Deep as Death

by Katja Ivar

  There was no point in hiding it. If Mustonen wanted to, he could find out the truth in no time. “He doesn’t live here any more,” I said.

  “Oh.” Mustonen’s voice was carefully neutral. “Well, I don’t really think you ladies need police protection, but if someone scares you tonight, don’t hesitate to call.”

  “Right,” I said. “Thank you.”

  The moment he left, Anita slumped on the sofa, the picture of a damsel in distress, her eyes huge and liquid, her baby-blonde hair dampened to wheat. An hour later, she was still sitting there, shivering.

  I handed her a dressing gown. “At least take your dress off. You’re soaked.”

  “All right.” But she still wouldn’t move. She had that shifty look about her that made me wonder if she was hiding something.

  “What is it? Do you have any idea who the person who attacked you might be?”

  “No,” Anita said, too quickly. She shook her head for more emphasis, but she wouldn’t look me in the eye. “No idea at all.”

  I made her a cup of tea sweetened with honey and put her to bed; held her hand until she fell asleep. As for me, I doubted I would find sleep so easily. Plenty of things to worry about: the slow progress of the investigation, the damages I had to pay, the lack of money. Anita, too – I felt responsible for her. And, at the top of my personal worry list, Steve. Because now I knew that, contrary to what he had told me, he had only moved in with me after his wife had left him. Which meant he had deliberately lied to my face. Maybe, I wondered, maybe there had been no school play either. Maybe that, too, had been a lie.

  The question was: why?

  23

  Hella

  The obvious answer was that Steve wanted me to believe he was the one leaving his wife. And then, after a week, he had decided he wanted to break up with me but didn’t have the courage. So he had provoked a scene and made me the guilty party.

  Maybe he met someone else, a nasty little voice whispered into my ear. That was the reason Elsbeth left. It wasn’t you – she had known for ages that you existed. No, it was some younger, prettier girl, just like the one delicately snoring on your bed.

  But then why had he called me yesterday?

  The usual reasons, the nasty little voice offered. I felt it physically, a thing gnawing at my skull, gorging itself on my misery. Maybe the girl was unavailable. Maybe he was bored. Maybe he’d had a bad day at work and wanted to hear the desperation in your voice to reassure himself that he still mattered. Plenty of reasons.

  Steve isn’t like that, I thought, but I was just fooling myself. Of course he was. All men were, provided we gave them the liberty to mistreat us.

  I wrapped myself tighter in my blanket, drew the curtains and lay down on the sofa. I didn’t expect to be able to sleep, what with the cold and the hunger and the nasty voice that kept murmuring obscenities in my ear. But I was wrong about that too. I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.

  When I woke up nine hours later, a lame Helsinki sun was creeping in through the gap in the curtains and I had a pounding headache. Anita was standing in the kitchen with her mouth half-open, clutching the belt of her dressing gown. At first I thought she was looking at me, then I realized her gaze was on the door behind me.

  It was not a pounding headache. It was someone hammering on the front door, screaming bloody murder.

  I scrambled to my feet, rushed to open it.

  As soon as I let her in, the woman who had been banging on the door erupted into a torrent of screams and incoherent moaning. From what I could gather, there had been another attack, and police had been called to the scene.

  My heart sank. Klara Nylund was right, I was not up to this. The police would be a safer bet. Surely Mustonen couldn’t keep covering for Ahti Virtanen?

  Our visitor was now slumped in the chair, sobbing uncontrollably. Anita stared at me, a glass of water in her hand, a puzzled frown on her pretty face. “Did you understand who the victim was?” she mouthed silently.

  I shook my head no.

  “Or how it happened?”

  I kneeled next to the woman.

  “The girl who died … did she drown as well?”

  The no came between two hiccups.

  I thought about what had happened to Anita the previous evening. “Was she attacked on the street?”

  “No.” My visitor grabbed the water from Anita and drank it in one gulp. It was only then that I recognized the gumsmacking girl from the day before last. She was struggling to get her words out. “Her head was bashed in,” the girl managed at last.

