Light in a Dark House (Detective Kimmo Joentaa)

by Jan Costin Wagner

  ‘That’s right.’ Timonen turned away from the monitor. ‘Do sit down. I’ve looked through it once . . . that was okay, I hope?’

  ‘Hmm?’ asked Sundström.

  ‘Okay that I’ve looked at it myself? I had to look for the right place.’

  ‘Yes, yes, that’s fine,’ said Sundström.

  ‘We have several cameras. I’ll just show you what I’ve spotted so far.’ He typed on the keyboard, and a grey image jerked into life on the little monitor.

  ‘That’s the camera fitted over the information desk. There, in front of the widescreen TV. See it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And there’s Lassi.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ Sundström leaned forward, and sensed Grönholm beside him doing the same.

  ‘He’s standing in front of the TV set looking at the camera.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I can see him.’

  ‘And it’s odd, because Lassi stands there for quite some time. He seems to be watching what’s on the TV screen.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sundström.

  ‘Then it all gets kind of fast and furious. Just a moment.’ He wound forward a little way.

  ‘He’s phoning,’ said Grönholm.

  ‘Exactly. And now . . . in a minute . . .’ The voice faltered slightly, and out of nowhere a man came into view. He seemed to be speaking to Lassi Anttila, and at the same moment he struck him down. Although from the bird’s-eye view they had here, they could hardly see that any physical contact had taken place at all.

  A single quick stab wound, thought Sundström.

  ‘There . . . now . . . somehow it got Lassi, and the other person disappears from the picture.’

  On a grey, coarse-grained screen, Lassi Anttila was in his death throes, and all around him people stood looking at the electrical goods on display and noticed nothing.

  ‘Good heavens,’ said Grönholm, sighing.

  ‘Do you have a larger or clearer picture of the man?’ asked Sundström.

  ‘Yes, at the exit. Wait a moment.’ He typed on the keyboard again, and other grey pictures came up on the monitor.

  ‘That’s the camera trained on every customer leaving the sales area,’ he said. He pointed to a small line on the screen that quickly came closer and took shape. ‘Here he comes.’

  Sundström and Grönholm leaned forward again. The figure on the screen was looking down and wore a hooded jacket; he had drawn the hood over his head. It was impossible to guess whether he was young or old. The way the figure walked looked as if he was indeed a man, but who could tell even that for certain?

  The man, assuming he was a man, walked on with remarkable composure, considering what had just happened.

  ‘Do you have one of him coming into the electrical goods store?’ asked Grönholm.

  ‘Yes,’ said Timonen. ‘Here you are.’

  Seconds later, a new picture flickered into life on the screen. The hooded man was approaching from the opposite direction, moving with equal composure.

  ‘If I didn’t know what was going to happen next I’d have said he was just strolling casually along,’ said Grönholm.

  The man disappeared, and Timonen froze the picture. ‘That’s all,’ he said.

  ‘Outside cameras? In the car park?’

  ‘I haven’t checked them yet,’ said Timonen.

  Sundström nodded. Something else seemed to him considerably more important. ‘Thanks,’ he said, and went quickly ahead along the dark corridor to the escalator, through the concourse and back to the large, brightly lit store in the middle of which the body of Lassi Anttila was still lying.

  He knelt down and bent over the dead man. Anttila’s mobile lay half covered by his right leg, level with the back of his knee. Sundström pulled it out without touching the body and studied the display before bringing up the record of calls. He stared at the number.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Grönholm behind him.

  ‘Just before his death he called the police emergency number,’ said Sundström.

  ‘What?’

  ‘But that’s not the really surprising thing.’

  ‘What is, then?’ asked Grönholm.

  ‘Before contacting the police he called a number with an area dialling code that I’ve known for some days, because that’s where Kimmo always calls from.’

  ‘Kimmo?’

  ‘Karjasaari,’ said Sundström.

  63

  A dead man whom no one has reported missing. He is sitting leaning back against a tree, in summer, in autumn, in winter. He doesn’t feel the rain, the snow or the cold any more.

  But I wonder whether the shoebox will keep out the water. For a little longer, that ought to be enough.

  Sometimes I search the Internet for any indications that the dead man in the forest has been found. There’s nothing of the kind. Maybe he doesn’t exist. Maybe my memory is a fantasy. Maybe I didn’t sit with him for a night and a day. Maybe I’m just imagining that I did because it seems to me appropriate.

  Dear diary. 16 December.

  I’m on the way back to Helsinki, sitting in the dining car drinking coffee with plenty of sugar and plenty of cream.

  The woman sitting opposite me thinks that’s amusing, and has given me the biscuit served with her own espresso.

  Lassi Anttila, cleaner, store detective. Surrounded by TV sets showing his face. I didn’t have much time. Unfortunately I had no chance to give him the business card, but he paid me the compliment of recognising me.

  There was perplexity in his eyes, but also, in that last long second, the dawn of understanding.

  64

  KIMMO JOENTAA LOOKED at the multicoloured muesli flakes in Seppo’s bowl, thought of Larissa, and called Tuomas Heinonen in hospital yet again.

