The Healer

by Antti Tuomainen

  I closed the trunk and the driver’s door and locked the car. I walked toward Hamid. His face still stared straight ahead, like a wax mask behind the wet windshield, and I realized I might be able to find out Väntinen’s destination if I went back to where we’d left him.

  The body was lying on the trail in the position it had fallen. The gun had sunk into the sand. The rain had whitened the bones of his skull even more and had so wet his clothes through that they were becoming part of the mud on the ground beneath and around them. For the second time that evening I put my hand in a dead man’s pocket. The difference was that this time the coat had someone in it. I found a telephone, and dried it on my shirt as I went back to the cab.

  Hamid had turned the radio on, and the taxi was once again filled with the familiar, unknown language, pounding out a thousand words a minute to a hip-hop rhythm. Maybe Hamid was trying to get things back to normal. I couldn’t actually see the look in his eyes, so it may have been something else. I didn’t ask him yet where he’d learned to shoot so well—where he’d learned to kill people. Maybe he would tell me himself sometime. Maybe someday I wouldn’t be so deathly tired, and I’d have the energy to think more about it.

  Väntinen’s phone wasn’t password protected, and I went straight to his message files. I didn’t need to search long before I found what I was looking for.

  The train ticket was for one person, but it was clear from the message that there would be two other passengers in the group, and that they were leaving tonight.

  The departure time was in forty-six minutes.

  28

  The station plaza was buzzing and bathed in the raw, naked glare of floodlights. The light was so bright that it seemed to shine right through the people on its way to the ground. All around there were shouts, arguments, pleas, entreaties, and threats. Trains headed north every hour, but even that wasn’t enough to lessen the flood of people. More and more people kept coming from the east, the south, and the west. The market on the plaza teemed with ticket scalpers and purchasers of valuables, hundreds of thieves and swindlers with hundreds of tricks and swindles, and, of course, ordinary people, each one more desperate than the next. Every other person walking by seemed to be a cop, a soldier, or a security guard.

  The cries of children and the threats and demands of adults mixed into one big strain of panic. I ran with long, quick strides all the way to the station building, slowing only when I thought I’d come into the field of vision of the guards with their assault rifles. I got in line at the security checkpoint, tried not to think of the minutes lost, and looked around me.

  I knew very well that the two other passengers mentioned on Väntinen’s ticket could be someone other than Tarkiainen and Johanna. I didn’t see any familiar faces in the spectrum of races and nationalities. The only familiar thing was the fear and helplessness lurking in their eyes. It was clear to all of us that only a fraction of those departing would find any sort of tolerable work, housing, or even food in the north.

  Jaatinen was waiting for me as arranged. His face wasn’t quite as distracted and sour as it had been a few hours earlier, but he also hadn’t regained the self-assurance that had sustained him when we first met. Now he was a man who was clearly missing something, and he knew that it showed.

  “Track twenty-one,” he said, before I had a chance to greet him.

  I was about to continue straight to the platform when he grabbed me by the arm. His tight grip, just under my shoulder, brought me to a stop.

  “Tapani,” he said in a low voice. “If we do find Tarkiainen—”

  “We will find him, if we get moving,” I said, wrenching my arm loose.

  He took a couple of quick steps and stopped in front of me, his eyes boring into me.

  “If we do find Tarkiainen, I can’t arrest him.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “There’s a problem with the DNA results. To be precise, the problem is that the results are gone.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just darted around him and headed for the door. He followed me and kept talking, but I heard only a few fragments of what he was saying: the server, crashed, backup copies missing, catastrophe. Track 21 was far off ahead and to the left. There were nine minutes until departure.

  I made my way half-running through the heavy-looking suitcases, the backpacks stuffed full, and the people carrying them, some hurrying, some stuck in one spot. The hall under the high roof of the station was so full of noise that I could no longer hear Jaatinen’s footsteps, or my own, on the asphalt. I could smell food vendors and human desperation. It was Christmas Eve, but there was nothing there to indicate it.

