I was being watched.
The wind had turned cold again.
Harmala soon came back onto the dock. His light-coloured jeans, white tennis shoes, and dark blue Henry Lloyd warm-up jacket made him look like a member of a yacht club.
‘What did you say your name was?’ he asked.
‘Aleksi Kivi.’
‘Really? Isn’t that the writer?’
‘That’s Aleksis Kivi, with an s on the end. My mother was an avid reader of Finnish literature.’
‘Have we met before?’
‘Never.’
I didn’t have to lie. We had never met. I had just followed him for miles by car and on foot whenever he was with Saarinen. He took hold of the wheelbarrow handles and thought for a moment.
‘Who interviewed you?’
‘Elias Ahlberg.’
‘Of course. I’ve got to go and get the rest of the stuff. It was nice to meet you. See you around.’
The wheels of the barrow bumped over the boards of the dock until he reached the shore and then were silent.
‘See you,’ I said.
I walked for an hour in the woods and around the grounds. When I got back to the house and my apartment I cleaned and did the laundry. I lay in bed and read a book. Now and then I got up and looked out of the window. I didn’t like my thoughts, what I was feeling, who my mind kept returning to.
The evening darkened and the sun crept to the horizon in varied hues of red. The strip of sky turned pink for a moment, then almost immediately a deep violet, and then the horizon was gone.
At ten-thirty I fell asleep.
Henrik Saarinen and Markus Harmala left early on Monday morning. I didn’t see Amanda. Enni got in her dark blue Škoda around noon, said she wouldn’t be back until Saturday evening, and drove away. I did my day’s work under a cloudless sky in still autumn weather and ate dinner in the kitchen of the main house. After dinner I walked from one quiet room to the next and ended up in the library. I turned on a lamp, looked at the books on the shelves, and eventually sat down in an imposing leather armchair. The leather was brown, worn soft as flannel in places. It quickly warmed under me. My phone rang and I took it out of my pocket.
‘Hello Aleksi.’
Ketomaa’s voice sounded familiar and far away. There was something touching about it. It felt like a memory that you know you have but don’t want to let into the light of day, because you know it will be painful, will turn out to be something other than what you think.
‘Hello.’
‘Am I calling at a bad time?’ Ketomaa asked.
‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘I’ve got my feet up.’
Ketomaa cleared his throat.
‘It’s been a while. Months. How are you?’
‘Very good.’
‘Very good? That’s all?’
‘Yep,’ I said.
‘Are you sure?’ Ketomaa said, and I didn’t need him to explain what he meant. I wondered what he would say if I told him about my job. Or that I was sitting in Henrik Saarinen’s library. I’d often thought since I’d come here that at some point I would have to tell Ketomaa where I was and what I’d found out. If I did find anything out. If not, there would be no reason to tell him.
‘Are you getting used to being retired?’
‘It has its good side. At first I wondered what the hell I was going to do with all my time, of course, but my days seem to fill up. Either that or I’m slowing down. A trip to the barber’s takes all day. But I suppose I should be grateful I have some business to give a barber.’
‘Indeed,’ I said.
‘And I haven’t completely given up investigating,’ Ketomaa said. ‘A little exercise keeps the mind alert. I’m freelancing these days. Doing some work for insurance companies and individuals.’
I didn’t say anything.
‘Of course it’s mostly following unfaithful wives and husbands and catching insurance scammers, but I think of it as a hobby. Or I guess hobby’s the wrong word, since it pays more than police work ever did, if you count it by the hour.’
He was quiet for a moment. Maybe he was waiting for me to say something.
‘It sounds as if everything’s going well,’ I said. ‘That’s good to hear.’
As I spoke my eyes wandered over the bookshelves. They stopped at a thin volume of poetry.
‘Are you still working as a carpenter?’ I heard Ketomaa ask.
I got up from the chair and took two steps towards the bookshelves. They were full, but well-organised. On the shelf at eye-level were several books of poems.
‘Hello?’
My gaze fastened on a thin, blue-covered book. I reached for it, and only understood my own words once they were out of my mouth.
‘A caretaker.’
I stopped. Ketomaa didn’t speak for a second.
‘A caretaker?’ he asked.
How had I lost the thread for that second? What had happened to my mind? It was a feeling like the one I’d had at that moment in front of the television long ago, and a few days ago sitting across from Saarinen.
A dark room that I had to get out of.
I took hold of the book. My hands were shaking. The book, not much larger than a wallet, fell to the floor with a slap.
‘Aleksi, are you all right?’
I picked up the book.
‘You said you’re a caretaker? Where?’
His voice had taken on that all-too-familiar tone. Somewhere between teacher and scold, with more than a touch of I expected more from you. I put the book on the table. Ketomaa must under no circumstances know where I was. I knew what he might do. Come here, blow my cover, thinking it was for my own good, that he was helping me.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I was just thinking about my building caretaker. I need to get in touch with him.’
Ketomaa was silent for a moment.
‘Aleksi, It was my job to listen to people lie for forty years. I’m familiar with all the variations. Fibs, white lies, half-truths, and bald-faced falsehoods. That last one can be ruled out in your case. What does that leave us?’
