‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘You’re welcome,’ she replied.
In the waiting room the news had been running on a TV screen. He’d had to look almost vertically up to see it.
The photograph had shown Salme S. with red hair, wearing a strange costume. A newsreader mentioned that the picture had been taken several years ago. As yet little was known about the background, said the objective voice. The investigating authorities were holding a press conference at 14.00 hours, which would be transmitted live.
‘Just a moment …’ said Nuutti Vaasara.
‘Yes?’ asked the nurse.
‘Could you make them a little looser? Because I … I probably ought to work today.’
‘Work? But this is New Year’s Day. I thought only people like us worked today. What do you do?’
‘I’m a puppet-maker.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Marionettes?’
‘Something like that.’
‘My little daughter loves puppet plays. We had a puppet theatre recently in our parish hall. Classical stuff. Punch and Judy, Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf.’
Vaasara nodded.
‘Do you really have to work today? You ought to take it easy for a while.’
‘I know. It’s just that I’m under pressure of time.’ Because Harri is dead, he was going to add, but then he bit back the words.
‘Let me have a look,’ she said, and began loosening the bandages round the palms of his hands and freeing his fingers. ‘Better?’ she asked after a few minutes.
‘Yes, thank you,’ he said. He stretched his fingers and clenched them into a fist. ‘Yes, that should be all right.’
She smiled. ‘Take care. And all the best,’ she said, and he thanked her again before he left. Photographs of the forensic pathologist and Harri were flickering on the TV screen as he crossed the entrance area. He stopped to watch for a little while. The photos disappeared, the announcer came on. Then there was a landscape of palm trees with dead bodies. They were carefully lined up in front of the wreck of a crashed plane. The bodies were covered with something shiny, but some of their arms were sticking out.
Nuutti Vaasara turned away from the pictures on the screen and went home. The low-built blue house looked strange with the snow piled high. Newspapers, letters and advertising brochures lay scattered around outside the door. He opened it and went in, making his way straight through the dividing door and down the passage to the studio.
The clown puppet which had startled that policeman Joentaa so much was leaning up against the wall. The policeman had probably been upset because the clown was holding the model of a dead man. Vaasara stood there for a while undecided, then he took the puppet out of the arms of the clown and laid it against the opposite wall, in a corner where it was hardly visible.
A middle-aged woman lay on the workbench. A drowned body. The puppet on which Harri had been working in the days before his death. The job was urgent, because the deadline for shooting that scene in the film was only two weeks away. The production company had called, and Vaasara had promised to deliver the puppet in time.
He went up to the workbench and stood motionless there too for a while. He felt reluctance, awe, a joy that he couldn’t explain, and a fear that had been with him for days.
He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. Then he bent over the lump of material in front of him and, carefully and with concentration, began completing Harri Mäkelä’s last puppet.
92
KIMMO JOENTAA DROVE back to Turku about midday to help Grönholm. Sundström stayed in Helsinki to appear at the press conference with Westerberg and a representative of the state prosecutor’s office. Heinonen had reported himself off sick for another day.
When he reached the outskirts of Turku, Joentaa bypassed the city centre and made for the Klosterberg. He knew the Children’s Home. Sanna had pointed its lemon-yellow building out to him, years ago, when they had been going for a winter walk on a sunny day like this.
He had only a vague recollection of the conversation, but Sanna had wondered whether it was sensible to have children of your own when there were so many growing up with no parents. He had only nodded, and tried to look interested, because at the time he had not felt any connection with the subject, whether the children in question were his or someone else’s.
He walked uphill and saw the children racing past him on their toboggans. When he entered the brightly lit front hall, a young woman asked him his business. He showed his ID and asked to see whoever ran the Home.
‘Pellervo Halonen,’ said the woman. ‘Come with me and we’ll see if he’s here.’
They found Pellervo Halonen in a large room where children were playing and looking at books. The young woman fetched him out of a conversation, and Halonen quickly came towards him. His handshake was firm, and the expression on his face reminded Joentaa of the eternal confidence of the face of Niemi, head of the scene-of-crime team.
‘Good afternoon,’ said Pellervo Halonen, leading him into the corridor out of earshot of the children. They faced each other, and the confidence drained away from Pellervo Halonen’s face as he said, ‘I know why you’re here. Salme Salonen.’
Joentaa nodded.
‘I wish it hadn’t happened,’ said Halonen.
Joentaa nodded again.
They said nothing for a while.
‘She talks about a little girl living here,’ said Joentaa at last. ‘A child who lost her parents in … in the accident at the skating rink. Rauna.’