  I passed whole countries and continents, crossed languages and dialects. Helsinki had finally become an international city. But this wasn’t how we had imagined it.

  Track 21 was jammed with people and their things, of course. The train stood at the platform, stretching out of sight. Väntinen’s seat was in car 18. I ran right to the edge of the platform, dodging the people waiting there. Jaatinen followed. We must have looked like two particularly inept tightrope artists as we tried to make our way along the narrow, empty edge as quickly as we could.

  I tried to count the cars as I ran. The mass of people hid the sides of the train from view, and counting them while performing my high-wire act was difficult. When I got to what I thought was car 16, I pushed my way back through the wall of people. A large, black-bearded man shoved me out of his way as I tried to look at the car number. I dodged the dirt-encrusted giant and the clinging smell of his sweat and waited for him to move on.

  Finally I saw the number. Fifteen.

  I continued along the platform with my shoulder almost brushing the side of the train and heard the last announcement to board in Finnish, English, Russian, and some other language. It became harder to walk along the outer edge of the platform and I had to push through the crowd to continue forward. In return I got shouts and a few shoves. An older, coal-eyed woman with a scarf on her head gave me a painful jab in the leg with the long metal tip of her umbrella.

  Car 18 was in front of me. I tried to see along its whole length. Jaatinen came up behind me. Before I had a chance to say anything, I heard him yell something and rush ahead. For a large, heavyset man, he moved quickly.

  My first glimpse of Tarkiainen’s face was in profile. Maybe he sensed Jaatinen running toward him. Maybe the look on his face changed ever so slightly. In a fraction of a second he made his decision, turned, and took off at a run. I ran after both of them.

  Jaatinen was about ten meters from Tarkiainen when a suitcase on the platform caught him in the legs. He let out a roar. His left knee was bent inward at a strange angle. He fell straight on his face with only his left hand to catch him. I could hear his wrist crack.

  I reached him as he held his injured knee and rolled onto his back. His face was frozen in pain. He curled his broken hand and pulled it toward his chest, then pulled his gun from its holster with his good hand and gave it to me. I didn’t say anything—I had no time to even think. I just took the gun and kept running.

  Tarkiainen jumped down onto the rails. I followed. I dropped off the platform and felt lactic acid already stiffening my muscles. My landing wasn’t a springy one, it was a thud and a stagger. But I kept my footing, heard the metallic voice announcing departing and arriving trains, and felt a tiny drop of rain on my skin. On the left I could see glass office buildings rising up, their black surfaces gleaming like water over ice.

  Tarkiainen had a head start, and I gulped for breath as I tried to catch up. He was approaching the grassy cliffs and old villas that lined the tracks at Linnunlaulu. The gun weighed heavy in my hand. With each step it was harder to carry. I got my run into a rhythm, matching my steps to the ties between the rails. Tarkiainen’s back loomed larger. The rain, the dark night, and the wan light of the rail yard made visibility hazy and blurred. The crossbeams of electrical poles floated above us like an unfinished roof.

  The co
ld, wet air tore at my throat and chest. When we reached the bridge at Linnunlaulu, where the rail yard narrowed between the stone cliffs, my legs felt very heavy. A commuter train arriving at the station rattled and wobbled on its tracks as it passed on our right. The tracks on the left were empty.

  As I passed the cut stone of the cliffs, I was only fifteen meters behind Tarkiainen. But my legs were like cement—I was slowing down. The pistol felt heavier and heavier in my right hand, and I made a decision. I released the safety, as Ahti had shown me, lifted my arm straight toward the sky, and pulled the trigger.

  Tarkiainen jumped, lost his balance, and stumbled. He looked behind him. I couldn’t speak, just aimed the gun at him. He stopped. I gasped for breath and concentrated on holding the pistol in front of me and holding myself upright. My lungs wanted me to bend over and rest my hands on my knees, or better yet fall to the ground and lie there on my back. For some reason, Tarkiainen wasn’t nearly as winded.

  “You must be Johanna’s husband,” he said, not seeming at all surprised.

