The Winter of the Lions

by Jan Costin Wagner

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Sundström. The words reached him in waves.

  ‘Sure,’ said Joentaa.

  The idea was Sanna. The moment when the nurse on night duty had put out the light. Bright yellow light, like the light in this room. The same white walls. He had seen Sanna’s face and couldn’t take in what he was seeing. Couldn’t take it in. Hadn’t taken it in to this day. He went out of the room.

  ‘Kimmo?’ he heard Sundström saying.

  The name came to him in waves, Kimmo, Kimmo, Kimmo.

  Kimmo, he had replied, when Sanna had asked who he was, what his name was. When she didn’t recognise him any more, when the world in which they had lived together was slipping away from her, to be replaced by a new world that he didn’t understand. Could he see her riding a horse, Sanna had asked, and he had nodded, and Sanna had smiled for the last time.

  He went down the corridor back to the living room, where it was warm. He sat down on the sofa where Vaasara had been sitting. His head was bowed, like Vaasara’s when they had arrived.

  ‘Are you really all right, Kimmo?’ asked Sundström behind his back.

  ‘In a minute,’ said Joentaa. He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing regularly.

  ‘It – they’re only models,’ said Vaasara. ‘Puppets.’

  Sundström laughed briefly.

  ‘Thanks. We’d never have thought of that for ourselves,’ said Westerberg wearily, standing in the doorway.

  21

  THE CONFERENCE ROOM was dark, and smaller than their own in Turku. Jobs to be done were shared out, areas of responsibility named. Officers assigned to keep the flow of information going between Turku and Helsinki. Two cities, one murder case. Sundström and Westerberg agreed to call each other twice a day, at fixed times, to exchange the most important results of their investigations.

  A forensics expert told them that an initial analysis showed the probable nature of the murder weapon in both cases.

  Probable nature, thought Joentaa.

  ‘As you know, features around the edges of wounds and the direction of the thrust allow conclusions to be drawn about the nature of the instrument used, but it’s not an exact science,’ said the forensics expert.

  ‘Probability will do us for now,’ said Sundström.

  ‘A small but sharp blade,’ said the forensics man. ‘Presumably an ordinary household knife, meaning it’ll be one widely sold in large quantities.’

  Sundström and Westerberg nodded.

  Joentaa heard little of what was being said. He was thinking of Sanna, Sanna’s face when life had come to a stop behind it. The routine sympathy of the nurse on night duty. The drive home. The landing stage and the lake in the darkness. The cold of the water against his legs as the pain finally made its way into him and spread.

  One of the Helsinki investigators talked about Harri Mäkelä. His voice sounded hunted, and rose and fell at unnaturally regular intervals. Mäkelä had been the best, he said. He’d made life-sized dummies not only for Finnish productions but also for the American movie industry. He’d even made the model of an Oscar prizewinner who had to fight a robot that looked just like him in a film. Joentaa wondered what the basic idea of that film could have been. The officer said, ‘He was much in the media. Recently wrote a book. Kind of a semi-celebrity, here in Helsinki anyway.’

  Silence filled the room.

  ‘Hm,’ said Sundström.

  ‘We don’t know much more about him yet,’ said the officer apologetically.

  Then they went along the corridor and stepped out into the driving snow. They drove to the TV station from which Kai-Petteri Hämäläinen’s chat show went out with such success. A large, tall building, surrounded by its own extensive park, dominated by glass. While they made for the building Joentaa looked at the little people visible through the glass, and wondered whether the executives who ran the station deliberately put their employees on show as if they were on a huge screen.

  The doorman stood to attention when Westerberg showed his ID, the woman editor of the Hämäläinen chat show welcomed them on the twelfth floor. She was in a cheerful mood. Kai-Petteri Hämäläinen entered the room a little later. He wore a black jacket and blue jeans, clothes expressing the mixture of gravity and the popular approach that presumably accounted for some of his success. Joentaa examined the best-known TV face in Finland and wondered what it was about it that he found so irritating.

