Light in a Dark House (Detective Kimmo Joentaa)

by Jan Costin Wagner

  Joentaa nodded.

  ‘You really do ask some abstruse questions.’

  ‘I know,’ said Joentaa. ‘Thank you. Sleep well.’

  ‘Was that it?’ asked Blom.

  ‘Almost. I’d like you to look at a photograph. I can send it through to you tomorrow if it’s been digitised by then. What’s your email address?’

  Blom told him.

  ‘Fine. And I’ll be in touch if anything else occurs to me.’

  ‘Right. Well . . . it’s been a pleasure.’

  ‘Oh, one more thing. What’s your profession these days?’

  ‘I run an auditors’ office in Laappeenranta.’

  ‘Thanks. I really am grateful, you’ve given me a great deal of help.’

  ‘That’s good, then,’ said Blom.

  Joentaa put his phone down and sat in the silence. He was trying to pin down ideas that seemed to be hovering in the air, unanchored. Disreputable, naive, desperate. And sad. And disreputable wasn’t the right word. Yet in a way it was. Or how had Blom meant that? So nice that you thought she wouldn’t give you the brush-off.

  He logged into the Internet, and then sat motionless for several minutes, looking at the latest message from veryhotlarissa.

  He read it, and thought:

  The budding writer had become an auditor.

  The boy who was top of the class had become a politician.

  The politician’s friend had become a software adviser.

  A long-forgotten moment had become a photograph.

  He thought of Westerberg, and the relish with which he always said: software adviser.

  He read Larissa’s message again.

  From: veryhotlarissa@pagemails.fi

  To: kimmojoentaa@turunpoliisilaitos.fi

  Seven years ago I worked with a woman from the Czech Republic. She was eighteen years old, and her boyfriend always brought her to work. If I’d told her that the man was no friend of hers, she wouldn’t have understood me. She worked from ten in the morning to two at night. After several months she had a kind of breakdown and was taken away from the house. I’ve just been looking for her on the Internet, and I saw that she is now working in Helsinki under the same name. The pictures are the same as well, although she’s seven years older now. Presumably her boyfriend is still the same too. Oh well, I’m hardly telling you anything you don’t know already about this trade.

  I don’t know why, but I thought of her when I read the message you sent me. ‘We don’t talk about what happened. Everything’s the same as usual.’ You want to find R., but I’m sure you know that already. You’re a clever guy, dear Kimmo.

  Kimmo Joentaa read the message. Then he read it again. And then again. After reading it five times he finally worked out what was subliminally occupying his mind, something to be read between the lines. A Czech girl of eighteen who was now seven years older. That meant that Larissa herself – and at least he knew that she had been twenty-six on 15 April – had been only eighteen when she had begun working in that trade . . . or even younger.

  15 April. Larissa’s birthday.

  He looked at the last line. Should he read affection or irony into it?

  Probably both.

  He wrote a short answer, turned off the computer and then the light.

  From: kimmojoentaa@turunpoliisilaitos.fi

  To: veryhotlarissa@pagemails.fi

  Dear Larissa,

  I’m thinking of you.

  If the giraffe has gone to sleep, wake it up.

  61

  ON THE MORNING of 16 December Lassi Anttila, store detective and cleaner in the big shopping centre, had a very odd experience, one which was to occupy his mind for the rest of his life.

  Around ten o’clock he was sitting in the fast-food restaurant in the shopping centre, drinking a coffee, when he saw his own face on the TV screen hanging over the counter. The sound was turned down, so that Lassi Anttila couldn’t hear the words accompanying the picture; all he saw was himself the way he must once have looked, an eternity ago.

  He got up and moved closer to the TV screen, looking to the right and left of him at the bored, abstracted faces staring at the TV without identifying the man on the screen with the man standing right beside them.

  ‘Something wrong?’ asked Mervi, the thin young waitress behind the counter, and followed his gaze to the screen, which was still showing the photograph. Anttila wanted to ask her to turn the volume up, but he bit back the words. A memory was vaguely beginning to surface.

  ‘Lassi, you look as if you’d seen a ghost,’ said Mervi, turning away.

  Hadn’t she recognised him either? Obviously not, as she was now busy with the coffee machine, entirely unmoved.

  He propped himself on the counter, and for a little while watched Mervi going about her work, which she accompanied with muttered curses, because it seemed that one of the levers wasn’t functioning.

  ‘Can I help?’ asked Anttila. He heard his own voice faintly, as if it were coming from a distance. Mervi’s reply, on the other hand, sounded unnaturally close.

  ‘You, help? That’d be something new,’ she said.

  ‘What would?’

  ‘You helping anyone. Of your own free will. Something new, like I said.’

  He looked at Mervi, and thought of the photograph. A newsreader was now talking on-screen. The photo. Of course Mervi hadn’t recognised him. He wouldn’t have recognised himself if he hadn’t known that he had once been that man. Sunburned, early thirties. They had trimmed the picture to leave out his bare chest. And the others who had been standing there with him. A hint of Lake Saimaa in the background, but it could be the sky. Maybe he had only seen Lake Saimaa in the background because he knew that it must be there.

