Light in a Dark House (26 page)

‘Well?’ asked Joentaa.

‘I know the two boys,’ she said, but she still seemed relaxed. ‘They were at our school. Several years above us.’

Several years above us, thought Joentaa. Which meant . . . that she had been even younger at the time than he had thought, much younger.

‘How . . . how old are you?’ he asked.

‘Thirty-seven,’ she said.

Joentaa nodded, and concentrated for some time on what was really a simple calculation. It meant that she had been twelve years old in the summer of 1985. When she was raped. In the music teacher Saara Koivula’s house.

‘And over behind there . . . yes, that’s her.’

‘Who?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Saara . . . Saara Koivula?’ said Joentaa.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘How do you . . .’

‘That’s her. That’s the way she moved.’ She imitated the body language of the woman in the picture. Sat up a little way, propped her head on her hand, and did what the woman in the photograph was doing: she looked at him and past him at the same time.

‘Ah,’ said Joentaa.

‘She always moved like that, you couldn’t help noticing,’ she said.

Joentaa nodded. He thought of the funeral. The pastor’s quiet voice and the empty place left for a name on the cross. An unknown woman, found in a roadside ditch with severe injuries to her skull, and brain damage. Without personal details. With traces of physical violence in the distant past.

Anita-Liisa Koponen offered him the photograph back, and Joentaa quickly put it in his pocket.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

She smiled.

‘I have one more important question to ask you. Does the phrase “the model student” mean anything to you in any connection?’

She did not reply.

‘I’m only asking whether, maybe . . . it sets off a memory.’

‘Yes, it does,’ she said.

‘Yes?’

‘Yes, Teuvo.’

‘Teuvo?’

‘A boy in my class. He went to piano lessons too.’

‘Lessons with Saara Koivula?’

‘Yes. All the others were girls, but he went for lessons as well.’

‘Teuvo . . .’

‘Of course he wasn’t a model student. Far from it, he was rather . . . unruly. That was probably just why everyone laughed when he signed up to piano lessons. Because it wasn’t like him. And because everyone thought it could only be because of her . . . do you see what I mean?’

‘Yes. And so he was called the model student? Because he went to piano lessons?’

‘I think so, yes. For a while some of the others tried annoying him by calling him that.’

‘Teuvo . . . and what else?’

She thought. ‘Teuvo Manner. I liked him very much. I even asked him about Saara several times. Asked if he knew how she was.’

‘You did?’

‘Yes, because she’d stopped coming to school. And I . . . I wasn’t going to piano lessons with her any more.’

‘I see,’ said Joentaa.

Teuvo Manner. He had a name.

He struggled with himself. With himself and with the next question he must ask. She spoke of Saara Koivula quite naturally. Even the angel had a name now. ‘I have to ask you something,’ he said. ‘It’s a question that frightens me but it’s important, perhaps for all of us.’

Beside him, Arja Ekström had straightened up slightly. Anita-Liisa Koponen, on the other hand, was still relaxed. ‘I know what you’re getting at,’ she said.

Joentaa did not reply.

‘You want to ask me . . . about Risto.’

R. says I’m not to worry about it.

Risto.

‘Yes, I do,’ said Joentaa.

‘I don’t know anything about him. Risto. That’s the only name he has. If he has another I don’t know it. I only saw him once. On that day.’

‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.

‘He was a friend of hers. I don’t understand why, but he was a friend of hers.’

‘Yes,’ said Joentaa. He felt helpless, and saw, in a few long seconds, a shadow come over her face. Instinctively he put a hand out to her, and laid it on her arm.

‘Will it soon be lunchtime?’ asked Anita-Liisa Koponen, without taking her eyes off Joentaa.

‘Soon,’ said Arja Ekström. Her voice seemed to come from far away.

‘Then I must go,’ said Anita-Liisa Koponen.

‘Of course. Thank you very much indeed,’ said Joentaa.

‘Will you be coming back?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I will . . . and not to ask any more silly questions.’

She laughed. A brief laugh, but genuine.

‘I promise,’ said Joentaa.

‘See you soon, then,’ she said, without standing up.

‘See you soon,’ said Joentaa, getting to his feet. ‘And I wish you very well, with all my heart.’

