The Defenceless (25 page)

‘
WHAT EXACTLY
are we looking for?’ Sari asked Anna. Vilho Karppinen’s apartment was quiet and expectant. Anna felt sick at the thought of going inside. At first she was puzzled at this feeling but understood later that it must have to do with the knives, still on display in the glass cabinet in the living room. More to the point, it was the knife that was missing that unnerved her. It was still a mystery how Vilho’s rare collector’s item had ended up in the woods in Ketoniemi where it was used to slit open Riitta Vihviläinen’s throat.

‘Let’s just look around. We’ve got to find the medication and the prescriptions.’

‘Which pharmacy did Vilho use? They would have copies of the prescriptions.’

‘His son didn’t even know about his father’s blood-pressure condition, so I doubt he’d know which pharmacy he used. Let’s find the medicine cabinet and see what else he’s got.’

They quickly found Vilho’s collection of medicine on the middle shelf of the cupboard above the counter. There wasn’t much there. A few packets of painkillers, a tub of moisturising cream and some Vitamin D.

‘There’s no Propral here.’

‘There was a packet in Riitta’s cupboard though,’ Anna remembered.

‘Let’s check that out too. Karppinen seems like a relatively healthy man, judging by his medicine cabinet.’

‘Where might he keep his prescriptions?’

Anna and Sari began going through his boxes and cupboards.
They worked slowly and methodically; if there was still any evidence of what had happened to Vilho, they mustn’t compromise it. Finding that evidence was someone else’s job. The collection of knives in the living room looked grotesque and frightening. The bottles of spirits in the next cabinet made everything look even more chilling. The classic Finnish combination at the root of most homicides: blades and alcohol. Normally it was an axe and alcohol. Could Vilho have killed first Vehviläinen then himself, carried out a shocking murder on the spur of the moment, then realised the horror and finality of what he’d done and been unable to live with it?

A box in the bookshelf gave them what they needed. It contained a plastic envelope full of prescriptions dating back many years. There were at least three prescriptions for Propral, but they had all long since expired. The latest prescription was missing.

‘The current prescription isn’t here,’ said Anna.

‘Either Vilho recovered from his blood-pressure condition and no longer needed the medication, or the prescription and the drugs have all been removed,’ Sari suggested.

‘Let’s check Riitta’s medicine cabinet straight away. Something’s not right here.’

‘Okay.’

Sari and Anna left the apartment and took the stairs down to the ground floor. Anna went straight to the cabinet in Riitta’s kitchen, picked up the bottle of Propral and read the label.

‘This is Vilho’s medicine,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘This was prescribed to Vilho. It’s a bottle of a hundred tablets, and it’s almost empty, though it was only bought at the beginning of March.’

‘So why is it in Riitta’s cabinet?’

‘That’s the question. This was purchased at the University Pharmacy on Kirkkokatu.’

‘We’ll have to go there right away.’

‘Could Vilho really have murdered Riitta?’

‘Or could Riitta have murdered Vilho?’

‘Good God,’ Sari gasped. ‘They could have killed one another. Riitta poisoned Vilho with Propral and Vilho stabbed Riitta before the drugs kicked in.’

‘There was no blood on Vilho’s hands.’

‘He washed himself thoroughly and died shortly afterwards. Or something.’

‘I don’t know. Vilho didn’t have a car. How could he have transported a body?’

‘True. This all sounds a bit far-fetched,’ Sari sighed. ‘Will we ever work this one out?’

Anna thought of the conversation she’d had with Mrs Vehviläinen’s daughter while she’d been talking to her informant. We only see what we expect to see, she thought, and more to the point we don’t see what we don’t expect to see. What should we be seeing now? What direction should we take? The obvious direction or the direction you’d never think of? What can we see out there? What is there to see?

That evening Zoran called and asked whether Anna was happy with Ritva Siponen’s work. Anna didn’t want to discuss work matters with Zoran, and she told him this upfront. Have it your way, Zoran laughed it off and suggested they meet up. Nataša had taken the children to a friend’s place, and Zoran could spend the night at Anna’s place.

‘I’ve missed you,’ he said in Serbian in that soft, deep voice of his. Though Anna was repelled by Zoran’s macho attitude, she found it hard to resist his self-assured, almost aggressive masculinity, a trait that Finnish men always seemed to lack. But now she thought of Nataša. She recalled how they had first met. Anna had been thirteen, Nataša fourteen. It was winter then too, the school playground was dark and cold. It all happened one morning. Anna had just stepped into the playground and seen a group of loud-mouthed, heavily made-up girls forming a circle around a strange-looking girl.
A new pupil, poor thing, Anna had thought and tried to slip past as though she hadn’t noticed anything going on, but then she heard the words ‘Yugoslav bitch’. She stared at the ring of girls and caught the new girl’s eyes. They were cold and hard, the girl was beautiful and fearless, and Anna knew that this irritated Tiina, the ringleader of the bullies.