  He remembered that photo. He also remembered the day it had been taken.

  ‘Hellooo, Laassii.’

  He jumped.

  ‘You were going to help? With the coffee machine?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t you remember? You offered only a few seconds ago.’

  ‘Oh, yes. S . . . sorry.’

  He cast another glance at the screen as he went behind the counter. An American soap opera was being shown now. A big-busted blonde was wriggling out of the embrace of a man who looked like Barbie’s boyfriend Ken. Had they really just shown his own face on TV?

  ‘The lever’s sticking,’ said Mervi.

  He put his hand on the lever and wondered whether he had imagined the whole thing. He had once heard that everyone suffered from hallucinations at least once in his life. A professor had said so in some documentary, and he ought to have known. Everything was in working order again behind the counter, and Mervi clapped her hands.

  ‘That’s great!’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The lever. Working again.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, and took his hand off the machine, which was making gurgling sounds.

  ‘Thanks, Lassi.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ he murmured.

  He went through the wide concourse, rode down the escalator and went into his office, which was really more of a small cubbyhole near the underground car park. He sat down at the table and for several moments watched the images flickering on both monitors. The labyrinthine gangway system of the big supermarket. The lingerie department of the women’s fashions store. The large hall of the specialist electrical goods store, with light pulsing through it. All seen from a bird’s-eye view.

  He thought of the others. Of Happonen. He’d gone in for politics. And had been murdered. But that had nothing to do with him. They surely couldn’t be looking for him in connection with little Happonen. Little Happonen, little Forsman, that’s what they had called the two of them at the time, although they had been sixteen or seventeen years old. All the same. Little kids. Happonen had cried like . . . like a baby on the day when that bad thing happened.

  But that wasn’t why his picture was on TV now. It couldn’t be possible that what happened in the dim
and distant past . . .

  He thought of Jarkko Miettinen. He’d really liked him, but after . . . what happened everything had somehow fallen apart, everything was cancelled out. It had taken some time for them to realise it, but then he had begun avoiding Jarkko, and the two kids were busy with very different things, and one day, in late autumn or early winter, Risto had dropped in to see him, stood in the doorway smiling, and said goodbye.

  He remembered that now. The scene was vividly present to his mind’s eye, although only an hour ago he hadn’t known he had any memory of it at all.

  ‘So long,’ Risto had said, and he hadn’t really known what he could say in reply. Then Risto had gone to his car, and in the light of the street lamp he had seen her on the passenger seat. Saara. She had been sitting upright without moving, and when Risto had started the engine and turned the car, she had seen him and raised her arm. As if to wave to him.

  He had thought about that again and again, for several months, that raising of her arm. What she might have been trying to express by it. And then that last memory had faded too, and the next summer had been a very different one, and so had the summer after that.

  Years ago, when he heard in passing of Jarkko Miettinen’s illness, it had left him cold. And he had only recently discovered that the kid Happonen had become a politician, that was when the poor man was murdered for reasons that, frankly, interested him very little.

  And as for the other kid . . . he could barely remember his name. Or could he? Kalevi. Kalevi So-and-So. That was all. Whatever Kalevi So-and-So was doing these days, it was of no importance to him whatsoever.

  He looked at the hands of his watch moving forward for a few minutes. Then he got to his feet and took the escalator up, back into daylight. He made purposefully for the large electrical goods store.

  There was ski jumping now on the TV screens, large and small. Quietly, but still audibly, he heard the commentator’s voice, which was highly agitated because a Finn had just been disqualified for too wide an acceleration. A little later a presenter and a former Olympics medal-winner analysed the state of the contest after the first round, and when the break came the presenter said goodbye, smiling, and gave way to the news.

  The newsreader was the same. The news was the same. The photo was the same.

  Lassi Anttila stood in the centre of a huge room, surrounded by flickering screens showing himself.

  He felt his legs beginning to give way, but he forced himself to stay standing, and stared at one of the many screens, a particularly wide, expensive one, while the newsreader read out the text that went with the picture showing him as a young man.

  He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on what the newsreader was saying, which wasn’t easy, because the sound was turned down and the confused voices of the customers in the store were loud, and because a number of confused thoughts were going through his head.

  The police are asking for the cooperation of the public, said the newsreader. Anyone who recognises the man in the photograph is requested to call the phone number at the bottom of the screen. Sought as a witness in connection with the murder of the politician Markus Happonen.

  Happonen, thought Lassi Anttila.

  Sought as a witness.

  All around him, the visitors to the electrical goods store were hurrying about on business of their own without giving him a glance, but sooner or later there was going to be someone who had known him an eternity ago. There might not be many, but there would be someone.

  He fished his mobile out of his jacket pocket and tapped in the wrong digits twice before he managed to ring directory enquiries. He asked to be put through to an old people’s home in the vicinity of Karjasaari.

  ‘In Karjasaari or in the vicinity?’ asked the woman at the other end of the line.

  ‘I don’t know exactly,’ said Anttila.

  ‘I’m afraid I need rather more detailed information,’ said the woman.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Anttila.

  ‘Yes?’

  Cunt, thought Anttila. Cunt, cunt, cunt.

