The meeting came to an end. Hutrila disappeared. Määttä and Tukiainen reeled off a list of names I should look into and suggested we meet to go through our material in three hours.
Back at my desk I woke up my computer with a tap and stared at the screen.
‘Suomalahti? Really?’
I swivelled round.
Pohjanheimo pulled up a chair from the neighbouring desk and sat down in front of me. Behind him the day had brightened, the snowfall had paused momentarily. Pohjanheimo raised his dark eyebrows.
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Finn Mining Ltd. Suomalahti.’
Pohjanheimo had the body of a twenty-year-old and the voice of a septuagenarian. Cross-country cycling and heavy smoking were a unique combination.
‘You probably don’t remember Kari Lehtinen,’ he said.
‘I kind of took his place, so I’ve heard of him.’
‘All good, I imagine?’
‘Everything’s relative.’
‘I’m joking. Lehtinen was a good reporter; a damn good one. Stubborn, a bit of a drunk, but a good reporter. It was rewarding working with him, if you could put up with the know-all attitude, the mood swings, the quick temper and the obsessive need to be in the right.’
‘I’ve read some of his pieces. He’s an excellent writer.’
Pohjanheimo nodded.
‘I was just thinking, Lehtinen had a finger in every pie, and one of those pies was the Finnish mining industry – Finn Mining Ltd and Suomalahti in particular. He and I once talked about doing a piece on their two-euro business venture, but it never came to anything. Lehtinen was the kind of journalist who didn’t start writing until he thought he had enough material. That usually took time and caused problems, not least because it took him ages to prepare anything. So we never got round to Finn Mining; we spent our time on other matters.’
Pohjanheimo’s blue eyes and charcoal-black eyebrows formed a hypnotic zone across his face. Many interviewees had doubtless found themselves saying things they weren’t intending to say.
‘People often got the wrong impression of Lehtinen, when they didn’t know him well. He came and went as he pleased, smelled of old booze and didn’t dress, shall we say, in the latest fashions. But I knew him and I knew his work. He was always following up on a thousand things at once; he used to sit furiously making old-school paper-and-pen notes. But more than anything, he knew people. He had contacts in surprising places, and in some mysterious way he always managed to have a little chat with them.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So he made notes about the mining industry in general and Suomalahti in particular?’
Pohjanheimo looked at me. ‘I believe so.’
‘Great. Where are they, and can I look at them?’
‘That’s just the problem.’
‘Whether you can look at them?’
‘No. I don’t know where they’ve gone. Plenty of times I was working on something and thought it might be worth asking Lehtinen what he knew on the subject, read through his notes. There were mountains of them: notepads, papers, files, you name it.’
‘Surely they were still in his desk somewhere…’
‘That’s the problem. Back then his desk was tidy, you see. The first time I looked, anyway. Everything was in order, papers sorted in neat piles. I looked through them, though of course it was kind of inappropriate. But at the end of the day I’m a reporter too.’
I didn’t know whether Pohjanheimo was being ironic, sarcastic or what. And I didn’t know whether it mattered.
‘You say “the first time”. Does that mean the next time you looked, the notes had disappeared?’
‘Right. By then there was just normal stuff. Not a single one of his famous notepads, some of which even had pictures. Lehtinen drew a lot. It pisses me off that we don’t make a bigger deal out of this. I’m convinced he had something. He always did. It’s just that writing up an article always took him forever. That might be one reason Hutrila didn’t seem all that interested in your suggestion. Any subject that whiffs of the stuff Lehtinen plagued Hutrila with all these years without ever finishing an article probably causes an allergic reaction.’
Pohjanheimo stood up, pushed the chair so that it rolled back under the desk a few metres away. The push was masterful; the arms of the chair stopped a centimetre from the edge of the desk. He walked off.
‘What happened to Lehtinen?’ I asked his back.
Pohjanheimo turned, glanced around him.
‘Died in a traffic accident, everybody knows that.’
‘I know. But what happened? Precisely?’
‘He was investigating a case in Berlin. He liked going there. It’s an ugly city, he used to say, but beautiful and vast. Of course, he liked to visit the bars. And so, one morning, when he rolled out of a bar and was walking home along a dark street – if you’ve ever been to Berlin, you’ll know the streetlights aren’t up to much; when it’s dark, it’s really dark; long, empty streets that you almost have to feel your way along – someone, apparently a drunk driver, hit him. Not hit, more like mowed down. Nasty, severed limbs and everything. They had to use DNA and dental records to identify the body. His head was crushed to a pulp.’
‘What do you mean, “apparently a drunk driver”?’
‘A normal driver would have stopped and phoned the police, an ambulance or both and waited at the scene. But drunk drivers, and people on drugs or in stolen cars, generally flee the scene because they know they’ll get into trouble.’
‘Didn’t they find the driver?’
‘No,’ said Pohjanheimo. ‘And I doubt they ever will.’
