Helsinki Blood

11

The woman still waits on my stoop. “Are you Inspector Kari Vaara?” she asks. Her accent is thick and hard for me to understand.

She’s fortyish, has salt-and-pepper hair done up in a bun. She looks older than her years, has the look of hard work and a difficult life that changes people’s faces. She has on a plain dress and shoes that speak of a limited income. I expect a complaint for beating people to jelly on the street on this fine summer morning. “Why do you ask?”

“Need help.” Her accent is Estonian-Russian, her Finnish broken.

Sweetness tells her in Russian that he can translate for her if she likes. A nasty little piece of history is that during the Soviet occupation of Estonia during the Second World War, Stalin had tens of thousands of Estonians shipped off to Siberia. Russians were brought in to repopulate. Most of the forcibly emigrated Estonians froze and starved to death. Part of the population now speaks Russian as a first language.

I remember that the U.S. had a crisis over busing children as a form of integration. I think Boston had the biggest shakeup over it. I think of Stalin and his form of integration policies with gulags and the deaths of millions. American problems often seem paltry to me. Maybe because they’ve never been invaded and forced to fight a nation bent on subjugating them, while Europe has been awash in blood and terror since the Pax Romana. I don’t count their civil war, a mess of their own making.

She nods and rambles for a minute, nervous.

Sweetness translates. “Her daughter has disappeared from Tallinn. She thinks men brought her here. She says she has friends here, and they told her you’re sympathetic to foreigners, that you might help her.”

“Tell her to go to the police, explain whatever it is that makes her think her daughter is here, and file a missing person’s report.”

They exchange a few words. “She’s done that,” Sweetness says, “and she got the distinct impression that nobody gave a damn.”

She says something else.

“The bikers we just stomped the shit out of. She asked if that’s what you do to bad people.”

“Tell her yes, if I think circumstances warrant it.”

Sweetness translates. She answers.

“She says, ‘Good. Please do something like that or worse to whoever took my daughter.’”

I give in. She’s won me over. “Ask her to come upstairs with us.”

Once inside my apartment, I tell her to make herself comfortable and offer her coffee. I ask Mirjami where Jenna is. She went to lie down, wasn’t feeling well. I ask Mirjami for a few minutes of privacy and she goes to my bedroom. Milo taught Sweetness how to use the bug sweeper to make sure there are no surveillance devices present. He gives the apartment the once-over. There aren’t any.

The woman watches Sweetness with curiosity but doesn’t ask about it. I sit next to her on the couch to put her at ease. Sweetness brings coffee for us. He sits in my chair to translate for us. I see the tension melt out of her. Coming here to ask a favor from a stranger caused her anxiety. Kindness relaxes her.

I ask how she found me. The Estonians in Helsinki have their own communities and networks. She says they knew how.

I speak intermediate Russian, studied it in school, but it’s rusty and her accent is difficult for me, so I ask her to tell her story to Sweetness and let him repeat it to me. They talk for a few minutes, then he relates it.

“Her name is Salme Tamm. She’s widowed. Her daughter’s name is Loviise and she has Down syndrome. It’s a mild case. Her IQ is over fifty and, within limits, she’s functional. She’s nineteen years old. She had a job cleaning offices, but through some friends, she met some men who offered her secretarial work in Helsinki. Loviise took a class where they taught her filing and some basic things, and she got excited about it. Salme told her not to trust strangers, but three days ago she didn’t come home. Salme thinks these men have bad intentions and Loviise is in trouble. Like most people with Down, she’s small, only four foot eleven, but her features are close to normal.”

Salme seems to understand Finnish, if not speak it. She takes a picture of Loviise from her purse and hands it to me. She’s pretty in her own way. It’s not hard to get a handle on what happened. Her diminished intellect makes her easy to manipulate. Her diminutive size makes her excellent fodder for pedophiles, a good earner. Some men involved in the human slave trade duped her, likely brought her to Helsinki, took her passport and whatever money she had, and told her she had to reimburse them for the cost of bringing her here. A scam, as the cost is only about twenty euros. And that she will work off the debt whoring. At the moment, she’s locked up somewhere. Not much time has passed yet, it’s hard to say what damage has been done to her.

I look up from the picture to Sweetness. “What do you think?”

“You’re a physical wreck. People are playing deadly games with us. We have our own to look after at the moment.”

An image comes into my mind. Kari Vaara rides a white steed. It runs at full gallop, hooves pounding and thundering. The wind is at Vaara’s back. Trumpets sound. Milo bought tickets to bring Kate home three days from now. If all goes well, she arrives to find Loviise here, safe and sound. Vaara has saved a disabled girl from the clutches of villains, from the worst of fates. Loviise can’t begin to express her undying gratitude. Everything Vaara has done in the past is vindicated. The horror Kate suffered is given meaning, and her emotional problems stemming from it disappear in the face of goodness. Kate flings her arms around Vaara, the savior of innocents, and declares her undying love.

Kate is constantly on my mind, and I turn ways to earn her love back over and over in my mind. But this isn’t just about her. I need this for myself. If I could truly save this one girl, in some tiny way, it would justify all I’ve done. It wouldn’t make things right or restore balance to my inner world, but the symbolism would be there, proof that doing good is possible for me.

“No,” I say, “tell her if Loviise is in Helsinki, that you and I will find her and return her to their home.”

“You’re insane,” he says.

“A valid assessment, but I’m going to do this, with or without you.”

Sweetness tells her we’re going to do our best. I understand well enough to get that he downplayed my phrasing so as not to make her hopeful, and he takes her contact information. She throws her arms around me, careful not to hurt my face, and thanks me over and over. After that, there’s no way I can let her down.