‘No, I wouldn’t call it a joke. She … I suspect she saw it as an adventure. I don’t know exactly what was going on inside her,’ said Joentaa.
‘A strong wish to torment her parents?’ Now Sundström was grinning.
Joentaa did not reply, thinking that he understood that aspect of the case less than anything else about it.
‘That must be it. The girl must be out of her mind. Totally deranged!’ cried Sundström, and now he appeared almost happy.
Joentaa thought of Sinikka. Of the way she had been sitting on the steps in front of the house. He wondered if she was still sitting there, or whether she had …
‘And you’re out of your mind too, if I may say so. You just drove away without speaking to her! That girl has been the subject of an expensive investigation, am I right?’
Joentaa nodded.
Sundström nodded too.
‘I wanted to let her get home first,’ said Joentaa.
‘Yes,’ said Sundström. ‘Yes, who wouldn’t understand that? Presumably, at this very moment, the daughter is running a kitchen knife into her mother’s breast, in return the father is throttling his daughter to death, and now he’s sitting quietly with his two dead women in his house until we finally put in an appearance.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Joentaa.
‘How nice,’ said Sundström. He was silent for a while, then continued, ‘All the same, we’ll have to speak to her.’
‘Of course,’ said Joentaa.
Yet again Sundström seemed remarkably cheerful as he said, ‘What an enormous … enormous shambles.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What do I mean? I mean we’ve made ourselves appear ridiculous.’
‘No one’s looked ridiculous.’
‘Searching for a girl who wasn’t even missing.’
‘But she was missing.’
‘You know what I’m getting at. No, really, now I’m doubly, trebly curious about that … peculiar young person.’
‘We ought to take this slowly,’ said Joentaa.
Sundström was going to say something, but then he stopped and just nodded. ‘Luckily Nurmela’s the one responsible for contact with the press. Don’t worry, he’ll show it all as a great success. And ultimately, well, it doesn’t matter. The main thing is that the girl is back and the old case … well, the really crazy part is that her extraordinary idea even, in a certain way, worked.’
Joentaa nodded and thought that Ketola had put it in just the same way.
‘What a weird thing,’ murmured Sundström.
Joentaa thought of the woman who had opened the door to them. Of the business card. Of the boy with the football outside the garage.
‘Her parents will be beating the living daylights out of that young lady,’ said Sundström.
He thought of Sanna on the landing stage in the rocking chair, wrapped in blankets.
‘Beating the living daylights out of her,’ Sundström repeated.
‘They’ll be glad to have her back,’ said Joentaa.
4
Sinikka was small and slender. A slender little figure, making her purposeful way through the woods a few metres ahead of them, while Kimmo concentrated on the feeling he had had when he was walking over the lawn in Ketola’s garden early that morning.
A feeling that did him good, one he wanted to hold on to, a sense of lightness.
A sense of being slightly out of this world, hovering a little way above the ground.
It was pleasantly cool in the shade of the trees. At first joggers and cyclists had come towards them, casting curious glances. By now the paths were narrower, and Sinikka went on and on as if she were never going to stop again.
Nurmela kept up with her, even overtook her now and then, although he didn’t know the way. Sundström strolled along beside Kimmo like someone out for a casual walk.
Joentaa thought of the conversation they had had that morning in the conference room. Sundström had explained the changed situation to the others. The message had been slow to make its way into their heads. Then Grönholm, who liked to talk a lot at the top of his voice, had lapsed into deep silence where he sat. Quiet Heinonen had uttered curses in loud, clear tones. Kari Niemi had leaned back against the wall, smiling. Nurmela had looked at Sundström as if, by means of an intensive stare, he could cancel out what had just been said. But Sundström hadn’t let that shake him and ended his account of the latest incidents with the remark, ‘I’d say that girl has a sense of humour.’
Then they went to see the Vehkasalos. Sinikka’s father opened the door. In his pyjamas, with reddened eyes. Ruth Vehkasalo had been sitting beside Sinikka in the kitchen, an arm round her shoulders. There was a bowl of oatflakes and milk on the table in front of Sinikka.
