The Winter of the Lions

by Jan Costin Wagner

Joentaa focused on the pictures flying backwards and said, after a while, ‘Stop. I think this is where it begins.’

  Tuulikki let the tape run on.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Joentaa, leaning forward.

  The audience was in sight on screen, sitting side by side in rows, concentrating as they listened to Patrik Laukkanen, who was not in the picture but whose voice filled the studio. Joentaa thought of Leena Jauhiainen and baby Kalle, and looked at the audience, all of its members, curiously, reacting as one to what Patrik Laukkanen was saying. Collective laughter, collective gravity. Patrik Laukkanen made what he was saying sound interesting and informative. Then Mäkelä was asked to come up on stage. The hand-held camera lingered on the applauding audience.

  Joentaa leaned even further forward, because the conversation about the puppets was now beginning on the stage, out of sight. Hämäläinen was asking questions in an easy, cheerful tone, and Mäkelä said, ‘A corpse burnt to death in a fire isn’t necessarily what it seems.’

  Now and then Patrik Laukkanen made a comment, and the hand-held camera moved over the spectators grimacing or laughing or listening spellbound. The mood changed from moment to moment.

  ‘The legs are at an angle,’ said Mäkelä, ‘the arms outstretched.’

  ‘Forensic science can draw conclusions from that,’ said Patrik Laukkanen. ‘For instance, it makes it possible to work out which part of the body began to burn first and where the fire spread to.’

  Hämäläinen asked a question, and Laukkanen said, ‘The internal organs are usually well preserved in victims of fire, that’s characteristic.’

  Hämäläinen moved on to the next puppet. Some of the spectators looked away, others stared at the stage, even more fascinated.

  ‘How cute,’ said Mäkelä.

  Hämäläinen laughed.

  ‘I mean that charming cloth you’ve draped over the hips,’ said Mäkelä. ‘It wasn’t there when I made the puppet.’

  There was a short silence.

  Hämäläinen injected a serious tone into his voice, presumably to smooth over the brief moment of embarrassment.

  ‘So here we have the victim of a plane crash,’ said Hämäläinen.

  Another short silence, and Mäkelä cleared his throat. Joentaa noticed that only incidentally, because he was concentrating on the faces of the audience. Horrified, amused, repelled, interested. They were no longer reacting in unison, yet their cohesion was still maintained. The spectators could choose from a range of possible reactions, but none of them reacted out of character.

  Except for Erkki Koivikko, who had been sitting on his living-room sofa. Who got to his feet, went to the bathroom and threw up.

  Joentaa narrowed his eyes, and Mäkelä made another joke about the cloth covering the corpse’s genitals.

  The audience laughed, reacting in unison again. The hand-held camera lingered on the spectators as a whole for a few seconds, before moving over the crowd and beginning to study individual faces again.

  ‘Stop,’ said Joentaa.

  Infuriatingly slowly, Tuulikki leaned forward and pressed a button.

  ‘Back,’ said Joentaa.

  Tuulikki wound the tape back.

  ‘Stop,’ said Joentaa again.

  He looked at the frozen picture.

  Nine people sitting close together, beside each other or one behind another. Eight of them were laughing. Four heartily and uninhibitedly. Two teenagers and two young men. An older woman was laughing in a rather forced way, an elegantly dressed middle-aged man was laughing absently as if his mind were on something else. The woman beside him was laughing hysterically, and a white-haired man was chuckling with tears in his eyes.

  Joentaa leaned back. He focused on the slender, tall woman in the middle of the picture. She was wearing a plain dark dress. He sat there motionless for several minutes.

  ‘Are we going on with this?’ asked Tuulikki.

  Joentaa heard her voice only vaguely.

  ‘Hello?’ said Tuulikki.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘Because I have to go down to the studio soon. There’s a meeting about camera angles before the show begins. And we’ve been sitting here for ever.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.

  For ever, he thought. The word echoed through his mind. ‘What do you see there?’