I tried to concentrate.
‘Honest,’ I said. ‘I’m doing the same work I’ve always done. Carpentry. Repairs and renovations.’
There was a low sigh on the other end of the line, like the steady leak from a tyre.
‘Fine,’ Ketomaa finally said. ‘Doing what you’ve always done. Got it.’
The book’s cover was familiar. I remembered seeing it on my mother’s bedside table. Of course you could find Eino Leino’s poems in almost any Finnish home, but this edition was a rarer one. There were scuffs on the cover that I seemed to recognise.
‘Same as always,’ I said.
Why were my fingers trembling? I opened the thin volume, flipped through it. Familiar underlines in thin, black, ballpoint pen.
Ken yhtä ihmistä rakastaa,
se kaikkia rakastaapi.
Ken kerran voi itsensä unhoittaa,
se unten onnen saapi.
He who loves one other soul
will love all others, too,
And he who once forgets himself
will make his dreams come true
‘Aleksi?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Should we meet sometime?’
I turned to the first page.
Thin, black ballpoint pen.
Sonja Merivaara. My mother.
‘Aleksi?’
I hung up the phone, sat down in the chair. I opened the book to a random page. One lone underline.
… dark as my heart …
I couldn’t swallow, couldn’t speak.
I was driving well above the speed limit. My new Volvo V60 could easily do 180 km/h. The night was dark on either side of the road, the lit asphalt like a tunnel in space.
I knew that it might all be a coincidence. My mother’s possessions, including her books, had all been donated somewhere. It might very well be that some of her books had ended up at a second-hand bookshop an
d were now owned by many people. And since it was twenty years ago, the book I’d found might have changed hands several times.
I looked at the book on the passenger seat. One of my mother’s favourites. A book she had written her own name in. Handwriting I would have known anywhere, at any time, from just one word. I remembered something Amanda had said.
Do you believe in coincidences?
No. Not now, if I ever really did.
I passed two lorries.
My hands weren’t shaking any more. My eyes were dry. My foot on the accelerator was relaxed and sure.
I knew that Ketomaa would get in touch with me again soon. I knew he meant well. I was further along than ever before, closer than ever, but still with such a slender thread that it wouldn’t be proof to anyone but me. I could almost see Ketomaa’s exasperated, weary look if I saw him and pulled the book out of my pocket and showed him my mother’s name. I could almost hear what he would say.
The man collects books. That’s not a crime.
I braked a little to avoid rear-ending a bus. It took half a minute to carefully pass it. When the bus finally slid back into its lane like a boat into a slip, I floored the accelerator again.
JUNE 2013
I SAW KETOMAA a few months before I started working at Henrik Saarinen’s estate. I’d been quizzed by Elias Ahlberg twice and it looked as if I was going to be their choice for caretaker. I didn’t mention the job to Ketomaa. We had more important things to talk about. At least I thought we did.
‘Every ten years?’ Ketomaa said.
‘My mother disappeared in 1993,’ I said. ‘Tanja Metsäpuro disappeared, was murdered, in 2003.’
Ketomaa gave me a sideways glance. We were walking in Kaisaniemi Park. In the pure, leafy green, the park’s reputation for rape and robbery felt like a distant possibility.
‘Where to begin,’ Ketomaa said. ‘Maybe with the fact that there is no indication of a connection between the two cases. And before you say anything, of course I understand that you see such a connection. Your mother and Tanja Metsäpuro were the same age, of similar appearance, and a few other weak links would otherwise seem to connect them, but that’s a far cry from proof of a single perpetrator, let alone one who acted in any systematic way. It’s purely theoretical …’
He glanced at me again.
‘And you look as if you’re not telling me everything.’
We came to a small side path with views over the bay to Siltasaari. The Baltic shone blue, the rays of the sun bouncing off the windows of the row of buildings on the shore. Ketomaa sat down on a park bench, and so did I. Half a metre of summer wind and fresh sea air lay between us.
‘I tried to tell you. This is 2013. Something’s going to happen.’
‘Because you feel it will,’ Ketomaa said slowly.
‘Yes.’
‘Can you tell me why?’
I leaned my back against the bench. Ketomaa was a man of facts, concrete realities. I wasn’t going to tell him that there was something about the dates that seemed fateful, like it had when I’d seen Henrik Saarinen’s golden-brown face on television. I arranged my words carefully.
‘It takes time to find the right person. When the person is found, she can’t be killed immediately. She has to be made to trust, to believe that they share a wonderful secret. She has to fall in love, to be full of hope. She has to be conquered. So that when the murder happens, it’s all taken away from her. That’s what gives Henr—… or whoever it is, satisfaction.’
I turned towards Ketomaa as I spoke. He had a way of looking and listening that gave a person a peculiar feeling, as if someone were finally hearing every word your heart had to say. It was an old policeman’s trick he had. For all I knew he could be thinking about the crossword in this morning’s newspaper and all the while looking as if he was completely in the here and now.
‘The ten years between my mother’s disappearance and Tanja’s murder isn’t random. The victims were random, but not the time. He’s systematic. He enjoys it. He’s a man who sets goals and achieves them. He stays on schedule. The pressure of keeping to a timetable is part of the enjoyment. That pressure came to bear on Tanja’s disappearance. You can see it in the crime in all sorts of ways.’