  I bit my lip. So it was different. And then another thought, a shameful one: it sounded like an unpremeditated murder. Still awful for the victim and her loved ones, of course, but just possibly I stood a better chance of uncovering evidence.

  “Who was it?” I asked. “The dead girl? What was her name?”

  My visitor stared at me like I was mad. “It wasn’t a girl. It was Klara.”

  24

  Chief Inspector Mustonen

  “All right,” Jokela said, his bloodshot eyes trained on me, “stop pacing my office and tell me what we’ve got on Klara Nylund.”

  “Female in an evening dress, late forties, head injuries, found in the brothel’s back yard at five in the morning by a girl who had gone out in search of wood logs for the stove…” I glanced up from my notepad. “The pathologist wouldn’t say anything – apart from the fact that the victim was dead and frozen solid. Given that she’s got no face to speak of and no grey matter left either, if he dared to say he had doubts about that, I’d have bashed his head in.”

  “So no estimate of the time of death?” Jokela was frowning and I thought I knew why. If we didn’t know what time the madam had died, we wouldn’t be able to verify Ahti’s alibi. Or arrange for it to be confirmed, depending on how desperate Jokela was.

  “Not yet,” I said. “The pathologist is Tom Räikkönen, by the way.”

  “I hate that guy.” Jokela stretched his limbs, took a sip of his coffee.

  And Räikkönen is Mauzer’s friend, I thought but didn’t say. One of the few she’s got left.

  “Any clues?” Jokela again. He sounded pretty much in control for a man who had thrown up like an open hydrant as soon as he had got into his car the previous night.

  “Not yet.”

  “See that there are none.” Jokela tilted his head to one side, his beefy fingers rubbing a spot on his neck. “You know. Limit the damage.”

  “This is a murder, Jon. I’m not messing around with this.”

  There was silence while Jokela tried to decide what to do about me. In the end, he laughed. He knew he had me by the balls, that I was in too deep already. He probably thought I was only protesting to save face, and in a sense he was right.

  “OK,” Jokela said. “Call it what you want. The important thing is that you know the stakes.” He waved a hand at me. I was dismissed.

  Over in the squad room, Anita was leaning on the secretary’s desk, whispering something, her tight little derriere like an invitation. She must have heard Jokela’s door close because she looked over her shoulder, catching my eye and blushing. She straightened herself up and hurried towards me. “Chief Inspector, I’ve been told that —”

  I raised my hand. In my office, the phone was ringing. “Later, Anita.”

  I shut the door, picked up the phone.

  “Has Sofia told you about the house?” No hello, no how are you, nothing. My father-in-law only believed in showing courtesy towards the rich and famous, and I was neither. I struggled to swallow the insult that was always on the tip of my tongue when I heard the familiar voice.

  “Yes,” I said. “She told me yesterday. We’re thinking about it. Whether we’d be able to afford it. Look, I’m sorry, but I’m in the middle of something here. Can we discuss it tonight?”

  “I’m busy tonight,” Sofia’s father said. “In any case, there’s nothing to discuss. An opportunity like that only comes
once in a lifetime. No one sells on our street unless they absolutely have to.”

  “We’ll see —” I started, but my father-in-law cut me off.

  “Be a man, for once, will you? My daughter and my grandchildren deserve to live in a nice place.” The old man snorted. “I knew she made a mistake when she married you. She probably realizes it herself.”

  I stared out of the window at the pale Finnish sun, at the plumes of chimney smoke drawing arabesques in the air.

  “That’s not true,” I said. “Sofia loves me, just as I love her.”

  “Then buy that goddamned house,” my father-in-law roared. Then he hung up.

  25

  Hella

  Klara Nylund’s body had already been carried away from the crime scene – a narrow back yard behind the brothel with a solitary birch tree standing, crooked and skeletal, against the wall. Tom had come and gone, too. There was just one uniformed cop at the door; he looked about fifteen. I wondered if he’d even be able to gain access to this place as a client.

