‘I made it myself,’ said Tapani.
‘It’s very good,’ Ketola said.
The TV was on. Ketola had switched it on as soon as he got home and had watched every news bulletin since. The reporting was all over the shop. The presumed murderer had presumably committed suicide. His name was Timo K., a Helsinki resident. Timo K. was dead and it was Antsi K.’s birthday. Ketola was too tired to laugh at that, although he had a vague idea that it was funny.
It all seemed very far away. The drive to Helsinki. The car in the lake, the dead body in the driver’s seat. Kimmo. Kimmo, sitting beside him in silence. Nurmela in jacket and tie, at over thirty degrees in the shade. And Nurmela hadn’t even been sweating.
All of it could have been an eternity away. The sequence of events was getting muddled up. Now Tapani was here; this was the present. Tapani eating his cake, taking small bites, and in the background, one after the other, pictures of Pia Lehtinen and Sinikka Vehkasalo coming up on the TV screen, and Ketola was thinking of a misty, very cool day in spring, a few months ago, but it seemed a long way off. He thought of the rain, of the sound of raindrops pattering down on the awning, of a very distinct emptiness in his brain. What surprising importance that distant day had now acquired.
He felt a longing. A particularly annoying longing, because he couldn’t put a name to it, he couldn’t assign it any content, he only felt that it was of huge extent and seemed to be sinking deeper into him by the minute.
‘By the way, I brought you a present too,’ said Tapani.
Ketola looked at his son.
‘It’s outside. Well hidden, of course.’
‘Yes. Of course. I’m delighted,’ said Ketola.
‘Come on.’
Ketola followed Tapani, who opened the door and turned into the garden as if he knew where he was going. ‘Look,’ he said, producing his present from behind a bush.
‘A bicycle,’ said Ketola.
‘That’s right.’
It was on the tip of Ketola’s tongue to ask how he had been able to pay for the bicycle, but he bit back the question.
‘And seeing you already have a bicycle, you could lend me your new one now and then,’ said Tapani.
‘Of course,’ Ketola agreed.
The daughter of the family next door was diving into the swimming pool. Her parents were sitting on the terrace. Ketola got the impression that they were looking at him and would have liked to ask him any number of questions. About the case on the news. Did he know any more about it? Of course they were interested, and he’d been in the police for a long time.
‘Sure. I’ll lend you the bike any time,’ said Ketola. ‘And thank you very much. I … well, I always find it hard to show it, but I’m glad to see you here. I really am very glad.’
Tapani looked at him and nodded, but he didn’t seem to grasp what Ketola was trying to tell him.
‘Do you understand?’ asked Ketola.
Tapani nodded again.
They stood there for a while in silence. Then Tapani said, ‘Will you lend it to me?’
‘Hm?’
‘The bike. Will you lend it to me?’
‘Yes, sure. I just said so.’
‘I mean now. I have to leave. I have to go into the woods. I must stop those people doing anything stupid.’
Ketola felt a pang and thought how pointless it was. What a pointless surge of emotion. ‘Yes, sure,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’ Tapani swung himself on to the bicycle, pedalled hard to give himself a good start, then cycled smoothly away, holding himself very upright and going goodness knew where.
16
Kimmojoentaa was sitting on the landing stage. In the decrepit rocking chair where Sanna used to sit, wrapped in blankets, during the last months of her life.
As soon as he got back Kimmo had gone down to the lake and he had taken the rocking chair out of the shed where it had spent the last two years.
He looked at the calm surface of the water and thought of that other lake, the silver sports car, the crumpled body in the driver’s seat.
He remembered the day when he and Sanna had bought the rocking chair cheap at a furnishing centre. Soon after they met and just before they moved in together.
Sanna had carried the chair to the car like a trophy and put it in the boot, just as Ketola had stowed the model on wheels into the boot of his car. In the driving snow. Not so very long ago.
