Light in a Dark House (30 page)

‘Of course. Visitors from Finland are always welcome.’ He stepped aside, and made an inviting gesture.

‘Thank you,’ said Westerberg. Seppo just nodded.

‘Excuse the untidiness,’ said Nygren, a remark that Westerberg waved away, wondering what untidiness he meant. To Westerberg’s way of thinking, the hotel suite which Risto Nygren had been inhabiting for months was meticulously neat and tidy.

Nygren opened a connecting door to a large and comfortable living room, and asked them to sit down as he took juice and a bottle of water out of the mini-bar and put them on the table. Then he fetched glasses. And then he sat down in an armchair, let himself sink back into it, and gestured to the drinks.

‘Help yourselves,’ he said.

Westerberg declined with thanks, while Seppo beside him suddenly straightened up and reached for a bottle of orange juice. He poured the bright yellow juice into one of the glasses, and Nygren said, ‘Well . . . of course you make me curious.’

‘Do we?’ asked Westerberg.

‘Yes. Very curious. What . . . brings you here to Germany?’

‘Happonen,’ said Westerberg, watching Nygren’s face for any reaction. At first there was none. Then surprise.

‘Happonen,’ he said in a toneless voice.

‘Happonen, Forsman, Miettinen.’

Nygren said nothing.

‘And Anttila.’

‘Ah,’ said Nygren. He seemed to be genuinely surprised. As if he had been expecting another name. Westerberg guessed what name, and Seppo spoke it aloud.

‘And of course Saara. Saara Koivula.’

Leaning back in his armchair, wearing a white bathrobe and white slippers, Nygren nodded.

‘Does that mean anything to you?’ asked Westerberg.

‘I’m not quite sure,’ said Nygren.

‘Not quite sure?’ asked Seppo, and Nygren seemed to be thinking. Then he stood up.

‘Excuse me,’ he said as he left the room. ‘I’d just like to get some clothes on.’

‘Of course,’ said Westerberg, and sensed Seppo beside him straightening up as if to get to his own feet.

‘I’ll be right back,’ said Nygren, and then Westerberg and Seppo were alone sitting on the sofa, which for reasons that Westerberg could not plausibly explain smelled of lemon.

‘Is that wise?’ asked Seppo.

‘Our friend will hardly be stupid enough to think he can simply walk away now,’ said Westerberg.

Seppo nodded, drinking his orange juice, and Westerberg looked at the armchair, now empty, where Risto had just been sitting. A tall man with short hair, wet and smoothly combed back, and a curiously composed expression in his eyes and on his lips. His smile non-committal, and doled out in small portions. Not a trace of aggression. His face was slightly bloated and marked by the passing of time, but only if you looked very closely.

‘At least I understand that now,’ murmured Seppo.

‘Hmm?’ asked Westerberg.

‘All through the flight, I was wondering what Nygren would say when he heard that name. Saara Koivula. And I couldn’t think of any words.’

‘Ah.’

‘I understand that now, because when Nygren heard her name, he didn’t say anything, he only . . . nodded . . .’

‘In agreement,’ said Westerberg.

74

RISTO NYGREN SAT
on his bed in the next room, his fingers busy with the keyboard, his eyes running over the letters. What a good thing his laptop had been here on the bedside table. And that the Internet connection was as fast as the hotel brochure said.

He read and read, and felt he had only seconds to catch up with what he had failed to do for six months. He urgently needed some information.

He had flown to Germany, getting out of Finland physically and also putting Finland out of his mind. He had consumed exclusively German television and German news and German papers and magazines, and even that only now and then, because he had had more important things to do. That was how he had acted again and again over the past years and decades, but this time it really mattered.

He had laid Saara in the ditch, leaving her dead body behind along with all the damn rest of it. Although her body, as he now read, had not been dead at all.

He hadn’t killed Saara, only injured her severely. Left her in a comatose state, according to the newspaper report flickering on the screen. He had found it, after specifying more and more details, by entering the words
accident, woman, Turku
and
roadside ditch
in the search line.

And then, long after he had come to Germany, Saara had died after all in hospital in Turku, in circumstances that had not yet been conclusively established. The newspaper report contained a picture of Saara, and he clicked on it and looked at it for a while, although he had no time to spare.

