Silence (18 page)

‘The witch talks just like Aku,’ he told her.

‘You’ve been to the cinema?’ asked Marjatta.

‘I mean Aku talks like the witch. He imitated her very well. Tell him I said so.’

‘I thought you were meeting your client about those terraced houses,’ said Marjatta.

‘I did. But I had some spare time first.’

‘Will you be home tomorrow?’ asked Marjatta.

‘Yes. Or the day after tomorrow at the latest.’

Marjatta did not reply to that.

‘I miss you all,’ he said.

‘We miss you too.’

‘Tell Aku what I said about the witch. I mean that he imitated her well. He’ll like to hear that.’

‘I’ll tell him,’ said Marjatta.

‘And give them both my love, of course.’

‘Will do.’

‘Sleep well.’

‘You too.’

He opened the window on the driver’s side and heard voices. One agitated male voice, one calm, quieter female voice. The voice of Elina Lehtinen, Pia Lehtinen’s mother.

Elina Lehtinen and her visitor were sitting in the garden. He heard their voices, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He just heard the peaceful calm of Elina Lehtinen’s voice.

His mobile signalled an incoming text message. Aku was pleased, wrote Marjatta.

He put the mobile down on the passenger seat and listened as the man, Elina Lehtinen’s visitor, uttered suppressed cries. Elina Lehtinen said nothing for a while, then he heard her quiet voice again. Pia had tried to cry out too. Lying under Pärssinen. He had seen only her legs. And her arms. And the bicycle.

He had sat in the car while Pärssinen sank the body in the lake. He had watched him through the windscreen.

Through his windscreen now, he saw a man coming out of Elina Lehtinen’s house. The man’s head was still bowed.

Elina Lehtinen watched him go until he had disappeared into the house next door to hers. A small, slender woman. She closed the door.

Another text message from Marjatta. Aku is wide awake, she wrote, badgering her about the witch, but when you’re away I can’t sleep anyway.

He turned off his mobile, started the car and drove. Around the city. Several times he was about to follow the sign pointing to the city centre, towards the hotel, but then he went on driving round in circles, until finally, with the last of his strength, he found a car park, put his head on the steering wheel and was asleep within seconds.

12

K
immo Joentaa looked at the stack of paper on the table in front of him. All the information gathered in the last few days by some forty officers investigating the case.

He passed his hand over the sheets of paper. Hundreds of them, crammed with writing. He thought of the others now sitting at home reading them too. Heinonen, Grönholm, Sundström.

He concentrated on statements concerning Sinikka Vehkasalo. He read, picked up the photo and imagined himself slowly becoming able to see through those eyes as he examined marginal notes.

He didn’t know why he was doing that, it made no sense, because very probably Sinikka Vehkasalo had been the victim of a criminal whose actions were subject to chance and instinct, and had nothing at all to do with the girl Sinikka Vehkasalo herself. All the same, he was concentrating just now, for reasons he couldn’t explain, on the factors that made Sinikka begin to take shape as he read between the lines.

Most of the interviews ended nowhere. Dealt with and summed up in well-rehearsed phrases that were meant to show accuracy and efficiency, and in reality were always just beside the mark. Or, at least, that was his impression.

Interviews with boys and girls at her school. She didn’t seem to have any close girlfriends, but most of them had liked Sinikka. She had always known everything but never put up her hand in class because she didn’t like to show off, said one of the boys who had been interviewed, in a throwaway comment.

One of the girls mentioned a birthday party when Sinikka suddenly disappeared. She had come back hours later, lost in thought, smiling in a mysterious way, and wouldn’t answer when asked where she had been.

Magdalena, the girl who had originally been going to volleyball training with her, said she had been very surprised when Sinikka didn’t turn up. She had always been there. And it for once, she was unable to keep a date she would certainly have said so. Magdalena had tried to reach Sinikka several times on the day she went missing, but her mobile had been turned off.

Joentaa nodded. They had found Sinikka’s mobile in her room at home. Sinikka had obviously forgotten it when she went to volleyball.

There had been three messages from Magdalena in her voicemail, never listened to, and seven from Ruth Vehkasalo. Where was she, Ruth Vehkasalo had asked. At first sounding cross, shouting now and then, and finally, late in the evening, just before her husband Kalevi had recognized his daughter’s bicycle on TV, she had begged Sinikka very quietly please to get in touch, because she was beginning to worry.

