Light in a Dark House (15 page)

Kimmo Joentaa read this text several times, until the letters began to blur in front of his eyes. He tried to find a plausible answer to the question of why he had returned to this lead. Why he had first leafed through the files past it, only to go back on his tracks.

He recognised Petri Grönholm’s handwriting on the yellow note added to the sheet of paper with the number 1,324 on it. He looked at Grönholm’s note and read that, too, several times:

Incidentally, this lady suffers from severe bipolar disorder, is living at present in an institution for the psychologically sick in Ristiina.

Under it, Grönholm had written the address of the hospital. The thought of Tuomas Heinonen briefly came back to Joentaa’s mind. He tried to imagine this phone call that had involved a police officer in Turku and a woman in Ristiina in a curious conversation lasting several minutes and hovering somewhere between bureaucracy and transcendentalism. And somewhere in the process it had been sent off to end up in the file for those contributions from the public that could safely be ignored.

Joentaa closed his eyes and massaged his temples.

Angels, devils, in another life. A piano teacher.

Passed on for examination and evaluation.

‘Kimmo, we’re going now,’ said Päivi Holmquist behind him.

He turned round and nodded. ‘Yes, of course. Have a nice evening.’

‘Did you get anywhere?’ asked Antti Laapenranta.

‘I don’t know. Maybe,’ said Joentaa.

‘You did?’ asked Päivi.

‘Perhaps. Listen to this,’ he said, taking the sheet of paper out of the folder. He read aloud the transcript of the phone call, and then looked at two faces so baffled that he couldn’t help laughing.

‘Okay,’ said Antti Laapenranta.

‘It sounds . . .’ Päivi began, and then stopped.

‘ . . . a little peculiar,’ said Joentaa.

‘Just a little,’ said Antti.

Joentaa nodded and filed the record of the phone call away again. Didn’t want anything disturbing the neatly kept sequence of files.

‘I’ll go on for a while, okay?’ he said.

‘Of course, Kimmo,’ said Päivi. ‘See you in the morning.’

‘See you in the morning,’ said Antti too, and Joentaa waved to the two of them until they were in the lift.

He drew the keyboard towards him and logged into the Internet. A little later the email address of
veryhotlarissa
appeared. As his fingers were moving over the keys, it occurred to him that he was probably committing some kind of offence. Passing on the results of police investigations to third parties. Or something along those lines.

Does this give you any ideas?
he wrote, and sent the complete record of the whole conversation to the woman whose name he didn’t know.

He sat there in front of the screen for several minutes, waiting for an answer that didn’t come. Then he got out his mobile and called Grönholm, who sounded breathless when he replied.

‘Petri?’ said Joentaa. ‘Kimmo here.’

‘Hi, Kimmo,’ said Grönholm.

‘Are you still there?’ asked Joentaa.

‘What do you mean, there?’ asked Grönholm.

‘Well, at the office,’ said Joentaa.

‘At the office. Er, no.’

‘You’re not?’

‘Kimmo, it’s quite late, past eleven.’

‘Oh.’

‘Do you play tennis?’

‘Tennis?’

‘Yes, I’m having a game with some friends at the moment, and I thought you could play with us too some time. If you like.’

‘Sure. Actually I’ve never played tennis.’

‘Never mind, we’re not all of us very good,’ said Grönholm.

‘I see.’

‘Okay, Kimmo, see you in the morning,’ said Grönholm.

‘Yes . . . Petri, just one moment . . .’

‘They want me for the third set. Can it wait until tomorrow?’

‘Ah . . . yes, of course.’

‘Thanks. And say hi to the night porter for me,’ said Grönholm, ending the call.

43

AGAIN AND AGAIN,
Kirsti Forsman’s eyes were drawn to the huge Viking ship on the wall. It looked different, more menacing but at the same time more menaced, because it seemed to be capsizing in a strong swell, but all the same she kept thinking of the TV series she used to watch as a child:
Vicky and the Strong Men
.

