Chapter 8
It had been a long time since Siiri and Irma had been in C wing, so they got lost for a while before they found Olavi Raudanheimo’s door on the second floor. It wasn’t customary at Sunset Grove to go ringing somebody’s doorbell unannounced. You weren’t supposed to disturb people. You don’t do it in a real apartment block and this wasn’t a commune. You could meet the people you knew, and those you didn’t, downstairs in the common rooms. In addition to the card players, there was a magazine-reading group and a gigantic television in the lobby. It was constantly on, showing singing competitions and cooking shows, and a couple of deaf old grannies were always shoved in front of it to be entertained.
Olavi Raudanheimo didn’t answer his doorbell. But they thought they could hear noises in his apartment. There was definitely someone in there. Irma tried to shout through the keyhole, although there was no keyhole, just a big, chunky lock. They doubted Olavi could hear her. Reino had once told them that a grenade exploded right next to Olavi during the war and he could never hear properly after that.
‘Mr Raudanheimo! Mr Raudanheimo!’ Irma shouted in a high-pitched voice like a ninety-two-year-old who had taken singing lessons in her youth. ‘It’s Mrs Kettunen and Mrs Lännenleimu from A wing! From the one-bedroom apartments!’
‘Why shout that?’ Siiri grumbled. ‘It hardly matters which wing we’re in or what our tenancy arrangements are.’
‘He has to have some way to figure out who we are. Otherwise he’ll be afraid to open the door,’ Irma explained, then continued to yell. ‘Siiri Kettunen and Irma Lännenleimu want to see you, Mr Raudanheimo! I have short hair in a perm and I’ve become a bit plump as I’ve got older, but I was very slender when I was young, and I have a blue dress, a real pearl necklace, and lovely earrings with real diamonds in them, and Siiri always wears long trousers and one of those . . . is that thing a cardigan?’
Siiri was starting to get nervous about the ruckus Irma was making. She glanced around crossly and noticed Virpi Hiukkanen at the end of the long hallway. Virpi gave her an icy stare and walked calmly towards them. Irma didn’t notice her ominous form approaching and continued shouting. Virpi was just a few metres away and Siiri couldn’t get any words out; she tugged on Irma’s sleeve in a panic.
‘We’re not Erkki Hiukkanen!’ Irma shouted into the lock, just as Virpi reached them. Siiri shrank like a schoolgirl in the head teacher’s office.
‘That’s enough of this nonsense. Here at Sunset Grove it’s important to leave the residents in peace and to create an atmosphere of tranquillity,’ Virpi said, forcing her face into a calm smile. Then she suddenly broke into a yell. ‘What is wrong with you two? Why are you shouting at the door of a total stranger? Who gave you permission to be here? You seem to have no concept of the principles of Sunset Grove! We are committed to the privacy of every resident and this behaviour is ridiculous. You’re endangering the safety of the entire institution with your silly whims. Do I have to call the police, or an ambulance, to keep you two in check?’
Virpi looked at them threateningly and adjusted her large, plastic-rimmed glasses, as if to add to her air of authority. Siiri started to feel dizzy and had to grab Irma’s arm.
‘I think I’m going to faint,’ she said, but she managed to stay upright with Irma’s support. Her vision grew foggy and she had to focus what little strength she had on breathing.
‘This place doesn’t ensure privacy, it ensures privation!’ Irma yelled, helping Siiri into a Biedermeier chair. ‘Siiri’s having a heart attack because of you! There are all kinds of shady things going on in this institution and all you do is spy on healthy people in the hallways! You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Where is Olavi Raudanheimo? Where have you put Reino Luukkanen? What’s going on around here?’
Siiri wasn’t having a heart attack. It was probably just the arrhythmia that she suffered now and then. But that was no joking matter, either, and she really did feel like she might black out at any moment. It was a lucky thing that there were chairs left by dead people in the hallways at Sunset Grove for situations such as these. When she opened her eyes Irma was holding her hand and Virpi Hiukkanen was standing a couple of metres away looking frightened. Virpi didn’t try to help her, she just gnawed nervously on her chewing gum, took a phone out of her pocket, as though she had something important to do, and moved off without another word.
