by Katja Ivar
So when, at half past five, I mounted the creaky stairs of my apartment building and spotted a bulging pigskin suitcase and a pair of shapely legs in a too-short skirt standing next to it, my first instinct was to run back to my office and wait until the legs were gone. I had a pretty good idea who they belonged to, and no desire at all to see their owner.
This split second of indecision, while I was hovering on the stairs, sealed my fate.
“Hel-la!” cried the sugary voice and Anita flew down the stairs, throwing her arms round my neck as if we were the best of friends. “So happy to see you! How are you?”
She took a step back, looked at me critically and frowned. “You’re even thinner than before. I didn’t think it was possible. And you’ve got a ladder in your stocking.”
“Thank you,” I muttered, making my way upstairs and fumbling in my pocket for the key. “I know.”
My lawyer had insisted I wear “nice ladylike clothes” to court, and I had complied. I had coiled my wild mane into a bun that resembled a cowpat, put on my only skirt suit, and even invested in a new pair of stockings. Which hadn’t even lasted a day. Somehow this minor disappointment crystallized all that was wrong with my life.
“What’s this about?” I asked Anita, my hand on the doorknob. I had rather hoped never again to see hide or hair of anyone from the police station in Ivalo. So did I really have to invite our former receptionist, who I’d never been close to, into my apartment for a cup of coffee and a chit-chat? And why did she have that suitcase with her?
Anita smiled: bright lipstick, perfect teeth, dimples. “It’s a long story. Can I come in?”
“Sorry.” I shrugged. “Sure. It’s been a rough day.”
My unexpected visitor picked up her suitcase and fluttered into my apartment. “Oh,” she said. “I love this place. It’s so … uncluttered. All those bare walls.”
“Yeah.” I dumped my bag on a chair and, leaving Anita to admire my sweet spartan home, went to the kitchen and put the kettle on. The coffee jar was almost empty, but I still managed to prepare two fairly decent cupfuls. I put them on a tray, together with a sugar bowl, and carried it into the living room.
Where I almost dropped the tray.
“What are you doing?”
Anita flashed a smile at me. “Surprise!”
I put the tray on the table, my hands shaking. “What do you mean, ‘surprise’? You’re hanging your clothes in my wardrobe. I thought you were just visiting?”
“Well, actually,” Anita said, deftly slipping a silk blouse onto a wire hanger, “I’m in Helsinki for good. I decided to follow in your footsteps, to try and be a hero like you.”
I stared at her. The girl was mad. For the three years I’d known her back in Ivalo, the only detective work that had ever interested Anita was finding a lipstick to match her nail polish. “You mean you want to be a cop?”
“Homicide detective, like you,” Anita beamed. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while, how I’d look in a uniform, and I decided that was it. This is what I want to be!”
“In case it escaped your notice, that’s all in the past. I’m not part of the police force any more.”
“Doesn’t matter. Everyone in Lapland knows your name. I applied to the training programme the day after you resigned. Actually, I started two months ago.”
I pulled a chair towards me and sat down heavily. Call me slow, but the situation was still unclear to me. “Where did you live?” I asked her. “Until now?”
Anita extracted a pair of crimson suede pumps from the suitcase and set them carefully in the back of the wardrobe. “With my cousin.”
“Ranta? Is he in Helsinki too?”
“Yep,” Anita smiled. “He always said he’d live and die as a police officer in Ivalo, but he transferred two months ago to work in the archives. Didn’t want to leave me alone in the big city. I was surprised he did, at his age – we celebrated his fifty-sixth birthday last week – but here we are.” She peered critically into my wardrobe. It was already full, but her suitcase wasn’t empty yet. “Do you know where I can put the rest of my stuff?”
“What happened with Ranta, then? Did you have a fight?”
