Harjutori 4 was a colossal stone building from the 1930s. The left corner of the building was occupied by a hall belonging to the Siiloan Full Gospel Church; the door next to that led into a Thai massage parlour. From here it was only a stone’s throw to Piritori, the most popular square for drug dealers in the city. The snowy night was like a soothing dream, soft and all-encompassing.
Behind me the taxi curved round the crescent-shaped park and sped off along Helsinginkatu towards Töölö. I found the wrought-iron gate that led into the stairwell, and I was startled to see a woman’s face in the dusk.
‘That was quick,’ she said as she approached the gate.
She didn’t open the gate but looked at me through the black grille.
‘I can’t help thinking you were just trying your luck with that code word.’
‘I wasn’t,’ I said. ‘It’s been in the back of my mind for a while.’
‘To your credit,’ she continued, ‘it was your first try and you got it right. My father must have had a reporter more like you in mind.’
‘Would it be easier for us to talk on the same side of the gate?’
The woman turned the lock, pushed the gate open, took a step back. Now I could see all of her. She was slightly younger than me; shoulder-length, straight, dark-brown hair with a centre parting; she was stocky and had broad shoulders for a woman. Not at all masculine; on the contrary, a powerful young woman. Her nose was strong, long and Mediterranean, her eyes blue and self-assured. Now I had a better understanding of the voice I’d heard on the phone. Maarit Lehtinen was the same no-nonsense kind of person as her deceased father.
‘Are you really writing a story about my father?’
‘I’m writing about Finn Mining and the mine at Suomalahti,’ I told her.
Maarit Lehtinen looked at me.
‘You lied.’
‘Only in part.’
‘I suggest you don’t make things worse by explaining any further.’
Maarit guided us into the centre of the stairwell. The lift was an original feature and so small that I stood face to face with her. We were almost the same height.
‘I read a few of your articles,’ she said.
I waited a moment for her to say something else, but she did not. Not another word. The old lift creaked as it hauled us up.
‘So I passed the test,’ I said.
A quick glance. Sharp eyes, a wide mouth, thin lips. ‘We’ll see about that.’
The lift juddered to a halt. I pulled the steel grille in front of us, held it open for Maarit. Her hair smelled of flowers and shampoo.
The attic was typical for a building this age: cold, damp and crammed with decades of useless clutter. Rough-cut two-by-fours and wire mesh divided the space into dozens of sections. The thrown-together feel of the place was heightened by the sections’ wonky doors, secured with padlocks, some of which had been broken apart and left hanging dejectedly on the doors. The floor was littered with the protective packages for syringes, plastic cups, and tiny balls of cotton wool spotted with dried, blackened drops of blood.
At the end of the narrow corridor was another padlocked door. Maarit opened it. There was barely any light. Maarit stepped to one side. I saw several boxes, most of them cardboard. They were all different sizes – some shoeboxes, some fruit boxes.
‘Everything in here belonged to my father,’ said Maarit. ‘For obvious reasons, I don’t really want to store my own things up here.’
I stepped into the storage space and pulled one pile of boxes into the middle of the floor. A thin strip of light fell on it. I pulled off the tape and peered inside. Papers, notebooks, newspapers, CDs. I glanced to one side.
‘Do you remember what you packed in which box?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t pack them; my father brought them up here.’
I turned and looked at Maarit. ‘He did it himself?’
‘Yes, all by himself,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t that bad a drunk.’
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean that, at all.’
I thought about what Pohjanheimo had said. Lehtinen’s desk had been tidy, everything in perfect order. But if Lehtinen had packed up his papers by himself before his death, he must have known he was in danger and that these notes contained valuable information. Maybe.
I pulled another box from the pile, placed it next to the first and opened it up. The contents were largely the same. And yet they weren’t. I went through the notebooks in the first box, looked at the documents Lehtinen had printed off, the newspapers left open at a particular place. I found a common factor almost immediately: vaccinations and vaccination sceptics. The other box was more difficult: maybe something to do with urban and town planning. The third box was obvious: prison conditions, sentences given for different crimes, particularly serious ones. Pohjanheimo was right. Lehtinen was thorough. Obsessive. I continued rummaging through the boxes. Halfway through I found the right one. Mining operations. Finn Mining Ltd. Suomalahti. Several notebooks, a few kilos of printed pages, CDs and a memory stick.
I stood up. My feet were numb. I’d been crouched down for a long time.
‘Can I take all this with me?’
‘You knew the code word.’
I packed my rucksack. It was soon full and heavy. I closed the boxes, piled them up again and Maarit slipped the lock back on the door.
In the lift we found ourselves once again face to face. This time Maarit’s blue eyes didn’t look into mine. Her denim jacket was emblazoned with badges, some of them real retro stuff: NUCLEAR POWER? NO THANKS; MEAT IS MURDER; ACTIVISM NOW; VEGETABLE JUNKIE. One of the badges was simply a black, shiny circle.
‘Do you know anything about this mining issue?’ I asked.
The blue eyes closed and opened, this time looking right at me.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just thinking out loud.’
