The two other bedrooms were simpler cases. The first one had a bed that hadn’t been made up and an empty bedside table, and was clearly being used as a guest room, while the other one served as a library with shelves, a desk and a laptop computer. Nyman didn’t switch on the laptop. It was too easy to detect whether someone had used it, and, besides, most people signed into their computers with a password. He wondered whether Olivia was on Facebook. Probably. Definitely. Nyman was not. After all, who was he? Who would have wanted to be his friend? And why were thoughts like this suddenly whirring through his head?
As he walked down the stairs he recapped his main conclusions. Nothing had aroused his suspicions, nothing suggested Olivia Koski’s guilt or innocence. He hadn’t learned anything new. Except that in this case things might actually be exactly the way they seemed and he really was a pitiful, lonely wanker.
He walked round the lower floor once more, this time in the opposite direction: the dining room, the living room, the bathroom – with no running water; the kitchen, hallway, porch – and came to the same conclusion as he had upstairs. He opened the front door and stepped onto the veranda. He carefully closed the door behind him, took the few steps down to the yard and thankfully managed to take a few steps towards the garden before he made out the sound of a motor and tyres against the gravel. A few seconds later a car pulled into view.
A police car.
18
The phone rang and Chico woke up. He’d been asleep in Robin’s bed. Next to Robin, by the looks of it. That hadn’t been the situation in the early hours when he’d moved into the bedroom. Robin had been snoring on the couch, soft sighing noises emanating from some part of his body, and Chico had realised there was only one place in the apartment where he would be able to lie down before starting to feel queasy.
But before that…
Chico followed Robin inside. Robin turned, began backing up towards the couch and sat down at the far end, all the while keeping his back to the wall. But Chico had already seen it. It looked like a cat’s scratching post. Chico sat down in a twenty-euro armchair that was so rickety, it felt as though it might collapse at any moment.
‘So you were watching the box,’ said Chico, determined not to mention Nea. ‘What happened to your back?’
Robin looked at him as though he had no idea what Chico was talking about.
‘Been thrashing yourself in the sauna again?’ Chico asked. ‘Where did you go?’
‘A sauna … nearby…’
His best friend was lying to him. Why?
‘Good soak?’
Something flickered in Robin’s eyes. ‘Hot.’
‘You haven’t heard any news?’ asked Chico.
Robin shook his head, seemed to think of something and pointed at the television. ‘There are new characters on tonight.’
The phone continued to ring. Robin’s flayed back was on his left, and on his right was the window, light filtering through the blinds and falling onto the bed. There was something unpleasant about this lighting, the sensual interaction of light and shadow – something inappropriate. Chico stood up, snatched his jeans from the back of the chair and found his phone. He didn’t want to pick up the phone but its trill insisted he did so. Chico looked at Robin, who was fast asleep. Chico answered and Jorma Leivo asked where he was. Chico told him. Jorma Leivo explained that either Chico would meet him in thirty minutes in the same place as last time or he would meet the police considerably sooner. Chico plumped for the thirty-minute option.
Jorma Leivo was waiting at the quarry when Chico arrived. The sky was cloudy. Chico was wearing the same clothes as the day before, including the grey Led Zeppelin T-shirt. He felt grey in many other respects too. Even the surface of the small pond looked grey. Jorma Leivo, however, exuded energy and bright colours.
‘We’re going on the offensive,’ he said. ‘We’re going to increase the pressure. I mean, you’re going to increase the pressure. You and your boyfriend.’
‘Robin isn’t my boyfriend.’
‘You sleep together. You just told me.’
‘We were just sleeping. And it isn’t what it looks like. Nothing is.’
Leivo seemed to ponder Chico’s last sentence. Chico didn’t know where the words had come from.
‘For your information,’ Leivo continued, ‘I’ve been offered ten thousand euros for your head.’
Chico tried to put the pieces together in his mind. For some reason everybody seemed to know more about what was going on than he did. Jorma Leivo didn’t wait for a reply.