Anita was already dragging her suitcase towards my bedroom. “I won’t stay long,” she assured me. “Maybe a couple of months. You’ll see, we’ll have fun together. Ranta was impossible, you know how he is, you’ve worked with him. Always snooping around, going through my things. Violent too, sometimes. I couldn’t take it any longer. There. Oh, goodness gracious!” I heard something smashing on the floor. A moment later Anita emerged, a piece of broken glass in her manicured hand. “That bed looks like two people have been sleeping in it. Are you seeing someone?” Her voice held an incredulous tone.
I stared at her, wondering if I had heard her correctly. Was it me who just two hours ago had been afraid of solitude? There were worse things. And Anita was one of them.
I wanted to start working on the case as soon as we finished our coffee, but Anita’s mind was set on having what she called a girls’ evening. That seemed to involve putting curlers in each other’s hair, painting our nails and eating pancakes. And drinking sparkling wine.
“I don’t have any,” I said.
“I noticed.” Anita wrinkled her nose prettily. “Your kitchen is empty, except for all those pickle jars.” The implication no wonder your boyfriend ran away hung between us like a cloud.
“There’s some pressed caviar left in the icebox outside the window. Also a bottle of vodka. Help yourself. You can’t get Prosecco with coupons in any case.”
“I don’t drink vodka,” Anita said, in a helpless, dying-to-a-whisper sort of voice that must usually obtain the desired effect. “And pressed caviar is for the poor.”
“As you wish.”
I pulled Klara Nylund’s notes out of my bag and started to read. According to the madam, Nellie had announced she was going solo on 15 February. She had still been alive on 17 February, when she had dropped by her friend’s place to borrow a curling iron. On the morning of 18 February, when the friend, Maria, came to Nellie’s to get her iron back, the girl was gone. Her body was found several days later, floating in the harbour.
“Are you really going to work all evening?” Anita asked.
“That’s my intention, yes.”
“You don’t even have a TV. There’s this show I love, it’s called —”
“Anita.” I pointed at the file. “Do you mind? I’m trying to focus here.”
“I Love Lucy.” Anita slumped on the sofa, but a second later she was up on her feet again and wrapping a blanket around herself. “This place is freezing,” she said. “I never realized you were one of those superwomen who never feel the cold.”
I clamped my hands around my ears and tried to focus on the file, but it was no good.
“Six foot tall,” Anita was saying, her face hidden behind a magazine she’d pulled out of her bag. “Size eleven shoes. Maybe even president. What?”
“Nothing.”
“You were muttering to yourself!”
“I was wondering about the six-foot-tall size eleven president.”
Anita flew off the sofa and slammed the magazine on top of the file. “Associated Press,” she said. “It’s about the women of the future. What they’ll look like in the year 2000, if the Soviets don’t blow us up before then.” I stared at the illustration. On it, a massive Amazon towered above two curvaceous beauties. “Is that what they think? That the woman of the future will look like the steel kolkhoz maiden, but without her male companion and her pedestal?”
“Yes!” Anita’s voice was breathless with excitement. “Women will know how to wrestle, and they’ll be dressed in special synthetic suits, and, and … they’ll have pills instead of food. And, Hella, we might even have a female president.”
“That could be useful,” I said, pushing the magazine aside. “The pills, I mean. No cooking. Now can I continue reading?”
Anita puffed up her
cheeks and blew out a long, discontented breath. Then she leaned over my shoulder and started to read my file.
According to Klara Nylund, there was no boyfriend, no promise of marriage, no man Nellie would want to present to her family. But she also noted that she probably wouldn’t have known even if there had been someone: she had close to twenty girls, she couldn’t keep an eye on everything. The address of Nellie’s best friend, Maria, was scribbled in the margin. I decided to start with her.
“Couldn’t Nellie have drowned accidentally?” Anita asked. “This sort of thing happens all the time.”
“Sure. And the police are probably right. It’s the fact that Nellie suddenly quit her job that made Klara Nylund wonder. Apparently she wasn’t the independent type.”
“Wait a second…” Anita, finally tired of her stooping position, pulled up a chair and sat next to me. “Does the madam think Nellie got involved with a man who got rid of her?”
