Anna-Liisa and Siiri found Irma on the third floor, in a room for six. She was lying in the middle bed on the left, and looked much better in her pink hospital gown than she had in the grimy, ‘sexy’ T-shirt they had given her at the Group Home. Her hair was washed and combed and she almost looked like her old self. Anna-Liisa stood back but Siiri sat down excitedly on the edge of the bed and took hold of Irma’s hand.
‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’
Irma didn’t recognize Siiri. She didn’t say anything or even smile; there was none of the twinkle in her eyes that Siiri had expected to see.
‘Irma! Anna-Liisa and I came to see how you’re doing here while you wait in line for your new hip. Irma? It’s Siiri. Don’t you remember me?’
Irma didn’t seem to understand where she was or what was happening. She didn’t respond at all. Siiri got up, confused, and went over to Anna-Liisa. They stood for a long time in silence looking at Irma and waiting for something to happen. Irma stared back at them blankly, then a happy smile spread across her face. She reached both hands out to Siiri and said:
‘Mama! You came to see me after all! Mama, I’m so thirsty!’
Siiri’s eyes grew wet and she couldn’t say anything, just held her handbag tight with both hands and swallowed.
‘Give her some water.’
It wasn’t until she felt Anna-Liisa give her a sharp dig in the ribs with an elbow that Siiri responded. ‘Yes, yes, of course. Sorry.’
With trembling hands she poured some water from the pitcher into the glass on Irma’s night table and sat wearily down on the bed again.
‘Here, Irma. Have some water. I don’t have anything better to give you right now. I’m Siiri. Remember, Irma? I’m your good friend Siiri. Would you like me to sing “Oh, My Darling Augustine”?’
Irma drank the water greedily in big, loud gulps, like she always did on the rare occasions when water was what she wanted. When she’d emptied the glass, she gave it back to Siiri and stared into her eyes with a long, searching look.
‘Thank you.’
Irma closed her eyes and turned her back to Siiri. She seemed to want to be left alone. Siiri pulled the covers over her friend, rubbed her back for a moment, then got up and took a deep breath. She looked helplessly at Anna-Liisa and, to her surprise, Anna-Liisa had tears in her eyes too.
‘Let’s go, Siiri. We’re not making anyone happy here,’ Anna-Liisa said, and turned her Zimmer frame towards the door.
Chapter 37
The final straw was when Sinikka Sundström and Virpi Hiukkanen were awarded medals for the bravery they’d shown at the time of the fire. Siiri choked on her instant coffee when she heard the news from Anna-Liisa.
‘Bravery! Director Sundström wasn’t even there. And Virpi Hiukkanen was mostly just yelling at me.’
Siiri and Anna-Liisa went to the Sunset Grove bravery ceremony out of pure curiosity. The event was held in the downstairs common room and the cafeteria, which had been combined into a large space for the unusual occasion by opening the partitioning doors. The more disabled residents were wheeled in their chairs and beds and positioned along the outer walls. The whole scene looked like a public festival was about to begin. The Remember to Sing dementia choir from the Evening Rest retirement home performed ‘Sink, Oh Sink, into the Bosom of Thy Country’ and a little man from city social services gave a short speech which must have been written by Virpi Hiukkanen, because it was nothing but lies from beginning to end.
At three o’clock, Nurse Hiukkanen was the first to notice the fire, which started with an electrical malfunction in the sauna. She quickly alerted emergency services and courageously directed the rescue personnel, whose efficiency can be thanked for the fact that not one of the residents of Sunset Grove was injured and the property damage was minimal.’
Siiri couldn’t believe Virpi’s lies. She was deliberately giving incorrect information about the fire. Lying about the time it started was bad enough but covering up the fact that someone had died was unforgivable. Siiri had to stop herself from speaking out. She knew that she couldn’t reveal her involvement in the incident in front of all of these people.
