by Katja Ivar
The train for Ivalo was leaving in less than an hour from Central Station. I picked up my cardboard suitcase and started to cross the street.
“Hey, pariah? You want a hand?”
I almost dropped the suitcase. Ranta? “What are you doing here? Don’t tell me you were at the vigil?”
“Didn’t you see me?”
“No.”
Ranta seemed satisfied. “That’s because I took care not to be noticed. Apparently I was scaring the girls, so I’m not welcome any more.”
“You were a client too?”
“Every other man in Helsinki was,” he grinned. “Thought I’d go and pay my respects.”
“That’s very noble of you.”
“Another reason was that I thought I’d find you here,” he continued, unperturbed. “Anita told me this morning that you were going back to Lapland. Are you visiting that happy-clappy Christian friend of yours?”
“Her name is Irja. And actually, I’d better hurry if I don’t want to miss my train.”
But Ranta was still blocking my way. “Your Steve is a suspect now. Mustonen is interviewing him as we speak. Don’t you want to do something about it?”
“No. He’s not my problem any more.”
“They’ve dug up an old case. Matilda Reims. Ever heard that name?”
“No,” I managed to say. “Look, I really need to be going.” I turned away and almost broke into a run.
He shouted after me – “Just think about it, pariah!” – but I didn’t look back. It was only after I’d run through Central Station’s doors that I realized I hadn’t asked him why he was so interested in Steve’s well-being.
Steve and I had met through music. People nodded when I said that – they imagined a concert, or a chorus, or even piano lessons, but it hadn’t been anything like that. I had been making a fool of myself on the radio and Steve was called to the rescue, cutting me off mid-sentence, replacing my voice with Johnny Mercer’s “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah”.
In the silence that fell on the studio after the microphones were cut off, my boss ran a trembling hand across his sweaty brow, throwing an apologetic glance at the radio host who had been interviewing me. “Are you out of your mind, Miss Mauzer?” he asked. “You were here to discuss the work we do to help homeless children. Do you really think anyone could be interested in knowing what a polissyster like you thinks about criminal investigations? The public will think we are a bunch of … amateurs!”
“Sorry, sir,” I replied, keeping my voice level. “I assumed I was here to talk about my work.”
My boss dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief. “You are impossible, Miss Mauzer! Your work consists of dealings with juvenile delinquents and female criminals when male officers cannot intervene for reasons of decency. Whoever put it into your head that women were equal to men?” He glanced at the radio host for support. “Was this programme about equality?”
“Not that I know of,” the man said, an eye on his watch. “Pity it had to end like this.” He hurried out of the studio, and my boss and I followed suit.
We were coming down the stairs when I heard my name. I looked up. A tall blonde man, his wavy hair cut short, was smiling at me. “Thumbs up, Miss Mauzer,” he said and winked at me. “You made my day!” He ran down the steps and held out a hand. “I’m Steve Collins. They only let me do rock ’n’ roll here, but I hope that one day I’ll be big enough to interview someone like you.” His hand was warm and soft to the touch, and he held mine a second too long. I felt myself blush, painfully conscious of my ill-fitting uniform and my nails bitten to the quick.
“It would be a pleasure, Mr Collins,” I said.
He laughed as if I’d said something funny and hurried up the stairs again. Thirty seconds later, I heard his voice coming out of the speakers fitted on the ground floor. I scurried after my boss, trying to convince myself that the way I looked didn’t matter because I would never see the blonde man again. Only I did. I ran into him at the corner store exactly seventeen days later, dropped the cabbage I was buying, and blushed even worse than the first time. My heart was lost, and I didn’t even have the time to run a background check on him. And now I was paying the price.
