The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency: Death in Sunset Grove by Minna Lindgren Read Free Book Online Page B

inflammation of the soles of your
feet.’
    The other passengers exchanged glances, some moved further away from the lunatic, some spoke louder into their phones, and a schoolgirl with multiple piercings sitting across from Siiri started
to giggle nervously. Siiri wished she could relax and enjoy the beautiful buildings and the sounds of the children. In fact, the incident at the card table the previous week was still playing on
her mind. No one had seen Reino or Olavi Raudanheimo since Reino had been sent to the Group Home to calm down.
    ‘He’s probably been drugged into dementia and sent to the closed unit permanently,’ Irma had said that morning when she’d come to Siiri’s apartment for coffee
before the book-club meeting.
    They had both heard horror stories about old people being drugged into unconsciousness. People who had seemed deeply senile might be completely in their right minds once their medication was
stopped. Old people who’d forgotten their own names would suddenly recognize everyone in their family, and even their neighbour’s relatives. They couldn’t comprehend how such a
thing could happen. What good would it do anyone to drug an old person senseless? It certainly was no way to save money. It would be cheaper for them just to die and get it over with.
    The confused woman on the tram was shouting even louder now, working herself into a kind of frenzy. The driver glanced at her nervously in the rear-view mirror, but he couldn’t do anything
because he had to keep driving.
    ‘I can tell you that Kai Korte was a good man, but even he, among all those piggy banks and brokerages, couldn’t do anything about the bacteria from the laboratories and the infected
feet. It may be that the doctors were eating the rats. They eat rats in China and they have better medicine than we do! They used styrofoam boxes to transfer the rats – and I saw
everything!’
    Siiri escaped from the tram at the railway station, along with many other passengers. She pitied the driver, who had to continue his route with the woman on board. She looked at the railway
station and the City Centre building with its sausage-shaped concrete awnings, two of Helsinki’s ugliest structures, and wondered why Eliel Saarinen and Viljo Revell had designed both ugly
and beautiful buildings – Revell, the Sausage Building and the Glass Palace; Saarinen, the railway station and the Marble Palace at Kaivopuisto. And why did Helsinki call such little
buildings palaces?

Chapter 8
    It had been a long time since Siiri and Irma had been in C wing, so they got lost for a while before they found Olavi Raudanheimo’s door on the second floor. It
wasn’t customary at Sunset Grove to go ringing somebody’s doorbell unannounced. You weren’t supposed to disturb people. You don’t do it in a real apartment block and this
wasn’t a commune. You could meet the people you knew, and those you didn’t, downstairs in the common rooms. In addition to the card players, there was a magazine-reading group and a
gigantic television in the lobby. It was constantly on, showing singing competitions and cooking shows, and a couple of deaf old grannies were always shoved in front of it to be entertained.
    Olavi Raudanheimo didn’t answer his doorbell. But they thought they could hear noises in his apartment. There was definitely someone in there. Irma tried to shout through the keyhole,
although there was no keyhole, just a big, chunky lock. They doubted Olavi could hear her. Reino had once told them that a grenade exploded right next to Olavi during the war and he could never
hear properly after that.
    ‘Mr Raudanheimo! Mr Raudanheimo!’ Irma shouted in a high-pitched voice like a ninety-two-year-old who had taken singing lessons in her youth. ‘It’s Mrs Kettunen and Mrs
Lännenleimu from A wing! From the one-bedroom apartments!’
    ‘Why shout that?’ Siiri grumbled. ‘It hardly matters which wing we’re in or what our tenancy