to catch. Got to keep moving.”

  “I understand,” he said.

  We were pushed along with the crowds under a covered shopping arcade. On either side were bargain clothes stores, sunaku bars, yakitori chicken-on-a-stick stands. Housewives, pensioners and teenagers bunking off school all around us. We went with the flow of people heading toward the escalators to the entrance to Kashiwa Station, when I spotted him three heads in front of us. The folds of his neck sent shivers down mine.

  “Ono.”

  “What?” Mr. Blackmore said.

  The stink of Ono’s sweat was in my nostrils. All he had to do was turn around at the sound of two foreigners talking and it was all over.

  I grabbed Mr. Blackmore’s arm and whipped around in the opposite direction. The noodle shop was just around the corner.

  “Let me show you where my aunt works.”

  “I thought we had to catch a train?”

  “We do but we should see Aunt Tanaka right now.”

  “Family business?”

  “Yes, kind of.”

  “I thought we were in a hurry…”

  “We are…”

  We turned the corner to the shop and the ticket machine beside the front door.

  “…but we have to eat too. Please. It’s only ¥500. And quick.”

  Mr. Blackmore made a grumpy face, but handed me a ¥1,000 note. “Here, get me some too.”

  “Great.”

  I fed the note into the machine and it spat out two tickets. I couldn’t see Ono. That meant he couldn’t see us.

  We ducked into the shop through the noren curtain. “Welcome, honoured customers” Aunt Tanaka shouted, she didn’t turn to see us.

  Aunt Tanaka’s was no bigger than Mr. Blackmore’s six-mat room, and just as dark. Only a little light from outside could cut through the steamed-up front window. A grey steel counter divided the room in two. On one side were five stools, all empty. On the other, Aunt Tanaka stood with her back to us, facing three huge stainless-steel vats billowing steam. If it wasn’t for the smell of garlic, red chilli and soy sauce, this could have been a sauna.

  “Please,” Aunt Tanaka said, holding her left hand out. I handed the tickets over. Two shoyu ramen with pork, the house special, the cheapest on the menu. Then she looked up from the soup vat she was stirring.

  “The American!”

  Aunt Tanaka’s ladle fell into the soup.

  “Hi, Aunt Tanaka, this is Mr. Blackmore…”

  Her mouth was smiling but her eyes were as wide as boiled eggs.

  “Itsnicetomeetyou,” she said, and held her hand out.

  “Um, likewise.”

  Mr. Blackmore shook it.

  She flipped back into Japanese.

  “Hana-chan, let’s have a little word together, shall we?” she whispered.

  I wrapped the flowing sleeves of my robe tight around my arms and slipped round the counter. We huddled the other side of the vat.

  “What are you doing Hana-chan? What are you dressed like that for? You haven’t called the Japanese man about the American man, have you? That Ono was looking for you and the American. He was in here two minutes ago. He was not happy. His boss was not happy. I’m not happy…”

  “I’m not either, Aunt Tanaka, but I’m just thinking how to do the right thing.”

  “The right thing? This is not the time for thinking. You have to do this right, I told you not to mess this up. Do you realise what trouble we’ll be in with these guys. Why can’t you stick to the plan?”

  “I have a plan. But it’s to help the American, Uncle Kentaro is doing the thinking.”

  “Is he? I need to call him right now.”

  “OK, but can we have some ramen? We’ve got a train to catch.”

  “Everything OK, Hana?” Mr. Blackmore called out.

  “Just sorting out lunch.”

  “Great. I could eat a horse, or I guess I should say a whale, this being Japan.”

  “What’s he saying, Hana?”

  “He said he could eat a whale.”

  “A whale? This is a ramen shop. Look, serve him the ramen, I’m going to make some phone calls, maybe we can fix this mess before we get into real trouble.”

  “But I made a promise…”

  “So did I,” she said and disappeared out the door with her mobile.