8
Again he loosened the knot, pulled the tie from round his neck and undid it. He sat by the window, holding in his hands the bespoke work of art, which he’d picked up on the Via Veneto in Rome, and stared out of the window.
The traffic along Topeliuksenkatu flowed gently towards the downtown area; the number 18 bus rumbled past the Töölö library. The bus made it round the awkward traffic bollards, just as it had done decades ago. He had exactly the view he wanted, the one he’d been waiting for. When a suitable apartment had come up for rent, he’d contacted the landlord straight away, saying his company wanted to locate their employees in the flat and that he was sure they could come to an understanding about the price.
The Töölö library stood at the north-eastern corner of a large park. Built in the early 1970s, the light-bricked, three-storey building was one of the places where he and Leena had been regular visitors. They’d read books; it was one of their shared hobbies – or passions, as people called hobbies these days. These days people said so much, about so many things.
He had continued reading over the years, sometimes voraciously, finding new books and new authors, but still the memory of the books he had read all those years ago exceeded everything that had come since. The books they’d borrowed had shown years of wear; they had been opened and closed by dozens of hands; the spines were loose, the pages stained, soft and yellowed, and they almost always had a certain smell, generally that of tobacco. Each book had always come with its own unique message, always making a bold claim: love is eternal; we will die for our freedom; the power of evil is great; fight the good fight.
When he went into the library or a bookshop these days, the books gleamed, pristine. A few years ago someone had told him that old books don’t interest people any more. Now he was told that books in general don’t interest people. As he looked around at airports, cafés and parks, on trains, metros and buses, he couldn’t help coming to the same conclusion. People still read, that much was clear, but they read about what other people had eaten for lunch or did tests to reveal what breed of dog they were.
The tie. He couldn’t get it to sit straight. This hadn’t happened in years. He looked at the time. Almost six.
He stood up, turned his back to the window as the light faded across the landscape, and concentrated.
He followed the man along the pavement duste
d with snow and into the supermarket. This hadn’t been his original intention. He should have kept his distance and waited; waited for the right moment to present itself and come about naturally. Did he really believe in that? He had proved to himself a thousand times that you had to take the right moment, grab it the way a thirsty man drinks – greedily, concentrating on nothing else.
A few minutes in the Finnish sleet had taken its toll. His Spanish shoes were soaked through; the tweed jacket he’d bought in Edinburgh felt like it weighed a tonne. The automatic doors flew open. He stepped into the shop, took a red shopping basket from the pile next to the door and walked further in among the aisles.
He spotted the man standing at the cheese counter. He stopped nearby and picked up jars of pasta sauce, turning them in his hand, examining them. Rocket. Panchetta. Asparagus. He was about seven or eight metres from the man. The man finally made his decision and dropped a chunk of pecorino into his trolley. The man had dressed appropriately for the weather: he was wearing rubber boots, a waterproof anorak and a thick, black woolly hat, its bobble now making its way towards the bread aisle.
He wasn’t properly prepared. There was nothing new about that. He’d had to improvise a lot recently. He knew that the shop was his only option. Outside was the short stretch of pavement, filled with sleet and people, and the crush of public transport.
He glanced around him. The freezer aisle was the quietest place; nobody bought ice cream in January. Thankfully it looked as though the man was going to walk round the entire store. Many people did so; it was an alternative to writing a shopping list. Sooner or later you would spot everything you needed. He gave the man plenty of space. He only needed an instant.
The man pushed his trolley towards the far end of the store, towards the frozen-food section. He pretended to examine labels, scratched his chin, read the headlines of the evening tabloids. Shock Divorce. Repossession. New-Found Happiness. They meant nothing to him; he didn’t know who these people were.
When the man finally turned into the furthest aisle, which ran perpendicular to the other aisles and appeared to lead to a large, confusing area stocking drinks, he lowered his empty basket to the floor and took a few brisk steps. Not fast enough to catch anyone’s attention, but accelerating and rising a fraction on to the balls of his feet. The man had disappeared round the corner.
He strode to the end of another long aisle, so that he could approach the man from the opposite direction. Improvise, he told himself. Just let it happen.
They saw each other at the same moment.
Memory can be strange. It knows things before it understands them. He could see from the man’s eyes that he recognised him, at least on some level, before he fully understood who he was looking at. A small delay was hardly surprising; it had been almost thirty years since they had last seen one another. He took a series of short steps, cautious and polite, towards the man.
The way the man walked, the way his feet touched the ground: light steps, his feet angled slightly outwards. And his upper body: his shoulders pulled slightly backwards, his long arms loose and relaxed at his side. The slim, dark-haired thirty-year-old man in a pair of retro glasses looked just as he had imagined he would.
Time shrunk around him, then tore itself open, forming a deep crevasse. It was all the harder to accept that, of his own volition, he’d been absent almost all the time that his son had lived on the earth and that he knew nothing at all of his son’s life. There was nothing from back then that they had done together, not a single shared memory.
He had to remind himself that this had happened all too suddenly. That they had bumped into each other by accident.
‘Hello, Janne,’ he said.
