As soon as she managed to get off the phone, Siiri started getting ready to leave. She searched for her comb and mirror. When she found them, she noticed Mika’s key ring on the table and was going to put it in her handbag, until she realized that her handbag wasn’t on the chair by the door. She forgot about combing her hair because she couldn’t find her glasses, and then she noticed that they were on top of her head. Next, she wondered where her cane was, before remembering that she was on her way to get it. Finally, she put the keys in her bag. Just as she was ready to leave, and was standing in the hallway with her coat on, she heard someone opening her front door with a key. She froze where she stood and watched as the door slowly opened. The corridor was dark, and the first thing that came through the door was a toolbox.
Siiri wasn’t exactly surprised when the man carrying the toolbox, Erkki Hiukkanen, followed, wearing blue overalls and his ever-present billed cap. He tiptoed through the door, looking over his shoulder into the hallway, and fumbled for the light switch. He had a considerable fright when he saw Siiri standing in her winter coat in her own apartment. Closing the door in a panic, he dropped the toolbox loudly on the floor, and pushed his cap to the back of his head. He stood there for a moment, then said with a stutter that he ‘d come to check the bathroom drain. Siiri said the bathroom drain had worked flawlessly for all the years she’d lived in the apartment.
‘Yeah. Well, We’re checking all the drains because we’ve had some complaints,’ Hiukkanen lied, so Siiri let him into the bathroom, although she had to leave. She really didn’t want to sit there in her coat watching him grub around in the drain.
As she sat on the tram, Siiri tried to remember when she had gone to Laakso Hospital. How in the world had her cane ended up there? She didn’t dare trust her memory. Just yesterday Virpi Hiukkanen had come to fetch her from the common room in the middle of a game of cards for her blood-pressure check. She could have sworn that she’d never agreed to such a thing. It cost an additional fee, after all.
‘Don’t you remember, Siiri? We all agreed to it just a short while ago,’ Virpi had said, as if she herself were one of the old people, and then she’d dragged Siiri to her office and started asking about arrhythmias and zest for life. Siiri didn’t know what she was talking about.
‘Well, you did go to Meilahti Hospital in December to chat with a cardiologist. Don’t you remember?’
Virpi’s questioning had been unpleasant, and Siiri felt a bit nervous, too, because her blood pressure was normal, not low, like it usually was.
‘Now, don’t be aggressive,’ Virpi had scolded her, and that had made Siiri so angry that she had firmly said ‘thank you’ and ‘goodbye’ and gone to her apartment. The Ambassador and Anna-Liisa could play cards by themselves, although Siiri was ever so slightly upset about the interruption of the game, because she’d been dealt two jokers. Or was that yesterday? Or the day before? It was best not to think about it, she decided now, and got off at the stop at Tullinpuomi. It was a puzzle that would never be solved, unless it was, as Irma would say. Siiri looked for a moment at the sun shining against the wall of the Aura building and set off on foot to climb the hill to Laakso Hospital.
The hospital was a confusing place and it took Siiri a little while to find someone who had time to hear her reason for coming.
‘Ah. I don’t have any information for you about where to look for your cane. Have you looked on the web?’ said a girl in a booth with a sign that read: ‘Information’.
‘You mean I should go on the web to get my cane? Where on the web would it be?’ Siiri asked in a friendly tone, and then the girl seemed to realize that there was no way for her to get her cane from a computer. The girl said she would find out for Siiri and asked her to sit down in the waiting room. As she sat there Siiri remembered that Olavi Raudanheimo had been moved to the Laakso chronic-care unit before Christmas, but she didn’t think she had come to visit him here; she ‘d only been to see him in his room with a view at the Hilton. They had served him thin pork gravy and they’d had fun reading the newspaper together.
The friendly girl came back with the cane in her hand.
‘My trusty cane always comes back to me!’ Siiri said, as Irma would have, and the girl smiled such a happy smile that Siiri ventured to ask her how the cane had ended up at Laakso Hospital.
‘Because I don’t remember ever coming here. But perhaps I don’t remember everything any more, since I’m so old.’
