Evil Things, page 11
“Morning,” grumbled Sergeant Mauzer. She had dark circles under her eyes, and a pillow crease on her left cheek.
Irja put a large plate full of pancakes in front of her house guest and turned to fetch the jam.
“Do you prefer cloudberry or blueberry? Kalle and I were about to start making himmeli, so I’ve cleared the table, but I’ll put everything back now. Would you like to join us for our craft project? Did you enjoy making himmeli when you were a child?”
“No, thank you.” Sergeant Mauzer pushed the plate away, a sour look on her face. “I don’t have time for Christmas ornaments. And I’m not hungry, either. I’ll just have some coffee.” She seemed to hesitate, then added, reluctantly, “Please.”
“As you wish,” stumbled Irja, taken aback. She was always uncomfortable when people were rude to her. Not because she was scared, no. She just felt confused, ashamed for the other person, as if it was she, not them, who had done something wrong. And maybe she had, after all. Maybe she had offended the sergeant. She tried again:
“I’m sorry I didn’t say goodnight to you yesterday. I was feeling unwell and I’ve neglected all my responsibilities. Will you forgive me?”
Sergeant Mauzer mumbled something that Irja couldn’t understand, and judging by the policewoman’s expression, maybe it was better that she didn’t. Irja flushed and turned away, busying herself with a stew that was sitting on the stove, ready to go into the oven. Tears swelled in her eyes, but she pressed on her lids with her forefingers and managed to stop the torrent that was threatening to upend her fragile equilibrium. If only Timo was here! If only he didn’t have to spend all his time at the church! Behind her back, Sergeant Mauzer’s spoon clinked against the porcelain as she stirred in the sugar.
“Your husband said you’re quite an artist,” said the policewoman all of a sudden.
“I used to be. A long time ago.”
“Still, you help him restore the icons.”
“Is that important?”
“Could be.”
“Why?”
“I need you to go to the shed. Draw the dead woman for me.”
“What?”
“You heard me. I need her portrait. A reconstruction, rather. If I had a photographer here I wouldn’t ask you, but it looks like I don’t have a choice.”
Sergeant Mauzer pulled the key to the shed out of her pocket and gave it to Irja. Then she buckled her worn leather shoulder bag and, after one last hostile look at her hostess, she grabbed her parka from the coat rack.
“I’m off to interview witnesses and suspects, your husband first. Will I find him at the church?”
Irja nodded silently.
“I probably won’t be back for lunch, so don’t wait for me.”
Sergeant Mauzer turned away, but the movement was deliberate, designed to make Irja believe she was indeed going, all the better to throw her off guard. Thus she was not surprised when the sergeant paused, her gloved hand on the door handle, the cold wind gushing into the living room, sending goose pimples down Irja’s naked forearms.
“When a search party was called to go looking for Erno, did you join the others?” the sergeant asked, attempting to sound casual.
“No.”
“Why? You’re young, able-bodied, and you could surely leave Kalle alone for short periods. So why didn’t you go?”
“My husband preferred that I stay at home.”
“Why?”
“He was afraid for me. I’ve been feeling unwell ever since we came to live in Käärmela. I regularly have bouts of fever, and he is always afraid I’ll develop pneumonia, like poor Anna Jokinen.”
Sergeant Mauzer acknowledged her answer with a nod. Then she left, for good this time.
Irja grabbed the pot of stew, and dropped it back down immediately. The left handle, which had been touching the oven door, was burning hot. Now a red line was starting to swell across her palm. Irja rushed off to the water bucket and put her hand in it. Then she scooped water from the bucket and splashed it onto her face, letting the drops trickle down her throat.
Suspects, Sergeant Mauzer had said. She was off to interview suspects, she was off to interview Timo. All in one sentence. What did she suspect him of? Killing that woman? Killing Erno? That was perfectly ridiculous. What would his motive be?
