The Winter of the Lions

by Jan Costin Wagner

  ‘I don’t think it’s anything serious,’ said Olli Latvala, and the woman nodded.

  ‘How are you doing?’ asked Olli Latvala. ‘Do you like the hotel?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the woman.

  ‘Did you come across Bon Jovi?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  He turned his eyes away from the road. ‘You did?’

  ‘Yes, in the swimming pool.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Latvala.

  ‘At least, that’s who he looked like. And he was speaking English,’ she said.

  ‘Must have been him,’ said Latvala.

  ‘Maybe he was surprised because I was swimming naked. I hadn’t brought a swimsuit with me.’

  Olli Latvala laughed and turned his eyes back to the road ahead. He felt relieved, without being able to say why.

  Maybe because now he was sure that this woman was still taking part in real life, even if only by meeting a rock star in the swimming pool.

  72

  HE SAT BESIDE Tuulikki looking at the picture of two bodies under rubble.

  Tuulikki phoned a colleague and asked him to stand in for her at the meeting with the cameramen, and Joentaa called Grönholm’s mobile.

  ‘The collapse of the ice rink in Turku, early this year,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, what about it?’ asked Grönholm.

  ‘I’m sure you remember it.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘We need the names of the dead. A complete list. We could be looking for a father and son.’

  ‘Father and son?’

  ‘We have a photo here. The body of a man, a child with him. They could be father and son. At the moment it’s only a theory, but they’re lying … well, as if closely entwined. Anyway, we need those names. Ask Päivi Holmquist to help you with the research.’

  ‘Sure. Then is it … why is the ice rink suddenly part of the case?’

  ‘I’ll explain it all later. We need to move fast now, we’re near the solution.’

  ‘Right, I’ll get to work.’

  ‘Thanks. Call me as soon as you have something.’

  ‘I’ll get in touch,’ said Grönholm.

  ‘Do that,’ said Joentaa, and ended the call. Tuulikki got up and went to the screen with the still of the laughing people still flickering on it. And the picture of the woman in the middle who wasn’t laughing with the rest of them. Tuulikki began pressing keys and adjusting controls, and Joentaa called Sundström’s number.

  ‘Hello? Kimmo?’

  ‘Where are you at the moment?’ asked Joentaa.

  ‘In the TV station. Entrance hall, at the security check. I’ve just arrived.’

  ‘Then please come straight up to floor thirty-six.’

  Sundström said nothing for a few seconds. Then he asked, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m here in the TV building too, on the thirty-sixth floor, in the office of one of the cutters, her name’s Tuulikki.’

  ‘Tuulikki?’

  ‘And tell Westerberg.’

  ‘He’s right here with me.’

  ‘Then both of you come up. We have something here that you ought to see.’

  ‘Yes … right. We’ll be with you,’ said Sundström.

  ‘See you,’ said Joentaa, breaking the connection again.

  He looked at the two dead bodies lying in a sea of rubble and snow, against the background of a dark, starlit winter night.

  Behind his back, Mäkelä said, ‘How cute.’

  Tuulikki had changed the tape. ‘Identical,’ she said in a toneless voice.

  Hämäläinen laughed. Laughed at Mäkelä’s comment. The audience joined in.

  Joentaa turned to Tuulikki, and on the screen saw the puppet lying on a stretcher in the warm illumination of the spotlight.

  The dead don’t have faces, Vaasara had said.

  He thought of the moment that never ended, and the winter behind the panes of the glass tower was indistinguishable from last winter, when the roof of a skating rink in Turku had collapsed.

  73

  KAI-PETTERI HÄMÄLÄINEN was looking at Tuula as she carefully arranged the yellow Post-It notes in order, side by side or above each other. From time to time she rearranged them, or removed a note because the point mentioned on it wasn’t needed now. Kapanen, who had inflicted a gunshot wound on James Bond, had agreed to come only on condition that he wasn’t asked any questions about the soap opera in which he had begun his career.

  The politician who had dominated the headlines for several weeks on end, after snorting cocaine during a grand reception in Sweden, asked them not to touch on that subject, although it was the only reason why he had been invited to appear on the show in the first place.

  Several other Post-It notes found their way into the waste-paper basket, and Tuula said, ‘Makes no difference. Of course we’ll have to ask him about it, but you’ll make it arise naturally from the situation.’

  Arise naturally from the situation, thought Hämäläinen. ‘Of course,’ he said.

  ‘He’ll know it’s coming, he can’t be that stupid. He probably only wants to make sure you won’t be too hard on him.’

  ‘Yes, probably,’ said Hämäläinen.

  ‘I’ll let him know just before the show begins, say we came to the editorial conclusion that the subject had to be mentioned, but at the same time I’ll indicate that there’s nothing for him to worry about.’

  ‘Right,’ said Hämäläinen.

  Tuula laughed. ‘As if there was still anything to be hushed up. The man doesn’t seem to realise that it was the only reason for his popularity.’

  ‘Sometimes people don’t understand things,’ said Hämäläinen. He stared at the yellow notes, and after a while sensed Tuula’s eyes resting on him.

