Palm Beach, Finland

by Antti Tuomainen

  Nyman smiled. ‘It seems I really am in vacation mode.’

  Again she looked as though she was taking stock of him. ‘We have hourly, daily and weekly rates. One hour is thirty euros, a full day is ninety euros, and a week is three hundred and sixty. The longer the rental period, the cheaper it is per hour, so you get a week for—’

  ‘For the price of five days.’

  Koski looked at him even more closely than a moment ago. ‘Four days.’

  Nyman did the arithmetic again and smiled. ‘Four, of course,’ he said.

  Olivia Koski continued by explaining that he could take the board with him immediately if he wanted or he could leave it here, right here, and collect it in the morning. Tomorrow morning would be great, said Nyman and explained he had other plans for the rest of the day. The woman said that would be fine and suggested they move into the office to sign the paperwork. She closed the shed doors, clicked the lock shut, and together they walked back towards the office.

  Koski walked in front. Nyman tried not to look at her backside, but looked all the same.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ he said, then realised he was addressing her buttocks and raised his eyes. He didn’t want to be one of those men, though all men are those men. ‘Palm Beach Finland…’ he began and hadn’t managed to formulate the rest of the question before the woman replied.

  ‘The name is new, the place is old,’ said Koski and glanced behind her. ‘The new owner painted a few walls, put up a sign and renamed the place. He wants to give it an international feel and appeal to foreign tourists.’

  ‘How’s that going?’

  The woman stopped. They were about to take the wooden steps up to the deck outside the office. She turned and looked at Nyman from above. Her brown eyes flickered.

  ‘The name has three words,’ she said. ‘And the last of them is Finland. If you’re looking for a holiday in the sun, do you really think this is top of people’s list?’

  Nyman filled in the rental forms and paid the deposit, ninety euros. Or to be more correct, Jan Kaunisto filled out the forms and paid the deposit. Nyman followed events from over his shoulder. He was still thinking about the way Koski had talked about the resort’s new name and the idea of booking a holiday in the sun. Again he glanced at the woman’s swimming costume, the text printed across it. He looked around.

  ‘Do you know any nice places to spend an evening round here? Where can I go to meet people?’

  ‘People?’ asked Olivia Koski. ‘You mean women?’

  Did Nyman see something in her eyes? Maybe not. Maybe he was just imagining it.

  ‘A nice little place, food, drink, open late, somewhere that’s popular with the locals.’

  ‘You’re from Helsinki.’

  It wasn’t a question.

  ‘I was born there,’ said Nyman. ‘And I’ve lived there all my life.’

  ‘Well, welcome to whatever this place is calling itself today. There’s nowhere to do all of those things, but if you combine a few places maybe you’ll find what you’re looking for. I’ll show you on the map.’

  The map was a colourful sheet of printed A4. At the top were the words PALM BEACH FINLAND. The map was not in any proportion. His green chalet, Tubbs, was as big as an entire neighbourhood at the bottom of the map. And the edge of that neighbourhood looked like it opened out into the desert. Nyman looked at Olivia Koski’s hands. Crosses appeared on the map, places acquired names. Everything was within walking distance, and when he asked, Olivia Koski assured him she wasn’t a regular customer at any of these establishments.

  ‘But you work here,’ said Nyman.

  ‘No, no, no,’ she said. ‘I’m a lifeguard, as you can see from the uniform. I’m just standing in for a colleague. Something came up.’

  ‘I mean in general,’ said Nyman and nodded towards the beach. ‘You work here.’

  The woman leaned a forearm against the desk and looked at Nyman.

  ‘A girl’s gotta do something for a living,’ she said.

  7

  Holma had already resolved to shoot his satnav and the woman who lived inside it, who constantly took him down ever smaller roads before changing her mind again, when he saw a sign on the side of a barn advertising the best pizzas within a hundred-kilometre radius. Holma didn’t particularly want a pizza, but the pizzeria was in the right direction, only eleven kilometres away. He was sitting by himself in his black BMW 530i, which was gleaming from a recent clean, with his unregistered Glock 17 on the dashboard. He could have silenced the satnav once and for all, but settled simply for switching it off.

