Evil Things, page 19
No, Hella supposed it wasn’t. Kukoyakka surely had some redeeming qualities, but somehow she couldn’t imagine him as a war hero. He was too complacent for that, and too self-absorbed. Still, they had nothing better to do, so she might as well listen to him.
“It was during the Continuation War,” he said finally. “I didn’t have a job at the time, so when they offered me a spot in the army, I didn’t say no. I hate the Soviets, so it seemed like a good idea. All I had to do was help them with radio transmissions and show them around; they weren’t familiar with the marshes … Anyway, we were part of the Petrozavodsk offensive and one day we came upon this village, Polovina, and of course it was empty. They usually were; the villagers must have developed some sort of sixth sense, because they always managed to disappear right before we turned up. You could still see stoves burning, food cooking and some handiwork abandoned, but no people. The guy who led our detachment, Colonel Koch, was angry – he would have liked to surprise those stupid villagers at least once. So here we all were, standing in a circle on the main street, the colonel drawing a map on the ground with the sawback bayonet mounted on his rifle – and all of a sudden we heard a child singing. I don’t know what that song was about – it went something like babushka, dedushka – but I turned my head and I saw him. A small boy, dark-haired, dressed in a sweater too big for him and short trousers, and there he was, coming towards us and singing. The colonel froze. We all did. And the child saw us, of course he did, but he didn’t stop or run away, because he was too small to know who we were and what it meant. And as he was singing, he was waving his arms above his head and skipping a little. I looked at the colonel, and he was smiling, and that was when I knew it wasn’t going to end well. The boy was just a few steps away from us, and the colonel joined in the refrain, singing babushka, babushka, and then he lurched forward and thrust the bayonet into the child’s belly. He …”
Kukoyakka tightened his grip on the steering wheel. When he spoke again, the tremor was gone from his voice. If anything, he sounded matter-of-fact.
“They put the boy’s body in the larder of the house Colonel Koch occupied. I don’t know why. I suppose it was indecent just to leave him outside, but no one wanted to bother digging a grave. I was given a bed in the house next door, in a room I shared with three Nazi soldiers. In the middle of the night, I had to go out to relieve myself. That’s when I saw a shadow slipping into the colonel’s house. I went after it, for no reason. That colonel, after what he did to the child – I didn’t even want to look at him any longer.”
He paused, his gaze on the road, his big hairy hands trembling slightly.
“Anyway, I went in. The colonel and his men must have stayed up late, because the coals in the stove were still red hot. That’s how I saw that the intruder was a woman. She was wearing a long black skirt, and her hair was tied up in a headscarf. She was frightfully thin. ‘Stop it,’ I said, in Finnish because I don’t know any Russian. ‘Get out of here.’ I don’t know if she understood. I don’t think so, because she whispered something and shook her head.
“I wanted to take her by the shoulders and lead her out of the house. I guessed she was the boy’s mother, or sister maybe, and she wanted to retrieve his body. Or maybe avenge him, I don’t know. But when I made a step towards her, she scooped up the burning coals with her bare hands and threw them into my eyes.”
He paused and sighed.
“I think they killed her after that. I’m only telling you this because it still keeps me up at night. That nightmare.”
But whether the nightmares were about the little boy or the burning coals, he didn’t say.
47
Neither of them uttered a single word during the rest of the trip. Even when the dim lights of Käärmela appeared in the distance, they remained silent. Hella was thinking about the little boy and the Nazi colonel who’d killed him. Colonel Koch. She’d remember that. How many of them were still out there, child murderers who had gone unpunished, authorized killers who now hid behind the masks of respectable citizens? She also thought about those who, like Kukoyakka, had contributed to the Nazis’ inexorable progression through Europe because they had been swept off their feet by propaganda, or simply because they had nothing better to do, and who had realized too late the horrors that lay behind the façade.
She almost wished she hadn’t asked Kukoyakka about his eye. Now she saw him differently, as a human being, a man who had made a terrible mistake and had paid for it, not just a truck driver who had designs on her. It would be difficult to put her plan into execution without compromising him. She’d need to think about it when the time came.
