‘Irma still hasn’t recognized me once. I can’t take her outside and she can’t be taken for walks.’
‘Is she always in a wheelchair? She isn’t paralysed.’
All the patients were kept tied to a bed or a wheelchair, because it made it easier to take care of them. At mealtimes the patients were brought one at a time to the table to eat. They were offered a couple of spoonfuls of watery mashed potatoes with one nurse feeding twelve patients. And if one of them wasn’t lucid enough to eat them, the nurse concluded that the person wasn’t hungry and wheeled them back to their room to stare at the wall. When Siiri had tried to feed Irma, they quickly intervened. Feeding was a task for a trained nurse; they couldn’t let just anyone do it. If Siiri fed Irma, they told her, it would interfere with her rehabilitation process.
‘Rehabilitation process? How dare they!’ Anna-Liisa snapped. ‘Nobody in that dementia ward is trying to rehabilitate anyone. They’re just storing them there until it’s time to send them to the crematorium.’
Every day there was a different nurse on duty, and always only one, often a refugee who spoke little Finnish. Usually, the nurse just sat in the break room drinking coffee and reading the paper. Not once had Siiri seen anyone in the Group Home spend any time with the patients.
She’d often read in the paper about retirement homes where they rubbed the old people’s shoulders, manicured their nails, curled their hair, and drank coffee with them out of pretty cups. The closed unit at Sunset Grove was something quite different. Siiri was the only visitor – but who would want to visit old ladies like these? It just made a person feel guilty. Even Irma’s daughter Tuula thought that her mother was too out of it to miss her. But could that possibly be true? There was always someone shouting ‘help’ or ‘I need you’, but the nurses didn’t seem to pay any attention. And they talked about the patients as if they were numbers.
‘Bed seven? She always yells, don’t let it bother you. Her incontinence pad will be changed in the morning.’
Anna-Liisa and Siiri rode through Eira without speaking. Siiri wondered whether they should switch to the number 1A at some point and take it to Käpylä. It was the world’s northernmost tram route, after all, and she hadn’t ridden it in years. They could admire the old wooden houses. It would almost be like going out to the country. A trip to Käpylä was all the communing with nature that Siiri needed. She had never been a country girl like Irma, who just last summer had wanted to go to the countryside the way she’d always done and sit on the porch at the family cabin.
Siiri’s great-granddaughter’s boyfriend Tuukka had called a couple of days earlier. The conversation had been a bit tense because Tuukka claimed that Siiri had had someone in for expensive repairs. Siiri was completely at a loss. She feared that she had forgotten something important again and didn’t dare to contradict him. She had come to realize that it was better to keep quiet than to admit to forgetfulness.
‘The Loving Care Foundation billed you for a drain replacement, which cost several hundred euros. Plus you still have the cleaning bill every other week, plus a new service increase since last October. Do you know what that is?’
Siiri didn’t know. Or didn’t remember. Tuukka was awfully nice and promised to put a little money in her account so that she wouldn’t be in a pickle. Irma once said that whenever her mother-in-law was low on money she used to say that said she’d ‘run into a pickle’. And when they got into real trouble she would send Irma to the neighbouring farm to get some potatoes.
Anna-Liisa didn’t seem interested in Tuukka’s phone call and Siiri’s repair bills. She’d been silent for almost the whole trip. But when the tram arrived at the market square, she grabbed Siiri by the arm and pulled her close. Siiri was surprised at how powerful her grip was; it was just like Siiri’s husband on his death bed, long after Siiri had thought he had no strength left in him. Anna-Liisa spoke with firm emphasis, as if she were revealing a state secret: ‘We have to go there together. At night.’
Chapter 31
Thus commenced their Plan, in honour of which Anna-Liisa invited Siiri to her apartment for the first time. Her rooms had poor light and books everywhere, even on the floor and windowsills, tall stacks of them all over the place, and a pervasive scent of dust. Siiri hadn’t known that Anna-Liisa still read every day, too. They talked about how much fun it is when you’re old to reread all the books you liked when you were young.
‘I’m reading Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga for the fourth time now,’ Siiri said excitedly, and sneezed.
