The Defenceless (28 page)

What if I called Anneli, he thought, and knew that he wouldn’t. I could ask how she’s doing, tell her about my plans. What would she say to that? Would she laugh? Say, ‘that’s a great idea, go for it’? That’s what she’d always said, and still the noose round my neck seemed to tighten all the more. I’ve been a damn fool. But I sorted out the Cobras. Christ, the NBI wouldn’t have been able to do anything without me. In practice, it was me who stopped the gang setting
down roots in Finland. Damn it, I deserve a medal for this. I’m still up to this job, oh yes. There’s still blood running in this old cop’s veins. Only another few years till I retire. Then. Then I’ll be free, thought Esko, though he knew that wasn’t true either. He fetched a bottle of Koskenkorva and slumped on his bed. Nobody is ever free, at least not while they are running from themselves, he thought and took a swig from the bottle. Vodka ran down his chin and on to the sheets, and burned his throat like fire.

That evening Anna stopped at the pharmacy on the way home. She made a cup of tea and paced up and down the apartment, ate a sandwich and listened to Delay’s
Tummaa
album, thinking about Grandma. Then she steeled herself and fetched her purchase from her bag. She opened up the small, light-blue cardboard packet and read the instructions carefully, twice. The procedure seemed simple. She went into the toilet and urinated into an empty yoghurt pot that she had washed and saved for some reason; she had no recollection why. She placed the testing stick in the yoghurt pot and went out to the balcony for a cigarette. The evening was warm. Earlier that day the temperature had risen above zero and it hadn’t yet dropped though the sun had set long ago. It’ll be even warmer tomorrow, thought Anna and looked at the concrete walls sprawling in front of her.

After her New Year’s Eve party, she had gone straight from Béci’s parents’ place to visit her grandmother. Grandma had made some coffee and asked her about the party, and she’d been very interested in how Anna’s former school friends were doing. Anna had enjoyed talking about them, though she imagined her grandmother had far better knowledge of the goings-on in Kanizsa than she did. Anna told her about Béci. She’d always been able to talk to Grandma about her boyfriends and relationship problems. She told her about their evening by the Tisza, the rusty swings and about how good Béci’s company had felt, how different he was from Finnish men. So what’s the matter, Grandma had asked. Anna wondered how her
grandmother knew that anything was the matter; Anna hadn’t said anything to that effect. She thought for a moment about what to say and wondered whether Grandma would understand.

‘It’s stupid,’ Anna said. ‘We were talking about Finnish houses, how they are warm inside even in the winter, how you can walk around with bare feet even though it’s freezing outside.’ Yes, Grandma had said inquisitively and poured more coffee. The old porcelain cups clinked prettily as Grandma stirred in her sugar. Anna loved that calming, familiar sound. ‘So then I tried to explain how the houses are insulated, how all the floors and walls and ceilings are lined with thick layers of insulation, the windows are triple-glazed so that the cold and the wind never come through them – but I couldn’t remember the word for “insulation”.’

Anna had been ashamed; she’d felt stupid and boastful, a fussy snob for whom nothing was ever good enough.

‘Béci said, maybe you don’t need to know,’ Anna told her grandmother without looking her in the eyes. ‘He’d said that women don’t need to know words like that. Am I being an idiot, Grandma?’ Anna whispered.

No, her grandmother had responded instantly. I understand you perfectly well, she said with a resolute smile and rubbed Anna’s head.

Anna stubbed out her cigarette and returned to the bathroom. Her heart was pounding as she lifted up the yoghurt pot. I can’t bring myself to look, she thought. But there was nothing for it. There in the middle of the testing stick, in a small square window, were two clear, red lines.

Anna stared at it, felt a tear rolling down her cheek. She looked at the plastic bathroom walls, at her own face in the mirror spattered with toothpaste. Oh Grandma, dear Grandma, she thought. As much as you would have wanted your family to continue and your son, my father, to have grandchildren, I cannot keep this child. I don’t know its father. I’m not ready to be a mother. I can’t look after a child, raise a child, can’t take on such a responsibility for the rest of my life. I simply cannot. Anna burst into tears, slumped to her
knees. Red and black circles swirled in her eyes. A girl lay abandoned on the riverbank, dead, a two-headed eagle tearing at her insides with its bloodied beak.

