The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency: Death in Sunset Grove (34 page)

‘How exciting. Will I have to come and testify?’

Luckily, they didn’t need to decide that now. Mika could represent Siiri because she was so terribly old, and he was her advocate. But it would be a long time before the hearing. The
official at the police station told them all this as if he was afraid Siiri might drop dead before the case made it to court.

‘Is that what you’re afraid of? That I’ll die? But I’m never going to die. They said so in the newspaper.’

‘In that case, there’s nothing to worry about,’ said the official. ‘But I thought it would be best if you knew our normal schedule for hearings.’

Siiri had no interest in discussing the matter further, and the official promised to discuss the case with Mika. Getting Irma home from the hospital was the important thing. Anna-Liisa spent
every day with the Ambassador, flitting around who knew where. They didn’t feel like playing cards any more, which was odd, since it had once been the Ambassador’s one and only passion.
The last time she’d seen the two lovebirds had been in passing, in the lobby at Sunset Grove, on their way to the antiques fair.

‘And in June we’re going to Stockholm to see the Passion exhibit at the national museum. Won’t that be fun?’

Siiri had asked a bit too sourly whether their trip to Stockholm was also a war veteran’s affair, although she didn’t actually want to cross a sea to look at erotic pictures herself,
whether the government paid for it or not. She had read a lot of books, listened to music, and played solitaire, and all of it was pleasant, but sometimes she needed someone to talk to and someone
with whom she could do all the fun things that Irma always used to think up. She’d lost weight, too, because she didn’t feel like warming up a liver casserole or blood pancakes just for
herself, so she just had a sandwich, or a banana, and not much else.

She wasn’t interested in getting to know the new residents at Sunset Grove. They mostly kept to themselves, like her new neighbour, Mrs Vuorinen, who must have been in severe pain because
she yelled loudly every night, louder even than Margit Partanen on a good night. Eino Partanen was in such bad shape that Margit was exhausted with taking care of him and prayed every night for him
to die. She had even calculated what it would cost to move to Switzerland and give him a euthanasia pill, but apparently it was so expensive that they couldn’t afford it.

This late spring had been the loneliest in Siiri’s life; in fact, the first one in which she’d ever suffered from feeling lonely. To be alone wasn’t a bad
thing in itself, but this was something else, a desolate, oppressive feeling, and it made her feel so weak sometimes that she had to force herself to get out of bed in the morning. Sometimes it
took her two hours before she was dressed and on her feet, she’d got so stiff and sluggish.

On the way home from the police station, Siiri thought of a fun game. She suggested that they only get off the tram at stops shared by at least two routes.

‘And then we always have to take the first tram that comes along. It will make the trip an adventure!’

Mika was a little doubtful of the idea. They might end up going around and around without ever getting anywhere. But Siiri informed him very authoritatively that there was no tram that
didn’t cross paths with another.

‘We can get to Mannerheimintie, you can be sure of that. Let’s get off here!’

They switched from the number 7 to the number 9 at the Bell Bridge stop, then to the number 6 in Sörnäinen, and the number 1 at Hakaniemi market. Siiri thought her new game was
brilliant.

‘You may not know it, but every tram route has its own feeling. The seven is unpredictable, the eight is melancholy. The number four is safe, so it’s kind of boring. The number three
is my favourite: it’s quick and cheery. But, hmm, this number one is one I’m a bit unfamiliar with. Don’t you think it’s a little antique-looking?’

‘You’re brave,’ Mika said abruptly. Siiri didn’t understand. Was he talking about the tram adventure? But then he started talking about the fire and her sentence. He
wouldn’t have thought Siiri had it in her to fight for her rights, because her position wasn’t a terribly strong one. And there was always the possibility that her sentence could be
changed to an even more severe punishment.

‘But I have nothing to lose,’ Siiri said airily. She wanted to know something about Mika, too, for once. ‘You don’t talk much about yourself.’

Mika sat silent and looked out of the window.

‘I really don’t know anything about you.’

Mika squirmed in his seat and Siiri saw the outpatient laboratory orator get on the tram through the middle door.

