Evil Things, page 12
She tried again.
“Mr Karppinen! Come on, open up, I know you’re home. I can hear you, Mr Karppinen. You’re standing just behind the door, and I can hear you breathing.”
This is ridiculous, decided Hella as she banged on the troll’s front door. This village is populated by old people, and I hate old people. To her, they were not the sweet, inoffensive creatures everyone imagined them to be. They were egotistic, arrogant, misbehaving brats who believed that their age conferred on them the right to do anything they wanted to. Including murder.
“Mr Karppinen, if you want to be arrested, this is the way to do it!”
What had got into the man? Was he afraid he’d said too much the last time she saw him?
Her patience worn thin, she picked up an axe from a bucket on the porch. If Eklund ever learns about this … But she pushed the thought aside.
“Step back, Mr Karppinen.”
Just as the axe’s blade touched the door, the handle turned.
“What are you, mad? You can’t just go around splitting people’s doors with an axe!”
“I warned you, Mr Karppinen,” sighed Hella. “I told you to open the door, and when you didn’t, I told you to step back. Were you hurt?”
But she could see for herself that Jeremias Karppinen was fine. He was seething with rage, but that was his problem. And the door wasn’t damaged; a mere nick in the wood.
“So may I come in now?”
“You already have.”
Still, he stepped to one side, allowing Hella to stomp into the shiny living room. Then he wiped his tiny feet, which was unnecessary given he hadn’t been outside, and followed her as she walked casually around the room.
“So what are you hiding from me exactly, Mr Karppinen?” Hella lifted the lid of a huge bin and glanced inside, not that she expected to find anything.
“Ain’t hiding anything,” intoned Jeremias Karppinen. Hella was under the impression that was what he was going to answer to any question she asked: haven’t broken into no house, haven’t killed no neighbour, haven’t heard of anything untoward. Karppinen made her think of the three proverbial monkeys condensed into one. Not exactly an easy witness.
She decided to change tactic.
Smiling widely, Hella slumped onto the bench next to the window and poured herself some coffee from the small coffee pot. She was not afraid of the germs here. One could trust Mr Karppinen to keep his house nice and clean.
“Good coffee, Mr Karppinen. Nice biscuits. Did you make them yourself?” She fumbled in the box, fishing out a plump cinnamon roll. “I have all the time in the world, Mr Karppinen.”
“What do you want?”
“I told you. I want the whole story. One, who was the woman? And I know things about her already, like her rank and where she came from, so the first question is really just to check if you’re lying. Two, did Erno have any other visitors? Three, were you the one who searched Erno Jokinen’s house? Four, how much do you expect to get for this information if you sell it to the Soviets? No, forget that one. There’s no four. You’re a law-abiding citizen, a patriot, and you’re very eager to make your confession. Free of charge. I’m listening, Mr Karppinen.” To drive her point home, Hella picked up another biscuit and started munching it noisily.
Christ, she thought, here I am, a grown woman, an elite police officer, trying to force a witness to cooperate by annihilating his food reserves! I should have begged Jokela to give me another chance in Helsinki. Not that he would have listened; he’s not the type to change his mind once a decision is made.
“I didn’t search his house,” said Karppinen.
“Martta Jokinen saw you lurking next to her brother’s house.” She said it very slowly, to make sure the information sank in.
The troll changed his version of events, but still confessed nothing. “Didn’t take anything. Went into the house, yes, I did. To check everything was in order.”
“Oh yes, I forgot! That was because you thought the house was already yours, right? Given that neither the child nor his guardians would be able to take care of it. So was everything in order?”
“No,” mumbled the troll in an aggrieved voice. “You saw it yourself.”
She started to formulate some threat she knew perfectly well would never be brought to execution, when the little man spoke up again.
“Look, I don’t know why you’re after me. I haven’t done anything. I’ve seen the woman before, yes, but it was dark. I don’t know a thing about her. You’re setting me up, most likely. Making me a scapegoat. And you’re doing it in cold blood, because you’re one of them.”