I did ask Steve about the other women in his life, of course I did. Not immediately, because in those early days of our relationship, I chose to believe that his marriage had been a terrible mistake, and that he had spent his entire life waiting for me. That he would divorce, and we would get married and live happily ever after. That’s how conceited I was. In my defence, he was the first man I had loved and who, I believed, loved me back. I couldn’t bear to think I was just one of many, even as rumours of all the girls Steve had dated before started to creep up on me. When I finally asked him, summoning up all my courage, he snorted: “That was in the past.” I must have gone white, because he added hastily: “It meant nothing.”
Too late. I didn’t believe him. The soul-destroying thought that I, perhaps, meant nothing too, would not subside. I started questioning Steve’s every word, spending sleepless nights picking apart our conversations, even the most casual ones, searching for secret meanings. The spontaneity seeped out of our relationship, gradually at first, and then all of a sudden, like water draining. My departure for Lapland had been a deliverance for him, I knew. Ever since we’d got back together, I’d been walking a tightrope of trust and self-esteem, careful not to look either way, to focus only on the next step, on the now. Until that rope had been snatched from under my feet, leaving me in free fall. Matilda Reims. A name I had heard before but had done my best to forget.
The train pulled into the station. I was one of the first to climb in. As I crossed the departure hall, I made a point of not looking at the newsboys, for fear of seeing Steve’s photograph on the front page. And now I was too far away to decipher the blurry headlines.
The old lady settling into my compartment smiled kindly at me, pointing at the bunny ears sticking out of my purse. “Is that for your baby?”
“For my god-daughter,” I explained. “No children of my own.”
The old lady nodded sympathetically. “It takes a while to find the right man. But it will come, my dear, don’t you worry about that.”
“I don’t think it’s going to happen. Not any more.”
“And so you’re leaving?” The woman tut-tutted. “Running away?”
I wondered if she had guessed right. Was I running away? Did I really believe Steve could be guilty of murder?
The answer to this was no. I felt it in my bones, in the darkest recesses of my brain. Steve was guilty of a lot of things, but not that. But if I believed in his innocence, how come I was turning my back when he needed me the most, while the wife he had cheated on during their entire married life was standing by him? Because I couldn’t stand the sordid, the shameful, because I thought that would teach him?
The train whistle cut through the noise, freezing people in mid-motion. “Why don’t you sit down?” my travel companion said. She was already pulling out her knitting needles and a ball of light-blue wool. “Would you like me to show you how to knit? You can make a friend for your little bunny.”
I didn’t answer. The sound of the needles gently clicking away brought it all back. The tiny room I had occupied during my police training, crammed with my parents’ belongings. The sweater I had knitted and offered to myself at Christmas, tearing through the gift wrap as if I didn’t know what was inside. The loneliness, the mourning, the questions. And then: Steve. I had been a fighter then. I hadn’t given up. Had the three years I spent in Ivalo really changed me that much?
I thought of the snow globe I had left in the office, of the wire-thin translucent girl inside it, standing knee-deep in the synthetic snow. I thought about Eva. If the worst came to the worst, not only would she grow up without a father, she’d be tainted by shame. I thought about my own father, and what he had meant to me. I didn’t owe anything to Steve, or to Elsbeth, but maybe I owed something to Eva.
; The train shook itself into motion. I had only a second left to make a decision.
Click-click-click, went the knitting needles.
“Oh dear,” sighed the old lady. “It’s so hard to do the right thing.”
43
Inspector Mustonen
July 1946
It was Tarja who brought me the letter.
“I opened it by accident,” she said, and blushed. “I’m so very sorry.”
“It’s all right.” I was alone in the squad room; I liked to be the first to come in, the last to leave. I glanced at the letter: the handwriting on the envelope was unfamiliar, the envelope itself looked cheap. I dropped it into the incoming mail tray, turned to Tarja. “Did Inspector Krigsholm say what time he’d be coming in?”
Tarja started fussing with her shawl. “Maybe you’d better read that letter now, Inspector. I didn’t read it myself, of course, but I couldn’t help seeing the first sentence, and —”
I picked up the envelope, pulled out the letter. One page, poorly formed characters leaning to the left, an ink stain in the corner. “Oh, I see.”