  I explained who I was, told him I needed to talk to the girls and go through Klara Nylund’s papers. Standing next to me, the gum-smacking girl sniffed and nodded.

  “I don’t know, ma’am,” the young cop said. He was clearly searching his memory for a textbook entry on PIs and how to deal with them. “Wait until Chief Inspector Mustonen gets here. He’ll tell you if that’s possible.”

  “Can I come in?” my companion asked. “I live here.” In her panic, she had run out of the house in just a flimsy dress. Now she was shivering.

  The cop blinked twice. “I don’t know, ma’am. Wait until Chief Inspector Mustonen —”

  He didn’t finish his sentence. The girl doubled over, heaving. I barely had time to catch her heavy blonde braid before she threw up. “Ma’am,” the baby cop called out. “Ma’am! Move away, please. You’re destroying evidence.”

  She gave him the finger.

  When her heaving subsided, we climbed the steps to the porch. I broke off long icicles hanging from the roof; the girl crunched the ice with her teeth, her eyes closed. I was about to suggest we go back to my place when she grabbed my arm. “I have something for you.”

  Several steps away, the young cop was studying his wristwatch, his blonde eyebrows furrowed.

  “What is it?”

  “Klara’s little black book.”

  “What?”

  The girl drew a deep breath. “In my bag. It was in the garden, not far from her body. I took it. You can have it.”

  I was already thinking about the fingerprints. “Did you touch it?”

  “No, I used my shawl to pick it up.” She thrust the book towards me as if it was burning hot, and I slid it into my bag.

  “Ma’am?” the baby cop called to me. “Chief Inspector Mustonen is here. You can ask your questions.”

  I turned.

  Mustonen was several steps away, one hand on the railings, the other clutching his murder bag. The brim of his felt hat was hiding the upper half of his face; all I could see was a thin smile.

  “Miss Mauzer. I suppose it is too much to ask what you are doing here?”

  “I’m here to talk to the girls,” I said. “But I suppose I’ll have to come back later. Everyone must understandably be shaken.”

  “Actually,” Mustonen smiled, “I’m not sure that will be necessary.” He went up another step. “This is a police investigation now. No place in it for a PI. But I’ll see to it that you get paid for your services. Please prepare an invoice.”

  “Not possible,” I said.

  Mustonen didn’t stop climbing, didn’t even look at me as he asked, “And why is that?”

  “I haven’t finished my work yet. I’m just getting started.”

  My assertion was pure impulse, an attempt to keep the upper hand in a game that I knew I’d already lost, an attempt to imprint a frown on that smooth benevolent face. I had no authority here, no resources; my client was dead. But the moment the words left my mouth I knew with absolute certainty that I was not giving up on this. Not until I was sure justice was done.

  Mustonen finally turned to look at me, a concerned expression on his lean, handsome face. “Trust me,” he said. “You don’t want to do that. You really don’t.”

  When I got to the morgue, the body was thawing in a saline bath. A rotary saw gleamed on the table, but Tom was nowhere in sight. I knew I wouldn’t be welcome during the autopsy – Mustonen was due to arrive at any moment, and even an independent mind like Tom had a basic sense of self-preservation. So instead I went into the cafe on the other side of the road and used Anita’s money to buy myself a big cup of hot chocolate sprinkled with cardamom. I sat there thinking about my limited options: my hands were tied, the police held all the cards. And now I had doubts that what Egg had said was true, that young Ahti was at the heart of this. He certainly didn’t fit the description of Anita’s attacker. How likely was it that not one but two homicidal maniacs, both obsessed with prostitutes, were roaming the streets of Helsinki?

  Most of all, though, I was afraid of doing even more damage. The thought that Klara Nylund might still be alive if she’d only contacted some other investigator hung over me like a thundercloud.

