The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency: Death in Sunset Grove (19 page)

Anna-Liisa and Siiri sat on the number 3 tram heading towards the handsome apartment blocks of Eira. Siiri tried to tell Anna-Liisa about her experiences in the Group Home, but
her explanations were rather confused. After the shock of her longed-for first visit she had been back to see Irma at least twice a week, sometimes three times.

‘Irma still hasn’t recognized me once. I can’t take her outside and she can’t be taken for walks.’

‘Is she always in a wheelchair? She isn’t paralysed.’

All the patients were kept tied to a bed or a wheelchair, because it made it easier to take care of them. At mealtimes the patients were brought one at a time to the table to eat. They were
offered a couple of spoonfuls of watery mashed potatoes with one nurse feeding twelve patients. And if one of them wasn’t lucid enough to eat them, the nurse concluded that the person
wasn’t hungry and wheeled them back to their room to stare at the wall. When Siiri had tried to feed Irma, they quickly intervened. Feeding was a task for a trained nurse; they couldn’t
let just anyone do it. If Siiri fed Irma, they told her, it would interfere with her rehabilitation process.

‘Rehabilitation process? How dare they!’ Anna-Liisa snapped. ‘Nobody in that dementia ward is trying to rehabilitate anyone. They’re just storing them there until
it’s time to send them to the crematorium.’

Every day there was a different nurse on duty, and always only one, often a refugee who spoke little Finnish. Usually, the nurse just sat in the break room drinking coffee and reading the paper.
Not once had Siiri seen anyone in the Group Home spend any time with the patients.

She’d often read in the paper about retirement homes where they rubbed the old people’s shoulders, manicured their nails, curled their hair, and drank coffee with them out of pretty
cups. The closed unit at Sunset Grove was something quite different. Siiri was the only visitor – but who would want to visit old ladies like these? It just made a person feel guilty. Even
Irma’s daughter Tuula thought that her mother was too out of it to miss her. But could that possibly be true? There was always someone shouting ‘help’ or ‘I need you’,
but the nurses didn’t seem to pay any attention. And they talked about the patients as if they were numbers.

‘Bed seven? She always yells, don’t let it bother you. Her incontinence pad will be changed in the morning.’

Anna-Liisa and Siiri rode through Eira without speaking. Siiri wondered whether they should switch to the number 1A at some point and take it to Käpylä. It was the world’s
northernmost tram route, after all, and she hadn’t ridden it in years. They could admire the old wooden houses. It would almost be like going out to the country. A trip to Käpylä
was all the communing with nature that Siiri needed. She had never been a country girl like Irma, who just last summer had wanted to go to the countryside the way she’d always done and sit on
the porch at the family cabin.

Siiri’s great-granddaughter’s boyfriend Tuukka had called a couple of days earlier. The conversation had been a bit tense because Tuukka claimed that Siiri had had someone in for
expensive repairs. Siiri was completely at a loss. She feared that she had forgotten something important again and didn’t dare to contradict him. She had come to realize that it was better to
keep quiet than to admit to forgetfulness.

‘The Loving Care Foundation billed you for a drain replacement, which cost several hundred euros. Plus you still have the cleaning bill every other week, plus a new service increase since
last October. Do you know what that is?’

Siiri didn’t know. Or didn’t remember. Tuukka was awfully nice and promised to put a little money in her account so that she wouldn’t be in a pickle. Irma once said that
whenever her mother-in-law was low on money she used to say that said she’d ‘run into a pickle’. And when they got into real trouble she would send Irma to the neighbouring farm
to get some potatoes.

Anna-Liisa didn’t seem interested in Tuukka’s phone call and Siiri’s repair bills. She’d been silent for almost the whole trip. But when the tram arrived at the market
square, she grabbed Siiri by the arm and pulled her close. Siiri was surprised at how powerful her grip was; it was just like Siiri’s husband on his death bed, long after Siiri had thought he
had no strength left in him. Anna-Liisa spoke with firm emphasis, as if she were revealing a state secret: ‘We have to go there together. At night.’

Thus commenced their Plan, in honour of which Anna-Liisa invited Siiri to her apartment for the first time. Her rooms had poor light and books everywhere, even on the floor and
windowsills, tall stacks of them all over the place, and a pervasive scent of dust. Siiri hadn’t known that Anna-Liisa still read every day, too. They talked about how much fun it is when
you’re old to reread all the books you liked when you were young.