  Tuomas did not reply, and he decided against leaving another message, since it would only have been a repetition of the one he had left in the small hours. Hello, Tuomas, thought I’d just call and ask how you’re doing.

  The last he had heard from Tuomas had been the alarming message about a big win. Tiger Woods. Record for the course broken. In spite of everything. Tuomas had called in the middle of the night to share his delight with him.

  He looked for Heinonen’s landline among the stored numbers, and called Paulina. Getting to his feet, he walked a few metres away from the muesli-eating Seppo. One of the twin daughters answered.

  ‘This is Vanessa at the Heinonen home,’ she said.

  ‘Hi . . . this is Kimmo. Kimmo Joentaa. I’m a colleague of your father’s,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘I know,’ said the little girl. ‘Daddy isn’t here.’

  ‘Er . . . well, I wanted to speak to Paulina.’

  ‘I think she’s in the bathroom. Wait a minute.’

  He heard her calling her mother.

  ‘She’s just coming,’ said Vanessa. Then she took a deep breath, noisily. ‘Hear that? Did you notice I’m sick?’

  ‘Yes, you sound sick,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘Tonsillitis. Both of us.’

  ‘Then I hope you get well soon,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘That’s okay. School can wait.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And we’re really feeling fine because of the antibiotics.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘But we have to stay at home all week.’

  ‘Have a nice time,’ said Joentaa, and then Paulina was on the line, and Joentaa realised that he didn’t know what he wanted to say to her.

  ‘Kimmo?’ said Paulina.

  ‘Yes . . . hello, Paulina. I . . . I just wanted to give you a call.’

  ‘Tuomas is still in hospital. But you know that.’

  ‘Mhm. I couldn’t reach him this morning and I just wanted to hear how . . . how things are looking.’

  Paulina did not reply. Whether because she was searching for words, or because there weren’t any. Or because the twins were hovering near her . . .

  ‘This is probably a bad time to call, with the girls at
home,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘Could be,’ said Paulina.

  ‘I’ve been calling Tuomas now and then, and I just wanted to tell you that he sounded cheerful but . . . but pretty unstable all the same.’

  Paulina laughed. ‘Unstable,’ she repeated.

  ‘I wanted to say you both ought to make sure he really does get a good rest in the hospital.’

  She laughed again, this time it was more genuine, heartfelt laughter. ‘Kimmo, I think you want to tell me that Tuomas has his laptop in his room and . . . you see what I mean?’

  She fell silent, probably because of the twins.

  ‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘I know all about it,’ said Paulina. ‘And unfortunately there’s nothing I can do. I can only keep asking him to think carefully about everything before he does what he’s doing.’

  ‘Ah.’

  The little girls were giggling in the background, and Joentaa wondered if tonsillitis had been such fun in his own childhood. But it was good to hear the two of them laughing.

  Paulina sounded both harried and calm as she went on. ‘Kimmo, it’s nice of you to call. And I think it’s nice that Tuomas confides in you. I think you’re the only person he’s talked to about all that.’

  ‘I . . . I’m glad,’ said Joentaa. ‘I’ll go and see him again very soon.’

  ‘Do that,’ she said.

  ‘I will. See you soon,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘See you soon,’ said Paulina, ending the call.

  Joentaa lowered his mobile and looked at the flashing poker machines. During the phone call he had kept walking, and had ended up in the lobby.

  He went back to the breakfast room. Westerberg and Seppo were deep in conversation, maybe about the muesli flakes, and his mobile played its usual tune. Joentaa stared at the number for a few moments, trying to persuade himself it was the sequence of digits for the number of Larissa’s disused mobile. But it was an entirely different number.

  ‘What kind of a village is this place where you’re hanging out?’ asked Sundström, without wasting any time on a greeting.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘That rustic place you’re in. Karjasaari.’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘Because I’m standing here in a shopping centre in Raisio and I’ve found your fourth man. From that photo.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Unfortunately he’s dead.’

  Joentaa thought of the giraffe. And the apple tree.

  ‘Stabbed in a department store. Seconds earlier, he’d called the police and told them he was the man they were looking for.’

  ‘Aha,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘He’d seen his own face on TV.’

  ‘Mhm,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘And just before that he called a number in that village of yours. Karjasaari. The number of the nursery garden outfit, what was the name of that guy with dementia? The gardener.’

  ‘Miettinen,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Sundström. ‘So now we have four dead people. No, five if we count our unknown woman.’

  ‘Saara Koivula.’

  ‘In all probability,’ said Sundström.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘The man’s name is Lassi Anttila. He has two daughters, and as far as we can find out at present one of them lives in Karjasaari. Eva Anttila.’

  ‘Good,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘Right now Nurmela is involved in a dispute over jurisdiction: the question is in which city the central investigation will be located. We ought all really to come and set ourselves up in that village of yours, but it looks like being Turku’s jurisdiction after all because we have the privilege of the latest body. Three cheers for our suburb of Raisio and its shopping centres.’

  The privilege of the latest body, thought Joentaa. He imagined Nurmela, cover name August, arguing with his typical dynamism and eloquence over jurisdiction, presumably with the police in Tamisaari and particularly Helsinki.

