The Defenceless (5 page)

Fear and anxiety gripped him. The streets hadn’t hardened him and the frost hadn’t frozen him completely; his conscience never relented, though he tried hard to subdue it. He would never be able to tell the kind pizzeria owners the whole story. His nausea seemed to escalate. He felt trapped, three limbs shackled in irons, their teeth sinking deep into his shins and arms, all the while his former neighbours standing above him laughing, drooling, threatening to kill him, offering him a syringe only to move it beyond his reach every time he stretched out his free hand. In the background the face of the murdered old man stared at him through grey eyes, with a look of confused accusation on his face.

Sammy stood waiting outside the back entrance to the Hazileklek pizzeria well before it opened for business. There were people in the courtyard, but nobody paid Sammy the least attention. The pizzeria had been in the same building so long that residents were used to the sight of people with dark skin waiting at the door. The ache in Sammy’s legs had worsened; standing on the spot was agony. It felt as though someone was digging a knife into his head. Muscles twitched all over his body. Sammy thought he must look like his cousin Yousuf, who had been damaged during a difficult birth and was now housebound, writhing in bed, his face set in a grimace. He had heard that disabled children could go to school in Finland, that they had to study just like able-bodied children. Sammy thought this somewhat strange, but the idea felt good. For some strange reason Sammy had always liked Yousuf. He would visit his cousin and read him books and newspapers, though his father had told him it was a waste of time, that his cousin didn’t understand a thing. Sammy disagreed and so did his aunt; Yousuf’s mother had taught him to indicate when he needed the toilet, when he was hungry or cold, and how to give yes or no answers to simple questions, and sometimes Sammy felt that they were able to communicate on a higher level of understanding than most people who speak fluently. Yousuf’s mother had shown her gratitude by baking Sammy hearty naan bread and looked at him with, if possible, eyes more loving than those of Sammy’s own mother.

Later on Sammy had lost contact with his cousin’s family. They had been forced to move and disappeared around the same time that the persecution against Sammy’s family had started. He’d heard rumours that they had gone to Karachi. He’d looked for them there.

‘Sammy!’

Maalik and Farzad had arrived. They seemed glad to see him, shook his hand warmly and gave him a friendly tap on the back, but they couldn’t hide their worried glances. They could see that something was wrong, badly wrong; they could smell the dirt and the fear. The men took Sammy into the back of the restaurant. Sammy
told them of his rejected asylum application, of how he had been living rough for two months in the terrible Arctic conditions, sleeping wherever he could, of how tired and hungry, how dirty and desperate he was. He decided not to tell them about the Subutex. He hoped that the men might help him; in fact, he was sure they would – Maalik and Farzad were Muslims, but not religious zealots like so many people in Pakistan these days. They would take him in, give him food and maybe even some money. He would buy small doses of bupe, reduce his intake over a couple of weeks, then quit altogether. That’s what he would do. Giving up all at once could be dangerous. Besides, he hadn’t been taking big doses before now; eight milligrams had been the absolute maximum. Of course, when injected that was a lot, but as a former heroin user he could tolerate larger doses. From now on he would take only four-milligram doses for a week – he felt ravenous saliva forming in his mouth at the very thought – then one week at two milligrams, then one, then a half, then he’d be free. Perhaps the men would bring him some painkillers, Burana or Panacod; they might even have some sedatives. He could tell them he’d caught a terrible flu brought on by all the stress. He would get through this somehow. Once he’d cleared his head, he could start planning what to do with the rest of his life. Perhaps he could go to Sweden or England. He had relatives there.

Farzad and Maalik withdrew to the dining room to talk. They glanced at the clock; it was almost time to open and they hadn’t even started preparing lunch. Sammy waited in the backroom, trying to resist the temptation to rummage through the bag Farzad had left on a chair. The man’s wallet might have been in there. But Sammy was not a thief. A pathetic junkie and a worthless refugee, yes, but not a thief, never. And at that moment the eyes of the dead old man opened wide and stared at him from the depths of his consciousness.

Farzad called in one of the part-time staff, a young student girl who sometimes helped out at the pizzeria, and started chopping cabbage before shredding it in a large food processor. Maalik took
Sammy back to the men’s apartment. Have a shower and rest, we’ll give you some food, he said. We’ll make up a bed on the sofa.

