The Defenceless (4 page)

Anna nervously crushed the stub of her cigarette into the ashtray and wanted to light another one. She’d had to go home with him, hadn’t she? Now Béci had tried to contact her in Finland, too; Réka had given him Anna’s email address and telephone number.
A fene egye meg.

She forced herself to forget the idea of a second cigarette, went back inside and agonised over whether or not to call Ákos. Eventually she called him. Her brother was drunk, but not too much, and said he was at home by himself watching TV, the television Anna had given him. Anna couldn’t hear the sound of the television. She asked whether Ákos had remembered to apply for his unemployment benefit, whether there was food in the cupboard and whether he’d had a shower. Yes, yes, everything was fine, Ákos was just
cutting down on his drinking, he’d almost stopped altogether, he hadn’t drunk much, everything was fine.
A kurva életbe
, Anna cursed under her breath as she ended the call. I’ve become a mother to my own older brother.

‘
SEEMS THE OLD MAN
hadn’t run away after all. I called all the local care facilities yesterday,’ Sari told Anna.

It was five past eight. The Violent Crimes Unit was starting its daily work, the photocopier whirred into life, the coffee machine gurgled, office lights switched on one by one, computers booted up. On the surface it was like an average day in any office. There was nothing to suggest that in these drab offices, with their non-descript furniture, people spent their time investigating acts which had their roots in the darkest recesses of the human mind.

‘That means he must have wandered off from his own home. I hope a relative notices something soon,’ Anna replied.

‘Let’s hope so. It makes me think of a few old people we’ve found mummified. They’d been lying dead for years and nobody noticed a thing.’ Sari yawned. The kids had woken her up at five and started playing.

‘Cases like that are rare exceptions. Let’s give it a few days; someone’s bound to call us worried that their grandfather has gone missing. They’ll probably call today.’

‘I hope so. I visited Rauno yesterday, by the way,’ said Sari.

‘Oh. How is he?’

‘He’s on sick leave until the end of April, goes to physiotherapy a few times a week. He’s coming along well, though it’s a long road to recovery. Apparently his left knee is in constant pain, and it’ll be a weak spot for the rest of his life.’

Senior Constable Rauno Forsman had been seriously injured when his car collided with an elk the previous autumn. Anna remembered the sight of her colleague, battered from the crash, as
he lay in intensive care; how she’d wished she could be in his place, in a coma, forever. She gave a shiver. At the time, she had been suffering from acute insomnia and was so tired that she’d started to wonder whether she was even capable of carrying out her duties as a police officer.

‘So we can forget the Achilles heel; from now it’ll be known as Forsman’s knee,’ commented Nils as he walked into the staffroom. His dark hair was still tousled with sleep. Nils was actually quite cute, Anna noticed and stole a glance at the golden ring gleaming on the ring finger of his left hand.

‘What about Nina?’ asked Anna.

‘She wasn’t at home. I didn’t want to pry. Still, you wouldn’t believe how the girls have grown. Rauno sends his regards to everybody, and said you should all pop in some time. Make sure you do; the poor guy seems bored to tears.’

‘I’ll have to stop in,’ said Nils.

‘Yes, me too,’ said Anna, though she knew she wouldn’t go.

‘Where’s Esko?’ asked Nils.

‘He was here before seven this morning, working that case the NBI was asking for help with.’

‘What case is that?’

‘Some foreign street gang that’s trying to establish itself round here,’ said Sari.

‘That’s all we need,’ said Nils. ‘I hope I won’t be drafted in to help them.’

‘I doubt it. We’ve got our work cut out with our own motorbike gangs, don’t you think?’ said Sari with another yawn.

Anna went into her own office and switched on her computer. She had to write up a few reports, then later that afternoon conduct interviews about a suspected assault. Nothing special; she’d get it all done in good time. But what should I do this evening, she wondered. The idea of a lonely Friday evening in her lonely apartment wasn’t appealing. Should she go into town, to a pub? She might ask the pathologist Linnea Markkula to join her.

Anna hadn’t gone out once in her free time since the Christmas break. This looked like it was going to be the start of yet another weekend when she would do nothing but exercise and wait for Monday morning to arrive. Was she really going to be only thirty-one that summer? She felt much older, with one foot in the grave of her suburban apartment. She yearned for Réka’s uncomplicated company, everyday chat about everyday things, long walks across the
puszta
that opened up between Zimonić and Velebit, the
járás
as they called it, a place where sheep grazed, herded by a shepherd skilfully using his dogs to guide them. The view could have been a hundred years old, if only the shepherd hadn’t occasionally been seen playing with his mobile phone, listening to music with a set of in-ear headphones, and if their walks hadn’t been cut short by the ploughing that tore the plains open, making them impossible to cross on foot. Churned fields were swallowing up the
puszta
one strip at a time; farmers were still ploughing the land in December. The pastures were getting smaller and smaller, and the wild animals no longer felt at home in the industrialised landscape; even the shepherd used his mobile to look for a better job.