  ‘Good to have you back,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  He thought of the imps looking at him as if he were a stranger.

  He thought of Irene’s hesitant touch, and the trembling in her voice that only he could hear.

  He thought of the girlfriend of the gunman who ran amok, the girl who had said she could have helped him, she was sure she could.

  He thought of a night under neon lighting in hospital.

  ‘Good luck,’ said Tuula.

  He nodded.

  ‘After the show we’ll slip off and celebrate your return.’

  ‘Let’s do that.’

  ‘Sound check in five minutes?’ asked Tuula.

  He nodded.

  He could feel the make-up on his face.

  He sat there for a few more minutes, then he got to his feet, and as he went along the corridor towards the babble of voices growing steadily louder, he thought of the very tall man who had hidden in the shower and made the children laugh until, for a while, they had forgotten everything that frightened them.

  74

  THE WOMAN PASSES a soft brush over her face and says she really ought to do something about that, and she doesn’t understand what the woman means.

  ‘Your lips. They’re so rough, you ought to do something about it.’

  ‘Yes?’ she says.

  ‘I can’t deal with that here and now. It’s more of a long-term project.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says.

  ‘I can only cover it up a bit,’ says the woman, going over her lips with the brush. ‘That’s better. I can’t do any more. More colour, Ukko.’

  Ukko, a small, youthful-looking man, brings up a tray presumably holding the colours.

  She closes her eyes and feels the fibres of the brush on her cheeks again. Stroking, tickling.

  ‘We can make a reasonable job of this,’ says the woman. ‘You’re the very fair-skinned type. I can’t get rid of that, I can only mitigate the effect a bit.’

  She nods.

  Get rid of it, she thinks, mitigate the effect. She thinks about words, and behind her back Olli Latvala asks, ‘Everything okay here?’

/>   ‘Nearly through now,’ says the woman. ‘I can’t do much about the lips, but I’ve covered up the sore places.’

  ‘Good,’ says Olli Latvala.

  Then she walks down a corridor beside Olli Latvala to a large room. There are trays of open sandwiches and fruit on tables along the wall.

  ‘Help yourself,’ says Olli Latvala. ‘Would you like something to drink?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she says. ‘I’m not thirsty.’

  ‘By the way, you mustn’t take my colleague in make-up too seriously. Your lips are perfectly all right.’

  Music comes through loudspeakers.

  ‘Here we go,’ says Olli Latvala. ‘But we have a little time yet. You’d better make yourself comfortable, and I’ll come and fetch you at the right moment. Then, like I said, I’ll go just up to the stage with you, not beyond that. Okay?’

  She nods.

  ‘I’ll be back. By the way, the white baguettes with eel and chopped egg are particularly delicious. I can recommend them highly,’ says Olli Latvala. ‘And if Bon Jovi happens to burst in here, mind you don’t confuse him any more! He has to sing today.’

  He smiles.

  She likes his smile.

  Then he goes away, leaving her alone in the big room.

  75

  PAAVO SUNDSTRÖM AND Marko Westerberg were out of breath when they entered the room.

  Outside, the snow had turned to driving sleet, and frozen pictures were flickering on the screens.

  A puppet on a stretcher in a TV studio.

  And two bodies, a man and a child, under rubble in the snow. The man had only one leg. His eyes were closed.

  Sundström and Westerberg looked at the pictures for a long time, went back and forth between the flat screen and the computer monitor, and finally Sundström asked, ‘What is it?’

  ‘The photo is from the collapse of the skating rink in Turku. You remember, early this year, in February.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The dead man in the photograph looks very like that puppet. They’re practically identical,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sundström, looking at the puppet on the flat screen on the wall. ‘I see what you mean.’

  ‘The woman we’re looking for saw someone she was mourning lying on that stretcher. Not a puppet, she saw a man she knew. Mäkelä did justice to his own claim.’

  ‘Meaning?’ asked Westerberg.

  ‘He wanted to create a perfect imitation of reality. And he did. As the woman saw it, there was no difference. While the others were amused, she saw a real person lying on the stretcher, just as she’d seen him at the moment of his death, and … maybe she was in the skating rink herself, and survived the accident.’

  Sundström nodded without taking his eyes off the screen.

  ‘I also think she didn’t see the show on TV, I think she saw it here. She was in the studio audience.’

  ‘What?’ said Sundström.

  ‘Can we run the other tape again?’ he asked.

  Tuulikki nodded. She swapped the tapes, and wound the one now in the machine back to the place where eight people were laughing and one was not.

  ‘I think that’s the woman we want. The woman in the middle,’ said Joentaa.

  Sundström did not reply. He focused on the picture, his eyes narrowed.

  ‘That’s terrible,’ said Westerberg in the background.

  Sundström nodded. ‘I see what you mean. All the same, she could simply be a woman who found the whole thing rather less amusing than the rest of them.’

  ‘That may well be so,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘That woman looks … she looks dreadful,’ said Westerberg.