The rocking chair was damp, and rotting away in places. It had been kept in the dry, Sanna always used to put it away in the shed when there was rain or snow, but all the same the chair got splashed with water every time Sanna had jumped up, gone to the end of the landing stage and dived head first into the water. That was earlier, not in the months before her death, because at that point Sanna had no longer been strong enough to swim.
Some time, thought Kimmo, some time, just when he least expected it, this chair would collapse under his weight, and if Sanna could see that she would be sure to laugh when she saw him lying on the landing stage, with the broken arm of the chair in his hand.
He closed his eyes and spent a little while trying to put his thoughts in order, but it couldn’t be done, it was totally impossible, and he let them drift.
He saw blurred, flickering images and heard words that had been spoken. Today or many years ago. Or maybe only now, at this moment, in his imagination.
Sanna, wrapped in blankets. Sundström, who could always put everything in a nutshell. In clear, comprehensible terms. In the brightly lit conference room. In the room where Ketola, an eternity ago, had investigated the disappearance of Pia Lehtinen. Ketola sitting in the shadows, chin propped on his hands, in front of a computer screen. In a strange house, in a room full of perfect right angles. The members of the salvage team calmly going about their work. Pulling the car out metre by metre. Elina Lehtinen in the garden of her house. Blueberry cake and tea in white cups. Pia, laughing out loud in a photograph, and Sinikka looking gravely into the camera. Niemi had said Sinikka looked sad. Just sad. A boy calling to him, a red football. And a business card. Timo Korvensuo, Estate Agent. A number under Timo Korvensuo, Estate Agent, that could no longer be reached. But there was the woman who had opened the door to them, expecting to see her son. Aku. Goodbye, Mr Joentaa. A number that he would not be dialling. And the vague feeling of having seen something. At a time that he couldn’t specify any more closely. Without a doubt, something of minor significance.
They had sat in the conference room, and Sundström had been integrating the estate agent Timo Korvensuo into the general context of their enquiries, expressing it all in short, clear sentences, when the call from their Helsinki colleagues came through. The thought of the annoyance on Sundström’s face almost made Kimmo laugh. Sundström, who had been in full swing, was suddenly stopped short in his tracks.
The times didn’t match. It was as simple as that. Timo Korvensuo had driven to Turku on Sunday. On Friday, at the time of Sinikka Vehkasalo’s disappearance, he had still been in Helsinki. His colleagues at the estate agency confirmed that. His wife Marjatta also confirmed it. So did Heinonen’s enquiries at the Turku hotel.
‘Which doesn’t have to mean anything,’ Sundström had said, after thinking for a while. ‘Of course he could have been in Turku at midday on Friday and back in Helsinki in the evening. That’s no problem.’
‘But if I understood it correctly,’ Heinonen had objected, ‘Korvensuo’s colleagues said he spent all Friday at meetings in Helsinki.’
‘Hm, yes … we’ll have to check that,’ Sundström had said, adding that he would drive to Helsinki first thing tomorrow. And Kimmo was to go with him.
He thought of Marjatta Korvensuo. So he would be seeing her tomorrow. And the boy, Aku. And the daughter, Laura. He’d see how they were. Get an impression. He would sit opposite Marjatta Korvensuo. They’d be sitting opposite each other tomorrow, just as they had this afternoon. He would have an opportunity of beginning from the beginning again, talking to her once more. But what about?
He opened his eyes and saw the white, calm expanse of water. The pale midnight sun persisted in shining. Somewhere, tucked away in a blind spot, the idea of something he had seen but not taken in was waiting for him.
He tried to approach that idea and saw himself, Ketola and Antti from Archives running through heavy, driving snow.
Antti now had a permanent appointment and seemed very happy working in Archives with Päivi Holmquist. Kimmo was really pleased for him.
Päivi Holmquist’s lumber room.
Ketola’s old files.
Ketola’s handwriting. On the day when Pia Lehtinen’s body had been found. Ketola’s hand had been shaking as he wrote a note on a piece of paper. A note in the old files.
Kalevi Vehkasalo. Sinikka’s father. His hand had been shaking too as he sat beside his wife on the sofa, asking her to keep calm.
