Palm Beach, Finland

by Antti Tuomainen

  Nyman flicked through the rest of the papers.

  Attempted shoplifting: an eiderdown jacket stuffed down the front of his jogging bottoms.

  Minor narcotics misdemeanour: attempting to sell low-grade marijuana to two undercover narcotics investigators having lunch.

  Selling stolen goods after a decidedly one-sided robbery: listing three hundred hammers on eBay, each item individually but all with the same user name.

  Attempted robbery: threatening a taxi driver with an ice-hockey stick, seizing his bag of money then hailing the same taxi as a getaway vehicle thirty seconds later.

  And the list went on.

  Nyman gave him points for initiative and energy. He leaned back and thought about it. The petrol-station café smelled of fried eggs. They were the only customers. The man who had been standing behind the counter in a pique T-shirt and with thick golden bracelets had disappeared. From the speakers came the plastic sound of generic pop music as a female vocalist promised them that life could turn into a party at any moment.

  Nyman took another look at the man’s photograph. The name Antero Väänänen didn’t ring any bells. Nyman replaced the pile of documents in the folder and slid it back to Muurla’s side of the table. He was about to say what he thought of it all when Muurla spoke.

  ‘The first summer was tough. I went on one of those singles’ cruises. They had a game where you put your name tag in a big tombola, then they matched up two names and reserved you a table at the nightclub. So … my date’s name is Teija. Quite a stunner but shy at the same time, talks in a whisper – which is a bit of a problem when you’re in a nightclub. I miss half of what she says, but thankfully she’s got her lips right up against my eardrum. And she doesn’t mess about. We’re sitting there talking and knocking back blue angels. Then she really goes for the kill, says maybe it’s time we went up to her cabin. I suggest we go for a walk in the moonlight, seeing as the moon’s shining and there’s the sea and that. Out on the deck we start kissing, there in the shadows. She starts pulling me. It’s a hot night. She’s got strong hands, plays tennis, apparently. We get into her cabin, and I do my best. There’s only so much you can do on a cramped bunk in the pitch dark. Once we’re done Teija says she wants to sleep alone, says she hasn’t been able to sleep with other people since her divorce. I take the hint and leave. When I wake up the next morning, I look out at the IKEA landscapes passing by and I think of Teija. It’s done me good. I go down to the duty-free shop, buy a box of chocolates and head back to Teija’s cabin. I remembered the number; I didn’t have too many of those blue angels, too sweet for my taste, and I’m not sure there’s much liquor in them anyway. The door’s open. Teija is already packed and her suitcase is standing by the mirror, a battered old Samsonite from the nineties. The toilet door is ajar too. Teija is in there. She’s got short cropped hair and there she is, having a piss standing up. I leave the box of chocolates on the table and wander off into the Old Town in Stockholm. Charming place, lots of history and good food. It was a start, the singles’ cruise. I’d recommend something like that for you too.’

  Nyman had been watching the swaying of the hedges outside. He turned and looked at Muurla. ‘This guy wouldn’t know the meaning of the words “professional crook”,’ he said and tapped the place on the table where the papers had been a moment ago. ‘But it certainly begs a lot of questions.’

  Muurla cleared his throat as he returned from the Old Town in Stockholm to the Finnish summer, to this table. ‘What kind of questions?’ he asked.

  ‘The guy’s been so busy he’s probably never met a civilian in his life – in his adult life, at least. His human contact is limited to security guards, the police and the authorities. And when you read that, you realise something else too. Someone is protecting him.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘There’s a professional nearby. By his side, in front of him, behind him, who knows? Helping him whenever he gets himself into a jam.’

  ‘A professional wouldn’t touch a mastermind like this with a bargepole,’ said Muurla. ‘It’s a dead end.’

  ‘He might,’ said Nyman. ‘If he had to.’

  ‘And what does that mean?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ said Nyman. ‘There’s a limited number of people of interest. I’ve made progress with all of them. It’s a slow business, as always. You have to wait for the right moment, for a situation to arise naturally. Right now I’m interested in Jorma Leivo.’

