Meaner Things (7 page)

7.

CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER

Ten
years
ago

I missed the local TV and newspaper reports about the ‘Break-in at Museum Warehouse’ and never got around to looking them up afterwards. Of course I wondered what had happened to the loot-filled backpacks, but I assumed that Emma had taken them. Thinking about that left a bitter taste in my mouth so I tried to put it out of mind. I was seriously crocked for the foreseeable future and, at least during the first few days, pumped full of painkilling drugs. Checking up on news reports about my failed exploits didn’t seem like a priority. I was way too depressed about it, about Emma, and about my physical state to have any interest in wallowing in post-heist details.

Anybody can get used to crutches with a little practice. Say, about six weeks. In fact, I’d just got the hang of them when I tripped over the edge of a hospital doormat one day on my way in to see the physiotherapist. That set me back a bit. Say, about six weeks. I was twenty-one years old and felt like fifty-five.

I was also broke and thousands of dollars in debt from student loans. For a time, maybe all of ten seconds, I considered getting back on the saddle and planning another heist. Then I realised that that’s the part I really liked – the planning – it was the
doing
that wasn’t so much fun.

Sure, I’d nearly pulled it off before my precious loved one, or ‘the bitch’ as I now thought of her, had betrayed me. But as I replayed that night over and over again in my head, the realization of all the other things that could have gone wrong sent shivers up and down my spine. It was completely unlike me to take those kinds of serious risks, the sort with consequences that could be adversely life changing. Yet I’d been the one taking the lead, right? Well, maybe.

As the days and weeks went by I began to feel better about it. I was proud of the immaculate planning I’d done and the sheer ingenuity I’d displayed in figuring out a way into the building, not to mention my quick thinking in getting out of it again. The adrenaline had been pumping through me and I’d felt truly alive for the first time in my life. I’d finally discovered something I excelled at, which is not to say that I had the slightest intention of attempting any similar venture ever again.

After the first few days when she failed to show, Emma’s continuing absence from my life wasn’t as big a shock as might have been expected. I called her many times, of course, then called all the numbers of her friends that I could remember or look up. Everyone said she had vanished. Her stuff was gone from her room and someone else was living there now. That’s what they told me. I had no reason to doubt them and didn’t bother to go over there and confirm it for myself. Deep down I knew it was true.

Looking back at our relationship, I could now see signs that I’d ignored before. A lot of university couples shacked up together, but Emma didn’t want that and I was okay with it. In reality we’d just been good friends who hung out together a lot. Now I severely doubted that we’d even been that.

I spent a lot of time lounging around in my apartment, with my gammy leg propped up. That’s what you tend to do when every upright movement necessitates grabbing two long pieces of wood and stuffing them under your armpits. Most of my remaining few dollars went to a pizza delivery man with a heavy Indian accent.

Even when the physiotherapist moved me on to a stick I still didn’t get around much. One day, after pizza, while doing my best Hitchcock movie impersonation – staring mindlessly out my rear window at the even dingier apartments across the street, hoping I’d spot a Raymond Burr lookalike wielding a spade – an idea came to me.

I knew exactly what I wanted to do when I was mobile again.

*

To cut a long story short, I took a ferry over to Vancouver Island to track her down. My hunch was she’d gone back there and was staying with her parents.

All I knew was that they lived in Victoria, which is a small city but not so small that you can just go knocking on doors. By now my money was almost all gone and, even by staying in the cheapest hostel I could find, I could only afford a few days there. So I had to think and act fast.

I tried to recollect every mention she’d ever made to me about her home and her family, but failed to come up with much. I did seem to recall that she’d once spoken favourably of Oak Bay, a suburban neighbourhood east of metro Victoria. In the Yellow Pages I found the address of Oak Bay High School and paid it a visit. I made up a story about writing a local history article and they led me to the school library.

There I found two wonderful things: a helpful librarian named Sidney and several shelves full of their school yearbooks. I quickly located the two or three that I was most interested in and went to work, studying the lists of students, each one with a head-and-shoulders colour picture. I reckoned that people don’t change much in three years or so.

Well, except Emma Virtanen. Without too much trouble I soon found her name in the relevant yearbook. Trouble was, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I wouldn’t call this Emma Virtanen exactly plain or mousy, but she was obviously a little overweight and had a bad case of acne. And when I held the book up close to my eyes I could see thin red lines on the bridge of her nose and under her eyes, where glasses had just been removed for the photograph. My Emma, as I knew only too well, was slim-limbed, had perfect honey skin and twenty-twenty vision. The girl in the school photo had blonde hair alright, and a Nordic or Scandinavian look that might have indicated Finnish ethnicity, but the nose, mouth, chin – everything – were different from those of the Emma Virtanen I knew. It was the difference between the girl next door and a fashion model.

I sat back in the library booth and tried to figure it out. Unless she’d had the world’s biggest, quickest and most successful makeover, this was an entirely different individual. Actually, the more I thought about it, not even plastic surgery could have made them the same person. Which meant that the Emma Virtanen I knew must be somebody else. I searched the yearbook again, but there was no head-and-shoulders picture of my Emma.

