And then, finally, Mika started talking. He told her how he’d messed up in school, drank and got into fights, got put in observation class and learned to be tough. Mika’s father was some big executive who’d cheated on his mother and then taken off, and his mother hadn’t really been able to look after him. The first thing he ever got really interested in was motorcycles. That was what actually gave him a real grip on life, getting into the motorcycle club and going to cooking school. But he’d always found it hard to trust people, except for Tero, who’d been almost like a little brother to him.
He said all this very matter-of-factly, almost harshly, and didn’t paw at the air with his hands at all.
‘So it’s cool when someone comes along who doesn’t ask any questions. Just takes you as you are.’
‘Like me?’
‘Yep.’
Mika said he’d been wondering why Siiri trusted him, when no one else ever had. She’d even made him her advocate, although he was, in fact, a criminal. Siiri thought about what Virpi Hiukkanen had been croaking about in her apartment, looking like an iguana, but she didn’t say anything about it, as she didn’t want to hurt Mika’s feelings.
‘I just trust my instincts. That’s what I’ve always done with people,’ Siiri said. ‘And I mean real instincts, not those odd instincts that Irma talks about. I don’t think life has hardened you, even though life has treated you unfairly. You’re the only person who’s offered to help me and Irma. We both would have been in the dementia ward if it hadn’t been for you, except that I would have been in prison. Do they have a dementia ward there, too?’
‘If you go to jail, I’ll tell my mates. They’ll take care of you there.’
They both laughed and got off the tram at the ice arena. Mika said he was leaving now; he had somewhere to go.
‘But before you go, can I ask you one more thing?’
The sun shone in Mika’s eyes, which glowed with blueness, although he was forced to squint in the dazzle. ‘Ask away.’
‘I was wondering . . . do you have a cat?’
Mika burst out laughing, a joyful belly laugh. Siiri thought he was more of a cat person than a dog person, and she wanted to know if she was right. If she could still trust her instincts.
‘I don’t have a cat or a dog.’
‘But would you think you’d be more likely to get a cat or a dog?’
‘A cat, of course,’ Mika answered, and smiled.
He waved to her and strode off towards the ice arena, his backpack on his back. Siiri watched him as he walked away, until she realised she must look stupid standing there smiling to herself in the middle of town, and headed for the stop on Mannerheimintie. The number 4 arrived quickly, as always, and Siiri got on, calm and contented, until she got to the Aura building and remembered Irma. A homeless hip-replacement patient in a trauma therapy ward, abandoned by her darlings, still waiting to learn if she’d passed her homecoming test.
Chapter 57
A sign was taped to the wall of the A-wing lift at Sunset Grove announcing that Head Nurse Virpi Hiukkanen was temporarily on sick leave. This provoked endless chatter at the cafeteria, card table and memory group. Everyone had their own theory about Virpi’s illness. Many believed that her altruistic self-sacrifice to improve the lives of the elderly had finally taken its toll, but there were others who said she was suffering from an aggressively malignant form of breast cancer. Only Siiri Kettunen knew that Virpi Hiukkanen had had a nervous breakdown.
‘Because of you,’ Irma said happily as they talked at Kivelä Hospital.
Anna-Liisa had come to visit, too, since the Ambassador was out on some secret errand in town, and she gave a full report of the rumour mill that Virpi’s sick leave had set in motion.
‘But I didn’t tell anyone about your part in events, Siiri.’
Irma was once again in excellent spirits. The task of boiling water in the therapeutic test kitchen had gone well, and an odd instinct had even reminded her to turn off the stove afterwards. Siiri’s and Irma’s husbands would never have passed such a test, even at the height of their powers, and they wondered whether the test was the same for men and women. After all, you couldn’t expect too much in the kitchen from men their age.
‘My darlings think that I can’t get along on my own any more. Or that, even if I can now, I won’t be able to for long, so it would be best to get me into storage in some institution ahead of time, preferably a proper nursing home so that this waiting for the crematorium won’t be so expensive. They haven’t made it here for a meeting because they’re busy at work, so they had to fill out a close-family distance questionnaire.’