‘And they say caregiving is a calling,’ Irma puffed, pulling a flask of whisky out of her handbag. She made Siiri take a gulp and wiped her brow with her lace handkerchief. ‘It’s not the one Reino mangled,’ she reassured her.
They thought that Virpi had gone to fetch a blood pressure cuff, since nurses always thought that anything troubling an old person could be made better by taking their blood pressure, but when she didn’t return after a quarter of an hour, Irma led Siiri back to her apartment. She helped her lie down on the bed, took off her shoes, and laid her nap blanket over her. Then she went to the front door and tried to call for help because Siiri was very pale and still wasn’t breathing normally.
The basic fee at Sunset Grove included a safety system – if a resident needed help, all they had to do was leave their phone receiver on the table and a member of staff would quickly appear. Of course anything they did when they arrived would be added to your bill, as would the call, but the system itself was part of the basic service. Irma picked up the receiver, laid it on the table, and listened for a while. Then she swore to herself, slammed down the receiver and went downstairs to find some help.
Siiri fell asleep. When she woke up, the room was full of people. Irma was talking with three or four strangers, young people, only one of whom seemed to understand Finnish. Irma tried Swedish, French and a little Russian, with no results. Luckily, the boy who spoke Finnish was calm and pleasant.
‘Siiri Kettunen,’ Siiri said by way of introduction, offering him her hand.
‘Seems alert,’ the medic said, wrapping a cuff around her outstretched arm and reading her blood pressure. ‘Readings are fine. No need for an ambulance. If another attack occurs, call a taxi to take her to the hospital. No need to call us again.’
He packed up his first-aid kit and the foreign women followed him out of the door. Irma sank exhausted into the old armchair and told her that Virpi had called an ambulance because she didn’t know what else to do.
The pleasant man was from the ambulance, as was the girl in the white uniform. The other two girls were Sunset Grove’s new Indonesian interns. Irma didn’t remember where Indonesia was, and Siiri couldn’t understand why the interns had come to peer at her in her bed.
‘They were sent to spy on you,’ Irma said. She thought that everything that happened at Sunset Grove was connected. ‘Tero’s death, too. Döden, döden, döden,’ she whispered before she left.
Three days later Siiri Kettunen received a bill for nineteen euros from a firm called Emergencion, for ‘Non-urgent ambulance visit, no immediate care. Code X5.’
Chapter 9
On her way back from a visit to the hairdresser Siiri Kettunen met a man at the lift who looked like someone she knew, though he wasn’t. Because it was so embarrassing to not be able to place someone who looked familiar, Siiri did as she always did in these situations and greeted the man, introducing herself, just to be on the safe side.
‘Antti Raudanheimo,’ the slightly greying, upright man said by way of introduction. He must be Olavi Raudanheimo’s son. He had the same narrow face and straight nose.
He was an intelligent fellow and told her he’d rescued Olavi from Sunset Grove and taken him to the hospital, where he still was at the moment. He spoke of the ‘terrible incident’, and Siiri knew he meant the assault in the shower, although he didn’t use those words. But something very distressing had happened and Olavi’s son intended to file a criminal report. He had tried to discuss the matter with Sinikka Sundström, but the director wouldn’t believe that anything so awful could happen in her retirement home.
&nbs
p; ‘She’s very sweet, but perhaps not informed about everything that goes on here,’ he said.
They stood for such a long time in the foyer talking about Olavi that Siiri started to feel uneasy. She couldn’t concentrate on what the man was saying, but instead kept glancing towards the office and looking behind her, although there didn’t seem to be anyone about. Then she remembered that even the walls had ears at Sunset Grove, and she grabbed Olavi’s son by the arm and pulled him closer.
‘I don’t think it’s a good idea to talk about these matters here,’ she whispered.
The man looked at her in bewilderment. ‘Has anything else happened here besides my father’s terrible incident?’