  I nodded. I let my breathing level out and held the gun straight in front of me, although it was so heavy that my arm felt like it was going numb. I took a few short steps toward him. Not that I necessarily wanted to be any closer, but because moving hurt less and kept my legs from stiffening better than standing in one place.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked. “Shoot me?”

  I used all my willpower to calm my panting for a moment.

  “If I have to,” I said, and greedily sucked in some air.

  I was standing five or six meters away from him now. Another commuter train was already passing us on the right. It shook the ground and made my legs tremble. I could feel the deepest tones of the slamming sounds it made in my breastbone.

  “Listen to yourself,” Tarkiainen said, and repeated my words. “‘If I have to.’”

  His face was wet and shining, but otherwise appeared just as it did in the photos—confident and muscular, even handsome. There was an intelligent look in his eyes; his gaze was level, and his hair was short and modishly gelled. And there was nothing in his midlength coat, oxford shirt, jeans, and sneakers that my sense of style could find fault with. As he stood there on the railroad tracks, he looked like he could be posing for a fashion shoot: one of those spreads where they put pretty people in gritty environments—abandoned factories, old tradesmen’s shops, or, in this case, rail yards.

  My breathing was leveling out, but my legs were twitching and the arm that held the gun had lost all feeling.

  “You know what I’m looking for,” I said.

  Tarkiainen didn’t say anything.

  “Johanna,” I said, wiping the sweat and rain from my eyes with my free hand.

  Tarkiainen’s expression remained unchanged.

  “You seem to have already found Väntinen,” he said. I noticed he was looking at the gun in my hand. I glanced at it, too.

  It looked the same as the gun that I’d left in Väntinen’s hand, the one lying in the dirt, sinking into the mud of Keskuspuisto.

  I nodded and looked at Tarkiainen again.

  “Hopefully he got what he deserved,” Tarkiainen said.

  I nodded.

  “A savage. A sick shit,” Tarkiainen said.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Väntinen. As you know.”

  “And you’re not?”

  He shook his head.

  “Even though you participated in murdering whole families?”

  “Väntinen murdered them,” he said. “And he enjoyed it. I didn’t kill them. I just did what I had to.”

  “And what was that?”

  “There’s no need to pretend to be horrified or shocked,” he said. “You can be your own smart self and tell me you understand.” He paused a moment. “Because if you’re half as sharp as Johanna says you are, you do understand. You know very well that my purpose wasn’t to murder families. My purpose was to show that actions have consequences.”

  “Tell that to those little children.”

  “What are they going to miss?” he asked, and took a step sideways. I moved my hand, following him with the pistol. “Food running out, clean water running out, everything running out. They’re going to miss being slowly smothered, and eventually suffocated. What is there going to be that they would have got any pleasure from? Cannibalism? Plague? Everyone at war with everyone else on one gigantic trash heap?”

  “Maybe they should have been allowed to decide that for themselves,” I said, moving the gun a little to the left again. Tarkiainen took a few small side steps toward the outermost rail. There was nowhere for him to run.

  “That was the whole problem in the first place,” Tarkiainen said. His face was tense now, excited. “That everyone got to choose. Endlessly, with no limits. That’s why we’re here today. The two of us. You and I.”

  Another commuter train clattered and rumbled past on the right. Someone had to eventually notice two men standing on the tracks. Where were all the guards and soldiers and police I’d seen in the station?

  I glanced behind me. The station shone all the way through the rain, but it was likely no one there could see us in the darkness, half hidden by the rocks.

  “Where’s Johanna?” I asked in frustration.

  “What’s the rush? Let’s chat a little,” Tarkiainen said. A smile rose to his face. “Or you could always shoot me. Is that your plan? Or are you going to hand me over to the police?”

  I remembered what Jaatinen had told me. The evidence had disappeared. Tarkiainen couldn’t be indicted, or even arrested. If I told him that, he would walk away triumphant. Then I would have no choice but to shoot him. I didn’t think I had that in me. On the other hand, I had heard that there’s something in all of us that’s ready to do almost anything.