‘I’m reading Galsworthy’s
Forsyte Saga
for the fourth time now,’ Siiri said excitedly, and sneezed.

‘Yes, I like
Buddenbrooks
better, although I wouldn’t want to read even that four times.’

‘At least I’m getting some use out of the fact that I forget everything!’

Siiri had the key ring that Mika had left with her. She’d kept it carefully in her handbag at all times for the past few weeks so that she wouldn’t leave it somewhere where Erkki
Hiukkanen could find it. She was sure that Mika meant them to spring into action and use it. And now they had realized what it was they ought to do.

First they planned to see what the corridors of Sunset Grove were like at night and map a route from their wing to the door of the Group Home. They would also use their key to get into the Group
Home and investigate what went on there at night. Once they had all the information, they would carry out their Plan. Mika would certainly be proud of them, if he only knew!

‘What if I run into Virpi Hiukkanen at night?’ Siiri said, a bit frightened at the thought.

‘Don’t worry! She thinks you’re senile anyway. If you wonder aloud who you are and where you are, she’ll just order you back to your room. But you won’t give her
the keys, of course, no matter how confused you are.’

‘Do you think I’m senile?’ Siiri asked, but Anna-Liisa ignored the question and asked Siiri if she would like her to read aloud from some old books. Anna-Liisa thought it
sounded fun, and since Siiri’s eyes tired easily, it was an excellent idea. They decided to start this new pastime immediately. Anna-Liisa rummaged through the stacks of books for a moment,
found one on top of the refrigerator, petted it as if it were a cat, put it back where she’d found it, then bent with some difficulty to look under the telephone table and found what she was
looking for. It was Maria Jotuni’s novel
The Tottering House
, which Siiri hadn’t read in decades. Anna-Liisa wandered around for a moment more until she spotted her reading
glasses on the bedside table, settled into an armchair, and turned on the floor lamp. She looked at the lamp angrily.

‘These environmentally friendly light bulbs are so slow to light up!’

Anna-Liisa waited a moment, then opened up
The Tottering House
with a flourish, sniffed the inside of the book, coughed a couple of times, and began to read. Siiri sat quite comfortably
in a corner of the hard sofa next to a pile of books, leaning her head on a musty-smelling cushion. The room was dim, Anna-Liisa’s deep voice flowed out evenly, and the atmosphere was
peculiarly homely, though Lea and Toini’s story began with a tough childhood full of alcohol and death.

‘Siiri, are you asleep?’ Anna-Liisa asked irritably, when she noticed her beginning to doze on the sofa.

Siiri napped much more often these days than she used to – uncontrollably, in fact. Last week she had even fallen asleep on the tram. The familiar driver who listened to Bruckner came to
wake her at the last stop and said she’d already gone around the whole route one and a half times.

‘Have you been listening at all to what happens in this second chapter?’ Anna-Liisa asked, and Siiri had to apologize because she had no idea how far Anna-Liisa had read.
Anna-Liisa’s reading style was quite monotonous and it positively lulled her to sleep.

‘Right. Pearls before swine. We’ll continue reading Jotuni some other time,’ Anna-Liisa said dourly and slammed the book shut, sending a cloud of dust flying into the air. She
put the book and her reading glasses down on the stack nearest her. ‘In other words, enough amusement. Let’s get down to business. What do you think, should we start our nocturnal
exploration this week? I could go first.’

‘That suits me. You’re much braver than I am. If you have your adventure this week, I’ll go at the beginning of next week. Won’t that be a good plan for starting the
Plan?’

‘That’s a more leisurely timetable than I would wish, but let’s just see what I find out. First, I’ll have to acquire the necessary equipment.’

Siiri was beginning to like Anna-Liisa. It wasn’t such a bad stroke of luck that they’d been thrown together to concoct their secret Plan. When you’d lived to be as old as they
were, it was a roll of the dice as to who you would have to get along with in your final years. The people you had in one way or another chosen as friends in the past were dead. In the end, all
that remained were a few people your own age, and you couldn’t be picky about who they were; you just had to get along with them. The group at Sunset Grove – Anna-Liisa, the Hat Lady,
the Ambassador and the Partanens – were a good example of this. They were all very different.

