‘He got off his ship, came to Karjasaari, went into the forest and killed himself,’ said Seppo.
Joentaa was silent.
‘And Lemberg read the diary and . . . cracked up.’
Lauri. Must ask Lauri tomorrow.
‘He must have been there,’ said Joentaa.
‘What?’
‘Lauri Lemberg. He must have been there, with Teuvo,’ said Joentaa. ‘The receipt for the pages copied was made out on 29 June. Judging by the letter, Lauri must have had the diary before that.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Lauri copied the diary, so Teuvo had sent him the original. Lauri looked for Teuvo, found him dead and gave him the diary back. Getting a copy made for himself.’
‘Gave it back . . . to the dead man?’
‘Yes.’
‘And then he just left him . . . the dead body . . . there in the forest?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh.’
Joentaa reached Turku just as night was giving way to morning. He did not drive straight home, but went to the city centre and withdrew money from a cash machine. Then he drove on, going a way that he had not taken for some time.
The last phone call that night came from Sundström, telling him that Saara Koivula had made a will a few weeks before her death.
‘A will,’ said Joentaa.
‘Yes. Handwritten, but properly witnessed by a notary. I think she knew or guessed that she would be in danger if she sought out Risto Nygren.’
Joentaa said nothing, but parked the car by the side of the road and wondered what he could put the money in. There was a CD sleeve in the glove compartment. The CD was in the player, a compilation that Larissa had made that summer when she was still around. Melancholy disco music, strong basses, atmospheric sound.
‘It’s about a small plot of ground, a kind of . . . meadow,’ said Sundström. ‘She left it to that woman . . . Anita-Liisa Koponen. The nutcase.’
Joentaa said goodbye to Sundström and wished him a good night. He felt the soft, fluffy snow underfoot as he went up to the house. He put the CD sleeve with 500 euros inside it into Tuomas Heinonen’s letterbox: Dear Tuomas, here’s the money you asked for. Let’s have a drink and talk in peace some time soon. I hope you and Paulina and the twins are well, and having a good holiday.
He drove home along increasingly narrow roads and thought of what he could ask Lauri tomorrow.
Maybe whether it was right or wrong to give Tuomas the money.
Or why Larissa always switched off the light when she came home.
82
6 December 1985
Lauri and I went to the Christmas fair. Lauri was talking all the time, and was kind of excited, and says I’m sad but I can’t show it.
Then something funny happened, and that’s why I’m writing now, although I wasn’t really going to write any more.
There she suddenly was. Saara. In a thick coat and a big cap, and she’d been drinking mulled wine and looking at the guys riding motorbikes on the ice rink.
She saw us and smiled for a second, and then she took several steps back as if she was afraid of something. Then I went up to her, because I couldn’t help going towards her, and she said I should run away. At once. Now. She screamed it.
Then she was gone, and I went after her. I couldn’t help it. She turned and shouted to me to stop following her.
Then Risto was there. He was pushing a motorbike and had probably been one of the bikers on the ice. He smiled, turned off the engine of the bike, came towards me quickly and bored into my ear with his finger until it hurt, and I thought I might pass out.
And then the funny thing happened. Lauri grabbed Risto’s hand and pushed it away from my head. It all seemed so easy. Risto stood there staring. Little Lauri, big Risto. Saara was standing beside Risto, and her eyes were gleaming so sadly, as if she was going to cry but she couldn’t.
Lauri let go of Risto’s hand and they stood facing each other. Lauri was trembling, I could see that, but he stayed put.
‘And who are you?’ asked Risto, and it sounded quite friendly. Lauri didn’t answer. Then Risto swung his arm back and punched Lauri in the face with his fist, with all his weight behind it, really hard, making Lauri’s head wobble, and flinging him backwards. But he still stayed put.
Risto asked Lauri if he wanted to die, and Lauri turned round and told me we’d be going now. He said it perfectly calmly, but then he began running and I ran too.
When we cycled home I suddenly had to cry because of everything, and because Saara had looked so sad, and Lauri’s face was red as a tomato, and his nose was bleeding because of the punch in the face.
Lauri asked why I was crying, and I couldn’t explain. Why was I sad, he asked, and I said I wasn’t sad. Then if I wasn’t sad there was nothing for me to cry about, he said.
Logical, Lauri, only logical.
Tomorrow I’ll tell him that he’s my best friend, but I’m sure he knows that anyway.
83
WHEN KIMMO GOT home, the giraffe had woken up and got to its feet and gone away. He looked for it in the snow under the apple tree for several minutes, but he didn’t find it.
He went back to the car, sat in it looking through the windscreen for some time, wondering how long electric light bulbs last. Wondering how long they would burn before giving up the ghost.
How many days and weeks?
How many days and weeks was it since he had switched on the light and locked the door and driven to Karjasaari? He didn’t know. He tried to think about it, but it was no good.
He thought of the Christmas tree, the fir tree a metre high that Larissa had carried out of the forest into his living room exactly a year ago. They had stood side by side looking at the tree, and he had felt a certain kind of smile come into his face.
A smile that now, at last, came back.
He got out and went up to the house that lay there in the dark.
THANKS
My thanks to Niina and Venla, Georg and Wolfgang, Christian and Klaus, Esther and my parents.
A special thank-you to Stefan Scheid, who had the idea of taking up music together. Dear Stefan, it was fun and gave me new strength for writing – and now at last I know what songs Kimmo listens to in the evening in his house by the lake. When he thinks of the people he misses.
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English translation copyright © Anthea Bell 2013
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First published with the title Das Licht in einem dunklen Haus in 2011
by Galiani Berlin
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by
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Light in a Dark House (Detective Kimmo Joentaa) Page 26