  ‘I’ve asked Petri to get together with Päivi Holmquist and dig up all the data about victims of the accident at the ice rink,’ said Kimmo Joentaa. ‘That ought to be the quickest way. There’s also a list of the people in the audience at the chat show, but it’s incomplete, and because there were no numbered tickets it will be difficult to identify the woman that way in a hurry. And as you rightly say, we can’t be sure about the woman in the audience.’

  Sundström nodded.

  ‘Petri will ring back soon and then we’ll know more.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sundström.

  Tuulikki had risen to her feet and was leaning over the computer monitor. ‘Who takes photographs like that?’ she asked.

  Joentaa, Sundström and Westerberg followed her gaze.

  The child was lying turned away from the camera, as if to hug the man, and one of the man’s hands rested on the child’s unnaturally flat body. In the light the camera had cast on it the picture looked as if the photographer had been fascinated by the scene.

  ‘Who takes photographs like that?’ Tuulikki asked again.

  76

  ALL EYES WERE on him. The cameras were turned on him. His legs were rather weak. He felt a smile on his face and sweat on his forehead. The button in his ear was working. The assistant stood a few metres away, both hands holding up the card showing his cues. The first presentation was waiting in the teleprompter. He had forgotten just what Tuula had written for him. He stood there at the centre of the world, searching for words.

  ‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘I’m very glad to be here this evening. And very glad that you … that you are here with me.’

  He turned to the bright red group of seats including the sofa where he was to welcome the first guest. It looked comfortable.

  Whatever Tuula had written for him had been different. Probably better.

  He sensed the camera on his back. He sat down. The full text of the presentation came up on the teleprompter. The cues were on the large piece of cardboard that the assistant was holding up.

  ‘A year is ending, a new year is beginning. We are here together to look back. We will try to discover what was important in the year just gone. Good enough or sad enough to accompany us into the New Year. The things that stand out from everyday life, creating memories that will stay with us. Things that we cannot forget, or do not want to forget, or ought not to forget.’

  He felt dizziness behind his forehead, and an impulse to wipe the sweat away from his hair.

  ‘I would like to say hello to my wife, who is usually in front of the television when I am on it. My most important and best critic. In fact, my only critic.’

  The audience laughed, and he laughed with them. The sweat on his body felt good.

  ‘And I’d like to say hello to my daughters. Hi, you two. See you after the show. Too bad if you can’t stay awake until midnight, because I have any amount of fireworks waiting.’

  More laughter from the audience. He felt their glances without being able to see the people. All he saw was the radiance of the spotlights.

  He had a feeling that he weighed less and less all the time, and he looked at the text of the first presentation on the teleprompter for a little while before he began to speak again.

  ‘And not least, of course, I would like to welcome my first guest. A man who felt the full force of happy chance in the year just past. This lucky person can boast of achieving the age of seventy-four, and he won the biggest jackpot in the history of the Finnish lottery. Welcome, Elvi Laaksola!’

  Applause burst out, and a white-haired man came towards him, looking unsure of himself rather than lucky.

  77

  A DEAD MAN in the snow, a puppet on a stretcher, a woman in the audience, and on the fourth screen Hämäläinen was talking to a winner who said he had been a loser all his life.

  ‘And now it’s too late,’ he said. ‘What am I supposed to do with all that money now? I don’t feel like travelling, and I can’t drive a car because of my eyes.’

  Hämäläinen smoothed over the situation with a joke.

  The audience laughed.

  The white-haired man remained waspish, and seemed unwilling to be disabused of the idea that winning the jackpot was an unreasonable imposition, the last thing he needed in his old age.

  ‘Very f
unny,’ said Sundström. ‘That’s how I’d like to be when I get old.’

  ‘Seriously?’ asked Tuulikki.

  ‘It was a joke,’ said Sundström.

  The monotonous ring tone of Joentaa’s mobile sounded. He took it out of his trouser pocket. ‘Petri?’ he said.

  ‘Hi, Kimmo. Well, we already have something,’ said Grönholm.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘When the roof of the skating rink collapsed, twenty-four people lost their lives. We have their names.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Can I fax them to you? Or if you can lay hands on a computer I’ll send you the list in an email.’

  ‘Do that. As soon as you can, please.’

  ‘Right,’ said Grönholm. ‘You’ll see that several of the victims had the same surnames. We haven’t gone through them yet to find two who might be father and son. We’re going to do that now.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘I’ll ring back as soon as I have news.’

  ‘One more thing: does the list include the names of injured victims who survived?’

  ‘Er, no.’

  ‘We need to know about them too.’

  ‘That could take more time. As far as I remember, there were quite a lot of them, and it’ll be a good deal more difficult to get a full list of those names.’

  ‘Try, please. And as soon as you find the name of a survivor that matches any of the victims let us know. We may be looking for a man and boy who died, and a woman who was among the survivors.’

  ‘Okay, we’ll get to work on it. More later,’ said Grönholm, breaking the connection.

  Joentaa turned to Tuulikki. ‘Can you reach Olli Latvala?’

  ‘I can try, but I’m afraid it’s not likely. He’s looking after the guests, and we have an enormous programme today.’

  Joentaa nodded. ‘He said there were names of at least some of the audience, and if they wrote ordering tickets those were sent by post. I’d like a list of any names.’