“I could give her an exclusive if she wants?”
“She doesn’t want. She wants to press charges. Let’s go over it one more time, yes?”
What could I say? We had been through the conversation ten times. Every time Detective Watanabe had got his facts wrong and waited for me to correct him. And every time I corrected him, he had got it wrong again. He would have made a terrible journalist. But, I realise, I would have made a terrible detective.
“I’m not a bad person, detective. I don’t have all the answers. But I will find them.”
“I don’t think you’re a bad person. And I don’t want to see you go to jail. But that is what you are facing. Do you understand? Do you know what that would mean for your future career as journalist? Prison not a nice place to be. There’s not really any way back from place like that for sensitive persons. Serious bad persons are there, not little bad persons, but big bad persons. I don’t believe you are big bad person. I don’t believe you belong there.”
I stare around the room. It was like any doctor’s office, train station or deputy headmaster’s office.
“I don’t want to go to prison.”
“I know you don’t.”
“I didn’t do anything very bad. I’m trying to do the right thing.”
“I believe you. And that’s why I think we can find a way out of problem. If you just make small statement. Maybe you don’t completely believe yourself. I know I often don’t. But if you just, for official records, you understand, agree that you did small thing against the law, say you are guilty and I’m sure you will be out on the street, free in a minute.”
“I could get out of here?”
“Of course. But, you understand how it is, you must agree that you were to blame for what you did. Admit a little of the wrong and you will be out of here.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I know you didn’t mean to do anything wrong. But if you just agree that you broke some laws and that you won’t do that again.”
“I can’t promise not to do again what I didn’t already do. I don’t know detective, but I’m feeling very tired and a little confused. I haven’t slept and I haven’t eaten since, I don’t know. If you’d let me rest I could think about your words.”
“Don’t think so much. Confess and you can go. This is playing a game. You play ball with me, I’ll play ball with you.
“I don’t want to play with your ball. I’m not in the mood for playing games.”
“Well, let’s start again. You stole someone’s ID...”
“I borrowed it.”
“…illegally entered the concert with boyfriend...”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“…impersonated a journalist…”
“I am a journalist, a student journalist.”
“…because you were chased by ninja…”
“He’s not a ninja.”
“…in flu mask…”
“It’s a round, heavy-duty mask, probably to disguise himself.”
My mind starts wandering as I answer his questions for the eleventh time. Maybe this is how Uncle Kentaro feels when he’s chanting the mantra for ceremonies at his shrine. If you repeat the mantra long enough, maybe you can achieve great understanding. All I know is I can say the set answers to the policeman and my mind can be somewhere else. Maybe that’s normal for other people. Certainly seems that way for Steve. He was always somewhere else when I was talking, I think. Though not Firefly. Funny. We can’t speak each other’s language but seem to have no problem communicating. Then I think about Aoi. I decide it’s a name. And she has something to do with Steve’s death. Steve’s killer must be brought to justice. That’s what they would say in the old American films that Uncle Kentaro likes. I’m not sure what being brought to justice means now. Perhaps Detective Watanabe knows something about justice. But he’s too busy asking his questions and playing his game with his ball and I don’t think he’d appreciate being interrupted. In fact, he probably only knows the rules of this ball-game, but sometimes things happen without rules, then what’s the use of knowing all the rules if the bad guys don’t want to play? I have a horrible feeling that Detective Watanabe is justice, and that means I’ll never know the truth. He doesn’t believe in a masked man with a sword. If Detective Watanabe can’t do it, then I have to. He doesn’t look like he’s going to get it. He’s on the 12th run-through of his questions and still has to read them from his notes. I have memorised the questions and can conduct this interview with myself. But none of that will make any difference to Steve. I might be able to make a difference if I can get out of here. That would be justice.
“Tell me what you want me to say so that I can get out of here. I’ll say it.”
And I do.
And so that is how I end up with a police record. So I’ll never be a public school teacher. Or a detective. But there is only one catch apart from saying sorry and really meaning it. I can only be released if I promise to go under the supervision of a family member.
I sigh and nod.
And then Detective Watanabe hands me a scrap of paper. I unfold it. It’s a Tokyo address with ”14:00” underlined. I scrunch up my eyes, as if that would make the note any clearer.
“It…” he clears his throat and speaks more quietly, “…it’s your fiancé’s funeral. Tomorrow. I thought you should know.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I don’t think many people will come to Steve’s funeral, but when I round the corner of the block, past a workshop where a man with a great visor on his head puffs on his cigarette and stares at me as I pass, there are maybe a hundred people in the grounds of the wooden temple.
Maybe I have come to the wrong place. Steve didn’t know all these people, did he? There are people my age and then other much older people, but all Japanese. The men are in black suits wearing white shirts and black ties. The women in black one-piece dresses and dark tights. I’m the only one in borrowed clothes, not wearing all black.
I look around for Steve’s parents. I wonder what he told them about me. Should I shake their hands, hug them or kiss them on the cheek? I decide that the right action will be obvious when I see them.