Recently, Sinikka Vehkasalo had been elected Years Seven to Ten delegate at school. She had won against another girl, a considerably older candidate, and that had attracted some attention. She hadn’t told her parents about her election.

A male teacher described Sinikka as a brilliant personality; a female colleague of his called her inconspicuous and silent. Joentaa highlighted these remarks, although they were just marginal notes, random assessments of her character.

It was really all about something else. About Sinikka’s body and where it was. And her murderer. And about the fact that, three days after Sinikka’s disappearance, they still had not the slightest idea of what had happened. The search for Sinikka’s body now involved more than a hundred police officers and volunteers, and two dozen divers.

Joentaa looked at the time. Three minutes after midnight. He hadn’t called Sanna’s parents. He hadn’t called his mother Anita. Tomorrow.

Someone rang the bell. Joentaa knew who it was. He went to open the door, thinking of another man who had come to his house on another night, in winter two years ago. He opened the door.

‘Hello,’ said Ketola. ‘I thought you’d still be up.’

‘That’s right.’

Ketola came in and said, ‘By the way, it’s my birthday.’

‘Oh.’

‘Since a few minutes ago.’

‘Many happy returns,’ said Joentaa.

‘Thanks,’ said Ketola and went into the living room, swaying slightly.

‘Sit down.’

‘Thanks.’ Ketola looked at the stack of notes and asked, ‘Champagne on ice?’

‘What?’

‘That was a joke.’

‘No, no, in fact I do have some in the cellar,’ said Joentaa. ‘It’s been there for some time, but … well, not champagne, of course, just sparkling wine.’

Ketola stared at him and Kimmo went down to the cellar to fetch the ancient bottle of sparkling wine. Bought by Sanna for reasons that never materialized. He opened the bottle in the kitchen. The cork hit Ketola, who happened to be standing in the doorway at the wrong time.

‘Ouch,’ said Ketola.

‘Sorry.’

‘Never joke with Kimmo Joentaa. For a moment I forgot that iron rule.’ Ketola rubbed his forehead.

Joentaa poured the sparkling wine into two glasses that he and Sanna had bought together. ‘Cheers,’ he said, handing Ketola a glass.

‘Thank you,’ said Ketola.

‘Are you all right?’

‘What?’

Joentaa pointed to Ketola’s forehead.

‘Oh, not so bad.’ Ketola was standing uncertainly in front of the sofa. ‘Well, cheers,’ he said, clinking glasses with Joentaa.

‘And happy birthday again,’ murmured Joentaa.

The sparkling wine was warmish, had an odd aftertaste and fizzed like mineral water.

‘Delicious.’ Ketola drained his glass and sank into the sofa.

‘Do you like the glasses?’

‘Nice, very nice,’ said Ketola.

‘Sanna had set her heart on them. As far as I’m concerned, to be honest, one glass is much the same as another.’

‘No, no, these are really beautiful,’ said Ketola. ‘Reading, I see?’ He indicated the stack of paper. Joentaa nodded. ‘Anything new?’

‘Not much. Possibly another case involving a small red car. In May 1983. It could get us a little further on, but of course it has nothing directly to do with Sinikka Vehkasalo.’

‘A murdered girl? In 1983?’

‘Missing. Missing to this day,’ said Joentaa.

Ketola nodded.

Joentaa refilled their glasses. ‘We’re really just clutching at straws with this one,’ he said, ‘But we don’t have much else.’

Ketola nodded. His glance fell on the cardboard carton standing next to the table. The old files that Joentaa had cleared away for the time being. Ketola’s files.

Ketola picked out one of the yellowed folders and leafed through it. After a while he smiled as he read. Then he closed the folder and put it down carefully on the table. He said nothing for some time, then he remarked, ‘Interesting, all the same.’

‘What’s interesting?’ asked Joentaa.

‘This carton standing here. These files lying around. With you. Who’d have thought this carton would ever leave Päivi’s room in the basement again? What was that boy’s name?’

‘Hm?’

‘The boy who took us down to the basement. On my last day at work’

‘Oh yes. Antti.’

