The Winter of the Lions

by Jan Costin Wagner

  Tuulikki nodded. She tried ringing Olli Latvala, but after a while she shook her head. ‘No good. He has ears for nothing but his headset right now, and the people taking part in this evening’s show.’

  Joentaa nodded. ‘Never mind. I have to call up an email. Is that computer connected to the Internet?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Tuulikki.

  Joentaa sat down in front of the monitor and minimised the photograph from Mäkelä’s CorpsesForDummies archive folder.

  ‘What was Petri able to tell us?’ asked Sundström.

  ‘They have the names of the dead. He’s sending a list.’

  ‘Maybe I’m rather slow on the uptake,’ said Westerberg, who had also come over to the computer, ‘but I don’t quite see the connection.’

  Joentaa opened the email that Grönholm had sent him; it contained no text, only an attached Word document.

  ‘The list must contain the names of the man and the boy you can see on that photograph.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Westerberg.

  Joentaa opened the attachment. Another list, he thought. First name, surname. No dates of birth yet. Mertaranta and Päivi Holmquist were working on that, because the age of the victims was important. They all leaned towards the screen and read:

  Leo Aalto

  Seppo Aalto

  Markku Aalto

  Petra Bäckström

  Sulevi Jääskeläinen

  Eva Johansson

  Ronja Koivistio

  Ella Kuusisto

  Lara Kuusisto

  Pentti Laakso

  Kielo Laakso

  Viola Lagerbäck

  Sipi Lindström

  Raija Lindström

  Ilmari Mattila

  Veikko Mattila

  Kaino Nieminen

  Tuomas Nieminen

  Arsi Peltola

  Urho Peltola

  Tuomas Peltonen

  Akseli Pesonen

  Tapio Pesonen

  Laura Virtanen

  Joentaa felt that at any moment he might come upon a name he knew. Someone he had met at some point and lost sight of, only to find him again on this list years later. But the names remained strange. Strange black characters on virtual white paper, on a monitor in a strange room. In alphabetical order.

  ‘Was Petri able to give us anything else?’

  ‘They’re still working on it, trying to make out which are the relevant names. I told him to look for a man and a boy, possibly father and son. He’ll be in touch as soon as they have anything new,’ said Joentaa.

  Sundström nodded.

  On one of the big screens on the glass wall, Hämäläinen was saying goodbye to the gloomy jackpot winner, and the white-haired man left the stage leaning on a stick.

  78

  THE WHITE-HAIRED man disappeared in the beam of the spotlights as if dissolving into mist, and the ski-jumpers who had just come on stage to resounding applause waved to the audience without changing expression. They looked rather comical in blue jeans and brightly coloured shirts, with their gold medals round their necks and their skis over their shoulders. Like children.

  Although one of them was in fact only sixteen, and sportsmen never had to grow up anyway, because they were not forbidden to play games or weaned off them; on the contrary, playing games was how they earned their money.

  He thought of Niskanen. Waiting for the result of the B test. Hoping against hope, flying in the face of logic, obsessed by an urge to tell lies upon lies, one after another, until he believed them himself. And when at last that urge had worn itself out you could always go to Ireland to breed sheep, cutting off the connection when your past was on the line.

  The ski-jumpers sat down on the comfortable sofas, and Hämäläinen lost his train of thought. The show was going well. The best thing about it was that he hardly had to pay attention. It just flowed on. He thought of the gunman’s girlfriend, and felt a slight pang, he couldn’t say just where. The pain wandered through his body, and he asked a question about the composition of skis for ski-jumping. Read it out from one of the yellow notes.

  One of the ski-jumpers answered, and he thought how clean everything was. So red and gold and dark blue and orange. So precisely adjusted, not a speck of dust in sight. The smooth parquet floor, the handsome desk at which he would sit later. Leaning a little way forward, not too far. Summoning up a smile, then wrinkling his brow. Then the smile again.

