Silence (26 page)

They were sitting in Joentaa’s kitchen with the morning sunlight flooding through the window.

‘No, no,’ said Joentaa.

‘She isn’t?’ said Sundström, sounding almost relieved. ‘Then I misunderstood.’

‘No, what I mean is she’s definitely alive. I’ve seen her.’

Sundström stared at him and waited.

‘She’s back. She was sitting outside her parents’ house when I drove away,’ said Joentaa.

‘When? When did you drive away?’

‘She’s back. I saw her outside her parents’ house twenty minutes ago,’ said Joentaa and when Sundström still went on staring at him with a question in his eyes, he repeated it: ‘She’s back.’

Sundström stayed in his upright position for a few seconds, then slumped and said in a toneless voice, ‘Well, well. Amazing.’

‘Ketola says it was her own idea.’

Sundström nodded, but he still didn’t seem to understand. ‘That means, if I understand you, that Ketola knows Sinikka Vehkasalo …’

‘No, he doesn’t really know her. She visited him. She was at his neighbours’, their daughter was having a birthday party. And Ketola was sitting on his terrace and that model was on the terrace as well.’

‘What model? You keep on talking about this stupid model …’

‘The model made at the time of Pia Lehtinen’s death, a kind of scene-of-crime sketch. I told you how Ketola took it away on his last day at work. We’d been looking for it down in Archives.’

‘Yes, yes, all right.’ Sundström fell silent again, stared at a point on the wall and seemed to be busy assembling the pieces of the puzzle into a whole. ‘Well, well,’ he murmured. ‘That would mean … correct me if I’m on the wrong track now, but that means that the girl was playing a kind of … well, a practical joke.’ Sundström’s glance moved away from the wall and met Joentaa’s eyes. There was even a touch of amusement in his expression. Sundström was fond of jokes.

‘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

S
inikka 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 Sundström 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

N
urmela 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 …’