The Defenceless (13 page)

Anna pulled up outside Marko Halttu’s house and sat in the car for a while examining the surroundings. It was the first time she had come here alone, and now she was annoyed that she hadn’t brought the keys to Halttu’s apartment. Anna enjoyed house searches; they always revealed something. Perhaps not right away, but as sources of information they were every bit as good as people. A home told you about its owner and rarely lied: did the inhabitant have a family, were they lonely, tidy or untidy, what did they enjoy doing, what did they like, eat, how did they spend their time? Homes could reveal a history of substance abuse or the suffering of mental illness far more honestly than any relatives; sometimes it seemed as though walls could weep. Most affecting was visiting the homes of seasoned criminals and finding photographs of children, mothers, fathers, pets, souvenirs from abroad, a concert ticket from twenty years ago, all those small but precious items that we all have, things we use to document the important events in our lives. It was moments like this that Anna tried to think of in interview situations, when anger and personal dislike began to blur the human being sitting in front of her.

The yard was deserted. There were only two cars parked outside: an old Opel covered in snow and a newer Toyota plugged into the outdoor battery charger. The building towered above the car park; there were three small, square air vents in the gable, one on top of the other like blocks of Lego bricked into the concrete wall. Those must be the bathrooms, so the only way of looking out into the car park would be to stand right next to the ventilation grille. Only from the neighbouring house could you see anyone entering or leaving the yard. I’ll have to speak to those residents too, thought Anna. To the left of the car park she noticed a row of bins, the place where the syringe had been found last summer, and tried to gauge the distance from the door of the A-building to the bins and from the bins to the road. She turned to look back the way she had come. How did people get into town from here? Had she seen a single bus stop along the way? She couldn’t see one from here. Did Marko have a car? She would have to find out immediately.

A short phone call to the station revealed that Marko didn’t have a car but that his mother owned an old Opel. Anna asked for forensics to join her at the scene and tried to remember when it had last snowed.

Anna still hadn’t seen a soul as she walked into Building A. She looked at Halttu’s door, the carefully handwritten note reading
NO ADVERTS
, and felt a burning desire to get inside the flat. Marko’s apartment was on the north side of the building; his ventilation grille was one of the Lego blocks overlooking the car park. He therefore only shared walls with two neighbours: the Kumpulas, who had complained about the music, and Vilho Karppinen from upstairs, the man who hadn’t answered the door. Anna rang Karppinen’s doorbell and waited. The apartment was just as quiet as before. She rang again, louder this time. Nothing. She lifted up the letterbox and peered inside. The first thing she noticed was a pile of post and advertisements scattered across the hallway floor. At a guess, Karppinen hadn’t been here for at least a week. The letterbox didn’t open wide enough to let Anna see further inside, but she noticed that the hallway lights were switched on. She called Virkkunen.

‘I’ve got to get into Karppinen’s apartment,’ she said.

‘I’ll get a warrant and send the caretaker to let you in straight away. Wait there,’ said Virkkunen without asking any further questions. His quick understanding of situations and his ability to trust his officers’ professional judgement were qualities that Anna greatly admired in her boss.

Anna sat down on the stairs and listened to the house: the faint sound of a flushing toilet, the blare of the television coming from Mrs Lehmusvirta’s apartment. It can’t be this dead round here, she thought. Nobody went in or out in the hour that she waited for the caretaker. By the time he finally arrived, Anna was beginning to get irritated. The caretaker didn’t apologise for the delay. His body language reinforced the impression he had given on the telephone, that he was being forced to interrupt something far more important. Anna swallowed back her annoyance.

‘Do you know the man who lives here?’ Anna asked as they clambered over the pile of post and into the apartment.

‘Vilho Karppinen, I think his name is. Never laid eyes on him.’

‘Of course you haven’t,’ Anna muttered. ‘You’re responsible for thousands of apartments.’

Only now did the caretaker look at Anna. His uptight expression seemed to melt away. That was sarcasm, idiot, thought Anna and forced herself to give a friendly smile.

‘Well, a plumber was called out a while back to look at the pipes. Karppinen was worried about noise he’d heard coming up through the drains.’

‘And was there anything wrong with the pipework?’

‘Nothing whatsoever. I remember it because we had a good laugh about it with the boys back at the office. You meet all kinds of cranks in this line of work.’

Believe me, you don’t know the half of it, Anna almost said.