He could see in his son’s eyes that he didn’t fully understand what was going on.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘That was abrupt. I recognised you; so I assumed you would recognise me too. I’ve seen your picture in the paper, but you won’t, of course … I’m your father.’
Emil held out his hand. Janne looked at it before gripping it.
‘I saw you walking past and thought I might as well introduce myself.’
‘Right.’
‘It’s been a while. I’ve been away, but I’ve moved back to Helsinki now.’
Janne said nothing. His left hand held the handle of his shopping trolley and in his right hand he was holding a packet of fair-trade coffee.
‘Groceries?’
Janne seemed to snap back to reality.
‘Yes. Guests this weekend. Just picking up some bits and pieces.’
‘That’s nice.’
Janne stared at him. ‘So you’ve moved back to Helsinki?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Do you have time for a glass of something?’ asked Emil.
They crossed the street in the snowfall. To Emil the snowflakes seemed softer and larger than any he’d seen before. Janne carried his numerous shopping bags with a light, experienced grip. Emil saw their reflection in a shop window. A stylish, greying gentleman and a trendy young father. Again he pondered how different everything could have been.
They stepped into a pub and walked up to the bar. Emil offered to buy the drinks. Janne gave a friendly smile, first to Emil and then to the waitress; wooden discs stretched her earlobes. Janne ordered a bottle of British ale, Emil a glass of red wine. He undid his jacket, saw in the mirror that his tie was straight, the knot sturdy and neat. Though his jacket was wet, his suit had remained dry and impeccable. For some reason this all felt important.
Janne picked a table by the window. The city flowed past, people gliding through the snow. They sipped their drinks. Everything Emil had planned to say felt utterly wrong.
He smiled at his son. His son didn’t quite smile back. He still hadn’t answered his son’s one-word question. That time would come.
They could talk first…
‘I have to go soon,’ Janne told him. ‘My turn to do the childcare.’
Emil tried to ignore the twinge in his chest.
‘A daughter. She’s two.’
‘That’s wonderful.’
‘And a partner,’ said Janne and sipped his beer. ‘The girl’s mother. She’s going out tonight, so it’s my turn to stay in.’
‘What does she do, your daughter’s mother?’ asked Emil.
His son looked out of the window, then turned and looked him in the eye. ‘She’s in consultancy.’
Emil couldn’t help but notice the almost imperceptible tightening of his son’s voice. He waited for a moment.
‘Is everything alright?’
Janne raised his eyebrows. ‘What do you mean?’
Emil leaned back in his chair. ‘If there’s anything I can do…’
Janne shook his head and raised the bottle to his lips. It was already half empty.
‘Unbelievable,’ he muttered. ‘Absolutely unbelievable.’
Emil waited. He tried to think of the right words, but saying the right words was difficult. Maybe the right words didn’t exist. Janne straightened his back, filled his lungs, exhaled.
‘What about you?’
‘What about me?’ asked Emil. The question was sincere.
‘What do you do for a living?’
Emil could see that his son found it a struggle to remain friendly. It was understandable. He had made a mistake in the past, and his son had the right to think of him what he wanted.
‘Human resources,’ Emil replied. ‘That’s been my job for a while now. I’ll be retiring soon. Just a few more small projects.’
Janne wasn’t listening.
‘Are you working on a new story?’
Janne nodded.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
Janne shook his head. ‘No,’ he said and again looked his father straight in the eye. ‘It’s at such an early stage – everything is up in the air, there’s no focus. It’s always like that at the beginning.’
‘I understand. It must be rewar
ding when the story is finally ready after all that hard work.’
Janne put an elbow on the table. ‘There’s that. And the fact that somebody is finally telling the truth.’
‘The truth…?’
Janne looked at him. ‘If you think about it, what else could the purpose of journalism possibly be? If I decided my priority was something else, what would I be doing? Isn’t there enough bullshit in the world without me? Is it worth going to all that trouble to tell the same lies as everybody else? However financially beneficial it might be…’
Emil realised that Janne was speaking to someone else entirely – he spoke slowly, stressing his words.
‘People justify it by saying they have to make a living and feed their families. That they’ve got to play the game, that everybody makes compromises, that the times change. But where do you draw the line?’ Janne sighed, raised his bottle, but stopped it before it reached his lips. ‘You said you’re moving back to Helsinki. Why now?’ He took a long swig from his bottle.
‘This might sound somewhat banal,’ Emil began.
Janne swallowed. ‘You’re dying,’ he said, so quickly that he seemed to take himself by surprise.
‘Not as far as I know,’ said Emil.
‘Sorry, it’s been a long day. I don’t know why I said that. There’s something about all this that…’
‘You’re thirty years old. The same age as I was when I left.’
Janne looked at him. Emil couldn’t work out what was happening behind those eyes. His son’s expression was impassive.
‘Is that all?’
Emil nodded, tasted his wine; warm and sour.
‘Welcome back,’ said his son and downed the remains of his beer. ‘I suppose.’
The Mine Page 6