The Bodyguard (12 page)

I gave Lehmusvuo an estimate of both my services and the surveillance equipment I was going to install. I’d start to plan the renovation first thing on Sunday night.

“It’s easier to figure out the proper setup if the floors aren’t swimming in junk. I’ll put the book and CD shelves together right away, if you don’t mind. And I haven’t even seen the upstairs yet. Reiska has to survey his future abode, right?”

“How did you come up with that name? Is it a nickname for Reijo?”

“That’s right. His full name is Reijo Juhani Räsänen. A genuine, uncomplicated Finnish name. And nobody can count all of the Räsänens in Kaavi—it’s such a common name.”

I went upstairs. The narrow hallway was empty, save for a large map of the world that was hung on the wall above the staircase. The bedroom facing the street contained only a simple bed: a pillow and a mattress but no sheet or blanket. It would do just fine for Reiska, who could always go to the recycling center to get materials to build a desk. Helena’s bedroom faced the backyard. There was a four-foot-wide bed in the room; she’d hastily made it. I didn’t look in her closets, not yet. I remembered how the tabloids had lambasted her for wearing the same black dress six years in a row to the Independence Day Presidential Ball—and she’d gotten it from a secondhand store. Apparently, the articles commented sourly, Lehmusvuo didn’t want to support Finnish designers.

If someone about six feet tall stood on top of the fence in the backyard, he’d be able to reach Helena’s bedroom window. If the stalker had done his homework, he’d know where the bed was. It would be simple to shoot her or throw an explosive into the bedroom. People were so clueless; it was extremely easy to do away with someone. At any moment, without warning, you could die. All you needed was to hit an elk on the road, or have a drunk driver plow into you, or marry the wrong person, or go to school with someone who had nothing going for him except his gun license. I understood why people made such a big deal about celebrating major birthdays. It was quite an achievement to make it to fifty alive, let alone the years beyond then. My mother had been twenty-six when she’d died. I’d managed to stay alive eight years longer than she had.

Something had to be done to the bed. It would be ridiculously expensive to replace the window with bulletproof glass, but if I thought that Helena Lehmusvuo really had a reason to fear for her life, I’d have to do it. The other option was for her to move. Tall apartment buildings had their advantages, especially if the adjacent buildings had fewer stories than yours. Anita had always chosen hotels where she’d be out of shooting range, unless the assassin was as nimble as Spider-Man or owned a helicopter. A chopper makes a hell of a racket, so anyone in his right mind would have enough time to take cover before it got too close.

Lehmusvuo’s sauna consisted of two rooms: the steam room and a small bathroom with a toilet, sink, shower, and washing machine in it. The clothesline, strung across the room, was full of damp linen; it slapped against my face when I walked into the sauna. It was just a booth for two people, and it looked like Helena’s claim of never having used it was true; the seats were piled with bulging file folders. Chicken wire, used to dry herbs, hung over the sauna stove, and a few cardboard boxes full of dishes were on the floor.

I went back downstairs. Next I checked who had been visiting Lehmusvuo recently. She could only remember seeing Aapo and the person who’d come over to install her broadband Internet. Someone had come to her door trying to sell her potatoes, but Lehmusvuo ate most of her meals at work and belonged to a CSA, which she used to order the few groceries she stored in her pantry. She’d only met some of her neighbors; like the other celebrities I had guarded, Lehmusvuo was slightly reserved when she communicated with “regular” people. You could never tell why they were actually reaching out to you. Cell phone cameras and voice recorders were everywhere.

“But you didn’t check my ID—you just let me waltz right in,” I told her when we were signing our contract. She blushed and said she remembered me from Chez Monique. Nevertheless, I told her, it couldn’t happen again. Anyone could claim to be a reporter and ask for a brief interview at an unexpected place, such as a bar, where there wasn’t a metal detector like there was at the cabinet building.

Helena said she’d be going to the Uusimaa Green League’s election seminar the following weekend, at the Kopparnäs Inn. I wondered whether David Stahl was still hanging around there. Now that was interesting; the idea of meeting him again was much too tempting. I had to think of something else to stop the throbbing between my legs.

I’d chat with the neighbors once I came back to Helena’s place dressed as Reiska. It was only appropriate that a Savonian handyman would be slightly nosy and a bit lonely, too. Maybe the men next door would even go out for a beer with him. My plans were taking shape. I asked Helena a few more questions while I put her bookshelves together. She asked that I’d put everything in alphabetical order so that she’d easily find what she was looking for. She then gave me a spare key, and I promised to make an appearance as Reiska on Sunday evening. In exchange for the key, I gave her my phone number and address on Untamo Road.