  The next question was about the fall in the penultimate round. When everything had suddenly been balanced on a knife-edge, and they no longer had a clear lead but were trailing slightly. The ski-jumpers laughed. They had come to terms with that past episode. The star among the victors explained how he had engineered the team’s triumph. A record jump in the last round, holding his attitude elegantly in the air over a distance that appeared physically impossible.

  Hämäläinen remembered. The microphone he had used for questioning the expert at the time, early in the year, during the live showing of the Finnish victory had been yellow, just like the notes in front of him now. Driving snow. The ski jump a monster, spewing out skiers like vermin. A flight of two hundred and forty metres through the air. Not bad for a human being.

  Hämäläinen had asked an expert how far this could go, would they be able to travel a kilometre or more through the air on skis some day, might that become a new and inexpensive mode of travel, and the expert had laughed, and the last man in the opposing team, previously in the lead, paid the price of nervous stress, failing in his flight like a bird whose wings had dropped off.

  He thought of Niskanen, leaned forward and smiled. The questions left his lips, and he heard his own voice sounding like a stranger’s.

  One of the ski-jumpers held up his medal to the camera, another made a joke in doubtful taste, then the four athletes went towards the mist, which swallowed them up, and Hämäläinen announced the summer hit by the rock band that the imps had liked.

  They’d probably be singing along at home, and Irene would join in, but only humming the tune, because she didn’t know the words.

  79

  SHE KNOWS THE song coming over the loudspeaker. It went gliding past her in a summer that she had seen disappear through a pane of glass.

  80

  ‘WE HAVE SOMETHING,’ said Grönholm.

  ‘Yes?’ asked Joentaa.

  ‘Got that list there?’

  ‘Yes, it’s here.’

  ‘Right, looks as if there was only one little boy among the dead. The names you probably want are Ilmari and Veikko Mattila.’

  Kimmo read the two names.

  ‘Father and son,’ said Grönholm. ‘The father was thirty-five, the son five, registered address in Turku, Asematie 19.’

  Name, address, date of birth.

  ‘However, so far we haven’t found anyone of that name among the injured. The name of Ilmari Mattila is still in the phone book, no one else is listed there.’

  Kimmo and Sanna Joentaa, he thought. And a number at which Sanna Joentaa could no longer be reached. In autumn a woman had rung trying to sell Sanna a magazine subscription.

  ‘Have you called the number?’ asked Joentaa.

  ‘Er, no.’

  ‘Let me have it.’

  ‘Just a moment.’

  Joentaa heard paper rustle, then Grönholm was back, dictating the number to him.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Joentaa, ‘I’ll call you back.’

  ‘Do we have something?’ asked Sundström.

  ‘A number,’ said Joentaa.

  He rang it.

  This is Veikko speaking. I’m not here. Papa isn’t here. Mama isn’t here either. See you later. Byeee.

  A child’s voice.

  ‘Well?’ asked Westerberg.

  And now the message for serious enquiries. A woman’s voice, slightly self-conscious, because she had felt it awkward to be sending a message out into nowhere. The child was laughing in the background. The woman gave the full names of the people mentioned by Veikko only as Papa
and Mama, and promised to call back as soon as possible.

  Then the sound of the signal.

  ‘Well?’ asked Sundström.

  Joentaa thought for a moment, then he typed the woman’s name into Google and looked for pictures. He recognised her at once, although she was a good deal younger in the photograph. She was wearing a fancy dress costume and standing at the wheel of a ship, with the sea and Naantali beach behind her.

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked Sundström.

  ‘Little My,’ said Westerberg. ‘Or at least, she’s dressed up as Little My.’

  Joentaa maximised the picture, which was illustrating a local newspaper article. It was about the beginning of a long-forgotten summer and the introduction of new attractions to Moomin World, like the ship. The woman in the photo was laughing heartily and seemed to be turning the ship’s wheel in a direction of her own choice.