‘That was it.’

‘The lumber room?’

‘Exactly. Who’d have thought this cardboard box would ever make it from there to your living room?’

‘Well …’

‘At least for a few days,’ said Ketola and Joentaa wondered briefly what he meant by that. ‘Nice lad, anyway.’

‘What?’

‘Nice lad, that Antti from archives. Is he still with you?’

‘Oh yes. He has a permanent appointment now. He and Päivi are always in fits of laughter when I’m in there. They get on fine,’ said Joentaa.

Ketola nodded. ‘And how about you?’ he asked after a while.

‘Me?’

‘How are you getting on?’

‘How am I getting on?’

Ketola looked at him for a bit, his eyes fixed calmly on Joentaa. Joentaa met his gaze and thought that they had never looked into one another’s eyes like this. Then he turned away, drank some wine and refilled his glass.

Ketola was smiling when he looked up again. ‘You’re a funny one, Kimmo,’ he said. ‘I really do like you.’

‘Funny?’

‘I can’t think of a better way to put it. Thank you for the bubbly.’ Ketola put down his glass and stood up.

‘Stay a bit longer.’

Ketola stopped in front of the photographs. ‘Sanna?’ he asked, pointing to the photo of Sanna knocking the biscuit out of her mother’s hand.

‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.

Ketola looked at the photograph. He stood in front of it for several minutes. Then he nodded firmly, as if he had understood something, and left.

12 J
UNE

1

I
t was a cool morning. Timo Korvensuo felt a brief, sharp stabbing in his back when he woke up. His left arm was hanging through the steering wheel and it was a few seconds before he could move it. His arm no longer felt like part of his body.

He waited for a while, looking through the windscreen at the car park, while the pain crept into his arm and from there through his body.

Then he sat up straight and thought of another morning many years ago, when he and some friends had been sitting beside a camp-fire in a wood. All night long. After a while some of them had gone to sleep, others had stared at the flickering flames in silence, and he had risen to his feet, murmured a goodbye and walked away.

He had made his way through the bushes and trees until he finally found the path through the wood; then he had gone the wrong way and he could no longer find his bicycle. He had a cut that stung on one arm, and with every breath he took he sensed smoke in his lungs.

He had walked through the wood for hours, and the whole place had looked exactly the same: trees, paths with other paths branching off from them.

When he finally did find his bike it was considerably warmer, and the sun was shining. The others’ bikes were not there any more.

As he cycled home, he had felt annoyed with himself the whole time for leaving earlier than the others, only to get home later than they did. They must have wondered why his bike was still there. Or maybe not. Very likely they had hardly registered it. He hadn’t mentioned the incident to anyone afterwards. That night had left them all exhausted.

It had been in the holidays. They had talked all night, eaten meat, drunk beer and spirits, and talked. Talked and talked, and he couldn’t remember a single word of it, only how tired he had been in the morning, and the vague fear he had felt as he walked the same paths through the same wood again and again.

He drove to the hotel. He parked the car in the underground garage and took the lift straight up to the fifth floor. He didn’t meet anyone.

His room was empty. His laptop was humming on the table. The DVD case lay beside it. He took off his jacket and hung it over the chair. The clock on the TV set said five thirty in the morning.

The bed was freshly made up and chilly. He lay on his back and thought about breakfast. In an hour’s time he would go down and eat something. He felt hungry. Very hungry.

He really liked the idea of that wonderful breakfast, fresh yoghurt with strawberries, scrambled egg with ham, salmon with horseradish and strong, sweet coffee. He was ravenous, and in an hour’s time he could satisfy his hunger.

His left arm still felt like a foreign body lying beside him. He watched the numbers on the TV clock moving on, and counted along with them quietly.

Never before had he looked forward so much to eating. A man in a neighbouring room had a bad coughing fit. For a while the man fell silent, only to go on coughing worse than ever. Timo Korvensuo could hear the mucus coming up.

He counted the minutes and sensed that something was happening. Something important.

He didn’t know what it was, but anyway it was important, and everything felt very light.

2

J
oentaa woke up and reached for Sanna’s hand, thinking that she was lying beside him. For a moment he was annoyed, and wondered where she could have gone so early in the morning.