The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency: Death in Sunset Grove (6 page)

The woman sitting next to Siiri got out her phone and started shouting into it to drown out the story of rats and organ transplants.

‘Are you going to start the potatoes?’ she said, without announcing herself or asking who she was speaking to, as was the custom now. She apparently meant put the potatoes on to
cook. Her husband – or maybe it was her child – had started the potatoes. The food would be on the table when she got home. Siiri’s husband had never cooked. He hadn’t known
how. He was lucky if he could get the skin off his own potato once it was cooked.

The woman from the laboratory hallway had moved on to a new subject. ‘Once, when I was talking on the tram, a man got on who looked like Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen. He lived in
Töölö. I had been to the door of his building and the trams don’t go there because people in Töölö are so fancy that they live in a closed society and
nobody’s allowed to see their lives from the window of a tram. I also know which building Kai Korte lives in. Nobody remembers who Kai Korte is any more, but he was the Finnish Chancellor of
Justice until 1986, and there are now almost a million people who have this device inside them, which I have, too. They install them in people and they cause inflammation of the soles of your
feet.’

The other passengers exchanged glances, some moved further away from the lunatic, some spoke louder into their phones, and a schoolgirl with multiple piercings sitting across from Siiri started
to giggle nervously. Siiri wished she could relax and enjoy the beautiful buildings and the sounds of the children. In fact, the incident at the card table the previous week was still playing on
her mind. No one had seen Reino or Olavi Raudanheimo since Reino had been sent to the Group Home to calm down.

‘He’s probably been drugged into dementia and sent to the closed unit permanently,’ Irma had said that morning when she’d come to Siiri’s apartment for coffee
before the book-club meeting.

They had both heard horror stories about old people being drugged into unconsciousness. People who had seemed deeply senile might be completely in their right minds once their medication was
stopped. Old people who’d forgotten their own names would suddenly recognize everyone in their family, and even their neighbour’s relatives. They couldn’t comprehend how such a
thing could happen. What good would it do anyone to drug an old person senseless? It certainly was no way to save money. It would be cheaper for them just to die and get it over with.

The confused woman on the tram was shouting even louder now, working herself into a kind of frenzy. The driver glanced at her nervously in the rear-view mirror, but he couldn’t do anything
because he had to keep driving.

‘I can tell you that Kai Korte was a good man, but even he, among all those piggy banks and brokerages, couldn’t do anything about the bacteria from the laboratories and the infected
feet. It may be that the doctors were eating the rats. They eat rats in China and they have better medicine than we do! They used styrofoam boxes to transfer the rats – and I saw
everything!’

Siiri escaped from the tram at the railway station, along with many other passengers. She pitied the driver, who had to continue his route with the woman on board. She looked at the railway
station and the City Centre building with its sausage-shaped concrete awnings, two of Helsinki’s ugliest structures, and wondered why Eliel Saarinen and Viljo Revell had designed both ugly
and beautiful buildings – Revell, the Sausage Building and the Glass Palace; Saarinen, the railway station and the Marble Palace at Kaivopuisto. And why did Helsinki call such little
buildings palaces?

It had been a long time since Siiri and Irma had been in C wing, so they got lost for a while before they found Olavi Raudanheimo’s door on the second floor. It
wasn’t customary at Sunset Grove to go ringing somebody’s doorbell unannounced. You weren’t supposed to disturb people. You don’t do it in a real apartment block and this
wasn’t a commune. You could meet the people you knew, and those you didn’t, downstairs in the common rooms. In addition to the card players, there was a magazine-reading group and a
gigantic television in the lobby. It was constantly on, showing singing competitions and cooking shows, and a couple of deaf old grannies were always shoved in front of it to be entertained.

Olavi Raudanheimo didn’t answer his doorbell. But they thought they could hear noises in his apartment. There was definitely someone in there. Irma tried to shout through the keyhole,
although there was no keyhole, just a big, chunky lock. They doubted Olavi could hear her. Reino had once told them that a grenade exploded right next to Olavi during the war and he could never
hear properly after that.

‘Mr Raudanheimo! Mr Raudanheimo!’ Irma shouted in a high-pitched voice like a ninety-two-year-old who had taken singing lessons in her youth. ‘It’s Mrs Kettunen and Mrs
Lännenleimu from A wing! From the one-bedroom apartments!’