‘You made that name up,’ Anna-Liisa said.
But it really was called a close-family distance questionnaire. It was an online questionnaire given to close relatives of a patient when they had to take care of their horses and couldn’t come to the hospital.
‘Ah. I see. The term suits your family remarkably well.’
The report from Irma’s homecoming team was crucial to the apartment question. If Irma had got a bad score – in other words, the highest possible number of points – she would have been thrown into an institution for memory-loss patients, which was what her children wanted, because then the city would pay for it. But since she’d got a clean bill of health, her problem was that she had no place to live.
‘So which is worse?’ Irma asked. She didn’t want to go to a nursing home or a dementia ward, and surely Finland wasn’t a country where a ninety-two-year-old veteran of the Lottas was thrown onto the street to beg.
‘Watch out – you might very well find me in front of Low Price Market in my Lotta uniform next to that handsome gypsy accordionist singing “Oh, My Darling Augustine” with a coffee cup at my feet. I still have my old uniform in the wardrobe, and maybe I can fit into it again after my hospital tour. Oh, that’s right. I don’t have it. No doubt my darlings took it to the flea market. Would anybody buy such a thing, when they probably don’t even know what it is?’
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Anna-Liisa began dramatically, interrupting Irma’s train of thought.
‘What about?’ Irma asked.
‘I’ve been thinking that if I moved into Onni’s apartment – he has three rooms and a kitchen in C wing, after all – then you could have my apartment.’
It was a stupendous idea. They had to let it sink in for a moment before they fully appreciated what a wonderful idea it was.
‘Does the Ambassador – I mean does your Onni – know about this scheme?’ Siiri asked.
Anna-Liisa said with great satisfaction that it had been Onni’s idea, but there were still some kinks to iron out. Then she changed the subject to the weather, because she was sweltering in the heat, just as they all were. It was well into summer and the hot weather was difficult for old people. It was even hotter inside than outside, and they couldn’t find anything suitable to wear, because a ninety-four-year-old woman can’t walk around in a sun dress with her arms bare. A lot of old people died of the heat, and Siiri’d had to remind herself to drink enough water. It would be embarrassing to dry up and die of dehydration in this land of thousands of lakes.
‘What would be the best way to die?’ Irma asked.
‘From a heart attack, of course,’ Anna-Liisa said, and Irma told them about her cousin who had had a heart attack right after she had taken a shower, rubbed herself down with lotion, and settled into bed to read Finland Illustrated magazine and listen to Bach’s Goldberg Variations. That’s how her children found her – freshly washed.
‘But it’s too late for us to think about it,’ she continued. ‘We should have died before everybody else wished we had. Before they started emptying out our homes and distributing our belongings to the poor.’
Irma showed them an envelope that had all of the many papers and reports that made up her homecoming-test results. She had been declared a very viable individual, but, even so, her homecoming evaluation ordered a nurse to visit her three t
imes a week in her home, though she didn’t have one.
‘Some poor nurse has to come and give me food and medicine. If she has time, she can wipe my bum, too, and on holidays I might get to go with her to take a shower.’
Irma had been put on the waiting list for the city nursing homes, but the social worker said her chances were low because she was too healthy and capable. She would be placed temporarily in the Suursuo Hospital chronic ward unless some miracle happened fast.
‘I was already there once! Am I going to start the hospital merry-go-round all over again?’
Siiri admired Irma’s ability to be so cheerful even in this situation. She didn’t dwell on her difficulties, she just wanted Siiri and Anna-Liisa to read her the death notices and obituaries. Then she wanted to know who had died while she’d been on her adventure in the Group Home and getting to know the hospitals of Helsinki. Siiri listed them for her again: Olavi Raudanheimo, Reino, the Hat Lady, and a few others whose funerals they hadn’t gone to. The details of the Hat Lady’s memorial reception at Ukko-Munkki put her in a particularly good mood. Then some odd instinct made her remember something she’d forgotten.
‘Anna-Liisa, were you serious when you said that you might move in with the Ambassador and give me your apartment?’
