The Hummingbird

by Kati Hiekkapelto

  ‘Your wife said she had taken the child with her on a trip.’

  The words knocked the air from Jussi’s lungs. This can’t be happening. Have they called Tiina already? What should I say now? No, I mustn’t say a thing.

  ‘Is she getting the days mixed up? They were out of town the day before,’ he replied, trying to sound convincing.

  ‘We can check that straight away. Let’s give your wife another call, shall we?’ the policeman boomed.

  ‘No, there’s no need,’ Jussi panicked. ‘I can explain.’

  ‘Let’s hear it.’

  ‘I was at home with another woman. She’s my lover. Does Tiina know what I said? About her and the baby? What have you told her?’

  ‘Calm down. We’ll need this woman’s contact details.’

  ‘I can’t give them to you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I just can’t. She has nothing to do with this. Let’s not involve her.’

  ‘I’m afraid she has everything to do with it; she can provide you with an alibi for the time of the murder.’

  ‘I didn’t shoot Ville!’

  ‘Who can prove that?’

  Jussi said nothing. He was in deeper trouble than he’d thought.

  He didn’t know exactly where the hookers had come from, but there had been two of them at his house, organised for him by a stocky, hairy Russian guy. And they were young too, so this was illegal in more ways than one. What had he got himself messed up with? Did Ville have to get himself killed on that night of all nights?

  ‘You’ll just have to believe me,’ Jussi cried.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not the way it works. I want that woman’s name, or I’ll have you taken into custody right away.’

  ‘They called her Ivana. I don’t know whether that’s her real name.’

  ‘I see, that kind of lover. And where did you meet this Ivana?’

  ‘On an online dating service.’

  This was almost true. Jussi had found his first prostitute through an ad in the lonely-hearts’ column. That had happened years ago and in a different city altogether. For a long time he had restricted his dalliances to business trips; he didn’t want to dirty his own nest, so to speak. But he’d started to get greedy. Tiina was never in the mood. After the baby was born, their sex life had dried up altogether. But he didn’t want a divorce; they didn’t have any form of prenuptial agreement. The previous winter he had ended up meeting the ringleaders of an organised racket in town. It had been one of those boozy nights out with the company bosses; the evening had started with gushing bottles of champagne and he had ended up in a dodgy bikers’ club with his tie askew, his flies open, a can of beer in his hand and a memory blackout. Finding the Russian guy had been easy. He’d promised to make Jussi’s dreams of having two at once come true – and relatively cheaply too.

  ‘We need contact details for that woman – or her pimp; it doesn’t matter,’ said Esko.

  Jussi thought about this for a moment. He had two options. Either way he was screwed, that much was certain, but was it better to be charged with buying sex, possibly from a minor, possibly a victim of human trafficking – or with murder?

  Ultimately it was a simple choice.

  ‘I don’t know the guy’s name, but I’ve got his phone number. He got me the girls.’

  ‘Girls?’

  ‘Yes. There were two.’

  ‘And do they have anything to do with an online dating service?’

  ‘Not really.’

  Esko stared at Jussi, who was trying to retain his dignity.

  ‘I see. Wait here for a moment, please.’

  Esko picked up the telephone and muttered something. Three painful, endless minutes passed. There came a knock at the door and a plain-clothed officer in his forties stepped inside.

  ‘Hello. My name’s DI Kimmo Haahtela. I’m with a different unit; we deal with international crime rackets. You’ll be coming with me. Let’s continue this conversation in my office.’

  Jussi stood up and stared at the floor, humiliated.

  ‘What about Tiina? Will she find out?’

  ‘I’m sure it’ll all become clear in the very near future,’ said Esko with an air of satisfaction.

  Hot bitch! Nice ass. Fuck u hore!