  ‘But that … that’s the woman who was sitting in the audience, isn’t it?’ said Tuulikki.

  Joentaa nodded. He glanced at the screen on which the Finnish boy band were singing their summer hit. The catchy music seemed to be coming at them from several loudspeakers.

  His mobile rang.

  ‘We have something,’ said Grönholm. ‘Ilmari Mattila was married, but his wife kept her maiden name.’

  ‘I know,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘You do?’ asked Grönholm.

  ‘Who is that woman?’ asked Sundström.

  The applause was dying down. Hämäläinen’s voice came over the loudspeakers.

  ‘Salme Salonen,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘Salme Salonen,’ said Hämäläinen.

  ‘What?’ asked Sundström.

  ‘Salme Salonen,’ Joentaa repeated.

  ‘Welcome to our next guest, and I am particularly glad to have her here today … Salme Salonen,’ said Hämäläinen.

  81

  HE WAS SITTING at the desk in the beam of the spotlights. The wood of the desk was exquisite and clean. He felt the smooth paper of the note in his hands. The contrast was too great. He would have to discuss it with Tuula. First the summer hit, now this. Tuula liked such extreme contrasts.

  The woman was coming out of the mist towards him, to a background of applause. She had long red hair, held herself very upright, and seemed to be gliding as if on rails. She sat down opposite him and put her handbag on the empty chair beside her.

  The firefighter who had been one of the first on the scene of the accident would have to put the bag somewhere else when he came on stage in a little while, because he was to join the conversation and sit beside the woman. Hämäläinen decided how to deal with that little complication smoothly.

  ‘It’s a wonderful step that you have taken,’ he began. ‘I think I can speak for all of us here, and for all viewers who are watching on their screens at home, when I say it is a step that we deeply respect without being at all able to imagine how …’

  The woman smiled at him.

  He returned the smile.

  Later he wouldn’t be able to explain that moment, he could describe only what he felt, and even that only a few times.

  Before the intent gaze of his hearers, which was otherwise hard to interpret, he would explain that he had been unprepared for that moment of understanding, that he had never seen the woman before, and didn’t know what impulse had set it off. That he had looked into her eyes.

  And he had felt it was a perfect moment, a moment of pain and of beauty.

  82

  THE LAWYER ATE one of Salme Salonen’s biscuits, and had just been offering them to his guests. He thought she ought to have told him about this.

  She certainly ought to have told him she was going to appear on television to talk about the accident, about her husband and her son.

  The biscuit was really very good. Fireworks were going off out in the garden, laughing children were whirling sparklers about, and his guests, most of them other lawyers and their wives, were all talking about cases that had turned out well and other cases that had turned out just as well, and something strange was happening on the screen.

  His wife Kirsti was clearing the table, taking out the plates and the leftover food, and after a while she stopped and asked, through the buzz of voices, ‘Have we lost the sound, or are they simply sitting there saying nothing?’

  83

  ON THE SCREEN Kai-Petteri Hämäläinen and Salme Salonen were sitting opposite each other, and Sundström, Westerberg and their colleagues were deep in phone conversations which were notable for the fact that no one understood anyone else.

  ‘Get her!’ cried Sundström several times, but his colleague at the other end of the line didn’t take his meaning.

  ‘The woman on stage seems to be the person we’re after,’ said Westerberg, and his own officer too had questions to ask.

  ‘What do you mean, what woman? There’s only one woman on stage,’ said Westerberg.

  ‘Did we post anyone near the stage?’ asked Sundström. ‘What do you mean, you don’t know …?’

  ‘No. No, of course the guests weren’t searched for weapons, only the audience,’ shouted Westerberg.

  Joentaa sat beside Tuulikki and heard the voices of the other two as if in the distance. He didn’t understand why they were so upset. Their agitation was in stark contrast to the silence emanating from the TV screen.

  There was a pause.

  Hämäläinen sat there motionless.