It wasn’t Anna’s style to get involved in other students’ business, she preferred to keep herself to herself, to the point that she was almost pitiable. Acting assertively was something she’d only picked up at the academy. But that time she stepped in. She pushed through the ring of bullies, took the girl by the hand and said
ajde, idemo
, come on, let’s go. Then she took the girl to the staffroom, told the teachers what had happened in the playground and left the girl to be looked after by the school nurse. When Anna was walking home after school, the girl ran up to her and spoke furiously.

‘
U pičku materinu
, you should have let me fight them,’ she shouted at Anna. ‘Fucking do-gooder, you had to go and tell the teachers. I’ll never be able to set foot in that school again, thanks to you.’

Anna didn’t understand everything the girl was shouting, her Serbian wasn’t very good, but she got the point: this girl could look after herself without the help of a teacher’s pet like her. They’d gone to Anna’s place for a cup of hot chocolate. She introduced herself to Nataša. They never became the best of friends, though they often spent time together. Nataša found a kindred spirit in Tiina’s gang. Anna had a secret admiration for Nataša’s boldness, and that’s why she’d been so surprised when only a few years later Nataša started dating Zoran, married young, dropped out of college, stayed at home to look after the kids, and turned into a quiet little wife, there only to please her husband. What’s more, Anna had complicated her relationship with Nataša by spending the odd night in Zoran’s arms, and in doing so she’d lost a friend.

‘It’s not on,’ said Anna.

‘Why not, honey? We haven’t seen each other properly for ages. My lovely lady,’ Zoran tried to charm her.

‘I mean it. We can’t do this. Don’t call me again if all you can think about is cheating on your wife. I’m not sleeping with you again.’

‘
Jebiga
, Anna, what are you raving on about?’

‘I’m not raving. We should have stopped this thing years ago. We should never have started it.’

‘What’s the matter with you?’

Anna held back the tears. She told Zoran about her grandmother’s death, how Ákos had gone to the funeral but she hadn’t been able to get there.

‘Honey, I’m sorry. Let me come round there and comfort you.’

‘Haven’t you understood a word I’ve said?’ she shouted. ‘I’m not sleeping with you again. Ever.’

Anna hung up and wiped a tear on her sleeve. In a rage she opened a can of beer and went out to the balcony for a cigarette. Why can’t some men ever give up, she wondered. Béci was still sending her emails, though she had only replied to one or two, and with nothing but a few words. And at that moment the loneliness hit her, attacked her like a pack of ravenous wolves. Anxiety gnawed at her insides, punched and pummelled her, making her body feel heavy and sore. Now I don’t even have Zoran, she thought and felt another wave of tears welling to the surface, but she stopped it in its tracks, swallowed it back to the hidden place full of other forgotten miseries.

She went back inside and opened another beer. She tried to call her mother on Skype. She wanted to talk about Grandma, her final days, her funeral. She wanted to tell her mother about the pain, her sense of longing, to talk about Zoran, to ask her mother why breaking up with a married man, with whom she hadn’t officially been together, could feel so terrible. There was no answer. Thank God, she thought. I don’t normally talk to Mum about my feelings, and certainly not about my sex life. Besides, her mother would have seen straight through it all and said that Anna needed to be in touch with her roots, whatever form that touch might take.

She tossed and turned in bed for hours waiting for sleep to come. The apartment around her felt cold and solitary. She fetched a spare
blanket from the closet, put
Westernization Completed
on low volume and decided to take some sleeping pills if she hadn’t fallen asleep in half an hour. The thought seemed to calm her. She quickly drifted to sleep, dreamt dreams punctuated by the rhythms of AGF, dreams of which by morning she could remember nothing at all.

ANNA PICKED UP
an unmarked Ford from the depot beneath the police station and drove through heavy traffic towards the main road leading east out of the city. The traffic was backed up, the lanes weren’t moving, someone was nervously beeping their horn at the traffic lights. Anna looked at the cars in the lines of traffic. Almost every last one of them contained only one person, the driver. It’s strange that car sharing hasn’t caught on here – especially given the sky-high price of petrol, she thought. Perhaps it’s for the best; the sooner we run out of oil, the better. At least then we’ll be forced to come up with an alternative. The idea of running out of oil had been used to scare people as long as Anna could remember. She’d never understood what was so terrifying about it; humans had survived perfectly well without oil for the majority of their time on earth, so what was to stop them doing so again? And why are people always trying to frighten us into action? If it’s not the oil drying up, it’s a global pandemic, a financial crash, the mass retirement of the baby-boomer generation, a heat wave even. Was the propagation of such collective menaces a means of keeping people in check, of making them dutifully fulfil the roles society had assigned them as consumers and producers, of making that role seem so secure and satisfying a way of life that it wouldn’t even occur to anyone that alternative truths might be possible?