  The message had arrived halfway through her shift, and Sari hadn’t paid it any attention at the time. Now she was standing in her nightgown in the darkened bedroom looking out of the window, holding her phone. Teemu was away on business again; this time he would be away for three days in a row. What should I do now? There were only two messages, and it had been a while since the first one. He didn’t seem very keen for a stalker, and the messages were short. His English wasn’t up to much either. But why had she started to receive them after Riikka’s murder? Could it really be simply a coincidence?

  Sari looked out at the small solar-cell lights lining the garden from the gates to the front door. They were nothing but decoration, like glow worms shining in the dark. They weren’t nearly strong enough to light the garden properly. Anyone could be standing out there, lurking, plotting – and I wouldn’t see them. The neighbours wouldn’t see anything either. What’s that car parked over by the street? Is it red? Sari tried to look more carefully, but the darkness blurred the colour and contours of the vehicle. Nobody’s going to stalk me, she snapped as she pulled on her shoes and jacket over her nightgown, got her phone ready to call the emergency services, stepped out of the front door and marched up to the car parked on the street.

  It was black. Empty. Sari recognised it: the neighbours’ eldest son was visiting again. How embarrassing.

  Am I really going to let two prank text messages get the better of me? Any teenage idiot could be behind them. What am I thinking?

  Sari went back to the house and locked the door carefully behind her. She fetched a spare mattress from the closet and made herself a bed on the floor in the children’s room. There she lay and listened to the sound of their calm breathing in the room that smelled of children. If I get one more message, then it’s time to act, she decided.

  22

  THE FORENSIC REPORT from the scene of Ville Pollari’s murder was almost as frustrating as the one in the case of Riikka Rautio – but not quite. There was no trace of the killer on Ville’s clothes or skin, and they found nothing in the immediate vicinity either. There were no prints or traces of saliva on the sweet wrapper. The pendant in his pocket had been duly wiped clean. But this time the team had been able to isolate three sets of tyre marks in addition to those made by Ville’s car. They now had a tyre impression that could belong to the killer’s car. At least that was something.

  The car is important, thought Anna. So far it was the best lead they had. She called Nils Näkkäläjärvi, who had been assigned to the case from another unit and told to collect images of car models that might fit the description they had been given. The portfolio was now ready, but there were hundreds of pictures and they all looked very similar. Nils wasn’t at all optimistic, but said he was ready to show them to witnesses. He planned to start with Jussi Järvinen, whose alibi for the evening of the murder had been confirmed but who had now been arrested for a raft of other charges, and then visit Helena Laakso. After that he planned to visit the houses in the areas around both running tracks.

  ‘I might as well go round both villages and ask about the car,’ he said.

  ‘That car is crucial,’ said Anna. ‘If we can just establish what make it is, we might have a chance of finding it – especially now that we’ve got the tyre tracks.’

  ‘Let’s hope for the best,’ replied Nils.

  There’s nothing in his accent to suggest he’s from Lapland, thought Anna. There’s nothing in mine either, but our names give us away.

  As a rule, minorities weren’t oppressed in the former Yugoslavia – except for the Roma, a sin of which the whole world is guilty. At least in theory, all minority groups belonged to the same extended southern Slavic family, though not a
ll of them were Slavs. Anna’s hometown of Vojvodina, or Vajdaság in Hungarian, was proudly considered one of the most culturally diverse regions in Europe. The area was home to at least 17 different nationalities; most were Serbs, though there were lots of Hungarians, too.

  You could sense something in the air. In all official documentation, names were transcribed to fit the standards of the national language. In passports Sándor became Aleksander, Hungarian surnames Kovács became Kovač, Nagy became Nađ, József became Josip and so on and so forth. At the time it had only caused minor inconvenience – some people found it slightly amusing – but afterwards Anna had started thinking about the deeper implications of such a practice. Names really matter. Names tell us where someone is from, sometimes even which village they come from. They tell us what language someone speaks. Our name is part of our identity; it is the clearest external manifestation of who we are. It is a unique, personal expression of who I am.