  I leaned forward, my hands wrapped around the cup. Klara Nylund’s little black book was now in my pocket, wrapped in a handkerchief. The police technicians could certainly get fingerprints if someone other than the madam had touched it. The only thing I could do was read it.

  I was going to read it.

  Then I’d be able to make up my mind.

  As with other really dangerous things – poisoned letters, trucks, teenage girls playing Shakespeare – the black book, when I pulled it out of my pocket and carefully unwrapped the handkerchief, looked harmless at first glance. Holding my breath, I picked up a clean spoon from the next table, wiped it with a napkin, then used it to turn the pages. Every page was identical: names on the left, numbers on the right. The names were nicknames: there were fat o. b. (old bastard? Someone’s initials?) and engineer sol. (solitary?). The numbers were presumably dates of passage and prices of sexual acts. Klara Nylund’s bookkeeping system was simple; it was also remarkably efficient. No one but her probably knew who these men were.

  There were no other notes. No names underlined in red ink, no exclamation points.

  I scoured the pages for descriptions that might fit Ahti: y (oung) m (oney)? Or Anita’s unknown assailant: vag (rant)? The closest I got was ten. pl (tennis player?), who seemed to be a regular, and filth. This latter came up regularly, before apparently stopping the previous December. Could he be the one? But filth didn’t seem an appropriate description for a man a beautiful young girl would hope to spend the rest of her life with. Unless of course he was also filthy rich.

  My notebook was out and I started copying all the names and numbers into it. My intention was to drop it off for Mustonen after I saw Tom. I could always say Klara Nylund had given the book to me the previous day. Even if Mustonen didn’t believe me, I doubted he would give me too much trouble.

  It was lunchtime by then and the cafe was filling with people. The waitress kept shooting me worried glances – I was occupying one of the tables and not eating. As the doors opened again to let in a carefully dressed middle-aged couple, I picked up my bag and started for the door, the little black book open on the page that I had started copying. I didn’t see the waiter carrying a tray piled high with cocktail glasses until I collided with him. For an instant, it seemed that the whole stack of plates and glasses would come crashing down, but he managed to recover his balance. “I’m sorry,” I murmured. Some of the liquid had spilled from the tray, staining the book.

  “No problem,” the waiter smiled. “Here, let me help.” He pulled a napkin out of his apron pocket and applied it to the stain. And there it was, in blotchy ink, as if the waiter had conjured it: US DJ.

  “Are you all right?” the waiter said. “You look … a little pale.”

  “What
? No, I’m fine. I’m fine.” The world around me seemed to disappear, as if the spilled water had somehow penetrated my brain, deactivating all connections but one. I locked my eyes on the door, forced myself to move forward. Next thing I knew, I was out on the street, drenched in cold sweat, my head spinning.

  US DJ, my brain kept screaming. Steve.

  26

  Hella

  I needed to see Steve. I needed to know if he had been a client of Klara Nylund’s the entire time he’d been seeing me. His name was one of the entries with the most numbers next to it. The last one was the night of the school play. I wondered if Elsbeth had found out about this. If that was the reason she had left.

  Tom was just coming out of the hospital, winding a long striped scarf around his neck, when I stormed past.

  “Fire in the cafe?” he called out.

  Not stopping for an answer, I brushed past him and almost bumped into an old woman in a tattered fur coat who was standing idly by the hospital’s entrance. The wind in my face filled my eyes with tears; I blinked them away. The last thing I wanted was for Steve to think I had been crying because of him.

  The streets were packed with people. Maybe it was the sun, spreading like a yolk under a fluffy blanket of clouds. For the first time in a month, it wasn’t snowing. And yet I couldn’t see the city properly. When I looked at the tall austere buildings, it was not the peeling paint that I noticed but my past: a cafe where Steve and I had first held hands, a toy store where I’d bought a yellow bus for my nephew, Matti. My past had shaped this city more than the architects and the builders had. Beyond its walls of brick and mortar, I saw people who no longer lived and dreams that had dissolved into thin air. And my heart ached.