  ‘What do I see?’ asked Tuulikki.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see people in the audience falling about laughing at Kai-Petteri. Or at that puppet-maker guy … Mäkelä. Probably at both of them.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.

  He looked at the woman sitting upright in the middle of the screen. A frozen smile in a frozen picture. ‘Could you please let it run on very slowly?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure,’ said Tuulikki.

  The picture moved on in gentle slow motion. Joentaa felt pain behind his eyes, and Tuulikki said, ‘That woman in the middle doesn’t seem to be having as much fun as the others.’

  Joentaa nodded.

  ‘Oh, my goodness,’ said Tuulikki.

  The door behind them was opened, but neither Joentaa nor Tuulikki could take their eyes off the screen.

  ‘She looks like living death,’ said Tuulikki.

  ‘I hope you don’t mean me,’ said Tuula Palonen, laughing.

  69

  MARKO WESTERBERG LISTENED to the acid comments with his usual composure. Anyway, most of the company seemed more amused than anything by the safety precautions, and Westerberg himself was among those who were amused.

  He had always thought well of Paavo Sundström, but he was at a loss to understand what had come over the man now. Sundström had seen to the setting up of a security zone at the entrance area. It was more reminiscent of the departure gate in an airport than the way into a TV studio.

  The visitors to the show, slowly coming in and including prominent figures of all kinds, frowned now and then, and made themselves look as if they found the whole thing funny, and his officers tried hard to do their job with suitably straight faces, while cameras were turned on them from all angles, recording the whole procedure, contrary to the original agreement. Presumably to go on about it at length in the show itself, letting everyone know what a big star Hämäläinen was.

  Westerberg buried his hands in the pockets of his jacket, brought out again specially for this occasion, and watched for a while as the rows of seats slowly but steadily filled up. Once past the airport security gate, members of the audience were handed drinks and small snacks, Karelian rice cakes spread with fish roe.

  His mobile rang. It was Sundström.

  ‘All clear there with you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. Apart from the fact that they’re recording the whole thing here from every angle,’ Westerberg answered.

  ‘That was only to be expected. Never mind,’ said Sundström. ‘Is Hämäläinen there yet?’

  ‘Not so far. But according to my information he’ll be arriving shortly.’

  ‘Good. I’m on my way now.

  See you soon.’ ‘See you,’ said Westerberg, slipping the mobile back into his side pocket.

  One of the good-looking young women editors, Margot Lind if he remembered rightly, came up to him, her eyes shining. ‘Can’t we persuade you to give us a little interview? Simply to … to do justice to these special circumstances.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘And please make sure that the faces of the police officers being recorded on film here don’t go out on the show. That was clearly agreed.’

  She nodded, and was going to ask something else, but then she turned to the blitz of flashing lights illuminating the darkness beyond the glass panes. ‘That’ll be Kai-Petteri now,’ she said.

  Westerberg followed her gaze. They were turned to the entrance hall. Hämäläinen came through the broad swing doors and, flanked by the two personal bodyguards assigned to him, walked purposefully to the lifts.

  The three of them got in, the doors closed, and outside the lights went on flashing for
several minutes, until word got around that the subject wanted by the photographers for their pictures was not there any more.

  70

  ‘AM I … ER, disturbing you?’ asked Tuula Palonen.

  The two of them did not respond. Tuulikki and the policeman Joentaa were staring in silence at the screen, on which Tuula Palonen could see nothing very startling.

  She came closer. The audience. The footage taken with the hand-held camera. Laughing people. ‘Anything special?’ When neither Joentaa nor Tuulikki reacted she added, ‘I have to go down now. They’ve already started letting people in. And Kai-Petteri will be here any moment.’

  Joentaa said nothing. Nor did Tuulikki.

  ‘You were looking for me?’ Tuula Palonen asked Joentaa.

  ‘I have what I wanted,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘We didn’t get any letters that might interest you,’ said Tuula Palonen, just to make Joentaa take his eyes off the screen at last, and turn to her.

  ‘What did you say?’ he asked.