‘That means I expect you to give me results worth ten thousand euros – and more besides. That’s my price; for that amount I’ll keep your little secret – I won’t tell anybody you’re the one who killed that guy in the house.’
Chico thought about this.
‘We didn’t kill him. I know it looks like we did, but we were actually trying to help him. It’s the truth. We only wanted to clear his head. He was so bloody angry, probably because someone threw a rock at him. And listen, you’re every bit as guilty as we are. We wouldn’t have gone down there if you hadn’t paid us.’
‘There’s no evidence of that. None whatsoever.’
Chico stared at Leivo and thought. Leivo’s expression suggested he was confident he was in the right.
‘And where’s your partner in crime?’
‘In bed,’ said Chico. ‘Asleep.’
Leivo looked at him for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders. ‘And you’re awake. Good. This might yet come to something, if you two would just pull your fingers out and remember what’s in store for you if I don’t start to see results.’
‘We torched her shed too,’ said Chico. ‘You can’t say we haven’t tried.’
‘That was too much,’ Leivo sighed. ‘Too obvious. You’ve had the police and the fire squad round there twice now. You were supposed to make things difficult for her, unpleasant. You were supposed to cause a little bit of distress, not get the authorities involved. You might as well have exploded a neutron bomb in there. Use your brains.’
‘We’ve tried,’ said Chico and realised what that must sound like. ‘I mean, we have been using our brains, but something unexpected always happens.’
‘This is your last chance. It’s Thursday today. By Monday, that land is mine. In other words, she’ll have accepted my offer. It’s your business how you make it happen. This is an ultimatum. Do you know what that means?’
Chico shook his head.
‘You don’t know what an ultimatum is?’
‘Yes,’ said Chico and stopped shaking his head. ‘But what can we do?’
‘You can start by thinking what I could do with ten thousand euros.’
They stood facing each other for a moment. Sand, silence, two men. Chico thought of the static Western in which Clint Eastwood held a cigar at the corner of his mouth for two and half hours and eventually killed everybody.
Jorma Leivo was like a lost colour chart in a world of grey. He turned and walked back to his car. Chico clipped on his helmet, jumped on the back of Robin’s scooter and watched as Leivo’s SUV trundled up the side of the quarry, black smoke belching from its exhaust pipe. The vehicle disappeared from view, and suddenly everything was silent. A swallow swooped along the wall of the quarry, back to its nest.
Chico couldn’t say where the hunch came from, how it took root in his mind, but he realised then, with unflinching clarity, that he wouldn’t spend a single second thinking about what Jorma Leivo might or might not do with ten thousand euros.
It took quite a violent shake to rouse Robin. He blearily listened to Chico’s explanation of what had happened at the quarry.
‘That’s not fair. It’s not Leivo’s money,’ said Robin.
Robin looked like an animal roused from hibernation. An animal that needed a shave. There was a stiffness to his voice that Chico hadn’t heard before. Robin repeated himself, and Chico nodded. Though Robin looked like a creature more at home in the woods or t
he savanna, he sounded as convincing as the hero in an action movie. The kind of action hero who, in the most impossible situation, says, We’re gonna pull through this, and the viewer believes him wholeheartedly.
They sat in Robin’s living room, Chico in the precarious armchair, Robin on the couch. Shirtless. It was light outside, though still grey, and Chico had opened the blinds, yet for some reason the room refused to open up. To Chico it felt as though they were stuck in a freezer container. And he didn’t know why Robin wasn’t at work. He wasn’t going to ask. The same instinct that prevented him from letting on that he knew Nea had visited and ravaged Robin’s back (Chico couldn’t bring himself to envisage the event any more than he could the factors leading up to the mauling) now made him hesitant about everything else too.
‘It’s so wrong,’ said Robin.
At least Chico could say something about this. ‘What if Leivo doesn’t get the money?’
‘He will, if he grasses us up.’
‘And if he doesn’t?’
