Palm Beach, Finland

by Antti Tuomainen

  Olivia thought for a moment. No, she wouldn’t mention the offer of ten thousand euros. Or was it an agreement? Maybe not, not before she had the money. Perhaps this was the no-man’s-land between offer and agreement.

  ‘It’s just that…’ she began and saw that Miss Simola was listening. It felt good. ‘I remember my father used to say that nothing happens round here without Miss Simola finding out about it.’

  ‘You want to get to the bottom of it yourself,’ said Miss Simola, her intonation not rising at the end of the sentence. It was not a question.

  Olivia stared at the woman’s brown eyes.

  ‘You remember our house. It needs renovating from top to bottom. I’ve starting using the outhouse again, because there’s no running water. Yesterday my sauna and shed burned down. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t want to sell the house. It’s all I have. I’m going to renovate it, if it’s the last thing I do.’

  Miss Simola didn’t speak, clearly waiting for Olivia to continue.

  ‘One way of doing that is to find out exactly what happened. It would help me move on.’

  ‘You said you don’t want to sell.’

  ‘Under no circumstances.’

  ‘But someone’s made an offer?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Olivia. ‘Jorma Leivo. My boss. The man who…’

  ‘Palm Beach Finland,’ said Miss Simola. The name sounded far more appropriate, more fitting, pronounced in Miss Simola’s thick Finnish accent. ‘I know the man. You’re thinking of him?’

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘As the person who killed the man in your kitchen? I didn’t mean as husband material.’

  Olivia shook her head. ‘The police told me Jorma Leivo spent that evening in his own restaurant, eating and mingling with the customers, offering everyone ice cream and taking selfies, apparently. I heard this the last time I was interviewed, and I asked the police whether Jorma Leivo was a suspect. And that’s the problem, I suppose. All logical explanations have been examined and discarded. That must be why the police have stopped investigating.’

  ‘The police never stop investigating,’ said Miss Simola. She sounded suddenly different.

  ‘That’s what it looks like,’ said Olivia. ‘First there were the local police – the big one with the moustache who was friendly at first but who yesterday seemed to read something into my every word; and the other one, who wouldn’t stop staring at me. Then came the physicists – I call them physicists because they had identical pairs of glasses, shirts and jackets, and they were always measuring things, places, time, and the way they spoke was terribly officious: “In your own words, how would you describe your hallway at 23:51 hours on the evening in question?” One of them, the one that did most of the talking, had a buzz cut that made him look at least twenty years younger, meaning he looked like he’d just got out of Sunday school. I liked them both, they were pleasant enough, and I told them the whole story. They measured everything again, the things they’d already measured, and I thought we were close to a breakthrough. Then the next day they disappeared, and I haven’t heard from them since. So in that sense…’

  ‘The police never stop investigating,’ Miss Simola repeated, her voice now stern.

  Olivia couldn’t quite read her expression. She decided to wait. Miss Simola looked around. As though someone was hiding in the garden listening. It wouldn’t be surprising. These bushes could hide a legion of spies. But maybe not, after all.

  ‘Have you noticed anyone following you?’

  Again Olivia shook her head. Perhaps Miss Simola was suffering from the type of dementia that made people paranoid. As if anyone would want to waste their time following Olivia, who knew nothing and had done nothing.

  ‘No,’ said Olivia. ‘There’s no reason to follow me.’

  Miss Simola appeared to weigh up this assertion, then visibly relaxed. The curiosity returned to her eyes. Somewhere among the greenery a bird chirped; judging by the sound and location, Olivia assumed it must be a small bird, one that could easily land in the palm of her hand and start singing.

  ‘And what about love?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘The clumsy, hairy, slightly smelly type,’ Miss Simola smiled. ‘Men.’

  ‘I’ve been engaged twice, married once. Nice guys for all their faults. I lost all my money. It all happened a while ago.’

  ‘And you haven’t met anyone since?’