“One more thing. Anita’s daughter, Cecilia Nuutinen-Kekki, will be in Finland next week. I don’t know the exact date yet. I told her I’d meet up with her. Is that all right?”

“Of course. Is she in charge of making the funeral arrangements?”

“Apparently.” The last time I’d been to a funeral was when Uncle Jari had died. The service had been at the church in Kaavi, and the memorial was held in the church community hall. More people showed up than I had anticipated—we ran out of coffee cakes and Maija Hakkarainen had to run out to buy more. The idea of Anita’s funeral gave me chills, but I didn’t think passing on it was an option.

After alphabetizing Helena’s CDs and eating one more apple muffin, I was on my way. As I walked toward the Kirkkonummi train station, I felt oddly light, almost giddy. Once again I’d managed to find a job, at least for a while. Plus, I’d gotten rid of David Stahl. It would be easy to hide out at Helena Lehmusvuo’s place as Reiska while I set up her security system, did some home repairs—and conducted my own investigation. Frankly, I was sure that Helena Lehmusvuo had told me only half of her story; maybe just a third of it. But I’d get the whole truth out of her soon enough.

12

The Untamo Road apartment was empty when I arrived there on Friday evening, and it stayed that way the entire weekend. On Saturday morning I bought some tools Reiska would need to work on Helena’s apartment, and in the afternoon I rang Mrs. Voutilainen’s doorbell—from the aroma of caramelized almonds, I could tell she was baking a Tosca cake. My nose hadn’t fooled me. When I came in, Mrs Voutilainen was just pulling it out of the oven and brewing coffee to go with it. I asked her whether she’d seen any other salesmen recently, picture or otherwise, but only some Jehovah’s Witnesses had been to her door. She showed me the latest issue of
The
Watchtower.

“I’m not scared of their talk of Hell—they’re free to believe whatever they want. Those poor people; they’re trying so hard. I took their magazine and gave them some blueberry pie so that they’d have energy for making their rounds.”

“You haven’t seen that painter Yuri again, have you?”

“No. Are you after his paintings? You can have mine if you want.”

“Thanks for the offer, but I won’t be home for the next couple of weeks; I wouldn’t have time to admire it. But if Trankov comes back to sell you some more, can you let him know that I’d really like one of those lynx paintings, too?”

“Going after a new job? Are you traveling somewhere?”

“Ostrobothnia—a fox farmer has been threatened and I promised to check it out. The owner can’t spend all his time guarding the foxes.” The lie slipped out easily and Mrs. Voutilainen bought it completely.

“The gall of some people, threatening these hardworking farmers who are just trying to make an honest living. Once these activist types grow up, they’ll see how easy it is to survive in the freezing cold winter without a good fox pelt. Here, have some more cake. I doubled the recipe for the topping—Jaakko, my late husband, would always complain about how this cake needed more topping.”

The thick layer of almonds and butter settled in my stomach, so later I headed to the gym to work it off. By Sunday evening my roommates hadn’t shown up, so I felt safe turning into Reiska in my room. I briefly wondered why neither of them had left me a message, but then again, when did I ever tell them what I was up to? I tried not to worry about it. Mrs. Voutilainen would have told me if she’d noticed something peculiar going on at our apartment. Still, the thought occurred to me that the Paskevich gang had kidnapped Riikka and Jenni in an attempt to find out where I was. What if David Stahl wasn’t visiting his childhood home in Tammisaari, but instead was torturing my roommates in a place where no one could hear them scream? I had to contact Jenni. The call went right to voice mail, and I left her a message. Riikka’s situation was even more worrisome: her phone repeated the message, “The person you are trying to reach is currently unavailable.” Her phone might as well have been at the bottom of the sea.

I left them a note in the kitchen saying I’d be gone for at least a week. I thought about giving them my new phone number, too, but decided it was best just to tell them that I had gotten a new phone and was no longer using the old number.

The transformation into Reiska was complete once I put on the mustache. I didn’t run into anyone I knew in the stairwell, nor did anyone stare at me on the trolley. Reiska rode the bus to Kirkkonummi on a route that stopped near Helena’s townhouse. On the way he listened to Eläkeläiset and hummed out loud to their cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog.” Their new album would come out next week, and he’d be the first to rush into Kirkkonummi Prisma to buy it. It felt good to be in the skin of gentle Reiska, who didn’t have someone’s death weighing on him—he was able to enjoy life, especially now that he had some work to do.

