Irma had suggested a tram ride after their daily coffee hour on the second floor of Hakaniemi Hall, and because Siiri had noticed that a new route, the 6T, had just been added to Helsinki’s selection of trams, she wanted to ride the entire route once. It would have made most sense to ride it downtown first, because it wasn’t until after Hietalahti Market Square that the number 6T veered off from the number 6 route and ventured down new paths, but Siiri wanted to go a little further afield, to get away from it all, and Arabianranta felt like a sufficiently distant destination. Besides, the tram would make a quick loop there before continuing back to the long Hämeentie stretch, which all drivers hurtled down even faster than the number 4 did down the Paciuksenkatu hill on its way to Munkkiniemi.
Hauhon puisto was the stop after Lautatarhankatu. The park was known for its abundance of roses and fruit trees, which nevertheless brought no joy on this snowless December day. A few pooch-walkers were sheepishly scooping up their pets’ droppings in plastic bags; other than that, the place was lifeless. Siiri had sat in the park the previous spring, when the blooming Cornelian cherries had formed a leafy arbour over the bench at the southern end. One year someone had hung recipes on all the branches; the idea had been that the recipes’ ingredients could be found in the tree it was hanging in.
‘But I didn’t see it myself; Muhis told me about it. Those are handsome, those tall, colourful buildings over there on Hauhontie, although some people think they shade the park too much,’ Siiri said.
‘Hmm,’ Irma mused absent-mindedly.
At the Vallila tram depot, Siiri started waxing rhapsodic over her favourite architect, Selim A. Lindqvist, even though the halls where the trams were serviced was quite the hotchpotch, and only its oldest part and the main façade were designed by Lindqvist.
‘Just think, there used to be a market hall here in Vallila, too, a cute little wooden building that was torn down when the tram depot needed expanding,’ Siiri said, but Irma’s response wasn’t particularly enthusiastic. Irma didn’t put much stock in Vallila; she still thought of it as the city’s old pasturelands. That’s where the name came from, too: some manor house whose cattle spent their days chewing cud in the vicinity. Since then, it had, in Irma’s eyes, been transformed into a neighbourhood primarily for rumrunners and the poor.
‘Look, they even have potato patches.’
‘Those aren’t potato patches, they’re allotment gardens planned by Elisabeth Koch. Charming little cottages and gardens, and still popular, even though no one in Finland is starving any more.’
To the left they saw St Paul’s Church, a dreary brick building from the 1930s by Bertel Liljeqvist; dents and surface damage from the Winter War had been unrepaired as a historical reminder. Irma thought it looked more like a fire station than a church. But neither one of them had ever passed through its doors, and it might be the most beautiful building imaginable from the inside.
‘Jumping jiminy, we are in the countryside now,’ Irma said, as the tram passed the allotment gardens and drove on towards Arabianranta.
‘I was supposed to remind you about something, but for the life of me I can’t remember what,’ Siiri said. Irma admired the old Arabia porcelain factory buildings and didn’t remember what Siiri was supposed to remind her about.
‘It was some time ago; I think it was before Eino died. You were very serious, you were smoking, and you said you had something very important to tell me but couldn’t talk about it then.’
‘Shuffle and cut, now I’ve got it!’ Irma crowed, and just then the driver took the end-of-the-line loop at a clip and it elicited a small squeal of joy from both Siiri and Irma. The driver looked at his sole passengers in concern, and Siiri recognized him: it was the boy who generally listened to classical music as he drove.
‘Why aren’t you playing Bruckner or Wagner today?’ Siiri called out.
‘One of the passengers who got on at the Western Harbour complained,’ the man said. ‘But if you don’t mind, I’ll put some on now.’ And so the familiar, sonorous orchestral thunder started building at the front of the tram.
‘This is such childish music,’ Irma whispered to Siiri, unnecessarily loudly. ‘Cowbells and cuckoo-birds. Poor Mahler, I wonder what complex he suffered from.’
‘What was it I was supposed to remind you about? Do you still remember?’ Siiri said, to distract Irma from criticizing Mahler any further; after all, he was the driver’s hero.
Irma remembered. It had to do with the renovation at Sunset Grove and the company responsible for carrying it out, and the time their whole household had unsuccessfully tried to remember the name.
‘Well, I remembered it: Fix ’n’ Finish. But I pretended that I didn’t, because Anna-Liisa was there.’ Irma looked a little uncomfortable as she explained that she had found several articles and comments from some crazy discussion forum on her flaptop about the company known as Fix ’n’ Finish, and it had made for unpleasant reading. Quite a few plumbing retrofits had taken on a dubious cast when this company was involved. Someone writing under a randy pseudonym had claimed that Fix ’n’ Finish was in the habit of changing its name whenever things got too hot.
‘That’s what Muhis and Metukka said!’ Siiri cried.
‘It’s clearly a fishy enterprise, that’s what everyone was shouting on the Internet. I suppose that means bankruptcies and fraud, all sorts of malfeasance. That’s why people change their names, too. My poor cousin who moved to Oulu knew one such swindler, a Don Juan whose name changed every week. Luckily, my cousin jumped off that horse before things got any worse; all he got out of her was a gold watch. Imagine, how idiotic!’
‘Sounds like something out of a novel.’
‘Believe me, he was no romantic hero; he was a completely average, normal man from Oulu. Well, not normal, of course, but from Oulu. And then I found out on the Internet, as a matter of fact on the Baby magazine discussion board, that Fix ’n’ Finish isn’t necessarily just a construction company, that it’s involved in . . . that site hinted that it’s somehow linked to a broader network involved in human trafficking.’
‘That’s what Muhis said. He’s been trying to warn us this whole time,’ Siiri said softly. ‘But why couldn’t you tell me this when in Anna-Liisa’s presence?’
‘That’s what’s so awful.’ Irma gazed out the tram window, and Siiri wasn’t sure if she’d forgotten what she was talking about, or why she was holding such a long pause. Eventually, Irma turned back to Siiri, a distressed look on her face. ‘You see, the name Onni Rinta-Paakku kept coming up.’
‘But that’s the Ambassador!’
‘A Finnish businessman who, thanks to his past career, has connections to Eastern Europe and former communist countries.’