by Katja Ivar
“Yes?”
“I have a summons for you. Please sign here.”
The man held out a large white envelope.
I hesitated, my right hand crumbling the mouldy cracker, the left grabbing the door frame.
“Come on, Miss Mauzer, don’t make me wait.”
I signed, of course. What other option did I have? I even managed to exit the building with my head held high.
Another envelope was waiting for me at the office, stuck under the door that led to the reception area. Cream vellum, now smeared with dust. Still out of breath after climbing up the three flights of stairs, I stared at it for a long moment, wondering if more bad news was coming my way.
I was still reeling from receiving the letter. The court had notified me that they had made a mistake earlier and that the damages I had to pay to Kukoyakka were due in five days. Even if I sold all my possessions, there was no way I could meet that deadline. I didn’t need any more hassle, and that new letter promised plenty. In the end, I flipped it with the tip of my shoe. It was from the madam, as I had expected.
The letter, when I extracted it from the envelope, started innocently enough:
Dear Miss Mauzer,
First of all, let me thank you for your generous offer. I am certain Maria will be delighted to spend some time with your friends in Lapland. The poor child is so worried, she needs rest.
I needed to write to Irja, warn her that Maria was coming. I tried to imagine Maria in Käärmelä: the high heels sliding cautiously on the ice, the hot coral lipstick drawing everyone’s attention at Sunday Mass. Irja and Timo would give her my room, I thought. The one with a scattering of violets on the curtains, and a too-big wardrobe.
Anyway, this was good. It meant Maria could be tucked away safely, and it meant the madam wasn’t mad at me for failing her so miserably. I read on.
The second objective of this letter is to beg your pardon for last night. I was taken aback by the revelation that the name of the attacker appeared to be common knowledge. That made me doubt your capabilities. I was expecting that, with your expertise and enthusiasm, you would be on top of the job. Maybe you had other priorities. Nevertheless, now that the girls’ attacker has been identified, I must ask you to please hurry. You certainly understand that my business is suffering and that I am losing money. I would therefore appreciate knowing that the attacker has been apprehended (or otherwise stopped) before Monday.
Before Monday. Just two days left, meaning I was not going to make it. In which case, the madam would refuse to pay. The message was clear.
Yours truly,
Klara Nylund
And I’d been hoping I’d get some cash soon to pay the damages. Damn!
20
Hella
I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to think up creative ways to prove that Ahti Virtanen had been involved in the murders and the assault.
Questioning his domestic helpers would be no good – and likely to get me into trouble. His university friends? I had no idea who they were.
I did come up with the boy’s photograph, which I tore out of a glossy magazine I found at the city library. One thing was clear: Ahti wanted to be a rebel, because there he was, clad in black leather, posing on a Harley. Unfortunately for the boy, his looks worked against him. The curly blonde hair, the round red cheeks, the bright blue eyes – he had the type of cupidesque face no one could take seriously. Would he go as far as killing someone to be in the spotlight? And there was one more thing: in Finnish mythology, Ahti is a god of water. Could there be symbolism in that? Was the boy trying to act out his name when he drowned these women, as if it were some perverse prophecy? I slid the page under my coat. It was 4 p.m. already, and I couldn’t stay still. PIs are like wolves. If they don’t move, they die of starvation.
“No,” said Maria’s neighbour when I showed her the photograph. “Never seen him.” The woman was wearing the same dress as the day before, but now her hair was done up and her lips were painted a girlish pink. “But I didn’t see Maria’s attacker, I already told you that. Now, if you’ll excuse me —” She slammed the door in my face.
Maria was gone already, on her way to Käärmelä. I tried the store on the corner and the fish dealer and a seamstress who had a small store on Maria’s street. No luck.
The sun was already low in the sky, and the streets were filling up with people: men returning home from work, children playing in the snow, dragging their backpacks behind them. Not many women: they were inside already, cooking. You could smell it in the streets: roast mutton, pierogies, kalakukko fish bread.