  ‘What about the woman, Olivia Koski?’

  Nyman looked out at the hedgerow, watched as the bushes fluttered against one another.

  ‘Interesting,’ he said and turned to Muurla. ‘Jorma Leivo has renamed the place Palm Beach Finland. Do you know why?’

  Muurla shook his head.

  ‘Me neither,’ said Nyman. ‘But I plan to find out. The beach is as cold as a witch’s tit. The rental chalets and other buildings look like they’ve just stepped out of an eighties discotheque. My chalet is called Tubbs. Jorma Leivo thinks the place is soon going to overtake Nice. I have the distinct feeling there’s something I haven’t quite understood yet.’

  Muurla paused for a moment. ‘When will we know more?’

  ‘A few days, a week,’ said Nyman quickly, and suddenly realised two things.

  Naturally, the estimate he’d just given Muurla was pulled out of thin air. Furthermore, he had a number of thoughts regarding Olivia Koski, some of which had prevented him from telling Muurla what had happened. For instance, the fact that Olivia Koski might have recently blown up her own shed.

  And as he remembered what he’d been thinking as he’d arrived at their meeting, the mental struggle he’d endured, Nyman thought of the difference between taking a shine to someone and falling in love with them, and how firm or flexible or wafer-thin the boundary between them might be. If you were to cross that boundary, was there any way of returning to the other side?

  Nyman ran through a hypothetical scenario: Olivia Koski prepares the fire in the shed herself, douses the place in petrol, throws in a match, then sits down opposite him half an hour later, smiling and sipping her white wine. Nyman could see her brown eyes, hear her laughter, and he didn’t care about the image of a blazing shed in the background. Why? he wondered. Why doesn’t this bother me?

  Nyman thanked Muurla, wished him a happy fishing trip, and returned to his bicycle.

  9

  Women, thought Chico. They were everywhere.

  The thought, which at first had caused him joy and more often than not a faint tingling sensation, had now turned heavy, exhausting even. Women really did find their way into every facet of his life, and in one way or another every one of them had a surprise in store for him.

  That morning it was Marjukka who had provided that surprise by informing him she wanted him to move out. How could someone do a thing like that after only one week? Even jobs had a trial period – so he’d heard – and that was often months long. He’d mentioned this to Marjukka, but she’d flown off the handle straight away: Oh, so you work here now, do you? Doesn’t much look like it to me, you don’t lift a finger, you just lie on the beach all day, your face burned, then you come home stinking of petrol, probably careering around on a motorbike, having fun and games with some biker girl.

  Chico couldn’t say he’d never so much as seen a motorbike, and he couldn’t say that he and Robin had blown up a lawnmower and burned down an entire building. He didn’t even say that living with Marjukka felt like hard work. Because Chico was a negotiator, he tried to steer the course of the conversation by suggesting a candlelit dinner at the beachside restaurant – if Marjukka could lend him the necessary funds, seeing as he was suffering from an acute lack of liquidity – but she wouldn’t relent and instead started throwing his things around, first into the hallway, then out of the front door, and finally off the balcony. The last of these made Chico run outside. His Lidl underpants didn’t quite fit his carefully cultivated image.

  Now Chico was standing
beneath a pine tree with a sports bag at his feet and his guitar case leaning against the trunk.

  He was wearing far too much. It wasn’t a particularly warm day, the wind was whipping in from the sea and he was quite near the shore, but he was wearing both a hoodie and a denim jacket because they didn’t fit in his bag. Chico looked out to sea. Perhaps dreams are like waves, he thought, sometimes they are high, sometimes just little shimmers that only happen when it’s utterly still.

  It was thirty metres to the back door of the beach restaurant. The door was open. Robin saw him and started walking his way. He took a few calm steps, looked around, sped up and gathered pace, which made him stumble all the more. The terrain was uneven – the roots of the pine trees jutted from the sandy ground. Robin looked as though he was doing something particularly demanding. He finally arrived beneath the pine tree, and Chico could see his agitation.

  ‘Nea’s coming,’ he said. ‘She wants something.’