‘Actually, it was found among one of the patient’s belongings,’ the girl said, and Siiri instantly realized what had happened.
‘Olavi Raudanheimo! Of course. I left my cane in his room at the Hilton and now he’s been transferred here with all his things. I could go and see him now, since I’m already here. What ward is he in, can you tell me?’
The Information Girl looked troubled and said that a visit wasn’t possible, because Mr Raudanheimo was no longer in the hospital.
‘Oh, what a shame. Where’s he been transferred to?’
‘He’s . . . he, um . . . passed, is resting . . . I mean he died.’
The girl said that Olavi had died of old age. But Siiri knew that such a cause of death had been expunged from the Finnish medical establishment long before the girl had even been born, probably because it was the only human function over which they had no control. Eventually, the girl fetched an older nurse, a friendly woman who’d seen something of life, and she explained that they didn’t have the authority to tell outsiders about the exact cause of a patient’s death.
‘But I can tell you that Mr Raudanheimo refused to eat for the last few weeks of his life, and his personal health-care directive prohibited tube feeding. It caused quite a bit of trouble and a lot of meetings among the staff, but what can you do?’
The nurse gave Siiri a meaningful look, and Siiri understood what had happened. She had heard of such things before. Irma had told her about a cousin named Sylvi whose children had put her in such a horrible institution that she eventually stopped eating just to get out of it.
‘If you know what I mean,’ Irma had said. ‘Like that fat woman in A wing.’
‘They gave her too much insulin, didn’t they?’
‘Don’t be silly! My cousin didn’t have diabetes, not even a touch of high blood sugar. She killed herself by going on a hunger strike, like Gandhi, but in her case nobody came to stop her before it was too late, because it’s a good thing when an old person dies, just like it was a good thing Gandhi didn’t, although, of course, he did in the end, but not from his hunger strike. Sylvi stopped eating and since she’d always been a skinny thing, she died two weeks later in the hospital. For a thin person it’s quite easy. If you remember to stop drinking, too, you’ll be in a bad shape in no time.’
Chapter 28
It was time for another funeral at the Hietaniemi chapel. This time they made very sure that they were in the right place at the right time. Siiri, Anna-Liisa and the Hat Lady took the number 4 and the number 8, although Siiri tried her best to talk the Hat Lady into taking a taxi instead. But the Ambassador’s taxi was full once Eino and Margit Partanen got in with their wheelchair, and the Hat Lady was afraid to go alone.
Siiri remembered to bring her green cushion, which was a good thing because the chapel pews were terribly hard and since she was so skinny she had to sit on nothing but her tailbone, which was painful after a while.
They hadn’t known it, but Olavi Raudanheimo had a large family and many friends. He had always been so solitary at Sunset Grove. The old Hietaniemi chapel was full of people, even his old classmates and numerous co-workers from his years working as the building attendant at the university pathology department. The Ambassador recognized some of the mourners as fellow Freemasons. Olavi’s relatives came in all sorts; there was even a girl with a face full of metal rings.
‘Those are piercings. It’s a kind of jewellery. They put them everywhere, even in their nipples and genitals,’ Anna-Liisa explained, and the Ambassador laug
hed loudly.
Siiri helped Anna-Liisa with her Zimmer frame, but she forgot her cane at her seat when it was their turn to approach the coffin. Margit Partanen had become quite nimble with her husband’s wheelchair. She also must have given Eino some strong medication, because he was quiet throughout the whole ceremony. Margit relayed everything to him in a loud voice. The Hat Lady was fast asleep and remained in her seat.
‘Rest in peace, Olavi,’ Anna-Liisa said very dramatically as she laid the bouquet of flowers on the coffin.
She had told them all beforehand that she wanted to say something, and Siiri, who had expected at least a quote from Uuno Kailas or a snippet of a Runeberg poem, was disappointed that Anna-Liisa was so succinct, and sounded like a gravedigger. As they stood by the coffin Siiri noticed she’d brought her cushion with her, which was embarrassing. There was nothing for it but to stand undaunted with the cushion under her arm and everyone looking at her and think, as Irma would have done, that at her age you can do whatever you like.