  As if by itself, an image appeared in Olivia’s mind in which she was drinking coffee opposite a man she had only just met. When she thought about it honestly, she enjoyed the man’s company and felt some degree of attraction towards him. Why not? she thought. Indeed, why not?

  ‘A maths teacher,’ said Olivia, and was taken aback at the certainty in her voice. ‘He’s nice, handsome. We’ve only just met. I don’t really know what to think about it. Perhaps there’s something there.’

  ‘That sounds good. It’s never too late, you know.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I didn’t mean your age.’

  ‘I think I did,’ said Olivia and decided she could be as direct as Miss Simola. ‘I’m thirty-nine years old. I feel as though if I give in over the house, I’ll never be able to stand up for myself again. And if I don’t do this, I’ll never do anything. There it is, take it or leave it, forever. A final chance, that’s what it feels like. A chance to show what I’m made of. Something like that.’

  Miss Simola was about to say something when the bright, shrill sound of the doorbell pealed from within the house. Miss Simola leapt to her feet and smiled. A ruddiness appeared on her cheeks, making her look considerably younger. Just as her body language had changed, her posture sharpened and her hands came to life: in an instant Miss Simola had adjusted her hair, fixed the position of her skirt and blouse, stretched her fingers and clasped her hands together across her chest.

  ‘My guest,’ she said. ‘You can leave through the gate at the bottom of the garden if you’d rather not meet the mayor’s widow.’

  Miss Simola looked as though she was about to rush to the door on the other side of the house.

  ‘I left my bike down there; the garden gate is perfect.’

  ‘I’ll be in touch if and when I hear something. Now that I know you’re looking into the matter. And you’re always welcome here,’ said Miss Simola and was perhaps about to add something when the doorbell rang again.

  ‘Bye then.’

  ‘Goodbye, Olivia dear,’ said Miss Simola and shuffled off in her leather brogues.

  Jan Nyman watched from behind the bushes as Olivia Koski left the red house a different way from how she had arrived. Nyman had positioned himself further up the hill, looking down diagonally at the house, giving him a view of the front door too, where an elderly lady in an attractive light-grey tweed suit and shiny, laced black-leather high heels was waiting for the door to open. After a small diversionary move, Nyman had decided to follow Olivia Koski. He had cycled in one direction for a short distance, checked to see whether Olivia or anyone else was behind him, then turned and headed in the direction he had come.

  He had quickly caught up with her. Following her uphill had been hard going as the paths were narrow and winding and varied greatly in height. The situation had eased considerably once Olivia had entered the house and Nyman had been able to pass the building and climb further up, deep into the woods and the cover of the trees. Of course, the relief was relative. He was plagued by mosquitoes, a horsefly bit a chunk out of his neck, the branches and undergrowth scratched and tickled his legs. His bare ankles made him feel uneasy. He was convinced he could hear the surrounding Lyme disease whispering his name.

  The front door opened just as Olivia Koski jumped on her bike and began freewheeling downhill. Nyman’s eyes followed Olivia long enough that he missed what happened at the front door. The door closed quickly. Nyman thought for a moment. Olivia Koski must have had a reason for coming all the way up here. Nyman didn’t know who lived in the ho
use. There was no mention of this address in any of the reports he’d seen. And that made the location of particular interest. Nyman made a quick decision. He would catch up with Olivia again, somewhere, somehow. He had to look into this house and its occupants.

  Nyman made his way from the woodland to the edge of the bushes, then, remaining in their shadows, moved down to the gateway through which he had just seen Olivia leave the property. The gate was unlocked. He silently lifted the catch and the gate opened without creaking. His first sensory observation was the simultaneous scent of a thousand flowers. It was as though he had walked into a fairy tale. The garden was dense, green, and exuded primitive life force from all directions. Nyman watched his step, afraid that he might step out of the bushes at any moment and give himself away. He caught a glimpse of the house’s red wall, changed direction and moved towards the building, crouched as low as he could. He came to a stop behind a large fern-like bush, listened to the birds, their chirping becoming all the more intense as evening drew in, and cautiously rose to his feet.