I hoped Helena Lehmusvuo would be able to forget that there was a woman hiding behind Reiska’s mustache. If necessary, I’d sleep as him, even if the mustache was prickly and the makeup made my skin feel clammy. I’d even considered cutting my hair to make it look half bald, like Reiska’s, but made do with a short crew cut. It would be easier to wear a wig over it, like a swimming cap.

Nobody else got off at Helena’s stop. Reiska carried an ice hockey bag, big enough to fit a woman of Helena’s size. I estimated that she weighed ninety pounds, so it would be easy to carry her out of her home in the bag, should it come to that.

There were no people on the street when Reiska rang Helena’s doorbell, but a flash from the neighbor’s window blinds told me that someone was spying on Helena to see who her visitor was. I could hear Helena’s footsteps behind the door, but it took a moment for her to open it. Apparently, Helena was smart enough to use the peephole. Reiska’s first task would be to install a chain lock on the door.

When Helena finally opened the door, I could see her eyes, once again round like a deer’s, but this time they hid a smile.

“Well, hi there. I’m Reiska Räsänen, and I’m here for that renovation.” He stepped inside before she had a chance to invite him in. Displaying his poor manners, he didn’t take off his shoes before entering the foyer. The piles of books were still on the floor, and the empty shelves had managed to gather dust in the few days I’d been gone.

“H
i . . .
” Helena didn’t quite know what to say. “You found your way here all right?”

“I had good directions. Where should I put my bag?”

“I thought you could stay in the guest room upstairs, the room that’s facing the street. It’s pretty quiet out here.”

“Oh, I’ll sleep anywhere,” Reiska said. “I suppose I can’t smoke indoors, can I? Or is it all right if I blow the smoke out of the bedroom window?”

“You smoke?”

“Need to take a little break with all that workin’. I can always go outside if you’d rather not have the smell in the house.”

Reiska did his best to speak more formally in the presence of a politician. He took his bags up and came back downstairs with a drill, a screwdriver, and two security chains. The front door had a good seal on it and would definitely prevent someone from breaking in, but as was so often the case, the back door was made of weaker stuff. It would also be easy to break in from the large window—just toss a rock through it and then climb in. At least the burglar alarm would alert an unsuspecting victim about an intruder.

Reiska puttered about for a couple of hours. First he worked on the chains, and then he installed burglar alarms on every door and window. Helena stuck around, curious to see what Reiska was doing. I’d always thought that all the Green League members were raging feminists, so she shouldn’t have been surprised that a woman like me knew how to work with electrical wiring. It was one of the most rudimentary tasks we’d had to learn at the security academy. Plus, I had learned a lot from Uncle Jari; I’d been his little handyman as a kid and later as a teen when I’d traveled around with him, installing wiring and electric outlets at construction sites. At Hevonpersiinsaari there were no men’s and women’s jobs; Uncle and I shared the chores. His preserved mushrooms and lingonberries were as good as any housewife’s.

Around nine my phone rang. I checked the number. It was Jenni. All evening long I’d been using Reiska’s slightly hoarse voice as if I had been stuck in puberty, so when I switched to my own voice, it startled Helena.

“Hi Jenni, thanks for calling. I was wondering why the apartment was empty all weekend.”

“I was on a student trip to Tallinn. I didn’t pick up when you first called because I didn’t recognize the number—I thought it was a telemarketer.”

“Some guy was tormenting me, so I had to switch numbers. Do you know what Riikka has been up to?”

Jenni started laughing. Based on the background noises, it sounded like the ferry from Tallinn was approaching the Finnish border and people were rushing to get into the tax-free shops before they closed.

“She met a guy! Some tech college student who lives with his dad in Krunikka. Riikka even bought some toiletries to take over there, and they’ve only known each other for a week. We might have to start looking for a new roommate soon.”

“I’ll be staying in Ostrobothnia for a while.” Better to tell the same lie to everyone. “But please don’t give this number to anyone else but Riikka. I’m keeping it private for now.”

“All right. I’ll save some of these chocolates for you—they were dirt cheap.”

I’d come to the conclusion that the townhouse had good soundproofing and insulation when I hadn’t heard a peep from next door—it would be safe to have a conversation without anyone eavesdropping, and I could switch back to Hilja’s voice when I needed to. Nonetheless, I adopted Reiska’s persona again as soon as I hung up. Hopefully Riikka’s new boyfriend was a regular guy, not some Paskevich hitman. Anyone could be a threat.

