The nurse smiles at me before closing the door. Jarkko Miettinen is sitting in a wheelchair by the window, and doesn’t take his eyes off the winter whiteness. He doesn’t seem to have noticed me coming into the room. I take a chair and sit down beside him. Black coffee shines in a white cup on a white table.
I don’t know how long it goes on. Miettinen is looking out of the window, and memories condense into concrete images, but they are still hard to grasp. Time stands still, but at the same time it is racing along a rail, forward and back, no stopping it, from image to image, until at last the old man slowly turns his face to me. My thoughts come to rest in those dead eyes.
I feel a little uncomfortable in my costume. Uncomfortable but at the same time protected. The boy in the shop made much of the fact that it’s genuine, whatever he meant by that. Jarkko Miettinen can’t see me, but he nods to me. I think I see his eyes light up as I open the box and give him the piece of quiche. Cream, salt, rye dough, cheese, salami sausage.
As he holds the piece of quiche and looks at it as if it were something strange but familiar, the images come back. A younger Miettinen, tanned and kneeling in a sea of coloured flowers in the sunlight. My mother beside him, praising his work. Miettinen turns to my mother and thanks her, smiling, and I see his face as I try keeping a football in the air so that it won’t fall on the lawn. The lawn that Miettinen has just been mowing.
I don’t know how long this memory lasts. Maybe only seconds, seeming to last longer because I need them to reconcile Miettinen, the landscape gardener giving our garden a makeover, with the other and yet identical Miettinen lying gasping and groaning on top of Saara.
That day is a long time ago, and the image is both loosely and firmly rooted in my mind. Miettinen – landscape gardener and rapist. I myself – a child.
My mother, who is dead now, stands in the picture, a strange and unsuspecting figure. To her, Miettinen is only a landscape gardener, no more.
She praises him again as I run indoors, shivering, and go up to my room. I remember how cold I felt.
Later Miettinen and my mother sit out on the terrace, and I hear them talking through the open door of my room. Miettinen is enjoying the quiche she has baked. Cream, salt, rye dough, cheese, salami sausage, mushrooms.
My mother praises Miettinen; Miettinen praises my mother’s quiche.
Now, many years later, Miettinen raises his cup and then the piece of quiche to his mouth.
He eats patiently, and turns back to the window when he has finished.
I ask him whether he can remember Saara, but there is no reply. He sits there motionless; only his hand trembles, as mine did a few weeks after that dreadful day when I saw him standing in a flower bed in our garden wearing a straw hat and green overalls.
I ask him again. No reply.
For the sake of doing the thing thoroughly I show him the business card, but he won’t look at it.
I ask him whether he knows where Risto is. No reply.
Perhaps his trembling gets worse, but I may be imagining that.
I stand up and walk out of the room. I carefully close the door after me. The young nurse, who is coming along the corridor towards me, says goodbye with a smile.
Miettinen’s death is a matter of simple arithmetic. A sum of the probabilities that, to my mind, work out conclusively. Because of his age and weak constitution, it’s possible that the amatoxin syndrome is already setting in. Vomiting, watery diarrhoea, stomach pains. But it will take some time. I shall not be here when he dies.
Outside, evening is falling fast. I look at the shopping centre, the ferry run aground, which begins to sway before my eyes, and after a few minutes merges with the black sky.
41
WESTERBERG AND SEPPO drove to Karjasaari. To the little town where the dead men had grown up and attended school together, about three hundred kilometres from Helsinki.
The most talkative person in the car was the lady telling them which way to go. Her directions were gentle and perfectly clear, and Westerberg slowly dozed off and fleetingly dreamed that the gentle voice became a loving, seductive one, and its owner was no longer leading him along roads to a strange place but by familiar paths to the bright room where she was hiding.
He felt humiliated by his dream, and tried to make his way back to reality, but didn’t manage it until Seppo’s voice broke through the images. Seppo was saying something that he couldn’t make out.
‘What?’ he asked, opening his eyes and sitting abruptly upright.
‘Oh, sorry,’ said Seppo.
‘What?’
‘Sorry I woke you, I didn’t notice that you . . .’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Westerberg.
Seppo took the exit recommended by the friendly lady, whose voice now sounded tinny and strange again.
‘Did you just say something?’ asked Westerberg.
‘Hmm?’
‘Did you say something? Some kind of word I didn’t . . . or else I was dreaming it.’
‘Oh, yes. Xing?’
Westerberg turned to Seppo and wondered for a moment whether he was still dreaming. But Seppo looked perfectly real, sitting at the wheel of the police car.
‘What?’
‘Xing. I said I’ve put my profile on Xing.’
‘Oh, yes?’ said Westerberg.
‘It’s a career portal.’
Westerberg nodded.
‘A networking site,’ said Seppo. The voice recommended them to turn off after 200 metres, and Seppo met his eye.
‘Not that I’m thinking of changing my job,’ he said, ‘but I’d kind of like to remain open to . . . to something new.’
Something new, thought Westerberg. He hadn’t the faintest idea what Seppo was talking about. But Seppo seemed to have said all he had to say, and the woman’s directions were now confined to the road to their destination.
