Muhis appeared at their side, looking concerned. He had removed his helmet and looked peculiar, as he no longer had his magnificent Rasta mane.
‘Did you have to shave off your beautiful hair when you became a fireman?’ Siiri asked, but Muhis didn’t answer. He explained that he’d found hordes of rats in the basement, and some cables that had been gnawed in two.
‘This wasn’t an accident,’ Muhis said. ‘It was sabotage, vandalism. What do you think, who could have done something like this?’ Muhis was very serious; apparently he found the act villainous indeed. Siiri and Irma glanced at each other and immediately announced in one voice, as proudly as naughty schoolboys: ‘We did it!’
Muhis gaped at them in disbelief. ‘You? Why? You understand you’ll be caught, don’t you?’
‘If you’d been forced to live in a space station like this for months on end, you would have pulled the same stunt. This is no place for human beings,’ Siiri explained.
Muhis’ erect back slumped a little, and he said he would have to report Irma and Siiri to the police. He looked so sad that Siiri felt sorry for him.
‘Don’t you worry on our account! We’ve planned every detail of this adventure!’
Muhis disappeared and returned a moment later with four police officers. They were all exceedingly young men, barely old enough to shave, and they looked concerned. One of the fuzzy-cheeked fellows questioned Irma and Siiri, asked for their birthdates as if it were a memory test, but showed little interest in listening to Irma’s catalogue of every Finnish president since the country gained independence. He wanted to know what they had done and why, and they told him freely.
‘So you confess to the crime?’ the officer asked. Siiri and Irma nodded in satisfaction.
‘Did you get help from anyone? Do you have any accomplices?’
‘No. We came up with the idea and did everything ourselves,’ Irma said. ‘We surveyed the cables and servers, hacked open the doors, orchestrated a suitable architecture for the rats, including the necessary vitamins of course, routed the clouds to the service and waited for the sky to come crashing down on us. It was that simple! Hey, c’mon guys, it’s the latest, dig? Are you going to arrest the army of rats, too?’
The police muttered among themselves, and three of them started walking out the doors towards their vehicle while the last one pulled out his phone and made a call. Off to the side, Muhis shook his head, and when Siiri looked at him, they both started laughing.
‘Siiri, my love! You’re crazy.’
‘I’m happy to hear it. That’s a downright honour. Have you been baking pulla?’
A lovely white smile spread across Muhis’ face. Gesticulating animatedly, he explained how his Nigerian friends had all fallen in love with the Finnish pulla Siiri had taught him to bake.
‘We have pulla nights where we compete to see who can braid the best loaf. We drink milk and cry.’
Siiri felt incredibly happy. There she sat on the sofa next to her dear friend Irma, chatting with Muhis about baking, offal stews and Muhis’ friend Metukka, who had also found a job, at a day-care centre. And Mika had returned to Siiri’s life, too. He had helped them once again; they had successfully carried out the plan and Mika wouldn’t be at risk on their account. All of her boys were doing well. Sunset Grove had been freed of chips, crumbs and contraptions, and not a single resident was in danger. She laughed, doubled over, at Muhis’ stories, even though they weren’t particularly funny, but because she was happy to see her friend again and because the laughter banished the sadness and suspense that had consumed her life over the past few months.
The fire-fighters had discovered many more residents than Siiri and Irma realized still occupied the building. The lobby slowly started to fill with people they’d never seen before. Temporary vagabonds of every description appeared with walkers, three-point canes and wheelchairs, some in tracksuits, others in nightshirts, a handful dressed appropriately. Most looked younger than Siiri but acted much older, with unfocused eyes and dragging feet. A decrepit crowd, all in all, and it was difficult to say how much they gathered of what had happened. A whiff of urine wafted across the lobby as the diapered diaspora filled the chairs, benches and corridors.
Suddenly Siiri saw Sirkka the Saver of Souls in the middle of the elderly flock. She was still wearing the same old turquoise tunic and speaking intently into her phone. A familiar-looking young man stood behind her, whose name Siiri couldn’t recall. Might he have been one of Pertti’s paladins, one of those who forced Anna-Liisa to sign the will Siiri later devoured? She smiled to herself as she thought how the document they had gone through so much trouble to draft had ended up in her mouth and eventually her bag. She hadn’t remembered to clean out the masticated clump from her handbag until days later, when she finally flushed it down the toilet.