  He saw two old ladies, both grey-haired and stylishly dressed. They were on the veranda, standing in the garden, sheltered from the outside world, and kissing. Fervently. The woman who had arrived a moment ago had pulled the other lady’s skirt up higher in order to get a better grip on her buttock, which she clenched like dough, gripping and releasing, allowing the flesh to relax, plump and ruddy, and fill her hand again.

  This she did again and again. Carefully, scrupulously, clearly with a firm grasp of technique.

  The woman then helped the other lady to place her right leg on a white iron garden chair, lifted up her skirt – not quite over her ears but to her armpits – and gently pushed her between the shoulder blades. The woman, who must have been the age of Nyman’s mother, bent forwards and mooned in Nyman’s direction. He averted his eyes and stared at the ferns, or whatever genus they belonged to.

  When he looked up again, the other lady was crouching behind the lady bending over, and pressing her face and presumably her mouth toward the dark gulf between her legs. Everything happened rather slowly, perhaps because of the ladies’ advanced years. At least this was Nyman’s initial interpretation, which he instantly realised was a rash conclusion. The ladies’ lack of hurry had more to do with skill and the precision of their movements, that and the fact that later in life we are able to value each individual moment in turn. The lady in the black shoes was clearly good with her hands. And eventually everything was as it should be, everything in the optimal position. The final result looked and sounded very successful indeed.

  After a few seconds, he concluded that this probably had nothing to do with the investigation whatsoever.

  He retraced his steps back to the gateway, the birds guiding him with their song. The flowers smelt heady and the setting sun seemed to gild the horizon with melted copper.

  14

  It wasn’t the first time in his life that Kari ‘Chico’ Korhonen found himself in the situation of having nowhere to go. On this particular evening the thought felt especially unfair. Moreover, the feeling had now assumed a new colour, a hint of finality, of irreconcilability. It was like cold liquid coursing through his body, from his neck, along his spine and finally to his knees and ankles. Chico tried to shake off the sensation, tried to throw it from his hands and fingers, kick it from his feet. But it wouldn’t budge, would not fall to the sand with a splat.

  The sky above him had darkened, layers of pink and gold gathered along the horizon, flashed by blue and violet. To his right his accursed cheap guitar lay in its case, to his left a sports bag full of clothes rested on its side, and Chico almost felt like leaving them there and running howling into the sea. He didn’t normally consider himself a self-destructive person, he wasn’t on suicide watch, someone that had to be guarded in case he harmed himself. In Chico’s experience, life and the world around him took care of that for him. He didn’t need his own actions to add to the hurt. And as for his current situation: he was homeless, penniless, workless, all at once. What had he done to deserve that?

  Chico looked at the shore, a place where he had spent more or less his entire life, in one way or another. Today it went by the name of Palm Beach Finland. The name didn’t matter: there was always the same number of people (too few) and they always looked the same (frozen stiff). Chico tried not to think of how many summers he’d spent on this beach in his capacity as lifeguard, ice-cream vendor, beach volleyball umpire (though he had no understanding of the rules), Mr Beach (he’d spent an entire summer wandering back and forth along the shore in nothing but tanning oil and a pair of Speedos, answering tourists’ questions; when he’d won first prize in the Mr Beach competition he’d understood the word ‘exposure’ to mean something rather different and a bit more glamorous), and everything in between, and despite his best efforts to avoid it, he came to the conclusion he’d been here twenty-four summers in a row. And that meant it was nineteen years since his encounter with God.

  God.

  The word of God.

  Chico, the young Chico, had been sitting on the beach in the early hours, strumming his acoustic guitar beneath the starry sky. The beach was deserted, so Chico had decided to start a small bonfire, which crackled and kept him warm in the chill of the night. In those days he was a poet too. He wrote scraps of lyrics in notebooks and read them aloud to his various girlfriends. His golden youth. Those were the days, my friend.