Last night’s conversation between Sergeant Mauzer and Timo, which Irja had overheard from her room, came back to haunt her.
Sergeant Mauzer could not possibly understand. She came from a different place. Almost from a different country. And her last name was German. Neither she nor her ancestors had lived in this land of blurred frontiers, of split allegiances. To her, the world was black and white. Now she was suspecting Timo because he was a former communist, and because he had told her about the gun. And what if she searched the house?
Seamus, who had been loitering at her feet, rubbed his back against her leg. Irja wiped tears from her eyes. She would draw the portrait, but not now.
“Come on, Kalle! Time to start working on our Christmas decorations!”
27
In the course of her short career, Hella had already met quite a number of people who only respected sheer force. They were totally immune to rational arguments, and any appeal to their better nature was usually met with an empty stare. But threaten them, bully them, and they turn around completely. Martta Jokinen was one of these people. Even though, during their previous encounter, Hella had taken her prized possessions from her, Martta had opened her door wide and bared those sharp rodent teeth in a welcoming smile when Hella showed up on her doorstep.
The old woman was wearing the same garish red dress she’d had on at the unknown woman’s funeral, except that now there were stains all over it. Dark circles under her armpits, with the smell to match, a white stain on one of the sleeves, like maybe she had wiped her nose on it, and brownish stains all over the skirt front. Hella preferred not to think about what these spots corresponded to.
Martta Jokinen apparently mistook her scientific interest for admiration.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” she asked playfully, turning her head to admire the big knot that decorated her scrawny behind.
“It’s the shoes that impress me most,” smiled Hella, pointing at the sort of pumps she thought only flamenco dancers wore and which had replaced the felt boots on Martta Jokinen’s feet.
“Oh, those?” With a swing of her skirt, the old woman hid them promptly from view.
Hella congratulated herself. Her first guess had been right. The woman had a club foot, which was not really apparent when she wore boots but was perfectly visible now.
“Would you care for some coffee?” asked her hostess, her long, bony hands flittering in the air. “With or without milk?”
There was a small pot on the stove, made of white metal, stained at the rim as if someone had just tasted its contents. Hella shuddered. The Paula Girl was smirking at her from the side of a coffee can.
“Black, please. You are very kind.”
And if I die of acute food poisoning, I want to be decorated posthumously.
As her hostess was taking two mismatched cups out of the cupboard, Hella flipped through her notebook.
“So tell me, Miss Jokinen, what kind of a man is your brother? I keep hearing different stories from different people. Some say he’s a highly intelligent, almost sophisticated man who relies on nobody and only wishes to do well. Others describe him as a pathetic, unreasonable creature who barely gets by on his own. I don’t know who to believe. You seem like a wise woman” – Hella gulped down her coffee, preferring to drink it while it was burning hot and she couldn’t make out its smell – “so I’d like your opinion as well.”
Martta Jokinen didn’t need time to search for an answer. “Erno was unlucky,” she said, with the finality of a doomsday soul judge, and sipped her coffee from a saucer. She had a lump of sugar placed between her lips. Esteri drank her coffee like that, too. Maybe all old people did.
“Is he? What do you mean by ‘unlucky’? Like when he played games?”
“Games, too. But he was unlucky his whole life. First of all, our parents didn’t love him. They only left everything to him because they wanted to even things out. Because I was the one they really loved, so if they left everything to me, too, that would have been plain unfair.”
Hella jotted this information down in her notebook, marvelling at the old woman’s logic.
“Other examples, Miss Jokinen?”
“Well, he had this daughter of his bring her little bastard home. Not something that would happen in respectable families. Just bad luck. And then she dies on him! Can you imagine? I mean, lots of people died that October, we had an epidemic or something, that’s what those doctors said, but still … It could have been the other way around. She could have lived, and her little bastard could have died. That would have been better. But it didn’t turn out that way.”
Hella had a lump in her throat, thinking of Kalle’s sweet, babyish smell, and trusting eyes. Was this woman even human?