‘Is there a Pling too?’ asked Westerberg.
‘Hmm?’ asked Seppo.
‘I wouldn’t mind signing up to Pling.’
‘To what?’
‘Or Zong.’
Seppo looked at him. ‘Are you taking the mickey?’
‘Just joking,’ said Westerberg.
Then Seppo concentrated on the road again, and Westerberg pursued a hard-to-define chain of thought until Seppo said he suspected there might be a fault in the satnav system.
‘Hmm?’ said Westerberg.
‘We’re going to drive into the water any moment now. Take a look.’
They were surrounded by an enormous lake, and Seppo was steering the car over the only firm terrain visible for far around, a bridge.
‘Oh,’ said Westerberg.
‘Yes,’ said Seppo.
‘Remarkable,’ said Westerberg.
After a few minutes, however, land came in sight and they turned off along a fork in the road. A few minutes more, and the tinny female voice announced that they had reached their destination.
Karjasaari. Clapboard houses in the wintry evening sunlight. Pale pastel colours. Snow clung to the trees like candyfloss. The street lamps were already on; it would soon be dark.
The school building passed by, and Westerberg recalled his fruitless conversations at an earlier stage of the investigation with the young headmaster, and with teachers long retired who had only the vaguest recollections of Kalevi Forsman as a school student.
He thought again of Forsman’s sister Kirsti, who had come to Helsinki in the evening and left again that same evening, and in the brief interim had said goodbye to her brother, with whom she must have lost any real contact some time earlier. Considerably earlier.
She had gone back to Hämeenlinna, and the investigation had gone off in a direction which, he hoped, brought them closer to the dead man than his long-forgotten childhood.
Seppo drove the car towards a building with gigantic letters fixed to its roof. Karjanhovi, the hotel into which Seppo had booked them, probably the only one in the little town.
It was only a
feeling that he had, but it was an intense one, and it could be summed up in a simple sentence.
‘I think we’ve come to the right place,’ said Westerberg.
42
THE LEAD THAT Kimmo Joentaa was looking for was hidden in just a few lines, and he overlooked it at first, before going back minutes later to the transcript entered in the extensive records under the number 1,324.
He read the text again. One of their colleagues who had been looking after the hotline at the time had written it down after the conversation.
Anita-Liisa Koponen, born in Mikkeli on 14 May 1973, thinks she recognises the unidentified dead woman as her piano teacher from her home town of Karjasaari. On being asked whether she could be certain of that, Koponen replies that the unknown woman played Sibelius like an angel; on being asked whether she could give us the dead woman’s name, she replies that she can’t remember it. On being asked why not, she replies that angels have no names; on being asked when she last saw the dead woman, she replies: in another life. On being asked whether she can provide any facts that would be useful to the police investigation, she replies that the unknown woman fell victim to the Devil. On being asked what she means by that, she replies that angels are always victims of the Devil, that’s the way of the world; finally the lady ends the phone call. It came in on 30 September, was passed on to P. Grönholm for examination and evaluation.
Kimmo Joentaa read this text several times, until the letters began to blur in front of his eyes. He tried to find a plausible answer to the question of why he had returned to this lead. Why he had first leafed through the files past it, only to go back on his tracks.
He recognised Petri Grönholm’s handwriting on the yellow note added to the sheet of paper with the number 1,324 on it. He looked at Grönholm’s note and read that, too, several times:
Incidentally, this lady suffers from severe bipolar disorder, is living at present in an institution for the psychologically sick in Ristiina.
Under it, Grönholm had written the address of the hospital. The thought of Tuomas Heinonen briefly came back to Joentaa’s mind. He tried to imagine this phone call that had involved a police officer in Turku and a woman in Ristiina in a curious conversation lasting several minutes and hovering somewhere between bureaucracy and transcendentalism. And somewhere in the process it had been sent off to end up in the file for those contributions from the public that could safely be ignored.
Joentaa closed his eyes and massaged his temples.
Angels, devils, in another life. A piano teacher.
Passed on for examination and evaluation.
‘Kimmo, we’re going now,’ said Päivi Holmquist behind him.
He turned round and nodded. ‘Yes, of course. Have a nice evening.’
‘Did you get anywhere?’ asked Antti Laapenranta.
‘I don’t know. Maybe,’ said Joentaa.
‘You did?’ asked Päivi.
‘Perhaps. Listen to this,’ he said, taking the sheet of paper out of the folder. He read aloud the transcript of the phone call, and then looked at two faces so baffled that he couldn’t help laughing.
‘Okay,’ said Antti Laapenranta.
‘It sounds . . .’ Päivi began, and then stopped.
‘ . . . a little peculiar,’ said Joentaa.
‘Just a little,’ said Antti.
Joentaa nodded and filed the record of the phone call away again. Didn’t want anything disturbing the neatly kept sequence of files.
‘I’ll go on for a while, okay?’ he said.
‘Of course, Kimmo,’ said Päivi. ‘See you in the morning.’
‘See you in the morning,’ said Antti too, and Joentaa waved to the two of them until they were in the lift.