It remained unclear what Director Sundström’s part was in the rescue operation. The city functionary spoke about the medal and said that only fifty-two brave heroes had thus far received it. With hands shaking nervously, he went to pin the medals on Director Sundström and Virpi Hiukkanen while the residents looked on in silence. Virpi Hiukkanen wasn’t wearing her usual pullover; she was dolled up in a sheer, pale-blue dress that made her look rather pasty. The functionary didn’t know where to put his hands in order to pin the bauble to her chest. The longer he hesitated, the tighter Virpi’s mouth screwed up, but she treated him like an elderly resident who’d taken ill – which is to say, she didn’t lift a finger to help him. Sinikka Sundström, on the other hand, smiled radiantly, took the medal from him, and pinned it to the collar of her bright-coloured cape with her own hands. When this task had been carried out, the functionary began the applause and the old people dutifully clapped along.
‘Last I heard, the fire started at two o’clock,’ Anna-Liisa whispered to Siiri. ‘They’ve tightened up their story. But shouldn’t you say something? Maybe ask where Sinikka Sundström was, since she was nowhere to be seen at the fire? Or why Virpi Hiukkanen didn’t get there until after three o’clock? And where is the nurse who called the fire department? She was the one who called, not Hiukkanen, right?’
But Siiri couldn’t say anything because she wasn’t supposed to be in the Group Home at night. No one had yet thought to ask how she’d got into the closed unit, because it would hardly occur to them that a resident would have keys to all the doors in the retirement home. Siiri watched Virpi Hiukkanen with a stern eye but Virpi didn’t notice; she just stood there smiling, with the medal on her chest and a certificate in a craft-shop frame under her arm. She hugged her husband Erkki, without whom the operation would have been an overwhelming task. Sinikka Sundström, too, looked blissfully happy, as if this were all a rare stroke of luck, this fire, because it had made a devoted government worker into a hero.
‘Excuse me.’ The Ambassador’s voice rang out from the back of the hall. He stood up and straightened his tie before continuing. ‘I’d like to ask why it is that highly flammable disposable incontinence pads were being stored in an electric sauna? The Group Home’s pad storage was in the sauna, was it not? Doesn’t that constitute a significant safety risk that has now been actualized? In addition, according to the information I’ve received, one of the patients died from injuries suffered in the fire, contrary to what you have just given us to believe.’
Total silence fell over the room. Sinikka Sundström reddened but continued to smile, and looked at Virpi Hiukkanen, who fiddled with the hem of her dress and glared commandingly at her husband Erkki, to no avail. Finally, the granter of the city social services medal stepped forward and raised his eyes to the ceiling, as he’d been taught to do in the city employee acting club.
‘As I understand it,’ he said. For a moment, he imagined he was in the National Theatre on a big stage, about to begin Hamlet’s soliloquy, but he quickly came to his senses and continued with this bewildering pause long enough to make it seem as if he’d done it on purpose, for effect. ‘As I understand it, a thorough investigation of the entire incident is being conducted, and is still underway.’
A loud murmur ensued among the old people. Everyone had something to say to his or her neighbour, the medal recipients, and the social services functionary. Sinikka Sundström clapped her hands together and demanded silence.
‘My dear patien— residents! Everyone is invited to the cafeteria for free cake and coffee in honour of this honour! I would also remind you that there is still time to participate in the collection for the Indian orphans, which has got off to a good start. There are donation boxes on the tables, and if you’re interested in Indian orphans, there will be a presentation on the subject in the auditorium after c
offee.’
The nurses began pushing the wheelchairs over to the cafeteria and Siiri went to thank the Ambassador for his courageous words. The Ambassador was pleased by all the attention – and there were actually more people surrounding him to offer congratulations than there were Director Sundström and Virpi Hiukkanen. Anna-Liisa gave him a warm, tight, long hug.
‘You deserve a medal, too,’ the Hat Lady said, and someone suggested a certificate for bravery.
When the worst of the hubbub was over there were just six of them left in the common room: their whole card circle, or what was left of it. They decided as one to skip the coffee. The mood was boisterous, and eventually Anna-Liisa suggested that they go to the Fazer Cafe in Munkkivuori for proper cake and coffee.
‘That we pay for ourselves!’