‘But he’ll get ten thousand—’
‘Robin,’ Chico interrupted. ‘What if he doesn’t drop us in it and doesn’t get the money? What if we stop him?’
‘How much?’
Chico was beginning to lose his cool. ‘How much what?’
‘How much should we stop him?’
Chico hadn’t thought about this. ‘I guess if we decide to stop him, we’ll have to do something that stops him from…’
‘Ever…’
Chico saw a change. Robin propped his elbows on his knees, leaned forwards. Chico shrugged his shoulders.
‘I guess,’ he heard himself saying.
Robin nodded. It was a determined, physical nod.
‘You see, yesterday…’ said Robin, his voice now that of someone who makes decisions for a living. At least, that’s what Chico thought such people might sound like. ‘I saw this thing on TV.’
19
Sitting in her swimming costume, Olivia Koski crossed her right leg over her left and explained to Jorma Leivo that she had begun to reconsider his offer.
‘I think I’m in danger,’ she said. ‘I’ve been thinking about our conversation since my sauna burned down. I’m out at the end of the peninsula all by myself…’
Olivia used her brown eyes to her advantage and showed plenty of leg. Jorma Leivo was a man, after all. Though his taste in women was probably more in line with those who appeared on a tyre calendar, he had the same hormones as all the others of his species. Hormones were democratic: once a certain limit had been exceeded, a man would run after almost anything at all.
‘But I’m concerned about two things,’ she continued. ‘First, there’s the offer you made: it’s far too low.’
‘I think it’s quite realistic,’ said Leivo. ‘But let’s consider it an opening bid, something we can come back to if both of us agree.’
‘Of course,’ said Olivia. This man’s like a boomerang, she thought. No matter how things start, they always end up benefitting him. ‘The second thing I’m worried about is what happened at my house. The homicide. The dead man in my kitchen.’
‘What about it?’ asked Jorma Leivo. ‘Him?’ he quickly corrected himself.
The office was silent. Olivia was certain she could still smell the fresh pink paint on the walls. The former scouts’ summer cabin had undergone quite a transformation, with its new plastic palm trees and other tasteless paraphernalia. Next to Leivo’s desk was an advert for sun cream and a tower of tubs. It didn’t look like many of them had been sold.
‘I want the matter resolved before I move out, quite simply because it’s my parents’ house – it belonged to my mother and father…’
‘The police looked into it,’ said Leivo, ‘and they came to the conclusion that it’s impossible to resolve.’
‘That’s why I’ve come to talk to you.’
Leivo thought about this for a moment. Olivia kept her eyes fixed on him.
‘Of course, I don’t know anything about it,’ he said, trying to avoid eye contact. ‘But if those are your terms…’
‘It’s one of my terms.’
‘One of your terms,’ Leivo continued seamlessly. ‘If that’s one of your terms I can employ a very reliable person to look into the matter. If we agree that it will lead to the sale of the property. The person in question is, shall we say, a master detective by any standards, worked with Interpol and the rest of them. But I don’t understand how…’
‘Finding out who did this will bring me peace of mind,’ said Olivia. ‘And once I have peace of mind, I’ll be better placed to consider your offer, which we can discuss separately.’
Leivo seemed to think about this. At least, Olivia hoped he was thinking about it. She hoped she had started the ball rolling.
‘How should we get to the bottom of this?’ Leivo asked eventually. ‘I mean, how precisely?’
Olivia shifted position, slowly uncrossed and crossed her legs.
‘I want to know who he is and where he is,’ she said. ‘That’s a must. But, between you and me, I don’t mind if that information goes no further. In fact, we can agree that it stays within these four walls. What’s important is to find out what happened. I don’t know if you can imagine what it’s like to be a woman living in a remote house all by herself. It’s frightening. Especially, as you said, if this is only the beginning of a larger crime wave.’
Leivo’s face lit up as he remembered what he’d told her. ‘Exactly,’ he said and looked pensive, or at least he did a good job of pretending. ‘Who knows what kind of serial killer might be on the loose? And with that in mind you’re absolutely right that this case needs to be investigated thoroughly. We agree on that. I’ll put my best man on it.’