I could try to pretend I didn’t even know how I found myself on Steve’s doorstep, but that wouldn’t be true. Steve wasn’t home, he was at work. As I stood under the street light, heavy snow landing on my lashes and melting on contact with my cheeks, his sexy voice was on Yle Radio, commenting on the latest American music hits. It was not him I had come to see. It was Elsbeth, his wife.
The front windows were dark. I thought that Elsbeth and Eva would be in the kitchen, towards the back of the house, having dinner. I wondered if my stomach would growl when I confronted them.
I stamped compacted snow off my boots and scraped the soles clean before climbing the steps to the front door and lifting my hand towards the bell. I pressed it hard, then waited with my ear to the door. It could be that Elsbeth had seen it was me and decided not to open it; or perhaps no one was home. I could hear no movement inside, no music and no voices.
I glanced at my watch. Half past six. Elsbeth could have gone to visit her parents, or a friend.
Before I could change my mind, I crossed the street, stopping in front of a cute little house, recently painted, its windows gleaming. Its door swung open as I was lifting my hand to knock. The young woman standing on the doorstep had a striped apron tied around her slender waist and two toddlers pulling at her skirt. Her face seemed to be caught between curiosity and righteous outrage. The outrage won.
“Are you looking for Mr Collins?”
“No. I’m looking for his wife.”
The woman raised an eyebrow. For a moment, we just stood there, staring at each other. The inside of the house smelled of roast pork and burnt sugar.
“She’s gone,” the woman said at last, her eyes never leaving mine. “Took her daughter and left. All her things, too.”
“When?”
“Mummy,” one of the toddlers started whining. “I’m cold.” Immediately, his brother joined the chorus, his mouth open, his whole body heaving.
“Stop it!” the woman muttered. And to me: “Look what you’ve done.” She started to close the door and I had to put my hand on the door frame, because I was damned if I was going to leave before finding out more. “When? When did Mrs Collins go away?”
The edge of the door pressed against my hand. “I know who you are,” the woman said. “She told me all about you.” Both toddlers were hysterical now, and I could hear a man’s voice calling “What’s happening there?” from somewhere deep in the house.
The woman kept pulling at the door, but she was hesitant to crush my fingers. “Elsbeth moved out ten days ago,” she snarled at last. “Now leave!”
I pulled my hand away, and immediately the door clicked shut. I stood at the edge of the street, massaging my bruised knuckles and thinking of all the lies Steve had told me, while damp snowflakes clung to my hair and lashes and blurred my vision.
21
Chief Inspector Mustonen
“Honey?” Sofia’s voice was breathless with excitement.
“Hold on.” I kicked the door shut. The office was almost empty at that hour, but I couldn’t risk anyone eavesdropping on my conversations. “What is it, darling?” I pressed the telephone against my ear. It was not often that Sofia called me at the office. Something must have happened.
“I just learned that the house next door to my father’s is for sale.” My wife giggled. “Isn’t that marvellous? Honey?”
“Of cou
rse,” I said. “It is. Marvellous. But Sofia, don’t you think that we maybe have enough on our plate at the moment? With the baby coming and all that?”
“Oh,” Sofia whispered. “I thought you’d jump at the idea.”
I ran my hand through my hair, sitting down heavily. I didn’t need the added complication, not now, but I couldn’t tell Sofia that. Ever since we had bought our little house by the sea, my wife had been dreaming of moving away. Our home was not grand enough, not chic enough. It had been deemed unworthy of an up-and-coming inspector and his socialite wife. She couldn’t invite her friends over; she was afraid that if she invited them, they wouldn’t come.
And then there was her family. As a wedding gift from her grandmother, Sofia had received a subscription to Harper’s Bazaar. It was the only way, the old lady said, that Sofia could now keep up to date on the lives of her more fortunate friends, the ones who had made better unions. So the possibility of getting that house: yes, it mattered. It mattered a lot.
