The Defenceless (22 page)

‘Okay,’ said Anna, trying to hide her disappointment.

‘See you on Monday.’

‘See you. Say hi to your wife.’

To her surprise, Nils touched Anna’s cheek. His hand was warm and rough.

‘I will. You behave now,’ he said, winked at her and left.

Anna downed the rest of her beer and glanced at the people around her. Everyone seemed focussed on their drinks and their own conversations. Anna suddenly felt herself shut out. The music had been turned up again, the yell of conversation blared above it.
Her ears ached from the cacophony. Anna decided to change bars. I’ll find a place where single, horny men are out looking for prey, a place where desperate women swing their hips on the dance floor for the gratification of the hunters – and I’m going to pick up the most handsome of the lot, she decided. The beer fizzed inside her and warmed her. Though Anna never danced, the early-evening tipsiness sped up her decision to go to the hottest nightclub in town. She lit a cigarette as she stepped out into the frosted street.

There wasn’t yet a queue at the cloakroom of the Dorian Nightclub, or at the bar. As she left her coat in the cloakroom, Anna noticed that the tags were black and that they bore the word KARHU. Good, I’m not on duty this evening, she thought. This is my free time. She bought a beer. Was this her fourth or fifth? She instantly checked herself, relieved and almost defiant: I wasn’t supposed to count tonight. The nightclub’s tables were hidden in booths, lascivious-looking velvet curtains draped above them. Golden beams of light circled the dance floor and the monotonous disco music was at a bearable volume. Propping up the bar were men, and girls in mini-skirts drinking brightly coloured drinks through a straw. A steady flow of revellers poured inside. Nobody wanted to be caught up in the queue that would shortly form outside the front door.

Anna wandered around the labyrinthine bar. Each corridor seemed to open out into another dance floor, new bar counters, new men with interest in their eyes. What an awful place, she thought, before correcting herself. This was a one off, she resolved and fetched another beer. In a dim corner of the final room she saw a roulette table. A young man dressed in a tuxedo was deftly handing out playing chips to people standing around the table. The roulette wheel spun into action. The players, three men and one woman, held their breath, trying to look uninterested. The ball came to a halt on one of the numbers. The players’ shoulders slumped a fraction. The croupier handed out new chips. The players’ muscles tensed again. Anna stood watching the game. There was something magic about the moment. The dimmed lights, the concentrated bodies standing
like statues around the table covered in green fabric, the whirr of the table as it spun towards the jackpot – or perhaps not. One of the players turned round. Anna recognised the face. The man’s expression flickered for a fraction of a second, like a child caught doing something naughty. Then he said something to the croupier, handed him the remaining chips and left without looking at Anna.

ANNA AWOKE
in a set of unfamiliar sheets. Her mouth was dry and her head ached. She felt sick. Where am I, she wondered and sensed movement beside her. The room was dim, the venetian blinds were firmly shut, and the sheets smelt of someone strange. Another movement beside her. A burning sensation on her skin.
A francba
, I can’t remember anything, she thought and quickly pushed the man away from her, got up and looked for the bathroom. The apartment was large, clean and decorated with masculine simplicity. This shag certainly didn’t have money problems, she thought as she rinsed her face in the stylish designer sink. The bright bathroom tiles gleamed, the walk-in shower was like something from a luxury spa, the boards in the sauna that she could just make out behind a glass door were probably not your average abachi wood. Anna thought of her own bathroom, the pallid blue plastic flooring, the shower with the white hose and only two settings: on and off. She hadn’t even bothered buying matching bath towels. The ones she had at the moment probably dated back to her days as a student; they were threadbare and the fabric hangers had snapped long ago. When was the last time I bought anything new for my apartment, she wondered. Something beautiful? She looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were red and bleary, and the bags sagging beneath them didn’t make matters any better. She felt dizzy.

Meanwhile the unknown man had got up and started making some coffee – naked. Anna looked at his muscular, gym-toned body, which seemed to stand in contrast to his greying hair. How old is this guy, she wondered, and who is he? The man asked whether she took milk or sugar, whether she’d like a sandwich. Anna nodded.
She wanted everything. When the man went into the bathroom, Anna quickly rifled through the pile of post on the kitchen counter. Markku Leinonen. The address was downtown. At least it’s easy to get home from here, she thought, relieved. I won’t have to call a cab. Where on earth did I pick this guy up? Or did he pick me up? Anna tried to think back to the events of the previous evening. She remembered standing by the roulette table, buying some playing chips, fetching a glass of rum … and that’s when everything got hazy. When would she learn not to touch hard liquor – at least not when she couldn’t count how many beers she’d drunk? She thanked her lucky stars that she hadn’t been raped or beaten up or worse, but
a picsába
– I really can’t remember a thing.