  ‘I’ll send you the audio data,’ said Sundström.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Kimmo, you’re not listening again.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Never mind. It’s at your moments of mental abstraction that you usually get interesting ideas.’

  Joentaa did not reply, but he felt a touch of pleasure at this praise, although he doubted whether the idea of Nurmela’s cover name was going to get the investigation anywhere much. Although who knew?

  ‘What was that you said about audio data?’ he asked.

  ‘We have the emergency call or whatever you like to call it on record. Lassi Anttila’s last words.’

  Joentaa nodded, and felt a tingling in his stomach. ‘Good,’ he said softly, more to himself than to Sundström, although he didn’t know just what the man’s last words might be expected to tell them.

  ‘I’ll send it over as soon as it’s been prepared. The technical guys are on the job.’

  ‘Good,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘I’ll call again,’ said Sundström, breaking the connection.

  Joentaa looked up, and saw that Westerberg was also talking on his phone. Seppo gesticulated as Joentaa came closer.

  ‘Seems to be about the fourth man in our photo,’ said Seppo.

  ‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.

  Westerberg looked profoundly relaxed, and was doing more listening with his eyes closed than talking, while whoever was on the other end of the line was presumably saying the same kind of thing as Sundström.

  He sat down, and noticed that Seppo’s bowl of cereal was only half eaten, and Westerberg’s hadn’t been touched. Then he heard the tune of his phone again. Once more he looked for a number that he knew was now unavailable. And once more it was Sundström.

  ‘Paavo here again,’ he said. ‘We’ve got something out of that emergency call now.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Although I don’t know if it can be right.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Joentaa.

  ‘The model student,’ said Sundström.

  ‘The model student?’

  ‘That’s what Anttila said just before he was stabbed. The model student.’

  65

  16 December now

  The model student. Words coming, muted, through walls. Out into a wonderful summer’s day.

  And you must be the model student.

  An unsuitable term. In every respect.

  The terrace door is open, there’s a mild breeze, a thin film of sweat covers your skin. It’s very quiet, only the bed is creaking in a room that I can see into only with difficulty. Suppressed laughter, suppressed moans. Risto is giving a running commentary on proceedings in the flat voice of a man on whom alcohol no longer takes effect.

  Seize the day. Revive it, live it again, and then again and again.

  Always the same day.

  The bike ride, accompanied by a hot bright sun warming your back. The piano playing. Close your eyes and wait for the notes to die gently away and come together again on the floor, in the silence. Saara’s voice, very low, so low that I’m not sure if I’m hearing her or if I only think I’m hearing her.

  Stop as soon as Risto comes into the room.

  End the day and begin it all over again.

  Begin it again and again, always beginning with the bike ride through the summery forest.

  The model student. Inappropriate as the description is, it also strikes me as appropriate that those were Lassi Anttila’s last words.

  Presumably I ought to be uneasy in view of the fact that my planning no longer stands up to reality, but ultimately I quite like that. The gardener Jarkko Miettinen died too quickly. Against all probability, with no regard for the statistics. Even his previous illness doesn’t adequately explain the considerably accelerated course of his symptoms of poisoning.

  I thought, on the other hand, that I could spend considerably more time on Lassi Anttila. I was sitting with Koski this morning in his office on the Stock Exchange, and Koski was saying
something about the share prices running past at the bottom of the monitor when a photograph I knew appeared higher up on the screen.

  I don’t know how that photo came to be on the TV news, but it made me think about the other side for the first time. So there are people out there trying to find me. Trying to understand. I like that. They’ll never understand, but I like the idea that they’re trying, and the fact that they’ve put a picture of the shopping centre detective and cleaner on the news suggests that they’ve made some connections.

  In the opinion of the analysts at Kengen & Koski, a close validation of recent long commitments in the shares of Nieminen OY offers an attractive chance-to-risk ratio. Stress test, lows, closing rates.

  Send an email off to Koski.

  ‘Thanks!’ Koski writes back seconds later.

  On the basis of rumours of the certification in the near future of a highly effective gene test relating to inherited illnesses, shares in the biotechnology company Sedigene were the winner on the OMX 25 today, with a surcharge of around 25%.

  Before I went home I met a remarkable man who does remarkable things in a remarkable location among the handsome ships in the West Harbour. His manner was brusque, but he seemed to know what he was talking about, and he needs only a small photograph in JPEG format and a name. Excellent. The world is a big village, and identity means nothing. It doesn’t come cheap, but it should pay off in the end.

  Leea stands in the doorway and says she’s just off to do some shopping. Can she get anything for me.

  I say no.

  Olli is in the doorway where Leea stood just now, asking me if we can play a game.

  ‘Do you have time?’ he asks. ‘Or are you working on some kind of . . . project again?’

  Time describes the sequence of events, and accordingly, by comparison to other physical quantities, it has a clear and irreversible direction. A project is a unique plan consisting of a set of agreed activities with a beginning and an end, and is carried out, taking into account constraints such as cost, time, etc., in order to achieve an aim. Projects are not infrequently undertaken by project teams.

  ‘What about it?’ asks Olli.

  Police officers who are looking for me while I am looking for Risto. The projects are similar, only the aims are different.