‘Leena.’
She turned. From her eyes he saw that, after looking at him quizzically for a moment, she finally recognised him.
‘Emil,’ she said.
Leena didn’t seem at all surprised to see him. What was she thinking? Emil couldn’t say. Leena looked around.
‘Where did you…?’
‘I wanted to see you. I looked up your name, found this place, your work. I thought it would be better to come and talk to you in person than over the phone. Telephone calls are…’
A bus drove past, its juddering almost knocking them to the ground, they were so close to the edge of the pavement.
‘I met Janne yesterday. I wanted to meet you. I wanted to…’
Yes, what exactly do I want? To start a new life? To go back and start again?
‘…I had to see you.’
‘And now you have.’
‘How are you? How have you been?’
‘I’m very well.’
‘That’s good to hear. There’s something … I’m moving back to Helsinki.’
Leena froze, stared at him. There they stood at the western end of Bulevardi, the piled-up snow on Hietalahti Square next to them.
Most of Leena’s hair was hidden beneath her woollen hat, but the strands pushing their way from under it showed that she too had aged. Her dark hair was now tinged with grey and silver. Her face was familiar, small and narrow, her skin didn’t shine as it had done all those years ago, and deep furrows ran the length of her cheeks, but she was still attractive. And her eyes: that stare that was constantly reading other people; the brightness shining into the distance. The caution in her every gesture.
‘Why do I need to know that?’ asked Leena.
‘It’s been thirty years, Leena,’ he said. ‘Forgive me.’
The words flew from his mouth before he had a chance to think about them. Everything seemed blurred and confused.
‘I was so young back then,’ he said. ‘I didn’t appreciate that everything has a cause and an effect.’
‘Of course you didn’t,’ said Leena.
They stood there, gazing at each other. Emil knew what he wanted.
‘I don’t…’ Leena began; paused. ‘There doesn’t need to be any bad blood between us,’ she added hurriedly.
‘That makes me very happy.’
‘I don’t know what else to say,’ she said and made to leave. ‘I have to get going.’
‘I’ve come to stay.’
Leena thought about this for a moment. ‘I have to go…’
‘Can I call you?’
Leena stopped. ‘Why?’
Because you are the one I’ve been thinking about all these years.
‘So we can talk. We have a grandchild now: Janne’s daughter.’
Leena’s body seemed to stiffen. It wasn’t a large movement, but he noticed it.
‘You want to be a grandfather, is that it?’
Her tone told Emil there was no point replying.
‘Emil, you’ve been away for a long time, and in that time many things have changed. I’m not sure you can just turn up and announce that Grandpa has returned.’ Leena paused for a moment, her breath steaming in the frozen air. ‘I might be wrong, you never know.’
‘Leena…’ He handed her a slip of paper with his phone number on it.
A snowplough rattled past along the cobbled street. The noise hurt their ears. Emil saw the reflection of the streetlight in Leena’s eyes. Then she raised a hand, took the piece of paper and walked off. Emil filled his lungs with the chilled winter air and sensed the bitter taste of metal in his palate.
2
Someone had printed off my blog post and left it on my desk. In felt-tip pen they had written the word THE TRUTH on the left-hand side of my photograph. I looked around, but nobody seemed ready to own up to playing a practical joke. Everyone was sitting at their desks, their faces glued to their screens or their cheeks pressed against their phones. I fetched some coffee and spread out more of Lehtinen’s papers across my desk. I was just wondering where to begin when my laptop beeped as an email appeared in my inbox.
Mr Vuori,
I sincerely hope life in Helsinki is going swimmingly, that your caffè latte is frothy and you have the strength to carry on the struggle for loony-left laziness and long sushi lunches in your fancy landscaped offices. Here in the north life isn’t that easy; for the most part the wind is cold and biting, and unemployment is doing its best to break the 30% barrier. From time to time, when we are finally offered work a hundred-kilometre drive away, we learn from amateur environmentalists in Helsinki that what we’re doing is wrong. These self-same privileged tofu tossers, who whinge about a two-minute tram journey, think we in the north should live on the smell of pine trees and the bubbling of the pure springs.
It is largely thanks to the spineless herbal-tea brigade and others of your ilk that things in the country are so well and truly fucked up. You write that the mining industry is not financially viable. Is it financially viable, then, to support your lifestyle? I Googled your name and learned that you have been awarded at least three grants to fund various media projects. Until reading your article, I’d never heard of you, so it appears your writings haven’t been all that successful. It’s no wonder. If you wrote them with the same intellectual input as you did your recent essay on the mining industry, they were doubtless used to wipe at least two or three backsides before being carefully sorted into the recycling bins you so worship.
What irks me more than anything is the arrogance of you and people like you. You’ve never done a proper day’s work in your life and yet you spend all your time writing about what people should and shouldn’t do in Finland, what we should and shouldn’t think, how much we should hug one another, understand one another. Do you ever wonder why so many people despise you? Does it even occur to you, as you sit there nodding in your woolly hats and fiddling with your iPads? Do you understand that you are the problem you’re sitting there in your designer spectacles trying to solve? Of course you don’t.