‘ANNA, WHAT’S THE MATTER?’
asked Sari and gave her a worried look. It was early morning. They were driving towards the airport with Sammy Mashid in the back of the car. Sammy had asked to be escorted by Anna and the immigration authority had agreed. Ritva Siponen had asked to be present, but Sammy had refused.

‘Nothing,’ Anna answered. The phone in her pocket beeped; somebody had sent her a text message.

‘Look, I can see something’s wrong. Have you been crying?’

How the hell does she notice everything, Anna wondered.

‘No, I haven’t. I was so tired that I forgot to wash my mascara off last night. My eyes were completely swollen this morning.’

‘How are you holding up?’ Sari asked Sammy in English, though her sceptical eyes remained firmly on Anna.

Sammy didn’t answer. His olive skin was pale. He was resting his forehead against the car window, staring with empty eyes out at the northern city that was not to become his home, whose morning traffic was a joke compared to the Karachi rush hour, a city where there were no opium dens but where you were sure to score some Subutex, a city whose cobbled streets gradually turned to motorways and intersections that now spat him out.

Anna clicked open the text message. It was from her mother. Ákos had hit the bottle and wouldn’t be able to come back to Finland, said the message.
I’m taking him to a treatment centre. I’ll call this evening.

Anna started to cry. She thought of the tiny collection of cells growing in her womb. Ákos would become an uncle. Her mother would become a grandmother. I’ll be a mother. But it won’t work. It can’t work; I can barely look after myself. Anna felt an immeasurable
solitude surrounding her, enveloping her, wrapping her in a parcel that nobody would ever open. Why can’t Ákos control himself? Why am I here all by myself at a time like this?

‘Anna, what’s wrong?’ asked Sari.

‘It’s nothing. I’m just worried about Sammy,’ said Anna and struggled to hold back her tears.

‘He’s frightened to death.’

Anna tried to banish her gloomy thoughts and glanced at Sammy on the back seat. The sight of him didn’t comfort her.

‘No wonder. You’d be frightened too.’

‘Will he be killed back home?’

I’m about to kill my own child before it even has arms and legs, thought Anna.

‘Sooner or later,’ she answered.

‘Bloody hell. Aren’t there restrictions on travelling to Pakistan?’

Anna sighed. She too had thought of this almost every day since they’d found Sammy.

‘That’s only for Finns. Tourists should avoid travelling to certain areas and the whole country is considered dangerous, according to the foreign office.’

‘So we send back a local resident whose life is in real danger?’

‘Yes. Apparently a Finnish life is more valuable than a Pakistani life, not to mention the lives of Pakistani Christians.’

When will it start to kick, Anna wondered.

‘Bloody hell,’ Sari sighed again.

Anna and Sari escorted Sammy on to the plane before boarding began. They waited until all the other passengers had boarded and the stewardess gave the signal. Anna wanted to hug Sammy, but he continued staring out of the window, silent and limp. The officers left the aeroplane and stood outside to make sure nobody got off after the doors were secured. Their colleagues would be waiting in Helsinki to escort Sammy on to the next flight.

A warm breeze was blowing from the south. The sky had clouded
over. One at a time, cool droplets of water began to fall on Anna’s face, her shoulders, the ground. A couple of swans flew overhead beneath the low cloud cover. The contours of the white birds blurred against the heavy, grey rainclouds, the roar of the aeroplane’s engines drowned out the squawk of the birds as it sped along the runway, rose lightly into the air and soared towards the clouds. Heavenly Father, or whoever you are, let Sammy find his way home, Anna said to herself. And forgive me, forgive me for terminating this pregnancy.

Once the mass of clouds had swallowed up the disappearing plane, Anna and Sari walked back to the car and drove into town in silence. The rain got heavier and the piles of snow seemed to melt before their eyes. They picked up a couple of large, filled rolls at a local bakery and went back to the station to make some coffee. Anna gave Sari contact details for Gabriella and her host family, told her that the girl wanted to remain in Finland for a while and find another au pair position. Sari was thrilled. You’ll have a new friend, she said to Anna. You’ve probably missed having Hungarian friends. Anna didn’t answer but admitted to herself that that was probably the case. Without much discussion they agreed to call it a day; a free afternoon was the least they deserved after weeks of hard work. Once she got home, Anna made an appointment with the gynaecologist. She lit a candle on the kitchen table though it was still light outside, listened to
Tummaa
by Delay and looked out at the shrinking piles of snow in the yard, now grey with sand and grit.