‘Pish,’ Anna-Liisa said. ‘The place is full of new people. We just haven’t met them.’

She was right, of course. Many of the residents had only been there a short time, and they hadn’t had a chance to get to know them. People arrived at Sunset Grove in worse condition these
days than they used to, even though the new residents were much younger than they were. Anna-Liisa thought it was due to politics.

‘Home care is in style now because it’s cheaper than lying in a retirement home. If an old person agrees to stay at home alone, the state will order all kinds of services for them.
Even hairdressers and handymen, and someone to walk you around the block, which is something we don’t have here. People only come to the retirement home when there’s no other
option.’

Anna-Liisa got worked up into a lecture about the care ratio, which was a new expression and, in her opinion, the worst possible kind. Before she could move on to the problems of language
development and the ethics of neologisms, Siiri went back to the subject of the care ratio, because she knew that it didn’t mean what it sounded like. A good care ratio didn’t mean good
care; it meant that there were fewer old people to be a drain on society. She and Irma had read in the paper that the worst possible care ratio was in Japan, because the population was ageing even
faster than in Finland. Irma hadn’t been able to understand how they could age any faster than anyone else.

That made Anna-Liisa laugh.

‘My Lord, we really must get Irma back. We might soon forget how to laugh without her.’

And that was exactly what they planned to do. Once each of them had performed her reconnaissance mission and they had a sufficient grasp of Sunset Grove at night, they were going to steal Irma
back. They were going to rescue her!

‘It’s quieter than a graveyard here at night,’ Anna-Liisa said as they drank their midday coffee at Siiri’s apartment.

Siiri hadn’t slept at all; she’d been so frightened for Anna-Liisa. But the expedition had gone well, and neither of them felt tired, because now the Plan was really in motion.

‘There’s no one in the office. The only light is in the closed unit, but it looked to me like the nurse was asleep.’

Anna-Liisa had made a careful drawing, noting all the surveillance cameras between A wing and the Group Home, and there were a lot of them. She told Siiri to take the proper equipment with her
on her own expedition; at the very least she must have a torch and a knife, and preferably a backpack as well.

‘I always carry a knife in my handbag,’ Anna-Liisa said, but Siiri couldn’t understand why she would need a knife in the middle of the night. And Siiri didn’t have
one.

‘Will a kitchen knife do? Of course, it’s not terribly sharp any more. And I don’t have a backpack; I’m not a Girl Scout.’

‘You can take my knife.’

‘But then you won’t have it in your handbag. Will you be able to sleep without it?’ Siiri asked, ribbing her a little, and Anna-Liisa smiled.

Then Anna-Liisa immediately pulled a knife with a knotted birch handle out of her handbag and laid it ceremoniously on the table, as if it were Marshall Mannerheim’s personal weapon. The
knife was old and worn, but dangerously sharp, and it didn’t have a sheath. No doubt it had a long and interesting history, but Siiri didn’t dare ask about it. It seemed a very serious
matter to Anna-Liisa, who at that moment was absorbed in the Plan and the notes she’d taken, bent over the pages with her glasses perched on her nose.

‘The last hallway from the lobby to the door of the Group Home isn’t as long as I’d thought. I did it in seventy-three steps. And it’s just thirty-one steps from
Sundström’s office to the card table – I measured that, too, while I was at it. Thirty-one steps isn’t much. It’s a little worrying, because it is within
earshot.’ Anna-Liisa lifted her gaze from the papers, put her glasses down on top of them, and straightened her back until she looked majestically tall. ‘What do you think, how quickly
can Irma wake up if we don’t give her any medication? Have you checked whether everything’s in order in her apartment?’

Siiri hadn’t been to Irma’s apartment since Mika Korhonen had cleaned it. She thought it better to proceed one step at a time. Besides, something about the whole thing troubled her.
She couldn’t understand why Irma’s apartment had been ransacked like that. It was a nasty thought that she’d tried to get out of her mind. Who had been there, and why?

‘It could have been any one of the staff,’ said Anna-Liisa, as if the matter had been settled by a police investigation. ‘They were looking for evidence to keep Irma in the
dementia ward.’