The Hummingbird

by Kati Hiekkapelto

  Why not?

  ‘Just a minute … The daughter of Kalevi and Sanna Paakkari – Irmeli, her name was – I think she married someone called Rautio.’

  ‘Riikka’s mother’s name is Irmeli.’

  ‘Yes, I have a vague recollection of Irmeli. This is a terrible shock – your own child murdered in broad daylight, and so close-by too. I’ve kept the doors locked ever since. I’m worried someone will turn up here with a gun.’

  The coffee cup in Aune’s hand had started to tremble, spilling coffee on to the shiny tablecloth.

  ‘I don’t think you’re in any danger,’ said Rauno, trying to sound convincing. But how the hell can I be sure of that, he cursed to himself.

  ‘The girl’s time of death has been placed at around ten o’clock in the evening. Do you remember anything about that evening?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Aune, touching her hearing aid.

  ‘I said, do you remember anything about the evening before you found the girl? Anything out of the ordinary?’

  Aune thought for a moment.

  ‘No, nothing in particular,’ she replied eventually. ‘In the evenings I watch television and go to bed early. Every night.’

  ‘How do you get by, here all by yourself?’

  ‘I do well enough. I can still move around and there’s nothing wrong with my head, nothing much anyhow,’ she laughed. ‘It’s just my hearing. But now I’m worried. Mind you, it’s a good thing the care assistant visits every morning. At least it won’t take them long to find me, if something should happen.’

  ‘Is there anyone you could ask to stay for a few days? A relative?’ Rauno suggested as he stood up.

  ‘My son is so far away. He’s too busy at work.’

  Aune wiped the crumbs from the table and gathered them in her quivering hand. She remained sitting at the table, lost in thought, and didn’t get up to see Rauno to the door.

  The woods on either side of the running track were shadowed and quiet. So what, thought Anna. It’s the same track, the same stretch of forest, the world is exactly the same as it is in daylight, she tried to convince herself the way her mother had done when she was a child and afraid of the dark. I’m not going to start imagining things now. But why on earth do all tracks like this have to run through the woods? They could just as well run through the city like soft streams, through the suburbs, from one yard to another, one car park to another, from the shopping centre to the church hall. People could run surrounded by lights and people; we wouldn’t always have to be by ourselves in the dark.

  Her legs felt horribly stiff. Anna jogged as slowly as possible and still found it hard going. She had smoked far too much in the last few days.

  She’d actually stopped smoking years ago. That’s what she tried to tell herself as she lit up every evening. The last time she’d smoked during the day was before joining the army, and even then she hadn’t smoked very much. One pack easily lasted her a week.

  A fene egye meg with the cigarettes, she cursed to herself. It was because of the nicotine that coffee had started to give her heartburn. Her mobile beeped. Happy at having an excuse to stop for a moment, she pulled the phone from her pocket. One new message. It was from the same number as the message earlier that day. Unknown. Prepaid. A faszom, she said out loud.

  Did you get my msg this afternoon? I’m really interested in you. And hey, be careful out there.

  There was a rustling in the trees nearby. The darkness behind the branches was almost impenetrable. Anyone could be hiding there and Anna wouldn’t notice a thing. The branches gave a crackle. Anna glanced around and put the phone back in her pocket. She was determined to find out who was sending these messages and why. It was probably the invalid; he’d clearly decided to start harassing her. Some people just can’t accept that I don’t want to see them a second time. But he could at least play fair; the unlisted number made the messages seem horrid, pathetic and frightening. Was that really his intention?

  Just then she heard the sound of someone running towards her. She felt the instinct to scarper into the woods and hide among the trees.