Happonen, Markus
. Rising politician. Also dead. Murdered. With bottles of whisky.

He searched for
Kalevi Forsman
, and found the home page of a computer company, although the name of Forsman as a partner was only to be found in archival hits. The name had been removed from the up-to-date page. Under
Kalevi F.
in the search line he found the reason; Kalevi F. was also dead, victim of an unusual murder in a Helsinki hotel.

Miettinen, Jarkko, Jarkko M., former gardener, dead. A small announcement in the Laappeenranta local paper.

Anttila, Lassi, Lassi A., cleaner and store detective in a shopping centre, dead. The home page of a tabloid newspaper illustrated the news with a wobbly photograph, probably taken by the camera of a mobile. A grey, then yellow store full of TV sets. The man lying on the floor some way off was barely recognisable, presumably the reason for the red circle drawn round him.

He leaned back, passed his hands over the keys carefully, and tried to think, but it was no good. As soon as a thought had formed in his mind, other and unwanted ideas made their way in. He thought of Greg, of whorefucker25, of Loverboy-5000, and for a moment felt an absurd impulse to log into the forum and read the experiences of its contributors. Had anyone else tried out little Julia?

A drink, he thought, a drink to bring him back to his senses. But the mini-bar was in the living room where those two police officers were sitting, the tall one and the short one, who had come to . . . yes, why had they really come? What were those freaks doing in his hotel room?

Think, he thought, think, but it was no good. He went into the bathroom, ran cold water over his hands, and passed his wet hands over his face. Looking at himself in the mirror, he realised that he hadn’t yet done what he had said he wanted to do: put some clothes on.

He put on his trousers and jacket. He stood in front of the laptop for a while, in front of the picture of the unrecognisable dead man encircled in red, then he took hold of the handle of the connecting door and after a few seconds went through it.

The police officers were still there. Of course. The younger one had emptied his glass of orange juice, the older man was sitting exactly as he had sat before. As if he hadn’t moved during his own absence of several minutes.

He went to the mini-bar, opened it and took out the drink that he needed. ‘One for you too?’ he asked the policemen, but he neither expected nor got any answer. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘You’re on duty.’

‘That’s right,’ agreed Westerberg, and Risto Nygren sat down in the armchair again, and looked at the clear liquid in his glass, trying to concentrate on Westerberg’s voice as the man began talking about a volleyball team.

A volleyball team.

‘What?’

‘You captained the winning volleyball team, didn’t you? Back in Karjasaari. In the summer of 1985.’

What a summer, he thought. What a summer that had been. Little Forsman, little Happonen. Although Happonen had grown into a giant. He’d known, even then, that little Happonen would amount to something, and on one of those evenings, just as the sun was sinking into the water and when the others had gone, little Happonen had said he’d like to be like him, Risto, some day, and have a woman like Saara.

‘And so you will,’ Risto Nygren had replied. ‘So you will.’

The volleyball tournament. They’d won a brunch in the fish restaurant. A very hot summer. Risto Nygren remembered how he had sweated that summer, he had been sweating all the time, and he was sweating now, probably because the memory of it was coming back.

‘Mr Nygren?’ said Westerberg.

‘Yes?’

‘I am asking you questions, but I’m not getting any answers.’

He did not reply.

‘I’d like to know when you last saw your friends. Kalevi Forsman, Markus Happonen, Lassi Anttila . . .’

‘Oh, not for a long time,’ he said.

‘Is that so?’ said Westerberg.

‘I can hardly remember them,’ said Nygren.

‘But in the summer of 1985 in Karjasaari, you were all very close.’

He nodded. He had no idea why now. The focus had been Saara. He had driven out to that dump from Laappeenranta every day, just to fuck Saara, that damn . . . woman, she’d made him crazy. The woman had turned him into a cripple, an emotional cripple, but no one understood that, only Risto himself, and he didn’t recognise the name that the younger police officer now mentioned at all.

‘Who did you say?’

‘Teuvo,’ said Westerberg. ‘Teuvo Manner.’

‘Who’s he supposed to be?’