Tomorrow Heinonen and Grönholm would speak to Sinikka’s parents. They would try to establish some connection between a dead estate agent and their daughter. Although it couldn’t have been Korvensuo who crossed Sinikka’s path last Friday. Or presumably not.
He thought of Sinikka. Of her face in the photo. Of the message Ruth Vehkasalo had left in her mailbox. Always the same message. Would Sinikka call? Please. In the end Sinikka’s mother had been shouting, almost weeping, with a premonition of disaster, even though she hadn’t yet known that Sinikka’s bicycle had been found.
Ruth Vehkasalo’s message had not left the house, because Sinikka’s mobile was still in her room. So why … why hadn’t Sinikka taken her mobile when she went to training? He would have to ask the Vehkasalos whether their daughter was forgetful; then he began drifting into sleep … Sundström would be at his door in a few hours’ time.
Sundström wanted to make an early start and had suggested picking up Joentaa at home. He didn’t know how late it was now, but the early start could be only a few hours away. He had the impression that the midnight sun was merging already, almost imperceptibly, into the morning twilight. Yet he felt that he didn’t want to fall asleep …
He sat up very suddenly.
He thought of the model on wheels. In the driving snow. And months later in Ketola’s house. On the living-room table. Ketola had laughed … incredulously … had simply not been able to understand it. That was how he had felt himself, but all the same there was something he had seen, something of very minor significance. One of the investigators had conducted an interview, one of the less important interviews …
He got up and went back to the house. Something that had briefly met his eyes … a passage that he had merely skimmed, because it was not of great importance and he had been too tired to concentrate on it properly. A conversation, only recently … He opened the front door and went into the living room, where the files lay scattered untidily around. He was looking for a statement about Sinikka, something that had struck him because it was odd. Not important, but odd.
He leafed and leafed through the files, and couldn’t find the wretched page. He sat down and forced himself to look through folder after folder calmly. Very calmly.
Relax, Kimmo, Sanna had liked to say, although she herself had been capable of considerably more alarming outbursts of rage than he was.
Here was the text he had been looking for. Tuomas Heinonen had written it and it wasn’t a formal record, just a summary of several interviews conducted by Heinonen that had brought up more or less important questions, matters that might still be explained. A girlfriend talking about a birthday party … Joentaa read the statement, then read it again, and again, and the longer he read it the less he understood what could be so important about it. He had been wrong, it must be something else, it wasn’t about this text after all.
He turned it over and saw a note in Heinonen’s very clear writing, so different from Ketola’s scribble. Clear and distinct, a word and a number.
Joentaa tore out the page, read the word and the number, and had no idea what they meant.
He sat there without moving for several minutes.
Then he stood up and left the house.
He didn’t understand it, he didn’t understand anything any more, but he felt an unspecified fear.
And a very specific hope.
17
‘Come in, Kimmo,’ said Ketola.
He didn’t seem surprised to see Kimmo, although it was nearly three in the morning. The buildings on both sides of the street might have been dead when Kimmo was driving through the city.
He followed Ketola into his living room. The terrace door was open.
‘I’m sitting outside. It’s a warm evening,’ said Ketola, looking straight at him as if to make sure that Joentaa agreed.
Joentaa nodded.
They sat on garden chairs, there on the threshold between night and morning, and said nothing.
Ketola had one hand on the model, which was now back on its wheels again. The field, the road, the avenue of trees, the bicycle, the red car.
On the table stood a chocolate cake decorated with kiwi fruit and raspberries.
‘Would you like a piece?’ asked Ketola.
‘No, thanks,’ said Joentaa and after a moment’s hesitation he leaned over the table, because the way the raspberries were arranged had caught his eye.
‘A and K,’ said Ketola. ‘Antsi Ketola. The birthday boy’s name.’
‘I see.’
‘My son baked it,’ said Ketola.
Their conversation lapsed again and Joentaa waited to feel the impulse to express what he hadn’t yet thought out fully.
Ketola seemed happy with the silence.