Siiri asked him to come to her apartment, although she didn’t really know him and couldn’t remember ever inviting a strange man into her home before. But he seemed trustworthy and direct; he looked her in the eye and spoke in a strong baritone. He came into her apartment but didn’t take off his coat, just sat down at the table and talked for a long time about everything. He was almost more thorough than Anna-Liisa in his attention to detail, and at times Siiri felt like she might fall asleep, but luckily she wasn’t sitting in the comfortable armchair. She was sitting on a hard kitchen chair that squeaked whenever she moved. What with her fatigue and the squeaking, she couldn’t quite commit everything he said to memory, and she knew that Irma would be mad at her for this later. But one thing was quite clear in her mind: he had arranged to get his father out of the Group Home, where he had indeed been relegated, just as Irma had said.
‘Do you happen to know if your father’s friend, Reino Luukkanen, is in the Group Home too? A large man in tracksuit bottoms, poorly shaved?’
‘That I don’t know,’ the man said apologetically. ‘I couldn’t really work out who all those poor souls were. One man was sleeping in the same room as my father, but I have no idea how long he’d been lying there or what kind of trousers he was wearing. He hadn’t been shaved in a long while, but then no one there had.’
Siiri got up and pulled a bottle of red wine out of the flour bin, but Olavi’s son declined to have any alcohol in the middle of the day.
‘I usually don’t either, but I’ve heard that red wine is good for you. It has some sort of particle in it that halts the ageing process. Are you sure you won’t have just a little?’ she asked, but he said that he had to get back to work.
Siiri escorted Antti Raudanheimo down in the lift. He intended to work for three more years before retiring, had two adult sons and a very nice wife. He laughed happily as he said goodbye, and his handshake was manly and soothing. Nevertheless, Siiri was quite worked up after he left. Some red wine really could have done her good. She stood dumbly in the lobby and regretted that the Sunset Grove cafeteria wasn’t a real restaurant where you could buy yourself a little sip, in the evening at least. The residents had to sit alone in their own little boxes to drink their nightcaps.
‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’
Irma and Anna-Liisa were coming down the hallway of C wing, on their way back from the activity session. Irma showed Siiri a cardboard tube peculiarly decorated with glued-on curls of wool. ‘It’s a lamb. I can give it to you as a Christmas present.’
‘I didn’t make anything. I just watched the others having fun,’ Anna-Liisa hurriedly explained, so Siiri wouldn’t think she was silly.
‘I’m so glad you two are here! Do you have a moment? Sit down on the sofa and rest a bit.’
‘You’re agitated,’ Anna-Liisa said as she installed her red Zimmer frame between two chairs.
‘She must have met some charming man!’ Irma laughed and automatically started to search her handbag for a deck of cards. Her glasses, lipstick and coin purse were soon on the table.
‘Yes, I have, and I invited him to my apartment.’
Irma screeched with delight, stopped emptying her bag, and started picking her things up off the table and putting them back into it. Anna-Liisa turned her good ear towards Siiri, and Siiri quickly told them what Antti Raudanheimo had said, or as much of it as she remembered, and especially how she felt about it all.
‘It’s really horrible. Nightmarish. The whole thing makes me feel sick. My ears are ringing and my head is aching. But Olavi Raudanheimo is at the Hilton now, and quite clearheaded. Not a sign of any dementia.’
‘You mean the Meilahti Hospital,’ Anna-Liisa said. Siiri nodded in agreement. The fifteen-storey Meilahti Hospital tower looked so much like a large hotel that people called it the Hilton. ‘If there’s going to be a criminal report, they’ll need witnesses. Were there any eyewitnesses to this terrible incident?’
‘Just Olavi’s word,’ Siiri said, looking sad. ‘Do you think the police will believe him?’
‘Of course they’ll believe him!’ Anna-Liisa shouted, rapping on the table as if the whole episode invigorated her. ‘It would be a strange state of affairs if they didn’t listen to the word of a war veteran!’
They knew Anna-Liisa was right again. They were all reassured by the fact that Olavi’s son had taken care of the matter in such an upright manner. Luckily there were still some people with decent relatives. The fact that Sinikka Sundström didn’t want to believe what she’d been told about what had happened to Olavi didn’t surprise any of them. Sinikka was so well-intentioned and so stressed. Lately she had been even more nervous and absent-minded than usual. A lot of staff had left. There were always a lot of staff changes among the nurses, but this autumn the turnover rate had sped up so much that Director Sundström herself didn’t seem able to keep up.
