I remembered something.
‘Those things are still in the car.’
‘Of course they are,’ he said, smiling again. ‘That’s fine. And the car’s staying here. I’m getting a lift into town with Ketomaa.’
I was finally completely awake.
‘The private eye?’
The black sunglasses hid his expression, the changes in his face, what his words really meant, what was left unsaid. I felt like tearing them off his face so I could see the truth.
‘Yes. Why does that surprise you?’
Which of us was pretending the most? Which one knew that the other one knew that he knew something the other one didn’t know?
‘I was just thinking about our errand this morning. And the car. That’s all.’
‘All in good time,’ Saarinen said. ‘And that time is still to come. And it shouldn’t matter to you. You work for me. If I say you have the rest of the day off, then you have the rest of the day off.’
‘Of course.’
‘That’s what power is. That’s something else we’ll talk more about later. Enjoy the afternoon.’
He turned. His soft, quick movement was familiar to me. It still chilled me. I stood in the doorway and watched him as he went down three steps, stopped, turned again. The sunglasses reflected the brightness around him and made him a peculiar mixture of face and landscape.
‘Why does Ketomaa provoke these emotions in you?’
‘Emotions?’
‘Insecure, awkward. Is it him, or the type of person he represents?’
‘I didn’t notice feeling insecure …’
‘I noticed. I notice things like that. Ketomaa is well-known to me. Don’t worry. He’s under our control now.’
The black sunglasses looked in my direction a moment longer, then Saarinen went down the stairs and disappeared around the corner of the house.
I closed the door and went to the window. Ketomaa walked to his car and stood with his back to me. His neck was thinner, the skin even paler than the last time I’d seen him. Henrik Saarinen folded himself into the car; Ketomaa stood beside it for a second. He turned his head only slightly, but it was enough. I knew that he knew I was watching him. A moment later he had lowered himself into the driver’s seat, the Citroën started up, and he drove away.
I didn’t have many options. I could demand an accounting of everything that was unclear to me, unjust, wrong, but there was no one who was the slightest bit obligated to tell me anything. Losing my self-control, surrendering my power to the undirected rage boiling inside me would spoil my chances. It would destroy my opportunity to find out the one thing I came here to find out.
I took a breath and decided to fall back on the tactic that had got me this far – my patience, my ability to wait for the right moment. It didn’t just feel right, it also gave me an idea that I instantly latched onto.
A young criminal investigator Ketomaa had mentioned in connection with Tanja Metsäpuro was called Sami Mansikka-aho. He wasn’t quite my age, although it may have seemed that way from Ketomaa’s point of view. Mansikka-aho was nine years older than me, with broad shoulders, dark, curly hair, sharp blue eyes, and a beard that may have been ironic or earnest. He got another cup of the Chinese restaurant’s bitter, yellowish coffee that tasted strangely of tea before we’d even had a chance to settle in and drink the first one. He pumped the thermos pitcher with quick, impatient gestures, came back to the table, and looked me in the eye.
‘I have to admit,’ he said. ‘I was a little surprised.’
‘My mother disappeared twenty years ago. You investigated Tanja Metsäpuro’s murder ten years ago. In my opinion the two cases have a lot in common.’
Mansikka-aho scratched his cheek with the same impatient hand he’d just used to get the coffee.
‘I mean the pattern for today,’ he said. ‘You get in touch with me and tell me Ketomaa can vouch for you, you assure me that you’re a smart, honest guy. Then you ask me not to say anything about it to Ketomaa. Not that Ketomaa and I see each other all that often. I haven’t seen him since he retired … what was it? A year ago? Two?’
His eyes were red and shining as if he’d just rubbed them with an onion. My eyes were probably much the same. We were both obviously tired, having not slept for our own separate reasons.
It was afternoon and the lunch rush was just ending. I’d reached Mansikka-aho at his desk and tried to start a conversation on the phone, but when he heard why I was calling he said that it was something we should discuss in person. I’d come to Helsinki in Henrik Saarinen’s Land Cruiser – against Saarinen’s express directions.