I find myself in a single-file line. Walking in starts and stops up to the entrance to the temple. I take Aunt Tanaka’s tight running shoes off and put on one of the dozens of brown pairs of shiny flip-flop slippers that have been laid out for guests. I continue the shuffle a few metres through the entrance hall to the ceremony room where I take the slippers off and add them to the dozens by the open sliding paper doors.
The sounds of the priest chanting and the sweet smell of incense are overpowering. There are sticks of the stuff everywhere. Burning. It’s the smell of death to me. My feet feel the grooves of the tatami mats. It’s a big room, but cramped, dark with beams of blackened exposed wood on the low ceilings and walls. People sit in three rows of ten facing the front, no one talks, but the priest in a purple and gold kimono bangs a small drum with a stick and chants while rubbing prayer beads in his free hand. I walk forward with the procession of people. We shuffle closer to the front of the room and I see more people seated on little stools close to the wall. All are facing the wall counter that is overflowing with flowers and, hanging from sticks, wooden and paper signs with Japanese kanji written in jet-black ink.
And in the centre of the display is a picture of Steve. The older man in front of me steps forward up to an altar in front of the photo. He bows once to the photo, turns around, bows to the priest and then turns toward the chairs and bows to the people there. Then he turns back to the photo of Steve. He reaches down to the altar and picks something up and holds it to his mouth with his eyes closed. Then he claps three times, bows his head for 10 seconds, then walks away, back to the door.
Now it’s my turn.
I step forward.
I smile and want to turn to someone, anyone, and tell them I know this picture. It’s a blow-up of his passport photo. I remem
ber him showing it to me the night we decided to move to London. I smile at the thought and the photo too. He hadn’t combed his hair and tufts were sticking up like a little kid’s. I want to hold his hand and talk to him, tell him that we have to adjust our plans, now that, because… because he’s dead. And I stumble.
I try to focus on what I’m supposed to do. I bow three times to Steve’s picture, pick up the stuff on the altar and stick it in my mouth. I should have bowed to the priest. I turn around then the taste in my mouth is revolting. It’s incense. I shouldn’t have eaten it. I spit it out and it ricochets off the priest’s bald head. But he’s a pro, his chanting doesn’t miss a beat. Then I remember I should have bowed to the people sitting closest to the picture. I turn and see them, the only two foreigners in the whole place apart from me. They must be Steve’s parents. The Dad looks shell-shocked. He’s not really taking anything in. I realise he has the same scruffy hair as Steve, if a little thinner on top and losing its colour. But they are obviously father and son. He’s holding hands with a short, plump woman. She has freckles on her face and hands and her red hair could be mine. I stare at her. Her eyes are kind. She whispers to Steve’s Dad. He nods. And she stands up. She’s slightly smaller than I am but is round and curved. She holds her hands out to me and I lean over to reach her and she hugs me, right there in the middle of the floor with the queue of Japanese behind me waiting to do their bows and what not, but I’m wrapped up in her arms and I plunge my face into her shoulder and before I know it I’m blubbering and tears are streaming out. She speaks to me.
“There, there, love. There, there love.”
I don’t want to let go. I want to stay being hugged and lifted off my feet and wrapped in her arms, this is the woman who would have become my mother, who would have shown me the ropes, taught me how to live as an English lady as I was destined to do. And I knew she could feel my pain and that we both shared a love for her son. Now that he was gone perhaps she would open up and find a place in her heart, just enough room for me. I could still be a good daughter, I could honour Steve’s memory and perhaps she would show me all the places that Steve lived, show me the life that I could have had if fate hadn’t intervened and taken our one true love away, and somehow, being in her arms right now, I feel this connection with this woman, the mother of Steve, my new mother. The person that has come all this way to bury her son and maybe get to know her daughter-in-law-to-be. She’s here to rescue me.
“There, there, love.”
“Take me home,” I blubber into her arm.
“I’m sorry, love, who are you?”
“I’m Hana.”
I look again into her soft eyes. Her skin is wrinkled from her eyes out to the edge of her face. She has quite a big nose though and I can see where Steve got his from. Perhaps when she takes me from here I’ll be able to look into those eyes whenever I miss Steve and I’ll be able to see him there. That us being together will make sure that Steve will still live on, that we can build a shared life, that my new mother…
“Sorry, love. Hana? Did you know my son well?”
I pull my head from her shoulder.
“Didn’t… didn’t Steve mention me?”
“No, I’m sorry love, he didn’t mention you. Did you know each other?”
I pull myself away from her embrace. I can’t believe that Steve hadn’t mentioned me to her. And I realise. I don’t really know this woman, Steve’s Dad or anything about them, and now without Steve here there’s no way I will get that chance because the person that holds us all together is in a wooden box and is not going to get out of it any time soon. And what am I going to say to this grieving mother? That I was in love with Steve too? She’ll just think I’m trying to get her sympathy.
I actually don’t want her sympathy and can’t give her anything other than my woes. It would be unfair to burden her with my feelings. If I tell her that we were going to get married, she might think I was just hoping to get something from her, and I’m so not. Not really. I’m not even sure what I’m doing here anymore. Detective Watanabe was right. I’m not really family, not yet, not completely and now it’s too late to fill the gaping hole. I missed my chance with Steve, so I’ve missed my chance to escape to Britain. At least, I can’t go like this, begging for sympathy. I don’t want sympathy, just my own future.