“I’ll think about it, all right,” I told my wife. “It might be a bit too expensive for us now, but maybe next year —”
“Aren’t you going to” – Sofia hesitated – “Aren’t you going to get that pay rise you were promised?”
“Only if I’m promoted to Jokela’s position. It’s not confirmed yet.”
But my wife was refusing to give up. “Can it be soon?”
“I’ll talk to Jokela,” I said. “I promise you I will. I’m meeting him for a drink, but there’s something I need to do before that, so…”
Sofia took the hint. “Of course,” she murmured. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow. I’ll probably arrange to view the house, just in case. To make sure we really like it, you know? No point buying something we don’t like.”
“Good point,” I said, even though I knew that to be the husband Sofia deserved, I had to like the house. I had to want it as much as my wife did. The gold brooch I’d been thinking of getting Sofia, as a gift for the baby’s birth, wouldn’t cut it. She wanted more. Much more. And I was not sure I’d be able to deliver.
“Love you, darling,” I said, hanging up. Then I grabbed my coat and my gun, locked the door to my office, and made my way downstairs.
*
Jokela was thoroughly drunk when I finally arrived at the American-style bar that had lately become my boss’s after-hours watering hole. He waved at me from a corner table.
“Over here, ma-ma…”
My boy, I silently mouthed. It really was time Jokela got rid of that stupid habit. Time, also, for my boss to stop patting me on the shoulder as if I was a prize horse.
I spread my lips into a smile and made my way over to the dimly lit corner. There were crisps scattered on the floor, sodden from the melted snow brought in on the patrons’ shoes.
“Here,” Jokela breathed, pushing a pint of flat beer towards me. And, suddenly annoyed: “You’re late.”
“Sorry.”
“I mean, what took you so long? It takes what, from Headquarters to here, all of fifteen minutes? You took two hours.”
“Sorry,” I said again.
“You’re hiding something,” he slurred. “You look dishevelled. What have you been up to?”
For such a big, impressive-looking man, with his military bearing and shrewd, piercing eyes, Jokela was a cheap drunk. He invariably fell apart after his second glass of anything. Maybe that was the reason he demanded that we drink together every night, whether in his office or here, in the bar: he needed practice. And someone to cover up for his inadequacies and see him safely home.
A pretty red-haired waitress materialized by our table, a menu in hand. “Would you like to eat something, sir?”
“Better not,” I said, smiling up at her. “My wife cooks dinner for me every night; she wouldn’t appreciate me eating here.” I pushed the beer aside. “May I have a brandy? What would you like, Jon?”
“Make it two,” Jokela said. And, after the girl was gone: “You really aren’t very bright, my boy.”
“Why’s that?” I asked, though I already knew. I also supposed that my boss didn’t really mean to offend me: he was just speaking his dirty, one-track mind.
“That girl” – Jokela pointed at the waitress’s receding back – “Want to bet that she’s more fun than that boring, pure-bred wife of yours?”
“I love my wife,” I said patiently. “I’m not tempted.”
“Even when you can’t fuck because the lady of the manor is pregnant?” Jokela snorted. “She did it to you the first time around as well, didn’t she? If you keep going like this, from now until retirement, you’ll only fuck once every two to three years, and only to procreate. I hope she has other virtues.”
“She does have other virtues,” I said. “She’s supportive, and kind, and —”
Jokela smirked. “You’re talking about your mother, right?”
I closed my eyes briefly. This conversation was my own fault. Three years ago, I had got a hard-on while looking at one of our female trainees. Jokela had noticed, and I had blurted out that my wife was exhausted by her pregnancy. Ever since, the topic would creep up every time a pretty girl crossed my path.
“Sofia is my wife and I love her,” I said again, to drive the point home. “It may surprise you, and I have no doubt she’s not your type of girl, but you should still be respectful of her. Now, could we maybe talk about something else?”