  A francba, there are other people running out here and they’re perfectly entitled to do so, Anna cursed as a jogger in a dark tracksuit ran past her with a wave. A regular, just like Anna. When she was younger, Anna had known all the local joggers. They had always greeted one another whenever they passed or overtook one another. Of course, she didn’t really know them, didn’t know their names, where they lived, their backgrounds, professions or their other hobbies. They only recognised one another on the running track, in their tracksuits, sweat on their brows. Anna knew that if she went for a run on a Monday at six, the middle-aged woman in the red tracksuit would also be out. On Thursdays there was the cute guy, who much to Anna’s disappointment had never paid her any attention except to greet her in passing. In all likelihood they wouldn’t have recognised one another in a different place or wearing different clothes. Despite this, the sense of camaraderie was powerful. They were like bikers or people in caravans who waved to one another anywhere in the world. Sometimes Anna had thought of those nameless, faceless runners as closer to her than her own mother.

  Humans are the perfect pack animal, she thought, and increased her speed until she began to feel the lactic acid in her muscles drain the energy from her body. She tried to forget about the text messages and her childish fears. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to complete one more lap of the track and didn’t pay any attention to the strange rustling that sounded as though someone were following her through the trees. She wanted to prove to herself that her fears were unfounded. Then she ran home and took a shower, more fatigued than she had been in a long time. This time she was forced to use the lift, and she was determined not to smoke before going to bed.

  When she came out of the shower, Anna glanced at the time. It was half past nine. Quite late, but she’d made up her mind. She fiddled with the settings on her phone so that the recipient wouldn’t see her number and called the number that had sent the messages. The officious-sounding female voice answered her: The number you have called … But of course, she thought, took out Petri’s number, tapped it into her phone and listened as a phone rang somewhere. She counted eight rings and was about to hang up when a sleepy voice answered. ‘Petri.’

  ‘Hi, it’s Anna,’ she said and drew a deep breath.

  ‘Hey there, how are you doing?’ Any signs of tiredness were gone; Petri sounded positively elated. ‘I almost thought you’d decided not to call me. Great!’

  Shit, she thought. That’s exactly what I didn’t want.

  ‘Have you sent me any text messages today?’

  Straight to the point; it was for the best.

  ‘No. You wouldn’t give me your number.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’ ‘If they did come from you, I’ll find out. I’ll have you charged. Come on, admit it. Stop harassing me and I’ll forget about it.’

  ‘That’s a bit harsh. Is that how you talk to all criminals? They’d be wetting themselves.’

  Anna wasn’t sure whether he was teasing her or not.

  ‘Do you admit it?’

  ‘Anna, really, I don’t even have your number. But I will admit I really hoped you’d call. This wasn’t quite what I had I mind, though.’

  ‘I bet.’

  ‘Can we meet up? I’ve been thinking about the whole Hungarian minority thing. And you.’

  It sounded as though he was begging and it irritated her.

  ‘Sorry, I’m afraid I’m too busy at work – I haven’t got time at the moment. But let’s see,’ she said, instantly regretting it.

  Let’s see. What on earth was she raving on about?

  ‘I honestly haven’t sent you any messages.’

  ‘Okay, bye then.’

  ‘Anna, don’t—’

  Anna hung up.

  And went out for a cigarette.

  She believed him. He had sounded so genuinely surpri
sed and excited to hear from her. At first. Imagine the disappointment she must have caused him.

  Anna anxiously clambered in beneath her sheets and tried to relax her exhausted limbs, and just as she was about to slip into a sleep as quiet and cool as a hole in the winter ice, her phone beeped again. Bassza meg, do I need to change my number, she snapped as she fumbled for the light switch. The phone continued to beep. It wasn’t a message; someone was calling.

  It was Esko.

  It was almost midnight.

  Jere had turned up at the station.

  16

  ‘I’VE ALREADY TOLD YOU a hundred times, I was in Kaldoaivi,’ Jere yelled with such force that a droplet of spittle flew on to his stubbly chin. Jere wiped it on the sleeve of his camouflage jacket.

  ‘What is that? Speak Finnish, please,’ Anna replied calmly, though she felt the urge to raise her voice. She was annoyed that the boy seemed so cocky after everything that had happened, and she could see that Esko felt the same.