‘Yes, I like Buddenbrooks better, although I wouldn’t want to read even that four times.’
‘At least I’m getting some use out of the fact that I forget everything!’
Siiri had the key ring that Mika had left with her. She’d kept it carefully in her handbag at all times for the past few weeks so that she wouldn’t leave it somewhere where Erkki Hiukkanen could find it. She was sure that Mika meant them to spring into action and use it. And now they had realized what it was they ought to do.
First they planned to see what the corridors of Sunset Grove were like at night and map a route from their wing to the door of the Group Home. They would also use their key to get into the Group Home and investigate what went on there at night. Once they had all the information, they would carry out their Plan. Mika would certainly be proud of them, if he only knew!
‘What if I run into Virpi Hiukkanen at night?’ Siiri said, a bit frightened at the thought.
‘Don’t worry! She thinks you’re senile anyway. If you wonder aloud who you are and where you are, she’ll just order you back to your room. But you won’t give her the keys, of course, no matter how confused you are.’
‘Do you think I’m senile?’ Siiri asked, but Anna-Liisa ignored the question and asked Siiri if she would like her to read aloud from some old books. Anna-Liisa thought it sounded fun, and since Siiri’s eyes tired easily, it was an excellent idea. They decided to start this new pastime immediately. Anna-Liisa rummaged through the stacks of books for a moment, found one on top of the refrigerator, petted it as if it were a cat, put it back where she’d found it, then bent with some difficulty to look under the telephone table and found what she was looking for. It was Maria Jotuni’s novel The Tottering House, which Siiri hadn’t read in decades. Anna-Liisa wandered around for a moment more until she spotted her reading glasses on the bedside table, settled into an armchair, and turned on the floor lamp. She looked at the lamp angrily.
‘These environmentally friendly light bulbs are so slow to light up!’
Anna-Liisa waited a moment, then opened up The Tottering House with a flourish, sniffed the inside of the book, coughed a couple of times, and began to read. Siiri sat quite comfortably in a corner of the hard sofa next to a pile of books, leaning her head on a musty-smelling cushion. The room was dim, Anna-Liisa’s deep voice flowed out evenly, and the atmosphere was peculiarly homely, though Lea and Toini’s story began with a tough childhood full of alcohol and death.
‘Siiri, are you asleep?’ Anna-Liisa asked irritably, when she noticed her beginning to doze on the sofa.
Siiri napped much more often these days than she used to – uncontrollably, in fact. Last week she had even fallen asleep on the tram. The familiar driver who listened to Bruckner came to wake her at the last stop and said she’d already gone around the whole route one and a half times.
‘Have you been listening at all to what happens in this second chapter?’ Anna-Liisa asked, and Siiri had to apologize because she had no idea how far Anna-Liisa had read. Anna-Liisa’s reading style was quite monotonous and it positively lulled her to sleep.
‘Right. Pearls before swine. We’ll continue reading Jotuni some other time,’ Anna-Liisa said dourly and slammed the book shut, sending a cloud of dust flying into the air. She put the book and her reading glasses down on the stack nearest her. ‘In other words, enough amusement. Let’s get down to business. What do you think, should we start our nocturnal exploratio
n this week? I could go first.’
‘That suits me. You’re much braver than I am. If you have your adventure this week, I’ll go at the beginning of next week. Won’t that be a good plan for starting the Plan?’
‘That’s a more leisurely timetable than I would wish, but let’s just see what I find out. First, I’ll have to acquire the necessary equipment.’
Siiri was beginning to like Anna-Liisa. It wasn’t such a bad stroke of luck that they’d been thrown together to concoct their secret Plan. When you’d lived to be as old as they were, it was a roll of the dice as to who you would have to get along with in your final years. The people you had in one way or another chosen as friends in the past were dead. In the end, all that remained were a few people your own age, and you couldn’t be picky about who they were; you just had to get along with them. The group at Sunset Grove – Anna-Liisa, the Hat Lady, the Ambassador and the Partanens – were a good example of this. They were all very different.
‘Pish,’ Anna-Liisa said. ‘The place is full of new people. We just haven’t met them.’