Westerberg just looked at him in silence, waiting, and Risto Nygren felt a memory begin to stir, and thought yes, he must know the name after all. He only had to answer that question to their satisfaction, and then Westerberg and his colleague would thank him warmly and go away. Back to Finland.

‘Teuvo Manner was twelve years old in 1985. He took piano lessons from your girlfriend Saara Koivula.’

Too hot, that summer, thought Nygren. Crickets chirping, mosquito bites all over his body. The smell of the insecticide that the gardener Miettinen kept spraying around, sticky insecticide spray.

‘She was your girlfriend, wasn’t she? Saara Koivula.’

‘Yes,’ said Nygren. ‘Yes.’

‘And she taught the piano,’ said Westerberg.

‘Just a moment,’ said the younger police officer.

Nygren looked up. He thought he heard a door opening. The terrace door in Majala, a mild breeze blowing in. The little house, the sofa beside the piano, Saara with her legs drawn up and her eyes closed, smiling as he penetrates her.

‘Excuse us, please, we are in the middle of . . .’ said Westerberg.

‘Room service,’ said a voice behind Nygren’s back. He turned round and saw a man he didn’t know. He watched him bringing a knife towards his neck, all very slowly. He turned back to Westerberg, who had risen to his feet and seemed to have frozen in mid-movement, while his young colleague walked past him in slow motion. Then Westerberg’s face was above him, curiously close and intimate.

Westerberg was phoning. Said something he couldn’t hear. Nygren’s head fell to one side, and he saw the connecting door swinging back and forth, a chair that had fallen soundlessly to the floor lying in front of it. He heard a humming, and now, very quietly, like a distant, muted murmur, he did hear Westerberg’s voice after all.

Room service. But the man hadn’t been wearing the green-and-white uniform of the hotel staff, and he hadn’t ordered anything from room service.

Above him, Westerberg seemed to be shouting. He looked at the man’s distorted face and his wide-open mouth.

He thought of little Julia, sitting on the bed counting the banknotes. The goodbye kiss, once on the left cheek, once on the right cheek. One day Saara had tried showing him how to play the piano. His hands had lain on the keys, but he hadn’t been able to move them, and Saara had laughed and said he was afraid of music.

Saara’s passport and Saara’s driving licence, both in his wallet. Now and then, before going to sleep, he had looked at the photos, running his fingers over the paper.

The voucher for the team’s brunch at the fish restaurant on the bathing beach at Karjasaari had never been cashed in.

Westerberg lowered his mobile, stood up and moved out of his field of vision.

Afraid of music, thought Risto Nygren, and then, after a while, the humming that had drowned out the silence also died away.

75

KIMMO JOENTAA SAT
on the ground, leaning back against the tree and reading.

From time to time Moisander came over and said something, and then the forensic pathologist from Laappeenranta came over and said something, but Joentaa listened only cursorily and never took his eyes off the lines.

A blue school exercise book. The words were very carefully written, by someone who wasn’t used to producing fine handwriting.
Summer 1985. Dear diary
.

Twilight seemed to be falling at midday, and Moisander came back again, bent down to him and gave him some transparent film folders containing various items, documents that the forensic technicians had found. Most of them were wet or softened by rain and snow.

‘Thanks,’ said Joentaa.

‘Is that . . . important?’ asked Moisander.

Joentaa followed his glance to the blue exercise book, and nodded.

‘In that box, I mean the shoebox, there was also a receipt from a stationery store.’

Joentaa looked enquiringly at him.

‘A bill for copying forty pages. Eight euros.’

‘Copies?’

‘Maybe someone wanted this exercise book copied.’

Joentaa looked down again at the fine letters written so carefully, forming the words.

Moisander went back to the forensic technicians and medics going about their work, calm and concentrating hard. Joentaa could see the swing and one of the windows of the little house through the branches of the trees. He read the diary again, and felt that now he would remember every word of it, that the text irrevocably made its own mark on the reader’s mind.

Summer 1985. Winter now.
And nothing in between, only the long gap torn open on one of those dates.

His mobile rang. Sundström. He sounded excited.

‘Kimmo, we’ve got him,’ he said. ‘Teuvo Manner. He’s obviously been at sea over the last few years. Mechanical engineer on one of the Baltic ferries.’