The Man Who Died
Page 25
And regarding that little matter: Sami is still missing. Tikkanen looked at me long and hard when, during questioning, I said I thought Sami was often a victim of his own emotions, that he could fly into a rage at the drop of a hat.
Suvi is no longer our temporary employee. Now she is our financial manager. I have never since brought up our conversation.
Tikkanen saved my life. I’ve thanked him on numerous occasions, and just as many times he has reminded me that I saved two people’s lives with my quick response. It’s true. I couldn’t save myself. Well, maybe there’s still time. Perhaps, though we die, we live on. Perhaps we leave something behind, a breath or a thought, something, anything.
Our business is thriving – better than ever in fact. Kakutama was especially impressed at how I was prepared to sacrifice myself for the sake of my business, how I put my life on the line to save our business agreement. He says he respects a man who, armed with only a pine branch, is prepared to resist an experienced man wielding a thirty-centimetre sashimi knife. I have congratulated myself on more than one occasion for managing to listen to Kakutama’s account of the length and sharpness of the knife without fainting.
Sanni has brought me back to life. In so many ways. I want to take her in my arms, to thank her for everything. I want to tell her that I love her with all my strength, with every cell in my body. Of course, I will never recover, and I will die soon. But that is something we all have in common, even those of us who once imagined we would live forever.
Sanni opens her eyes. She smiles, looks me in the eye.
‘Did you say something?’ she asks.
I shake my head and gently kiss her scalp. She’s asleep again before long.
The screen tells me we’ll arrive in Tokyo in three hours. On the other side of the window the sky is blue as we fly towards the rising sun.
Acknowledgements
The Man Who Died feels like a turning point in many ways. After writing five very dark books – albeit all very different from each other – ranging from the dystopia of The Healer to the icy north of The Mine, I started to feel that I needed to change things up a bit. More than a bit, to be honest. I told my agent this. I think I also told him I needed to laugh a bit. His response: go for it.
So:
I would like to thank my literary agent Federico Ambrosini for his invaluable and incomparable support and feedback. I am very grateful to have him in my corner, so to speak. And on the subject of agents, I would like to extend my gratitude to everyone at the Salomonsson Agency, Stockholm.
I send my gratitude to the amazing Karen Sullivan of Orenda Books in London. She is a fearless independent publisher and an inspiration. She works harder than anyone I know. Thank you, Karen.
My most sincere thank-you goes to the one and only Harri Haanpää, the editor of this book (the original Finnish version, that is). This was my third book with Harri, and I think Harri has by now edited out one novel’s worth of extraneous sentences. Harri, I thank you and your steadfast pencil.
Thank you also to the supremely brilliant David Hackston. Finnish is not an easy language, but you make it seem so. I’m privileged to be translated by you.
Thank you to West Camel for your fantastic and careful editing on the English version.
I want to thank my mother and father for giving me the love of books. I have the best job in the entire world, and I wouldn’t have it without the bookshelves you put in our home a long time ago.
Finally, I wish to thank my beautiful, wise wife Anu. None of this would be possible without you. Thank you for everything. You are my heart and my home. May our journey continue.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Finnish author Antti Tuomainen (b. 1971) was an award-winning copywriter when he made his literary debut in 2007 as a suspense author. The critically acclaimed My Brother’s Keeper was published two years later. In 2011 Tuomainen’s third novel, The Healer, was awarded the Clue Award for Best Finnish Crime Novel of 2011 and was shortlisted for the Glass Key Award. The Finnish press labelled The Healer – the story of a writer desperately searching for his missing wife in a post-apocalyptic Helsinki – ‘unputdownable’. Two years later, in 2013, they crowned Tuomainen the King of Helsinki Noir when Dark as My Heart was published. The Mine, translated by David Hackston and published in 2016, was an international bestseller. Several of his books have been optioned for TV/film. With his piercing and evocative style, Tuomainen is one of the first to challenge the Scandinavian crime genre formula, and The Man Who Died sees him at his literary best.
Follow Antti on Twitter: @antti_tuomainen, on Facebook: Facebook.com/AnttiTuomainen and on his website: www.anttituomainen.com
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
David Hackston is a British translator of Finnish and Swedish literature and drama. Notable recent publications include Kati Hiekkapelto’s Anna Fekete series (which currently includes The Hummingbird, The Defenceless and The Exiled, all published by Orenda Books), Katja Kettu’s wartime epic The Midwife, Pajtim Statovci’s enigmatic debut My Cat Yugoslavia and Maria Peura’s coming-of-age novel At the Edge of Light. He has also translated Antti Tuomainen’s The Mine (published by Orenda Books). In 2007 he was awarded the Finnish State Prize for Translation. David is also a professional countertenor and a founding member of the English Vocal Consort of Helsinki. Follow David on Twitter @Countertenorist.
COPYRIGHT
Orenda Books
16 Carson Road
West Dulwich
London SE21 8HU
www.orendabooks.co.uk
First published in the United Kingdom by Orenda Books 2017
Originally published in Finland by Like Kustannus Oy, as Mies joka kuoli 2016
Copyright © Antti Tuomainen 2016
English language translation copyright © David Hackston 2017
Antti Tuomainen has asserted his moral right to be indentified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–1–910633–84–7
eISBN 978–1–910633–85–4
Typeset in Garamond by MacGuru Ltd
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
Orenda Books is grateful for the financial support of FILI,
who provided a translation grant for this project.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.