38

DARKNESS HADN’T COME RUSHING into the city, brash as a troubadour, but still it had taken everyone by surprise. Suddenly people noticed that it was dark all the time. It was dark when you went to work, to school, and it was dark when you trudged through the driving rain and sleet to the local shop and back home. In the November darkness, the desperate plight of the homeless didn’t bear thinking about; not having a place to leave, a place to return to. In the darkness. Despite of the darkness.

Of course, the darkness had announced its arrival through the gradually encroaching evenings, rudely edging the summer out of its way, as it does every year. People knew to expect it, yet it had succeeded in creeping up behind them and startling them with a whisper. It’s me again. Are you ready?

On a good day, an orange glow might hang behind the apartment blocks for a moment, but for the most part the days passed unchanging through the colourless landscape.

Somewhere else it might have been possible to relax, to let yourself be carried along by the quiet, the stillness, to descend into the darkness as it appeared, to find the beauty in the myriad shades of grey that defined the restrained winter landscape, to let your mind rest with the rhythm of nature. In the city, nobody would even think of such a thing.

Puddles of sleet seeped up through the soles of your shoes, into your socks, chilling your feet. If only it would snow, people said, begging for mercy; it would be so much lighter. Then when the snow did come, everything went crazy: trains and aeroplanes were late; there were fatal car pile-ups on the motorway; the price of electricity went through the roof. Shops ran out of spades and snow shovels. Flu spread through the city. Alcohol sales reached record levels.

And in the mornings you had to go to work, though it was the last thing anyone wanted to do. Beneath the glare of LEDs and fluorescent lamps, people were expected to unflaggingly present a play directed by market forces, a performance called Western civilisation.

It was the eve of Kaarina’s trial. Anna was on her way to meet Ákos. She had taken her brother to the rehab clinic in Kivelä when, repentant and in very bad shape, he had turned up at her door to apologise.

Anna had forgiven him – almost. And though she knew that by helping him she was actually helping to prolong his illness, she couldn’t turn her own brother away.

Now Ákos was doing much better. The tremors and the voices were kept at bay with sedatives, liberally dished out at the clinic. On principle, Anna thought it was wrong to treat addiction with other substances that caused addiction, but now she didn’t have to strength to care. The priority was to get Ákos back on his feet. At least for a while.

As she wandered along the street, she noticed the Pink Ink tattoo studio and remembered that Virve had said this was the place where she’d had the hummingbird etched into her left arm. On the spur of the moment, Anna stepped inside. A young girl with multiple face piercings was sitting at the counter leafing through a magazine.

‘Hi there.’ The girl raised her eyes from the magazine and greeted her.

‘Hello,’ said Anna and showed her police ID. The girl looked frightened.

‘I’d like to ask about a tattoo. Do you remember a girl who came in here back in May and got a tattoo of a hummingbird sucking nectar from an orchid?’

‘Yeah, I remember her,’ the girl said. ‘It turned out great! But I don’t do the tattoos here. I only do piercings. Timo!’ she shouted. ‘The police are asking about the hummingbird sleeve you did back in the spring.’

From a room at the back emerged an enormous man, his face, neck and arms covered in tattoos. The sight was imposing. And quite sexy, Anna realised and smiled at the man.

‘Fekete Anna from the police. Hello. Do you remember this tattoo?’