‘It’s such a long way,’ Margit Partanen said, because she was stingy and didn’t really like Anna-Liisa, but the Ambassador promised everyone a free trip on his taxi coupons, and so they all ended up in disabled vans on their way to Fazer. The vans came astonishingly quickly after the Ambassador paid the girl at the information desk five euros to speed things up. Margit said that sometimes you had to wait on the phone for more than half an hour to order a disabled van, and you had to pay for the call by the minute. The drivers were friendly and helped everyone in, one at a time – wheelchairs, Zimmer frames and all. There was a blue light on the ceiling of the van and holders for bottles and cups.
‘All that’s missing is the champagne!’ the Ambassador grinned as the van pulled out of Sunset Grove onto Perustie. Anna-Liisa, sitting beside him, laughed out loud.
‘I don’t know how taxis work, and I don’t usually go to Munkkivuori. The trams don’t go there. For me, anywhere the trams don’t go might as well be in Timbuktu,’ Siiri said with a smile, but Margit was serious.
‘You can get an ordinary taxi quickly but a disabled van is a different matter. The system just doesn’t work very well. The elderly and disabled have to wait in the rain for hours, not knowing when their lift will come. If you have to be somewhere at a certain time, like a family event or a concert, you might be horribly late. And then some tiny little girl shows up who can’t lift a wheelchair. Or some Negro fellow who can’t speak Finnish well enough to even say hello,’ Margit complained, oblivious of their driver, an African man who spoke fluent Finnish.
‘Fellow of colour,’ Anna-Liisa corrected her, but Margit paid no attention.
‘You can get to Munkkivuori by bus, you know,’ she said to Siiri.
But if Siiri took the bus even for a short trip, she started to feel sick. When her oldest son was in the Jorvi Hospital before he died, Siiri had to go all the way to Espoo to see him, and, once, she got so motion sick on the bus that she had to get off and had no idea where she was. A crazy thing like that could never happen when you took the tram, since you could always follow the tracks, and trams moved so smoothly, not gyrating around on some road out in the Espoo woods. The air was fresher than it was on a bus, too. Buses were always far too hot.
‘You must have someone working for you in the travel department, because they’re planning tram routes to Munkkivuori now,’ the Ambassador laughed as they stood on the pavement waiting for Eino Partanen to descend on a sort of lift from the back of the cab. ‘They’ll lay down tracks by the kilometre just so that Siiri Kettunen can get to Fazer Cafe and have a pastry! Have the police questioned you yet?’
He threw the question out like it was a joke, although he was, of course, in earnest. But Siiri didn’t know if the fire was even a police matter. She had for some time been uneasy about the possibility of being questioned, but nothing had happened and Virpi Hiukkanen was no longer running around her apartment interrogating her, so she had started to think that the fire would be dealt with in the same way Olavi Raudanheimo’s case had been. They would just wait for the key witnesses to die, and then they would cook up a prosecutor’s motion to dismiss it.
‘But you’re never going to die,’ the Ambassador said, holding the cafe door open for everyone. ‘Reino always said that you were the prettiest girl at Sunset Grove. You don’t look a day over . . .’
‘Over what?’ Siiri asked laughingly, because now the Ambassador was in a tricky situation. If he wanted to flatter a ninety-four-year-old, what age should he say?
‘Not a day over twenty-seven,’ he said with a laugh.
‘So you only need to live seventy more years,’ Anna-Liisa said, sounding sour for some reason.
They ordered an assortment of pastries and a round of coffees with no regard to the price. But the girl at the counter refused to carry their order to the table.
‘This is self-service.’
It took a while to carry all the trays. Anna-Liisa balanced a coffee and a slice of cake on her Zimmer frame, the Ambassador took care of his own espresso cup, and Margit Partanen first pushed her husband to a window seat and then brought their trays one at a time to the table. Siiri carried the Hat Lady’s butter-eye pastry and juice carton on her own tray and forgot her cane at the counter, but a nice young man brought it over to her. The pastries were delicious and the coffee so strong that Siiri added sugar to hers from a little paper tube.
‘It looks like drugs,’ Margit said, and Anna-Liisa asked how Margit came to know so much about drugs.