Anna-Liisa nodded but looked serious. Unbeknownst to them, she had given the matter considerable thought.
‘There are certain problems that have come up,’ she said, fiddling with the corner of the blanket on the hospital bed, which wouldn’t fold the way she wanted it to. ‘Namely, that Sunset Grove doesn’t allow cohabitation.’
Anna-Liisa and the Ambassador had to be married, if they wanted to live in the same apartment.
‘Why is that a problem? Just get married!’ Irma suggested.
‘Yes, that’s what we thought,’ Anna-Liisa said, still very serious, though Irma and Siiri were positively elated. ‘But it’s complicated, because of Onni’s past.’
‘Oooh! How exciting! Is he a criminal, too, like me?’ Siiri said, and she and Irma laughed so that it seemed they would never stop, just like teenagers on a tram. Anna-Liisa was annoyed at their hilarity, so they tried to calm down and listen to her revelations about Onni’s past.
The Ambassador was not a criminal, but an official who’d had a considerable diplomatic career and had lived in many different countries that no longer existed, such as Yugoslavia. The mother of his children had died long ago. But after that he had remarried and divorced at least twice while abroad, and now he had found out that in Finland they only recognized Finnish divorces.
‘So he’s a ninety-year-old widower with two wives and a girlfriend? Actually, that’s quite an accomplishment!’ Irma said, and told them about her cousin who had three brothers and twelve sisters-in-law. Then she started to wonder whether registered lesbian partnerships were allowed at Sunset Grove.
‘In that case, Siiri and I could move into the Ambassador’s big apartment.’
The Ambassador had been so enthusiastic about Anna-Liisa’s bold plan, however, that he had started to get his papers in order. As a diplomat and a Freemason, he was used to taking care of things with two phone calls and a bank transfer, but clearing up his divorces had proved unusually labour-intensive. Anna-Liisa was afraid that once her Onni’s affairs were delved into, more scandals might turn up.
‘More scandals? What nonsense are you talking about?’ Irma asked.
By scandals, Anna-Liisa meant children, especially any born out of wedlock, but Irma and Siiri didn’t understand what the Ambassador’s flock of children had to do with Anna-Liisa’s life.
‘Children want an inheritance,’ Anna-Liisa explained patiently. ‘And if they’re very greedy, the way children are, they’ll prevent our union because they’ll be afraid that I’m after Onni’s fortune. You see, he’s very wealthy.’
She said this very secretively, leaning so close to Siiri and Irma that their heads almost bumped together. Anna-Liisa imagined that everyone at Sunset Grove, and probably everyone in Kivelä Hospital as well, envied her and the Ambassador their love and their money. Irma suggested that they write a prenuptial agreement. That way, the Ambassador’s hypothetical children wouldn’t have any reason to fear her intentions.
‘That’s what I suggested, but Onni refuses to do it.’ Anna-Liisa sighed. ‘He wants to treat all his wives equally. And he’s never had a prenuptial agreement with any of his other wives, so he refuses to have one with me. He’s certain that the other wives will die first, but as far as I know, all but the first one are still alive.’
‘How fun! You can invite them all to the wedding!’ Irma crowed, and started laughing again. ‘Do you promise to make us your bridesmaids?’
Anna-Liisa burst into a young bride’s laughter and never answered Irma’s question. Only after they had left Irma to rest in her bed and walked down Sibeliuksenkatu to the tram stop did she suddenly say:
‘There isn’t going to be a big wedding. We’re going to a magistrate.’
Chapter 58
Irma’s ninety-third birthday arrived. Suursuo Hospital was full, so she was still being stored at Kivelä. This had caused a chain reaction: Laakso Hospital had collected several rehabilitated hip-replacement patients who were waiting to go to Kivelä for the homecoming process, which meant that Töölö Hospital had people who had just had their hip surgery and were lining up to get into Laakso for rehabilitation, and another crowd of patients was at the Hilton waiting to get into surgery at Töölö.