A humid wind pushed back the hazy threat of the Afghan borderlands up ahead. Everything was silent; the horizon shimmered like a mirage in the glow of the sun. Suddenly something appeared from the rippling air, at first only a speck, growing rapidly. It was a car, a dirty-green jeep full of men. The barrels of rifles jutted like extensions of the men’s silhouettes towards the sky, Mosin-Nagants and Kalashnikovs with bayonets inherited from the Second World War, but still functioning and deadly. The vehicle kicked up such a thick gauze of dust and sand that the glare of the sun dimmed behind it. The car was hurtling at full speed towards a solitary whitewashed building standing at the edge of the desert. Now from amongst the men on the trailer at the back, a smaller figure came into view; black and slightly hunched. The jeep came to a halt. Two men with rifles jumped to the ground; one of them held out his hand and helped from the trailer the woman shrouded in a burqa. She cautiously lifted her veil, a sliver of black lace covering her eyes. She didn’t look around, simply followed the riflemen towards the building. They walked into a small office where men in uniforms stood smoking cigarettes and drank tea from chipped porcelain cups. The air was thick with smoke. The men stared at the new arrivals. The woman lowered her head and tried to convince herself that she had nothing to fear. Her cousin was standing beside her. Thank God she’d found him. Without a male relative she would never have made it. Without a male relative she would have no chance at all.

Behind the battered table sat a chubby official, his cruel, gleaming eyes fixed on the woman. Her cousin had said that the man was one of them, that there was nothing to worry about. Everything would work out just fine. Then why did he look so mean? Was the man showing off in front of the other soldiers? Or was her cousin mistaken after all? The woman choked back her fear and stood beside her cousin, silent and humble. We’ll get through this. The man is
one of us. He has to be.

‘What is your cousin’s wife’s name?’ the official growled from behind the table, addressing his question to the man standing next to the woman. Her cousin had said he would do the talking, but she could feel the words bubbling up within her, she wouldn’t be able to hold them back for long, for the certainty that her words were true had grown and grown within her for a month now, like a storm gathering pace, and now those words were wrenching at her, overwhelming her, tearing at her so much that soon nothing would be able to hold them back. If the man is one of us, he will understand. Dear God, let it be true.

‘Iqra Mashid.’

‘And where is she going?’

‘Karachi.’

‘Why?’

The storm whipped up, its first ferocious gust pushing out the words that had so tortured the woman; the force of those words filled the room with their energy, the official groped for a pen to sign all the relevant documents.

‘I know that my son is there. I know that I will find him,’ said the woman and cautiously raised her head.

Thank you to Maija, Jani, Jaakko, Risto, Paavo and Satu for all the expert advice.

Mum and friends, thank you for your support.

KATI HIEKKAPELTO
is a bestselling author, punk singer, performance artist and special-needs teacher. She lives on an old farm on the island of Hailuoto in Northern Finland, where she is currently setting up a retreat for writers and artists in danger. Hiekkapelto has taught immigrants and lived in the Hungarian region of Serbia, which inspired her to write her highly regarded debut crime novel,
The Hummingbird
. Shortlisted for the Petrona Award,
The Hummingbird
has been published in six languages to date.
The Defenceless
won best Finnish Crime Novel of 2014. Kati is currently working on the third novel in the Anna Fekete series. Follow Kati on Twitter @HiekkapeltoKati or visit
www.katihiekkapelto.com
.

DAVID HACKSTON
is a British translator of Finnish and Swedish literature and drama. Notable publications include
The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy
, Maria Peura’s coming-of-age novel
At the Edge of Light
, Johanna Sinisalo’s eco-thriller
Birdbrain
and two crime novels by Matti Joensuu. In 2007 he was awarded the Finnish State Prize for Translation. David is also a professional countertenor and a founding member of the English Vocal Consort of Helsinki. David has translated both titles in the Anna Fekete series. Follow David on Twitter @Countertenorist.