‘The old boy lay in bed complaining he was dizzy and said the pipes were making such a racket he couldn’t hear anything else. The racket was in his head, if you ask me. The pipes in this building are fine; they were only renovated a few years ago, and new windows fitted too.’

The lights were on in the bedroom too. How likely was it that he would have left the lights on if he was going away for a few days? Don’t people normally check these things many times, come back from the front door to double-check the stove, the lights, the coffee maker?

‘Vilho Karppinen is an elderly man, I assume?’ Anna asked as if in passing.

‘A batty old dinosaur, Kalle called him – the plumber, that is. He’s got a sense of humour, that boy.’

I’m sure, thought Anna. The caretaker’s presence was beginning to annoy her. She wanted to look around in peace; otherwise she wouldn’t hear what the apartment wanted to tell her.

‘Could you wait in the hallway, please? Preferably in the stairwell.’

‘What? I can’t leave you here by yourself to rummage through the old man’s things. You realise I’m responsible for anything that…’

Anna pulled out her badge.

‘Have you forgotten?’ she asked. ‘Or would you rather I charged you with obstructing an officer?’

The caretaker fell silent, turned and left the apartment. Within a minute Anna heard him talking on the telephone.

Anna went into the living room. It was small and dark with simple furnishings, a leather sofa, an armchair, a television and bookcase, and a worn, Oriental rug on the floor. Anna crouched down and ran her fingertips along the rug’s surface. To her surprise she noticed that this wasn’t a polyester copy but a genuine hand-made, woollen rug. This must be very valuable, she thought. Strange that such a modest apartment should contain a rug like this. It surely had a fascinating story attached to it or memories of a trip somewhere. The bookcase was full of novels, classics, collections of poetry. An intellectual, Anna concluded. The unit also contained two glass cabinets. One held expensive bottles of wine, whisky and cognac, and the other housed a collection of unusual knives.

Anna opened the doors to the vitrines. The collection comprised twelve knives, each finer and more elaborate than the next. They were clearly handcrafted; many of them had the maker’s name engraved into the blade. Could the knife found in Ketoniemi belong to Vilho Karppinen’s collection, Anna wondered and felt a light tingling sensation along the length of her arms. Was it possible? And what on earth would it mean? She closed the cabinet and went into the bedroom. The covers had been thrown back, as though someone had just got out of bed; the sheets, washed hundreds of times, were crumpled. The room was tidy and bare. Only a bed, a bedside table with a book of crosswords filled out in jittery lettering, and a chair with a shirt and a pair of trousers hanging over the arm. It was like a male version of Mrs Vehviläinen’s bedroom. Vilho Karppinen. Anna tasted the name. Could this be Villy? Had the two of them run off
together? The thought seemed good. It was the sort of thing she too might do with a fun-loving elderly gentleman.

Anna peered into the bathroom. The Lego window was high up on the wall. You could open it to let out condensation from the shower and the laundry, but you’d have to stand on a chair to look out of it. An electric shaver was in the mirror cabinet above the sink. There were yellow-and-brown streaks at the bottom of the toilet.

The stink of an old rubbish bag hung in the kitchen. This finally confirmed what Anna had feared from the outset: Vilho had not gone on a trip and neither had Riitta downstairs. Where were they? Why hadn’t they come home?

A terrifying thought crept into Anna’s mind. The old bypass ran behind Leppioja and headed towards Kangassara. It was about seven kilometres away, but the route was straightforward. That’s where Gabriella lived with her host family. Gabriella would normally have driven along the motorway, which was quicker and more direct, but that night she had wanted to postpone going to sleep, to put her music on full blast, so she’d taken the smaller bypass instead. Lost elderly folk were sometimes found very far from home. Despite their dementia, a life of hard work often meant they were in better shape than teenagers wasting away at their computers. She had to find Vilho Karppinen’s relatives, have them identify the body in the morgue and establish whether one of Vilho’s knives was missing. But where was Riitta Vehviläinen?

Vilho Karppinen had a son, Juha Karppinen, a fifty-three-year-old tax officer who was currently on a skiing holiday in the north. He had been there for over a week and was due back the following evening. He agreed to come in and identify the body on Monday morning. Anna didn’t want to go into detail over the phone, and Karppinen’s son hadn’t asked. All she said was that the body of an elderly man had been found on the old bypass at Kangassara and that the victim could be Juha’s father. The road at Kangassara, the man had asked, somewhat perplexed. Then I doubt it’s my father,
but of course I’ll come and look as soon as I get back, he continued. Behind the voice trying to sound succinct and matter-of-fact, Anna could hear the blur of alcohol. I doubt you’ve even taken skis with you, she thought spitefully.