She was right, of course. Many of the residents had only been there a short time, and they hadn’t had a chance to get to know them. People arrived at Sunset Grove in worse condition these days than they used to, even though the new residents were much younger than they were. Anna-Liisa thought it was due to politics.
‘Home care is in style now because it’s cheaper than lying in a retirement home. If an old person agrees to stay at home alone, the state will order all kinds of services for them. Even hairdressers and handymen, and someone to walk you around the block, which is something we don’t have here. People only come to the retirement home when there’s no other option.’
Anna-Liisa got worked up into a lecture about the care ratio, which was a new expression and, in her opinion, the worst possible kind. Before she could move on to the problems of language development and the ethics of neologisms, Siiri went back to the subject of the care ratio, because she knew that it didn’t mean what it sounded like. A good care ratio didn’t mean good care; it meant that there were fewer old people to be a drain on society. She and Irma had read in the paper that the worst possible care ratio was in Japan, because the population was ageing even faster than in Finland. Irma hadn’t been able to understand how they could age any faster than anyone else.
That made Anna-Liisa laugh.
‘My Lord, we really must get Irma back. We might soon forget how to laugh without her.’
And that was exactly what they planned to do. Once each of them had performed her reconnaissance mission and they had a sufficient grasp of Sunset Grove at night, they were going to steal Irma back. They were going to rescue her!
Chapter 32
‘It’s quieter than a graveyard here at night,’ Anna-Liisa said as they drank their midday coffee at Siiri’s apartment.
Siiri hadn’t slept at all; she’d been so frightened for Anna-Liisa. But the expedition had gone well, and neither of them felt tired, because now the Plan was really in motion.
‘There’s no one in the office. The only light is in the closed unit, but it looked to me like the nurse was asleep.’
Anna-Liisa had made a careful drawing, noting all the surveillance cameras between A wing and the Group Home, and there were a lot of them. She told Siiri to take the proper equipment with her on her own expedition; at the very least she must have a torch and a knife, and preferably a backpack as well.
‘I always carry a knife in my handbag,’ Anna-Liisa said, but Siiri couldn’t understand why she would need a knife in the middle of the night. And Siiri didn’t have one.
‘Will a kitchen knife do? Of course, it’s not terribly sharp any more. And I don’t have a backpack; I’m not a Girl Scout.’
‘You can take my knife.’
‘But then you won’t have it in your handbag. Will you be able to sleep without it?’ Siiri asked, ribbing her a little, and Anna-Liisa smiled.
Then Anna-Liisa immediately pulled a knife with a knotted birch handle out of her handbag and laid it ceremoniously on the table, as if it were Marshall Mannerheim’s personal weapon. The knife was old and worn, but dangerously sharp, and it didn’t have a sheath. No doubt it had a long and interesting history, but Siiri didn’t dare ask about it. It seemed a very serious matter to Anna-Liisa, who at that moment was absorbed in the Plan and the notes she’d taken, bent over the pages with her glasses perched on her nose.
‘The last hallway from the lobby to the door of the Group Home isn’t as long as I’d thought. I did it in seventy-three steps. And it’s just thirty-one steps from Sundström’s office to the card table – I measured that, too, while I was at it. Thirty-one steps isn’t much. It’s a little worrying, because it is within earshot.’ Anna-Liisa lifted her gaze from the papers, put her glasses down on top of them, and straightened her back until she looked majestically tall. ‘What do you think, how quickly can Irma wake up if we don’t give her any medication? Have you checked whether everything’s in order in her apartment?’
Siiri hadn’t been to Irma’s apartment since Mika Korhonen had cleaned it. She thought it better to proceed one step at a time. Besides, something about the whole thing troubled her. She couldn’t understand why Irma’s apartment had been ransacked like that. It was a nasty thought that she’d tried to get out of her mind. Who had been there, and why?
‘It could have been any one of the staff,’ said Anna-Liisa, as if the matter had been settled by a police investigation. ‘They were looking for evidence to keep Irma in the dementia ward.’
Siiri was still thinking about the green folder, which at first they hadn’t been able to find anywhere, and then there it had been, underfoot with the rest of the mess in the apartment.