‘I’ve been thinking that—’ Mika began, but then the lab assistant started her presentation on styrofoam boxes, livers and kidneys, Kai Korte and Paavo Lipponen, and
finished up with the itching feet. Mika laughed when she said everything just as Siiri had predicted, but Siiri was tired of this tram artist. They switched from the number 1 to the number 3 at
Senate Square.

‘Were you going to say something?’ Siiri asked as the tram turned onto Urho Kekkonen. The driver took curves at such high speed that Siiri had to hold on to Mika’s arm.

‘This is like the rollercoaster at Linnanmäki!’ she shouted, and Mika smiled. ‘Are you starting to like the tram?’

‘Yep.’

Nothing would make Mika say what he had been about to say. Siiri lightened the mood by telling him about the composer Ilmari Krohn, who went out every day in the winter for a ski on the rocks at
Temppeliaukio, where the church was now, and Yrjö Kilpinen, who walked across the school playground at the Girls’ Normal School every day in his dressing gown for a morning swim at
Hietaniemi, always when the girls from the school were on their break, of course.

‘He swam naked, you see. You probably don’t know who Yrjö Kilpinen is, do you? Or Ilmari Krohn? The Normal School doesn’t exist any more, but the building is still there;
it was designed by Onni Tarjanne, the same architect who designed the National Theatre. You must know the National Theatre? If you ask me, it’s an ugly building, but the old girls’
school is beautiful and well-proportioned.’

Siiri looked at Mika, her big, handsome angel, who didn’t quite fit in a tram seat.

‘Hey, at the Tram Museum Cafe you said that I have a big heart and that you’ve been hardened by life. What did you mean by that? You’re still a young man!’

And then, finally, Mika started talking. He told her how he’d messed up in school, drank and got into fights, got put in observation class and learned to be tough. Mika’s father was
some big executive who’d cheated on his mother and then taken off, and his mother hadn’t really been able to look after him. The first thing he ever got really interested in was
motorcycles. That was what actually gave him a real grip on life, getting into the motorcycle club and going to cooking school. But he’d always found it hard to trust people, except for Tero,
who’d been almost like a little brother to him.

He said all this very matter-of-factly, almost harshly, and didn’t paw at the air with his hands at all.

‘So it’s cool when someone comes along who doesn’t ask any questions. Just takes you as you are.’

‘Like me?’

‘Yep.’

Mika said he’d been wondering why Siiri trusted him, when no one else ever had. She’d even made him her advocate, although he was, in fact, a criminal. Siiri thought about what Virpi
Hiukkanen had been croaking about in her apartment, looking like an iguana, but she didn’t say anything about it, as she didn’t want to hurt Mika’s feelings.

‘I just trust my instincts. That’s what I’ve always done with people,’ Siiri said. ‘And I mean real instincts, not those odd instincts that Irma talks about. I
don’t think life has hardened you, even though life has treated you unfairly. You’re the only person who’s offered to help me and Irma. We both would have been in the dementia
ward if it hadn’t been for you, except that I would have been in prison. Do they have a dementia ward there, too?’

‘If you go to jail, I’ll tell my mates. They’ll take care of you there.’

They both laughed and got off the tram at the ice arena. Mika said he was leaving now; he had somewhere to go.

‘But before you go, can I ask you one more thing?’

The sun shone in Mika’s eyes, which glowed with blueness, although he was forced to squint in the dazzle. ‘Ask away.’

‘I was wondering . . . do you have a cat?’

Mika burst out laughing, a joyful belly laugh. Siiri thought he was more of a cat person than a dog person, and she wanted to know if she was right. If she could still trust her instincts.

‘I don’t have a cat or a dog.’

‘But would you think you’d be more likely to get a cat or a dog?’

‘A cat, of course,’ Mika answered, and smiled.

He waved to her and strode off towards the ice arena, his backpack on his back. Siiri watched him as he walked away, until she realised she must look stupid standing there smiling to herself in
the middle of town, and headed for the stop on Mannerheimintie. The number 4 arrived quickly, as always, and Siiri got on, calm and contented, until she got to the Aura building and remembered
Irma. A homeless hip-replacement patient in a trauma therapy ward, abandoned by her darlings, still waiting to learn if she’d passed her homecoming test.