He sat down in front of her and pulled the biscuit tin towards him, slamming the lid shut.
“I’m not setting you up, Mr Karppinen. But I strongly suspect that you know much more about what happened to your neighbour than you’ve told me.”
But Karppinen, possibly feeling that Hella was losing ground, went on in the same high-pitched voice that made her cringe: “You need to pin it on someone, right? Better me than your dear priest and his wife, even though they have a motive and I don’t. I know the way the police work. Much easier to pin it on an ordinary citizen.”
“Out of curiosity,” asked Hella in a scathing voice, “what motive would you credit them with?”
Karppinen smirked.
“What kind of a police officer are you exactly? Even a polissyster would have known that by now. Go to the cemetery. Then ask them about Anna Jokinen’s death, and what it meant for them. Ask them, and watch them answer.”
30
It was dark outside. Night had fallen as it always did at this time of the year: creeping in like a crab, hesitating, withdrawing, before finally dosing the sky in indigo and magnifying the stars. Irja had lit all the lamps in her living room, and still dark shadows were lurking in the corners. The table was piled high with food. She had spent the entire afternoon cooking, and now she was wondering who would eat it all. This was something she did when she was worried. She knew it, and yet she couldn’t help herself. When her hands were busy, her mind was at rest: no dark shadows there, and no monsters.
Timo was out somewhere. At noon, when he hadn’t come home for lunch, she had packed some pierogies and gone to the church, thinking he must be so absorbed in his work that he hadn’t noticed the time passing. He was not there. No message from him and no means of finding out where he was or what Sergeant Mauzer had talked to him about. Irja bit her lip. Next to her, Kalle was making paper planes. Their attempt at himmeli had fallen flat – the boy just wasn’t interested. Ever since Sergeant Mauzer had left them, running out of the door shortly after eleven, Kalle had been making planes out of her drawing paper. There were maybe twenty of them already, but he showed no intention of stopping.
Irja wondered about the portrait she had drawn, and what Kalle’s remark meant for all of them. The revelation that Erno’s mysterious visitor had been a Soviet army captain had come as a shock. She didn’t quite know what to make of it. Was it really possible that Erno was a spy? As far as she knew, he spent his time at home, only going away to hunt for two or three hours at a time. What interest could he possibly represent for a spymaster?
She thought of their last conversation. She hadn’t told Sergeant Mauzer about it yet, didn’t think it would be useful, but maybe she was wrong. She was always unsure how much Sergeant Mauzer really needed to know. Irja had liked old Erno very much; she now hoped with all her heart that the presence of a Soviet captain at his place had some innocent explanation. Maybe they were family? Erno’s sister. A niece of Erno’s dead wife, who needed to see him urgently. Something like that.
Kalle’s small hands kept working on his paper planes. It was the children who suffered, thought Irja. The innocence, the trust in the world around them, the memories they have – how easy it is to destroy all this. What would Kalle have left, once he learned that his beloved grandpa was a spy who’d betrayed his own country? Would Kalle’s memories of him be forever tainted by that knowledge? She hoped she had strength enough to make this child happy again.
31
Hella’s knee-jerk response to Irja Waltari’s welcoming smile was a groan. And if it was Eklund who was here instead of me? she wondered. Or Ranta? Would the woman still be as friendly, as nice?This gentleness was a façade. When Irja, undeterred, beckoned her to the table, the surface of which was not even visible under the accumulation of plates, saucers and bowls, all brimming with food, Hella pretended she was not hungry. Even though, truth be told, she was ravenous. Karppinen’s biscuits were a long-forgotten memory. She had spent the entire afternoon sifting through Erno’s belongings. She had opened every book, had looked in every corner, under the benches and on the shelves. She had fumbled inside the stove, dislodging an avalanche of soot. She had paced the front yard, and the back garden, on the lookout for recently disturbed soil while tiny Karppinen in his muskrat hat with earflaps surveyed her every movement from his porch with his stupid binoculars.