The first night at Kirkkonummi passed without incident. I woke up a few times, first to a moped buzzing loudly at it went by. Apparently it didn’t occur to the driver that people were trying to sleep. Next I woke up to the mail slot clanging. Helena and I both slept behind closed doors and I wasn’t able to monitor her breathing. The morning was rainy, so Reiska busied himself working indoors.

Reiska and I had both come to the conclusion that we’d need to put a tracking device on Helena. Should she go missing, I’d be able to find her. But we’d have to figure out a way to hide it somewhere where a bad guy wouldn’t be able to find it. Forget jewelry or a watch. Helena’s ears were pierced, but she switched her earrings according to her moods. A device could be placed inside a tooth, but that required a trip to the dentist. We finally decided on placing the tracker at the nape of Helena’s neck, where her hair was the thickest. She said she went to the hairdresser every three months, and in between visits she gave herself a trim to save time. Perfect. I sewed the device into her hair. It was made out of plastic, so it wouldn’t set off the metal detector at the cabinet building, and it wouldn’t be damaged by water. It would tell me Helena’s whereabouts to within thirty feet.

“Letting you guard me like this means I trust you,” Helena said with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. I made sure that the device was working before she left for her meetings.

Reiska’s week was uneventful but busy until Friday. There was nobody sneaking around in the backyard or moving the rosemary plant. He went out a few times a day for a smoke or smoked while he worked outdoors. On Tuesday the curious retiree from next door had come to chat with him to find out who Reiska was and what he was up to. He must’ve had the phone number to
Seitsemän päivää
magazine’s gossip line on his speed dial.

“That’s what I told my old lady, too; that’s no boyfriend, it’s a handyman! So much younger than representative Lehmusvuo. Although, you do see all sorts of things these days. I’m Pentti Hirvonen. You must be from Savonia somewhere. You sound like home to me.”

“I’m from Kaavi. Reijo Räsänen. Just call me Reiska.”

“I’m from Juankoski, not too far from there.”

When it rained on Thursday, Mr. Hirvonen invited Reiska over for a smoke and a cup of coffee.

“The missus went to her water aerobics class at the pool. Tried to get me to go with her, but there’s no way I’ll start jumpin’ around like a fool. I’ll turn on the fan so she won’t notice we’ve been smoking.”

Apparently the Hirvonens had been both excited and worried about having a real live politician next door to them. Her party was definitely not the right one—the Hirvonens had always voted for Social Democrats—but at least they could boast that their neighbor had been to the Independence Day Presidential Ball. According to Mr. Hirvonen, there had been all sorts of “googly-eyed folk” at Lehmusvuo’s doorstep when she’d first moved in, but they’d all taken off when he’d opened the door and walked outside. When Reiska asked him as nonchalantly as he could why the newspapers would have been moved from the mailbox to the slot in the door, Mr. Hirvonen didn’t have an answer.

“And of course we’ve been a bit worried, what with Lehmusvuo criticizin’ that Putin and other Russian folk. It’s fine and dandy to complain about America in this country—we’re just a tiny speck on their radar, and probably most of them have no clue where this country even is. Or whether this is a real country at all! But Russian
s . . .
they’re a diff’rent sort altogether. Better to stay on good terms with them. I came into this world thanks to my pop’s leave from the army; at least he made it back alive, though he lost a leg. You’re so young you don’t remember how it was when Kekkonen was president: we were sweatin’ bullets, hopin’ the Russkies wouldn’t get pissed off with us and start a new war. Asking America or Sweden for help wouldn’t have done a damned thing. Listen, son, you tell your employer that she needs to keep her mouth shut about the Russians; we don’t want to invite those tanks to our borders. She doesn’t want Finland to join NATO, does she? Now that would be pure madness.”

Reiska told him that he’d been hired to renovate Representative Lehmusvuo’s place, not to engage in political debates. It was good to know, though, that Pentti Hirvonen and his wife Eila thought that Helena might be in danger. At least they had their eyes on her. Just to be sure, Reiska asked Hirvonen to call the police or at least alert Lehmusvuo if they saw any suspicious characters sneaking around.

The townhouse complex had five apartments, and the middle one was occupied by Noora Asikainen, a twentysomething single mother, and her young daughter. She made no attempts to hide her interest in Reiska. He was used to it. Although he had a mustache and dressed like a farmer, women were constantly approaching him. He usually only flirted a little—after all, he was a nice guy and didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.