Maarit didn’t say anything.
‘While we’re on the subject … and this might sound a bit weird…’ I stammered. ‘Don’t tell anyone I was here.’
‘I’m my father’s daughter,’ said Maarit. ‘I’m used to weird requests.’
I recalled what Maarit had said downstairs.
‘When we met … What did you mean by a reporter more like me?’
‘You’re not the only reporter that’s called me. But you’re the only one who knew what to say. My father said someone like you would probably know to look in the right places.’
I thought it best not to tell her it was a pure fluke that I’d guessed the code word.
‘Another reporter, eh?’ I said once the lift reached the ground floor. ‘From Helsinki Today?’
‘Didn’t say.’
‘They must have introduced themselves?’
Maarit shook her head. Her hair moved just enough for her scent to reach my nostrils again. We walked out of the stairwell and arrived at the gate.
‘Man or woman?’ I asked.
‘A man.’
‘How old, approximately?’
‘Hard to say. Not young but not old.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said he was a friend of my father’s and wanted to know whether there might be anything belonging to him among my father’s affairs.’
‘What kind of friend doesn’t introduce himself to the deceased’s daughter?’ I said. ‘And how could anything belong to him if you don’t know who he is or what he’s looking for?’
Maarit stopped, resting her hand on the gate’s lock.
‘Exactly,’ she said; then, looking me in the eye, she turned the lock.
The gate slammed shut. I listened to Maarit’s steps until I could no longer hear them. How could Kallio at night be so quiet, so still? The taxi rank was at the other side of the crescent-shaped park, in front of a pawnshop and a bar selling cheap beer and days of blurred time.
That way.
I didn’t take a step.
Through the park, its trees naked in the January night, I saw there were no taxis at
the rank. But I saw something else too. To the left, at the corner of Helsinginkatu and Harjutori, a man slipped behind the building. I recalled what I’d seen seven hundred kilometres away: first in the heavy snowfall at the gates to the mine, then in the motel car park.
The corner of the building was a retail space, currently empty. As there were no lights on inside, the large windows allowed me to see through to the next street. There were no broad shoulders continuing along Helsinginkatu and I didn’t see them returning to Harjutori.
On the side of the corner facing the street was a strip of brick wall two metres wide, providing just enough room to hide. The rucksack on my back was heavy.
I took out my phone and was about to call for a taxi but stopped short. I walked briskly towards the corner of the building. When I was about twenty metres from the windows, I saw the man creeping out from behind the strip of wall. I quickened my pace, slipped both straps of my heavy rucksack over my shoulders and turned on to Helsinginkatu.
The man had increased the distance between us. He must have run a short way. Now he walked with long, supple steps. The back covered in a black coat, the body language – both so familiar. I accelerated into a run. The rucksack bounced around on my back. The man had reached the middle of the block, where a set of concrete stairs interrupted the row of redbrick houses.
The man disappeared. He had turned and taken the stairs, which led to a large landing above, a popular spot during the daytime with the local drunks and junkies. I loped up the stairs, craning to see more with each step. I arrived at the platform. Another set of stairs rose to Aadolfinkatu. In front of me was an old university building, the gates at its entrance shut.
A brick wall stretched out on both sides. I stopped to listen. To the left the wall ended at Franzén Park. I walked towards it.
The park was set on an incline, two paths crossing each other in the middle. Even when they were black and leafless, the trees provided effective shadows, but I saw the man. He was walking uphill towards Franzeninkatu. The Kotiharju sauna’s vertical sign gleamed through the snow, the letters S-A-U-N-A looking as though they were alight.
The man had reached Franzeninkatu and soon disappeared again.
I ran. The bag thumped against my back. I gasped for breath.
I didn’t notice the figure step out of the shadows of the wall. Perhaps he jumped out, perhaps he shoved me. I was on the ground. A shoe pressed down on my neck. The rucksack was being torn from my back. I tried to turn over. With a boot at my throat it was difficult. The man twisted my right arm and managed to slip off the strap. He twisted my left arm. I managed to free my right hand and struck out with all the strength I could muster.
I hit nothing.
The man gripped my throat. The hand was covered in a glove. He throttled me, leaning in closer. I caught the smell of garlic and fast food. I hit out again, this time with my elbow. It hit the target. The man let go.
I heard someone shouting. The voice was close by. The man let go of me and yanked again at the rucksack. It felt like my left shoulder almost dislocated, but I managed to keep hold of the bag.
I rolled over. A foot struck me in the face. Then I heard boots running away.
I sat up; slipped the bag from my shoulder and held it in my lap, hugging it close.
14
Emil didn’t need to read any further. He looked at the man’s picture, his address, checked the time on his computer. The night was young. What were his options? Tomorrow during the day or the early evening?
In Emil’s experience, daytime was the most complicated. It required thorough preparation, the careful selection of time and place, and the utmost control.