  Chico couldn’t help but return to the idea of women coming at him from all directions.

  ‘What does she want?’

  ‘She didn’t say, just said she wants to meet us because we know people.’

  ‘Who do we know?’ asked Chico. ‘Who do you know, for that matter?’

  Robin looked at Chico. Chico realised that his tone of voice had been mean, frustrated. He knew things like that frightened Robin.

  ‘Marjukka threw me out,’ he explained. ‘I’m a bit tense.’

  ‘You can stay at my place,’ said Robin.

  Robin had offered this before, but Chico just couldn’t bring himself to take him up on the offer. There were several reasons. One was that Robin was a bit too … laissez faire for his liking. Chico didn’t think it was right for two guys to sit next to each other on a couch watching TV together if one of them was only wearing a pair of underpants. But Robin simply stripped off his clothes if he was too hot.

  ‘Thanks, Robin. I’ll be fine. Did Nea phone you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Robin smiled.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She wants to meet up, because we know—’

  ‘Robin,’ said Chico. ‘Why did she phone you all of a sudden? You haven’t told her anything, have you? You didn’t mention anything about recent events, did you?’

  Robin shook his head. Chico wondered what this was all about. It was difficult. He was a problem solver, but sometimes problems were … complicated.

  ‘Nea’s coming, let’s go with her,’ said Robin.

  Chico looked towards the car park. Nea’s sunglasses – a pair of aviators – were the most concealing item of clothing she was wearing. The mirrored surfaces reflected the sunshine in their direction. Her brown thighs were gleaming. Chico heard Robin make a low-pitched guttural sound and smack his lips. One day he’d tell Robin not to do that. But this time he asked simply:

  ‘Where is she taking us?’

  Again they passed the bright, garish lights of the Palm Beach Finland signpost. Chico noted how seamlessly Nea’s attire seemed to blend with the sign. It was as though the sheer surfaces, Nea’s glowing skin and the sign’s chemical coating had combined for a moment, as though the colours and shades strengthened and enhanced one another. It was like fireworks in the middle of the day, like a flashing music video. Then they turned, walked through the park, crossed another road and went downhill along the cycle path until they arrived at a narrow dirt track.

  Chico was relieved he’d dumped his guitar and sports bag in the staffroom at the beach restaurant. This amount of exercise would have been impossible carrying all that stuff. The instrument and bag felt so heavy that it was hard to think of the weight in kilograms. Besides, today of all days, carrying his stuff around left him with the niggling feeling that people might ask how he was doing – a question to which even he didn’t have an answer.

  ‘What’s happened to your faces?’ asked Nea as they walked along the side of the cemetery.

  Chico nudged Robin in the ribs and made sure his hand remained behind his back, out of sight.

  ‘Nothing,’ Chico replied quickly. ‘Nothing has happened.’

  He’d already forgotten all about it, all except the heat and exertion. The wind and the morning air had cooled his face, and a storm was raging inside him, distracting his attention from everything else. Their faces really looked burned. Or if not exactly burned, then certainly flambéed. That was the word Robin had used. Chico wasn’t sure whether this was the sort of thing you should tell people. It didn’t sound especially cool. Oh, my face? It’s flambéed.

  ‘You told Robin you wanted to meet,’ he said.

  Nea’s sunglasses gleamed, her pouting lips gleamed, her face gleamed.

  ‘A few weeks ago … the guy that turned up dead at Olivia’s place,’ said Nea, and Chico could see she’d chosen her words carefully. ‘I wondered if you’d heard anything about it.’

  Chico gave Robin another sharp nudge in the ribs.

  ‘Why would we have heard anything about it?’ he asked. ‘Except what everybody else has heard. Everybody was talking about it, but not so much now. Hardly anyone’s talking about it. I mean, it’s still unsolved. Because nobody knows anything. Nobody’s talking. Not a squeak.’

  Chico stopped himself. That’s enough, he told himself. Nea looked at him.

  ‘I just thought, seeing as you two move in those circles.’

  ‘What circles?’