An irate beep came from behind her. Anna snapped back to reality and noticed that the cars in front had edged forward and the lights had again turned red. It’ll be evening by the time I get home, she thought. But what does it matter? There’s nobody there anyway.

The skiing resort at Iso-Kero was like every other skiing resort in the country. A hotel at the top of the fell with clusters of log cabins around it, miniature villages of cabins at the foot of the fell, an overpriced village shop, lots of Russian tourists, a reindeer enclosure, a husky farm, trailers, ski boxes, drinks in the hotel lobby, one too many cocktails at the after-ski party. The slopes of Kero Fell were scored with downhill pistes and ski lifts. During the summer the place was empty and the deserted pistes looked like enormous gashes violently scratched into the fell’s sensitive skin. The scars of this annual winter destruction didn’t look quite as brutal when everything was white and covered in snow. Anna parked the car in front of the hotel and stepped outside. It was windy at the summit, and the air was fresh. The sky was overcast, the temperature a few degrees below freezing: ideal weather for skiing. I should have taken my skis with me and done a short trek after work, thought Anna as she stretched her legs. The hilly terrain would make a refreshing change from the sea ice, and it would be light long into the evening.

Anna looked at her watch. She’d carefully measured how long the journey had taken. From the city centre, it took between ninety minutes and two hours to drive out here, depending on the weather and the number of reindeer lazily trotting along the road. She had only seen one, standing in the verge of snow like a statue staring in the woods.

Anna went into the hotel. The foyer was full of Lapland trinkets and souvenirs for sale, though the centre wasn’t actually in Lapland. For foreign tourists, the idea of Lapland was relative. You could buy the same junk in Helsinki department stores too. At the reception sat a young girl, her eyes glued to her iPhone. She didn’t look up. Anna cleared her throat. The girl remained uncommunicative.

‘Good afternoon,’ Anna said eventually. The girl started and sheepishly slid her phone into her pocket.

‘I’m sorry, madam, I didn’t notice you there. Do you have a reservation?’

‘No. My name’s Fekete Anna, I’m from the police. I called this
morning and said I’d be paying a visit,’ she said and showed her badge.

‘Oh yes, that’s right. Welcome to Kero.’

‘I’ve come to ask about one of your customers. I’d like to see the records you have for a Mr Juha Karppinen. It seems he arrived on the eleventh of March.’

‘Our customer records are confidential, I’m afraid.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ve got all the relevant warrants. This is a criminal investigation,’ said Anna.

‘What if I call my supervisor?’

‘You do that.’

The girl stepped out from behind the reception desk and gave Anna an awkward smile. She walked across the foyer to the restaurant, where a throng of tanned guests in brightly coloured skiing gear were lining up at the lunchtime buffet table. Anna recalled the skiing trip she’d taken years ago. She’d gone with the only serious boyfriend she’d ever had, a policeman who shared Anna’s passion for sports and outdoor activities but who hadn’t understood her need to spend time alone, nor her reluctance to start a family. They’d spent a week skiing through the wilderness without seeing anyone else. They carried their food and all their equipment on sleds that they pulled behind them. The layer of snow was thick and soft. Lunch was mostly rice with dried mincemeat, macaroni with dried mincemeat. Every morning they put the dried meat in a sealed plastic bag with a dash of water so it could rehydrate. They prepared their food on a portable stove, sheltering from the wind. Dessert was a cup of instant coffee and some chocolate. How delicious it had all tasted.

She hadn’t hiked like that since their break-up. Anna noticed that she missed it. Would Béci make a good hiking companion? Anna guessed he would rather spend his nights between a set of clean sheets than in a sleeping bag in a shack in the woods and would rather eat gourmet hotel food than simple hiking fodder, but she would never know the truth. She had no plans to ask him.

The hotel manager was a man of around sixty. He shook Anna’s
hand firmly and showed her to his office. Anna declined the offer of coffee and asked to see the details of Juha Karppinen’s visit immediately. The manager signed into the computer system and quickly located the records in question.

‘That’s right. Juha Karppinen checked in on the eleventh of March at 2.15 p.m. He stayed in Room 173. He stayed with us for a week and a half. I don’t remember him myself; I don’t deal with the customer-service side of the business.’

‘Could you tell me who was working that afternoon? And the next day, the twelfth of March.’

‘Let me see. We had the same reception staff on both days: Inkeri in the morning and Janne in the afternoon and evening. To cut costs we don’t have anyone on duty during the night.’

‘What time does the evening shift end?’

‘Midnight.’

‘How do customers get in if they come back after that?’

‘Everyone is given a door code.’

Anna thought carefully. Vilho had died around midnight. Propral takes effect around an hour after being administered. If Juha had driven from here into town to kill Vilho, he would have had to leave at 8 p.m. at the latest.