‘I know it sounds a little contradictory, but you know my background.’
We were sitting in the last booth in the back. He sipped his coffee, his lips pursed on the edge of the cup, his slurp audible. Behind him was an almost empty room with windows onto a car park. The rear end of the grey Land Cruiser looked like a hearse waiting for someone to step into it.
‘I know what there is to know,’ he said, putting his cup down on his saucer with a clink and pausing a moment before looking at me. ‘Ketomaa was the original investigator. Over the years you two apparently met or at least talked, since you know about Tanja and you knew I was on the case.’
‘So you know that I know quite a lot. I wanted to hear more about Tanja Metsäpuro. Presently …’
‘My first stiff. First murder case, I mean.’
‘I know.’
He raised one eyebrow. ‘There’s no new information about Tanja.’
‘But you had a suspect.’
‘I can’t tell you about that. The police can’t –’
‘I know it was Henrik Saarinen.’
He leaned back in his seat.
‘If Ketomaa’s been telling you these things it could be considered professional misconduct.’
‘He didn’t have to tell me. Henrik Saarinen is responsible for my mother’s disappearance.’
Mansikka-aho’s red eyes didn’t blink, his expression didn’t change in any way. But something – something careless and relaxed – disappeared from his demeanour, without altering his face or posture. The difference could only be seen in his red eyes, which now seemed to be aimed more directly at me.
‘And who have you proffered this theory to?’
‘No one,’ I said. ‘No one except you and Ketomaa before.’
‘Nobody else?’
‘No. Why?’
Mansikka-aho didn’t answer my question. Instead he asked me, ‘How did Ketomaa react to this suggestion?’
‘He says that even when a shoe’s the right size it could be the wrong style. That not all water is rain. That you can throw a bullseye one day and miss the mark for the rest of your life. And other things like that. In a nutshell he says that just because something seems true doesn’t mean it is true. How well do you know Ketomaa?’
‘Not very well, but a bit,’ Mansikka-aho said, seeming to be saying something more. ‘A bit.’
I’d barely tasted my so-called coffee. It was probably unfit to drink by now, a sour puddle in front of me. I pushed the cup and saucer aside and leaned my elbows on the table.
‘What about lately?’ I asked. ‘Are you still investigating Tanja’s murder?’
He looked at me for a second. ‘Why not ask Ketomaa about it? If he told you confidential information before, why not now? As far as I know he’s still doing some kind of PI gigs, even if he’s mostly retired. Why not call him?’
I didn’t answer right away. Mansikka-aho noticed.
‘Why don’t you?’
‘Why don’t I what?’
‘Why don’t you ask Ketomaa? Is he not as obsessive as he used to be about the case?’
‘Ketomaa? He never was. Just the opposite. He always told me I was on the wrong trail.’
Mansikka-aho looked at me as if I was raving mad.
‘You’re kidding, right? He didn’t seem to do anything else just before he retired. Spent all hi
s time on your mother and Tanja Metsäpuro. He even pestered me with questions about it now and then. I told him what I told you. There’s no new information.’
I was about to ask, What about Henrik Saarinen, but suddenly the whole situation felt wrong. The smell of the greasy food, the music that was either one endless song or the same short song over and over, the cop with bloodshot eyes like the warning lights on some indecipherable machine. I could see in his face that he knew he’d made a mistake, he’d said something that had the exact opposite effect from what he’d expected. What could make an experienced cop behave that way? The bright autumn day flooded over me and the thought of fresh air and open sky was suddenly insistent.
‘I have to go,’ I said.
‘Wait,’ Mansikka-aho said.
I remained seated.
‘If you know something about Ketomaa, you should tell me,’ he said. ‘If he’s still chasing after innocent people, he’s got to stop. This is a serious matter.’
The restaurant was suddenly quiet, as if it had been abandoned.