The man strode out of the bathroom with a smile, still naked.

‘That was quite a game we played last night,’ he said with a sparkle in his eye.

‘Well, yes…’ Anna replied. ‘Could you remind me exactly what kind of game it was?’

‘Hah, has our police officer forgotten already?’

‘Yes, and it’s not amusing.’

‘Sorry. I hope you don’t normally drink that much.’

Anna’s stomach ached. She tried to hold back the grimace spreading across her face.

‘Only on my nights off, a few times a week,’ she replied sourly.

For a moment the man looked at her, puzzled, then laughed. ‘There’s something fascinating about you. It must be your sense of humour.’

‘That’s nice. Well, are you going to tell me?’

‘Tell you what?’

‘How we ended up here, for a start? Who are you? What have we done? That kind of thing.’

‘You really can’t remember? We met at the roulette table. You won quite a bit of money and said you’d treat me for the rest of the evening. I’ve never heard a pick-up line like that before. You really made an impression.’

‘Aha. And what happened then?’

The man took a step closer to Anna, looked at her intently and gave her a meaningful smile. ‘And you really did treat me.’

‘I have to go to the bathroom. I feel sick.’

Anna went into the bedroom, gathered her clothes from the floor, couldn’t find her underwear – had the man added them to a sick collection of trophies? – got dressed quickly and came back into the kitchen.

‘I’m going home. My husband’s probably wondering where I’ve got to. He gets pretty jealous.’

‘But you told me you were single.’

‘Well, people say all sorts of things when they’re drunk. And I’m not really a police officer.’

‘What are you then?’

The man seemed suddenly adrift in his own kitchen, lost without a map.

‘A nursery-school teacher.’

‘The way you asked about the other roulette players, I was sure you were a cop.’

‘I was just having you on,’ she said calmly, though she felt a wave of disquiet: what the hell have I been telling this guy?

‘But why?’

‘The same old story. My husband cheated on me, so I took revenge. But nice to hear you had some fun.’

Anna turned and stepped into the hallway, twisted the lock on the front door. A click echoed round the stairwell. A sense of panic tingled in the balls of her feet. Someone was breathing down her neck, inside her head. A two-headed eagle, a girl raped, left for dead. The river.
A kurva anyád
, will this never end? Anna noticed her legs were trembling uncontrollably.

‘Anna, don’t go yet.’

‘My name’s Mirva. Just forget the whole thing, okay?’

Anna ran down the stairs and out of the building, and though she could still taste the previous night in her mouth, she lit a cigarette.
It didn’t make her feel any better. She smoked the cigarette, trying to calm herself down, and checked the time on her mobile. It was ten o’clock. I haven’t slept much, she thought and walked off in search of a bar that had already opened for the day.

‘
ANNA AND ESKO
, in my office,’ said Virkkunen from the staffroom door. Anna had just poured herself a cup of coffee. Esko was reading the morning papers with a sulky expression on his face. Anna wanted to ask what was wrong with him. Esko had been strange and distant these last few days. Anna guessed it had something to do with the suspicion of an underlying illness, which she had only heard from Sari; Esko never told anybody anything about his health or well-being. But there was something else going on too. Esko seemed somehow troubled.

Anna took her coffee with her and followed Virkkunen into his office, trying to avoid the eyes of his pretty wife staring at her from the desk.

‘I’ve just got off the phone with the finance division,’ Virkkunen began.

‘Yes?’

‘They’ve been investigating a case of large-scale illegal construction, and it turns out our beloved Hell’s Angels are somehow involved. Everything about it is dodgy: receipt fraud, money-laundering, you name it.’

‘And what’s this got to do with us?’ Esko grumbled.

‘Kari Haapsaari, that’s the caretaker from the house in Leppioja, is suspected of being behind the receipt fraud. The house underwent an extensive pipe and window refit a few years ago.’

‘Damn.’

‘I’ve met him,’ said Anna. ‘Slimy bastard.’

‘Of course, this might have nothing to do with recent events in the house, but alarm bells have started ringing. At the very least we’ll
have to bring this Haapsaari in for a good grilling. We’re not all that interested in the receipt fraud, the guys from finance will take care of that, but I wondered whether Vilho and Riitta might have found out something they shouldn’t.’