A few years ago he had drowned a London banker in the Thames as he was leaving a lunch meeting. It all happened at the bottom of a set of stone steps leading down to the riverside. It was a sunny summer’s day – exceptionally bright for an English afternoon. The whole operation had been so touch-and-go that Emil shivered just thinking about it. Of course someone had seen him. The location he had chosen with great care and consideration at night, was in broad daylight the route of somebody’s daily walk. Emil remembered the sirens blaring as he walked to the underground station, his face stony and impassive, the legs of his pin-striped trousers wet, the squelching in his leather shoes, his muscles still aching from the exertion. Never again, he thought, as he finally took his seat on the District Line train and hid behind his copy of the Financial Times.
And so he only had the hours of night at his disposal.
Wait a minute…
Emil typed in a few combinations of search terms. The process of finding and gathering information had completely changed since he’d started out in this line of work. Nowadays people provided all the information he needed by themselves, quite freely. All he needed to do was put it all together. The man published the runs he’d completed on Run Keeper on his Facebook page. He ran every morning. Judging by the map, he ran round Helsinki Central Park, usually following the same three-kilometre route. This was understandable: it was the only path for running in the local area that was maintained throughout the winter. Almost without exception his run took place between six and seven in the morning.
Emil waited three and a half hours. He didn’t even try to sleep.
When the clock struck five he began to get dressed. Black running leggings, new, blue-green Asics trainers, a black skin-tight running top and a black Goretex fleece. In the fleece pocket he stuffed a pair of black gloves and a black running hat. He looked at himself in the mirror. Only his pale, wrinkled face would distinguish him from the surrounding night.
The quiet side streets around the Taka-Töölö district were deserted. Emil walked towards the sea. Once on Valhallankatu he found what he was looking for.
The Hyundai van belonging to a local plumbing firm had been left in an unofficial parking space in the shelter of the hedgerow and an elm tree. It had probably seemed the perfect parking space when it had been left here. It was perfect for Emil too. As was the age of the car – none of the newest anti-theft technology. Emil opened the door, sprung the ignition, and in only four minutes he was driving along Mannerheimintie.
He drove north and passed the former Teboil garage at Ruskeasuo. He looked left: the Pikku-Huopalahti district had sprung up in an area where there had once been nothing but wasteland, scrapyards, junkyards, and even longer ago a dump. Emil remembered the shacks, the wonky warehouses. The poor man’s high street, they’d once called it.
For all the contradiction, the idea that he was at work, that he was on his way to a job, seemed comforting – good, even. For a long time now, work and life had been one and the same thing. Work had told him who he was, what his role was in the world. It had been the rock that had always supported him, even in the years when loneliness had hit him like a punch in the gut; forced the air out his lungs.
He thought of his son and their meeting. He felt like suggesting they meet again.
Mannerheimintie ended at the newly constructed Hakamäentie intersection. There was something about the intricate tangle of roads and tunnels that made Emil feel lost in his own city. Once he reached the northbound highway, he increased his speed to the eighty-kilometre limit, and before long he sighed with relief. The landscape on both sides of the highway was familiar now. To the right was the darkness of Helsinki Central Park, to the left, the lights of Etelä-Haaga and the towers of rented apartments in the suburb of Pohjois-Haaga. At the next junction he turned off, took the first ring road and headed east. He remained on the ring road for a few kilometres.
The district of Länsi-Pakila had become gentrified over the years. The plots of land, at first divided into two and now apparently three parts, were crowded with brash detached houses that looked more like miniature castles. He remembered this area as having been occupied by a rather sparse selection of terraces and old, detached houses, which had been prefabricated, wooden constructions, built immediately after the war. These new houses, however, looked
like something between modern art galleries and diplomatic residences in a banana republic.
He drove as though he was on his way home. Perhaps not home – no plumbers lived in this area of the city – but as though he’d been called out to unblock a drain or fix a leaking pipe.
The house he was looking for was at the end of a road, at the top of a rock rising steeply from the ground. He’d checked the street view to see how the property fitted into the surrounding environment. He knew that the house was relatively new – less than ten years old – and that it towered like a fortress above its surroundings. He drove a hundred metres or so past the end of the road and pulled up to the pavement.
The bourgeois sleep sound.
Was that slogan from a socialist cabaret or a Russian play? No matter, it was an apt description of the early hours in Länsi-Pakila. It was so quiet that he could almost hear his breath steaming up the windows.
He couldn’t stay in the van. In a neighbourhood like this it would attract too much attention.
He remembered the topography of Pirkkola Park on the map, recalled the route of the three-kilometre running track. He drove onwards. Pirjo’s Tavern, a legendary watering hole at the Pirkkolantie intersection, had been demolished.
The car park was opposite the Maunula urn cemetery. There were no other cars around. He took the photograph from his pocket and looked at it for a few minutes. He would recognise the man anywhere, from any angle.
It was now six o’clock. He stepped out of the van. His new running shoes were soft and silent in the snow.
He walked up the hill and easily located the running route. From the runs logged on the man’s Run Keeper account, he had seen that the man went round the park, which was mostly forest, anticlockwise. Emil set off jogging. He was an experienced runner who enjoyed long distances, relishing the sensation of his legs finding their own rhythm.
The Mine Page 8