The truck’s brakes screeched as it pulled up next to the church. Hella laid her hand on Kukoyakka’s arm. “Could you please come back for me this evening? I promise you it’ll be …” She stumbled, unsure of herself. Hella Mauzer, a would-be seductress! But there was no way back now. “Unforgettable.”
He nodded, ogling her, his eye suddenly alight and fiery, and she jumped out of the truck and ran towards the Waltaris’ house. How should she play it? Tell them she still had a couple of questions left?
It was Kalle who opened the front door. “I saw you coming,” he said accusingly. “Why are you here?”
He had the bearing of the man of the house. Not a frightened little thing any longer, thought Hella. He had found his place.
“I need to talk to you, Kalle. And I want you to tell me the truth. Did someone come to the house while you were all alone waiting for your grandpa to come back?”
The boy nodded, looking away. “But I didn’t see them. They came at night. I only heard them when they were leaving.”
“And the next morning, was the stove all smeared? Is that why you’re sleeping on the stove now? To guard it?”
He nodded: yes.
Hella looked at the tiny warrior who stood before her, his eyes downcast, his mouth resolute. So she had been right. This realization didn’t make her feel any better, though. If anything, she felt worse.
“Irja’s ill,” said Kalle suddenly. “Timo went out to look for a horse. He wants to take her to Ivalo. I told him it was no use, but he wouldn’t listen.”
Hella, who was now inside the house, stopped in her tracks. “Why is it no use, Kalle? Surely the doctor can help?”
The boy shook his head. “Not the old doctor in Ivalo. He doesn’t understand a thing. That’s what Grandpa said.”
Hella knelt beside him. “When did he say that?”
Kalle looked away. “I don’t know. A long time ago.”
He was shutting up like a clam. She would get nothing more out of him. Not like this.
“Let’s go and see Irja,” she proposed.
She took Kalle’s hand, and together they passed through the narrow corridor into the living room. As soon as she saw the priest’s wife, Hella realized she would have to change her plans. Irja’s eyes were too big for her face and her breathing came fast and shallow. Jesus! No wonder Timo had gone to look for a horse. This was not labour, though. It was something different and altogether more sinister.
“Please make yourself comfortable,” whispered Irja. She was sitting on the bench, her head in her hands. “I am afraid I can’t help you much. I’m a little under the weather today.”
“No problem.” Hella seized the coffee pot and poured a cup for her hostess. “You need to drink. You also need a doctor. Although young Kalle here thinks Dr Gummerus is not a good bet and, having seen the specimen in person, I would have to agree with him. At least Dr Makarova was interested in what his grandpa had to tell her.”
She turned towards the boy. “Dr Makarova, the Soviet doctor, examined your mother, didn’t she? She drew her blood. She asked all sorts of questions. She examined you as well, even though you weren’t ill like your mother. Is that what happened?”
Kalle cocked his head to one side, probably remembering the scene. A year is an eternity when you are seven. Had he forgotten it? Had he forced the painful memory out of his mind?
“The Soviet doctor was nice,” he said finally. “She gave me chocolate. Not Fazer Blue, hers had a ballerina on the wrapper, but it was very good.” He brightened all of a sudden. “Was she the same woman who came to see Grandpa again last spring? She taught me how to make paper planes.”
“I know,” said Hella. “I found one in your old house. Is that what you did, while you waited for your grandpa to come back? You made paper planes. So I suppose you were happy when Dr Makarova came to see you last spring? Your grandpa must have been very surprised!”
Kalle hesitated.
“He was. But then he was angry, not at her, but about something. After she left, he told me I couldn’t go to the forest with him any more. That there were evil things in the forest, and even in the village, too. But he, he was away all the time.”
“I think he was looking for something,” said Hella slowly. “Something he was afraid of finding. Proof of what Dr Makarova had told him.” Her eyes rested on the steel container that was sitting on top of the cupboard. “I think, in the end, he found it.”
48
The Waltaris didn’t believe her at first.