  He broke the connection and tapped in a number that he knew off by heart. It was ages since he had called it, but he still remembered it. He pressed two fingers to his forehead, and when a strange voice with the right name answered, he said:

  ‘Lassi here. I’d like to have the number of the home where Jarkko Miettinen is living.’

  The man at the other end of the line said nothing, and Lassi Anttila thought that he ought to get his ideas in order first. Think about it properly.

  ‘Who is this speaking?’ asked the man who had introduced himself as Miettinen. Probably Jarkko’s son, who had taken over the nursery garden business. The same firm. The same telephone number.

  ‘It’s Lassi. I’m . . . I’m an old friend of Jarkko’s.’

  ‘Then . . . do you already know what’s happened?’

  ‘Er . . . I’m afraid . . .’

  ‘My father is dead,’ said Jarkko’s son.

  On the TV screens a ski jumper crashed into a barrier bearing advertisements.

  ‘Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The name Lassi means nothing to me.’

  ‘It’s . . . a long time ago.’

  ‘Are you a reporter?’

  Paramedics were bending over the ski jumper. The red of their jackets stood out in sharp contrast to the snow.

  ‘Hello?’

  Anttila ended the call. The ski jumper was being led out of the stadium, his skis still in the run-out position, one lying some way from the other. With a forced smile, the ski jumper waved to the camera.

  Dislocated shoulder, thought Anttila.

  He called the three digits that every child knew. The answering voice sounded young and pleasingly calm.

  ‘Police emergency number 112, what are you reporting?’

  ‘My name’s Anttila. I’m the man you’re looking for.’

  ‘Can you put that more clearly?’

  ‘I’m the man you’re looking for. On TV.’

  ‘What exactly is this about?’

  ‘On TV. On the news. That photo.’

  The man at the police switchboard said nothing for a moment, and Anttila turned his eyes away from the screen and looked into a face that he knew. Or maybe he didn’t.

  ‘Mr Anttila?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘We have an appointment.’

  ‘Oh . . . do we?’

  ‘What a shame. He’s dislocated his shoulder.’

  ‘Excuse me, I must just . . .’

  ‘We spoke on the phone. I’m the security scout.’

  ‘Er . . . you’re too early. I . . .’

  ‘No, no, I’m right on time,’ replied the man.

  The police officer on the phone said something, but all that Lassi Anttila could hear were the words formed by his own lips. He didn’t know if he was really speaking them or just thinking them.

  All around him it was silent, only the words still hung in the air, like drops that wouldn’t fall.

  He saw the man making for the exit at a brisk but steady pace, and for a few seconds he felt the soft burning sensation in his stomach as something that he had been expecting for a long time.

  62

  BY THE TIME Sundström and Grönholm arrived, the electrical goods store had been closed off, and inquisitive rubberneckers had positioned themselves on the other side of the police tape in the entrance foyer of the shopping centre.

  A uniformed man led them past the DVDs and CDs and laptops and computers and washing machines and fridges to the dead body, which was lying on the grey carpet at the centre of the extensive shop floor. Sundström put on the overalls and gloves that one of the technicians handed him and bent over the man. He lay on his back, arms spread wide.

  ‘CCTV surveillance?’ he asked.

  ‘The recording is being assessed and prepared for you at the moment,’ said the man in uniform.

  Sundström nodded.

  ‘La
ssi Anttila. The store detective.’

  ‘Store detective?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you could call him the combined security man and cleaner of this shopping centre.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Like I said, combined security man and cleaner,’ the uniformed man persevered.

  Salomon Hietalahti of Forensics was leaning against a desk on the periphery of the scene with a sign saying Information in large yellow lettering above it, making notes. Sundström went over to him.

  ‘You’re in the right place,’ he said.

  Hietalahti glanced up and looked at him enquiringly.

  ‘You’re in the right place. Information.’ Sundström pointed to the sign above Hietalahti’s head.

  ‘Ah, I see.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘The man was stabbed. A single stab wound.’

  ‘A single stab wound?’

  ‘Inflicted horizontally. One quick, fast, powerful stab wound.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Sundström. Fast and powerful, he thought.

  ‘As far as I can see at present,’ said Hietalahti.

  ‘Ah,’ said Sundström.

  ‘Come over here, would you, Paavo?’ Grönholm called from some way off. He was standing beside a small woman wearing a dark brown trouser suit who came over to him with, in view of the circumstances, a surprising spring in her step. Sundström was already moving in that direction.

  ‘Mr Sundström?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Sundström, returning the woman’s firm handshake. She introduced herself as Johanna Eklund, deputy business manager.

  ‘We have the CCTV recording ready for you. Would you like to see it?’

  ‘Very much,’ said Sundström.

  He followed Grönholm and the woman through the concourse to the escalator and down to the basement floor. The little woman, her step still lively, walked briskly ahead and said, as she finally opened a door, ‘Sad as it is to say so in the circumstances, this is poor Mr Anttila’s domain.’

  Sundström looked around the dead security man’s office, and nodded to the man standing bent over a keyboard.

  ‘I’ll be with you in a minute,’ he said.

  ‘This is Tommy Timonen. A colleague of Mr Anttila’s.’