Palm Beach, Finland

by Antti Tuomainen

  The lift reached the underground parking lot and Holma awoke from his reverie. He walked to his car.

  Only two weeks and two days ago Holma had told Antero it was time for him to become more independent, time to do something for himself. It seemed his brother had taken that advice quite literally.

  Holma sighed. Either way, Antero was family. And if anyone so much as snapped a hair on the head of someone in his family, then…

  He clicked open the car doors.

  5

  ‘Why are we meeting him out here?’ asked Robin. He took a few steps, walked in a full circle and said out loud something that Chico knew only too well.

  They were at the bottom of a quarry, standing right at the edge of a small pond.

  Robin was running through things, thinking out loud: ‘Thirty shrimp casseroles, seven o’clock. Dessert: sorbet and strawberries. Chop organic strawberries for thirty.’

  Chico didn’t answer, but he understood Robin’s predicament. He understood it only too well.

  The last two weeks had been a blur. But they had stuck by their decision. Keep calm and carry on as if nothing had happened. Or as if almost nothing had happened. There was only one problem: their faces looked as though they had had an unfortunate encounter with a brick wall. Or an electric whisk.

  The solution to this came from the glam rock of their youth, from the only rock group they had played in together; the only group in which Robin had ever played: they had started wearing make-up again. For the first few days they had needed an embarrassing amount of powder, eyeliner and mascara. No fucking way, it’s Alice Cooper, people said in bars. Chico couldn’t explain that he wasn’t actually an Alice fan, though he made an exception for the legendary Billion Dollar Babies album. A few days later they went through a shorter phase, emulating The Cure and Robert Smith, before finally reaching this last, more modest approach, along the lines of the veterans of hard rock still alive today: eyeliner, a touch of mascara, a few dabs of powder to distract from the darker areas around the eyes and the swelling across the eyebrows.

  Chico pulled at his T-shirt. There wasn’t anything necessarily wrong with his Eric Clapton T-shirt, he knew that, but it was too tight. Everything felt too tight.

  Chico looked around: a circular and allegedly deep pond at the edge of the quarry, the car they’d borrowed, Robin’s mother’s plumblue Ford Siesta parked at the water’s edge, young birch trees and ragged bushes along the light and brown embankments, pines standing tall as if keeping watch, and above it all a bright sun that didn’t yet warm them.

  Robin was stressed, Chico could see it. He was disappointed too. Robin had great plans for that money, Chico knew that only too well. Dreams and plans. And in one way or another they all involved Nea.

  Nea was one of the lifeguards – Chico’s colleague and the brownest white person Chico had ever seen. She was also the most scantily dressed person he’d ever seen. On many occasions Chico had felt like asking Robin what he planned to do about his infatuation, other than stand paralysed with awkwardness and let out a low, mumbling sound every time he saw her, staring at her shining brown skin, of which there was so much on display that even Chico had to double-check that she was wearing at least some clothes. Thankfully, however, he’d never got round to asking.

  For a while everything had seemed fine, but now they’d slid back to square one, maybe even further than that. Palm Fucking Beach Finland, thought Chico as Jorma Leivo finally appeared at the end of the dirt track.

  Leivo drove his car right up to them, forcing them both to take a step backwards and pushing them towards the edge of the pond. Leivo opened the door, stepped out of the car and stood at its front corner, almost as wide as the bonnet of the Pajero itself. Chico guessed Leivo had deliberately cornered them before the conversation could get under way.

  ‘Two weeks,’ said Leivo and stared at them with those frightening blue eyes of his. ‘Two weeks, and nothing to show for it.’

  It took Chico a moment to understand quite what Leivo meant. Surely he couldn’t be serious.

  ‘Well, the situation—’

  ‘The situation is that you two haven’t been doing what I asked,’ said Leivo.

  Chico shook his head. He wanted to refute what Leivo had said, but couldn’t quite believe he’d heard right.

  ‘But we’re at work every day,’ he said.

  ‘Damn right you are,’ Leivo snapped. ‘And I pay your wages. I’m not talking about that. We have another agreement, one that we’ve shaken hands on. And the matter is now more urgent than ever.’

  Chico was about to say something – he wasn’t sure what – when he heard Robin’s voice beside him.

  ‘We killed the dude, accidentally yanked him in different directions.’

  Jorma Leivo started bellowing and raised his hands to his ears. ‘I didn’t hear that,’ he said, now even angrier than before. ‘I don’t know anything about that. I just…’ Leivo lowered his hands. ‘For crying out loud. I’m paying you to do a job, and it’s your job to actually do it. Is it really that complicated? Am I working with a pair of complete idiots or what?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Chico. He was responding to Leivo’s previous observation, but now it sounded as though he was unsure of his own idiotism. He didn’t care. What he saw here was the opportunity to negotiate. ‘It’s not that simple. I mean, it actually is quite complicated. You see, we’ve only been paid one instalment, for one job.’