You claim to want to protect the environment, though you’d be lost in a hectare of woodland. You whine about climate change, then in the same breath you buy a new smartphone and book a city break abroad. You claim to love trees and demand to have them growing outside your favourite café, though the only tree you would recognise is the Christmas tree you buy from the market downtown. (What’s more, when you buy a Christmas tree for eighty euros you’re paying seventy-nine euros more than the real value, which serves you right, of course, but is yet another tragicomic example of your all-encompassing ignorance.) You believe the world’s problems are caused by people who are greedy, racist meat-eaters.
Thankfully, justice will be done, and you will eventually drown in your own shit. And by that I don’t mean the infinitesimally small amount of metallic waste produced by a few mines. Not at all. You will drown in the shit that you, sir, represent: self-righteous know-it-allism, weak morality and endless inbreeding.
To round off, I cordially invite you to the grim, hard-working north. You might enjoy yourself so much that you’ll never leave.
Yours sincerely,
Raimo Minkkinen
Retired journalist, Suomalahti
I’d never heard of Minkkinen, but his message was the most civil one I received that morning. The messages that followed were far more direct and, of course, anonymous. According to these writers I was a communist, a loony leftist; I was kissing the Green Party’s arses and sucking their organic cocks; I was the inbred offspring of the hard-left activists of the 1970s; I was trying to turn Finland into Somalia, probably growing cannabis in my back garden, lived on mung beans fertilised with my own faeces, and deserved to be stoned to death or ‘escorted behind the sauna’, as one writer euphemistically called it.
Not a single correspondent thanked me for my blog post, let alone suggested that it was timely and important.
That afternoon Hutrila asked me into his office. As usual,
we remained standing.
‘Where are we at?’
‘The blog has received a lot of publicity,’ I said and spoke quickly so as to finish my sentence before he could interrupt me. ‘It lays the groundwork for further investigation. I want to write an in-depth piece. There’s lots of material. I need time. There’s no way I’ll have it all ready for tomorrow’s edition.’
‘Why should we have it in tomorrow’s edition?’
‘I thought that’s what you wanted to talk about.’
‘Who is your insider?’
The question was direct and came straight from my boss. Nonetheless, or perhaps for that very reason, I said, ‘I can’t tell you.’
Hutrila raised his left arm across his chest, propped his right hand against it and placed a forefinger on his chin.
‘How did Lehtinen’s notes appear out of the blue?’
‘His daughter gave them to me.’
‘I didn’t know he had a daughter.’
‘It had nothing to do with his work, I suppose,’ I said and shrugged my shoulders.
‘How did you get your hands on them?’
We were standing opposite each other, our eyes locked.
‘I knew something that everyone else knew.’
‘And you won’t tell me that either.’
‘No.’
Hutrila continued to stare at me with his unflinching grey eyes.
‘I suggest you find a bit of humility in your work.’
‘I didn’t mean to—’
‘I’m still your boss. Have you had any feedback on the blog?’
I was surprised at the sudden change of direction. I told him about the messages I’d received, what people thought, how they viewed our paper, how they viewed me.
‘Sounds good,’ said Hutrila, lowering his arms and relaxing his posture. This meant our meeting had come to an end.
I walked back to my desk and read a bunch of new emails. More of the same. With one exception. I looked at the time, then made for the door.
Sleet.
3
The wet snow whipping diagonally past and the wind coming in across the sea had blown away all life in its path. Mustikkamaa was now a deserted island. There was only one car in the car park. I walked up to it, opened the door and stepped inside.
‘Phone,’ said Marjo Harjukangas.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and showed it to her. It wasn’t enough. Harjukangas took it, dropped it into the locker between the seats and pushed the lid shut. She wasn’t in a good mood.
‘Any other devices?’
I shook my head.
‘Can I check…?’
Harjukangas frisked my jacket and quickly tapped the pockets of my jeans.
‘Let’s walk and talk,’ she said.
We got out of the car. Harjukangas seemed to have chosen our route in advance. I walked alongside her, between the wintery tennis courts and football pitches, and towards the edge of the trees.
‘I suppose you’ve read my blog,’ I asked.
We were moving briskly, the sleet clamouring to breach my jacket.
‘You made an amateur mistake,’ said Harjukangas.
‘By mentioning an insider?’
I didn’t tell her why I’d thought it was necessary. The truth was, I wanted to let the people concerned sweat a little. With her anorak collar standing up and her woolly hat pulled down across her forehead all I could see of Harjukangas was a twelve-centimetre strip: eyes, nose, mouth.
‘It was too soon,’ she said. ‘But that’s not the only reason. More crucially, your boss has probably already asked about it and wants to know who your contact is.’
I said nothing.
‘So I’m right,’ said Harjukangas.
Her steps were a runner’s, moving her forwards lightly, effectively.
‘Did you tell him?’
