The Defenceless Read Online Free PDF Page A

its owner with it. These weren’t the old man’s footprints, she thought, as she continued on her way, there’s nothing here; the road is too icy. She could see the police tape up ahead. Despite the icy conditions, the car Gabriella had been driving had left skid marks, though they were barely visible. Nothing sticks to a surface like this, thought Anna and looked at the blood spatter on the ground. That had stuck, that much was certain; blood and everything that had sprayed out of the old man upon impact had soaked into the ice, melting large, dark-red pools into its surface. The blood had seeped gruesomely into the surrounding snow.
    Esko soon joined her. He was visibly out of breath.
    ‘You should cut back on the cigarettes,’ she commented.
    ‘Why the hell should I?’ he snapped, fumbled in his jacket pocket and lit another one. ‘Let’s check out that thicket and cut the bullshit, if that’s alright by Miss Moral High Ground?’
    Anna laughed. She felt as though, in a very peculiar way, she sometimes even liked Esko.
    They clambered in among the spruces. At first their legs sunk up to their knees in snow. Then, though there wasn’t much snow beneath the trees, the thick tangle of branches made it hard to walk. There was no way a feeble old man could have reached the road this way. And there are no prints here either, not even animal tracks, Anna noted just before she saw a bounding hare’s tracks in the soft snow. That’s what the dog must have been chasing; it would have run off after its prey if it hadn’t been on a leash. Anna examined every tree trunk for a strip of fabric, a hair, anything at all. But she could see nothing.
    ‘It’s odd,’ she said to Esko, as they returned to the road and dusted the snow from their legs.
    ‘What is?’
    ‘Well, the fact that there are no tracks round here. Nothing to suggest where the victim was coming from.’
    ‘I don’t think it’s all that odd. If the old boy was doddering around in the road or on the verge, there wouldn’t be any tracks. Everything’s iced over, and ice is pretty damned hard.’
    ‘I suppose. But it’s still odd.’
    ‘You’ll have to apply for more details on the Hungarian driver,’ said Esko. ‘Virkkunen’s orders.’
    ‘How am I going to do that? I don’t know how to apply for details like that.’
    ‘For crying out loud, you know how to use the telephone and you can stammer something in your own language. Either that or send an email.’
    ‘Back at the station I could barely remember how to say “press charges”. And who am I supposed to call? There are probably more police officers in Hungary than there are people in this city.’
    ‘Ask Virkkunen. You’d better check out her residence permit while you’re at it.’
    ‘Listen, you’re perfectly capable of doing that yourself. Any news on the identity of the victim?’
    ‘Sari just sent a message saying she’d come up with nothing. Nobody matching the description has been reported missing. She’s ringing round all the local hospitals and care facilities.’
    ‘Judging by the photographs, the man’s pyjamas weren’t issued by a hospital. Besides, surely these places would notice if someone has gone missing?’
    ‘You’d be surprised at the things people do and don’t notice in these places.’
    ‘I’m not surprised at all, sadly.’
    Anna thought of her own grandmother, who lived with her father’s sister, Anna’s aunt. Grandma drank a small glass of home-made pálinka every morning. Apparently it helped her circulation and kept her mind in good order, and Anna certainly had no reason to disagree. Grandma was over ninety, she’d survived the wars, she’d seen plenty of sorrow in her life, not least the loss of her son, her grandson and her husband, but somehow she always managed toremain happy and content with her life. Back home people didn’t hide their old folk out of sight, didn’t send them to care homes to lose their minds. Back home they were