The Raudanheimo family sang the hymns handsomely, and Siiri enjoyed other aspects of the funeral, too. The pastor was a wise and kind woman who didn’t talk about a journey or any of the other usual things, but about Olavi, as if she’d always known him. She even spoke beautifully about how Olavi had died when he wanted to, and about a world grown impossible for a good man, or something like that.
They didn’t feel like going to Restaurant Laulu-Miehet for the reception, although one of the Raudanheimo boys warmly invited them.
‘You’ll have so many guests there that you’ll hardly need us to fill the place,’ the Ambassador said politely.
Siiri was able to ask Olavi’s son about the police report, regarding the crime against his father. Although she ‘d thought beforehand that it wouldn’t be an appropriate thing to talk about at a funeral. But the son was so down-to-earth that it didn’t seem wrong to bring up the subject. He had received a letter eight days after his father’s death from the Helsinki criminal police that said that the prosecutor had filed for a motion to dismiss the case, but it didn’t say what the reasons were for the decision.
‘It may be that the police were relieved that my father had already died so the case could be buried. Not that they were purposely waiting for the old man to kick the bucket, but it was such an awkward thing to investigate. Director Sundström at Sunset Grove sounded on the phone as if she’d been acquitted of a life sentence. She almost burst into tears, the poor woman.’
Chapter 29
‘Siiri? Siiri who?’ the nurse asked at the door of the Group Home. The name on her lapel read: Yuing Pauk Pulkkinen. Siiri explained that she had come to visit Irma Lännenleimu, and repeated that she had a visitor’s pass expressly requested for her by Irma’s daughter and approved, finally, by Director Sundström.
‘Irma? Irma who?’ the nurse asked, and Siiri started to wonder if the company the woman was keeping was starting to rub off on her. Nurse Pulkkinen explained that she was just visiting and thus wasn’t acquainted with the patients.
‘We’re all just visiting, it seems,’ Siiri said, but Nurse Pulkkinen didn’t understand her.
She let Siiri into a kind of common room, talking the whole time about temp work, bad pay, and Mr Pulkkinen’s serious alcohol problem. They went to a glass cubicle that served as the nurses’ office and break room, and the nurse started flipping through the papers on the desk. Finally, she found Irma’s information and showed Siiri where her room was.
The lighting in the Group Home was glaringly bright and the place was filled with institutional furniture, as if it were a government auditor’s office. The smell of chemicals, urine and floor wax was powerful and Siiri found it hard to breathe.
‘What does “expressly requested” mean?’ Nurse Pulkkinen asked as they walked down the hall.
All the doors were closed and shouting could be heard from two of the rooms. The hallway ended in an unused sauna and next to it was Irma’s room. The nurse went on her way and Siiri stepped fearfully into the little room, which had a picture of Mount Vesuvius on the wall and a window that looked out on the concrete wall of the building next door. There was a woman lying in a bed on the right, and another was tied to a wheelchair, dozing. Siiri warily approached the woman in the wheelchair, who showed no reaction at all, even when Siiri touched her hand. The woman snorted, a glassy look in her eyes, food stains down her front, looking strangely fat – swollen, in fact. Her hair stuck out in every direction, dirty and untrimmed, and long hairs grew from her chin. It was a mighty sad sight. Then Siiri saw a familiar string of pearls around the old lady’s neck, and knew that this unfortunate creature was her dear friend Irma Lännenleimu. A cold feeling went right through her, paralysing her limbs and her thoughts, and made the whole room feel like a cellar. She couldn’t move her hands; she just stood and stared at the stranger before her. Irma, who was always so particular about cleanliness, who wore a stylish dress even on an ordinary weekday! And now she was in completely unrecognizable clothes, loose green tracksuit bottoms and a shirt that said ‘I’m sexy’ in sparkly letters.
‘Döden, döden, döden,’ Siiri said in a choked voice into Irma’s ear, trying to perk her up, but Irma didn’t respond in any way, she just stared at the wall without blinking. Siiri felt like she was going to cry, felt like screaming and throwing herself on the floor, but she had to remain calm. She slumped onto the bed next to the wheelchair, took hold of Irma’s hand, gave it a hopeless squeeze, and stroked Irma’s cheek. It was incredibly soft, like a little child’s.