Jokela pursed his lips and stared into his glass. I knew he’d make me pay for my outburst, but I didn’t care. The waitress glided up to our table with our order. I thanked her without looking up.
“Right,” Jokela said at last. “What about Mauzer?”
“I followed your instructions, and she received the new payment date this afternoon. You know her better than I do. Will it deter her?”
My boss thought about that.
“Not sure,” he said at last. “She’s stubborn, like her father was. Jesus, the whole family was like that, uncompromising. Like they were a different species or something. I didn’t know him that well, of course, but that’s what people said. Even his enemies said that.” Jokela shrugged. “Not a sign of superior intelligence, if you want my opinion.”
“He was a spy, wasn’t he?”
But Jokela was not finished with his monologue yet. “It’s not that I don’t have principles,” he said sententiously. “It’s just that, in order to succeed, one needs to be practical. I mean, it’s obvious.”
“So I suppose Mauzer’s father didn’t succeed?”
“Him?” A dismissive wave of the hand. “He did worse. Got himself killed. Family, too. Mauzer was the only one lucky enough to escape.”
“I thought what happened to her family was a tragic accident? I heard something about a truck that got out of control on an icy road.”
“Is that what Mauzer told you?”
I nodded.
“Then she’d better keep believing it. Safer that way. Not that she’s the kind of girl to play it safe.” Jokela stretched and yawned. “As I said, she’s a different species. It must be in her – what do they call them? – genes.”
I pretended to yawn too. “It’s getting late, Jon,” I said. I almost added Sofia will be worried, but thought better of it. “Shall we get going?”
Before Jokela could object, I helped him to his feet, pointing him in the general direction of the door. It was late. The bar was almost deserted: just the pretty waitress, looking bored out of her wits, and a couple of men in the opposite corner. One of them looked like Mauzer’s boyfriend, only older. “Mauzer should be careful,” I said. “She doesn’t know everything, doesn’t realize her Steve is a nasty piece of work.”
“Ouch! Hold the door, my boy!” Jokela bumped into the door frame, angry with me because I should have watched him better. We stumbled outside. The street lamps’ dismal light was struggling to pierce through the snow suspended in mid-air. The weather seemed to be getting colder, or maybe it was the contrast with the warm interior of th
e bar. I pulled Jokela’s fur cap out of his coat pocket, put it on his bald scalp. I aimed him in the direction of the car that was waiting further along the street – he was clutching my arm, his fetid breath in my face – and was taking a step forward when it happened.
The woman slammed into us, sent us skidding on the ice. She must have been running. I noticed her gaping mouth and her terrified eyes even before I heard her scream.
I let go of Jokela’s arm – my boss fell into the snow like a dummy – and grabbed hold of the girl. “Hey,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
22
Hella
Anita was trying hard not to cry. She wanted to, of course, but she was also mindful of the fact that if she started, her eyes would be all puffy the following morning, and that was out of the question. “He looked like a vagabond,” she said. “He smelled like one, in any case. Urine, rotten teeth and old sweat.” She shivered theatrically. “And it was dark, and when he edged towards me in the shadows, I just —”
“But did you see him?” I asked. “Can you describe him?”
“No,” she said, pursing her lips. “I ran. And, trust me, it wasn’t easy to run in that dress. And in those shoes. I kept slipping. Don’t laugh, Mauzer! I was doing it for you!”
“I know, I know. It’s just that … it was a really stupid idea. Putting on an evening dress to wander the streets near Klara Nylund’s establishment in the hope of catching the prostitutes’ murderer… You were lucky you ran into Mustonen.”
Anita looked down at her hands. An hour earlier, she had been brought over to my place by my impeccably polite former colleague.
“She’s all yours,” Mustonen said, with barely a look at my shabby living room. “We didn’t manage to catch her attacker, though. I’ll ask someone to look into it tomorrow.” He paused, maybe realizing for the first time how small my apartment was. “Are you both living here with your boyfriend?”