A knock at the door brought Anna back to the here and now. Virkkunen stepped inside.

‘A squad car was called out to the woodland behind Ketoniemi last night. They found a knife and a lot of blood, as though an animal had been slaughtered.’

‘Is this another job for us?’ asked Anna.

‘Maybe. Forensics are on the way there now.’

‘Perhaps someone killed an animal out there? Or there was a fight and someone got hurt?’

‘We haven’t had any new reports of an assault.’

‘If this was a fight between two drunkards, I doubt they’d come down to the station and press charges.’

‘Still, it’s not a place you’d expect drunks to hang out.’

‘Surely people go out there drinking sometimes?’

‘Call round the hospitals all the same and ask if they’ve seen anyone injured in a stabbing. And check the health centres too.’

‘Sari has just called them all regarding the old man in the traffic accident. If only we’d known, she could have asked about this too.’

‘The information just came in. Could you get on to this today?’

‘Very well.’

‘How are you otherwise?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘In general. Work, life?’

Anna felt awkward. She didn’t consider Virkkunen a particularly close acquaintance, though she’d had to tell him things about herself that she hadn’t wanted to share with anyone. Once her position had been made permanent in January, Virkkunen had asked about her sleeping problems, the panic attacks she’d had as a child and all manner of other things: her past, her plans for the future. Indeed, what
were
her plans for the future, Anna found herself thinking long after the conversation.

‘Everything’s fine,’ she said with a smile. It’s true enough, she thought. There’s nothing the matter with me.

Anna’s mobile beeped. An unknown number was flashing on the screen. Virkkunen left the room with a wave of the hand.

‘Fekete Anna,’ she answered in an official mode.

‘Szia, Anna. Itt Gabriella, emlékszel?’

Remember her? How could Anna have forgotten her? She had interviewed Gabriella only yesterday. The girl had been released soon afterwards. Initial tests had revealed her speed at the time of the crash to be around eighty kilometres per hour, far too fast given the weather conditions but still within the speed limit. Gabriella’s shocked host family had picked her up at the station. She had been advised not to leave the country until the investigation into the crash was completely wrapped up. She seemed visibly relieved when word came that she had been driving within the speed limit. She’d promised to call Anna some day; Anna hadn’t expected the call to come quite so soon.

‘Szia, Gabi. Hogy vagy?’

‘I’ve felt better. Thankfully Tommi took the day off. That’s my
host father. I’m still not in any shape to look after the children. I couldn’t get to sleep.’

‘That’s perfectly normal; it’s a shock reaction. It’ll last for some time, but it’ll pass eventually.’

‘I can’t stop wondering why the man was lying there. Why did I have to go that way? Why was I listening to music?’

‘Gabi, calm down. It looks as though this was all an accident. You weren’t speeding, there was no alcohol in your blood, no drugs. You haven’t done anything wrong; you just had some bad luck. If you hadn’t run over that man, someone else would have done it.’

‘There was nobody else on that road. Nobody.’

‘Then he would have frozen to death.’

‘What if he was already dead?’

‘Gabi, we’ve already talked about this. If he had some sort of heart attack, we’ll find out in the autopsy.’

‘Who was he?’

‘We don’t know.’

‘You still don’t know!’ Gabriella cried.

‘It’s been one day. Sometimes investigations like this take weeks.’

For a moment Gabriella said nothing. Anna heard the rush of background noise, a child’s voice, then a man’s voice somewhere further off.

‘Listen, could we meet up?’ said Gabriella suddenly.

‘What?’

‘Off the record. They gave me numbers for a crisis counsellor and an interpreter, but I’d rather talk to you about it. Besides, you already know the facts of the case; it would be easier.’

Anna hesitated. It didn’t feel like a good idea to get mixed up in the life of someone currently under investigation; more to the point it was probably prohibited. On the other hand she understood Gabriella. If she had been in her situation, she would probably have done the same thing. She wanted to help this girl who, though not exactly a compatriot, was something along those lines. They arranged to meet at the Irish Corner Bar at nine o’clock that evening.