Tears roll down my cheeks, and I don’t even try to stop them. I don’t even know if I’m crying for Steve, for me, or the end of a dream.
“I knew him, but now he’s gone,” I say.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
My Dad’s old Mini Cooper has seen better days. The wooden dashboard is chipped. The stuffing is coming out of the passenger seat and I can feel every bump, every pebble and every gap on the road surface as the car trundles on through the underground highways of Tokyo. It’s been 45 minutes and still Uncle Kentaro hasn’t spoken. The tunnel lights are orange yellow and the hum of fans along the roof of the tunnel every 30 seconds makes me think the whole city would collapse if any of the propellers stopped turning. If the fans stopped moving for just 30 seconds, the roof would cave in and the skyscrapers of Tokyo would crush us to nothing.
“I think I can take whatever the world throws at me. Just not a crazy masked man with a sword who wants to kill me. I need a bit of help to deal with that.”
A flicker of a smile crosses Uncle Kentaro’s face. But he keeps staring ahead at the road in front. The tunnel becomes a motorway and then we’re crossing a river. We head east, away from the city. We spend the rest of the journey to Abiko in silence.
We pull into the gravel path of the shrine and I find myself sitting on the tatami mat floor in Uncle Kentaro’s front room reserved for out-of-town guests and door-to-door salesmen. It stinks of tobacco. The ugliest dress I’ve ever seen is hanging from Uncle Kentaro’s sword, which he got for winning the Chiba kendo championships, hanging above the tokonoma display area. The dress is green with yellow triangles.
“What’s with the dress?”
“It was Emi’s. She got a job as a cleaner at Skytree, but quit the second day of training.”
“It’s a very ugly dress.”
“She decided to go back to America. You could do that job. Use your English and learn a little Japanese.”
I snort. “Right. Skytree would be about the last place on Earth I’d go.”
“You didn’t used to be scared of heights. Before the accident you were fine.”
“Lots of things changed after that.”
“Yes.” Uncle Kentaro toys with his cigarette. He rolls it around in his hand. “But you could get back all that you lost. That blow to the head didn’t kill you. The doctors said the parts that were affected weren’t to do with long-term language memory. You just have to relearn what was lost. And what you lost was your confidence. It’s all psychosomatic. It’s all in your head.”
“That’s easy for you to say. But for me, I have to relearn everything I can’t do. That means going back to being a child again. And that doesn’t get me any closer to finding out why Steve died.”
Smack.
Uncle Kentaro slams a sliding door open in the futon cupboard. He unrolls a musty futon. He reaches up and takes out sheets and a pillow from behind the top sliding doors of the futon cupboard built in to the wall. He doesn’t speak.
“Thank you,” I say. “In the morning, I will try to figure out what is going on with the crazy man and just what happened to Steve because…”
“No.”
“No? But I have to…”
Uncle Kentaro claps his hands together once like he does when he’s summoning the attention of the gods in a ceremony.
“No. I’ll tell you what you have to do. You have to forget about Steve. You have to forget about masked men with swords.”
“But that’s…”
Uncle Kentaro’s lower lip quivers.
“This is not a discussion. This is the part where I speak and you listen. All I want to hear from you is yes or no, you got that?”
“OK.”
He glares at me.
“I mean yes, yes, I got it.”
“Right. I agreed to take you in because I owe that much to your father, you got that?”
“Yes.”
“It’s like Japan will always owe an apology to the world for the war. It must keep apologising for the actions of its ancestors.”
“Yes.”
“It’s the same for you. You’ve had a tough time for sure. You’ve been hurt. I get why you revere all that is not Japanese, your English side and London as your home and all that… but it’s time you faced the truth. Your mother was Japanese and Japan is your home, whether you accept it or not. It’s more your home than England ever will be.”
“No.”
“It’s tough to face the truth, I know. Believe me, I know. I’ve been hiding my identity behind a bottle for as long as I could drink. But I can face facts when I have to. I’m here in Japan and I will be for the rest of this life. Am I happy about this? Are my Korean ancestors happy about this? It really doesn’t matter now. It’s irrelevant. I can barely speak Korean anymore. I don’t know what is happening in Korea now and every day I care even less. Does it matter that the Japanese don’t accept me as fully Japanese? No, that’s irrelevant, too. What matters is not where I am but what I do. I’m here and I do what has to be done to get on with life. You get it?”
“Yes.”
“You really get it? I took you in because you don’t have anywhere else to go. If it’s not me then it’s the street, right?”
“Yes.”
“There isn’t any other place you can go. I’m taking you in because there is no one else. But know this. This is the end of the line. You have to make your own life from now on. You have to forget about pipe dreams. You have to accept the past. You have to make a future, right here, in this country. Start today or you are as good as dead.”
Year of the Talking Dog: A Hana Walker Mystery (The Hana Walker Mysteries Book 2) Page 7