  He was sitting by his bonfire, his legs crossed on a blanket, quietly playing and singing, putting together a new song that didn’t yet have a name, that didn’t really have any words, when he noticed a man standing just inside the light of the fire. Chico stopped playing and initially thought it must be one of the local drunks – Tamminen or Holopainen – but the man was dressed differently, and the closer Chico looked at him, he saw that everything else was different too. His shoes were sturdy, a cross between boots and walking shoes; his jeans were dark blue and sat snugly round his toned legs; his white T-shirt seemed almost moulded to his body. On anybody else they would have looked like ordinary clothes, but Bruce Springsteen had brought them together in a way that changed everything: they became a uniform, something so cool, so desirable that just thinking about it gave him a wincing pain in his stomach because the clothes shops were shut and he couldn’t run off and get them for himself. Bruce looked like a god, which of course he was. Chico wondered whether Bruce had been doing a gig in Finland that evening. But it was a rhetorical question – if he had, Chico would have been in the front row. It’s a good thing Chico had read that Bruce was a down-to-earth kind of guy, someone who enjoyed mixing with normal people, walking down the street, minding his own business. So it was entirely conceivable that Bruce was simply on vacation; he happened to be in town and decided to pay a visit, just like that.

  ‘Dancing in the dark?’ Bruce asked him.

  ‘No,’ said Chico, but added a few words once he’d recovered from the initial shock. ‘I don’t dance. I’m just playing my guitar, writing a new song.’

  ‘I’m on fire,’ said Bruce.

  ‘It just feels like that. It can get pretty warm by the bonfire.’

  ‘I’m goin’ down.’

  Chico sensed that Bruce wanted to sit down. He laid out an extra blanket. Bruce sat down. In the glow of the bonfire, he looked even more mystical, more valiant, more like a rock god. They sat for a moment in silence. The bonfire crackled. Bruce gazed out at the dark sea.

  ‘The river?’

  ‘No, the Baltic Sea.’

  Again, silence. Chico realised he too ought to say something, that the least he could do was ask Bruce how he was doing. Chico asked and Bruce thought about this for a moment.

  ‘Glory days,’ he said, looked as though he changed his mind, then added: ‘Better days.’

  Bruce looked at him. Chico couldn’t understand why he wasn’t more nervous, why he wasn’t completely freaking out. The situation felt so natural.

  Bruce nodded at him an
d the guitar. ‘Born in the USA?’

  Chico shook his head.

  ‘No, I’m local,’ he said. ‘From round here.’

  Chico realised Bruce was still staring at his guitar. Chico placed his left hand on the fingerboard, and at that moment the perfect song title appeared in his mind, bright, almost ablaze, like the fire roaring between the two men. He began strumming ‘Beach Princess’, though the song wasn’t quite ready yet. From out of nowhere came the certainty that this was the song he was meant to perform. It was semi-autobiographical, based on Chico’s own experiences – the references to work notwithstanding – and, besides, this was his Bruce Springsteen song, not a cover or a pastiche, but strongly influenced by The Boss. Chico translated the lyrics into English as he played:

  ‘I’m so lonely, I’m a working man,

  I work so hard every day and in the evening I have a beer,

  I come to the beach and I see you,

  Beach Princess, can I say something,

  Beach Princess, let me touch you,

  Beach Princess, don’t run away,

  Beach Princess, don’t call your brother,

  He’s too strong and his fists hurt my face,

  In the morning I go back to work,

  I work so hard all day and put ice on my wounds

  And I dream of you,

  Beach Princess, can I say something,

  Beach Princess, let me touch you,

  Beach Princess, don’t run away,

  Beach Princess, I didn’t steal your bikini.’

  Chico stopped. The song was ready. He didn’t know where it had come from. He looked first at his guitar, then at Bruce.

  ‘She’s the one,’ said Bruce quietly.

  Chico nodded. Bruce had understood everything, he knew what Chico meant, knew what he was singing about. Bruce started to smooth the crinkles in his T-shirt. Chico realised Bruce was about to leave. Bruce stood up. Chico’s eyes followed him.