Maalik drove through the city centre and out towards the other side of town. Sammy looked at the throng of people in bewilderment, recalling how he had once been puzzled at the incredible silence and cleanliness in the city centre, how few people there were, how peaceful everything was. He had been in hiding so long now that it felt like a crowd.

When they arrived, Sammy started coughing and complaining of a headache, said he’d been feeling ill for a few days. Maalik gave Sammy a towel, opened the sofa bed and made it up with clean sheets, showed him what food there was in the cupboards and left a banknote on the kitchen table as he left, telling Sammy to pick up something at the pharmacy – just as Sammy had hoped. The money was just enough to get him eight milligrams, which he could then halve. By increasing the time between fixes he could probably make it last over the weekend. But where could he get his hands on some gear? Sammy knew the city and he knew the best places to score. Macke’s place was closest, but he wasn’t going there. He’d have to go to Rajapuro, though it was further away.

Most of the windows in the police station were dark on a Friday evening. Dozens of offices quietened down for the weekend, leaving only the duty officers and the traffic police downstairs on duty. But the lights were still on in one window on the fourth floor. Esko Niemi was sitting in his office reading about a Danish-Swedish street gang called the Black Cobras, who ran a lot of drug trade on their own territories in the suburbs of Copenhagen, Stockholm, Malmö and other large cities, and who were involved in violent clashes with other gangs. Members of the gang had now been seen in this city. Information had come through yesterday from the National Bureau of Investigation. Esko was examining lists of names, online surveillance data, criminal registers, addresses, reports, links to other known gangs, their connections to a variety of crimes and all the
other information that now formed tall piles of paper on his desk. Every now and then he took a swig from his bottle of Koskenkorva, a quarter of which had now disappeared, and every time he did so he realised how much he enjoyed these lonely nights at the office. If only he could disconnect the damn smoke detectors, he wouldn’t have to go up and down the stairs just to have a cigarette.

Esko’s task was to investigate the recent activity of a local immigrant youth and to help the NBI establish what plans the Black Cobras had for expanding in the city. The kid in question was a Finnish citizen; he had turned up in Finland by himself ten years ago as a teenage refugee. His name was Reza Jobrani. Esko stared at the black-and-white passport photo taken a few years ago. Reza was a handsome young man with a slender face and black eyes, dark stubble on his chin, though in the photograph he must have been barely twenty years old. They’re all so fucking hairy, thought Esko. The women are probably like monkeys too. He’d read in a report that Reza had visited Copenhagen four times in the last two years. Budget flights to Copenhagen and back. The first visit had lasted four days, the second and third a week each, and the latest visit, a month ago, had taken four days. Nobody had followed the boy’s movements in Denmark. A month ago nobody had paid much attention to him at all; no one imagined he was responsible for anything at all. But then something had happened in Denmark: a shoot-out in broad daylight in an area of town with a reputation that made Koivuharju and Rajapuro seem positively gentrified. The boy had been ‘in the hood’, as they say. The police had taken him in for questioning. At first it all seemed like coincidence, the boy said he just happened to be walking past, but Esko’s Danish colleagues had been smart enough to establish that Reza had in fact been staying with a guy called Mohammed, even though he’d checked into the Copenhagen Backpackers Hostel in the city centre. Of course, there was nothing illegal about this, but it so happened that Mohammed was a member of the Danish Black Cobras; not one of the leaders, but someone they trusted. Reza had denied any
involvement in the shoot-out, and because spending the night at the house of a known criminal is not a criminal offence, they’d let him go. The Finnish police had been alerted to Reza, and now he was on Esko’s radar.

You little runt, I’ll find out everything that you’re up to and put you away for the rest of your life. Let
that
be asylum for you, thought Esko with a sense of contentment, as he felt the blood boiling in his veins and the magnificent burn of Koskenkorva in his throat. Now he had to go downstairs for a cigarette.