‘Yes,’ said Halonen.
‘Mrs Salonen said she wanted to adopt Rauna.’
‘Yes, she did,’ said Halonen. ‘But permission wasn’t forthcoming. Mrs Salonen was considered too … too unstable. She hasn’t worked since the accident. I had a feeling that Mrs Salonen mattered a lot to Rauna, that’s why I was always glad when she came to see her. They went through the whole thing together – the accident, I mean.’
‘I know,’ said Joentaa. ‘Mrs Salonen … described it.’
Halonen nodded.
‘Has Rauna heard anything about what’s happened?’
‘No,’ said Halonen. ‘And she won’t in the immediate future. Of course she will ask where Mrs Salonen is. She came to visit Rauna here at least once a week.’
Joentaa nodded. ‘I hope you’ll be able to help Rauna and … and find the right way to explain to her.’
‘So do I,’ said Halonen.
‘I don’t want to speak to her now – there wouldn’t be much point in that,’ said Joentaa. ‘I simply wanted to form a picture in my mind.’
Halonen nodded, and seemed relieved. ‘I’m glad you see it like that. Incidentally, she has a visitor at this moment. Over there, doing a jigsaw puzzle, that’s Rauna.’
Joentaa followed his eyes, and saw the little girl, kneeling on a chair, elbows on the table as she contemplated the pieces of the jigsaw. There was an elderly man sitting beside her, and now and then Rauna laughed when he said something. Joentaa could hear their voices, muted by distance.
‘A neighbour of Salme Salonen’s,’ said Halonen. ‘Aapeli Raantamo. I had a long talk to him, and thought it all through, but he insisted that he wanted to see Rauna. And she was pleased. They went on an outing together a few days ago, he and Rauna and … and Mrs Salonen.’
Joentaa nodded, and looked at the girl and the old man. He seemed to be extremely sad and extremely happy at the same time.
‘Done it!’ cried Rauna, and Aapeli clapped his hands. Then she said something that Aapeli didn’t appear to understand, and Rauna’s explanation came over loud and clear. ‘The lions, of course, silly! The other lions. And I’ll steer the ship, not that man with the long beard.’
Aapeli laughed, and Rauna held an invisible but impressively large ship’s wheel in her hands as she spoke.
93
THAT EVENING KIMMO Joentaa sat in an empty house and watched the children out on the lake, playing ice hockey in the pale moonlight.
The game seemed to be endless. After a while Joentaa began keeping track of the score. It was an evenly balanced match, although he had realised that only late in the day, so he didn’t know whether one team already had a clear lead or not.
The game never flowed smoothly; there were constant discussions, and now and then players sat down on the ice at the rim of the playing area, presumably sent to the sin bin for two minutes, and Joentaa wondered where the referee making these decisions and timing the penalty period was. He couldn’t see anyone. Goals were being scored all the time.
Finally one side was jubilant, its team members hugging one another, and the other side collapsed, exhausted. The game was over.
A few minutes later they all came off the ice together, shouting greetings to each other before running off home in different directions. Joentaa recognised Roope, the boy from one of the houses nearby, and the goalie, who was wearing an unsuitable cycle helmet, came up to the window where he was standing. The goalie knocked at the glazed door to the terrace, and as he opened the door Joentaa thought he must be suffering from some kind of delusion.
‘We won,’ said Larissa. She took off her skates, threw the helmet down on an armchair, and ran her hands through her hair. ‘Twenty–eighteen. Great game.’
‘Oh …’ said Joentaa.
‘I’m sweating like a pig. I’ll go and shower.’
‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.
She pulled her sweater off over her head, ‘Everything okay with you?’
‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.
‘Great. Be with you in a moment.’
She took off her trousers, and was halfway to the bathroom when Joentaa said, ‘But eighteen goals against you – that’s a lot.’
‘It’s winning that counts,’ she said without turning round.
‘Only joking,’ he said. ‘Hang on a moment.’
‘What is it?’ she said. ‘I need to shower.’
‘If you’d told me you were an ice-hockey goalie, I’d have thought that was guaranteed to be a lie,’ said Joentaa.
She studied him for a long time.
Then she turned away and went into the bathroom.
Joentaa heard the rushing and pattering of the shower.
When she came back, he was lying stark naked on the sofa, arms reaching out to her ostentatiously, with a silly grin on his face.
She seemed baffled, and frowned. ‘Er … Kimmo,’ she said.
He laughed at her confused expression for several minutes before joy finally overcame him, and he began to shed tears.
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First published with the title Im Winter der Löwen in 2009 by Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurt am Main
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