“Malaria!” exclaimed Father Timo, incredulous, when he finally returned home, leading two nags he had borrowed from someone in the village. “Isn’t that some tropical disease?”
“It is,” said Hella, forcing him to sit down next to his wife and listen to her. “It’s endemic in sub-Saharan Africa, India and parts of Latin America. That was precisely the reason they chose it. To see how a mosquito-borne tropical disease would adapt to local conditions. I guess they had this idea to use it as a biological weapon of sorts. Or else they were afraid someone else – the Soviets, probably – would use it as a biological weapon on Finland, and they wanted to see how it would spread in a cold climate.”
“And they tested it on us? Knowing full well that some people would die from it? Who would do a thing like that?”
“It could be our local authorities, as my boss Chief Inspector Eklund lovingly calls them. That’s his term for the SUPO. But I think it was probably the Western Alliance. Because Eklund didn’t know anything about it at first. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have authorized me to come here. He would have just classified the case, or else he’d have assigned it to Ranta to put a stamp on it. It was only once I was already here that he realized what I had stumbled across. That’s why he made such a fuss about getting me back.”
Irja’s face was ashen. “But if what you’re saying is true, it means that they set out to poison us – in cold blood – like lab animals?”
Hella shrugged. “Well, it does sound melodramatic when you put it like that, but it’s not unheard of. There are precedents. And they did take precautions. Remember you told me that a team of doctors came up to the village to treat a flu epidemic? Those doctors, where did they come from? No one knows. My guess is that they weren’t doctors at all, or at least not all of them. They were scientists studying the spread of malaria in local conditions. When people started falling ill in droves, they arrived with a cover story – a flu epidemic, because the symptoms are apparently similar – and they had their chloroquine, this new anti-malarial drug, ready. They just didn’t anticipate that their experiment would work so well, that some of the mosquitoes would indeed survive at the end of the summer and continue infecting people. The experiment was supposed to come to an end, naturally, when the temperatures dropped. But last October was uncharacteristically warm, and some of the malaria-infested mosquitoes survived. That’s how both you” – she pointed at Irja – “and Anna, who had only just arrived in the village, became infected. And as the experiment was officially over, and the ‘doctors’ had left, you didn’t get the medical help you needed.”
Father Timo was staring down at his hands with a puzzled expression. “Do you think they ran their tests here, of all places, because the locals are second-rate citizens to them? Because this land has been changing hands so often, its inhabitants are – well, they don’t belong anywhere, do they? They’re refugees, even if they don’t wander from place to place any longer.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. It’s possible, of course.”
But Father Timo was already pursuing a different line of thought.
“Erno couldn’t have possibly realized all this,” he objected. “Erno was educated, yes, but he wasn’t a scientist. If what you’re saying is true, he was the only person around who figured it out. How could he have done?”
“He didn’t figure it out all at once. He just knew that his daughter had fallen seriously ill, just like many other people in the village had fallen ill before her. But by that time, the so-called doctors had already left, and Anna, who was fragile, was getting worse by the day. So Erno did a perfectly normal, logical thing. He borrowed a horse and took his daughter and his grandson, because he didn’t know who to leave him with, to Ivalo, to see the doctor there. That visit wasn’t a success. Dr Gummerus barely examined Anna. He diagnosed her with the flu and sent them away. Erno was desperate. He could see that his only daughter was dying. So he made a decision. If the local doctor couldn’t find what was wrong with her, he’d take his daughter across the border, to Svetly. And why not? He went to Svetly for his groceries, he spoke pretty good Russian, it was worth a try.”
“The Soviet doctor, Daria Makarova, was different. She became interested in Anna’s case. She must have noticed that Anna’s fever was peaking every other day – you noticed that too, Irja, by the way, you told me so yourself – and she found it strange. Also, Anna’s spleen was enlarged. It didn’t look like the regular flu. Still, Dr Makarova didn’t know what it was exactly, so she drew Anna’s blood and sent it somewhere, to Murmansk probably, or even to Moscow, for a test. I don’t think they have a lab in Svetly, the town is too small.”