  The woman sat there motionless.

  They were looking at each other, and seemed to have said everything even before the first word was spoken.

  84

  KAI-PETTERI HÄMÄLÄINEN looked at the woman, at the mist caught in the spotlights behind her, and beyond that at the silhouettes of the people watching and listening while the two of them said nothing.

  Instructions came through to him from time to time by way of his earpiece. The director’s rather hoarse but loud voice asking what the hell was going on. Hello? Hello, Kai-Petteri. Can you hear me?

  He looked down and let his eyes move over the questions that he wasn’t going to ask. Questions resting on the dark, smooth wood, spellbound there in cues and transitions between subjects on yellow Post-It notes. Mrs Salonen, you yourself were a victim of the accident in Turku on 17 February this year. Do you have a clear memory of what happened? How do you live with it? How long were you in hospital? How are you today?

  How much time had passed? He had no idea.

  Tuula was gesticulating in the mist, waving her arms in an uncoordinated way; it was impossible to work out what her signals meant.

  The woman on the other side of the desk was gazing past him into the far distance. She looked neither happy nor sad. He had never seen a more neutral face. He did not know this woman.

  Perhaps it was her dress. The shadow of a dress that he had seen.

  Perhaps it was the silence in her face.

  The very tall man appeared, emerging from the mist. He looked relaxed, and smiled encouragingly both at Hämäläinen and at the woman. He picked up her handbag and sat down on the chair which was really meant for the firefighter. Lightly, barely perceptibly he placed his hand on the woman’s left arm. The woman didn’t seem to notice it.

  ‘Do you have any children yourself?’ Hämäläinen heard himself asking him.

  The very tall man shook his head. ‘Unfortunately not,’ he said.

  Hämäläinen nodded. Advertising break, said the voice in his ear, adding that the show would go on in three minutes and fifty-eight seconds’ time.

  85

  HIS SON SAMI and Meredith, the daughter of a woman colleague of his, were rolling about on the floor in front of him, and he wondered vaguely why the daughter of two Finns was called Meredith, and when and in what circumstances you had to trace a sexual component in this kind of childish playfulness.

  He had read something on the subject only recently, an interesting article in a psychological journal, but he couldn’t remember the exact content of the article now, proba
bly because what was happening on the TV screen was distracting his thoughts.

  Now came the advertising break. A beautiful melody provided the background music for a car company’s inane advertising spot.

  ‘What was that about?’ asked Seppo.

  He turned to him and the other guests who were still sitting at the table, dipping their fondue skewers into the hot oil.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘That … that was a patient of mine.’

  ‘A patient of yours? On the Hämäläinen show?’ asked Seppo.

  ‘Er, yes.’

  ‘The lady who was sitting there just now?’ asked Sami, who was lying on the floor sweating and taking advantage of a moment when Meredith left him alone.

  He nodded.

  ‘No, don’t! Stop! Stop it!’ cried Sami, because Meredith had begun tickling him again.

  ‘How did she acquit herself?’ asked Seppo.

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘Your patient,’ said Seppo.

  ‘Oh. I … I don’t really know,’ he said.

  ‘Leave the box on, will you?’ said another guest. ‘Kapanen’s going to be on next. The actor. I’d be interested to see him.’

  He nodded, and decided to call Salme Salonen first thing in the morning.

  Then he stood up and went back to the table.

  86

  THE INTERVIEW, WHICH was still described as an interview over the next few days even though the two participants had not exchanged a single word, lasted two minutes thirty-four seconds. The following advertising break occupied four minutes.

  While the ads were running on screen, the very tall man led Salme Salonen off the stage. Hämäläinen watched them go, and thought they looked like a couple, leaning close together, the woman seeming to place her head trustingly on the man’s shoulder.

  Hämäläinen felt very calm, calmer than he had felt for a long time, and Tuula came on stage and asked what the matter was.

  He shook his head and said, ‘Nothing.’