I nodded, my eyes on a studio portrait of a beautiful girl dressed in a high-necked white blouse, her blonde hair tied in a bun. This photograph had been supplied by Nellie’s family; in it, she looked like an office worker, not an escort. I had asked Klara Nylund about this, and the madam had shrugged it off. Lots of the girls lied to their families about their occupation, she said. There was another photograph where the girl wore a low-cut gown and earrings, and had her hair loose, but the madam had given that one to the police.
“There’s something I don’t get,” Anita said. “If Klara Nylund told the cops all of this already, why would she want a PI as well?”
“She went to see Chief Inspector Jokela in the homicide squad to see how the investigation was progressing, and he told her the file wasn’t a priority for them because they’re not even certain a crime was committed. The pathologist’s conclusion seems to be that Nellie slipped on the ice and fell into the water. Cause of death: drowning. And Klara Nylund couldn’t really insist – she’s not related to the girl. Officially, her business establishment doesn’t even exist.”
“It doesn’t?”
“No. Prostitution is illegal. According to Jokela, if Nellie’s parents insisted, the police would look into it more closely, but otherwise…”
Anita’s eyes widened. “Let me guess. Nellie’s parents told all their neighbours that their daughter had a respectable occupation, and they’re afraid the truth will come out if there’s a proper investigation?”
“Exactly. So Jokela told Klara Nylund that Inspector Mustonen has been working on the case but he’s got no results so far, and it was time for him to move on to something more important. Because the madam kept insisting, he gave her my address and told her a PI might be a better option.”
“Nice guy, Mustonen,” Anita said dreamily. “He makes me think of that actor, what’s his name?”
“Errol Flynn?”
Anita brightened: “Yes. Too bad he’s married to that horse-headed creature who keeps bossing him around. He loves her, too. I ran into him at the jewellers once, he was looking to buy her a gift.”
I sat up sharply. “Do you know him?”
“Uh-huh. The training programme alternates between theoretical courses and fieldwork. Ranta got me a place on Mustonen’s team. I do nothing of course, apart from wear flattering dresses, serve coffee and generally provide a nice contrast to all the manly detectives, but I can see the way they operate. Mustonen is one of the nicer ones. Hasn’t ever tried to grab my bum in the corridors yet.”
“I guess he’s a decent guy,” I said, feeling silly. “He never tried with me either.”
Anita burst out laughing. “That, honey, is not really all that surprising.”
I dreamed of the dead girl. In my dreams, Nellie was much younger; she looked about ten. She floated on her back in the murky waters of the port, her hair spread out like tentacles, her lips frozen, blue. A tall man was standing on the embankment, hands thrust into his pockets, a felt hat pulled low over his face. Waiting for something. My heart was beating too fast. I glided up to him in the darkness, stopping maybe a yard short. The man, who must have heard the sound of my steps, turned towards me. He didn’t have a face, but I knew who he was, and I knew why he was grabbing hold of my wrists and pushing me gently into the icy water. Don’t act surprised, he told me. You’re a big girl now. You’ve got to understand. I have a family to protect.
I woke up screaming, disoriented, and for a while I couldn’t figure out who the other person sharing my bed was. It was only when I switched the night lamp on that I could make out Anita’s flaxen hair and her small hands clutching the pillow. The air in the room was cold and damp. Shivering, I picked up a cardigan, threw it over my shoulders and felt my way into the kitchen. I could never go back to sleep after that dream. Awake, I didn’t believe for a minute that Steve could have had anything to do with the dead girl. Asleep, I wasn’t so sure. And I wasn’t taking any chances.
Instead, I wrapped the cardigan tighter around me, gulped down the remainder of the cold coffee from Anita’s cup and settled on the living-room sofa with the file. Young and radiant, Nellie gazed at me from the photograph supplied by Klara Nylund.
