Europa Blues Read Free Page B

relatives, who provided for the old man. And then it transpired he had been sitting on just over a million.
    Nothing was ever really as it seemed.
    When he reconstructed Pertti’s life, it must have gone something like this: young, enthusiastic, provincial doctor finds himself drawn into the Finnish Winter War after an abrupt attack by the Soviet Union. He turns out to have a knack for guerrilla warfare in the frozen winter forests and quickly climbs the ranks. He becomes a hero after several decisive offences, and after the Russian victory, disappears into the forests like a classic guerrilla fighter. He returns after the Second World War, more or less a broken man. He starts drinking more and more and has trouble keeping his job as a doctor in increasingly remote backwaters. He eventually returns to Vasa and becomes an eccentric, living that sad old life until he turns ninety. End of story.
    Or so Arto Söderstedt thought.
    Until his inheritance arrived.
    The inheritance which was now being consumed, in the form of watermelon, beneath the growing shade of an umbrella. The Tuscan spring sun was now touching the curving horizon of the Ligurian Sea. Before long, it had sunk low enough for the chalk-white family to venture out into the water.
    After everyone else – shivering – had already left the beach.
    Arto Söderstedt saw the old fisherman pack up his stall of watermelons, cast a last astonished glance at the shadow-covered family, shake his head, and head off for a glass of wine in his local
osteria
. Once there, he would tell his friends about the sun-shy family and pay with money which had once belonged to a different eccentric from a completely different part of the world.
    For a moment, Söderstedt was fascinated by the movement of money, its transfer, its origins.
    Then he took off his crinkled suit and ran at the head of a line of children towards the edge of the water, testing it with his big toe. Its icy coolness reminded him of the Finnish lakes of his childhood.
    On the beach, Uncle Pertti sat, necking Koskenkorva vodka and laughing hoarsely at his cowardice.
    He ran in. The children wailed like organ pipes.
    And in his rucksack, up under the blue-and-white parasol, his mobile phone was still switched off.

3
    THE GIRL WHO had been fortunate in her misfortune was sitting on a hospital bed with a surprised look on her face. She probably hadn’t stopped looking surprised since the previous evening. It was now a permanent look of surprise.
    Paul Hjelm found her surprise entirely understandable. When you were ten years old and walking hand in hand with your dad one spring evening, you hardly expected to be shot.
    But that was what had happened.
    She had felt cold; the wind had suddenly picked up, blowing straight through her thin quilted jacket and chilling her practically bare legs. She had been holding her dad’s hand and clutching a balloon shaped like a happy yellow face. She had been skipping slightly, mainly to keep warm but also because she was happy about the bag of sweets she had fished up out of the lucky dip. Aside from the cold, everything was just fine.
    And then she had been shot.
    A bullet had come flying from somewhere and buried itself in her upper right arm. That was where it came to rest. Fortunately.
    She had been fortunate in her misfortune.
    ‘You’ll be fine, Lisa,’ Paul Hjelm said, placing his hand on hers. ‘It’s just a flesh wound.’
    Lisa’s father’s eyes were puffy and red from crying and he was snoring loudly in the armchair. Paul Hjelm poked his shoulder gently. His head jerked upwards with a snort and he stared uncomprehendingly at the policeman standing by the edge of the bed. Then he saw his daughter with the bandage around her arm and the awful reality came crashing back down.
    ‘Excuse me, Mr Altbratt,’ Hjelm said courteously. ‘I just need to be absolutely certain you didn’t see any sign at all of a perpetrator. No movement in the trees? Nothing?’
    Mr