  Gotcha.

  Jorma Leivo looked at him. Thank God Robin was keeping his mouth shut. Leivo cleared his throat. ‘And the police?’ he said.

  Chico waited for Leivo to continue, but he didn’t.

  ‘They don’t know what happened,’ Chico nodded. ‘It’s obvious.’

  Leivo looked at him. What was going on in Leivo’s eyes? Why were his blue eyes glowing like that? Were they about to explode?

  ‘Not for now,’ he said, now strangely slow and clear, as if he were talking to a child. ‘But what if someone told the police what had happened?’

  Chico could feel Eric Clapton shrinking on his chest. Eric and the guitar, his grip now tighter than before.

  ‘Here’s what I suggest,’ said Leivo, still speaking slowly. ‘I suggest you take care of your job – both jobs – and then, once everything’s been taken care of, we can think about your remuneration. You’ve got exactly two more weeks. It must happen within two weeks. I need her signature on the dotted line. I don’t know how clearly I need to spell this out, but you have two options: the local nick or a simple job that needs sorting. I don’t want to know what went on in the house, and this meeting never happened. This conversation never happened either.’

  Leivo paused. Either the boughs of the pine trees were humming, thought Chico, or the sound was coming from somewhere deep inside him. Leivo turned to look at Robin.

  ‘Two weeks,’ he repeated.

  ‘Two weeks is fourteen days,’ said Robin.

  Jorma Leivo got into his car, reversed a few metres, stopped and seemed to be weighing up his options: as if he might either accelerate towards them and dump their bodies in the pond, or turn the car. For a moment the Pajero stood on the spot, then the bonnet began to turn. Chico could breathe again; he took a few steps forwards, a few steps away from the edge of the water, just in case.

  Robin was driving. Chico was sitting next to him, watching the landscape shudder and shimmer past. It was late summer.

  Yet another summer. That greenness that lasted only a moment, the sun that rose so high that eventually it had to get its own back. And boy did it get its own back. For a full six months it wouldn’t show its face. And so another year had passed, another whole year of life.

  The guitar he had almost held in his hands.

  The debut album he had almost released.

  Chico thought of Eric Clapton. He knew Eric had had his fair share of tragedies, his own difficulties, but … nothing like this. No matter how hard he tried, Chico couldn’t imagine Eric Clapton sitting in
his childhood friend’s mum’s car – one that looked like a yoghurt pot, the air heavy with the scent of vanilla Wunder-Baum warmed in the sunshine – blackmailed into violence with the threat of a prison sentence, and all because he’d slipped and pulled when he was supposed to remain upright and push.

  Suddenly it all felt quite surreal.

  He couldn’t imagine Eric Clapton in a situation like this because Eric would simply never get himself into a situation like this. I mean, what did a super-rich international rock star know about situations like this in the first place? And right then, as though a playlist featuring all of Eric’s most compelling blues renditions had suddenly started spinning inside him, he heard everything with new ears, mortal ears, and Chico had to ask himself: how did Eric know how to play the blues, how to sing it? What did he actually know about the blues?

  The feeling was new and confusing, it turned the songs upside down to reveal everything that lay behind all that masterful guitar playing, and for a moment Chico couldn’t see anything no matter how much he fumbled in the darkness for his mentor. The sensation passed as quickly as it had arrived, Chico was once again in the car with Robin beside him. It was a huge relief, but a seed of uncertainty had become lodged in his mind.

  Chico realised he had come to doubt even Eric Clapton.

  6

  The bright-blue beach hut was a long row of white-framed doors and windows, and served as a boatshed, a warehouse, a coffee shop and a grocery store. Jan Nyman stopped at the fridge in the grocery section and took out a bottle of Dr Pepper, paid in cash and sat down on the broad terrace outside. The chair felt warmer than the air temperature.

  Nyman was happy with his new shorts. Their dark brown went well with his red-and-white checked short-sleeved shirt, and a pair of light-brown sandals rounded off the maths-teacher-on-vacation look perfectly. The sea glimmered in the afternoon sunlight – no longer with the intense midday glow and not yet the golden mirror effects of late evening; this was a languid light, stretching out across the water as far as the eye and sails could take him. And speaking of sails, Nyman looked at his phone, still in disbelief.

  It was true, though:

  You have been enrolled in a windsurfing class for beginners. Starts Tuesday 9 a.m. Register at the West End. That’s right, the West End. You can’t miss it.

  Nyman sipped his chilled drink. Of course, he thought, Muurla had forgotten to mention something essential. And this, if anything, was essential. He would not be windsurfing though. He would go to the West End, whatever that meant, and would switch to a team sport – beach volleyball if there was nothing else on offer. If you wanted to get to know people, team sports were the best. On a previous case he’d joined a floorball team while trying to track down a guy dealing in growth hormones. He never located the man, who was wanted for involuntary manslaughter, but he’d made many new friends to whom he couldn’t give his real name and whom he could never meet again. But that was another case.