  I fished the ladle out of the vat and prepared two bowls of noodles, sweet corn, a square sheet of seaweed, half a hard-boiled egg, and a slice of pork floating in the centre. I topped it off with a slice of pink and white fish sausage, cut like a flower.

  “Here you are, cowboy,” I said.

  Mr. Blackmore laughed. “Just because I wear this hat, doesn’t mean…”

  The counter rattled. The ceiling light swayed. I knew what this meant.

  “Earthquake,” I said.

  Mr. Blackmore’s eyes were darting around the room. Maybe this was his first earthquake. There’s always that moment when the shakes stop getting stronger, then you just carry on with what you were doing.

  Only this one didn’t stop getting stronger. Chips of plaster fell from the ceiling. The soup slopped out of the ramen bowls all over the counter. I got up off the stool, but I couldn’t stand without holding on to the counter.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Mr. Blackmore said.

  From the door of the shop, the shaking was just as bad outside in the shopping precinct. Some people were looking up at the roof over the street, others were running for the main street. I heard some screams, but mostly silence.

  I didn’t know what to think or what to do.

  “Come on,” Mr. Blackmore said. We were out on the street. But it felt wrong: it was swaying.

  And it was getting worse.

  2:46

  I tried to stand still, but I was still moving. I had never noticed before how many wires there are above the streets and criss-crossing over the roads. They were swaying in the wind.

  Only there was no wind.

  Everything was rattling. Lampposts were bending. The street was rippling, filling with waves running from the distance towards me, and then past. But I was kilometres from the sea. Still, I could feel waves beneath the concrete, beneath everything. Everything rode the waves: the McDonald’s, the 7-Eleven, the pachinko parlour, the funeral parlour.

  The whole city was getting rocked by an underground ocean. The expression “On solid ground” came to me. On solid ground? What does that mean? Land separate from the sea? Only right now, land and sea were just two different labels for the same thing.

  An old tramp with wild white hair and a grey beard held onto a wall to keep from falling. A toddler, aged 60. But then I was rocking from side to side. I had my legs apart and feet pointed out, the way you are supposed to stand on a surf board. Or commuter train. Or the Big One.

  Aunt Tanaka came running from behind her shop, shaking her mobile phone at me and shrugging.

  The traffic had stopped, cars at a standstill where they were. A white mini-van halted beside me. An old lady looked through the windscreen, unsure what she was seeing. Was it safer behind the wheel, or on foot? She didn’t know. I didn’t know either. She sat where she was and looked over at me.

  I shrugged my shoulders. She shrugged her shoulders.

  Others got out of their cars and stood beside them. Now there was no traffic noise. Instead, I was alive to the sounds of the city’s new tap dance. Shaking from the ground up. Every window frame, concrete slab, metal sign, lamppost and parking sign was trying to break free of the ground.

  The rattling continued. How long had the earth been shaking? 30 seconds? A minute? Ten? I had no idea. Rattling
and shaking to the rhythm of the waves. It was like summer by the banks of Lake Teganuma, with the deafening sounds of cicadas and bull frogs. But this was March, in Kashiwa, below the Joban train line between Ueno and Fukushima.

  Then I noticed the traffic lights were out.

  A man in a white coat with a white surgical mask over his face came out of a chemist’s in front of me. He looked up at the swaying wires and cables overhead. Then he ducked back inside.

  But the old tramp was shuffling to the edge of the pavement and scooting himself along the white steel pedestrian fences, trying to walk out into the street. He didn’t care about the cables dancing above his head. Once he got out into the street he made his way through the stopped cars. They were riding up and down in place, like surfers at Onjuku Beach, waiting for the big wave to come that would send them flying back to shore. Where was the ocean? Couldn’t be far from here.

  Then it stopped.

  All the noise of the city stopped. Every man-made thing was silent. The man in the white coat and mask came out of his shop again.

  “It’s stopped,” Mr. Blackmore said.

  At this moment we were all one. All of us. Aunt Tanaka. The tramp in the street, the old woman in the car, the masked man. Mr. Blackmore. Me.