  The silence was refreshing. He could hear his own thoughts again. He liked them. He’d heard that some people didn’t like examining their own thoughts too deeply, but Holma certainly wasn’t one of them. He enjoyed listening to himself.

  Genuinely. Objectively.

  He often thought – and this too was a thought he had developed himself and which amused him for its aptness – that other people would be knocked for six if they had thoughts as good as his. They would have understood more, seen things with more clarity; they would have been capable of the same kinds of observations as him. Of course, when he did try to help people, this wasn’t the case, and it caused no end of misunderstandings.

  He genuinely didn’t know why though. Holma only gave people advice when he could see that they needed it. Of course, he identified a lot of need around him, but that was mostly to do with the original state of affairs: the fact that his thoughts were, undoubtedly and with complete objectivity, like finely polished diamonds. And he wasn’t selfish either; he always did his best to amuse and enlighten people with his opinions, only to receive a cold shower in return. That irritated him, though he didn’t show it. Even he was only human. Perhaps, for want of a better word, more imposing than others, but human all the same.

  He didn’t consider himself a genius, a number of specialised skills notwithstanding, but he did think he suffered from an ailment that afflicted many Renaissance people like himself. He was an all-rounder. That was it. An all-rounder.

  It wasn’t his fault that so much human activity overlapped with his particular skill set. He had phenomenal mental capacity, so why should he be forced to hide it? Why should he be ashamed of his own exceptional character? Why – and now he could feel another aphorism coming on; another apophthegm to add to his growing collection, which he’d long thought should be published in a handy self-help manual for the masses – why hide your light under a bush, as they say, when the bush will simply catch fire and burn all your wisdom to ashes … In fact, was it a bush or a bushel? As proverbs went, it still needed some refinements, but there were plenty where that came from, and he would share them all for free, for only the price of a book.

  The car arrived at a T-junction. The road headed both left and right. The signpost in front of him gave distances to towns he had never heard of and with which he decided never to acquaint himself. Having said that, to the left of the signpost was one sign that caught his attention. He hadn’t heard of the place before, but the English-language slogan, the bright colours and the palm trees looked like just the thing that would have attracted Antero.

  Antero, his little brother. Different mother and different father.

  It was complicated. They were adopted, they had different biological parents, but they were family. For the most part. His adopted father had disappeared while he and Holma were on a father-and-son camping and canoeing trip. Holma never got to know his new father; he was about to move out when the guy appeared in the hallway, and, besides, by that point Holma didn’t feel the same sense of attraction towards his adoptive mother. The feeling had worn off, as the prison psychiatrist would tell him much later.

  Antero was backward, in so many ways. It was their primary-school teacher who managed to put this in the nicest terms, when she said Antero was a searcher. He was an admirer too. He worshipped Holma and wanted to be like him, but nobody could be like him.

  Holma
overtook the slower motorists in front, heard the tooting of horns as he passed, something that happened every time he tried to overtake when he shouldn’t. People didn’t appreciate that he had the situation under control.

  The landscape began to change. He felt the proximity of the sea and loosened his tie.

  Though his visit was somewhat melancholy in nature, there was a positive way of looking at it. A holiday. He hadn’t had a holiday in a long time. He could combine his investigation into Antero’s misadventures with a spot of sunbathing.

  He might even meet a local beauty on the beach. They might look at those palm trees together, and she too could listen to his proverbs. They might get to know each other a bit better. He liked that. More precisely, he liked people getting to know him.

  He had so much to give.

  8

  Olivia Koski was sitting in front of Jorma Leivo. The windows behind Leivo’s head looked as though they were ablaze: the sun struck the bonnet of the SUV parked outside and bounced up into the office making both of them – the car and the office – look newer and cleaner than was really the case.