A sign was taped to the wall of the A-wing lift at Sunset Grove announcing that Head Nurse Virpi Hiukkanen was temporarily on sick leave. This provoked endless chatter at the
cafeteria, card table and memory group. Everyone had their own theory about Virpi’s illness. Many believed that her altruistic self-sacrifice to improve the lives of the elderly had finally
taken its toll, but there were others who said she was suffering from an aggressively malignant form of breast cancer. Only Siiri Kettunen knew that Virpi Hiukkanen had had a nervous breakdown.

‘Because of you,’ Irma said happily as they talked at Kivelä Hospital.

Anna-Liisa had come to visit, too, since the Ambassador was out on some secret errand in town, and she gave a full report of the rumour mill that Virpi’s sick leave had set in motion.

‘But I didn’t tell anyone about your part in events, Siiri.’

Irma was once again in excellent spirits. The task of boiling water in the therapeutic test kitchen had gone well, and an odd instinct had even reminded her to turn off the stove afterwards.
Siiri’s and Irma’s husbands would never have passed such a test, even at the height of their powers, and they wondered whether the test was the same for men and women. After all, you
couldn’t expect too much in the kitchen from men their age.

‘My darlings think that I can’t get along on my own any more. Or that, even if I can now, I won’t be able to for long, so it would be best to get me into storage in some
institution ahead of time, preferably a proper nursing home so that this waiting for the crematorium won’t be so expensive. They haven’t made it here for a meeting because they’re
busy at work, so they had to fill out a close-family distance questionnaire.’

‘You made that name up,’ Anna-Liisa said.

But it really was called a close-family distance questionnaire. It was an online questionnaire given to close relatives of a patient when they had to take care of their horses and couldn’t
come to the hospital.

‘Ah. I see. The term suits your family remarkably well.’

The report from Irma’s homecoming team was crucial to the apartment question. If Irma had got a bad score – in other words, the highest possible number of points – she would
have been thrown into an institution for memory-loss patients, which was what her children wanted, because then the city would pay for it. But since she’d got a clean bill of health, her
problem was that she had no place to live.

‘So which is worse?’ Irma asked. She didn’t want to go to a nursing home or a dementia ward, and surely Finland wasn’t a country where a ninety-two-year-old veteran of
the Lottas was thrown onto the street to beg.

‘Watch out – you might very well find me in front of Low Price Market in my Lotta uniform next to that handsome gypsy accordionist singing “Oh, My Darling Augustine” with
a coffee cup at my feet. I still have my old uniform in the wardrobe, and maybe I can fit into it again after my hospital tour. Oh, that’s right. I don’t have it. No doubt my darlings
took it to the flea market. Would anybody buy such a thing, when they probably don’t even know what it is?’

‘I’ve been thinking,’ Anna-Liisa began dramatically, interrupting Irma’s train of thought.

‘What about?’ Irma asked.

‘I’ve been thinking that if I moved into Onni’s apartment – he has three rooms and a kitchen in C wing, after all – then you could have my apartment.’

It was a stupendous idea. They had to let it sink in for a moment before they fully appreciated what a wonderful idea it was.

‘Does the Ambassador – I mean does your Onni – know about this scheme?’ Siiri asked.

Anna-Liisa said with great satisfaction that it had been Onni’s idea, but there were still some kinks to iron out. Then she changed the subject to the weather, because she was sweltering
in the heat, just as they all were. It was well into summer and the hot weather was difficult for old people. It was even hotter inside than outside, and they couldn’t find anything suitable
to wear, because a ninety-four-year-old woman can’t walk around in a sun dress with her arms bare. A lot of old people died of the heat, and Siiri’d had to remind herself to drink
enough water. It would be embarrassing to dry up and die of dehydration in this land of thousands of lakes.

‘What would be the best way to die?’ Irma asked.

‘From a heart attack, of course,’ Anna-Liisa said, and Irma told them about her cousin who had had a heart attack right after she had taken a shower, rubbed herself down with lotion,
and settled into bed to read Finland Illustrated magazine and listen to Bach’s Goldberg Variations. That’s how her children found her – freshly washed.

‘But it’s too late for us to think about it,’ she continued. ‘We should have died before everybody else wished we had. Before they started emptying out our homes and
distributing our belongings to the poor.’