‘I understand,’ Mansikka-aho said, in a voice that was considerably softer than the one he’d used a moment before. ‘You’ve been through a hellish experience. It could give a person all kinds of ideas, and if those ideas were stoked up by a slightly daft old retiree, it could lead to all kinds of misunderstandings.’
‘What do you mean, stoked up?’
He leaned forward.
‘Ketomaa didn’t retire. He was forced out. Think about it. It started a long time ago.’
‘What did?’
‘His bizarre behaviour. Not long after your mother disappeared, I think. And that was a long time ago. Almost twenty years.’
‘What kind of bizarre behaviour?’
‘I can’t talk about it, but let’s just say that it had to do with this same obsessive need to find connections between suspects and crimes where there were no connections.’
I didn’t say anything. I was starting to realise the extent of the error I’d just made. Fatigue and emotion and disappointment and doubt had all got the upper hand after all.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you right away if I hear from him. It all sounds very odd.’
‘And what you said a moment ago about a certain person,’ Mansikka-aho said. ‘This Mr Saarinen. It’s best to forget about it. There’s nothing to support it.’
‘No, of course.’
He smiled. His red eyes lit up again.
‘It was nice to meet you,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you got in touch with me. Otherwise I don’t know what might have happened.’
There was something repellent about the items in the back of the Land Cruiser. They were just tools, but it felt as if they had a purpose. Otherwise Saarinen wouldn’t have bought them.
I’d made a mistake about Ketomaa. He’d been a step, or many steps, ahead of me the whole time. I took my phone out of my pocket, found his number, and tried to call him. The call went to voicemail. I was just about to leave a message, but snapped the phone off.
I was crossing the bridge at Pasila. Itä-Pasila rose up in front of me like a poor man’s sci-fi city. The train tracks headed north and south on either side of the bridge, some of them startlingly rusty in the sunlight, tarnished and forgotten. The shinier ones shot under the bridge towards the station that loomed to my left, looking like an East German swimming stadium, a shameful reminder of the 1980s and ’90s habit of building things as grey and ugly as they could possibly be and expecting them to come into their own once they were built, the way the hundred-year-old stone buildings in the city had.
I turned onto Aleksis Kivi street. I knew where I was going. There was no need to call ahead and say I was coming. I passed the Kallio library and drove along the Sörnäinen shore road toward the quiet of Kruunuhaka.
Why had Ketomaa spent years making me think that I was on the wrong track, barking up the wrong tree, when all the while he himself was trying any way he could to solve my mother’s disappearance and Tanja Metsäpuro’s murder? He even got fired for it, if Mansikka-aho was to be believed.
I had to drive up and down Liisankatu before I found a place to park. The Land Cruiser needed such a lot of room that it made you wonder how anyone thought of it as a city car. I left the parking unpaid. Liisankatu in the daytime seemed broader, seemed to lead somewhere. It had looked different at night.
I rang the buzzer. I rang it again. I was looking at the names listed by the door and pondering my next move when I heard a lively bark behind me. A small white dog wanted to go inside. On the other end of its lead was a middle-aged woman in thick-framed glasses and an oversized parka. She didn’t give me a second look as she opened the door with her key and left me to decide whether I should enter or remain outside. I followed her in and went to the second floor, where the small white dog barked again and led the woman to her door. I climbed up to the third floor and rang the bell.
Finally I heard steps on the other side of the door. Then they stopped.
The door remained shut.
SEPTEMBER 2013
THE NEXT MORNING I walked down to the beach. The sea lay calm and blue. Not a leaf was moving in the trees on the shore. The sky black with rain was just a memory, a puddle here and there and the damp fragrance of the forest all around. I put my toolbox on the sauna porch and breathed in deeply. I needed to breathe. I had my requisite tools. If anyone asked, I was still the caretaker, doing my job.
