by Katja Ivar
Now it was probably too late. Jokela would have a fit if I told him I was having second thoughts. Already, when I had mentioned it might be useful for me to see young Ahti, Jokela had stared at me as if I was mad. Absolutely out of the question, my boss had said. Don’t even think about it. All this because a politician’s son was involved, and because Dr Palmu had been seen hyperventilating at the staff meeting earlier that week. Jokela thought his time had come, and maybe it was true. Maybe it was also true that I would follow in his footsteps and become the youngest ever head of the homicide squad. Right now, it made no difference. The death of Nellie Ritvanen should have been investigated by the police, not some hapless PI. I supposed my qualms could be interpreted as a case of bad conscience. Or professional pride. If there was an arrest on that case, I wanted to be the one who made it.
Even with my door closed, I could hear my boss telling elaborate war stories to a suitably spellbound audience in the break room. Jokela was laughing at his own jokes, to the sound of an obediently cackling chorus. How ironic that the man could remember his stories so well, but never the people he’d already told them to. Everyone present in the room would probably be able to recite Jokela’s stories even if woken from a deep sleep.
The card was out of the wastepaper basket almost before I realized what I was doing. I pressed the telephone to my ear. One of the girls answered on the second ring.
“I need to talk to Ms Nylund.”
She didn’t ask me who I was, just put the receiver down and yelled, “Klara! For you!”
As I waited, I kept glancing at my closed door. If anyone came in, I’d just have to pretend I had dialled a wrong number. No way could I allow word to get around that I had been calling the madam.
“Who is this?” Klara Nylund came on the phone, breathing hard.
“Chief Inspector Mustonen.”
“What’s happened?”
“Nothing. I heard from my boss that he recommended you contact a PI, so I wanted to know if you went to see Miss Mauzer.”
“I saw her yesterday afternoon.” The woman paused. “Is that really why you’re calling? Or are you trying to find out if she’s uncovered something?”
“Did she?”
“She’s working on it. I like her, she’s got good ideas. She’s been talking to Nellie’s friend, Maria, she thinks the girl knows something.”
I listened and my heart rate picked up. Jokela was wrong to underestimate the former polissyster: there was every chance that she’d get to the truth first. I had to act, and fast.
15
Hella
I had never realized it until then, but one of the main advantages of living in a big city was that you could pick your own friends. You didn’t have to fit in. You could ignore your neighbours and choose your companions, not have them chosen for you. In villages, you had to socialize with people with whom you had nothing in common but your birthplace. But in big cities? You could do as you pleased. Life was smaller, more confined. At least mine had been until Anita came along.
If I’d been hoping she would spend her evenings elsewhere and only show up at my place for the night, I had just been proven wrong. Anita’s cheerful warbling – “Vaya con Dios”, a recent hit by Les Paul and Mary Ford – greeted me at the top of the stairs. Along with the smell of something burning.
I dumped my bag on the floor and shut the door behind me. “What are you cooking?”
“Well,” Anita said, giggling, “it was supposed to be a Runeberg torte. Only it sort of stayed flat.” She had Steve’s old shirt thrown over her dress like an apron, and that was when I realized I’d forgotten to put his things outside the door the previous night. I looked around. His trench coat was gone from the hook and his boots were no longer by the door.
Anita had already disappeared back into the kitchen. “Did someone come round?” I called after her.
“Uh-huh.” And then: “Oh, for heaven’s sake!”
I peered in. I suppose a man would have said Anita looked adorable, standing there in a cloud of flour, her blonde hair in an elaborate coil on top of her head, her blue eyes twinkling. I could well imagine Steve thinking just that.
“Did my boyfriend come over here while I was away?”
“Your ex,” clarified Anita, matter-of-fact.
I felt like knocking her off her feet and stuffing the torte down her throat. Instead, I hissed through gritted teeth, “Yes. My ex. Did he come, yes or no?”
Anita nodded.
“Did he leave me a message?”
“No. He just packed his things and left.”
I faced her. “Is that all? He didn’t ask…” I took a deep breath. “Did he say anything at all?”
Anita rinsed her hands and turned towards me. “He said this kitchen stinks. I noticed it, too, by the way.”
“He did?”
“He also said you’re a pain in the neck.”
“He didn’t!”
“He said you don’t realize how beautiful you are.”
“You’re lying.”
“Yep,” Anita said. “He didn’t say anything. Anyway, how long were you living with him?”
I wondered if I should lie. The truth – the brevity of our life together, the fact that Steve had run off so quickly – was almost more than I could bear. But Anita, who was no fool where this sort of thing was concerned, must have noticed the limited number of Steve’s belongings and drawn her own conclusions.
“Just a week,” I said.
“You’re blushing.”
“I’m not. I just stayed outside too long. Probably have a touch of frostbite. As to Steve and me, we were sort of trying to see if it would work, you know, before committing long-term. Obviously it didn’t.”
“Then,” Anita shrugged, “you’d better forget about him. You know how the saying goes. Girls want a lot of things from one guy, but guys want only one thing from a lot of girls. And once they get it —”
“Steve’s not like that.”