‘Tell them it’s complete chaos, that we need backup,’ the young man urged Sirkka.
‘What? They’re coming. What’s that? I wasn’t talking to you, I was talking to Tuomas. He’s standing right here. Yes.’
‘It’s a disaster! What did he say? We’re never going to be able to handle this. Ask them if we can just drop them all off at the hospital,’ Tuomas said to Sirkka.
‘Yes, right. The police and fire-fighters, a few ambulances. Tuomas, not to the hospital. I wasn’t talking to you; I was talking to Tuomas.’
‘What do you mean we can’t take them to the hospital? Where, then?’
Tuomas’s agitation grew and he tugged insistently at Sirkka’s sleeve. Siiri had often witnessed such multi-party calls on the tram, when the person next to the caller forcefully inserted themselves into the conversation, making a complete mess of it. Sirkka the Saver of Souls was about to go mad talking to two people at once. She shouted at both and the conversation didn’t make the slightest bit of sense.
‘They can’t just dump us at a hospital,’ Irma said. ‘We’re perfectly healthy. Old age isn’t a disease or a cause for death, and that’s that.’
‘I must say, I thought we’d be able to stay here,’ Siiri added. ‘The building still has electricity. We have lights and heat and the stove works, too.’
They chatted about this and that and engaged in a running commentary on what they saw, as if they were watching a confusing television series. There were lots of them these days, programmes where the camera followed fires, emergency rooms and night-time police patrols with no sign of a reporter. If this had been a television broadcast, it would have been far better than the ones that were normally shown, but nevertheless, they would have changed channels long ago.
‘What would we watch? Oh, if only Jeeves were still on! I love him almost more than I love Hercule Poirot,’ Siiri sighed.
‘Okey-dokey! Hey, guys, no cause for panic!’
Jerry Siilinpää’s familiar voice echoed above the din in the lobby of Sunset Grove. No one paid him any attention, but Siiri gathered that Jerry found the situation a little challenging, but no worries, everyone would be back in their homes in a jiffy. Then Jerry and the police officers spoke for quite some time. Jerry kept on glancing at Siiri and Irma. They returned his glances with their most irresistible smiles.
‘Do you see? He’s not wearing his gorilla feet.’
‘He’s pulled on a pair of sneakers, since he was in such a rush to get here.’
‘I think they caught him when he was out jogging. Look at the rubber suit he’s squeezed himself into. That’s what they all run in, even our ministers, hacking up phlegm along the seaside paths.’
The ambulances were the first vehicles to pull out. After the one that carried off Ritva, Aatos and Tanglethatch vanished, two more first aid cars appeared outside, and the most addled patients were packed into them, even though it was unlikely there was room for them at the hospital. There were more police officers now, and the fire-fighters continued to bustle around most speedily. Uniformed men kept running down to the basement. From what they could make of the rescue crew conversations, Siiri and Irma
deduced the firemen were intent on exterminating the rats. Before that, the traces of the destruction had been doggedly photographed and documented and more than one police officer had inspected the scene of Siiri and Irma’s crime. Fuzz-face had asked them to press their fingers into a square that looked like an ink pad, which was very exciting, and it turned out not to be an ink pad after all, but some sort of smart-alec screen that sketched their fingerprints directly into the criminal register. Then they were allowed to continue watching the entertainment unfolding before their eyes. The old Somali woman came over to thank them for their heroic act and said she was going to sleep. A few more maintenance men had appeared from somewhere; Siiri recognized the winking fellow with the dead fobs whom she had let into Sunset Grove. The maintenance men were hustled off to wrestle with the elevators and residents’ apartments and get them running again. Jerry gave orders as if he had just completed his reserve officers’ training.
‘Automatic systems are down; we need locks and elevators that function mechanically. The security system should have issued an emergency command; I don’t get why this action point wasn’t executed according to the roadmap.’
‘Maybe it’s night-time in India and his cloud engineers are sleeping?’ Irma suggested in her tinkling coloratura laugh.
Gradually the lobby emptied. The residents were either directed to their apartments or carted off, but Siiri couldn’t figure out where. The maintenance men fought to get one elevator into functioning condition. The locks to the doors were still jammed, and as an emergency measure Jerry proposed an open house. No one seemed to be bothered by the notion that they wouldn’t be able to shut the door to their apartment. As things gradually calmed down, some of the fire-fighters and police officers left. Siiri and Irma were starting to think that they had been completely forgotten on their bench, but then Muhis came back over.