  “What do you want to chat about?” I asked, to win myself a few more seconds.

  “Don’t you want to know what this is all about?”

  “Väntinen told me. Greed. Business. Plus a taste for murder, I might add.”

  Tarkiainen shook his head, displeased.

  “None of those things,” he said decisively, as if we were on a talk show rather than standing on railroad tracks with a gun between us. “It’s about humanity, about what, in the end, is the right thing to do. Who do you think those murdered people were? Benefactors? Humanists? They were selfish, indifferent narcissists. They were the real murderers.”

  A short, dry laugh erupted from behind his tight smile.

  “There’s no other name for them. Even after they knew about the destruction they were causing, they kept doing it. They kept murdering—by lying. The worst thing is the deceit. All that talk about being friends of the environment, about ecology, respecting nature. As if electronics wrapped in plastic or cotton irrigated with drinking water could ever be anything but a detriment, the cause of the destruction, replacing something irreplaceable with a pile of trash.”

  He took another step toward the outer rails. I followed him, stepping over one tie, then another. He continued talking, his voice rising: “You’re an intelligent guy. You don’t really believe that eating organic food or driving a hybrid car could solve the problem, do you? Or buying environmentally friendly products? What does that even mean? Why do marketers use Soviet-style language? That’s like talking about liberation through communism. Do you understand, Tapani? We’ve been living in a dictatorship. Shouldn’t dictators be opposed?”

  He was standing next to the outermost track now. I had been listening and watching him without speaking. The ground started to tremble, and I glanced behind me. Another train had left the station. It would reach us within a minute.

  “We’re in free fall, Tapani. All we can do now is what our heart tells us is right. Defend what is good, even if we know it’s too late.”

  The train shook the earth. I could hear steel against steel, the wheels screeching against the tracks.

  “I’m on the side of good, Tapani. There was
a time when I strove for nothing less than saving the world. Now that the world can’t be saved, I have to make sure that good continues to live for as long as evil and selfishness does. Maybe justice isn’t winning, but it’s not completely gone.”

  The train let out a long, low warning sound. I lifted the gun, not knowing why. The train was almost upon us. I took a couple of steps backward and looked in Tarkiainen’s direction again. He was standing in front of the train, in the middle of the tracks, lit up by its headlight. The low warning blast echoed from the rocks. Then the train passed just two meters from me and I couldn’t see him anymore. I lowered my gun.

  When the train and all its cars had roared past and its noise had faded, I looked warily across the rail yard. I directed my gaze to where I had last seen Tarkiainen and prepared myself to see … what? Pieces of a person, the white bone, the varicolored internal organs?

  I saw coarse gravel, railroad ties, and the rails, shining in the night. When I raised my eyes higher I saw a tall fence, and beyond that a taller wall of rock glistening with rain. I looked to the side at the retreating rear of the train, and then that, too, was gone. All that was left were the tracks, reaching into infinity.

  I looked in the other direction and saw the rail yard, the tracks like a vast steel web, and the brightly lit station on the horizon, shining like the world’s largest campfire, burning steadily even through the veil of rain. No trace of Pasi Tarkiainen.

  I turned around several more times. All I got was freezing rain in my eyes. The cold took its numbing hold on my body again. Finally, I shoved the gun in my coat pocket and walked back toward the station.

  Someone was jumping from the platform onto the tracks and coming toward me with quick steps, every third or fourth step ending in a treacherous stumble. I recognized the walk—eager, decisive. The grayish-blue coat, which was hanging slightly crooked, and the baggy black pants were familiar. There was something strange about the hands though, held straight out in front like that, not swinging from side to side for balance. When I could make out the hair and face, I was sure. The hair was dirty and tangled, the face pale and wet. From closer up, I could see a bloody scratch on the right cheek and a dark blotch on the chin. Lips dry and cracked. I could see the plastic tie around the wrists now and the feverish light of complete exhaustion—but also persistence and strength—in the eyes as they fastened on me again and again.