The letter was about my father. The person writing to me, a certain Mrs Saari, hadn’t made any attempt to soften the blow. Your father has had a stroke, the letter said. He is conscious but he can’t move, and he can’t speak. You need to come at once.
“Looks like you’ll have to do without me,” I said.
The secretary started crying, as if on cue. “Oh, Inspector, this is so awful. Of course you need to go and stay with your poor father.” She must have realized, from the fact that the letter had been written by a stranger, that my mother was already gone, so she asked about brothers and sisters.
“Five sisters,” I said, already thinking of the time it would take me to pack my things and get to Central Station. “I’m the youngest.”
“The apple of your father’s eye,” Tarja sobbed. She was prone to hackneyed imagery.
When I finally managed to get hold of Jokela between two meetings, he was harder to convince, but even he gave in eventually. That evening, I boarded a night train for Tampere.
44
Hella
The sun-melted snow was dripping from the rooftops when I got back to my place. When the water froze again the following night, the Surgical Hospital would have a field day with all the broken limbs. I made a mental note to tread carefully, both literally and metaphorically. A sensible, grown-up resolution that lasted as long as it took me to climb the four flights to my apartment. Then my heart gave a loud bang against my ribcage, and the suitcase tumbled down the staircase.
“Steve,” I said, when my voice was back under control. “You’re here?”
He ran down the steps to grab my case. “I didn’t know you’d been out of the city.”
“I haven’t. I was planning to go away, but then I changed my mind. Anyway, it’s a long story. Boring, too. How did it go with Mustonen?”
“I’m innocent,” Steve said in a mumble, taking my hand but then letting it go immediately. “Jesus, the way you look at me…”
“Any proof? Of you being innocent?”
We entered the apartment, Steve still staring at my suitcase, me trying to push the bunny’s knitted ears deeper into my bag. The apartment smelled like Anita now, almond oil, powder and honey. Her clothes brush lay forgotten on a sideboard.
“Is she still living here?” Steve asked, looking around. “Your friend, Anita. She was there during the interview this morning.”
“You didn’t answer my question.” I wondered if I should offer him coffee but decided against it. I was back to help him, but that didn’t come with an obligation to be nice.
“No proof,” Steve said, taking a deep breath. “Hella. We’ve known each other for how long?”
The answer – 1,844 days – was always at the back of my mind, like a thread enmeshed in everything I did, but I was damned if I was going to admit it. The new post-break-up me was cool, cynical and independent. Much like the pre-break-up me used to act, only this time it was for real.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Four years? Five?”
“Five years. Probably a bit longer now, even.” Steve fumbled in his pocket for his cigarette case and lighter. “Remember how we —”
“Steve. Enough already. State your case or bugger off.”
He smiled weakly. “That’s the spirit. It must be what I’m lacking to break through. Do you know that the Soviets reported this morning that Stalin had a stroke? But I’m not covering that, oh no, I’m not good enough.” He drew on his cigarette. “Maybe if I could get straight to the point, like you do, they’d let me do serious stuff and I wouldn’t need to bury my head under some girl’s skirt to forget about my inadequacies. No. Sorry. OK, then,” he added when I didn’t answer. “I need your help. I’m the damsel in distress that courageous Hella Mauzer in her shiny armour must save before the dragon eats her.”
“Mustonen doesn’t look like a dragon to me. More like some mythological snake, a youthful Jörmundganr, maybe. And, just out of curiosity, how exactly am I supposed to save you?”
“You’re the only one who can confirm my story. I told Mustonen I was with you on 17 February. And I know, I know” – Steve’s voice took on an unpleasant pleading tone – “that given the circumstances, helping me out is the last thing you want, but here we are.”
“The day Nellie Ritvanen went missing. Did you tell Mustonen the reason I would remember 17 February?”