  ‘Fine,’ said Olivia and waited.

  She thought about what she’d said, how she had answered the question How are things? Wondered whether she could still retract it, add something like All things considered… but decided against it. She felt extremely uncomfortable sitting in the office in only a swimming costume and a pair of trainers, especially as the man behind the desk had wrapped himself in a bright-blue shirt and white blazer, was bathing in the powerful light, and had adopted a tone of voice somewhere between creepy sugar daddy and aggressive street peddler.

  ‘Good to hear,’ said Leivo. ‘And thanks so much for stopping by head office.’

  Olivia smiled. It wasn’t a genuine smile, but then again, neither was Jorma Leivo’s thanks so much.

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘We haven’t had a chance to chat much. It’s a shame. I think of myself as a hands-on leader, and I lead by talking.’

  Leivo paused. Olivia didn’t know what to say. Was she going to have to chit-chat with him? Hopefully not.

  ‘It was a frightful thing, what happened in your house,’ he continued. ‘Most unfortunate indeed. A dangerous man – let’s be honest, a criminal – forces his way into your house. It makes you think. What’s happening to the world, who can we trust, where can we feel safe? Can you ever really feel safe living in a remote little town? And, perhaps more to the point – and I don’t mean this to be demeaning – as a woman alone in a remote little town, can you feel safe? Is anything worth risking your life for? Not to mention what might happen to the value of property round here once people learn we are being targeted by the most depraved serial rapists. I’m sure you’ve been thinking about all this yourself.’ Leivo’s expression showed that he was going to continue regardless of what Olivia replied.

  ‘I admit I’ve thought about it,’ Olivia said. It was the truth.

  ‘Let me recap, just in case,’ said Leivo. ‘As we know, nowadays the value of many remote properties in bad condition is only theoretical. There is such a thing as use value, but it’s economical jargon that…’

  That I won’t understand because I’m a woman, Olivia thought to herself.

  ‘…that we don’t need to get ourselves bogged down in right now,’ Leivo continued. ‘Because we can talk about the matter at hand, about what’s on offer. Because we can assess the current situation and see what we can do about it. By that I mean doing what is sensible and safest.’

  Jorma Leivo leaned forwards, carefully placing his hands on the table as though he were testing to see whether the stove was hot or not.

  ‘Let me tell you, it’s a good thing you weren’t at home when that man turned up to assault you, to torture and murder you in the most brutal fashion. He thought he could get away with it because the house is so isolated and worthless—’

  ‘Worthless?’ Olivia asked, her tone neutral, not at all offended, but her interest piqued.

  Leivo looked confused. It was hard to say whether his confusion stemmed from her question or the fact that he’d been interrupted.

  ‘What I mean is that after this sadist – the first one we’ve had round here, but you can bet he won’t be the last – after he’d destroyed your house—’

  ‘He messed up the kitchen,’ said Olivia. ‘I’ve cleaned it now.’

  ‘That’s right, rapid response,’ Leivo nodded. ‘In other circumstances I’d applaud you, if only such extremely brutal, sexually-motivated murders with all their twisted ritualistic characteristics weren’t so commonplace in this country.’

  There was no point trying to end this conversation by herself, she thought. Leivo would get to the point when it suited him. Or once he had composed himself. Olivia could simply focus on being there. Even that was hard work.

  The rule stipulating that during working hours all employees had to wear their work uniform – in Olivia’s case this meant a swimming costume made of cheap fabric and bearing a logo that harked back to the 1980s – caused discomfort for at least two reasons: the fact that people saw her wearing it at all and the weather being what it was. It was generally cold, and men’s eyes generally wandered somewhere other than her face.

  Leivo inhaled slowly, his head angled slightly backwards, his chest expanding. He looked like something pulled from the depths of the ocean, gasping for air.

  ‘I want to meet you halfway,’ said Leivo. ‘I see this shaping up into a classic win-win business opportunity. It’s a business term that means—’

  ‘I know what it means,’ Olivia interrupted and noted how profusely Leivo was sweating.