  “Is Emi safe?” Mr. Blackmore pleaded with me.

  I couldn’t answer. I got my phone out to call Uncle Kentaro, but I could get no dial tone, just a recorded woman’s voice saying all lines were busy. Could Uncle Kentaro feel this earthquake? What about Emi?

  I checked Twitter. The quake was the only news. I started to write a few tweets. I didn’t expect to get any answers.

  The tramp had made it to the crossroads. He was right in the middle now. He put his right hand up above his head, palm open, facing out. With his other hand he beckoned to the old woman in the car. It was her turn to move. I looked around and read the clock by the Sumitomo-Mitsui bank.

  2:46 p.m.

  That was the time money, yakuza, priests, cowboy hats, and my future became clear. Only one thought mattered: Is Emi safe?

  2:51

  I’d had earthquake drills every month as a kid. All those years of earthquake drills, preparations for the Big One, and this was it. What was I supposed to do again? Run a bath? Hide under a table? Put a cushion on my head? Go to the school-yard.

  How was Emi? Where was she? She must be somewhere far from here. Maybe far from the earthquake. Wherever she was, she would be at school now.

  “Come on,” I said to Mr. Blackmore.

  “Where?”

  “We are going to school. In a disaster, you head to the nearest school-yard.”

  I linked arms with Aunt Tanaka, but she pulled away from me.

  “Follow the path of the stream to the school. I have to check my shop.”

  “But…”

  “It’s everything I have. Take the American. Go now.”

  We hurried along the main road away from the station to the gates of Kashiwa Junior High School. Outside the gates a handful of men were smoking. Inside the gates a thousand children lined up by classes in the brown dirt school-yard. Mothers were arriving now with questions about their children at school and husbands at work, trying to get answers on their mobile phones. There were teachers with clipboards, but they didn’t look like they had any more answers than I did.

  What had happened? What do we do next? When do we get the all-clear? Who has any answers?

  A crack as wide as my hand snaked through the ground in the centre of the school-yard. Mr. Blackmore walked over to it and ran his hands through the dirt.

  Then I heard someone shuffling up beside me.

  “You two found her yet, Shitpants?”

  The hairs on the back of my neck bristled.

  Ono was by my side.

  “Arai Takahiro.”

  “What?”

  “Arai Takahiro, the president, is not happy.”

  He cocked his head, then took a black wallet from his shirt pocket and placed a business card on it, with the name facing me.

  Arai Takahiro

  Shachou

  There was nothing else on the card.

  “I give up. Shachou? President? Should I call him Mr. President?”

  “You don’t call him anything. He calls you. And he’s pissed off. You are in so much trouble. You don’t trash his car and ignore his orders and get away with it.”

  “Have you been following me? Is this all part of your plan?”

  “Why can’t you foreigners just do as you’re told?” He grabbed the card from me and scribbled a telephone number on the back.

  “Listen up: When you find that girl, you call me. If you find that girl and don’t call me, well…” He cocked his head to one side and patted himself, “…I shouldn’t have to show you this.”

  He lifted his shirt. He had a big belly.

  “No, you probably shouldn’t show that to anyone.”

  He glared at me and sucked it in. Tucked between the gut folds was a gun. A really mean-looking gun.

  “Retaliation is the highest form of mourning, baby” he said.

  But all I could say was: “Suntory Premium Malts is the highest calorie beer.”

  “Shachou said you were a smart ass just like your dad. You have his golden hair. You have to dye it to look Japanese.”

  “I am Japanese.”

  “Hah!”

  He grabbed my arm, his fingers brushing my breast as he did. I tried to cower from his touch, but couldn’t pull away. And something else kept me there.

  “What do you know about Papa?”

  “I don’t know anything. But Shachou knows. He said your dad could never keep his mouth shut.”

  “He was a journalist. His job was to tell the truth.”

