The drawer next to me rattles open and I hear a man exhale like he’s doing something he has never done before. Maybe he’s never been this close to death. I don’t see what all the fuss is about. A body is just a body. When you’re gone, you’re gone from other people’s lives, that’s the bit that hurts. That’s the bit that matters. Crying over flesh and bones is just like going to the supermarket and crying over the sliced salmon. Right?
The drawer next to me slams shut.
I can feel myself being pulled out. I keep my arms at my sides and my eyes shut. I can’t move. I dare not move. If the cop touches me, it’s game over. Even if I don’t give myself away by moving or sneezing or twitching, if he feels my arm, I’m busted. I’m bruised, worn out, but most importantly, I’m still warm.
“Eh?” the cop cries out when he sees me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
This is it. I’m busted. It’s over. I open my eyes a crack, so that at least I can see the end when it comes. The cop is looking away from me and holding his nose.
He slams the drawer shut. I do my best not to make a sound as my head hits the back wall of the capsule. I feel the roll of natto in my pocket and remember that the filling of one is smeared across my gown. The smell must be pretty strong. I guess the policeman is not a fan of natto. Maybe he’s from Osaka. The smell of natto and the smell of dead bodies must be pretty close. I give a prayer of thanks to the gods. Aunt Tanaka had been right all along, natto is good for you. And then I can’t stay awake a moment longer. I’m out cold.
When I wake up, I’m shivering. How long I’ve been asleep, I can’t tell. Five minutes or five days, I have no way of knowing. My back hurts more than my head. My legs and arms feel like they belong to someone else. But my mind is my own now.
I’m not sure what else I have going for me. Firefly has sided with the police, but he saved me when I fell. If he saved my life then I must be able to trust him. But he might turn me in again. Uncle Kentaro might help me, but he worries so much, he’s more trouble than he’s worth. And the cops? Detective Watanabe has already decided I’m the problem.
If there is any way to find out what’s going on, it’s up to me and no one else to find out.
I feel for my natto roll. It’s still there. I stuff it in my mouth. I guess there are worse things to eat. I run my hands backwards over the roof of my capsule until my head is free of the wall and I ease my bare feet onto the cold concrete floor. I’m still very stiff, but I can stand without feeling dizzy. That will have to do.
I hear footsteps. I push myself back on the tray and push myself back into the capsule just as the door opens. I realise too late I’m on my front with my head closest to the frosted window, not on my back with my feet visible. If anyone sees me they’ll know something is wrong. But I can look through the glass plate. An unshaven, scruffy middle-aged man in glasses and a white coat wheels in a body on a table with wheels. It’s Dr Ishihara. He pulls out an empty tray and rolls the body from the stretcher onto the tray. He huffs and strains to pull the body by the shoulders; it’s too heavy and stiff to move easily. It looks like a woman’s body, but I can’t be sure through the distorted glass. I can’t understand why the hospital would make only one person do a job that needs at least two.
He gets the body into the right position. He ties a label round the toe and slams the tray door shut. The vibrations rattle through the bank of bodies. I hold my breath. He looks around but doesn’t check the other drawers and hurries out of the morgue with the empty stretcher.
I breathe again. It isn’t a smart idea to lie around here. Just breathing marks me out as not belonging. I could head back down to the parking garage, but even if I get past the parking guard, how far will I get in a hospital gown on the streets of Tokyo? I look at my dead neighbours. Their yukata are no less noticeable. And I don’t fancy having to wrestle one off the 70-year-old. She’s already lent me her name; it doesn’t feel right to take her clothes too. But I am cold. I tie the lady’s name back to her big toe.
There is no way out of it. I have to brave the rest of the hospital. I open the doorway to the stairwell and climb the flight back to the main entrance. And then think better of appearing in the lobby and risk being handcuffed to a bed for my own good at a moment’s notice. I go up one more floor and push the door open a crack.
All the lights are on. But outside the window it’s dark. I’m standing by the lifts. There are plastic outdoor chairs and tables and a vending machine. Toilets marked for men and women and toilets marked “guests”. A woman in green is walking along with a trolley. A cleaner? There’s something different about the way she moves, the way she has her hair loose. Filipino? It’s hard to tell. Like all hospital employees, she’s wearing a mask.
She stops her trolley outside the guest toilets and goes inside with a bottle. I have a crazy idea to just climb into her trolley. It’s a yellow plastic thing with separate chutes for burnable and unburnable rubbish. She can take me to the dumpster and then I’m free, but it’s not going to happen. I have no idea whether I should be classified as burnable or unburnable. I mean, at a certain temperature everything is burnable. But anyway, I can’t fit in. And even if I could, she would be suspicious. At the back of the trolley is a section for clothes. There are green bloody scrubs and a hat. I don’t think much of it, but what the hell. I grab it and slip back into the stairwell.