The waitresses, wearing costumes suggestive of the Middle Ages, were serving delicious dishes, and Tapio Takala, the managing director of the company she worked for, had been talking to her for what felt like an eternity, because a new Tetra Pak guideline threatened to restrict the means of distribution. She nodded, and clung to her glass of red wine, and at some point Takala had begun addressing her as ‘My love’.

‘My love, I’m sure you understand that we need an idea here. I’m counting on you,’ he said.

She nodded. Her thoughts were moving in an area where Takala and his fruit yoghurt with chocolate and coconut chips occupied a comparatively small space.

Vicky and the strong men were more important.

And the calls to her mobile.

Westerberg the Helsinki police officer had left no messages, but she had recognised his number. She had looked at his business card often enough, and although she never called the number she knew it by heart.

She looked at the ship, thought of Vicky, let Takala’s torrent of talk flow past her and wondered why Westerberg had tried to reach her three times. In the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening.

And soon night would fall, and Takala was still talking non-stop, and the waitress brought dessert, mango cream with pineapple slices, which seemed to have little to do with Vicky, the strong men and the Viking ship on the wall.

Takala had more red wine poured, and when at last there was a sudden silence, Kirsti Forsman wondered whether he had really just wanted to discuss Tetra Paks and guidelines with her or whether he had something else in mind, something that he hadn’t achieved yet.

She smiled at him and felt slightly tipsy, a feeling that wouldn’t turn to nausea until later that night or in the morning.

Takala raised a hand and ordered two espressos.

Her iPhone buzzed. Like a swarm of bees.

Westerberg.

She stared at the number on the display, and waited for the swarm of bees to move on. When the phone fell silent Takala did what she had really wanted to do, breathed audibly out.

‘Nothing important?’ he said, and Kirsti Forsman had the impression that there were other words mingled with those, something like: What could be more important than me, my love?

She smiled and shook her head. Nothing important.

She thought of Kalevi. Of that summer’s day in the distant past. The humming of bees and flies. Kalevi telling their mother something in a wavering, breaking voice, like a small child. Their mother’s eyes. The horror in them, the sadness, the fear that couldn’t be put into words, and all the words in the world would not have been up to the story that Kalevi had told.

Kalevi, who was crying like a child.

Her mother, who had no more tears to shed after several days.

And she herself, who had shut that day away as if in a room to which she would never return. She had thrown away the key. She had met Kalevi now and then. The last time at Christmas nearly three years ago. Kalevi upstairs in the guest room. His soft snoring behind the closed door against which she had leaned her head for a few minutes.

Takala seemed euphoric, challenged her to a duel with their mobiles converted to laser swords.

She ate the dessert fast and greedily, the fruity mango cream, and emptied the last glass of wine in a single draught.

Takala was playing the flute on his mobile, elegiac notes that even added up to a tune.

‘Lovely,’ she said, and Takala looked pleased and insisted on escorting her home.

Outside the front door he lost his nerve, perhaps because she hadn’t laughed at any of his jokes on the way, and when he was about to embark on a hesitant ‘Goodnight’ she asked if he wouldn’t like to come in.

The surprise in his face finally made her laugh, and a few minutes later, while she was lying under him on the squeaking bed and smelled his sweat, she imagined herself lying in the arms of Westerberg, whom she had somehow liked, even though he had found the key that she had been trying to lose all her life.

44

KIMMO JOENTAA DROVE
down a long, narrow road that night. The dazzle of headlights came towards him less often, and the lakes hidden behind the snow-laden trees to left and right drew in on the road, until at last it became a long bridge leading over the water.

Soon after that, early in the morning, he arrived in Ristiina and parked the car outside the hospital from which the interview with the reference number 1,324 had come.

He was feeling tired, and knew at the same time that he wouldn’t be able to sleep if he tried to now. He had often felt like that in the first weeks and months after Sanna’s death.

The hospital lay in the dark, surrounded by a large garden. A massive building like a villa, it seemed to consist of a main house and several subsidiary structures. Lights were on here and there. Behind one of the windows Kimmo Joentaa saw a young woman and a young man. The woman was sitting at a desk in front of a computer screen, the man was talking and didn’t seem to notice that the woman wasn’t listening to him.