Ketomaa’s eyes were like two soft, blue pillows. I continued.
‘You know what I’m talking about. You must remember the Hyvinkää case from the early nineties. The killer was never caught. That tells you that a person can do a thing like that and get away with it, come out without a scratch. That applies to my mother’s disappearance even more than the Hyvinkää case. Because her body was never found. Another example of that kind of compulsion is that guy in Oulu who raped and strangled three women in exactly the same way, right after being released for the very same crime. This unknown person we’re talking about, the one who murdered my mother and Tanja, shows the same behaviour. He does it because he has to, but since he’s an organised, systematic person who’s used to success, he doesn’t act blindly, and he doesn’t get caught.’
Ketomaa looked out over the bay. A gust of wind wrinkled the water.
‘I see you’ve boned up on these matters,’ he said. ‘In both of the cases you mention, your interpretation is correct, in a way.’
A pair of wild ducks waddled up to our bench side by side and stopped a few metres off with deeply disappointed looks. They must have seen that we didn’t have any bread.
‘The Hyvinkää killer is either in jail for some other crime or dead,’ Ketomaa said. ‘Otherwise the crimes would have continued. That’s clear. The guy in Oulu has a compulsion, of course. He’s released after a few years and then he’s compelled to rape and kill again. You don’t have to be a detective or know much about their backgrounds to see what’s happening. Anyone could understand it. In those cases. The problem with trying to connect these two cases is that you have to create facts that don’t correspond to reality. It’s a bit like taking your favourite scenes from two movies and trying to combine them to create a movie that perfectly suits your taste. The pieces won’t fit together.’
‘What does correspond to reality? What would fit together? If there’s nothing in the known facts that explains my mother’s disappearance and Tanja’s death, then there must be some explanation that hasn’t occurred to anybody for some reason.’
Ketomaa sighed.
‘Every ten years,’ he said.
‘I’m sure of it,’ I said.
He sharpened his gaze.
‘So?’
‘So what?’
‘This is 2013. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought any further than that.’
Should I tell him that I would soon be working on Henrik Saarinen’s estate? Should I tell him about the certainty that had grown inside me? About the fact that deep down I was sure that in 2013 someone was going to die at the hands of the same man who had murdered my mother? Or rather, they would die, if someone didn’t prevent it from happening.
I turned to look at the water and for the first time in my life I lied to Ketomaa.
‘I haven’t thought of anything else other than what I just told you.’
SEPTEMBER 2013
COMING INTO HELSINKI had always been a homecoming. I couldn’t help but feel it. It didn’t matter how long I’d been away or where I was coming from. When I passed Tarvaspää and Munkkiniemi on the highway from the north, it felt as if I’d made it safely through, as if I’d arrived. But the feeling would fade as quickly as it came over me. As I drove deeper into the city proper I usually didn’t feel anything. Usually. This time I did. And it was not at all a joyful return.
I passed the Hietalahti shipyards, turned onto Tehtaankatu, parked in a paid spot and walked a few hundred metres. I could see the lights shining from the third floor of Saarinen’s apartment. I took a few more quick steps towards the building and stopped. I stood on the odd-numbered side of the street and tried to sink into the shadows, towards the darkness. In front of the building, on the other side of
the road, was Amanda’s black, custom Range Rover.
The air was cool, the time nearly midnight. A couple came around a corner, a man and woman, probably in their forties, and expensively dressed. I felt their curious looks as they walked by, pausing in their conversation and continuing it once they were a safe distance past the strange man in the shadows.
As I looked up at the third floor I thought about my options, about what I’d decided on the drive here: I wasn’t going to take my eyes off Saarinen again; I would dig the truth out of him no matter what it took.
A tram approached from the direction of the shipyards, sliding through the night, weirdly silent, and passing the empty tram stop as if in a dream.
The street door opened. I pressed deeper into the shadow of the courtyard passageway and watched as Amanda Saarinen stepped onto the street and headed towards her car. Right after her came a man whom I recognised as Markus Harmala. Amanda was wearing a short black dress and high heels. Her arms were bare in spite of the coolness of the night. She nearly ran to the car and Harmala followed.
Harmala glanced around. He was dressed in black leather shoes, black suit trousers, and a bright white, button-up shirt. Amanda was rummaging in her bag. Every other step she took was too short or too long. Harmala caught up with her and said something that I couldn’t hear. Amanda swung her bag at his head. He easily dodged it and tore it out of her hands.
Harmala dug through the bag and apparently found what he was looking for. His hand went straight to his trouser pocket. He threw the bag back to Amanda and said something. I couldn’t make out the words, but Amanda could. Her body stiffened, her back straightened, and she stood firmly on her feet. The hand holding her bag flew in a swift right jab.
Harmala must have been as surprised by her quickness and accuracy as I was. The first punch was followed by another, a hook this time, and the bag whacked Harmala in the face again, but she didn’t surprise him the third time. He caught the flying bag in the air with his left hand, and raised his right.
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