‘Who is he?’ asked Olivia.
Leivo was twiddling a biro in his left hand. At her question the pen stopped still.
‘He operates anonymously.’
Olivia nodded. ‘Undercover? I understand.’
‘How are things at the beach?’
Olivia thought for a moment. ‘Fifteen minutes ago it was grey and windy. There were maybe two dozen people out in total. Quite a few sunloungers still free.’
‘How many?’
‘How many are there altogether?’
‘The brand-new sunloungers…’ he said, a hint of pride in his voice. ‘The white ones with the turquoise shades … there are sixty of them. A hundred and twenty in total.’
‘I’d say there are about a hundred and fifteen free.’
Leivo glanced at Olivia. ‘Word hasn’t got round yet. We need a boost.’
Olivia said nothing.
‘A marketing campaign, maybe,’ said Leivo. ‘Once people know what this is all about, they’ll choose us. Often all it needs is a little push. I’ve been thinking of different marketing slogans we could use: Frugal families save on sunscreen. Forget the language barrier once and for all. Sun and sand only a six-minute flight away. If you imagine that a jet plane travels at eight hundred and fifty kilometres an hour, then the journey from Helsinki is about six minutes. Of course, disembarking is a bit of challenge, but we’re going to fix that soon. And my favourite for our transatlantic clientele: Florida without the face-eating junkies. I saw that on TV. It’s a bit edgy, I know, and maybe it’s not appropriate at the moment, what with a murderer on the loose, but for the future, once we get to the bottom of the case. Then there are slogans for the Thai market: Diarrhoea only from your own cuisine. And for our European customers: Finally – a beach that’s one hundred percent sunburn-free. And how about: Leave your melanoma at home. These still need a bit of tweaking, I know, but as you can see we’re holding all the cards here. I wouldn’t have put money into this place unless I knew it was the best business venture in the world.’
Olivia sat in silence. She was beginning to understand things, to see things clearly, both figuratively and in reality. Leivo, sitting across the desk, was sweating profusely. Talking this much had turned him red in the face
. It seemed the slightest exertion made him hot and bothered.
‘Sounds good,’ she said, and in some ways this was true. When it came to Palm Beach Finland, Leivo appeared to be deadly serious. That meant he might be prepared to go very far indeed to shore up his own interests. ‘I’ll wait to see what your investigation turns up.’
Leivo gave a start. He had clearly been carried away by his own slogans.
‘You won’t need to wait long for that. I guarantee you things will start to become clear sooner than you think.’
Olivia’s legs were trembling as she walked across the sand. She was startled when she noticed it. She had done what she set out to do: she had got the investigation under way. And straight away she’d heard more than she’d expected. Leivo said he’d sunk all his money into this place. That said a lot. He didn’t need to think of anybody but himself. Olivia had sunk all her money into her house. And what was she prepared to do? The answer was simple: whatever it took. Her thoughts made her shiver.
The wind had dropped slightly. The clouds were parting. A typical summer’s day.
She arrived at the lifeguards’ tower. Leivo’s words were spinning through her head. Olivia had carefully played the role of the damsel in distress; she hadn’t said anything specifically untrue, though she had embellished the pure, unadulterated truth somewhat. When you behaved like that, it was worth bearing in mind that the person across the table might be doing the same. Or worse.
And Leivo had a dream.
Those dreams seemed dangerous.
Olivia climbed into the watchtower. She looked at the beach, the sea, the people. Ultimately everybody was looking for something. And that’s what had happened to her too. She’d been walking through life with her eyes closed, doing the things she assumed she was supposed to do or what other people had asked her to do. Then she had woken up. She couldn’t be the only one. The older you are when you wake up to your dreams, she thought, the more vigorously you pursue them. The more desperately. Because with every passing day there’s simply less to lose.
Palm Beach, Finland Page 19