‘Are you taking me to Karelia?’ asked the other old woman, who was dressed in pads and overalls and tied to the bed with some kind of harness. She looked intently at Siiri with her small, dark eyes. ‘Shall we sing?’
Siiri was startled to find someone watching her, but singing actually seemed like a good idea. She smiled gratefully at the old lady, sighed deeply, and began to sing ‘I Remember Karelia’, a bit timidly at first. Then, singing more briskly, she switched to ‘Cuckoo, Cuckoo, that Faraway Cuckoo’. This clearly made the old woman, who must have been evacuated from Karelia during the war, very happy. Then Siiri sang ‘Oh, My Darling Augustine’ for Irma. It was a song Irma had once sung in a school song contest. She had been disqualified because, although she sang it well, the teacher had thought the song was indecent because of the lines: ‘With pants off and shirt off and socks off and shoes off, oh, my darling Augustine, everything’s off!’ Irma had tried to explain to the teacher that the song was about a drunk who passes out and gets mistaken for dead and tossed into a mass grave and then wakes up naked and foolish. Granted, it was a strange choice of song for a little girl to sing in a contest, but everybody sang ‘Oh, My Darling Augustine’ back then without thinking about what it meant.
When Siiri got to the naked part, Irma came to life.
‘With pants off and shirt off,’ she tried to sing along, but just then the nurse appeared in the doorway.
‘Keep your pants on. We’re not going to the toilet. You’ve got your pads,’ she yelled in Irma’s ear, so loudly that Siiri could see that it hurt. So much so that Irma got angry. She yelled and screamed and when the nurse took hold of both of her hands, Irma bit her. Nurse Pulkkinen yanked her hand away and let out a screech, in that order. Siiri looked on in shock. She didn’t recognize this madwoman as the Irma she knew; she couldn’t understand what had happened, or why.
Irma kept singing the Augustin song as if it were a political manifesto, so loudly that her voice changed to a strange sort of growl. The old woman in the bed started to pray aloud and the nurse ran away to dress her wound. Irma calmed down immediately once the nurse was gone and started the song over from the beginning very quietly and pleasantly, in her own high soprano. She smiled to herself, not looking at anything, and seemed happy.
‘. . . with pants off and shirt off and socks off and shoes off, oh, my darling Augustine . . .’
Siiri was so engrossed in watching Irma, this unpredictable stranger
with thoughts she couldn’t fathom, that she didn’t notice when Nurse Pulkkinen came back into the room. Suddenly the nurse was standing next to Irma, bending over behind her to pull down the back of her tracksuit bottoms and give her a very professional-looking poke with a syringe in the behind. It all happened incredibly quickly and efficiently. Irma wailed as if her heart would break. Siiri realized that she was wailing, too. She got up in a rage, but froze where she stood, unsure of what to do. She sputtered Irma’s name, embraced her desperately, and felt Irma gradually go limp, her head lolling backwards, her eyes closing. Nurse Pulkkinen didn’t stay to watch the scene, she just took hold of Siiri with both hands and told her that unfortunately she would have to leave and not cause any more disturbances in the Group Home.
Irma’s room-mate could be heard all the way down the hallway, praying ecstatically as the nurse tugged Siiri by the hand, scolding her like a four-year-old who’d got lost on a field trip. The ward door locked with a clack behind Siiri’s back and the sound of it echoed in her ringing ears until everything around her gradually became a dark grey roar. She couldn’t understand where she was. She stood alone, swaying in a hallway somewhere outside the ward, winded and confused, and then felt herself slowly waken from this horrible nightmare that wasn’t a dream.
Chapter 30
Anna-Liisa and Siiri sat on the number 3 tram heading towards the handsome apartment blocks of Eira. Siiri tried to tell Anna-Liisa about her experiences in the Group Home, but her explanations were rather confused. After the shock of her longed-for first visit she had been back to see Irma at least twice a week, sometimes three times.
The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency: Death in Sunset Grove Page 14