  ‘How should I put it?’ Nea said and raised her hands, pulling her hair into a bundle on her head. Chico saw her breasts beneath her thin top. They were bigger than he remembered. Rounder. ‘Rock ‘n’ roll circles. The underworld.’

  Chico thought it best not to say that he’d been trying to find the town’s underworld for the best part of thirty-nine years – and all he’d found was his one best friend, who right now was standing next to him, his brown eyes staring at a half-naked woman behind whom the gravestones rose and fell and the dead scurried around.

  ‘No, I haven’t heard anything, not from the underworld, and not from the rock ‘n’ roll crowd. Why do you ask? Have you heard something?’

  Nea thought about what to say. Chico could see it. She had finished playing with her hair and let it fall back into place as she lowered her hands. She took the sunglasses from the bridge of her nose.

  ‘I’m looking for the killer.’

  ‘The killer’s dead,’ Chico snapped. ‘You said so yourself.’

  ‘I mean the killer’s killer. The killer who died didn’t get the chance to kill anyone. It’s not that difficult.’

  Chico had to think about this for a moment. Thankfully Robin seemed unable to do anything but stare ahead vacantly.

  ‘I didn’t know you were interested in the case. How come you’re suddenly looking for the killer?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I look for him?’ asked Nea and turned to look at them. Behind her the birches in the cemetery swayed in the breeze. ‘Why is it whenever I do anything everyone suspects I’m up to something? It was the same when I opened the food supplement shop. Everybody was like, who’s going to shop at a place like that? Well, Robin came in every day and bought a large bag of protein powder, vitamins and minerals. Then he stopped coming in and the shop went bust. But that doesn’t mean anything.’

  Chico shook his head. Robin stared at the ground in front of him. Chico reminded himself that he was a problem solver.

  ‘I don’t suspect anything,’ he said and hoped he could choose the right words. ‘But, did you just come up with the idea one day? Have the police been asking anything? Or have you been in touch with the police?’

  Nea gave him a quizzical look.

  Fair enough, it isn’t the police, thought Chico. It must be something else. But what?

  Nea started walking again.

  ‘Maybe we do know something,’ said Chico.

  That stopped her. Nea turned, looked at him and folded her arms: clench, thrust, display. The series of movements made looking at her breasts an entirely unavoidable course of act
ion.

  ‘I’m prepared to pay…’

  The pause was long. Chico managed to pull his eyes away from her chest. He looked over Nea’s shoulder; the sight of the headstones calmed him. It was hard to think about her gleaming breasts and their deceased neighbours at the same time.

  ‘A hundred euros,’ said Nea.

  If Nea was prepared to pay to get to the bottom of this, that meant that … Nea must be getting something out of it. Money? Everybody was interested in money. But there was one thorny problem with this: Chico and Robin were the very people she was looking for.

  ‘Five hundred,’ said Chico, realising this was the surest way to move her suspicions somewhere else. ‘Per head. That’s a thousand in total. A thousand divided by two.’

  Nea groaned, ran the pink tip of her tongue across her shiny lips and looked up at the sky. Chico realised he was witnessing something important.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘What do you know?’

  She stuck her hands into her denim shorts. The pockets poked out beneath the shorts, the white tips peering out like mice against her tanned thighs.

  ‘Where’s the money?’

  The words came out by themselves. It felt good. Chico was himself again.

  ‘I’ll pay,’ said Nea. ‘But I haven’t got the money yet. I’ll pay you later.’

  Chico looked at Nea, then Robin, then Nea again. I’m the only sane one here, he thought. The thought gave him a good deal of satisfaction, and that satisfaction could be heard in his voice as he said:

  ‘Pay us first, then we’ll talk.’

  10

  There are plenty of us. I am not alone. Once word gets out…

  Jorma Leivo checked the thermometer reading and gave a firm nod. To himself, as he was alone in his office, but also to some greater power that commanded the weather. Good work. The thermometer showed 13.5°C, the time was almost half past two, the warmest point of the day. Marvellous. Excellent. The Finnish summer. In an uncertain world, at least there was something people could rely on.