‘The caretaker told me that Vilho had complained about noises from the pipes after the renovations,’ explained Anna.

‘Maybe he had other things to get off his chest too,’ suggested Virkkunen.

‘Sounds a bit far-fetched,’ said Esko. ‘How would ordinary residents find out something like that?’

‘I don’t know. But that’s what you two are going to find out,’ said Virkkunen.

Heikki Hiltunen was driving a large rubbish truck towards the tip at Mustikkamäki, or the refuse reprocessing centre as it was called these days. He steered the truck, full of stinking household rubbish and the packaging materials of a hysterically consumerist society, past the compost bins and the incinerators burning rubbish for energy, and towards the landfill site, the rush of Green Day blaring through his headphones at full volume. He didn’t spare a thought for how sick the landscape looked. JCBs wobbled on top of mountains of rubbish, slowly compressing it into a smaller heap to make room for even
more
rubbish. He didn’t once think why there was so much of it, because he had been born in an age when amassing all kinds of needless junk was seen as an unavoidable, even aspirational part of life.

Heikki enjoyed his early shifts; they meant he could get home early and take his car for a spin. He’d just bought his first car, an old Toyota in pretty good condition, with money he’d earned and saved. He was so proud of it. The old Toyota didn’t exactly turn the girls’ heads, but it was far more impressive than a bicycle. He’d even picked up in it once. Kaisa. Heikki remembered Kaisa, her chubby thighs and soft tummy. He reversed the truck towards the mountain of trash.
I’m coming home
, Green Day yelled in his ears. One press
of the button and the back of the truck began to rise up. Kaisa was a sweet girl. Heikki tried to behave like an experienced Casanova with women, but he wasn’t really up to it. The reality was that Kaisa had taken his virginity. Not on the backseat of the Toyota, but in Heikki’s shabby, rented bachelor pad. That was the ride of my life, Heikki thought with a smirk. Her thighs, her stomach, her arms … I could call Kaisa after work.

What the hell’s that? He took a closer look in the rear-view mirror. Something strange had tipped from the truck amongst the bin-liners and plastic bags. A leg. A thigh.

Heikki jumped out of the cabin and ran through the stinking air towards the foot of the tip. Yes. A leg jutted out of the mountain of trash. Not a chubby, soft leg like Kaisa’s but a white one with varicose veins. Heikki’s primal scream rang out over the whirr of the truck’s engine and across the tip.

Anna went into Esko’s office. She needed a cigarette. She’d received another email from Béci, and the craving for nicotine hit her again. That’s what partying at the weekend does to you.
A francba
, everything falls to pieces the minute you loosen your grip. She’d deleted the message without replying. But Béci was certainly persistent. He’d been nice and relatively good in bed, but Anna had her reasons for not responding to him. The idea of a Hungarian man, and especially one from Kanizsa, seemed quite tempting, at least in theory, but in practice, in reality, it was something altogether different. It was a culture that reared boys into a world in which women could never become their equals. And if by some fluke they did, the men simply took off. In that culture, a woman’s role was to cook, serve drinks, clean and entertain; she had to be pretty but sufficiently in the background, funny but not too intelligent. The man was the one who shone, the one with freedom, who did as he pleased, the one that people doted upon, looked after and admired. There wouldn’t be anything wrong with it if the same was possible for women, but it wasn’t. That, in a nutshell, was the Balkan male mentality that
Béci had been talking about, though he’d probably meant something rather different. Anna could never put up with a relationship like that. Still, so many Finnish men seemed far too nice and soft in comparison. Nothing’s ever good enough for me, she thought.

‘I haven’t got any,’ said Esko. Anna was surprised but didn’t have time to comment before Esko continued. ‘They’ve found a body in Mustikkamäki. That’s means more overtime for us.’

‘You won’t have any time to go out on the piss,’ said Anna.

‘Look who’s talking,’ Esko retorted.

‘Who is it?’

‘Some woman.’

‘
Bassza meg
. Do we have to go straight away?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where can I get a cigarette before we leave?’

‘Ask Peltola on the second floor. You should probably cut back too.’

Anna smirked, stuck her tongue out at Esko and told him to meet her in the car depot in ten minutes.