‘Oh my, I don’t know. Ask Virpi. Or somebody else,’ Director Sundström would answer desperately whenever anyone made the mistake of asking her why there was no nurse available, why the physical therapist had cancelled all her appointments, or why the activity director hadn’t shown up for the joke group. The young girls who made up things for the residents to do were called activity directors. They believed that old people could be cheered up with songs from the war years, black-and-white movies and crafts.
Sunset Grove also offered rehabilitation and memory exercises. There were pictures and activities glued to the walls for the Memory Game. They looked almost like they might have been donated from a preschool centre – hand-drawn flowers, boats, houses and animals. Siiri was particularly bothered by the one that someone had glued right next to her door, a picture of a family of bunnies on a summer outing. But Irma was a curious person and had played the Memory Game more times than she could remember. Anna-Liisa came at regular intervals for a ‘memory check’ at the afternoon activity session, because she knew that the more you use your brain, the slower your memory breaks down. She started every day with a crossword puzzle and every night in bed she went through all the case endings for the Finnish interrogative articles, to keep her mind in working order.
‘Self-care. It saves the state money,’ she always said proudly.
Rehabilitation was a very broad concept at Sunset Grove; it might include anything from massage to toe wiggling. It was compulsory and free for the men because they were veterans, but the women had to pay for their own rehabilitation, even though many of them had been in the Lotta women’s auxiliary, and some of them, like Siiri, were even stationed at the front. Of course all she’d done was wash bodies and put them in their coffins. It hadn’t really felt like front-line work, but still, it was a tough job for a young girl. During the Winter War the bodies were frozen so you had to thaw them out. In the Continuation War they were full of maggots and had a sickening smell.
Siiri and Irma occasionally went to exercise class or to the pedicurist out of sheer pity for the nurses. They didn’t really know what they were being rehabilitated for.
‘For death,’ Irma said. ‘Döden, döden, döden.’
‘Why in heaven’s name do you keep repeating that?’ Anna-Liisa said, almost angrily.
The Swedish author Astrid Lindgren had said in a TV interview, when she was quite old, that she often talked on the phone with
her sister about who would be the last to die, and when they realized that all they talked about was death and dying, they got into the habit of starting their phone conversations by saying, ‘Döden, döden, döden.’ That’s where Irma had got it. She still liked to read Astrid Lindgren’s books, and often had a copy of Pippi Longstocking on her bedside table.
‘Emil of Lönneberga is my favourite, though. He’s just like my third son – the one who ran away to China. He was a real Emil when he was little, just as sweet, and quite impossible.’
‘I heard that the boy who was the cook here hung himself,’ Anna-Liisa said.
‘Who?’ Siiri said, but Irma was still talking.
‘I like the Moomin books, too,’ Irma continued. ‘They’re such clever stories!’ She thought that the older a person got, the more like a Moomin they became. ‘Until eventually it’s hard to tell whether someone’s a man or a woman – or maybe it’s not, but anyway. Just think how fun it would be if we could all grow tails. We could hold them out at right angles and the nurses would urge us to cheer up like Moominpappa did at the Hemulens’ kindergarten.’
‘What are you girls lazing about for?’ Exercise Annie said, interrupting their wandering conversation. She smiled brightly, patted Siiri and Anna-Liisa, and waved her exercise stick invitingly. They called all the young rehabilitation directors Exercise Annie.
‘You’re not too late for the stick exercises! And today we get to play with balls, too!’
Anna-Liisa and Irma promised they would come to the exercise class and left to get their exercise clothes from their apartments. Siiri didn’t feel like it. There was something degrading about messing around with sticks and balls, especially when you had to do it in front of a wall of mirrors with everyone looking so old and wrinkled that it was difficult to recognize yourself. They did, in fact, look like Moomins in their grey exercise outfits, just as Irma had said.
The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency: Death in Sunset Grove Page 5