Arja Ekström was on her feet too, and he followed her to the exit.

‘She still hasn’t told us what she told you,’ said the psychiatrist as they were saying goodbye.

Joentaa nodded.

‘It strikes me as remarkable but right that you don’t tell us yourself. The initiative must come from her.’

‘Yes, probably. And I don’t know . . .’

‘What?’

‘I don’t even know whether it’s something that she can get over at all.’

Arja Ekström gave him a long look.

‘What I mean is, I don’t know whether she can come to terms with it, by talking about it. I don’t know my way around this field as well as . . .’

‘Well, in any case you’re the most thoughtful police officer I ever met,’ she said.

Joentaa looked for amusement in her eyes.

‘Not that I’ve met so very many,’ she said, laughing. ‘No, seriously, do come again when you like, because it’s just as you say. Talking is only part of coming to terms with a problem, but at the moment she’d rather talk to you than to the doctors. And we long ago left behind the days when psychiatrists and psychotherapists thought they knew everything and were superior to lay people.’

Joentaa nodded.

‘See you soon,’ she said, shaking hands.

‘Yes, see you soon.’

As he made for his car through the biting cold and the snow that was beginning to fall, he tried to imagine a summer. The summer that Anita-Liisa Koponen had forgotten, suppressed, denied so that she could go on living, and yet it had come back to haunt her.

67

WESTERBERG HAD WORKED
out what he was going to say. He would inject considerably more authority into his words, and leave the woman in no doubt of the fact that he wasn’t going to spend even a single day longer trying to chase her up on the phone. He took a deep breath and was just preparing to utter those words when Kirsti Forsman herself called him.

Her voice was calm and friendly.

‘Mr Westerberg, good to hear from you,’ she said.

‘Er . . . well,’ murmured Westerberg.

‘You tried to reach me several times over the last few days,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Westerberg.

‘I didn’t have the time to speak to you then,’ she said.

‘I see,’ said Westerberg.

‘Or the inclination.’

‘Ah.’

‘But in the end, it’s no use,’ she said.

‘Well, that makes me feel hopeful,’ he said.

‘What is it you want so urgently?’

Westerberg closed his eyes and tried to recall the woman at the other end of the line. Lawyer. Dairy products. Advises the company’s management on legal questions. A woman who seemed dynamic, and had stood in Forensics for a long time beside her dead brother, saying nothing. Who had bought a suitcase on the way to a place she had wanted to leave again in a hurry.

‘Do you remember that photograph?’ asked Westerberg.

Kirsti Forsman did not reply.

‘The one I showed you the day after your brother’s death.’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Your brother is in it. And a school friend. And two other men.’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘It has now become . . . a central factor in our investigations.’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘What do you know about it?’

‘About what?’

‘About the photograph,’ said Westerberg.

There was a long silence.

‘Nothing,’ she said.

‘That’s . . .’

‘Nothing and everything.’

‘That . . .’ said Westerberg, but then Kirsti Forsman began telling her story, and Westerberg sensed the change in her voice and sat very upright as he listened.

68

SHE WAS SITTING
in her office, at a clean, smooth desk, in front of the files in a legal dispute over a low-fat strawberry-flavoured yoghurt in which a consumer had found an insect. The man had taken the insect for a strawberry and bit into it with relish before turning to the editorial staff of a popular tabloid with his unusual discovery.

Westerberg was waiting at the other end of the line.

‘Nothing,’ she said.

‘That’s . . .’

‘Nothing and everything.’

She thought of the insect in the yoghurt, and the photograph. A central factor, as Westerberg called it. Kalevi had looked different in that photo, but she had recognised his smile, and it had looked as if Kalevi was pleased about something. Although the date had been on the back.

19 August 1985
.

‘That . . .’ said Westerberg, but she didn’t want to listen to what he had to say. She began talking, listening to herself as she did so. Westerberg said nothing at the other end of the line; she only heard him breathing quietly now and then, and the words felt like something she had wanted to get rid of for a long time.

An August evening. She is sitting in the garden at the rather wobbly table among the flowers and shrubs and trees, and her mother is humming as she serves the meal.