‘Why shout that?’ Siiri grumbled. ‘It hardly matters which wing we’re in or what our tenancy arrangements are.’

‘He has to have some way to figure out who we are. Otherwise he’ll be afraid to open the door,’ Irma explained, then continued to yell. ‘Siiri Kettunen and Irma
Lännenleimu want to see you, Mr Raudanheimo! I have short hair in a perm and I’ve become a bit plump as I’ve got older, but I was very slender when I was young, and I have a blue
dress, a real pearl necklace, and lovely earrings with real diamonds in them, and Siiri always wears long trousers and one of those . . . is that thing a cardigan?’

Siiri was starting to get nervous about the ruckus Irma was making. She glanced around crossly and noticed Virpi Hiukkanen at the end of the long hallway. Virpi gave her an icy stare and walked
calmly towards them. Irma didn’t notice her ominous form approaching and continued shouting. Virpi was just a few metres away and Siiri couldn’t get any words out; she tugged on
Irma’s sleeve in a panic.

‘We’re not Erkki Hiukkanen!’ Irma shouted into the lock, just as Virpi reached them. Siiri shrank like a schoolgirl in the head teacher’s office.

‘That’s enough of this nonsense. Here at Sunset Grove it’s important to leave the residents in peace and to create an atmosphere of tranquillity,’ Virpi said, forcing her
face into a calm smile. Then she suddenly broke into a yell. ‘What is wrong with you two? Why are you shouting at the door of a total stranger? Who gave you permission to be here? You seem to
have no concept of the principles of Sunset Grove! We are committed to the privacy of every resident and this behaviour is ridiculous. You’re endangering the safety of the entire institution
with your silly whims. Do I have to call the police, or an ambulance, to keep you two in check?’

Virpi looked at them threateningly and adjusted her large, plastic-rimmed glasses, as if to add to her air of authority. Siiri started to feel dizzy and had to grab Irma’s arm.

‘I think I’m going to faint,’ she said, but she managed to stay upright with Irma’s support. Her vision grew foggy and she had to focus what little strength she had on
breathing.

‘This place doesn’t ensure privacy, it ensures privation!’ Irma yelled, helping Siiri into a Biedermeier chair. ‘Siiri’s having a heart attack because of you! There
are all kinds of shady things going on in this institution and all you do is spy on healthy people in the hallways! You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Where is Olavi Raudanheimo? Where have you
put Reino Luukkanen? What’s going on around here?’

Siiri wasn’t having a heart attack. It was probably just the arrhythmia that she suffered now and then. But that was no joking matter, either, and she really did feel like she might black
out at any moment. It was a lucky thing that there were chairs left by dead people in the hallways at Sunset Grove for situations such as these. When she opened her eyes Irma was holding her hand
and Virpi Hiukkanen was standing a couple of metres away looking frightened. Virpi didn’t try to help her, she just gnawed nervously on her chewing gum, took a phone out of her pocket, as
though she had something important to do, and moved off without another word.

‘And they say caregiving is a calling,’ Irma puffed, pulling a flask of whisky out of her handbag. She made Siiri take a gulp and wiped her brow with her lace handkerchief.
‘It’s not the one Reino mangled,’ she reassured her.

They thought that Virpi had gone to fetch a blood pressure cuff, since nurses always thought that anything troubling an old person could be made better by taking their blood pressure, but when
she didn’t return after a quarter of an hour, Irma led Siiri back to her apartment. She helped her lie down on the bed, took off her shoes, and laid her nap blanket over her. Then she went to
the front door and tried to call for help because Siiri was very pale and still wasn’t breathing normally.

The basic fee at Sunset Grove included a safety system – if a resident needed help, all they had to do was leave their phone receiver on the table and a member of staff would quickly
appear. Of course anything they did when they arrived would be added to your bill, as would the call, but the system itself was part of the basic service. Irma picked up the receiver, laid it on
the table, and listened for a while. Then she swore to herself, slammed down the receiver and went downstairs to find some help.

Siiri fell asleep. When she woke up, the room was full of people. Irma was talking with three or four strangers, young people, only one of whom seemed to understand Finnish. Irma tried Swedish,
French and a little Russian, with no results. Luckily, the boy who spoke Finnish was calm and pleasant.