‘Sinikka Vehkasalo,’ said Kimmo.
Ketola looked up. ‘Sinikka Vehkasalo,’ he repeated.
‘She went to a birthday party. A few months ago. A girlfriend said something about it and Heinonen – well, you know Heinonen – in his thorough way he noted down the place where that party was given. The address, although it didn’t seem to be of any importance.’
‘Ah, yes, Heinonen …’ said Ketola.
‘Number 20 Oravankatu. That’s the house right next door to here. Those are your neighbours.’
‘Hm, yes,’ said Ketola.
There was a long silence.
‘Sinikka suddenly left the party,’ Joentaa finally said. ‘After a while she came back and she seemed different. As if something significant had happened. But she didn’t tell even her girlfriends what it was. She kept it to herself, like an important secret.’
‘Well …’ said Ketola.
‘She was here. With you. Why? What happened that day?’ asked Joentaa.
‘Nothing,’ said Ketola.
‘Nothing?’
Ketola nodded.
‘Was she here?’ asked Joentaa.
‘Yes. Of course.’
Of course, thought Joentaa. Of course. ‘Why?’ he asked.
‘Ask me another,’ said Ketola. ‘Something easier.’
‘Why?’ Joentaa repeated.
‘I don’t really know why.’
Joentaa waited.
‘I was sitting on the terrace. Same as now. The girls were running about in the garden, even jumping into the swimming pool, though it was very cold. And then it started raining. They all went indoors except for Sinikka. Sinikka climbed the fence and joined me here on the terrace.’
‘Why?’ asked Joentaa.
‘I don’t really know why. She knew that I’d been in the police. I expect her friend, my neighbours’ daughter, had told her. She was probably a bit curious. And she asked why I was sad.’
‘What?’
‘Funny, isn’t it? I thought so myself. A girl of Pia Lehtinen’s age climbs the fence and asks me pointless questions …’
‘And then?’
‘Then what?’
‘What happened after that?’
‘I sat here in my chair, much as I’m sitting here now, and I probably stared at her as if she were a ghost. And she began to laugh.’
Joentaa thought of t
he photograph. The girl’s serious features and how he had thought he could detect loud, hearty laughter lurking beneath them.
‘Yes,’ said Ketola. ‘She … she said she’d been watching me and wondering all the time what was the matter with me, and then I began telling her all about it.’
‘All about it?’ asked Joentaa.
‘Everything, from the moment when I thought of Pia Lehtinen. On my last day at work, you remember. Everything that had been going through my head since then. All about Pia. Everything I could remember. Everything I’d thought about during the months after … after my retirement. I had plenty of time to rack my brains over it. I guess that was about the longest monologue I ever delivered in my life.’
Ketola stopped.
‘And?’ Joentaa asked.
‘She sat there listening. She was surprisingly calm. I talked and talked, and after a while I had the feeling that nothing I had ever said before was sinking in so … so directly. It’s hard to describe. I had this sense that she was actually absorbing it all, understanding the whole thing, without once interrupting me or asking a question. And then, at the end …’
Joentaa waited.
‘At the end she pointed to the model and said, as if it was quite natural, that she knew the place. The place where the cross stands, she always passed it on her way to volleyball training. And then … we neither of us said anything for a long time. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Then she suddenly said I had to find the man who killed Pia Lehtinen …’
Ketola fell silent again.
‘And after that?’ asked Joentaa.
‘After that I thought: either this is just childish and I’m sitting opposite a precocious girl talking nonsense at random, or I’m dreaming, or I’ve gone crazy, or all at once … good heavens, how would I know?’
Ketola got up, stood there for a minute, and cut himself a piece of cake as if he had just been waiting for the moment when he could do that. ‘Want some too?’ he asked.
Joentaa did not react, and Ketola was not to be deterred. ‘It’s really good, come on,’ he said, cutting another piece.
Joentaa took the plate that Ketola handed him, bit into the soft chocolate icing and thought he felt just as Ketola had on the occasion he described. Soon Sundström would be standing at his door, waking him up.
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