  “Whatever. You’ve got a debt to pay. You’ve got to deliver the girl and bring the $100,000. And you owe me. We didn’t finish what we started last night.”

  He was looking over my body. His grip tightened.

  The ground started shaking again. Concrete rattled, children screamed.

  “Aftershock!” I looked for Mr. Blackmore. Ono’s grip loosened.

  I didn’t need a second chance to know there was only one thing to do.

  I ran like hell.

  Ono lunged after me. But I was free of him, through a crowd of mothers and into the school building before he could catch up to me. All the doors were pinned open, so I ran past the great banks of wooden shoe cubbyholes. I didn’t stop to take off my wooden geta sandals.

  “Hey get out of there!” a clipboard-teacher lady yelled, “The building could fall at any moment!”

  I clattered through the entrance, jumped over the step into the no-shoe zone, and darted down the dusty corridor looking for a way out. Chunks of plaster fell from the ceiling. I stopped to catch my breath at the end of a corridor. No lights. Cupboard doors banged open and shut and open again from the aftershock. Footsteps came fast behind me. Someone else was wearing shoes. Dust and flecks of paint fell from the ceiling. I couldn’t tell if I was moving or the ground was. Half in control, half out of it.

  Half-life, half-death. Which way? Which way out?

  I saw natural light through frosted glass, so I pushed the door open. The doorway led to the girls’ toilet. I went in and crouched behind a stall half-door and locked it. Then I thought better of it and unlocked it. It swung open and I climbed onto the toilet seat. If anyone came in and looked under the door, they’d see an unlocked stall with no one inside. No children were here, but I still heard footsteps come up the corridor to the toilet room. The main door opened. I held my breath.

  A ceiling tile fell to the floor. The door closed and the footsteps moved on. There was a slim frosted window along the top edge of the ceiling, but it was sealed shut. Another ceiling tile fell.

  I was trapped.

  TEXT MESSAGE

  Mr. Blackmore, sorry I ran. Panicked. Stuck in school toilet. Roof might fall. Truth = not a P.I. People helping are yakuza. Want your money
. They don’t care about Emi. But can find her easier than us. If still want my help, meet me back at hotel if I make it out. Maybe yakuza better bet than me. But I will not let Emi down. See you tonight? If not, good luck cowboy. Hana.

  4:15

  The footsteps moved on. The room stopped shaking. Then another aftershock. The ninth? Tenth? But each was almost as strong as the earthquake. Were aftershocks like having a baby? If they get closer together did that mean an earthquake was due? The ground floor of a concrete building was not the best place to be. But where was? Wherever that was, Ono would be.

  I had nothing to use to escape, just my phone, the hakama robes I was wearing, my wooden sandals and whatever I could pick up. Foam ceiling tiles or toilet paper. I tried to focus. Maybe Uncle Kentaro could help? Then another aftershock, stronger than before.

  The stall door swung open and banged shut. More plaster, another chance three floors of concrete would fall on my head.

  But I was not ready to die. Not here.

  I stood straight up on the toilet seat and grabbed hold of the porcelain lid on the back of the toilet and lifted it free. With both hands I flung it high at the window. The glass shattered and the lid flew through and smashed onto the concrete outside.

  I stood still on the toilet seat, listening.

  I thought I wouldn’t get into too much trouble for this, the earthquake would get the blame, and really I wouldn’t be in this fix if it wasn’t for the earthquake, so that was fair enough. Kind of. Anyway, if anybody else was in the building they would think it was the earthquake, not a girl hiding in the toilets. I hoped.

  I wrapped my obi cloth belt around my hands and punched out the last of the glass around the window frame. I hopped down and picked up a ceiling tile to sweep the shards of glass from the window frame onto the floor. Then I tied one end of the belt around the toilet stall door frame and held on to it with one hand as I squeezed myself through the half-meter width of the window. Then I eased myself down the outside of the wall, still holding on to the belt.

  Halfway down the wall, I slipped my hand free of the belt and jumped free of the wall.