“Hmm,” the judge said. “Let me get this straight. You expect that you can walk into a man’s bedroom, flirt with him, then get away unscathed?”
“That’s what I said, Your Honour. As a police officer, I had reasons to go to that logging camp, and into that room, and those reasons had nothing to do with romance or seduction.”
The judge stared at me for a long time, wondering perhaps if I’d explain my reasons further, but I kept quiet. What had happened to me was nobody’s business, and I was ready to suffer the consequences. To the judge, I was a former police officer from Ivalo, Lapland, discharged from the force for disobeying my supervisors’ direct orders and now being sued by a man who claimed I had damaged his leg when I attacked him.
“Well,” the judge said at last. “Perhaps that is the truth. Still, the accuser has provided a medical certificate which states that the wound you inflicted prevents him from exercising his profession. You are a truck driver, are you not?” he asked my self-proclaimed victim, who almost jumped from the bench, nodding.
“Yes, Your Honour.”
“A very valuable profession. Especially at a time when our country, having finished paying war reparations to the Soviet Union, is undergoing a massive reconstruction. We need working men. We need truck drivers.” The judge turned back to me. “You are not married, are you? So what do you do for a living?”
He knew already, of course. He just wanted to hear me say it.
“I am a private investigator, Your Honour.”
The judge chuckled. “What do you investigate? Missing cats?”
“I specialize in murder cases, Your Honour.”
Now the spectators in the courtroom were laughing too. Even my lawyer leaned forward to hide a smile.
“Murder?” the judge said. “Murder investigations pay well, last I heard. The court finds you guilty of assault on the person of Seppo Kukoyakka and sentences you to pay damages to the amount of…” He paused, his eyes assessing the value of my cheap wool jacket and tired leather pumps, noting the absence of jewellery. “One hundred thousand markka.”
Six months of police sergeant’s wages. Not that I was employed any more.
My lawyer gasped. He sprang to his feet as the judge’s gavel hit the desk in front of him. “Your Honour, a hundred thousand markka is an extraordinary sum and the defendant —”
“Case closed,” the judge said, not looking at him. “People like Miss Mauzer are a danger to society. You will have the chance to appeal, if you so wish. Next!”
The lawyer threw me a dejected look. “You shouldn’t have been so provocative,” he said. “It would have been better to say you got scared, changed your mind. The judge would have been easier on you. Now, what are you going to —”
I got to my feet. They were already bringing the next defendant into the courtroom, a vagabond who smelled of urine. The show was over, the public shuffling towards the exit, grinning.
“Don’t you worry,” I said to the lawyer. “How much time do I have to pay the sum?”
“Two months.”
“Then I’ll find a way to pay it.”
He stared at me, his Adam’s apple working up and down his thin neck. “I’m sorry, Miss Mauzer,” he said at last. “I should have prepared you better.” He leaned over to pick up his briefcase. “Good luck. You’re going to need it.”
Five minutes later, I stood on the steps of the courthouse, the frozen expanse of the Baltic Sea stretching ahead of me. The guidebooks called Helsinki the White City of the North, except that there was nothing white about it. To me, this was a city of softened greys and sunless mornings, of blurry shadows and damp drizzle. Its sky was ancient and low, its air charged with salt. A city of seafarers, merchants and soldiers. This was a place I was determined to once again call home. Luck or no luck.
2
Hella
The snow globe sat on my desk, on top of a sheet of wrapping paper. There was a figurine of a child inside it. It looked like Eva: painfully thin, almost translucent, with a great mane of red-gold hair that reached down to her waist. The hair didn’t move as I turned the globe upside down – only the synthetic snow did. It swirled inside the glass sphere, the plastic child caught in a snowstorm. With the tips of my fingers, I caressed the smooth cool surface, thinking of all the little phrases I had stashed away in preparation for the big day: We don’t have to be friends – I just want us to get to know each other a little. I’m not trying to replace anyone, Eva. Your dad and I never meant for it to happen, but sometimes life is like this. It sweeps you off your feet.
“No no no no no,” Steve said, restlessly pacing in my tiny, cluttered office. Three steps to the left took him to the window and the view of the patched-up roofs that stretched all the way to the green-and-gold dome of Uspenski Cathedral. One step to the right, and he was in front of the door that opened on what the landlord insisted on calling a reception area – in reality, a room little larger than a cupboard, furnished with two mismatched chairs and an umbrella stand crammed between them. “You’re kind, and generous, and selfless. And tough,” Steve added, once he shot a glance at the reception area and confirmed that it was empty. “You’re not asking this of me. You’re not that kind of person.”
Rising up from my chair, I turned to face him. “I am, trust me.”
Steve rubbed his face with both hands. He looked tired, his tall frame slumping forward a little, his blue eyes bloodshot. “You’re the kind of person who blackmails the father of a fragile child?”
“Yes,” I said, after a glance at the snow globe. I hadn’t got round to wrapping my gift, and now I probably never would. “That’s me exactly. So is it a yes or a no?”
I’d never meant to have this conversation in the first place. The day had already been awful enough as it was; first the courthouse, then a food stamp office where I’d had to queue for an hour before being told by a bored employee that they’d just run out of coupons and I had better come back the following day. And now this.
It had started innocently enough, with Steve dropping by to tell me he was awfully sorry but he wouldn’t be able to see me tonight after all. He had forgotten that Eva was performing in a school play. Playing Ophelia, can you imagine? He had to go to the play. Of course he did.
“Lovely,” I replied. I had been planning on spending my evening at home with Steve, but the theatre was even better. Even when played by fourteen-year-olds, Shakespeare has the power to make one realize how insignificant our problems are in the grand scheme of things.
Steve paused. He had been wearing his coat when he came in, but when we had started talking he had taken it off and slung it over the back of the visitors’ chair, the only comfortable one in the room.
“Hella,” he said. “I know it’s not a good time…”
I should have stopped him there. I should have shrugged it off, told him it didn’t matter. But some angry force inside me, looking for a fight and more reasons to cry, decided that it was time to finally clarify the terms of our relationship.