Nurmela tried to find words. The others said nothing.
‘Sinikka is back,’ Kalevi Vehkasalo finally said.
Ruth Vehkasalo had been shedding silent tears.
‘In the woods,’ Sinikka said when Nurmela asked where she had spent the last few days.
In the woods they were now walking through.
‘Are we nearly there?’ asked Nurmela yet again. Sinikka nodded and walked on and on, until Joentaa thought that they would never arrive. Then after all Sinikka stopped, and seemed to be surprised that her companions were surprised.
She pointed up. Nurmela breathed out as if he had been making a strenuous effort. After a few seconds of surprise, Sundström began chuckling quietly.
They stood there for a while, craning their necks and looking up at the tree house under the clear sky.
‘I didn’t build it myself,’ said Sinikka. ‘I just found it here. Last summer.’
‘Well, well,’ said Nurmela.
‘I knew at once that was how to do it. No one ever comes this way.’
‘I can well imagine it,’ said Nurmela.
‘Crazy’ said Sundström.
Sinikka clambered up.
Nurmela took a jump, slipped and fell to the ground. ‘Not for me,’ he muttered, straightening his jacket.
‘Who are you telling?’ said Sundström.
Joentaa himself made several false starts before hauling himself up to the tree house. Then he was sitting beside Sinikka. He felt dizzy. He saw the things that Sinikka showed him through a blur. A bag of provisions. Mainly cans. A small rectangular radio.
‘The reception was quite good,’ she said as he stared at the radio.
The tree house seemed stable and had a surprising amount of room in it. Sinikka’s left hand was bandaged with a thick layer of sticking plaster.
‘Your injury? Did you do it yourself?’ asked Joentaa.
Sinikka nodded. ‘Well, the blood was important, wasn’t it?’
‘I suppose so,’ replied Joentaa, thinking of what Ketola had said. A silly idea; the silliest idea he’d ever heard of.
‘Did you really think that this … that all this would work?’
She looked at him for a long time. Then she shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘I hadn’t the faintest.’
‘How long would you have stayed here? If … if your plan hadn’t worked?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘As long as possible.’
‘What I don’t understand – and you must have thought of this – is … well, about your parents, and of course your friends as well. You must have thought how they’d be feeling.’
Once again she looked at him for a long time.
‘Everything okay up there?’ called Sundström from below.
Joentaa leaned forward and saw the other two standing side by side on the ground. Nurmela was nursing his arm and swearing quietly. Presumably he’d hurt himself in his run-up to the tree.
‘We’re coming right down,’ Joentaa called back.
He got no answer to his question from Sinikka. Perhaps there wasn’t one. Or at least, not one that he would have understood.
They went back the same way as they had come. This time Nurmela and Sundst
röm went ahead. Nurmela was talking to Sundström, planning the next few hours. He held his arm at a right angle as if it were broken, and talked on and on, although in a calm, self-controlled voice. Whether you liked Nurmela or not – and he could certainly pull out the emotional stops, as he was doing now with that arm – no one could say he didn’t keep a cool head in awkward situations.
Sinikka walked beside Kimmo, listening attentively to the two men ahead of them. Joentaa got the impression that only now, in the minutes during which she heard Nurmela and Sundström in animated discussion, was some idea of the consequences of what she had done dawning on her.
They drove back in silence. Nurmela was scribbling notes in a small book, and he pointed out in passing, just in case they were anxious about it, that he had only wrenched his arm.
‘Don’t worry, we aren’t anxious,’ said Sundström.
Outside the pale green house, Ruth Vehkasalo was waiting for her daughter to return.
5
Nurmela dealt with the exigencies of the day in commanding fashion and with alarming efficiency.