She had found some money, but not much, sewn into Erno’s mattress. The cache had also contained a lacquered wooden box, surely Palekh. Inside it, there was a wide golden band, well worn, which Hella guessed to be Erno’s wife’s wedding ring, and Erno’s papers: his birth certificate, his passport, his father’s will. She had also found Kalle’s birth certificate: Father: unknown. No gun. No proof of Erno’s involvement in a spy game, either. Could Kalle have dreamed up the stars? Child witnesses were notoriously unreliable.
Thus she was back to what Karppinen had insinuated: namely, that she had to take a closer look at the Waltaris. She followed his advice and went to the surprisingly vast cemetery, where she wandered between the tombstones and crosses until she found what she was looking for.
“Are you sure you’re not hungry?” called Irja as Hella was heading down the corridor.
Angry with herself, Hella ambled back to the living room. Irja was sitting next to the table, her head in her hands. No sign of the priest. No sign of the boy, either, though it probably didn’t mean anything. He could be hiding above the stove, as he usually was.
“Where’s your husband?”
The woman smiled a guilty smile. “I don’t know. I was hoping you could tell me. He left this morning, and I haven’t seen him since. You did meet him in the church, didn’t you?”
Hella sat down next to Irja and grabbed a pierogi, almost without thinking. The rich, creamy filling, made of potatoes and mushrooms, melted in her mouth. What had they talked about? This morning seemed like centuries ago. “I asked him questions pertaining to his past. To his involvement in the Communist Party.”
“Oh,” whispered Irja. “That was a long time ago; he was just a boy. He knows now that he was wrong. And he wasn’t an active member of the group. Just a supporter.”
“My father,” said Hella sententiously, “always told me that people don’t change, ever. With age, they just grow more like themselves.”
Irja thought about it for a moment as Hella devoured another pierogi.
“I’m not sure I agree,” she said finally. “People can change. I know I have.”
“Oh yes, you have,” confirmed Hella, and coming from her, it didn’t sound like a compliment. “Actually, I think that in some ways, you’re just like me. The only difference between us is that you want to be different. But deep down, you’re not. You’re in revolt, and angry that this God of yours hasn’t helped you, even though you serve Him all day long, just like your husband, and you’ve prayed, and you’ve done nothing wrong. And still your God did this to you. So some days you wonder, I bet you do. What if He doesn’t even exist? What if it’s all a big lie, and your beloved husband is serving that lie?”
She waited for a moment, then delivered the fatal blow:
“So are you going to call him Aleksi?”
Irja froze, her eyes on the copper coffee pot she had just placed on the table.
“What are you talking about?”
“Your new baby. Because you’re expecting a new baby, aren’t you? So I’m asking if you’re going to give him the same name …” Hella hesitated, but only for a fraction of a second. She was angry at the priest’s wife, appalled by her docility, her resignation. How could she live, how could she be normal, let alone nice, when such a terrible thing had happened to her? “I’m asking if you’re going to give the new baby the same name you gave his older brother,” she repeated in a clear voice. “Aleksi. Is it a family name? Are you going to give him the same clothes? The same toys?”
She had gone too far. Irja drew her breath in sharply, still not looking at her. Then she sat down slowly, smiling through tears.
“Thank you.”
“You’re mad,” replied Hella in a flat voice. “A raving lunatic. No wonder you married a priest. What are you thanking me for?”
“You’re the only person I’ve met who speaks of Aleksi as a real child. Others … They just pretend he didn’t exist. They only say, don’t you worry, Irja, one day you’ll be a mother too. They don’t realize that I am already a mother. And this” – she touched her stomach, briefly, and smiled again – “this will be my second child. I’ll call him Petar, after Timo’s father. And I’ll want him to know that he isn’t the first, that his brother existed, and still exists in my heart, even though Timo, I and the midwife were the only ones who saw him before he was put in the grave.”