He drew the keyboard towards him and logged into the Internet. A little later the email address of veryhotlarissa appeared. As his fingers were moving over the keys, it occurred to him that he was probably committing some kind of offence. Passing on the results of police investigations to third parties. Or something along those lines.
Does this give you any ideas? he wrote, and sent the complete record of the whole conversation to the woman whose name he didn’t know.
He sat there in front of the screen for several minutes, waiting for an answer that didn’t come. Then he got out his mobile and called Grönholm, who sounded breathless when he replied.
‘Petri?’ said Joentaa. ‘Kimmo here.’
‘Hi, Kimmo,’ said Grönholm.
‘Are you still there?’ asked Joentaa.
‘What do you mean, there?’ asked Grönholm.
‘Well, at the office,’ said Joentaa.
‘At the office. Er, no.’
‘You’re not?’
‘Kimmo, it’s quite late, past eleven.’
‘Oh.’
‘Do you play tennis?’
‘Tennis?’
‘Yes, I’m having a game with some friends at the moment, and I thought you could play with us too some time. If you like.’
‘Sure. Actually I’ve never played tennis.’
‘Never mind, we’re not all of us very good,’ said Grönholm.
‘I see.’
‘Okay, Kimmo, see you in the morning,’ said Grönholm.
‘Yes . . . Petri, just one moment . . .’
‘They want me for the third set. Can it wait until tomorrow?’
‘Ah . . . yes, of course.’
‘Thanks. And say hi to the night porter for me,’ said Grönholm, ending the call.
43
AGAIN AND AGAIN, Kirsti Forsman’s eyes were drawn to the huge Viking ship on the wall. It looked different, more menacing but at the same time more menaced, because it seemed to be capsizing in a strong swell, but all the same she kept thinking of the TV series she used to watch as a child: Vicky and the Strong Men.
The waitresses, wearing costumes suggestive of the Middle Ages, were serving delicious dishes, and Tapio Takala, the managing director of the company she worked for, had been talking to her for what felt like an eternity, because a new Tetra Pak guideline threatened to restrict the means of distribution. She nodded, and clung to her glass of red wine, and at some point Takala had begun addressing her as ‘My love’.
‘My love, I’m sure you understand that we need an idea here. I’m counting on you,’ he said.
She nodded. Her thoughts were moving in an area where Takala and his fruit yoghurt with chocolate and coconut chips occupied a comparatively small space.
Vicky and the strong men were more important.
And the calls to her mobile.
Westerberg the Helsinki police officer had left no messages, but she had recognised his number. She had looked at his business card often enough, and although she never called the number she knew it by heart.
She looked at the ship, thought of Vicky, let Takala’s torrent of talk flow past her and wondered why Westerberg had tried to reach her three times. In the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening.
And soon night would fall, and Takala was still talking non-stop, and the waitress brought dessert, mango cream with pineapple slices, which seemed to have little to do with Vicky, the strong men and the Viking ship on the wall.
Takala had more red wine poured, and when at last there was a sudden silence, Kirsti Forsman wondered whether he had really just wanted to discuss Tetra Paks and guidelines with her or whether he had something else in mind, something that he hadn’t achieved yet.
She smiled at him and felt slightly tipsy, a feeling that wouldn’t turn to nausea until later that night or in the morning.
Takala raised a hand and ordered two espressos.
Her iPhone buzzed. Like a swarm of bees.
Westerberg.
She stared at the number on the display, and waited for the swarm of bees to move on. When the phone fell silent Takala did what she had really wanted to do, breathed audibly out.
‘Nothing important?’ he said, and Kirsti Forsman had the impression that there were other words
mingled with those, something like: What could be more important than me, my love?
She smiled and shook her head. Nothing important.
She thought of Kalevi. Of that summer’s day in the distant past. The humming of bees and flies. Kalevi telling their mother something in a wavering, breaking voice, like a small child. Their mother’s eyes. The horror in them, the sadness, the fear that couldn’t be put into words, and all the words in the world would not have been up to the story that Kalevi had told.
Kalevi, who was crying like a child.
Her mother, who had no more tears to shed after several days.
And she herself, who had shut that day away as if in a room to which she would never return. She had thrown away the key. She had met Kalevi now and then. The last time at Christmas nearly three years ago. Kalevi upstairs in the guest room. His soft snoring behind the closed door against which she had leaned her head for a few minutes.
Takala seemed euphoric, challenged her to a duel with their mobiles converted to laser swords.
She ate the dessert fast and greedily, the fruity mango cream, and emptied the last glass of wine in a single draught.
Takala was playing the flute on his mobile, elegiac notes that even added up to a tune.
‘Lovely,’ she said, and Takala looked pleased and insisted on escorting her home.
Outside the front door he lost his nerve, perhaps because she hadn’t laughed at any of his jokes on the way, and when he was about to embark on a hesitant ‘Goodnight’ she asked if he wouldn’t like to come in.
The surprise in his face finally made her laugh, and a few minutes later, while she was lying under him on the squeaking bed and smelled his sweat, she imagined herself lying in the arms of Westerberg, whom she had somehow liked, even though he had found the key that she had been trying to lose all her life.
Light in a Dark House (Detective Kimmo Joentaa) Page 11