“You poor thing,” Anita said. “Are you hungry? We can eat the caviar.”
Five minutes later, having sliced rye bread and spread sticky grey caviar on it, we settled on the sofa.
“Pity there’s no butter,” Anita said, biting into her sandwich. “The newspapers pretend that food rationing is likely to stop soon. Maybe even before the end of the year. Do you remember what it was like – going out shopping, buying what you wanted? Good butcher’s sausages to make lörtsy pastries, egg butter, Christmas stars?”
“I guess I’ve got used to living with less. Maybe it’s not so bad.”
I carried the plates back into the kitchen. When I came back, Anita was curled up on the sofa, the crocheted blanket pulled over her legs.
“So,” she said. “What did you do today?”
I started ticking off on my fingers. “I went to the apartment Nellie occupied before her death – it’s already been rented out and her things shipped to her mother’s house. I interviewed her neighbours, her milkman, the postman…”
“Anything interesting?”
“No. I also talked to the other girls she was friendly with. Caught them while they were dressing up for their evening. They all claim —”
“That’s one of my fantasies,” Anita said.
“What are you talking about?”
“I heard those girls have the most exquisite dresses.”
I stared at Anita until she blushed and looked away. “Anyway,” I continued, “it doesn’t seem like these girls know anything useful. They all say that Nellie had never been threatened, and she didn’t have any debts.”
“She could have met someone outside” – Anita searched for the right word – “her workplace.”
“Yes. She could have. That’s what I was thinking too. Tomorrow morning I’ll try Maria again. She knows something, but for some reason she’s wary of me.”
“Did you talk to the pathologist?”
I hesitated, not sure if I wanted Anita to know about my friendship
with Tom. If it ever got back to Jokela, he probably wouldn’t be happy about it. “What about you?” I said, changing the subject. “How was Jokela today?”
“His same old self.”
“And Mustonen?”
“Preoccupied, but I don’t know what with. I barely saw him.”
“You haven’t told him you’re living here, have you?”
“I did, actually,” Anita said. “Well, I didn’t tell him, I told Tarja, our secretary, but he was nearby and he heard me. He sort of made a joke about it.”
“What joke?”
“I don’t remember.” Anita busied herself with her bag.
Must have been something about my housekeeping skills, I thought. “He didn’t ask about me working on this case, did he?”
“Nah,” Anita said. “He probably thinks it’s for the best.”
I looked at her. She was bent low, filing her nails, so I couldn’t catch her eye. I was not sure if what she said was true, even though she believed it herself. I knew Mustonen: unless he’d changed dramatically over the last few years, he wouldn’t be happy if someone like me solved the case after he had dismissed it. Mustonen didn’t like to lose. He wanted to be the best at what he did, and he wanted everyone to know it.
But before I had a chance to ask another question, I heard rushed footsteps outside, then a sharp knock on my door.
“Mauzer,” my neighbour said, “a phone call for you. The woman said to hurry.”
16
Hella
Even though the phone was located in a booth, the madam’s screaming greeted me halfway down the stairs. I held the receiver away from my ear.
“It’s Maria! She’s been mugged!”
“Hold on,” I said, when the madam finally paused for breath. “Is she hurt?” I didn’t ask if the girl was alive; I hoped she was.
“Her face is ruined,” Klara Nylund breathed out, suddenly quiet, as if someone had put a lid on her. “Her teeth are knocked out and —”
“I’m coming. Is she at her place?”
The phone was on the ground floor of my building, which was occupied by a language school. I paid them a small fee, they let me use the shared line. It didn’t mean I could stay on it long.
Once Klara Nylund whispered a yes, I put the receiver down and climbed the stairs to my apartment. I needed to grab my bag and fend off Anita, who had been hovering by the door with puppyish enthusiasm, her coat and hat already on.
“I’m going with you!”
“Oh, no,” I said. “No no no.” I had been expecting that. Anita had that zeal of a new convert, she was itching to take part in a real investigation, but there was no way I was letting her. The girl was too young; she’d be a hindrance, not an asset. Besides, I’d never felt the need for a sidekick, or the urge to discuss my cases. I supposed that made me a loner. “You stay here,” I said. “You need your nine hours of beauty sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
Before she could answer, I was out of the door.
It was probably not as bad as it looked, though that was not a thing to say to a girl whose only card in life was her face.
Maria’s tiny apartment was chock-full. There was the madam, in an evening dress and a mink stole, her crimson lipstick bleeding into the fine lines on her face. There were a couple of top-heavy guys with broken noses and cauliflower ears. Several girls in various states of undress. They had all rushed to Maria’s rescue, alerted by a neighbour. Maria was lying on the sofa, an ice pack pressed to one side of her head. Her eyes were like slits in her swollen face.
I kneeled beside her. “Did you see your attacker?”
She shook her head no.
“How did it happen?”