I pop my head out of the stairwell. The cleaner is putting the empty cans of coffee from beside the vending machine into a yellow plastic bag. She clips the bag to her trolley and enters the lift. When the doors slide shut, I slip out into the hallway and dash into the patients’ toilets. I change out of my hospital gown and put on the green clothes. I take a pair of green slippers from the toilets. I study myself in the mirror. I look like a junior doctor in scrubs, only I have no stethoscope and no ID card. On the wall is a checklist for when the toilets had last been cleaned. A signature in katakana. It’s written with the same ink from a pen hanging from the top of the clipboard. It’s filled in with a time stamp: 02:30am.
I take the clipboard and the pen. Although I have no ID and no way to answer anyone if stopped, I have the clipboard and pen, and no one wants to talk to someone with a clipboard and pen. Just as long as no one looks closely at the title on the sheet and realises I’m not a toilet monitor. But no one will, I’m pretty sure.
Now what? I can just walk out of the front door; maybe no one will be around or on the ball enough to stop me. But something is telling me I have unfinished business here. How is it that Dr Ishihara, Liberty Pachinko, Detective Watanabe and me are all connected to St Christopher’s? Why was I brought here and not to another closer hospital? What is so special about this place?
I’m at a loss to know what to do. If I had my smartphone, I could call Uncle Kentaro. But I need answers. If it’s after 2:30am, then now is as good a time as any to get some answers while all those who have my best interests at heart are still asleep.
I slip out of the toilets and look both ways. The stairs and elevator lobby are empty. I study the floor guide at the lifts. A sign beside the lift has explanations for what is on the three floors. There’s something wrong about this. Think. Uncle Kentaro says Japanese don’t like the number four “shi” because it sounds the same as the word for death. Then it would make sense in a hospital not to call a floor the fourth, the death floor. But I’m sure that when I stood outside and looked up at the building there were five storeys. But according to the lift there are only four and an underground basement.
I carefully open the door to the stairs. I tiptoe slowly into the stairwell. The automatic light doesn’t come on. I close the door behind me as slowly as I can so the latch barely clicks. I listen. Nothing. But it’s not exactly silence. I hear something. Scurrying sounds. Not human sounds. Rats? Insects? It couldn’t be either, not in a hospital. I walk to the stairs and wave my arms around. A light comes to life. I hear more scurrying sounds, then silence. I walk up the stairs as fast as I can. I examine the concrete step
s. I don’t want to trip and I don’t want to step on something not human. I pass doors for the first, second and third floors, then an unmarked door and, up a final flight, I see a No Admittance sign to the roof. So the unmarked door is actually for the fourth floor. I walk back down to the unmarked door. It’s nothing special, just a white plasticky door with a single lock in the middle of the doorknob like in hotel bathrooms. One kick and the whole thing would splinter open. Even I could do it in my condition. But it might be unlocked. I turn the handle.
I have a sudden fear that this is a trap. I look around the stairwell, at the light strips that come on automatically. Is there a camera somewhere? Am I being watched? I hear the scurrying sound again. Is that voices on the other side of the door? I go up the flight of stairs away from the door and look down at it from the No Admittance sign. I’m breathing hard. I try to control my breathing. I stop moving and concentrate on keeping calm. The fluorescent lights go off. I can’t see anything, but I can hear something. It’s a voice from behind the door. I hear the door being unlocked and the catch slipping as the knob turns and the door swings out onto the stairway. I hear men’s voices. But it’s in a language I don’t know. Not English, and I don’t think Japanese. Korean?
The smell of burning tobacco fills the stairwell. Then the talking becomes a little frantic. I think. Though I can only hear one voice. I’m frozen to the spot scared that my breathing will give me away. What if he decides to walk up to the roof? The light will come on and he’ll find me.
I’m sure I hear the man climb the steps. What now? I have to distract him before he sees me. I do the only thing I can. I drop my clipboard between the rails of the staircase. I hold my breath. The footsteps come again, but is he moving so slowly that the lights don’t come on? The lights snap on now, but in the next instant there’s an explosion of noise as the clipboard clatters onto the basement floor five floors below.
The man says something under his breath then runs down the steps, two at a time. He hasn’t seen me. I watch as he goes down the flights of stairs. I could run out onto the roof. But I don’t fancy going though all that again. Or go down the stairs and try my luck escaping. Or I could wait here and hope no one comes for me. But I know any escape is temporary. I have to find out what’s going on, and you can’t find out what’s going on if you leave every door closed. Whatever lies behind that door might hold the key to the mystery. I call it intuition. Uncle Kentaro calls it asking for trouble.
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.
Year of the Talking Dog: A Hana Walker Mystery (The Hana Walker Mysteries Book 2) Page 14