Within minutes, a sharp breath of cold air filled the interior of the car, and Joentaa reached for the file lying on the passenger seat.

Anita-Liisa Koponen. Believes she recognises the unidentified dead woman as her piano teacher. Can’t remember her name. Played Sibelius like an angel.

He leaned back and thought of Larissa. Tried to imagine where she was. Probably asleep. Breathing, dreaming, weeping. She wouldn’t be able to remember her dream when she woke up.

The woman on the other side of the window began to laugh, and the man shook his head and went over to the computer. The woman pointed to the screen and laughed again, and once more the man shook his head, presumably to show that he couldn’t share the woman’s amusement.

Joentaa watched the two of them engaged in their silent dialogue. How far away from him they were, although only a few metres separated them. A low wall, part of the garden, a windowpane.

He looked down at the file without reading it. Angels have no names. His thoughts began circling round memories that faded before he could grasp them. Only to come back again. Sanna swimming in the lake and laughing, although she was mortally ill. Larissa trudging through the woods ahead of him, telling stories from the novels she read or the films she saw, or about the children with whom she played ice hockey.

He closed his eyes and felt sleep approaching after all. For a while he imagined letters emerging from all the stories, all the words he had heard, single letters that began to form a name.

Just as he was thinking he could read the name, a repeated knocking brought him back to reality. He was looking at the face of a bearded man who was knocking on the window of the driver’s door.

‘Excuse me,’ he called through the glass.

‘Yes?’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine.’

The man nodded, turned up his thumb and went towards the hospital building. The cold inside the car had spread, and the darkness was giving way to a touch of daylight. Cars drew up and parked near his own, people climbed out, ran stooping past a porter’s lodge into the courtyard beyond and disappeared into the main building. Room after room was flooded with electric light, and the snowfall setting in made the morning look brighter than it was. The room where a young woman and a young man had been bending over a computer screen some time earlier was empty.

Kimmo Joentaa put the file, which had slipped down between the seats, back on the passenger seat and waited to feel the impulse to get out. His mobile, lying beside the file folder, was blinking at him. He picked it up. A call that had come in at 5.30. He imagined hearing Larissa’s voice as he tapped in the number to bring up his mailbox.

Then he heard the tired, distant voice of Tuomas Heinonen. ‘Kimmo, Tuomas here. Call me, please . . . when you have time. I have . . . a few difficulties.’

Joentaa lowered his mobile and thought of Tuomas, sitting in a room in another hospital. Tennis, he thought. Good quota, wrong tip. He almost felt as if he could hear the rhythmic sound of a rally in the background, behind Tuomas Heinonen’s soft voice.

He ought to call Paulina and ask her how it was possible for her husband, during a stay in hospital to cure his gambling addiction, to bet on tennis matches. And first he would call Tuomas and tell him he really must stop all that nonsense at once.

He slipped the mobile into his coat pocket and got out of the car, leaning forward as he ran to take the edge off the cold. He showed his ID to the porter, who was sitting upright behind his little window, and explained that he urgently wanted to talk to Anita-Liisa Koponen.

‘On what business?’ asked the porter.

‘On what what?’

‘On what business?’ repeated the porter.

‘Oh, I see. Angels,’ said Joentaa.

The porter gawped at him, and seemed to have another question ready, but Joentaa didn’t let him get it in.

‘Angels, devils. Life, death. Summer, winter, fire, water. The usual thing, you know what I mean.’

The porter nodded, and hesitated briefly. Then he rang a number, had a conversation on the phone, and told him – it sounded rather ambiguous to Kimmo Joentaa – that one of the hospital staff would be along right away to take care of him.

45

THE BREAKFAST BUFFET
in the Karjanhovi Hotel was surprisingly lavish. Apart from a very old man who was stoically reading a newspaper at the side of the room without ever turning the page, Westerberg and Seppo were the only guests there. Seppo ate a hearty breakfast: scrambled eggs, sausages, cheese, salmon, and he finished with some curiously multicoloured muesli flakes.

Career portal, thought Westerberg as his young colleague shovelled the colourful muesli and milk into his mouth like a child.