  ‘You wanted me to find out whether there were any reactions to that programme, letters or emails attacking Kai-Petteri or the other participants.’

  ‘Yes,’ Joentaa agreed.

  ‘No, there weren’t,’ said Tuula Palonen.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Joentaa. He didn’t even seem to have heard her.

  ‘But one thing did occur to me. It might interest you,’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’ asked Joentaa.

  ‘The causes of death were important to you in some way, weren’t they?’

  At last Joentaa looked at her.

  ‘I mean you wanted to know whether we’d had any correspondence about the … the kinds of death. The causes of death of the … the puppets.’

  Joentaa nodded.

  ‘Like I said, we had no correspondence of that kind, but there was a … a complication on the day of the programme, and I only remembered it today.’

  ‘Yes?’ Joentaa was paying attention now.

  ‘Mäkelä supplied three puppets; we’d discussed it all and agreed on certain puppets that would give as wide as possible an idea of the work of a puppet-maker producing models of dead bodies like that …’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘The problem was that among the puppets Mäkelä delivered there was one we couldn’t use. The victim of a plane crash, as agreed, but it was a little girl.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘We couldn’t possibly show a little girl on the programme,’ said Tuula Palonen. ‘Do you see what I mean?’

  ‘Not entirely,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘We can’t put a dead little girl on show. We put the puppet aside and asked Mäkelä for a substitute. We wanted three puppets, but not that little girl. Then it was all rather hectic, Mäkelä sent us one of a man, and we thought that puppet too was the victim of an air crash. But in fact it had been made for a film about the collapse of that indoor skating rink in Turku.’

  Joentaa nodded, but he didn’t understand. He felt dizzy. A little girl. A plane crash.

  A man. An ice rink.

  ‘I’m not entirely with you,’ he said.

  ‘After the show we went to have a drink, Mäkelä, the forensic pathologist, Margot Lind and I.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘And after a while Mäkelä began talking at length about his puppets. He said it had been annoying for him during the show when Kai-Petteri described one of his puppets as the victim of a plane crash, when really his puppet had … died another kind of death. He said he hadn’t liked to contradict Kai-Petteri at the time, and in the end it made no difference, because sometimes there were no characteristic features to show whether someone had … had fallen to his death or whether his death had fallen on him.’

  Joentaa nodded. It was a few seconds before he understood the comparison.

  ‘He put it something like that. The way the bodies look is sometimes the same, never mind whether they died in an air crash or in the collapse of a building. As in the case of that ice rink.’

  Ice rink, thought Joentaa.

  ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘No,’ said Joentaa.

  Ice rink, he thought. Turku.

  ‘Well, the puppet delivered to us just before the show had been made for a documentary. The accident at that Turku skating rink when the roof collapsed. It made headlines early this year.’

  Joentaa nodded. Mäkelä’s archives. CorpsesForDummies. He stood up and reached for his rucksack. The CD that his friendly colleague in Helsinki had burnt for him was lying in its side compartment.

  ‘I don’t suppose it’s important,’ said Tuula, ‘but I wanted to tell you because you were interested in that … that aspect of it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Joentaa. He looked around him. ‘I’d like to play a CD. Can I use that computer?’ He pointed to the one standing on a desk to one side.

  ‘Of course,’ said Tuulikki. She took the CD and put it into the computer drive.

  Tuula Palonen’s mobile played a symphony.

  ‘Yes? Oh, good. Wonderful. I’ll be with you right away.’

  ‘There are only photographs on it,’ said Tuulikki.

  Joentaa sat down beside her at the desk.

  Ice rink. Turku, he thought. The accident had dominated the news. At the beginning of the year. For several days he had investigated the scene until the vague original suspicion of intentional murder had been ruled out. It was an accident. A tragic accident.

  He thought of the cheerful widower who had moved into an empty house. Who was used to tragedies.

  ‘I have to go down. Kai-Petteri has arrived,’ said Tuula Palonen. ‘See you later.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘Do you want any particular folder opened?’ asked Tuulikki.

  ‘Why is a dead man better than a dead girl?’ asked Joentaa.