  Is this why the authorities changed people’s names? To weaken the influence of the Hungarian identity? To ensure that official records showed the country to be more unified, more Slavic? Anna felt the urge to telephone Réka, to talk things over, to ask what things were like today now that they belonged to Serbia.

  Belonged to Serbia, Anna repeated to herself, tasting the meaning of those words. That they belonged to Finland, Sweden, Norway, she thought, and looked up at Nils.

  ‘I’ll give you a call when I’m ready,’ he said.

  ‘What? Ah yes, thanks,’ said Anna as she woke from her reverie.

  *

  That evening, despite her resolve earlier that day, Anna didn’t have the energy to go running. The thought of the shotgun killer lurking in the bushes along the edge of the track was no incentive to pull on her tracksuit and run out of the door.

  It had started to rain again, the small drops forming thin rivulets along the kitchen window. She had supper and listened to the news on a local radio station. Joggers were advised to exercise caution. It’s actually my duty to stay at home, she thought with a sense of relief and lit a cigarette, this time not even bothering to go out to the balcony.

  Anna glanced at the clock; it was almost ten o’clock. Time for bed. She switched off the radio and clambered into bed. Her feet were chilly. She fetched a pair of soft woollen socks, pulled them on, went to the bathroom and snuggled once again beneath the duvet. She tossed and turned trying to find a comfortable position, without success. Her shoulders were tense. After lying in bed for an hour she went back into the living room and put on a CD, a collaborative effort with AGF and Vladislav Delay called Symptoms. You can’t beat the golden oldies, she thought as she cracked open a can of beer. How do you say ‘golden oldies’ in Hungarian? She couldn’t think of a suitable translation. She thought in Finnish so often these days. It was a shame, but there was little she could do about it.

  Electronic music filled the room; Anna lowered the volume. Easy-going music, she thought, almost commercial stuff. The melodic sound combined with just enough experimental noise began to lull Anna to sleep; the sofa turned into a river barge carrying her to the shores of the Tisza, to the summers of her childhood once again. Her father stood on the shore shouting vigyáz, vigyáz, as she swam out into the powerful current. Buta apuka, she thought, Silly Daddy. After all, their mother was right next to her – and she was a champion swimmer. She would never have swum out to the middle of the river by herself.

  Of course, she and Réka used to swim out there in secret. They had been spying on the older boys who had set up tents by the shore and lived there all summer, hidden behind the bushes slightly to one side of the swimming area. She could still smell the bonfire smoke wafting beneath the bogrács, inhale the aroma of fish soup, the clay banks along the shore parched by the sun, and the river. Sometimes the boys invited Anna and Réka to join them for some soup. Áron and Ákos were there too. It was the best fish soup she’d ever tasted.

  At the weekend there was a disco down by the shore that attracted youngsters from the neighbouring cities and villages, and brawls were a regular occurrence. Ákos had a Mohican haircut, and back then that was enough to start a fight. It was thanks to their father that the policemen from Kanizsa never gave Ákos a beating, but if things at the Strand disco got really out of hand and the police from the neighbouring town were called, Ákos was always their favourite victim. Sometimes he would come home covered from head to toe in dried blood and their mother would weep and cry that the boy would never come to any good. By this time their father was already dead.

  Anna woke and realised that the CD had stopped. Silence tingled in her ears. She had dozed off on the sofa. She got up and went out to the balcony for a cigarette. The chilled, moist air bit her bare legs. She leaned against the wet railing. The sleeves of her nightgown were soaked.

  She felt a strong urge to call Ákos, to ask if he too remembered, to ask him about their father’s death. Anna had been so young at the time, in her last year at nursery school. In the photograph on her bedside table, their father looked just like Ákos.

  She couldn’t recall his voice. All she could remember was the distant cry of vigyáz, vigyáz. She had a vague recollection of her father reading her a bedtime story. Mazsola. It must have been Mazsola.