‘Siiri Kettunen,’ Siiri said by way of introduction, offering him her hand.

‘Seems alert,’ the medic said, wrapping a cuff around her outstretched arm and reading her blood pressure. ‘Readings are fine. No need for an ambulance. If another attack
occurs, call a taxi to take her to the hospital. No need to call us again.’

He packed up his first-aid kit and the foreign women followed him out of the door. Irma sank exhausted into the old armchair and told her that Virpi had called an ambulance because she
didn’t know what else to do.

The pleasant man was from the ambulance, as was the girl in the white uniform. The other two girls were Sunset Grove’s new Indonesian interns. Irma didn’t remember where Indonesia
was, and Siiri couldn’t understand why the interns had come to peer at her in her bed.

‘They were sent to spy on you,’ Irma said. She thought that everything that happened at Sunset Grove was connected. ‘Tero’s death, too.
Döden, döden,
döden
,’ she whispered before she left.

Three days later Siiri Kettunen received a bill for nineteen euros from a firm called Emergencion, for ‘Non-urgent ambulance visit, no immediate care. Code X5.’

On her way back from a visit to the hairdresser Siiri Kettunen met a man at the lift who looked like someone she knew, though he wasn’t. Because it was so embarrassing to
not be able to place someone who looked familiar, Siiri did as she always did in these situations and greeted the man, introducing herself, just to be on the safe side.

‘Antti Raudanheimo,’ the slightly greying, upright man said by way of introduction. He must be Olavi Raudanheimo’s son. He had the same narrow face and straight nose.

He was an intelligent fellow and told her he’d rescued Olavi from Sunset Grove and taken him to the hospital, where he still was at the moment. He spoke of the ‘terrible
incident’, and Siiri knew he meant the assault in the shower, although he didn’t use those words. But something very distressing had happened and Olavi’s son intended to file a
criminal report. He had tried to discuss the matter with Sinikka Sundström, but the director wouldn’t believe that anything so awful could happen in her retirement home.

‘She’s very sweet, but perhaps not informed about everything that goes on here,’ he said.

They stood for such a long time in the foyer talking about Olavi that Siiri started to feel uneasy. She couldn’t concentrate on what the man was saying, but instead kept glancing towards
the office and looking behind her, although there didn’t seem to be anyone about. Then she remembered that even the walls had ears at Sunset Grove, and she grabbed Olavi’s son by the
arm and pulled him closer.

‘I don’t think it’s a good idea to talk about these matters here,’ she whispered.

The man looked at her in bewilderment. ‘Has anything else happened here besides my father’s terrible incident?’

Siiri asked him to come to her apartment, although she didn’t really know him and couldn’t remember ever inviting a strange man into her home before. But he seemed trustworthy and
direct; he looked her in the eye and spoke in a strong baritone. He came into her apartment but didn’t take off his coat, just sat down at the table and talked for a long time about
everything. He was almost more thorough than Anna-Liisa in his attention to detail, and at times Siiri felt like she might fall asleep, but luckily she wasn’t sitting in the comfortable
armchair. She was sitting on a hard kitchen chair that squeaked whenever she moved. What with her fatigue and the squeaking, she couldn’t quite commit everything he said to memory, and she
knew that Irma would be mad at her for this later. But one thing was quite clear in her mind: he had arranged to get his father out of the Group Home, where he had indeed been relegated, just as
Irma had said.

‘Do you happen to know if your father’s friend, Reino Luukkanen, is in the Group Home too? A large man in tracksuit bottoms, poorly shaved?’

‘That I don’t know,’ the man said apologetically. ‘I couldn’t really work out who all those poor souls were. One man was sleeping in the same room as my father, but
I have no idea how long he’d been lying there or what kind of trousers he was wearing. He hadn’t been shaved in a long while, but then no one there had.’

Siiri got up and pulled a bottle of red wine out of the flour bin, but Olavi’s son declined to have any alcohol in the middle of the day.

‘I usually don’t either, but I’ve heard that red wine is good for you. It has some sort of particle in it that halts the ageing process. Are you sure you won’t have just
a little?’ she asked, but he said that he had to get back to work.