  ‘Hello,’ said Hämäläinen, and shook hands one by one with Sundström, Westerberg and Joentaa. He sat down, crossed his legs, and looked at them with a friendly, enquiring expression.

  Hämäläinen is playing the part of Hämäläinen, thought Joentaa, and Hämäläinen’s expression darkened as Westerberg explained the reason for their visit: Harri Mäkelä, found dead outside his house.

  ‘That … that’s terrible,’ said Hämäläinen.

  ‘There’s worse to come,’ said Sundström.

  Hämäläinen looked at him and waited.

  ‘Patrik Laukkanen.’

  Hämäläinen frowned and seemed to be thinking. ‘Isn’t that the forensic pathologist who was on our show with Mäkelä?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Sundström.

  Hämäläinen waited.

  ‘Laukkanen was also found dead,’ said Sundström.

  ‘Oh, good heavens,’ said the editor.

  ‘That … that’s terrible,’ said Hämäläinen, and for the first time he really did seem to be shaken.

  ‘The only link between the two that we’ve been able to establish so far is your show. The appearance of both of them on the programme,’ said Sundström.

  Hämäläinen was silent for a while. ‘I see,’ he said at last.

  ‘So far as we know, Mäkelä and Laukkanen met for the first time on your show. Can you think of any other connection between them?’

  Hämäläinen shook his head, and seemed to be lost in thought.

  ‘Nothing at all that stuck in your memory?’

  ‘It was a good show that day, a good conversation, we had good …’ He stopped.

  We had good ratings, Joentaa suspected.

  ‘We had a good conversation, they were nice guys and they came over that way. Good guests,’ said Hämäläinen.

  Sundström nodded.

  ‘There’s one idea we’ve discussed within our team, an idea we would like to put to you,’ said Westerberg with ceremony and very, very wearily.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Hämäläinen’s editor when the silence began to seem endless. Kai-Petteri Hämäläinen was staring at the glass walls around them.

  ‘Do you … will you have anyone around for protection?’ asked Westerberg.

  Hämäläinen didn’t seem to understand what he meant.

  ‘Do you have personal protection? Bodyguards?’ Westerberg specified.

  ‘No,’ said Hämäläinen. ‘No, I’m not a … I lead a perfectly normal life.’

  Westerberg nodded, and Joentaa thought of an interview with Hämäläinen he had read a few weeks ago. It had focused again and again on that statement. A perfectly normal life, a star within the reach of ordinary people. As far as he remembered, Hämäläinen was the father of two daughters. Twins. Like Tuomas Heinonen.

  ‘Why do you ask that?’ said Hämäläinen’s editor. ‘Do you really think that Kai-Petteri …?’

  ‘To be honest,’ said Sundström, ‘at the moment we’re overwhelmed by what’s happened. We get that sometimes. We don’t know anything, and we don’t understand it. We’re only registering events.’

  They all fell silent, until Hämäläinen suddenly stood up and said, in an unnaturally loud voice, ‘Absolutely out of the question.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Sundström.

  ‘Out of the question. I’m very sorry about these deaths, but I didn’t know either your forensic pathologist or Harri Mäkelä personally. I met them just once, at the time of that interview. I can’t contribute anything, and of course I don’t need personal
protection or anything like that. Excuse me, please.’ He shook hands with Sundström, Westerberg and Joentaa, and walked out of the room.

  ‘That was quick,’ said Westerberg slowly.

  The editor took them down the now brightly lit corridors of the big glass case that was the TV station to the lift and said again, before the automatic doors closed, how terrible it was. The doorman stood to attention, the large car park was a picturesque scene in the dark of an early evening swirling with snowflakes.

  They drove in silence, and Kimmo Joentaa thought of Kai-Petteri Hämäläinen acting the part of himself. A part that he had to play all day long. A man who was real on screen and only a copy in real life.

  The sad comic imitates voices, the presenter imitates himself.

  Joentaa closed his eyes, tried to concentrate on some distant but central nugget of information, and suddenly had to laugh at his own crazy idea. He laughed and chuckled, and thought, vaguely, that he must call Larissa.

