The Defenceless (21 page)

‘That’s my boy, Jani. Thank you.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ he said and looked out of the car window. Anna noticed a restless and anguished look in the boy’s eyes.

‘Can we talk again some time, if I think of any other questions?’ asked Anna.

‘We’ll see,’ Jani replied.

‘Well, here you go for now,’ said Anna and handed him a fifty-euro note. ‘Whatever you decide.’

He snatched the bill quickly, like a fledgling whose mother has brought food back to the nest.

Anna drove back into town. She chatted with Jani about all sorts of things, asked about his life, tried to talk to him the way she would to any young man his age. He answered reluctantly. It seemed as though he was ashamed of himself. Anna dropped him off where she’d found him, outside the supermarket in Vaarala. A security-firm van was parked outside. The shop had been the target of numerous attempted robberies and the employees were frightened without a constant security presence on site.

‘See ya,’ said Jani, opening the door and running off towards the apartment blocks.

Anna felt her heart racing. A smile crept across her face. I’ve got my very own informant, she thought, exhilarated. Just like all real criminal investigators.

HE DIDN’T HAVE TO LEAVE.
He could stay, spend years in a secure room safe from the world outside. Sammy felt a rush of inexpressible joy. If he went to prison, he would be free. If he was charged with murder, he might receive a life sentence, Ritva Siponen had said, trying to frighten him. She didn’t understand that this was precisely what he wanted. A life sentence. In Finland that didn’t mean spending the rest of his life behind bars, but it would be at least eight or ten years. That was enough for Sammy. He would even be happy with the worst possible scenario – deportation – because that would take years to put through the courts. Without any charges, he would be deported straight away.

In a few years anything could happen in Pakistan, the situation for Christians might improve or worsen, but that didn’t matter, because over time people would forget him and his name. Perhaps he too could forget himself, forget his past. He would try to, at least. He could change his name to something that didn’t give away his Christian background. Mashid meant ‘Messiah’, and almost all the Christians in Pakistan were called Mashid. He could take a Finnish name. What could it be? Juhani Virtanen – the most common men’s first name and the most common surname in Finland. One of his Finnish classes had been about names. Sammy thought it was strange that names in Finland often didn’t mean anything, though he recognised that many of them had Christian origins. Sammy stood up from his bunk, assumed an official expression, held out his hand, said ‘my name is Juhani Virtanen’ twice, in the best Finnish he could muster, and shook an imaginary hand in front of him. The name tasted strange.

He would kick the drugs, finally. He thought of the opium dens in Karachi, the Subutex market on these frozen northern streets. How different they were, and yet how similar. Disaffected people on the margins of society, the living dead, recreational users that needed something to liven up a life that’s just too easy, people who think they’re in control of themselves. Maybe some people can stay in control, but Sammy knew how rapidly the drugs can take over, how abruptly everything can change. People will do anything for money: prostitution, theft, begging, pay-day loans. Despair, withdrawal symptoms, a heightened level of tolerance, desensitisation to the drugs, deepening addiction, getting involved with a dangerous crowd, depression, self-loathing, suicides. All this was as true in Finland as it was in Pakistan. He banished from his mind the thought that he would have to give up his best friend, and swallowed the saliva that had formed in his mouth. After ten years behind bars I’ll no longer remember what it feels like to slowly press down on a syringe, thought Sammy. I’ll forget what it feels like when the subs or heroin or any drugs flood into my bloodstream, so dazzling and intense that angels strum their harps in heaven out of sheer blissful happiness. But why can’t I forget that sensation? I should think only of dirty mattresses on the floors of darkened rooms, junkies who would kill you just to get a fix, chilling nights in this frozen city, desperately walking the streets looking for someone selling bupe, scavenging for money, a place to stay, trying to escape everything. That’s what I mustn’t forget, he thought. I’m going to study. I will learn this language so well that they won’t be able to throw me out. Ritva told me that prisoners here can retake their high-school exams and learn a trade. I’m going to do all that.

Sammy looked up at the poem on his cell wall. The poem burned his retina like the beating sun. Perhaps his interpreter could translate it for him.

The scan only took a moment, but still Esko felt the urge to tear the electrodes from his body and run away. Except that he didn’t have
the strength to run. He wanted to curse out loud. Cables and meters were attached all over his body: his chest, wrists, ankles, everywhere.