It was evening. Anna was lying on the sofa listening to Vladislav Delay’s
Anima
album, trying to put off going out for a cigarette, though she really wanted one. Then it would be over, her only cigarette for the day. It smouldered down so quickly, and she was always left craving for more. Gabriella had tried to visit her. Anna hadn’t answered the phone or opened the door. Ákos didn’t answer the phone to Anna either and didn’t open the door. What the hell’s wrong with us, Anna wondered and got up from the sofa, fetched her outdoor coat and went out to the balcony. The cigarette felt good, the nicotine seeped through the membranes in her mouth and up into her head, the feeling of giddiness was wonderful, she inhaled deep into her lungs and blew smoke rings into the crisp night air, its chill pinching at her bare hands. I’ll have to call Mum on Skype, she thought. And Réka. She missed them both and was worried about her grandmother.

Anna smoked her cigarette down to the filter; it was already burning her fingers by the time she stubbed it out in her grandfather’s old ashtray that she’d brought from home. Her grandfather had been a heavy smoker. Small items from their former home – an ashtray, a water jug, a coffee cup, the old terry towel that she’d used to dry herself as a child, worn away so much it was now almost smooth – they all created the feeling that there was something permanent outside her daily routines, they brought a continuum to her life, the sense that she hadn’t drifted too far after all. Tomorrow, she thought as she stared at the crumpled cigarette end, and didn’t know what to think of the feeling of sadness that the thought elicited. I mustn’t give in to these stupid nicotine cravings; I’m an athlete. I want to be out running when I’m an old woman. Only one. That will have to do.

She sat down again on the sofa and looked at the white walls
around her. She could already see faint cracks in the paintwork. The building was quiet, as though she were its only resident. She wondered whether to read anything or whether she could be bothered to clean the bathroom. There was a basket full of laundry that needed to be washed, but it could wait until tomorrow. She switched on her laptop, plugged in her headphones and signed into Skype. Réka wasn’t online. Of course she wasn’t online – it was a Friday evening. Everyone would be down at the Gong, or perhaps they’d gone to Szabadka or Szeged for the evening. Or maybe they were all at Nóra and Tibor’s place. The group of friends often met up there nowadays, because it made life easier for little Gizella’s parents. Anna called her mother’s landline, counted five rings and hung up as the answering machine cut in. Mum had things to do too, people to see, friends and relatives, though now she was probably in hospital with Grandma. Only Anna was at home by herself, moping. What might Béci be up to? Was he getting ready for a night out in Budapest? Or was his five-year-old son spending the weekend with Daddy? Béci had divorced two years ago. His ex was from western Hungary, and according to Béci she’d never fully understood his Balkan mentality. Anna asked him what that mentality was like. Béci laughed. You know, he’d said and looked her in the eyes, and Anna felt almost faint.

She got up from the sofa, went into the kitchen and drank a glass of water. She washed up the dirty dishes in the sink: a fork, a knife, a plate and a frying pan, as if to destroy any evidence of the meal she’d eaten, all alone. Was there anything more depressing than eating by yourself on a Friday evening in a drab suburban apartment, she wondered. If I had a husband and children I’d need a dishwasher. My routines would take on a new meaning altogether. She banished all thoughts of family dinners from her mind, of children sitting around the table, of a husband that cleared up the dishes after dinner, loaded them into the dishwasher and thanked her for the excellent food with a kiss. That’s not what she wanted. She couldn’t deal with that. In the hallway she fetched her mobile from her coat
pocket and wrote Réka a text message suggesting they talk on Skype tomorrow. At the last minute she decided not to send it. Instead she replaced the word ‘tomorrow’ with ‘today’ and saved the message as a draft. Réka won’t even read the message until the morning, Anna explained to herself, though she knew that wasn’t the real reason. She was ashamed of her own loneliness. She curled up on the sofa, propped the laptop on her knees and clicked open the Magyar Szó Online newspaper and used the headlines to travel back home to Vajdaság, imagined the rustle of the newspaper, their small kitchen table, always covered with a clean tablecloth, and listened to the clink of her grandmother’s coffee cup.