  Anna had dragged herself out of bed, forced herself awake, pulled on some clothes and driven to the police station through the night-time drizzle. On the way she nervously smoked another cigarette inside the car. As soon as she tossed the butt out of the window, she felt a deep sense of disgust at herself. The air inside the car was thick with poisonous smoke and the smell of tobacco wafted from her hair as she walked across the station car park. Esko’s Opel was parked there too, lonely and expectant like a faithful old dog tethered outside a pub. Has he been home at all, she wondered.

  ‘I don’t know what language I should speak to you, but I get the feeling it isn’t Finnish. I was in Kaldoaivi. End of story. I left last Sunday and got back a few hours ago. My mum called me the minute I turned my phone on – that was this morning – and told me the police were looking for me, that Riikka’s dead, shot. What’s been going on here? And why are you looking for me? You don’t think I shot her, do you?’

  ‘What is Kaldoaivi?’ Anna asked again.

  ‘It’s an area of Lapland, in the moorland between Sevettijärvi and Pulmankijärvi,’ Esko replied on Jere’s behalf.

  ‘What were you doing there?’

  ‘Hiking and fishing, of course.’

  ‘Who were you with?’

  ‘I was by myself.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What d’you mean, why? Why was I by myself? Surely a man can go off to Lapland by himself if he damn well pleases. What else could a man possibly want?’

  ‘You didn’t tell anyone where you were going and you turned your phone off.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. Because I felt like it.’

  ‘I’d drop the arrogance, if I were you. You’re currently at the top of our list of suspects. Murder suspects. How does that sound?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Fucking hell.’

  ‘Where is your rifle? The Remington,’ asked Esko.

  ‘At Riikka’s parents’ cottage. That’s where I normally go duck shooting.’

  ‘Riikka’s parents don’t seem to know about it.’

  ‘How would they, they hardly ever go there. But that’s where it is. You can check if you like.’

  ‘We will,’ said Anna. ‘What time did you leave on Sunday?’

  ‘In the morning. The train to Rovaniemi leaves at nine.’

  ‘And from there?’

  ‘I got the bus to Ivalo, then another one to Sevettijärvi.’

  ‘Can anyone corroborate that?’

  ‘I’ve still got the tickets. I’m sure the drivers would remember me. And I booked the train ticket online – I can prove that.’

  ‘The fact that you booked a train ticket doesn’t prove anything. But don’t worry, we’ll be able to chart your journey to the minute.’

  ‘Good. Then I’ve got nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Riikka was killed at around 10 p.m. on Sunday evening. Where were you then?’

  ‘In a tent in Sevettijärvi.’

  ‘And who can prove that?’

  ‘I spent that evening in the local bar.’

  Esko immediately went outside to make a phone call. After a few minutes he returned and gestured for Anna to join him in the corridor.

  ‘It’s true. The publican Armas Feodoroff confirmed that last Sunday a young man matching Jere’s description came into the bar just after the Ivalo bus arrived, around 8 p.m., and drank seven bottles of beer. They chatted about everything from ptarmigan-shooting to fishing – the boy drank himself into quite a state. There was one other customer too, Antti Bogdanoff, one of the local drunks, so he can confirm Jere’s story – apparently he wasn’t in too bad a state that night. The lad said he studied mathematics and that he wanted to go hiking before term started again. The same person was sighted in the shop operating next door to the pub. He bought some chocolate and a couple of beers.’

  ‘From Sevettijärvi there’s no way he could have got back that same evening,’ said Anna.

  ‘Absolutely no way.’

  ‘So it can’t be Jere,’ said Anna, unable to hide the disappointment in her voice.

  ‘It certainly looks that way.’

  ‘We should send them a photo of Jere, just in case.’

  ‘Sure. I’ve taken down an email address.’

  ‘I suppose we’ll have to start going through the members of the hunting association. Perhaps one of them just lost it.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Thanks for calling me.’

  ‘Thank Virkkunen,’ said Esko.