After ending the call, she asked Sari for a list of phone numbers for the health centres and hospitals in the city and called them one by one. It took a surprisingly long time; there were a lot of numbers and she never got the information she needed from the person who first answered the phone. None of them had treated a stabbing victim in the last week. Someone must have killed an animal out in Ketoniemi, thought Anna, maybe put down their dog because they couldn’t afford to take it to the vet. She looked up at the clock on her office wall. Another hour and she would be free for the weekend.

Sammy woke with a start in the pitch dark. Amazingly he’d managed to sleep for a moment, though now he felt anything but alert. The wind had whipped up last night. It had blown in from the northeast, making the icy temperatures feel even colder. The surface of the road had frozen over, and was now more slippery than before, but hidden in amongst the newspapers he had felt surprisingly warm. A windproof plastic covering and a thick layer of paper to insulate him. That’s where Sammy slept whenever he was unable to find anywhere else. And that’s what he’d done last night too. Paper recycling bins were warm but unsafe. You couldn’t spend many nights in the same place. He was afraid that someone would notice him and call the police. A few times someone had come along, opened the lid and thrown their newspapers inside and shrieked when they noticed a young man curled inside the bin. In situations like that Sammy had tried to look as friendly as possible.
Sorry, sorry
, he repeated before running off. Two months now, nothing but running. His whole, hellish life had been nothing but running – running from the police, running from normal people, from the withdrawal symptoms, from radical Islamists. Sammy didn’t know what to do. There was no one he could ask for help. Surely nobody could spend their whole life in hiding? Not in a country this cold at any rate. He felt trapped without any chance of escape, like a fox caught in the grip of an iron snare. But even that was better than the certain death that awaited him back home.

Sammy hadn’t eaten all day, but he barely noticed it because the cravings were worse than the hunger. After what had happened last night, Sammy had decided to lay low for a while and stay away from the drug crowd. But he couldn’t go on like this for long; he had to find some money and some Subutex. If only he could afford a dose big enough for an overdose. An overdose of bupe would be difficult; he’d need something else too, a handful of diazepam at least. Too expensive. He’d been dreaming of his final journey and made peace with his reaper, there in the shadows of the recycling bins, the corridors and basements. Sammy no longer feared death at all, but he refused to give the satisfaction of his death to the men who had already murdered his father, mother and brother.

Sammy listened to the courtyard around the paper bin. Everything was quiet, not even the sound of traffic from the nearby road. That told him it was a weekday and that it was almost midnight. He could have rested here in peace and quiet for hours if he hadn’t felt so awful. The muscles in his legs were twitching, he had a headache and felt sick. He caught the disgusting smell oozing from his skin. When was the last time he’d had a wash? Sammy tried to relax. He imagined being at home in his own bed. In his memories it was softer than it had ever really been. He had shared a room with his brother, a small room with just enough space for two narrow beds. His mother and father had slept on a sofa bed in the living room. The kitchen was in the living room, too. They didn’t have any other rooms. Still, even two rooms were a luxury if they were your own. And their home had been their very own; his father had worked hard, he and his brother had gone to school. In this respect their family was exceptionally well off. The whole family knew how to read, even his mother. His father had been so proud of this. Everything had been fine until a new family moved in next door. Sammy tried not to think about it; anger would only make him feel worse. He closed his eyes and listened. No footsteps. No cars. People rarely brought their rubbish out at this time of night. He was safe. He would have to leave early in the morning, before the first people
hurrying to work flicked a pile of advertisements into the bin as they ran to the bus stop. But where could he go? The stinking crack dens, each worse than the next, more squalid than Macke’s dump of an apartment – a place the boy’s mother even came and cleaned once in a while – were all out of the question. There was no safety in those strange rooms, dimmed by drawn curtains and a collective chemical haze. Someone always lost it or tried to rob him. The police could raid places like that at any moment. At Macke’s he could walk in at any moment, and Sammy never wanted to see him again.

Sammy started to feel that the only sensible option would be to go straight to the Hazileklek pizzeria the following day and explain it all to Farzad and Maalik, the whole sorry story from start to finish, the drugs, everything. He hadn’t had the courage to tell the pizzeria owners about the refusal of his asylum application, though they were the only people with whom he had something resembling normal contact. He didn’t want to cause them any trouble. He already felt ashamed of himself in their presence, unable to trust them. Sammy was convinced he would never be able to trust anyone on earth ever again. And yet, by himself, it was impossible to survive. He desperately needed help. He needed food and sleep. He needed to be at peace in his soul. He needed money; he needed Subutex. Oh, why had he got mixed up with the rotten stuff? Wasn’t his situation difficult enough without it?