I hadn’t been able to reach Ketomaa. Enni had come back early that morning; I could tell by the fresh tracks of her Škoda’s tyres in the mud. I hadn’t heard anything from Amanda, no explanation for not answering the door. That didn’t stop me from thinking about her. I was reminded of her by the bucket at the foot of the steps, where she’d had her fish and her knife on that stormy night. My paranoia about the meeting with Mansikka-aho still simmered in the back of my mind.
I sat with my hands folded and prayed for patience, looking out at the water. I told myself many times that everything was fine, everything was going as planned. I was so absorbed in my own thoughts that I didn’t notice the sound of footsteps until they reached the porch floorboards, and I realised I’d heard them from far off before they registered.
Tall boots, black and shiny clean. The camouflage trousers and dark-blue safari jacket were also clean, looked brand new. His whole outfit was crisp with newness. Another thing that was new was a detail that made me immediately uneasy. A white bandage was wrapped around the right hand. A thick one. The bandage reached from inside the coat sleeve halfway down the fingers, leaving the thumb and fingertips free. So the wound was on the knuckles, the palm, or the back of the hand. It looked serious, but it didn’t seem to affect the broad smile on his face.
‘Working hard, of course,’ Saarinen said. ‘I’m not surprised. The morning’s well advanced.’
I stood up. Saarinen took off his sunglasses.
‘Good morning.’
I moved to the middle of the porch. For some reason I expected Ketomaa to be a few steps behind him, but he was alone. Of course. The idea that Ketomaa would be with him was absurd, a product of my own imagination. Or was it?
‘It looks as if it rained all day and night. Or did it only start in the evening?’
‘I didn’t notice. It did rain hard during the night.’
‘Did it wake you up?’
Did it wake me up?
‘It must have,’ I said, then changed the subject. ‘How’re things in Helsinki?’
‘Surely you know when the rain started since you’ve been spending all your time here, working.’
His eyes were as impenetrable as always. The contempt was there, but he was also looking at me with curiosity and sincere interest.
‘To tell you the truth,’ I said, ‘I think I fell asleep as soon as you left and slept until the evening. It was definitely raining by then.’
‘Sleeping during working hours?’ His voice wasn’t annoyed or shocked. Just the opposite. He looked g
enuinely amused. ‘Should I take it out of your pay?’ he asked, then said, ‘I’m joking, Aleksi. I’m not interested in counting your hours. Far from it. I like you. I see a lot of myself in you. You know what you want, and you don’t trouble yourself with irrelevancies. And most importantly, you’re willing to take risks.’
That last sentence was left to echo in my ears. It could be taken a thousand different ways.
‘Speaking of risks,’ I said. ‘I know it’s none of my business, but what was that private eye here about?’
Saarinen looked out at the sea.
‘Something was stolen from me, and I want it back.’
The book of poems. It had to be the book of poems. With my mother’s name in it. Which I’d kept.
‘What kind of theft do you mean?’ I asked. ‘Did someone break into the house?’
‘A break-in would be a police matter, wouldn’t it?’
Saarinen took a couple of steps towards me and leaned on the railing with both hands, but his right hand was too tender. He visibly flinched in pain. His hand withdrew, trembling. I could only see part of the left side of his face, the edge of his mouth, the line of his chin. They seemed to convulse in pain. The hand slowly lowered to his side, as if he were being careful not to hurt it again.
I didn’t say anything. An almost transparent screen of cloud lingered in front of the sun. I hoped he would keep talking. A moment later he started again.
‘It’s a personal possession, something that is only valuable to me. It would be hard to explain to someone if it was just a job to him. I mean it might be difficult to motivate him to get it back for me.’
‘I understand.’
‘Do you?’ Saarinen said, not looking at me.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You’ve hired someone to find it because he’ll be motivated by money. You can pay him directly for returning it to you.’
‘That’s not exactly what I meant,’ Saarinen said, turning towards me. It was a slow turn; he was clearly being careful of his hand. Whatever had happened to it, the wound must have been serious, or at least painful. When he’d made his half-turn, he leaned his back against the railing. The sea was behind him, his large head and powerful gaze set against a horizon filled with sky.
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