‘It’s plain as day,’ Anna-Liisa snorted. ‘First they took it, and then they returned it to cover their tracks.’
‘Cover their tracks? It seems to me that Irma’s apartment was full of tracks!’
‘But not any more, because Mika Korhonen cleaned it all up. Have you thought about that? Why was your angel Mika in such a hurry to clean away other people’s tracks? Or had he been there himself? After all, it was his idea to break into Irma’s flat, but if you look at the details, he actually already had the keys in his backpack. Did you happen to notice how many pill bottles he put in his pocket? I don’t trust that man. For an ordinary taxi driver he is strangely up to date on everything going on here.’
Anna-Liisa was very worked up at this point, her cheeks glowing and her voice trembling, though she was usually so controlled. Siiri was completely speechless. She wasn’t prepared for this kind of outburst, and everything Anna-Liisa was saying seemed frighteningly logical. Siiri had thought that Anna-Liisa believed Mika Korhonen to be a good person at heart, someone who wanted to help them.
‘What reason does he have to help us? A bunch of penniless old women?’ Anna-Liisa continued. Siiri looked nervously at her hands, which were squeezed into fists.
‘I . . . I imagined that he’d made friends with us and . . . and that we . . . had a sort of mutual enemy here, because the cook who hanged himself was a friend of his and somehow . . . somehow it was all connected to Tero. Isn’t that what you thought?’
Anna-Liisa didn’t say anything. Perhaps she was thinking. Siiri wasn’t very persuasive in her defence of Mika. It was all so flimsy and vague. How had she and Irma trusted a stranger, a cab driver, and gone to lunch with him, just like that? And Siiri had invited him into her own home, a strange man who wore a coat with a skull on it. They certainly needed Irma now!
‘No; Irma needs us. We have to do it all by ourselves, Siiri Kettunen.’
Chapter 33
Siiri padded very nervously in her slippers towards the dementia ward. Anna-Liisa had advised her to wear her slippers so that she wouldn’t make any unnecessary noise as she made her way down the corridor. When she went down to the ground floor, she felt as if the noise of the lift would wake the whole city. With her heart
pounding she wandered down the office hallway to the common areas and wondered at how different the rooms she knew so well looked at night. There were no old people who had fallen asleep, no one reading the paper, even the television was dark. Someone had forgotten their Zimmer frame in the middle of the lobby and the Ambassador’s deck of cards was waiting on the table for its players.
She continued like an automaton along the B wing corridor, at the end of which was the locked door of the Group Home. Seventy-three steps, Anna-Liisa had counted. Siiri got confused in her count after fifty. Anna-Liisa’s steps were clearly longer than hers. The lights in the hallway turned on by themselves, which gave the place a ghostly atmosphere. She had a torch in her hand, which was unnecessary – she didn’t know why Anna-Liisa had needed one. Or was the idea to rummage through cupboards and peek into corners? In her excitement Siiri couldn’t remember whether that was a part of their Plan.
She tried to find the surveillance cameras Anna-Liisa had talked about and imagined the poor soul whose job it was to watch her on a screen somewhere. She stopped as she came to one of the cameras and examined it. It was round and had a glass dome over it; it looked more like a lamp, and she wouldn’t have understood that it was a camera if Anna-Liisa hadn’t given her a brief presentation on surveillance equipment and told her that they have them everywhere nowadays, even in taxi cabs.
‘Döden, döden, döden,’ Siiri whispered, and aimed the torch at the device as she passed, just in case. If it was a camera, it wasn’t going to get a picture of her. She felt incredibly clever and counted three camera-like protrusions altogether in the corridor and one gadget that might be a fire alarm or an air freshener. A night-time expedition was actually rather fun.
As she approached the Group Home she heard a muffled shout. Some unfortunate dementia sufferer was yelling in vain for help again, not knowing if it was day or night. It didn’t sound like Irma’s voice, although Siiri couldn’t be sure because when Irma had that attack of rage at the nurse in the middle of the Augustin song, her voice had become completely unrecognizable. This was a very feeble moan.
The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency: Death in Sunset Grove Page 15