Still, Martta Jokinen rattled on. “And now he’s gone. Pfuitt! Disappeared. He’s dead, but I live.”
“You’re right,” recognized Hella, “that is plain unlucky.”
As Martta Jokinen creased her brow, trying to make up her mind about the impertinence of this last remark, Hella voiced the question she had wanted to ask from the start:
“Some people I interviewed told me that your brother was concerned with ‘evil white things’. Would you know what they were talking about?”
“I don’t know,” said Martta. “The priest, maybe? His ceremonial clothes are white, aren’t they?”
Father Timo. Hella had thought of that too. He had been wearing a white surplice the other day.
“Very interesting observation,” Hella encouraged her. “I’ll consider it carefully. Just one tiny last question, and I’m gone. What was that thing you borrowed from Erno just before he went missing? I know there was an angel who appeared to you in your sleep, you told me all about it, but I understand there were practical reasons for your visit as well.”
The old witch took her time to consider the question. She smoothed her skirt, she stirred the coffee in her cup, she looked out of the window, offering Hella a full view of her dandruffy back. When she finally decided to speak, it was with such gravity that Hella’s mind had already raced off imagining all sorts of exciting possibilities: a nuclear warhead, maybe, or a map indicating the exact position of Jesus Christ’s grave.
“The Jokinen family album.”
Hella’s dreams of fame screeched to a halt. “A photograph album?” she asked in disbelief.
“That’s right. I’ve wanted it all my life. Then one day my stupid brother shows up unannounced, asking if I’d like to have it for a while. I suppose he was afraid that that little bastard of his would make paper planes out of all the pictures. Or maybe he felt he was going to die, and wanted to make things right with me. I don’t know. So he tells me I can have it, but only the first part, and I’m to bring it back in two days, and that’s when I’ll get the second volume.”
“And did you? Bring it back, I mean?”
“Of course. It was how I found the boy. But I didn’t bring it back in two days; I took my time with it. Had every right to do so. Besides, he borrowed something from me, too. A trinket box I dug out from a dump last year.” She made a vague gesture towards a shelf jammed with all sorts of objects, most of them old and stained. There was an empty space next to what looked like a pasta machine. “Said he liked it.”
Something was wrong here, thought Hella. For what reason would Erno all of a sudden decide to bring the album to his sister? They practically never saw each other. The only explanation Hella could imagine was that the album had just been a ruse to make sure that Martta would come to his house and check on Kalle while he was away. Which meant that he had known there was a risk that he might never come back. But if things had really happened in this manner, it had been a terrible gamble on Erno’s part. Martta was not reliable. She had been told to return with the album in two days, and she had waited four more before she had complied with her undertaking. Kalle could have died waiting for her to show up. Why hadn’t Erno asked Timo and Irja? she wondered.
“So where is the album now?” Hella asked out loud.
“What do you think? Took it back with me, no point leaving it there. Took the second one, too.” Martta Jokinen pointed to two fat, leather-bound volumes that sat on a shelf otherwise crowded with dirty dishes.
“Can I borrow the albums, Miss Jokinen? Until tomorrow?”
Hella thought about the dead woman. The album would certainly contain a picture of the other Jokinen sister. Whether she would be able to match a picture of a child with the disfigured remains of a grown woman was another question.
“No,” said Martta, suddenly suspicious. “You can’t.”
“I’ll be very careful,” promised Hella. “I’ll wear gloves.”
Martta Jokinen stared at her. “Write it down. About the gloves.”
Hella obediently scribbled a note promising to handle the album with care and to return it promptly, then watched the old woman hide it inside her corsage. Only then were the two albums, fat and bound in pigskin, brought to her. Hella resisted the temptation to look through them straight away; instead, she got up, thanked Martta Jokinen for her hospitality, and, with the albums under her arm, rushed back to the Waltaris’.