  ‘What?’ replied Tuulikki.

  ‘Never mind. CorpsesForDummies, please.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s the name of the folder I want to look at.’

  ‘Ah, got it.’

  The name of the file ran: 170208/FIN/TUR.

  17 February 2008. Skating rink, Finland. Turku.

  Tuulikki pressed a key, and thumbnail views of all the photographs came up on the screen.

  ‘Do you want to look at them all?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Joentaa, and Tuulikki pressed another button.

  Flickering pictures.

  A macabre slide show, thought Joentaa, nothing more.

  ‘Edifying stuff,’ said Tuulikki.

  A winter evening lit up in bright colours. Black and yellow. Firefighters in red. Paramedics in white. A mixture of colours in the dark, blurring before his eyes.

  ‘Oh,’ said Tuulikki.

  Falling to your death, having your death fall on you. Used to tragedy. Would you like to stay with her? the doctor had asked. At the hospital, in the minutes after Sanna’s death.

  ‘Did you see that?’ asked Tuulikki.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘I’d like another look at that photo. Just a moment.’ Tuulikki pressed buttons, and then they were sitting side by side in silence again in front of a frozen picture.

  ‘Look at that, the dead man in the middle next to the firefighter, under the rubble.’

  She pointed to the screen, gently touching the picture of the dead man with her forefinger.

  ‘It reminds me of one of the puppets in the programme. He’s lying in just the same way. They look identical. And he has only one leg. As if he’d been the model for the puppet.’

  How cute, thought Joentaa.

  ‘If it weren’t for the closed eyes and injuries everywhere, I’d say they were the very image of each other,’ said Tuulikki.

  ‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘It’s eerie,’ said Tuulikki.

  ‘I have to find out who he is,’ said Joentaa.

  Tuulikki leaned forward and touched the screen again. Very lightly and
carefully. She showed him what he had just seen. ‘I think that … that bundle lying in front of the larger body is … it looks almost like a …’

  ‘A child,’ said Joentaa.

  71

  WHEN OLLI LATVALA entered the hotel lobby the woman was already sitting on one of the sofas. She did not seem to notice all the comings and goings around her. She was looking straight ahead into nothing.

  Olli Latvala slowed down. He was a little anxious. He wondered if she would be up to appearing on the show, and thought of what had happened to her. It was unimaginable. He had no idea what this woman must be feeling, and he asked himself whether Kai-Petteri would succeed in getting through to her.

  The questions that he and Tuula had put together were good questions. They built up from each other, and there was plenty of scope for dealing with anything unforeseen. What was important today was the fact that the show was going out live. No one was better than Kai-Petteri at dealing with the unforeseen, no one could break the ice better.

  Break the ice, he thought. To lose her husband and her son, to see it happen. Severely injured herself. And to this day no one knew exactly why the roof of that skating rink had fallen in.

  He thought it had been the right decision to fetch her from the hotel himself and not leave it to one of the drivers. He had a feeling that she needed special attention, and had … well, deserved it.

  He quickened his pace again and injected a certain amount of volume and confidence into his voice as he said, still some distance away, ‘Hello, here I am. It’s nearly time now.’

  The woman took her eyes off the driving snow outside the panes and looked at him.

  ‘Shall we go?’ asked Olli Latvala.

  The woman stood up.

  ‘There’s a good deal of traffic, and it’s snowing. But I know a way of my own to the TV station,’ said Olli Latvala. He smiled at her.

  The woman nodded and followed him into the open air. His car was parked directly opposite the gilded main entrance to the hotel, in a No Parking zone. The hotel doormen flanking the entrance nodded at them, and Latvala said, ‘Good, no parking ticket, I’m in luck. Sometimes it takes our helpful friends only a minute to write one of those out for you.’

  He let the woman into the passenger’s side, got in himself, and moved the car out into the evening traffic. Fireworks were going off sporadically in the sky; they drove past a rear-end collision. One of the cars had slipped into the roadside gutter, the other had a slightly dented bonnet.