‘I’d like to talk to both receptionists.’

‘Inkeri will be starting the evening shift at four o’clock. Janne is on his day off, but he lives on site in the dormitory for seasonal staff.’

‘Could you ask them both to come up here now? I’ll talk to the staff at the restaurant while I’m waiting.’

‘That’s fine. What has this Karppinen done?’ asked the manager. His body language betrayed his almost childish curiosity.

‘I’m afraid I can’t go into details at this point in the investigation,’ Anna replied, and walked through to the restaurant.

As she drove back towards the city through the monotonous forest landscape where small villages eked out a living far away from supermarkets, banks and one another, where clusters of slender fir trees
disappeared the further she drove and the last vestiges of snow grew thinner the closer she came to the sea, Anna went over what she’d learned. The barman had remembered Juha. He’d been in the restaurant every evening and drunk quite a lot. Whether he had been there on the Wednesday evening in question, the barman couldn’t be entirely sure. I think he was here every single night of his stay, but I can’t be sure, he said. That Wednesday there was a dance and a band playing in the hotel bar. There had been so many people in the bar that it was impossible to remember anyone in particular.

Inkeri from reception clearly remembered Juha checking in. He had arrived dragging large suitcases and a bag of skiing equipment, quizzed her about the conditions of the pistes and skiing tracks, the breakfast and other hotel services, and booked the sauna between eight and ten o’clock the following evening. Janne had been on duty that night, and he remembered seeing Juha taking the stairs down to the basement with a towel over his arm just before eight o’clock. Juha waved hello and asked whether he could take his own bottles down to the sauna; Janne answered that that was fine, as long as he didn’t leave the empties lying around. He didn’t remember seeing Juha return from the sauna, because by then the restaurant and the lobby bar had started to fill with revellers. Juha’s alibi wasn’t watertight, and more importantly, Inkeri remembered that Juha was driving an SUV. Anna saw movement by the side of the road. She braked and flashed her lights at the oncoming car. A group of grey reindeer strutted into the road and began trotting in front of her. The reindeer zigzagged between the lanes of traffic until the large white male that had first run out into the road leapt over the verge and back into the forest; the rest of the herd followed him and the road was clear again.

Anna’s phone rang. She switched on her hands-free device and answered. It was Sari. Apparently Vilho had been very active on the housing-association committee, and on several occasions he’d asked for more detailed documentation from the firm that carried out the pipe and window renovations. It seemed that Vilho had suspected that not everything about the company was above board. The firm
never provided him with the documents. Anna told Sari that Juha drove an SUV.

‘What if they were in it together?’ asked Sari. ‘Juha and the caretaker.’

‘It’s quite possible,’ said Anna. ‘And if that’s so, we’re going to find out very soon.’

‘Excellent. We’re nearly there. Oh yes. That Sammy has been asking to talk to you all day. He still maintains he killed Vilho and Marko, but funnily he didn’t know anything about Riitta. He clammed up when I asked about her. Now he’s saying there was a man in the corridor the night he killed Vilho and that this man could verify that Sammy was there.’

‘Poor boy,’ said Anna. ‘I’ll visit him tomorrow. We’ll have to see whether anybody saw Juha’s SUV somewhere other than in the hotel car park on the night of the murders, and we should check the GPS coordinates for his mobile phone.’

‘I’m on it. Drive carefully,’ said Sari and hung up.

Grandma’s funeral had gone smoothly. The service was held at Kanizsa cemetery in a chapel with a stone floor so cold, despite the sunshine, that Ákos and her mother’s feet had felt the chill. Lots of relatives from Hungary and Serbia had gathered for the occasion. Ákos, her mother and her father’s brothers had greeted each of them in turn, standing in the small chapel. The service lasted several hours, the priest said a blessing and prayed for the deceased. After this the congregation had travelled to Békavár for a meal. The funeral had turned into a warm family reunion; relatives who rarely saw one another had a chance to chat and catch up with each other’s news. Everyone except Anna. Grandma’s obituary, complete with a photograph, was taped to every bulletin board in the town, on trees and streetlamps. Ákos promised to bring one back with him but couldn’t say when he would be back. Anna felt a chill. What will happen when Mum dies? Who would she have left? What remains of home when those who live there are gone?

Anna went out to the balcony for a cigarette and drank a large can of beer. She couldn’t bring herself to listen to music but leant instead on the windowsill in the darkened living room and stared out at the concrete walls of the houses opposite. The grey skies above the suburbs appeared to give off a faint glimmer of light. Anna had noticed it before. The combination of thick cloud cover and the landscape, as it turned towards the spring, seemed in some strange way to light itself. The pitch darkness had gone. Then she put clean sheets on the bed, took a sleeping pill and curled up beneath the blankets.