‘No.’
‘I asked you once before, and I’ve been disappointed, so I’ll ask you again. Can I trust you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Don’t answer too quickly. It makes you seem unreliable.’
The leafless trees, the grey horizon full of heavy sleet.
‘Remember,’ she continued. ‘If you interpret things, you have to do so correctly.’
We arrived at the southern tip of the island and followed the path along the shore. We walked along the stretch of the path that we hadn’t reached last time. Harjukangas needed to let off steam. She would get to the point before long; I was sure of it.
‘Remember the accident last week, in which Kimmo Karmio died?’ she asked as we made our way up a small incline.
‘Yes.’
‘Now we’ve lost another member of the board: Alan Stilson.’
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know. But I know one thing. First, people said he’d had some kind of seizure, but now the city police are investigating both Stilson’s death and Karmio’s little accident. Which is still being considered an accident, at least for now.’
I took a breath. ‘If the police are investigating it…’
‘Precisely,’ said Harjukangas.
‘I’ll look into it,’ I said.
‘I hope so.’
‘Have you got any idea what might…?’
‘Threats,’ said Harjukangas. ‘We’ve had them through the years. We talked about it a while ago – whether to take them seriously or not – and if so how seriously.’
‘What kind of thing?’
‘Death threats…’
‘But why? Why would someone want to threaten you?’
‘The most serious were probably from activists. I got letters: Because you’re destroying our environment, we’re going to destroy you.’
‘Did you ever find out who was sending them?’
‘No,’ Harjukangas said quickly but corrected herself almost immediately. ‘Well, one of the letters gave the name of an organisation. Black Wing. One word or two, I can’t remember. The name didn’t mean anything. There’s no organisation registered under that name and nobody had ever heard of them.’
We walked up the hill and arrived back at the tennis courts. Behind them was the car park and the solitary Škoda Octavia.
‘You’ll get your phone,’ Harjukangas said without looking at me. ‘But not a lift. You have to earn that.’
I worked until nine-thirty that evening. I called a long list of colleagues to see if I could get a name and number at the police department that might actually yield something. I quizzed and questioned people. Everybody I spoke to instantly smelled that I might be on to something. Eventually I got a number.
Almost instantaneously Detective Inspector Halonen managed to turn the conversation back on to me. Where had I got an idea like this? When? Who had recommended I call him specifically? I ended the call before it could turn into a full-blown interrogation. I was no wiser when I put down the phone, than I had been when I picked it up.
Some of Lehtinen’s papers were in a box beneath my desk. The majority of them I kept stored in one of the kitchen cupboards at home. I picked up the miscellaneous bundle and placed it on my desk. I glanced through the papers, leafed through the notebooks. I was too tired.
Pohjanheimo and Hannikainen, one of the other reporters, were both still at their desks, typing away. I said good night and walked the few hundred metres to the metro station. The freezing air embraced me as soon as I stepped outside, snow whipped up in my face. Romani beggars in threadbare clothes were standing beneath the shelter in front of McDonald’s, eating one-euro hamburgers. A group of strikingly young junkies, with designer trainers, jeans and rucksacks, were hollering at one another in the ugly glass-covered entrance to the station. I took the escalator in noble solitude, alone in the vast metro hall. As the orange train glided into the station I realised I hadn’t heard anything from Pauliina. At Herttoniemi I got a bus and wound my way home through the dark suburban streets.
When I opened the door, there was nothing to welcome the return o
f the heroic journalist. I found Pauliina in the kitchen.
‘How’s Ella?’
‘Fine,’ said Pauliina as she tapped at her laptop.
‘Did you read the blog?’ I asked.
‘I haven’t had time. I was in a hurry to make Ella breakfast. After I’d changed the bandage on her hand, that is.’
We looked at each other, but not warmly. I took a carton of blueberry juice out of the fridge, poured some into a glass and sat down opposite Pauliina. She raised her head from the screen, pulled the band from her hair and shook it loose.
‘We were in a rush this morning,’ she said. ‘It would have been nice if you’d said you were leaving so early. I ended up stressed about making it to the interview in time.’
‘The interview?’ I asked, and realised instantly what I’d done.
Pauliina’s gaze was a mixture of disappointment and contempt.
‘You’d forgotten.’
Yes, I had forgotten. Now I remembered. The job interview that Pauliina had been worrying about for a while, that she’d talked about weeks ago.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘This story of mine is—’
‘That’s right – of yours.’
‘Things happened so quickly I—’
‘To you.’
There was still blueberry juice at the bottom of the glass, like darkened blood. I don’t know why it made me think of that.
‘It’s always me, me, me,’ said Pauliina.
I was exhausted. It was late. I’d made a mistake. That gnawed at me, that and everything else. Pauliina tied up her hair again. A few flicks of the hand and the ponytail had reappeared.
‘How did it go?’ I ventured.
‘Fuck off,’ said Pauliina, very quietly but with all the more resolve.
She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. I don’t think she’d ever looked at me like this before.
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