When she entered the living room, Kalle was standing with his head cocked to one side in front of a portrait sketched by Irja. Hella suppressed an exclamation. The priest’s wife had talent, there was no doubt about that. The unknown woman was staring at her from the page, the jaw resolute, the cheekbones high. But Kalle seemed not to find her to his liking. Just as Irja came into the room, carrying a basket full of clothes, he turned towards her.
“You forgot the little stars she had on her shoulders,” he said accusingly.
28
Time stopped. Hella felt the little hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. The little stars … She held her breath. Kalle was staring out of the window now, watching the snowflakes that waltzed towards the ground. How many more days did she have here? Probably one or two. Even if Eklund didn’t force her out of the investigation, the snow would.
Then everything snapped back into motion. Not daring to believe what she’d heard, Hella grabbed a pencil. She drew a Red Army star that looked like a capital A, with a bar tied to its extremities.
“This sort of star?”
Kalle nodded.
“How many of them? On each shoulder? Do you remember?”
Kalle counted out dutifully. “Four on each.” He showed her his splayed hand, his palms sweaty and pink, the thumb pressed down. “Like this.”
A captain. Jesus Christ! Did Irja Waltari understand? Hella didn’t dare look at her for fear of betraying her excitement.
“And this woman, she was your grandpa’s friend?”
The little boy shook his head. “She wasn’t a friend. You asked me already whether Grandpa had a lady friend, and he didn’t. Those who say so are lying.”
“Who was she, then?”
It emerged from Kalle’s long and confused explanation that the woman had come to see Erno the previous spring. She had knocked on their door one evening, and at first Erno hadn’t understood who she was, but when he had, finally, he had sent Kalle to bed. The next morning, Erno and the woman had been very angry at each other; apparently, they were not on speaking terms. But the woman was nice, and over breakfast, she had taught Kalle how to make paper planes. Then she was gone, and Kalle hadn’t seen her since.
“Do you remember her name, Kalle?” asked Hella.
He didn’t. Maybe his grandpa never told him. He didn’t remember.
“And did the woman really have those stars on her shoulders?” asked Hella cautiously. She had difficulty believing that a captain in the Soviet army could go wandering across the border wearing her uniform.
No, explained Kalle. She had been wearing a sweater and trousers. But she had showed his grandpa a little book; it had her picture in it, and Kalle had noticed the stars. He thought that the stars were very beautiful. He wanted some on his own clothes when he was old enough.
Hella’s thoughts went back to the steel cabinet that occupied the right-hand corner of Eklund’s office. The cabinet was screwed to the wall; there was a big lock on it, and inside there was a strongbox. Once, when she had just arrived in Ivalo, Eklund had explained to her that the strongbox contained sensitive files.
“What kind of files?” she asked him. “Criminal investigations? Evidence to be used in court?”
“No. Political files. You can’t ignore that our relations with Soviet Russia are tense at the best of times. With Ivalo being located so close to the border, it is our duty to be on the lookout for all sensitive cases. Military intelligence. Diversions.”
“Are we expected to cooperate with the SUPO?”
He looked at her in disdain. “Not you. Only officers of my rank can have security clearance.”
Well, good luck to you, Lennart Eklund, thought Hella. I’m here, on the spot, security clearance or not. And I’m not giving up on this.
There was just one more question she needed to ask:
“Was that woman related in some way to what you called the ‘evil white things’?”
Immediately, the boy shut up like a clam. He wouldn’t meet her eye.
“He doesn’t know,” ventured Irja. “He’s afraid. Can’t you see that? He told you all he knows, or what he can tell.”
Hella turned abruptly and made for the door.
29
Patience is a virtue, thought Hella. It was a pity she had so little of it. It was just another admirable character trait that Irja Waltari seemed to possess in bucketfuls and Hella didn’t: tolerance, kindness to strangers, generosity, you name it. If it was nice, she had it, and Hella didn’t.