And once again I thought of the Kalevala, that most Finnish of all poems:
And the waves are white with fervour,
To and fro they toss the maiden,
Storm-encircled, hapless maiden,
With her sport the rolling billows,
With her play the storm-wind forces…
6
Chief Inspector Mustonen
Even with a lifetime of training behind me, the coldness of the water took my breath away. I dived quickly, emerged quicker still. Didn’t stay my usual five minutes. Maybe it was because of all I’d had to drink the previous night. I wondered if I could use it as an excuse to put an end to my drinking sessions with Jokela. Probably not. My boss would just tell me to stop exercising.
Sofia was waiting next to the hole in the ice with the towel, like she always did. Smiling. The worst part was over, her morning sickness a distant memory. My wife’s belly was round and she laughed a lot. She was certain this second baby would be a boy as well. She wanted to call him Janus, like the father-in-law she’d never met, but I had rejected it absolutely. Finally, Sofia seemed to have settled on Jonas.
“Thank you, darling.” I blew her a kiss and she stepped back from the edge of the water, throwing me the towel. I wrapped it around my waist. At this early hour, we were alone on the shore; I didn’t have to worry about anyone seeing me.
“Will you train Arne too, when he’s old enough?” Sofia made a show of shuddering. “Ice-water dips so all the Mustonen men stay fit and healthy and handsome?”
“Of course I will! My father always said what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
I swept my wife off her feet and ran up the slope with her. “Do you think I could manage this without the ice dips?” I panted.
She was laughing, protesting, but as we drew nearer to the house I stopped paying attention. Inside, the phone was ringing. Not many people had our number. It could be Sofia’s father; it could be Jokela. If my boss was calling me at home, it meant there was a new case. Not a small one, either, or he wouldn’t have bothered. No, it must be something big.
7
Hella
My father always said Helsinki was a city of lost souls. A place forever caught between East and West, the onion-shaped domes and the neoclassical facades. A paler copy of St Petersburg, now revolutionary Leningrad. A city whose golden age had been before the First World War. A city scarred by shrapnel and painted in pastel colours. A city of broken dreams, none of these more broken than those of the girl who had written the pathetic little letter I was reading.
Dear Mother,
I hope you are in good health and that the weather is not too cold. Here in Helsinki, the winter is mild, though it still snows a lot. It’s a good thing I spend my days in the office. In your last letter, you asked me about the other girls, if they were nice. They are,
for the most part, but our supervisor says we talk too much.
“So this was Nellie’s white lie?” I said, folding away the letter Klara Nylund had provided with the file. “An office job?” The effects of my bad night were kicking in and I needed coffee badly, but Maria, Nellie’s best friend and our only witness, hadn’t offered me any. I had woken her, I think. Unable to sleep, I’d showed up at the address Klara Nylund had given me – a run-down building in Punavuori – at eight in the morning, and then had spent the next ten minutes with my finger pressed on the doorbell.
Maria shrugged, studying her nails. Her face was too white, as if she’d never seen the light of day. “A stupid girl daydreaming,” she said. “Nellie couldn’t very well tell her mother the truth, could she? So she said she worked at the radio station, as a secretary. Not that it fooled anyone, if you want my opinion, though it wasn’t in their interest to say otherwise. She was her family’s only source of revenue. The fact that she was unhappy – that wasn’t their business. They didn’t want to know.”
The tiny apartment was overheated and cramped, with clothes all over the floor, but it offered a nice view of the sea. I strolled towards the window. “All right,” I said. “So Nellie, who was supporting her widowed mother and four-year-old son, lied to her family and told them she held an office job. Then one day she tells Klara Nylund she’s going solo, and several days later she turns up dead. Is it reasonable to think she might have stopped working for Klara Nylund because she’d met someone?”
“I don’t know,” Maria said. She pulled a strand of hair out of her ponytail and started twisting it around her finger. “Are you really a former policewoman? Klara told me you were a friend of the inspectors in the homicide squad.”
“I used to work with Inspectors Jokela and Mustonen, but now I’m on my own.”