‘Is there a queue for the crematorium, too, do you think?’ Irma wondered as they drank sparkling wine in the hospital garden in honour of her birthday. Siiri and Anna-Liisa had smuggled in the bottle and glasses, but they hadn’t been able to bring a cake because it would have been too much to carry. The hospital canteen had strawberries for sale, though, and that made for an excellent ninety-third-birthday celebration. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and the traffic was roaring. Irma even smoked a cigarette, and claimed she could feel the titanium spike glowing in her hip.
The situation at Sunset Grove was an odd one. Virpi Hiukkanen’s sick leave just kept on going, and there was no one to replace her. Director Sundström was completely worn out from work, walking around nervously and lamenting that she had no time for children in developing countries. But the strangest thing was what had happened to Erkki Hiukkanen. Anna-Liisa had heard about it from Margit Partanen, who had finally got her husband into the closed Group Home and herself out of being his personal caregiver.
‘And who should she see there but our caretaker, dozing in a nightshirt with the other patients,’ Anna-Liisa said.
Erkki Hiukkanen had been diagnosed with early onset dementia, the kind that happens to sixty-year-olds. He was quite demented and, according to Margit, downright sweet. He told the same three dirty jokes morning to night and liked doing arts and crafts. He had probably been senile already when he was following Siiri around the city.
‘And when he stole my silver hand mirror and Onni’s ryijy rug,’ Anna-Liisa said.
Siiri thought that Anna-Liisa was just speculating about her hand mirror and the ryijy rug, but it turned out that Margit Partanen had seen the silver hand mirror in Erkki’s handbag in the closed unit.
‘He has a handbag?’ Irma said excitedly.
The handbag was stolen, too, but no one knew whose handbag it was. It probably belonged to a resident who had died a long time ago. But Anna-Liisa was very happy to get her mirror back, her mother’s morning gift, at long last.
‘What should we buy you for a wedding gift, then? I had been thinking a silver hand mirror was a good idea,’ Irma said. ‘Maybe something more practical. Sheets? No – I’ve finessed it: matching nightshirts! Yes?’
‘Or maybe a frying pan from the Munkkiniemi supermarket? Egg cups? Or a year’s subscription to Donald Duck comics?’ Siiri suggested.
‘I know: the Kama Sutra!’ Irma crowed, and she laughed until she had tears in her eyes.
Anna
-Liisa let them babble, but finally demanded a chance to speak with a pound of her fist on the bench. It seemed that the Ambassador had used his diplomatic connections to get his divorce papers from abroad with remarkable swiftness, even the ones from non-existent countries. Every paper had to be dragged to one magistrate or another and only then could they beg for a certificate of non-impediment and get married.
‘I thought non-impediment was when they have to let you get from one place to another in your wheelchair,’ Irma mused, serious once more. ‘Half the apartments have to have bathrooms where an invalid can take a shower.’
‘Onni has been very energetic and it looks like we’re going to get married in August, and you can move into my apartment even before then, Irma. But under no circumstances will we accept any wedding gifts.’
‘It’s a lucky thing that Virpi Hiukkanen is out of the picture,’ Irma said, and she was right. ‘I’m sure she would have prevented us from trading apartments.’
Anna-Liisa said that she’d sent forms and documents to this place and that and had arranged things very cleverly, so that the Loving Care Foundation couldn’t help but approve the plan.
‘Onni bought my apartment and now he’s going to be Irma’s landlord!’
‘I didn’t know anybody could buy an apartment there,’ Irma said in wonder.
‘They probably can’t, normally,’ Anna-Liisa said. ‘But Onni has connections, and if you buy the place, you don’t have to wait. Otherwise, you couldn’t have just moved in. There are dozens of seventy-year-olds in poor health waiting in line. And apparently retirement-home apartments are an incredibly good investment, because there are more and more old people all the time and the rents are going up every week.’
‘Lord, help me! I’ll go bankrupt!’ Irma cried.
She had good reason to worry. Even if her rent was reasonable, her life was getting more expensive in other ways. The hospital homecoming team had ordered so much home care for her that it was going to cost hundreds of euros a month, if not more.
The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency: Death in Sunset Grove Page 27