He had a conversation with Sinikka’s parents in which he gently pointed out that it wasn’t over yet. He told them that inevitably Sinikka was going to be at the centre of public interest, and the question of the consequences still had to be cleared up. After all, Sinikka had started off an expensive investigation. Kalevi Vehkasalo thanked him and said no more, but Joentaa thought he heard the words that were on the tip of his tongue, and his wife’s tongue too: they none of them needed to worry about that, not at all, not today or at any time in the near future.
Then Nurmela coordinated the break-up of the groups of investigating officers. He seemed to enjoy restoring order. In the corridors and the canteen, after that, a mood that was difficult to define but seemed almost relaxed prevailed. Some people were amused, some acted as if they were amused. Others didn’t understand what exactly had happened, others again freely expressed their disapproval, in the same way as Tuomas Heinonen that morning. Not much work was done, simply because the case that had been occupying at least the officers on the third floor of the police building had burst like a soap bubble.
Nurmela did not seem to be disturbed by the chaos following the restoration of normal order. He held his arm away from his body for all to see, thus appearing to be borne up on wings of inspiration. In Joentaa’s opinion, he took that feeling with him to the press conference that he staged with Sundström’s support, and with an eye on the right quarters, as a perfect mixture of objectivity, serious concern and smug satisfaction. Questions about details were blocked with the indication that it was still too early to go into that.
Nurmela went to hospital to have his arm X-rayed.
A TV team from the public broadcaster YLE parked a transmission van outside the police building and issued hourly bulletins on the news. A small commercial station in Turku even built an improvised studio.
Tuomas Heinonen and Petri Grönholm communicated with officials in Turku and their colleagues in Helsinki to gain a more precise picture of the dead man in the lake, Timo Korvensuo. The last meeting of the day was devoted to his person, and at the beginning of his remarks Petri Grönholm, himself very likely light-headed with the absurdities of the last few hours, said something that stuck in Kimmo Joentaa’s memory. ‘Somehow it’s kind of funny, but while Sinikka Vehkasalo in the flesh has come back to us, our estate agent seems to have been, in a way, entirely extinguished. At least so far as his life and activities in Turku are concerned.’
‘Meaning?’ asked Sundström.
‘I’ve had several telephone conversations, and I have to say, well, it’s turning out difficult to form any idea of him. He seems to have been very much a loner. When he was living in Turku. And would you believe it, there was a fire at City Hall. The register of residents went up in flames. In 1985. No computer data available.’
‘Oh.’
‘So we don’t even know where Korvensuo was living. As long as no friend or fellow student of his can tell us anything, all we know is that he was studying mathematics. And chemistry and physics as subsidiary subjects.’
‘Excellent combination,’ said Sundström.
‘And the university did have an address, but it was his parents’ home address in Tampere. When Korvensuo registered he probably didn’t have a place of his own yet in Turku, so he gave that address. And he never corrected it.’
‘I get the idea,’ said Sundström.
The parents are both dead. No brothers or sisters … and considering the state of affairs, none of that really matters,’ said Grönholm. ‘Sinikka is back, and as for the girl who went missing in the mid eighties …’
‘Marika Paloniemi,’ said Joentaa.
‘That was it. Any connection between Korvensuo and her disappearance seems fanciful, in view of the new situation. Korvensuo had been living in Helsinki for a long time then. And incidentally, he never had a small red car after 1982. That’s according to his wife, who knew him from then on. She says her husband didn’t like the colour red. Which does not suggest that he ever had a red car.’
Or maybe he did have a red car and never wanted to be reminded of it again, thought Joentaa.
He saw Marjatta Korvensuo again in his mind’s eye. The living room where they had sat on white sofas. The bright entrance hall. The sparsely furnished room in the basement, all right angles. Ketola in front of the screen, now switched off. Nothing in that house had been red.
‘It’s quite possible that this small red car never existed. Either in connection with Pia Lehtinen or with anyone else,’ said Sundström. ‘Just a false trail.’