A machine sketched a fidgety graph in time with his heart, but he couldn’t see it. All he could see was the depressing blue curtain pulled in front of him. Behind the curtain another patient was giving a blood sample. What a palaver, thought Esko, no privacy whatsoever. The machine beeped. A young nurse in a white coat pulled back the curtain and slipped inside the cubicle. She calmly removed the electrodes. Her fingers were small and cold, ringless, her nails neatly trimmed. The chill of her touch tickled Esko’s skin. It didn’t feel bad at all. For a moment he imagined her caressing him, stroking his greying hairs and pressing a light kiss on his chest. The nurse reminded him of his former wife when she was young.

‘Right, you can get dressed now. I’ll take this to the doctor. If you could go and sit in waiting room number three, he’ll call you from there.’

‘Will it take long?’ Esko asked as he pulled on his shirt.

‘It shouldn’t take very long. We’re not too busy at the moment.’

Esko went into the waiting room and sat down on one of the red plastic chairs. He pressed a piece of nicotine chewing gum from the packet and started chewing it; a bitter taste flooded into his mouth. He thought of the list of all the Kia Sorentos in town that he’d pulled from the database. Judging by the names of the owners, two were registered to immigrants and one belonged to a rental firm. Esko had called them all. The rental company gave him a potential lead. The car had been rented to a man called Rasul Alif, and it turned out that his personal details, including his name, were fake. Esko told the traffic police to stop and search every black Kia Sorento that they saw. He looked at the other people waiting in the room: three old ladies, a man, and a woman with a whinging kid. They all looked lost, as though they had ended up there by accident. If my heart is in good nick, I’m going to go and work in a camp after all, he thought. You bet I will. Nothing is going to stop me.

‘Niemi,’ came a voice from the door of room number five. Esko
stood up stiffly, walked to the door and shook hands with the doctor, a man approximately his age but who exuded an annoying aura of excellent health.

‘Please sit down,’ said the doctor and placed the cardiograph on his desk. ‘When did this episode of breathlessness take place?’

‘On Tuesday,’ said Esko.

‘Tell me what happened.’

Now Esko felt even more annoyed. His paperwork doubtless showed what he’d said about what had happened during the chase, how he’d felt and everything else. Why did they have to go over the matter again and again? He briefly explained the course of events, doing little to hide the note of irritation in his voice. The doctor looked at him intently.

‘I’d like to listen to your lungs again.’

For crying out loud, the nurses had already listened to his lungs. We already know there’s a funny sound in them. Just tell me whether everything’s okay on the bloody scan, he thought. He started to suspect that everything might not be okay after all. That’s why the doctor wanted to examine him again and was asking all these questions: he couldn’t bring himself to tell Esko straight up that he’d had a heart attack, that he was going to need coronary angioplasty, that he didn’t have long left.

The doctor took his stethoscope and listened closely to Esko’s chest and back, at times telling him to take a deep breath, at times asking him to hold his breath.

‘Well,’ he said finally and prised the stethoscope from his ears. ‘The cardiograph doesn’t show anything out of the ordinary. Your heart seems to be fine.’

‘Really?’ Esko gasped. He felt as though he rose a centimetre above his chair.

‘It would certainly show us if you’d had some kind of heart attack. But as for your lungs … I understand you’re a smoker?’

‘I’ve cut back quite a bit,’ said Esko and showed the doctor the chewing gum in his mouth.

‘I’m afraid cutting back won’t help at this point. I recommend that you stop altogether. It seems likely that you are developing a condition called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.’

‘What the hell?’ Esko blurted.

‘Of course, we’ll need to do more tests. You’ll receive notification by post once we’ve scheduled an appointment. But please, stop smoking immediately. COPD is a very serious condition. Here’s some information about it that I’ve printed for you. I can write you a prescription for something to help you stop…’

‘Yes, I’ve already got one of those, thank you very much,’ said Esko and took the bunch of printouts.

When he got out of the hospital he crushed his half-full packet of cigarettes and threw it in the bin. He glanced around the car park but couldn’t see a black SUV or anything else suspicious, and decided to see whether he could find Reza at the other address his mother had provided.

The bar was full. Anna pushed her way through a crush of punters and almost knocked a young woman’s drink over her chest. A few hours later, and that girl would have started a fight, thought Anna. She ordered a bottle of lager. The beer was wonderfully chilled; it tingled in her mouth and had a pleasant bitterness. I needed this, she thought. Being around other people, relaxing, having fun. I’ve buried myself at home and at work, obsessed with skiing on the ice. This weekend I’m not going skiing at all. I’m going to have a two-day hangover, laze around in bed and drink a couple of beers to steady myself through the day. She sent Réka a text message. For once she plucked up the courage – and on a Friday. She left out the bit about being out on the town by herself. Anna looked across the crowds of people. She quickly finished her bottle and ordered another. Today I’m not holding back,
a kurva életbe
.