  The light streaming in from behind him revealed the beads of sweat appearing on his cheeks. Olivia could see Leivo mentally processing the matter before putting it into words.

  ‘I want to buy your plot,’ he said.

  Olivia stared at him. ‘What plot?’

  ‘The plot with your sex-murder house on it.’

  ‘Even though it’s apparently worthless?’

  ‘The house is worthless,’ Leivo nodded slowly, as though something were gradually dawning on them both. ‘But the land—’

  ‘Why?’

  The question stopped Leivo in his stride. He looked at Olivia for a moment. ‘Well,’ he stammered. ‘One small step for man…’

  Olivia waited, but Leivo didn’t complete the sentence.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘We’re expanding.’

  Again Olivia waited.

  ‘We?’ she asked.

  ‘Palm Beach Finland. I’m offering you the chance to get involved.’

  ‘I think I’m already quite involved,’ said Olivia and looked down at the logo written across her chest. ‘I’ve already surrendered most of my clothes. How will selling the house make me any more involved?’

  ‘Not the house, the plot,’ said Leivo. ‘You have to look at the bigger picture, see things that don’t exist yet. In three years’ time we’ll be the number one resort among the rich and famous. Stunning women, just like yourself, handsome men just like … people from all over the world; boats, yachts, each bigger than the last, their sails wider, their keels deeper.’

  Olivia began to realise where Leivo was going. The beach-side plot she had inherited was the key to the bay which, because of its depth, would allow almost any size of boat to moor there. Her plot of land included part of the small peninsula extending out into the bay and a crucial stretch of the shoreline, which could be connected to a future marina. Yes, she owned a beautiful stretch of beach, the end of a peninsula, but the most important part of this deal was the plot itself – and it was that plot Leivo was trying to get his sweaty hands on.

  ‘We’ll have rows of bungalows – Florida-style bungalows, the biggest and the very best, each with their own private beach. It’s a luxurious little touch. You can moor your yacht at your very own jetty. None of those poky Finnish summer cottages; these will be
villas.’

  ‘I already have a villa,’ said Olivia.

  ‘Modern villas,’ said Leivo. Olivia wasn’t sure whether he’d heard her or not. ‘The kind of villas with panoramic windows, open terraces, real architecture.’

  Olivia decided not to ask what Leivo meant by the last word.

  ‘In what way would I be involved, exactly?’

  ‘By selling the plot, you would accumulate capital which you could then use to buy shares in our future limited company.’

  Leivo had clearly been practising this spiel.

  ‘And what if I don’t sell?’ asked Olivia.

  ‘Why wouldn’t you?’ Though Leivo was clearly trying his hardest, a sense of urgency had entered his voice.

  ‘I have a dream too,’ said Olivia. ‘And it involves my hundred-year-old house. I inherited that house from my father. I plan to renovate it, from its foundations right up to that small, rusted weathervane at the top. Then I’m going to live in it.’

  Olivia didn’t add that she’d already made plenty of bad choices in her life, and always as a result of listening to men who always had suggestions that always involved her money. Men were like a playground slide: you got to the bottom and realised you’d lost your wallet. She’d had enough.

  Leivo’s expression, which Olivia had difficulty making out – the sunlight, Leivo’s hair and clothes, the oddly bright walls in the room, all put her off balance – now seemed darker, sterner.

  ‘The future…’ Leivo began and again seemed to think hard about how to continue. ‘It’s coming whether we like it or not.’

  Leivo might have had other thoughts about the future, about tomorrow, next year, but Olivia wasn’t interested. She didn’t care. In fact, she hardly spared a thought for her uniform any longer, that or the imbalance of power between the two parties involved in this negotiation. So she said exactly what was on her mind.

  ‘I’m grateful for this job. I wish your company well. This company and the future company. But I’m not selling. Neither the plot nor the house. It is mine and it’s going to stay mine. If it’s all the same, I’d better get back to the watchtower.’