“Because it’s your birthday,” Steve said. “We spent it together, remember? Dinner at that little French restaurant on Albertinkatu, and I offered you a book. Introduction to Criminalistics, by Charles O’Hara and … and James Osterburg.” He glanced around the room. “You still have it, don’t you?”
“On my bedside table. I imagine Anita reads it every night.”
“You see?” Steve forced a smile. “Can you tell that to Mustonen?”
“What else? While you’re at it.”
Steve flinched as if I’d hit him. “Nothing. I know you don’t believe me, and God knows you have your reasons for that, but I’ve never set foot in that brothel.”
“But?”
“But the police say they’ve got an anonymous tip telling them to investigate my whereabouts. And I suppose it’s only a matter of time before they dig out the Matilda Reims case.”
“Oh yes,” I said. “There was her, too.”
Steve started rubbing his face with both hands. “Yes. And before you say it, I know how it looks.”
I asked the police receptionist to call Mustonen, tell him I had come to give my witness statement. They ushered me in immediately: the Harbour Murders, as the tabloids were calling them, were gaining traction. Tarja pursed her lips as I crossed the squad room in the direction of Mustonen’s office; Anita didn’t look up from her reading.
“Hella,” Mustonen said, enveloping my hand in both of his. “Glad you came. Care for some coffee?”
“Yes please.” There was a drawing on Mustonen’s desk, propped against the photograph of his wife and son. Something complicated, a jumble of tiny hearts, with a ruby dot in the centre like a drop of blood. Mustonen noticed me looking. “It’s the design of a brooch I ordered for my wife, as a gift.”
“Beautiful.” I accepted the coffee cup from Tarja. “I won’t take up too much of your time. As Steve Collins already told you, we celebrated my birthday together. I came to give you the details.”
“Really?” Mustonen asked, arching an eyebrow.
I looked him in the eye, careful not to blink. “Yes.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “Tell me about your evening.” A nod to Tarja. “Start writing.”
I told Mustonen everything I could remember. The maître d’ and his measured smile. What we had eaten – duck à l’orange and chocolate fondue – and what we had drunk – the Martinis, and too many of them. The clumsily wrapped package that Steve had placed in my lap. The expression on the faces of the nice middle-aged
couple at the neighbouring table when they had seen what the book was about. And – the hardest part – how we had come home, drunk and happy, and made love.
As I talked, Mustonen kept checking against his notes. “You know that Mr Steve Collins was a regular client of Klara Nylund’s?”
“That’s what I heard, yes.”
“All right,” Mustonen said at last. “Could you please wait in the reception area while Tarja types your witness statement? Then you can sign it and go home.”
I did as I was told. Half an hour later – even though it felt much longer than that – I was out on the street again, my heart jammed in my throat. There was no going back now. I had made a decision that could possibly cost me my career and land me in jail. Worse than that: this witness statement turned my entire world upside down. It redefined me. I was no longer an uncompromising investigator, but a woman led by emotion.
Hella Mauzer, born 16 February 1924. A liar by omission. A perjurer. All for the sake of one resentful teenage girl. The old me would certainly have refused to shake the new me’s hand.
45
Chief Inspector Mustonen
“How did it go?”
Jokela was looming in the doorway, his moustache spiked and twitching. He had obviously been waiting for Mauzer to leave so he could pounce.
“Collins has an alibi,” I said. “Maybe we can break it; I’ll have a look into it. Also, he’s probably too tall.”
“Too tall for what?”
“According to Räikkönen, our guy is a bit shorter than Collins.”
“Don’t see how he can tell,” Jokela said. “That’s pure guesswork, if you want my opinion.”
I didn’t, but now was not a good time to say that. Instead, I said: “The news is going around that Dr Palmu will be retiring at the end of the month, and that your appointment to his position is on the Justice Minister’s desk. How come I had to hear about it from Tarja?”