‘Look who’s here!’

Anna jumped at the voice behind her back and turned to look. ‘Nils! How’s it going?’

‘Not bad. I came straight from work. In fact, technically I’m still at work. I’ve been looking into that cloakroom tag. I suppose I should be getting home.’

‘Don’t go yet. Any news on the tag?’

‘Not yet. I’ve been round about half the bars and restaurants in the city and still haven’t come up with anything. It’s a bit frustrating, especially as the tag could have come from anywhere. It could be from another city.’

‘We’ll find out sooner or later.’

‘By yourself, are you?’ asked Nils and stepped closer to Anna.

‘Yes.’

‘Me too. My wife couldn’t be bothered to join me.’

‘Is your wife Sámi too?’

‘Gosh, Anna. You’re really direct. I like it. The whole Sámi thing is a bit of a taboo, you know. It’s like asking, is your wife a mongoloid too.’

‘Surely not?’ Anna chuckled.

‘Well, maybe not quite, but still. It’s a difficult issue for some people.’

‘I had no idea. Seems some good comes from being an outsider.’

‘You’re not an outsider. You speak Finnish better than me.’

‘Really?’

‘I’m serious. I only started speaking it properly when I joined the police academy.’

‘Wow. Where are you from originally?’

‘Near Inari. A tiny village in the middle of nowhere. Only three huts.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘It’s a village with only three houses. My journey to school was forty-five kilometres each way.’

‘Terrible.’

‘At least I didn’t have to live in a hostel somewhere. Do you want a drink?’ Nils asked and pointed to Anna’s bottle, which again was almost empty.

‘I’ll have another one of these, thanks.’

Nils stood in line at the bar. Someone turned the music up louder. Anna could feel the alcohol making her dizzy. Nils was a full head taller than most other people at the counter, and his back muscles were defined beneath his shirt. One hell of a good-looking guy, thought Anna. And nice with it. Anna gripped the bottle Nils handed her and took a long swig, looking him fixedly in the eyes. Nils looked back at her just as fixedly.

‘Have you got children?’ Anna asked for want of something to say.

‘Yes, a girl. She’s five.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘In the new area of Leppioja.’

‘Oh, doesn’t Rauno live there too?’

‘Yes. Quite nearby, in fact.’

‘Do you know how he’s doing?’

‘The physiotherapy seems to be progressing well. Nina has decided to stay with him for the time being.’

‘Good. That’s great news.’

‘I know. It would have been too much if he’d lost his health and his wife all at once.’

‘Quite.’

‘Of course, financially an arrangement like that can be tough, but Rauno’s got good insurance, so apparently they’ll survive for at least six months.’

Anna couldn’t think of anything else to say. She looked across the crowd again, spotted a few people checking her out and eyed them back for a moment. Tonight I’m going to pull myself a man, she thought and turned back to Nils. He avoided meeting her eyes.

‘It looks like Esko’s back on the booze,’ he said eventually.

‘Hmm. I suppose that makes two of us.’ Anna didn’t want to talk about it.

‘Have you noticed him drunk at work too?’

‘I don’t pay attention to things like that.’

Nils smirked. ‘I thought as much. How are things otherwise?’

‘Not much to tell. Work, mostly.’

‘Do you visit your former homeland often?’

‘I don’t have a former homeland.’

‘Oh, right. What does it feel like that the country where you were born no longer exists?’

‘You get used to it. I don’t think about it very often. The idea of the fatherland never meant much to me anyway. I think I lack the brain receptors to appreciate something like that.’

‘I sometimes feel the same way, though of course Finland is a fatherland of sorts for the Sámi people.’

‘The town, the house and the people who live there are all the same, though the name of the country has changed,’ said Anna.

Well, in some respects, she added to herself. Worry about her grandmother washed over her mind. Ákos had called from the hospital and said that Grandma was very weak.

‘There’s never been a separate Sámi country, so in that respect my situation is even worse than yours,’ said Nils.

They both laughed. Anna looked at Nils. She was interested and she felt a wave of drunken wooziness in her head and legs. It’s incredible that, deep down, this man from the far north is very similar to me, she thought.

‘Listen, I’ve really got to go. My wife will have a fit if I stay out too late.’