Turned out, Maria had spent her day in the apartment, but had realized as dusk set in that she had run out of cigarettes. The tobacconist’s was on the corner of her street. She was out for less than ten minutes, but when she approached her front door, someone had been waiting on the landing, concealed in the shadows. She felt a hand grabbing her neck, propelling her inside. That was when she got lucky: her foot caught on the leg of a side table, which came crashing down.
Maria glanced at her saviour, a matron in a flowered dress. “I heard it,” the woman said. “The noise, I mean. I live on the other side of the landing, and I have keys to Maria’s place, just as she has keys to mine, so she can water the plants when I’m away. I grabbed a poker and the keys, and went inside.”
I couldn’t help being impressed. “Did you see what he looked like?”
“No, he must have heard my keys turn in the door. He ran out onto the balcony and skidded from roof to roof. I didn’t see him at all.” The look on the woman’s face suggested that if she had seen the attacker, Tom would have had his hands full tonight.
Maria moaned. We had forgotten about her. Klara Nylund perched herself on the arm of the sofa and started caressing the girl’s hair.
“We need to send you away,” she said. “Maybe your family —”
“No.” Maria shook her head.
I had an idea where she could go, a place so far away that no one would ever find her, but I was not quite ready to mention it yet.
Instead, I said: “Maria. Listen to me. It’s possible Nellie got involved with a gangster or a thug. Did you tell anyone – and I mean anyone at all – that you knew something about her death?”
The girl sat up suddenly and threw her ice pack to the floor. “How many times do I have to say it?” she hissed. “I don’t have any information about Nellie’s death. I don’t. And I didn’t mention it to anyone. There’s a maniac going around, hunting Klara’s girls. Did you hear about Elena? She used to work for Klara too.”
I stared at her. “No, I didn’t.” Out of the corner of my eye I could see Klara Nylund looking as puzzled as I was.
Maria was sobbing again. “What good are you then? Everyone knows who the killer is! Everyone! But no one will stop him because his family is rich. Now get out of here!”
I hadn’t seen that coming. I prided myself on having a decent network of informants, a legacy of my time on the homicide squad, but maybe I was fooling myself. I had seen two of my informants the day before, and neither of them had mentioned it. Maybe the only stories they told me now were public knowledge anyway.
The madam didn’t say anything when she heard about the latest port attack. She didn’t need to: I may be a lousy detective, but even I know when I’ve messed up. She just wrapped her scarf tighter around her neck and hurried back to her establishment. She had a business to run, after all. Although, going by the feeling in Maria’s room, her girls would be quitting in droves before long.
I stood outside, thinking. It was late, but not too late. I could track down that Elena girl, question her, take it from there. That was the advantage of dealing with prostitutes: they were up all night. I could practically work this case around the clock.
At first, luck was on my side. My first contact – a black market operator nicknamed Egg who lived right next to Uspenski Cathedral – told me everything I wanted to know. Almost.
“Elena is a Soviet,” he said as he shuffled back to his armchair after opening the door for me. “Very pretty. Lots of clients.” He sat down heavily. Egg was in the business of trafficking American cigarettes and whisky. Only a few people knew he had started out selling egg powder from the Allied supplies on the market, which was where he’d got his nickname. The fact that, with all the good food he could afford, he had begun to resemble an egg himself, was just a happy coincidence.
“The story goes,” Egg said when I took a seat across from him, “that lovely Elena deserted her native country the day she discovered the reason you can buy just one shape of pasta in the Soviet Union.”
He was clearly waiting for me to ask the question, so I played along. “And what is the reason for all the pasta being the same shape?”
Egg cackled, delighted. “The Soviets make pasta on the same machines that they use to make bullets. Same calibre. So that
when there’s another war they can stop making pasta and produce ammo instead. Anyway, when Elena learns that, she flees to Helsinki. She settles in quite nicely, does a bit of freelancing. One day, she’s messing around with a politician’s son” – here Egg’s voice took on a reverent undertone – “and apparently the boy decides that what she needs most of all is an ice dip. The suggestion doesn’t go down well with her – she starts wriggling, and the car goes into a tailspin.” Egg threw his hands up in the air. “No harm done, not even a bruise. But our girl overreacts, starts screaming about abduction, and tries to drag the police into it.”
“Who?”
“The local station at first, but then bigger fish got involved.”
“Who?”
“Ah…” Egg laughed softly. “Your nemesis. The golden boy of Finnish policing.”
“Mustonen.”
“You two were quite the pair, did you know that? Both of you defying the names you were born with. I mean, seriously, Hella the Gentle, you don’t really live up to your first name, do you? Always rushing about like a Fury. And partnered with a Mr Black, all blonde, blue-eyed and presentable. At least Mustonen’s parents didn’t have a choice – the dark in his name goes back generations.” My informant chuckled and looked at his watch. “That will be two hundred markka.”
“Wait. Give me Elena’s address.”
Egg gave me a look. “You’ll need to double the price.”
I winced. I was almost out of cash. Could Anita be relied upon to buy food over the next few days, giving time for me to get back on my feet? I counted out the money and Egg scribbled an address on a torn envelope. “Here you go.” He pocketed the money, looked me in the eye. “Only don’t waste your time. The girl’s already left.”