“She wanted to keep Mama with her,” confirmed Kalle all of a sudden. “She wanted to send her to a local hospital, but Mama refused. She didn’t want to leave me. So Grandpa brought us back.”
“I think,” added Hella, “that another thing that probably puzzled Dr Makarova was that neither Erno nor Kalle was sick. Erno was a strong, grown man, so maybe he was more resistant than others, but Kalle? He was just a child. How come he didn’t catch the virus from his mother? Because it was not a virus. Malaria is transmitted by a parasite. It lives in the body, but it doesn’t spread from one person to another. Except” – she forced herself to look Irja in the eye – “from a mother to her unborn child. It’s not your fault Aleksi died. And you didn’t catch the disease from Anna. You mentioned once that you’d been devoured by mosquitoes when you arrived in the village. That’s how you got infected.”
“When did Erno know for sure?” asked Timo, addressing the polished surface of the table.
“I suppose the blood tests must have taken a long time,” explained Hella. “The Soviets must have been so stupefied with the results that they ran the tests over and over again, until they were a hundred per cent sure. When they were, in March of this year, Dr Makarova crossed the border to find Erno and explain to him what had happened to his daughter. It was a big risk to take, but she was a doctor, a real one. She wanted to shed light on what had happened. Quite possibly, she had a personal motive too. A scoop like this! It could have advanced her career no end. She could have got out of Svetly with a promotion.”
Irja’s burning gaze was fixed on Hella. “You mentioned that the woman had slivers of glass in her mouth. Was it …?”
“Yes,” confirmed Hella. “She was bringing you chloroquine, because Erno had asked her to. He was feeling guilty about you losing baby Aleksi, and when he realized you were expecting again, and that your illness could be cured, he must have contacted Dr Makarova – I don’t know how – and told her that he’d provide the Soviets with proof of malaria testing in exchange for chloroquine. I’m only guessing, of course, but I think that’s what must have happened. It explains why both of them were killed when they met for the exchange. I imagine their killers destroyed the evidence that Erno had gathered. Luckily for us, he put a few of the vials aside. He —”
Irja cut in, her voice terse. “How did they know? Erno’s killers, who told them that the exchange was to take place?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Hella. “Maybe there’s a mole in Svetly selling Russian secrets to the Western Alliance.”
Timo gasped, but Irja was not listening any longer. Her eyes were closed, and beads of perspiration had appeared on her forehead. Her husband cast an anguished glance at the door. She was running a high fever. They needed to find her a doctor, and quick. All the rest – the political motives, the responsibilities, the killers – could wait. First things first.
“Dr Gummerus won’t help you,” Hella told them. “I saw him just this morning. He is old, and he’s not very bright. He’ll never believe us if we tell him you’re suffering from malaria, and in any case, he hasn’t got the medicine we need. He said chloroquine would only be available in Helsinki, at the central army pharmacy.”
Timo Waltari frowned. “Do you really think the officers there will agree to give Irja the drug? Just like that? Won’t they be tempted to decide that we’re all hysterical villagers who have no medical background and no idea what they are talking about? Or it could be even worse. Because it was either the SUPO or the Western Alliance who killed Erno and Dr Makarova. So that this thing doesn’t get out.”
“It’s possible,” said Hella. “Even likely. But I know someone – Colonel Kyander. He’s an old friend of my father’s, and he’s part of the SUPO, one of its most senior officers – I think he can help us. My father trusted him.”
She paused, wondering if she hadn’t promised more than she could deliver. After all, how could she be sure? People change. And Colonel Kyander might not even be there. Still, it was worth a try.
But Timo had a different idea. “It will take ages to get to Helsinki. A horse to Ivalo, then we would need to find a car … and then go and explain the entire story to your friend …” He drew a deep breath. “The Soviets will believe us. I expect they’ll be ready to help us if we tell them we’re going to expose the whole thing. That will give them a card to play. ‘Western Alliance poisons capitalist world’, that sort of thing. Just imagine Pravda’s headlines!” He looked around, his eyes resting finally on the icons that adorned the wall opposite him. “If we leave now, we can be in Svetly in four hours.”