  Nyman looked up. The West End was opposite him, situated on the other side of the almost deserted beach: a bright white sign and turquoise lettering told him this was the place. Next to the sign was a pink building with two shiny plastic palm trees on either side of the front door.

  Nyman stood up and walked off, taking the most direct route across the beach. It was a mistake. In an instant the sand forced its way into his sandals and started chafing his feet. If he was this unaccustomed to beach life, how could someone even begin to believe he wanted to take up windsurfing? Nyman stopped, took off his sandals and was surprised at how warm and soft the sand felt against his bare feet on such a chilly day. The feeling was pleasant, and it made him stop and look around. Buildings in garish colours, a large bright sign, of which he could only see a sliver. He stood there for a moment, enjoying the feel of sand between his toes, the sensation of his brain processing powerful sensory stimuli. It was a brief moment. Nyman started walking again, and after a second or two could barely remember why he had stopped in the first place.

  He arrived at the pink door of the pink building, opened it and stepped inside. At first he could see only outlines, but his eyes soon grew accustomed to the dimness.

  And he did not cancel his windsurfing course after all. It was all because of the woman behind the desk.

  Long dark hair, long regal nose. A tall, magnificent woman.

  Olivia Koski.

  ‘I’ve come to register for the beginners’ windsurfing course,’ Nyman continued once he’d introduced himself. ‘The group that starts tomorrow at nine.’

  ‘That’s right. Nine o’clock means we’re in the water at nine. Before that we carry the boards down to the shore and make sure the sails are in order. Do you want to rent a board or have you brought your own? We sell boards too – new and second-hand.’

  Her brown eyes were striking; the photographs didn’t do them justice. Her voice was friendly, very pleasant indeed.

  ‘I’m a complete beginner,’ said Nyman. ‘I’ve never even stood on a surfboard, let alone actually gone surfing. What would you suggest?’

  Olivia Koski looked at him, her eyes almost level with his. Nyman was one, maybe two centimetres taller, but his posture was hunched – relaxed, as Nyman might have preferred to think – and Koski was standing slightly higher on the uneven floor. The office was empty, except for this woman wearing only a swimming costume. It must be a protocol thing, thought Nyman. Few people would wear a one-piece swimming costume to work out of choice.

  ‘Let’s start by finding you the right board,’ said Olivia Koski.

  The boards were stored in a locked shed outside. She opened the wide doors facing out to sea. Nyman looked at the woman’s shoulders, her arms, her back: exercise and sunshine, and a long, light-coloured scar starting behind her right shoulder and disappearing midway down her back. They stepped inside the shed, and Nyman saw more sails and surfboards than he’d seen in his entire life. Olivia Koski glanced at him, sizing him up.

  ‘Five foot eleven, one hundred and sixty-seven pounds?’

  ‘Five foot eleven and a half, one hundred and sixty-three pounds.’

  ‘The Distance Runner,’ she said and tapped one of the boards. ‘This is the one.’

  ‘How long have you been windsurfing?’ asked Nyman keeping his eyes firmly on the board he’d been allocated, his voice carefree and chatty.

  ‘Thirty-nine years,’ said Olivia Koski.

  Nyman looked up.

  ‘My father,’ she explained. ‘He was always in the water, one way or another. Swimming, windsurfing, canoeing, diving. I used to accompany him – as far back as I can remember.’

  ‘Are you from round here?’

  ‘Originally,’ she replied, staring past Nyman and out to sea. ‘I was away for a long time and came back when … Are you buying or renting? I’m sorry, my thoughts were … somewhere else.’ The woman gave a melancholy smile, her brown eyes finally settled on Nyman’s face. ‘A beginner, you say?’

  ‘Completely.’

  This time Olivia Koski looked at him more closely, and to Nyman it seemed this was the first time she truly paid him any attention.

  ‘I’d rent this one,’ she said. Now she sounded as though she was choosing her words carefully. ‘Not just for a day, but for a while longer. Think of it as reserving the board for yourself in case you take a liking to it. This board is top of the range, but we can talk about the price. So if you’re planning on sticking around for a while…’

  ‘At least a week.’

  ‘Then I’d rent this one for a week, and if, or rather, when, the windsurfing bug hits you like a bolt from the blue, I’d buy it at the end of the week.’

  ‘So windsurfing hits you like a bolt from the blue?’

  The woman smiled, but her smile stopped short. ‘I’m not the best judge of people, but I know a thing or two about windsurfing, so in that respect…’

  Nyman nodded. ‘Let’s do that. I’ll take the board for a week.’

  The woman seemed to
be waiting for something. Nyman didn’t know what.

  ‘People normally ask for a discount,’ she said eventually. ‘And failing that, at least they ask the price.’