The Ambassador returned to the subject of the fire and told them he had filed a criminal report as soon as he’d heard Sinikka Sundström’s nonsense at the information session the following day. Anna-Liisa patted his arm and said she was proud of his courage and initiative. Margit Partanen gobbled down her butter bun and fed tosca cake to her husband Eino. Crumbs and almonds sprinkled all over him and he smiled contentedly.
Chapter 38
People have very different ways of ringing a doorbell, even if it is just a mechanical device, and not a musical instrument as such. You can tell a person’s temperament and mood in the way they summon you to open the door. Now there was someone outside Siiri’s door who was full of energy and obviously in a hurry, maybe even in a panic, so it wasn’t a resident of Sunset Grove, and it couldn’t be the cleaner, or, for that matter, anyone else ringing the doorbell as part of their job – not Sinikka Sundström, because she wasn’t energetic and enthusiastic, and not Virpi Hiukkanen, because she never rang the doorbell, she just let herself in. So it had to be Mika Korhonen.
‘Happy Spring,’ Mika said, so enthused that he walked right in without taking off his shoes, though Siiri had mentioned this to him before. It hadn’t occurred to Siiri that it was spring already, but it was, at least according to the calendar, the beginning of March. The streets were covered in grey slush and unmelted ice.
‘Where in Finland do you suppose Josef Wecksell wrote his poem “Demanten på Marssnön”? Siiri said to Mika, who smiled uncomprehendingly. ‘“The Diamond on the March Snow”. He couldn’t have written it in Helsinki, because the only snow we have here in March is in old grey heaps. More like “The Diamond on the March Slush”. It’s a Sibelius song, too, one of his most beautiful, but I like “Första Kyssen” even better. That one is from a Runeberg poem, I think. It always makes me think of my first kiss. Imagine, it happened to me with my husband, right here in Munkkiniemi, on what used to be Linna Road, which is Holland Road now. I never had any other man but that man. My husband, I mean. He died twelve years ago.’
‘So, about the fire,’ Mika said, launching crisply but volubly into a monologue about everything connected with the fire. He was very angry about everything that had happened, and the cascade of talk was difficult to follow. He searched for words, raked the air with his big hands, and kept adjusting his stance. His voice was hoarser than usual and his blue eyes were strangely aggressive. Siiri had to interrupt him when he got to the part about the fraudulent bookkeeping and the incontinence-pad storage used for drug storage.
‘Excuse me. I should ask Anna-Liisa to come over, if that’s all right. Since both of us are soft-headed, we might remember more and understand somethin
g if both of us hear it.’
Luckily, Anna-Liisa was free that day. She had skipped aerobics and was in her apartment reading Buddenbrooks in German when Siiri called.
‘I’ll be there in three minutes and forty-five seconds,’ Anna-Liisa announced, and she arrived in almost exactly that amount of time. She shook Mika’s hand and looked disapprovingly at his muddy shoes.
‘Don’t you know how to undress yourself?’
‘Huh?’
Siiri feared Anna-Liisa was being rude because she had all sorts of suspicions about Mika, but Anna-Liisa was actually being quite friendly, flirting like a schoolgirl as she wrung all she could out of the word ‘undress’. Mika dutifully took off his shoes and carried them to the hallway. There was a large puddle on the living-room floor, which Siiri rushed to wipe up, to save him from embarrassment. Anna-Liisa sat and watched the hubbub she’d caused with satisfaction. Siiri took the rag into the bathroom, sat down on the sofa next to Anna-Liisa, and asked Mika to sit in the armchair, because that was where her husband had always sat.
‘Yep. The place of honour,’ Mika said, and then they listened carefully as he continued his explanation of why the fire wasn’t an accident and didn’t start by itself. He wasn’t as forceful and angry now, but his flailing hands, darting eyes and continuously tapping foot indicated his restlessness.
‘Siiri did see someone running outside!’ Anna-Liisa cried.
‘Good point,’ Mika said, and continued his rapid-fire talk. He believed that the fire had destroyed important evidence to do with prescriptions, money and the drug market. That explained why he was angry – he was frustrated about losing some documents he was looking for.
The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency: Death in Sunset Grove Page 18