‘Siiri, my love, the police are going to take you in for questioning. Do you know what that means?’
‘Of course I know. They’ll ask us questions and when we confess everything and explain why we did what we did, they’ll understand and be grateful and everything will be over. Or then we’ll be charged and end up in court. We’re fine with any of the alternatives.’
Muhis laughed a little nervously at Siiri’s nonchalance and shook his head. He promised to come and visit them no matter where they ended up and said he would be in touch the very next day.
‘We can always appeal to our old age, claim we aren’t responsible for our actions on account of dementia or allow ourselves to deteriorate so badly they free us out of sheer pity,’ Irma said, and Muhis chuckled loudly, looking relieved.
Muhis hugged Siiri first, then Irma, then shook their hands just to be sure, because according to him that was the custom in Finland, one always shook hands. He said he had more pressing tasks to attend to, as there was a fire in Pitäjänmäki and one of the cars had to start up its sirens and rush off. But Muhis wanted to see Siiri and Irma to the police car. The young, almost-whiskered senior detective who had so conscientiously stored their fingerprints in the criminal register came over and respectfully asked them to follow him. From a distance, it looked as if he were asking them both to dance. It didn’t occur to anyone to put Siiri and Irma in handcuffs.
The dignified duo lowered themselves into the back seat of the blue police vehicle while the officer held the door open like a butler. The car smelled of plastic and leather, the way new cars always did, and they started feeling like they were important figures on a state visit. Muhis helped Siiri with the seatbelt and looked his friend in the eye, a little concerned.
‘What’s going to happen to you now, Siiri, my love?’
‘Irma and I will be just fine,’ Siiri said, taking Irma by the hand. ‘With Irma at my side, I’ve never had a care for the morrow. Watch out; you might die before I do.’
‘Yes, we still have the most exciting thing in life to look forward to!’ Irma said.
Muhis looked at the women in concern. ‘Most exciting thing? Prison?’
Irma and Siiri shook their heads, exchanged glances and cried in a melodramatic vibrato:
‘Döden, döden, döden!’
Read the complete Lavender Ladies series
DEATH IN SUNSET GROVE
Good detectives come in all manner of guises . . .
Siiri and Irma are best friends and queen bees at Sunset Grove, a retirement community for those still young at heart. With a combined age of nearly 180, Siiri and Irma are still just as inquisitive and witty as when they first met decades ago.
But when their comfortable world is upturned by a suspicious death at Sunset Grove, Siiri and Irma are shocked into doing something about it. Determined to find out exactly what happened and why, they begin their own private investigations and form The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency.
The trouble is, beneath Sunset Grove’s calm facade there is more going on than meets the eye – will Siiri and Irma discover more than they bargained for?
ESCAPE FROM SUNSET GROVE
It’s not easy sharing a flat.
Especially when you’re ninety-five years old.
Change is afoot at Sunset Grove retirement home, and its residents aren’t impressed.
Under threat from falling masonry, best friends Irma and Siiri are forced out of their home to negotiate twenty-first-century living in the centre of Helsinki. Their new surroundings throw up an endless number of daily challenges, from caring for the ailing Anna-Liisa to the mystery of which of the many remotes controls the TV.
The pair are joined by growing numbers of friends in their flat-share, and their new close-quarters living raises some unexpected questions. As the Lavender Ladies begin to dig a little deeper, they find themselves following a trail of corruption, deceit and intimidation that might just lead them to their own front door . . .
The Lavender Ladies must steel themselves for what is set to be their most dangerous case yet.
Also by Minna Lindgren
Death in Sunset Grove
Escape from Sunset Grove
First published 2015 by Teos Publishing, Finland
First published in the UK 2018 by Pan Books
This electronic edition published 2018 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
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Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-4472-8933-3
Copyright © Minna Lindgren 2018
Translation copyright © Kristian London 2018
Cover Illustration by Jim Tierney
The right of Minna Lindgren to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
English edition published by agreement with Minna Lindgren and Elina Ahlback Literary Agency, Helsinki, Finland
Pan Macmillan does not have any control over, or any responsibility for, any author or third-party websites referred to in or on this book.
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The End of Sunset Grove Page 26