  I only have vague memories of the reception centre. My life was punctuated with trips to primary school, like all the kids who lived there. Or nursery school, if they were still young like Mehvan.

  The adults stayed at the centre all day and slept. It was probably the adults’ sleepiness and vacant behaviour that made my memories of the centre so messed up. Everything was dusky and obscured behind wisps of mist; it was like being woozy with fever. That’s when the split started, on the first day at school. It’s a split that appears between all kids and their parents, crack, crack, crack. At first it’s just a small hairline fracture, but it gradually grows and deepens. Eventually it tears apart with a great rip. The kids are pulled into the outside world. They learn things quickly, jalla jalla, they learn the language and local customs. They have a function, morning assemblies at nursery, going to school, studying, a reason to exist.

  But what about the adults? They stay behind and sleep. They might take a language course, if they’re lucky. They wait, twiddling their thumbs, for their kids to come back from school, for their new, wonderful lives to begin, the life that they had planned so fervently back home and that aunts and uncles and cousins and neighbours and friends of friends who had previously left have lied about to them. Ask anyone who’s ever left for the West and they’ll tell you how fucking well they’re doing. After time, the parents give up waiting – what’s the point? The kids aren’t coming home and life isn’t suddenly going to turn into heaven on earth. After a few years they weep and rage when their kids speak Finnish to them but are still falling behind at school; they just hang out round the city listening to shitty American music and don’t do anything sensible now that they’ve finally got the chance – and at what cost? – though it’s cost the adults everything, EVERYTHING. The adults would even be prepared to swallow the fact that they no longer have any function here, but that their kids are throwing everything away too…

  I’ve thought about this a lot, and I’ve spent weeks locked in my room so hey, I’ve had plenty of time to wonder whether it’s possible to stop that split from happening. The only thing I can think of is that adults need to be shoved out of the door straight away, just like the kids. Put them straight into work, then you either sink or swim. Less of the Social Services, less of the nonsense about integration, just get these people into work. Working life in Finland isn’t so weird and wonderful that an immigrant can’t survive. But of course this would mean less fund
ing for integration projects, fewer jobs and meetings for all those experts. So that’s that then.

  Every single day it felt completely stupid having to go back to the reception centre after school. In the morning the doors pushed me out into a place with a surface, with sounds and tastes and smells, a place that I could be a part of too, then in the afternoons those same doors sucked me back into a bad dream that went on and on without you ever really waking up. Mum told me to call that place home. Four beds in a small room, a table, a bookshelf, depressing blue-grey curtains at the windows, a grotesque excuse for a sky. Cold floors and echoing corridors with endless rows of identical rooms, temporary homes for other people waiting for their real lives to start. Lamps shaped like tubes. A communal kitchen. The kids called it the loony bin. Apparently the building had once been a mental asylum. I secretly worried that Mum would go crazy, that all the madness those windows had seen and sucked up would somehow be transferred into her. That’s what it seemed like. For the most part Mum just cried and stroked her ever-growing stomach and stared at the walls. Dad sat outside smoking with the other men living in the house. There were others from our country, the country that didn’t really exist. Damn it, I’ve heard so much about it that my head hurts; I’ve had a lifelong overdose of it. Dad was happy that he could sit out there and plan a free Kurdistan. Mum had no one to keep her company. I called the place home whenever Mum was listening so that she wouldn’t go mad. Whenever Dad said that at least here we didn’t need to fear for our lives and that the children would have a future, Mum started crying all the more. Then Dad would go out for another smoke.

  In a way, my experience was the opposite of the Sámi. I’ve read somewhere that back in the olden days the Sámi people weren’t allowed to speak their language at school and they were forced to live in hostels, and they weren’t allowed to speak Sámi there either, and so their memory of school became blurred. The things they remember most about childhood were the holidays, because being able to use their own language helped strengthen the memories better. One person said the only thing they remembered about school was when their mother came to visit. Then they could speak. Then they were alive.