  ‘Kimmo’s laughing,’ said Sundström, and Westerberg only nodded, presumably because he didn’t understand the joke and was not at all interested in understanding it.

  22

  ON THE DRIVE back to Turku he tried to reach Larissa, but she wasn’t there.

  Of course not. He wondered why he felt such a great need to talk to her.

  He repeatedly got through to his own mailbox, with the manufacturer’s standard pre-recorded announcement, a metallic female voice that brusquely asked callers to leave a message. He had deleted the real announcement, Sanna’s announcement in Sanna’s voice, three years ago on the night of her death. It had been an almost unconscious act, one that he could hardly remember.

  At the fourth attempt he closed his eyes and began speaking. ‘This is Kimmo, Hello. I … I’ll be a little later home than expected because … because of Helsinki, I’ve been in Helsinki, on a case, and I’m on my way back but the road … it’s snowing heavily, so it could take some time … See you soon.’ He was going to add something more, but sensed Sundström’s eyes resting on him and broke the connection.

  ‘What was all that about?’ asked Sundström.

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘That was …’

  ‘What?’ asked Joentaa.

  ‘That sounded like a new woman in your life.’

  23

  KAI-PETTERI HÄMÄLÄINEN WAS looking at the previous evening’s ratings, handed to him by Tuula. His eyes rested on the figures, and he tried to remember the guests, to give faces to those numbers.

  His head was empty. He had blacked out. Surely he could remember the people he had talked to yesterday evening? There was a knock at the door. It was Tuula, to say that the girl had arrived. He looked at her enquiringly.

  ‘The girl. The girlfriend of that gunman who ran amok.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Do you want to speak to her. Or …?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  He stayed sitting there motionless, while Tuula lingered in the doorway.

  ‘In a moment. I’ll be with you in a moment,’ he said. He kept thinking of his guests. The day before yesterday’s guests. Of course. The Tango King. The Tango King had collided with an elk on a country road and died. He had talked to his widow the day before yesterday. Hence the figures. A great many viewers switching on. Even more than usual. The Tango King’s widow. And today he was going to talk to another widow, if that was the way to describe the girl. That was an editorial mistake. He couldn’t be seen talking to widows two evenings running.

  Tuula came back and said it was already on the news. He didn’t understand her.

  ‘Mäkelä. And the other man. The news desk wants to know if they can show a clip from your programme. Of course I said yes.’

  Hämäläinen nodded.

  ‘Fantastic!’ said Tuula.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hämäläinen.

  Tuula was turning to go, but he held her back.

  ‘Listen …’

  She waited in the doorway.

  ‘What do you think happened … to Mäkelä and the forensic pathologist?’

  Tuula seemed to be waiting for him to be more specific with his question.

  ‘Does it … does it have anything to do with us?’ he said.

  ‘Us? How do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know … well, they were both on the programme with me. I talked to them, and now …’

  ‘Lords of life and death,’ said Tuula.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I remember the wording … that was the trailer we made for the programme they appeared on. Lords of life and death.’

  Hämäläinen said nothing.

  ‘Are you going to come and talk to the girl? She needs a bit of soothing and encouragement,’ said Tuula.

  ‘In a minute,’ said Hämäläinen.

  ‘The recording starts in twenty minutes,’ said Tuula.

  24

  GLIDING OVER THE snow.

  Setting the world to rights.

  Sleeping, dreaming. Waking.

  In the evening she visits Rauna. The children are eating in the large, brightly lit dining room, and she sits to one side, watching them. Pellervo Halonen, head of the Home, sits down beside her smiling. He asks how she’s doing.

  ‘All right,’ she says. ‘I’m feeling better.’

  Rauna is eating with a hearty appetite, and laughs at them, and Pellervo Halonen says, ‘Rauna always likes it when you come. It’s good to see that, every time.’

  She nods.

  ‘I really hope you’ll be able to help Rauna some day when … when she fully realises what happened. When she has to confront … well, the whole of it.’