What must this place smell like in the summer heat, thought Anna as she tried to hold her breath. Esko parked the car outside the modern-looking refuse reprocessing centre, behind which the mountains of rubbish seemed to extend as far as the eye could see. The area was surrounded by a tall fence with electric barbed wire twisting around the upper edge. Rummaging and scavenging were forbidden here; what has been thrown away must stay thrown away. If you want something, you buy it, preferably something plastic wrapped in two layers of polythene packaging, so that there’s something to leave behind. This was the fingerprint of modern man; it was the future of our city and our planet, thought Anna. Rubbish that will never go away. In the warm spring air, the stench of the thawing tip was nauseating.

The site manager, Samuli Kenttälä, led Anna and Esko past the ridges of trash to a valley where a solitary rubbish truck stood with its tipper raised into the air.

‘That’s where we found her,’ Kenttälä explained and pointed towards the bottom of the ridge. A panicked young man stood beside the vehicle.

Anna saw the leg. It jutted grotesquely from amid the trash. She and Esko stepped closer. They carefully began moving strips of plastic to one side, juice cartons, yoghurt tubs and other rubbish from around the leg. Beneath the rubbish they unearthed a large, black bin-liner tied securely with a tight knot. The lower edge of the bag was torn, and the leg protruded from the hole.

‘Let’s wait for forensics and the coroner,’ said Esko and turned to talk to the young driver.

What do you know – he’s not lighting up, Anna noted.

‘Where did you pick up this load?’

‘Mostly around Mellunniemi. That’s where I was on my round. Some of it’s from Vesala.’

‘Have you any idea where you picked up that bin-bag?’

‘No. I don’t much look at what comes tumbling out of folk’s bins. Only if there’s something wrong, mind, if the mechanism gets stuck or something.’

‘Did anything get stuck this morning?’

‘No. Everything was working normally.’

‘Still, that bag is so big that I doubt it came from your average-sized bin,’ said Anna.

‘I couldn’t say,’ said Heikki. ‘Vesala is mostly all detached houses, and the bins are pretty small. But there are terraced houses in Mellunniemi; they have bigger bins.’

‘I want you to think through your route this morning and try and imagine where there’s a bin big enough to hold that bag.’

‘I could go through the log on the satnav. That has all the addresses and other information.’

‘Do that,’ said Esko.

Three cars arrived. The forensics team and Linnea Markkula. Anna and Esko explained what they already knew about the situation and the investigators got to work. First they cordoned off the
area; even the rubbish truck remained behind police tape. Then they painstakingly photographed the scene. Once this was done, they carefully opened up the bin-liner. A deathly white face spattered in bloodstains stared back at them. The mouth was frozen in a terrified grimace and there was a gaping wound on the neck; the victim’s throat had been slit. Everything was covered in dried blood.

‘It’s Riitta Vehviläinen,’ Anna told Esko.

‘The dead junkie’s neighbour?’

‘Yep. The dead Vilho Karppinen’s neighbour too.’

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘Your repertoire of swear words has softened lately.’

‘Go screw yourself.’

‘Esko, not in public.’

‘Vehviläinen didn’t live anywhere near where this trash was picked up,’ said Esko.

‘No, she lived the other side of town.’

‘Could she have been killed where the teenagers found that knife? Out in Ketoniemi?’

Anna was frustrated that she hadn’t thought of this immediately. But Esko was surely right. Riitta’s throat had been cut with a sharp instrument. In Ketoniemi they had found a knife and lots of human blood. It couldn’t be mere coincidence.

‘It’s very likely. And there were signs that somebody had dragged a heavy bag through the snow too.’

‘But the rubbish truck didn’t drive through Ketoniemi either.’

‘No, but it’s easy enough to move a body in a car. There were tyre tracks from an SUV in the forest.’

Esko hesitated a moment. ‘I think I’m being followed by an SUV.’

‘What? Why didn’t you say something?’

‘I’m not a hundred per cent sure. Besides, it’s not that important.’

‘Yes, it is. It’s very important, and frightening.’

‘You visited Riitta’s apartment.’ Esko changed the subject. ‘Were there any signs of a struggle?’

‘Nothing. The rugs were neatly placed; the chairs were all upright.’

‘She must have been lured out of the apartment, then killed and dumped in the rubbish bin.’

‘It’s cold-blooded.’

‘Perhaps Vehviläinen did her own spying through the peephole. The gang kids might have noticed and decided to shut up a potential witness once and for all,’ said Esko. ‘She must have seen someone really important, one of the Cobras or the Angels. These guys are capable of just this kind of brutality.’

‘You might be right,’ said Anna.

‘She must have seen Reza,’ said Esko with a glint in his eye.