Grönholm nodded. ‘Incidentally, the wife is twelve years younger than Korvensuo. When they met in 1982 he was twenty-nine and she was only seventeen,’ he said. ‘He obviously kept silent as the grave about his days in Turku. His wife knows almost nothing about that time.’
‘Of course our colleagues in Helsinki are seeing if they can connect Korvensuo with any unsolved cases. They’re only just beginning, but nothing so far,’ said Heinonen.
‘Right,’ said Sundström, nodding.
The rest kept quiet.
‘How … how is his wife?’ asked Joentaa.
Heinonen shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’
Nor did Grönholm. ‘We’ve only spoken to our colleagues, not to the wife herself.’
‘About the files on Korvensuo’s computer. The thing is stuffed with child pom: photos and clips. What you might call bursting at the seams with them,’ said Heinonen.
‘Charming,’ said Sundström. ‘Then if I may sum up: we have a missing girl who has come home safe and sound. We have a case thirty years old …’
‘Thirty-three,’ said Joentaa.
‘A case thirty-three years old of a murdered girl which was cleared up yesterday, in view of the fact that the presumed murderer drowned himself and his showy car in the lake where he sank his victim back in the past. Right?’
‘That’s it,’ Grönholm agreed.
‘We have a Helsinki estate agent, name of Timo Korvensuo, as the sole tangible object of this … er, absurd investigation. Korvensuo, who goes off two days after the disappearance of Sinikka Vehkasalo, pretending he has a business engagement, to seek out Pia Lehtinen’s mother, give her his business card and take his own life. Belated remorse. Or whatever. Is that it?’
No one replied. No one contradicted him.
‘Okay,’ said Sundström. ‘Great. Speaking for myself, my head is spinning.’ He turned away and had almost crossed the room when he turned once more.
‘And by the way, you’d better start thinking up ideas,’ he said. ‘Ideas for ways to bring tears to Nurmela’s eyes, I mean. Because of the usual present given to sufferers in such cases. He called me half an hour ago. His wrist is broken. In a very complicated way, like he emphasized. Surprise result of the X-ray examination.’
6
Aquarter to six.
Mow the grass behind number 86.
<
br /> He wrote it down in his notebook before going out.
A hot sun was shining down. Old Mrs Kononen from number 89 was putting out the washing on her balcony, and ostentatiously looked away when she saw him.
Even though he’d oiled the squeaking hinges of the swings long ago. Not a sound to be heard when the children went on the swings. Like the little boy just now, who shouted that he was just going over the top of the frame.
‘Any moment now! Watch out!’ shouted the boy, and he swung higher and higher, and Pärssinen felt as if the boy would crash to the ground on the seat of his trousers any moment, and took a few steps back, ready to catch him.
But the boy lost impetus and beamed at him, and Pärssinen returned the smile and thought that it must be a lot of fun playing on the swings. Not for him now, though. Not at his age.
He went to the shed and pushed the lawnmower out. He sat on it, started the engine and rode round to the other side, to the back of building 86. He began circling round the grass area that, he knew, it would take him half an hour to cut. Tomorrow it would be the turn of numbers 87 and 88. And the day after that numbers 89 and 90. And next week he would mow the big expanse of turf surrounding the playground. He liked the loud roar of the engine, the effortless power with which it drowned out all other sounds.
He waved to Virpi Jokinen, passing with her two little dogs, and thought of Timo, who had come back. He wondered how Timo was. It had been an odd meeting between them a few days ago. How long ago exactly? He’d written it down in his notebook.
He liked Timo. Always had, even at the time when he’d been so worried, after Timo’s disappearance and after the bad thing that had … had happened to him and Timo.
He wondered whether Timo knew that. Knew that he really liked him, even liked him a lot, or whether Timo maybe saw him in quite the wrong light.
He had a feeling that this time Timo wouldn’t come back, and he felt sad. But maybe he was wrong, because only a few days ago he would never in his wildest dreams have expected to see Timo again, which meant that Timo might surprise him by coming to his door some other day. Some time or other.
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