  She thinks about what he has said for a little while.

  ‘I hope so too,’ she says at last.

  Pellervo Halonen rises to his feet and walks away, and she watches him. He is unusually young, younger than most of his staff, and he always walks very upright, turning to meet life. She noticed that on her very first visit.

  She had been afraid of seeing Rauna again that time. It was a mixture of fear and longing. She talked to the psychologist about it. He advised against it, and she went to see Rauna the very next day.

  Pellervo Halonen’s upright carriage as he accompanied her to Rauna’s room. She remembers that. And Rauna’s distant face at the moment when their eyes met. Rauna said nothing, and for a few moments she thought that Rauna didn’t remember her. Then the fear in Rauna’s eyes gave way to longing. Rauna ran to her and hugged her, and laughed. Pellervo Hallonen laughed. Even she herself laughed, for the first time in a very long while.

  ‘I’ve had enough to eat. Shall we do a jigsaw?’ asks Rauna.

  She opens her eyes and sees Rauna smiling.

  She nods. Rauna runs ahead with a hop, skip and a jump, and she follows her to the playroom. Rauna does the Noah’s Ark puzzle. Deep in thought, she fits all the pieces in place until the picture is complete.

  ‘Finished!’ says Rauna, and she claps her hands and says Rauna is the best at doing jigsaw puzzles for miles around, and Rauna asks where the third lion is. ‘The third lion. The third monkey. The third giraffe.’

  She can’t think of an answer to that, and says it’s a good question.

  ‘The third lion is coming later. And so are the others,’ says Rauna.

  She nods.

  ‘On another ship,’ says Rauna. ‘In the winter.’

  A carer is standing in the doorway. Visiting time is over. She reads Rauna a bedtime story, and at the end of the story Rauna, in her pink pyjamas, is wide awake.

  ‘See you again soon!’ calls Rauna, and the carer, smiling, offers her hand as she says goodbye.

  25

  THE HOUSE, WHITE in the darkness. The apple tree wrapped in snow. He parked his car and went the few steps to the front door. Opened it and stood there in the silence. The note was lying on the living-room table, with the pen beside it. He looked at the note, read what he had written that morning, and wondered whether Larissa had read it. T
urning his gaze away, he looked at the closed bedroom door. He imagined Larissa lying on the bed on the other side of the door. She had fallen asleep and had not woken up. Couldn’t find her way back to the surface. The image spread, and he strode over to the door and opened it abruptly. The room was empty, the bed was made. The bedclothes and cushions were as tidily arranged as in a hotel bedroom when you first move in.

  Joentaa closed the door and stood there for a while, indecisively. The little Christmas tree was an outline in the dark. He hurried out into the cold and fetched the DVD from the car. The snow crunched under his feet. Then he was sitting in front of the flickering screen. Patrik Laukkanen laughed, and an unseen audience joined in. Leena Jauhiainen lay awake. The baby was asleep. Hämäläinen lifted a blue cloth and revealed the view of an injured face.

  ‘A funeral the wrong way round.’

  He turned.

  ‘That was what disturbed me. I remember it now,’ said Larissa. She let her snow-white jacket slip to the floor and came towards him.

  ‘I didn’t hear you coming,’ he said.

  She sat down beside him and looked at him. He avoided meeting her eyes, looked at the pictures flickering on the screen, and sensed that her gaze was resting on him.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  She did not reply.

  ‘What did you mean about …’

  ‘A funeral the wrong way round. People were laughing, not mourning, the dead were on show and not buried,’ she said.

  Joentaa looked at her grave, sad face.

  Her gaze was resting on his eyes.

  He nodded. Waited. Her hand shot out fast, he felt a sharp pain on his cheeks and felt himself falling. Then she was lying on top of him, with her lips to his throat. Her movements were calm and regular. He closed his eyes and let himself drift. She was saying something in a voice that didn’t belong to her. The TV audience was laughing in the background. Suppose it was always like this? Falling. Falling for ever and ever. In the distance, he heard her laugh. There was soft, cool fabric against his face.