Hella could take it no longer. She sprang to her feet and in her haste to get away knocked over a pale blue cup with a gilded rim. The coffee spilled onto the tablecloth. She didn’t even pretend to wipe it or set the cup straight again. She just ran away, to her room, to her file and her field notes. To take refuge among things she could understand.
32
It was now two hours since Hella had escaped to her room, slamming the door behind her. She had spent those two hours sitting on her bed, in the dark, staring out of the window, not that there was anything to see there, and drinking vodka from a mug. In her head, the conversation continued. At some point, she didn’t even know who it was she was talking to, if it was Irja, or her dead mother, or Steve. Or even that other Hella, not the bitchy, ruthless, trigger-happy spinster she had become but the eager, confident medical student with her dimples and ready smile who had died on her doorstep eight and a half years ago.
But though she didn’t know who she was talking to, she did know what she was talking about. Her conversation was about strength, and weakness, and about how easy it was to mistake one for the other. And she was wondering about herself.
She had always thought of herself as a strong woman. After all, she had survived the death of her entire family and hadn’t gone mad. She had even managed to finish her studies – not medical school, she couldn’t bear to see blood and human suffering all day long any more – but the polissyster training, and then the course at the police academy. At the time, it had seemed like a good idea, not only for the feeling of control it bestowed upon her, but also because, in those early years, she had still thought she could catch the bastard who had taken her family’s life. Over time, she had amassed a huge load of information, witness statements, weather reports and complicated graphs mapping the deadly truck’s trajectory.
In the dark northern sky, the stars were close enough to touch. The lawn in front of her window was dressed in a thin white coverlet. She hadn’t noticed it was still snowing. One more day, and she’d have to get out of here. Resume her life in Ivalo. Spend her days writing reports that no one ever read. Go home to her solitary room where no one was waiting for her.
“You’re so strong, Hell,” Steve used to say. “You’re one hell of a woman.” Stupid as she was, she had taken it as a compliment, at first. She was strong when she walked through the gloomy Helsinki night alone, dancing her way home after yet another clandestine meeting at Yle Radio headquarters. She was strong when she pretended to be a casual acquaintance when they ran into his mother-in-law on the street. She was strong when they cancelled their evening plans because his daughter had had a nosebleed and his wife was worried.
“You’ll be all right, Hell, won’t you? You won’t start screaming, tearing your hair out or doing other silly things hysterical women do?”
“No,” she used to reply with a superior smile. “Of course not. I’m not like your wife.”
Elsbeth, Steve’s wife of many years, was a housewife. For this reason, she was considered the delicate one. The one to be pitied, because Steve didn’t love her any more. He’d told her so himself. The one to be protected, because, in contrast to Hella, she’d never known how to fend for herself.
“You understand, Hell, she’s not strong like you, she can’t survive on her own. I want to leave her, of course I do, to be with you, but – what kind of man would I be then? You’d be the first to call me a bastard.”
Never, not once in three years, did she dare say: No, I wouldn’t. Leave her.
Which was just an illustration of how stupid twenty-something orphans could be.
“So tell me, what does it feel like to have so much authority?” Steve would ask, propped on his elbow, a lazy finger following the curve of her breast. “Does it feel amazing? To be the one with the gun, to have everyone listen to you?”
“It feels good,” Hella would say and smile, even though, to be honest, it didn’t always. “It feels like being the master of the universe.”
That was what Steve wanted to hear. He was the master of the universe too, in his own way. His deep, husky voice with that mid-Atlantic twang, which was one of the few things, along with the name, that he had inherited from his American father, filled the air every weekday from 3 to 9 p.m. in his popular music and chit-chat show on Yle Radio. When she was still at the police station at nine – as was often the case, not because she wanted to show her dedication to the job, but because Steve’s office was around the corner – and waiting for him, she always switched the radio on full blast. She listened intently, because she wanted to be ready to discuss whatever deep thoughts he shared with his audience. Even though, most of the time, he didn’t say anything deep, or indeed say anything at all. His dream of being an investigative journalist had not been realized yet; his bosses thought that he was only good for music.