There
was
a blank space at the end of the long columns of photos, with a short list of names in it. I decided she must have been off sick the day the photographer came to the school. It took quite a bit more searching through the yearbook, page by boring page, but I eventually found her in the volleyball team. She was standing in the back row. Same smooth forehead, high cheekbones, sticky-up nose, wide mouth and strong, tapering chin. Same ash blonde hair, worn in her distinctive ‘Mongol’ style – probably the only girl in the entire pile of yearbooks who wore it that way.

The name underneath the photograph was Agneta Nurmi.

*

I Googled both names, of course. It didn’t take me long to find Emma Virtanen. Her sad story came up on screen, front page news in the Victoria
Times
Colonist
for a whole day. Just a couple of weeks after her high school graduation, Emma, the real one, had been the victim of a hit and run accident. Under the banner ‘Oak Bay Girl Dies Following Hit-And-Run Accident’ there was another, somewhat more flattering, head and shoulders photo and brief, but gory, details.

Just
before
9
o'clock
Tuesday
evening
on
Smythe
Ave
.
north
of
Strathcona
Park
,
eighteen
year
old
Emma
Virtanen
was
walking
home
with
a
school
friend
when
a
Jeep
came
speeding
by
,
mounted
the
curb
and
knocked
Ms
.
Virtanen
to
the
ground
.

Witnesses
say
the
recent
high
school
graduate
was
bleeding
profusely
from
the
head
but
managed
to
rise
to
her
feet
again
before
falling
over
once
more
.
The
injury
was
so
severe
that
Ms
.
Virtanen
was
dead
by
the
time
an
ambulance
arrived
.
A
spokesperson
from
Royal
Jubilee
Hospital
confirmed
that
the
victim
died
from
head
injuries
and
massive
internal
bleeding
.

The
hit
-
and
-
run
vehicle
is
described
as
a
dark
,
older
Jeep
Grand
Cherokee
with
damage
on
the
passenger
side
.
Anyone
with
information
should
call
. . .

Blah, blah, blah. It made depressing reading, even now. Out of respect for the real Emma I printed up a copy of the news article and searched for any subsequent updates about the tragedy. The perpetrator, as far as I could tell, was never identified.

I Googled until I was sick of looking at the screen and had a headache coming on, but nothing came up for Agneta Nurmi. All I discovered was that it too was a Finnish name.

So what was going on here? The two girls must have known each other. Did they hang out together? Share a table in the school café? It seemed possible, maybe even likely, that their mutual ethnic background connected them, or at least their families, in some way. Then, when the real Emma met her fate, my Emma took advantage of circumstances. I could only speculate about why she would do such a bizarre thing. She must have known that it couldn’t be a permanent identity switch. Sooner or later someone from Victoria who’d known them both would have bumped into pseudo-Emma and blown her cover immediately.

I’d now discovered that my Emma, as I still and would forever think of her, had been studying at UBC under an alias. Maybe she did have some compelling reason for doing so, but I’d never know what it was. I wasn’t even sure that I
wanted
to know. Whatever it was still wouldn’t have explained or justified her subsequent behaviour on the rooftop.

When I got back to the hotel I borrowed the telephone directories in the foyer. Both the names I was interested in were uncommon and I’d no trouble finding them in the phone book. There was a Virtanen listed with an address on McNeill Avenue and a Nurmi along St. David Street. I jotted down both addresses on a scrap of paper. In the Yellow Pages I found an accountancy firm called Nurmi & Associates, on Fort Street, which was within walking distance. I added their address and number to my notes.

Up in my room I sat on the bed and considered my next move. I smoothed out the scrap of paper with my thumb, laid it on the quilt and picked up the phone. As my finger tapped in the number I thought about what I would say.

“Nurmi & Associates, how can I help you?” It was her voice.

My brain froze. I opened my mouth but couldn’t get a word out.

“Hello?” Her tone was insistent now.

I sat there, immobile, as if time had stopped for me.

“Hello?” She waited another couple of seconds then the line clicked dead.

I put the phone down and stared into space. My heart was pounding, my chest heaving. I found it hard to breathe, as if the room had suddenly emptied of air. Sweat trickled into my eyes. I sucked in an enormous breath and lay back on the bed.

Eventually my chest calmed and my breathing became normal again. My body cooled and the sweat dried on my forehead.

I would go there, confront her. That’s what I’d do.

*

I didn’t, of course. Somehow hearing her voice took all the fight out of me. I stayed another day but kept well away from Fort Street. By now I had no money left to stick around any longer and no reason to do so, if I wasn’t going to take the next step.

I realised that I no longer had the stomach for it. I was tired, broke and terribly depressed, and all the tramping around Oak Bay had hurt my ankle so much that I was limping badly again. She was gone from my life. Accept it, I told myself, accept it.