Helena Halme - The Red King of Helsinki - Lies, Spies and Gymnastics

She sighed and dialled Anni’s number.

There was no answer.

‘Sorry to have bothered you,’ Maija said and replaced the receiver.

Maija wondered if she should call Iain. She could see he was fond of the girl, but it was still difficult to burden a man with the demands of rearing somebody else’s child. Especially a teenager. Iain was kind, and loving, but would this prove too much for him? Maija didn’t want to frighten him. It was enough that he’d warned Maija.

Maija put her coat on. She couldn’t sit at home doing nothing. Iain was right. Pia must be involved with drugs.

Pia sat in the tram, recalling Heikki’s kisses on her lips, the taste of the ice cream he’d eaten in her mouth, oblivious to the dreary blocks of flats and the cold and dark streets floating past. She hummed Love me Tender, a soppy song Mum turned the radio up for. It wasn’t often you heard foreign songs, especially American ones, on Finnish radio, so when the occasional old one came on it stuck in your head for days afterwards. Pia kept reminding herself of everything Heikki had done and said, how he’d looked at her after their long kiss outside on the pavement. Pia had felt his trousers bulging and knew he wanted her. When would there be another party at Sasha’s house, where they could be alone? She must try harder to be friends with her.

Pia was so engrossed in her thoughts that she hadn’t noticed the man sitting right behind her, until he reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. She jumped up and tried to turn around but the man’s hand got hold of her neck. Her eyes darted to and fro. There was no one else on the tram.

‘Be good girl, Pia. Sit still.’

Pia tried to let out a scream, but it was more like a mouse’s squeak. Pia smelled the man’s warm, sour breath, as he whispered hoarsely into her ear, ‘No sound.’ His hand squeezed tightly on her neck. She didn’t move or say a word. Her mind raced. How did the man know her name? The tram turned the corner of Tehtaankatu and he pressed the bell with his free hand. The driver looked briefly at them through the mirror. Pia wished she’d winced or made a face, done something to alarm him, but it was too late, he was concentrating on slowing down for Anni’s stop. The hand let go of Pia’s neck and the man said, ‘You get out with me.’

Pia got up and tried to look at the man’s face. But he held tightly onto her neck and she was unable to turn her head. He said out loud, ‘C’mon, girl!’ Then to the tram driver, who was staring at them with a passive look, ‘…Daughters!’

‘Goodnight,’ the tram driver said, without smiling.

As Pia stepped out of the tram, the man gripped her arm, pushing it high up behind Pia’s back. He steered Pia towards the top of Tehtaankatu, towards Anni’s flat. It hurt. ‘Be quiet and follow me,’ the man said. Ahead of them, coming from Kasarminkatu, the direction of her own flat, Pia saw a woman, waving her arms, running down the road, as if to stop the tram from moving away. The man quickly let go of Pia’s arm – the woman with the brown Ulster and curly hair escaping from the fur hat was her mother.

‘Pia!’ screamed her mother.

‘Mum!’ Pia shouted. She started running towards Maija.

As she ran, Pia looked down Tehtaankatu and up the hill to Laivurintie – the man was gone. When she reached her mother, she looked breathless and angry.

‘Where the hell have you been, young girl!’

Pia looked into her eyes. They were as dark as the streets surrounding them. Her mother had never sworn at Pia before.

‘Well?’ her mother demanded, standing in front of Pia, suddenly taller, making her feel five years old.

‘Mum, please, let’s just go home. There was a man…’ Pia was shivering with the cold and fear. The foreign man could come back at any time. He might have just gone to get some help, an accomplice.

Pia’s mother gave Pia a long hard stare, ‘Yes, who was he? A drug dealer?’

‘No, I didn’t know him! He gripped me, if you hadn’t come, I don’t know what might have happened. Please, he might be back any minute!’

Her mother stared at her. ‘What have you got yourself involved with?’

‘Please Mum!’

Pia’s mother took hold of her wrist as if Pia was a child and started walking down the road. Pia felt tears well inside her.

Her mother dragged Pia along the street. Pia felt cold inside her down jacket. What was wrong with her mother? Why was she talking about drug dealers? Her mother was walking so fast, they were nearly running.

‘Mum, you’re hurting me!’ Maija let go of her. If only Pia had asked Heikki to come home with her. He would have hit the foreign man in the face, and afterwards they could have sat in her room and talked while her mother watched TV in the living room. Besides, Pia was sure her mother would not have acted so strangely in front of Heikki.

The snow fell faster, and everything looked as if it was covered in cotton wool. Maija walked in front of Pia without saying a word. Pia glanced behind them – the Russian man could turn up at any minute and do something horrible to her mother. Pia didn’t understand any of it.

Her mother opened the heavy outer door to the block of flats.

Pia said, ‘I want to tell you everything.’

Maija turned to look at Pia with her dark and angry eyes and said, ‘We’ll speak when we’re inside the flat. I don’t want the whole world to hear what you’ve been up to!’

Pia couldn’t understand why her mother was so angry. It wasn’t even eight o’clock. Hardly late for a grown-up daughter to come home, she thought.

Inside the flat, Maija acted like a KGB officer. She took Pia’s coat off, looked into all the pockets, sniffed her breath and examined her eyes. ‘You smell of cigarettes, or smoking, or whatever it is you’ve taken,’ she said.

Heikki’s smoking, Pia thought. ‘I went to Happy Days and everyone smoked there.’

Pia’s mother gave her an incredulous stare and told Pia to go and sit down at the kitchen table. Her hands shook as she filled the coffee machine.

‘I know everything, Pia.’

Pia stared at her mother. Underneath her coat she was wearing a cotton tracksuit the colour of baby’s vomit. She’d tucked the trouser bottoms inside woollen socks. The outfit made her look old.

‘Iain told me about the drugs!’ she said and put a hand over her mouth, to muffle a cry. Iain? Thought Pia. What’s happened to the Admiral?

‘Iain, is it now?’ Pia said. ‘Whatever the Admiral has told you, he’s lying. I have no idea what you are talking about. None of us take that stuff. It’s for kids who don’t know better!’

But Maija didn’t listen. She whispered, ‘Pia, I know it’s my fault. Oh, Pia! But I can only do so much on my own.’ She turned around and her shoulders started shaking. The only sounds in the room were Pia’s mother’s sniffles and the gurgles of the machine, dripping black drops of coffee into the glass jug.

‘Who are you going to believe, your own daughter or your fancy English boyfriend, who by the way…’

‘What about him?’ Her mother was now hysterical, screaming the words.

‘Oh nothing,’ Pia said. For Anni’s sake she must not tell her mother about the British Council. Pia couldn’t understand what the Admiral was playing at. Or had her mother got the wrong idea?

‘Iain said he had contacts, and that he knew that if not you, then some of your friends are taking drugs. And then the money went missing!’

‘The money?’

‘Last night I had two five hundred mark notes in my purse and now I only have one.’

‘And you think I took it,’ Pia whispered. She was hurt. Why was her mother being so stupid?

‘From now on you are not to go out in the evenings. And I forbid you to take part in that Russian Competition!’