  Ákos didn’t answer the telephone. The number you have dialled is currently unavailable, the familiar female voice informed her. Anna went to bed. She couldn’t get to

  We lived in the reception centre for two years, wallahi. Imagine, two years. Mum seemed to wake up when we finally got something more permanent, residence permits and an apartment. I don’t know what took so long. Not to mention the naturalisation applications. I always imagine that the Department of Immigration as this enormous building, each floor full of cabinets, and when your papers arrive they’re filed away in the lowest drawer of the first cabinet on the first floor. Sometimes someone comes along and moves them to the next drawer, then after a while someone else moves them on to the next drawer. So your papers are moving from one drawer to the next, slowly making their way up to the top floor where, in the room at the far end of the floor, there’s a huge desk full of more drawers, surprise surprise. All this happens really slowly, because the few members of staff that work there have better things to do than move applications from one drawer to the next – they have to sit at their computers, for instance, and go to loads of meetings all the time – so it’s only very rarely that they’re assigned to moving paperwork around, once a week at most, and there are millions of drawers. Thankfully the applications never go missing. They don’t shout, don’t rattle around and they don’t get hungry. They never get depressed, frightened or pissed off, and they never complain. It’s so much easier to encounter a piece of paper than a real human being. But it takes an age for the papers to make their way to the lowest drawer of the final cabinet, and from there they’ll one day make it up on to the desk itself, where, of course, there’s another pile of paperwork waiting to be dealt with.

  And one day, the person whose job it is to sign and stamp applications (between 9.30 a.m. and 9.45 a.m.) is on duty and your papers are on the top of the pile and abracadabra you have a residence permit. After that you don’t have to worry about little things like being deported, being taken in a police car to a holding cell at the airport and from there herded on to a flight back to where you fucking well came from, because here in Finland we know better than you about whether it’s safe to go back there, whether your rights will be upheld or whether you and your children will be able to live a life of dignity like the lives of the Eastern European gypsies, because I’m sure they love living in landfill sites. I’m sure no Finn would ever want to leave a life like that if they happened to be born there. No, no.

  Sometimes people even get their hands on the big prize: citizenship. But the desk that deals with citizenship applications is in the President’s office and that’s why it takes even longer. Just thought I’d mention that.

  Once we finally had our residence permi
ts, permanent ones no less, the council agreed to rent us an apartment in Rajapuro. We moved into the ghetto and Mum was thrilled. She never looked out of the windows to see what it was like out there: graffitied concrete walls and half-empty car parks, kids with their heads in bags of glue round the back of the houses. She probably walked to the supermarket with her eyes closed, so as not to break the illusion of the start of our wonderful new life. Still, she must have heard all the drunks. The whole place was a forest built of dirty concrete, a thicket of trees as far as the eye could see, a place with trolls grunting on the pathways and creatures lurking in the corners, a place where the glimmer of a fairy tale shone only in the glazed eyes of the drug addicts.

  Mum decorated the bookshelves with junk from Kurdistan, cooked kubba and birinc and listened to old Ciwan Haco cassettes all day long. Dad stapled a green-white-and-red flag to the wall so that the sun would shine even in the middle of winter. He set up a satellite dish on the balcony, and after that the TV was on all the time, belching out news from across the mountains, or at least from Denmark, and our living room had become a vacuum-sealed jar where Mum and Dad were petrified of the slightest leak, because then their new life might start to go off.

  23

  ‘HEY! I’VE GOT IT!’ cried Rauno as he rushed into the staffroom where Esko, Anna and Sari were quietly sipping their morning coffee. It was eight o’clock. Sari’s youngest had been up all night with a temperature; he’d complained of a sore ear and eventually they’d taken him to hospital. Sari looked pale and exhausted. Esko looked hung-over again. As he raised his cup, black coffee spilled on to the table. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair a mess. Anna didn’t look much sprightlier. She had woken up repeatedly, sleeping in fits, without dreaming, without feeling invigorated.

  ‘I’ve got it! You could at least pretend to be interested,’ exclaimed Rauno, dispelling the sullen atmosphere in the room.