It was a quarter to nine; Anna had arrived at the pub a little early. She’d driven straight home from work, gone for a short run, taken a shower, put on some make-up and, exceptionally, thought hard about what to wear. She’d eventually picked out a pair of jeans and a black blouse. She sensed that she’d have to wait well past nine o’clock. You didn’t need to travel far to encounter very different ideas of time-keeping; in fact, you didn’t need to travel at all. Different notions of punctuality had arrived in Finland, too. Anna always arrived on time and, if possible, a bit early rather than late, a very Finnish trait. Back home she’d found herself irritated by having to wait for Réka to turn up at the Gong or the Avant bars. She’d had to work hard to get over the irritation, because people who were uptight about punctuality were far more annoying. Now Anna wanted to hold on to the nonchalant attitude she’d acquired back home. She ordered a pint of cloudy ale, its taste pleasant, bitter and smoky, and sat at the counter looking calmly around; she decided not to hang around waiting for Gabriella if she was late. The pub was already full. Some of the customers seemed to have found their way in there on the way home from work, briefcases propped against their tables, their eyes unable to focus. A quirky looking older man at the other end of the bar started giving Anna the eye, but Anna didn’t look at him and he soon buried himself once again in his newspaper. The barman exchanged a few words with her, asked about the weather, mentioned in passing that his shift would soon be over and that
he was going ice-skating, recommended a new brand of ale. Anna decided to order that one next.

Gabriella stepped into the pub at nine o’clock sharp, Anna noticed with amusement. The girl was soon the object of many a stare. Even Anna could see that Gabriella was beautiful; long, healthy, dark hair, brown eyes and full cheeks, slim, with stylish clothes. Anna felt herself hopelessly old and bland as Gabriella sat down on the barstool next to her as lightly as a spring breeze in a fruit orchard. There was no sign of shock or grief in the girl’s eyes. Perhaps youth could conceal sorrow more effectively than any foundation cream.

‘
Hihetetlen
,’ said Gabriella. ‘I drove down here in the car. Unbelievable! And I wasn’t at all freaked out. Well, I was a bit when I left, but it soon passed.’

‘So it seems,’ said Anna sipping her beer. She couldn’t hide the note of irritation in her voice, because she’d expected Gabriella to turn up still weeping and wracked with guilt. I’ve turned into such a petty old busybody, she thought. Gabriella didn’t seem to notice her tone of voice. With a confident flick of the wrist she beckoned the barman and ordered a glass of tonic water.

‘But this time I wasn’t listening to music,’ she said with a little laugh. ‘Do you like Sebestyén Márta?’

‘I’ve heard her once or twice.’

‘Once or twice? Oh my God!’ Gabriella shrieked. ‘I’ll lend you a few CDs. You just have to get to know the star of Hungarian folk music.’

‘I never listen to folk music.’

‘What do you listen to then?’

Anna thought of electronic music, sounds made by computers, the surreal world into which she disappeared in the evenings, a world that opened her eyes to incredible landscapes, much more powerful than television, more exciting than the cinema. What could she tell Gabriella of this?

‘Not much at all,’ she replied. ‘Classical music sometimes.’

‘Liszt? Bartók?’

‘Sometimes,’ Anna lied.

‘Haven’t you ever visited a
táncház
?’

‘Gabi, I’ve lived in Finland since I was ten.’

‘Oh. Poor you. Why on earth?’

Anna finished off her pint and ordered another. What an annoying brat, she thought. She had turned up to console someone she thought was in the depths of despair, but now Gabriella was behaving as if nothing had happened, as if she wanted to get to know her, as if the words
kezét csókolom
had now been replaced by a simple ‘hi’.

‘Because my family moved here back then, and because at that age people don’t normally leave their families. Or do they?’

Gabriella still didn’t seem fazed by the sniping tone in Anna’s voice. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed it at all.

‘Yes, yes, but why did you come here?’

‘Because there was a war going on that had already killed my eldest brother, and my mother was worried that my other brother would be sent to the front. That’s why.’

‘Oh right, the war in Yugoslavia. I was just a baby back then, it was so long ago. Was it really awful?’

‘What?’

‘The war.’

‘I was never in the war, and there wasn’t any fighting in Vajdaság; things were fairly calm there. People just tried to get on with their lives. The only thing was that all the young men disappeared. I know as much about that war as any Finn my age. I’ve seen images on TV, watched a few documentaries, read a few books.’