Her mother asks where Kalevi is, and she says: In his room, I think.

Then they sit together for several minutes before, hesitantly, they begin to eat. Cucumber soup, potatoes, fish, beetroot sauce made with milk. Then her mother stands up and goes into the house, and she hears her calling to Kalevi.

The chilled soup tastes good. When her mother comes back she is just putting some potatoes on a plate and pouring the milky red beetroot sauce over them.

There’s something the matter with him, says her mother.

Something the matter with who? she asks.

With Kalevi.

What is it? she asks.

He’s locked his door, says her mother.

They go on eating for several minutes.

Then Kalevi comes out. That image is clear before her eyes. The first thing she thinks is that Kalevi has forgotten to wipe the tears off his face. Only then does she really notice that he has been crying. She has never seen Kalevi crying before. Big brothers don’t cry. He says something, but his voice has lost its resonance, and her mother asks a question because she didn’t understand him.

She asks what’s going on, and Kalevi eats. He eats the soup and then the potatoes with the sauce and the fish.

What’s going on? her mother asks several times.

Then Kalevi stands up and goes away. Her mother clears the table, and she helps a bit and then goes to the playground with two girls who are friends of hers. To smoke in secret up there, under the little wooden roof above the slide.

When she comes home it is still very warm. She opens the door and means to go to the kitchen to get herself a drink, but she stops because she hears Kalevi’s voice, that new, toneless voice, and her mother’s weeping.

He’d only been there, that’s all, he is saying. He couldn’t have done anything. What’s he supposed to have done?

He doesn’t scream those words, he says them very quietly, murmuring. Rather pitifully. Plaintively.

Yes, they’d been playing football and volleyball down on the beach a lot over the last few weeks, he’d told her so, hadn’t he? There was a net set up there, and the field, and the music teacher had often been there with her boyfriend, and some time ago the boyfriend had asked if they’d like to play too, and of course they hadn’t said no.

Well, and last time the teacher’s boyfriend had offered them something to drink, and he, Kalevi, had drunk something, but only a few sips. Everyone does that, it’s no big deal. But somehow the teacher’s boyfriend was in such a funny mood, maybe because the teacher herself wasn’t with them on the beach that day, and as for the other two who are always there, the gardener and the guy who cleans the supermarket floors, in his opinion they were falling-about drunk, and then they all ended up at the house. The boyfriend’s house. How often does he have to say he had no idea what it was all leading up to? And no, he doesn’t know where the music teacher suddenly came from and just as suddenly the others kind of . . . started pulling her around. No, he didn’t do that. And nor did Markus Happonen.

Yes, in the bedroom. Yes, on the bed. No, the woman hadn’t objected, she had gone along with them. Yes, he was sure of that, because after all she hadn’t done anything. What did he mean, do anything? Well, she didn’t scream or complain . . . yes, of course, what else? No, he just stood there and didn’t understand what was going on. Yes, exactly. Yes, the music teacher, he’d said so three times already. Yes, her boyfriend. No, then he came home. Yes, alone. No, Markus had already . . . had already left earlier. Yes, he had gone directly after that. Yes, he keeps telling her so. What stain? What sort of stain in what underpants?

Suddenly his voice is rather louder.

Kirsti Forsman stands on the steps and wonders what it would be like to be caught smoking by her mother. In the playground, up there in the shelter of the little wooden roof of the slide.

What was she doing, poking around in his underwear, asks Kalevi. No, he doesn’t see why it matters. No, it isn’t a stain, and he doesn’t know why it’s so important . . .

A conversation between her brother Kalevi and her mother Ruut.

Kalevi in his toneless voice, her mother in tears.

About something she couldn’t grasp.

She stops talking and waits. She doesn’t know what she is waiting for until Westerberg speaks.

‘Rape,’ he says.

It sounds as if he is talking to himself more than her, and what he says seems to her very serious and sober in view of what she’d just been pouring out.

‘Three men. Two schoolboys,’ says Westerberg.

She thinks of the photograph. That normality. Kalevi smiling at the camera and writing on the back of the photo that he doesn’t have to worry about it. Because R. said so. Kalevi smiling into the camera, so distraught that he can’t even bring himself to write the name out in full.