Light in a Dark House (Detective Kimmo Joentaa)

by Jan Costin Wagner

  ‘The pastor came to see him,’ said the woman.

  ‘What did you say?’ asked Westerberg, without taking his eyes off the window.

  ‘The pastor. About once every two weeks Mr Miettinen liked to see a pastor, and this time . . . yes, in fact that was different.’

  ‘What was different about it?’ asked Westerberg.

  ‘The pastor. Normally it’s a young woman pastor who visits him, but this time someone else came instead, a man. A very . . . he seemed a very nice man.’

  ‘Where can we find this pastor?’ asked Westerberg.

  ‘I don’t know. I’d never seen him before.’

  ‘You’d never seen him before?’

  ‘No, as I said, he came instead of the usual woman pastor. And now that I come to think of it, he came out of turn.’

  ‘Out of turn?’

  ‘Yes, his colleague the woman pastor had been here only a week before, so it wasn’t really time for the next visit yet.’

  ‘How long did he spend with Mr Miettinen?’ asked Westerberg.

  ‘Not very long,’ she said. ‘Quarter of an hour, I’d say.’

  ‘And that was the day when Mr Miettinen’s symptoms set in?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘A few hours afterwards.’

  ‘What did he look like?’ asked Westerberg.

  ‘The pastor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tall, slim. Normal.’

  Normal, thought Joentaa. Passes the time of day in a friendly manner after throwing a man off a balcony. Calmly has a beer with a politician in full view of the public before murdering him with three bottles of whisky.

  ‘Any more details?’ asked Westerberg.

  ‘Mid-blond hair,’ she said. ‘And a thin face. He was smiling all the time, but not in a pushy way. It was . . . it was a completely natural smile.’

  Westerberg nodded.

  ‘To be honest, I can’t imagine the pastor having anything to do with your investigations.’

  ‘I’d like to speak to the woman pastor. Can you phone her?’

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘All right. I have her number in the office.’

  Joentaa was still standing by the bed, and noticed the slightly uneasy silence only after a little while.

  ‘Kimmo?’ asked Westerberg.

  ‘Hmm? Oh, yes – you two go. I’ll just stay here for a moment.’

  ‘Well . . . all right,’ said the nursing supervisor.

  ‘See you in a moment,’ said Joentaa.

  Then he was alone, looking at the bag of photos lying on the bedside table. He thought of the day after Sanna’s death. Of the nurse who had handed him a bag just like that, and the things inside it. The book that Sanna had been reading, with a bookmark in it between the last page she had reached and the other pages that she would never read now.

  He looked at the square white table standing by the window, and the white chair. He tried to imagine Miettinen sitting at that table and looking out of the window. Day after day.

  After a while Westerberg came back.

  ‘No such man as that pastor,’ he said.

  Joentaa nodded.

  ‘The local woman pastor had no idea what I was talking about, and the nursing supervisor’s jaw dropped when she heard that,’ said Westerberg.

  ‘Funny, isn’t it?’ said Joentaa, more to himself than to Westerberg.

  ‘Yes, and there’s more to come. I called the hospital, and the doctor told me that it could have been poisoning. Poisonous mushrooms.’

  ‘Mushrooms?’

  ‘Liver failure. It was all very fast because the victim’s constitution was already massively weakened. Possibly amanita mushrooms. In the circumstances they’re going to carry out a post-mortem first thing tomorrow.’

  Joentaa nodded.

  A death-dealing pastor, he thought.

  A gardener who will tend no more gardens.

  A murderer who smiles.

  And sheds tears.

  60

  WHEN THEY GOT back to the hotel, Seppo was still sitting between the breakfast room and the lobby, on the same chair at the same table beside the flashing machine. He was on the phone.

  ‘Yes, darling. Exactly. Here come my colleagues, I’ll have to go. Yes, love you too. See you tomorrow.’

  He broke the connection and looked expectantly at Westerberg.

  ‘Seppo . . .’ said Westerberg wearily.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Who on earth is willing to talk to you of all people at this witching hour of night?’

  ‘Hmm? Oh, that was Marianna. My fiancée.’

  Marianna. Nice name, thought Joentaa.

  ‘Oh, I see. Your fiancée,’ said Westerberg.

  ‘Any news?’ asked Seppo.

  Westerberg seemed to be still deep in thought, presumably about Seppo’s fiancée, but then dropped into one of the chairs and said, ‘We went to the nursing home. And communicated with the hospital. Miettinen,’ he added, ‘was probably poisoned. We were only able to talk to the doctor on night duty, but they think it was food poisoning, probably with mushrooms.’

  ‘Mushrooms,’ said Seppo.

  Westerberg nodded.

  Mushrooms and bottles of whisky, thought Joentaa, sitting down himself.

  ‘They’re doing a post-mortem tomorrow,’ said Westerberg. ‘Have you heard anything from Helsinki?’

  ‘Not much,’ said Seppo. ‘They’ve made multiple copies of our photograph, and the technical people are working on filtering out the fourth man. It will go out on the telex tomorrow.’

  Westerberg nodded.

  ‘With mention of the connection to Happonen,’ said Seppo. ‘Because of course the media need to be fed something, a titbit to induce them to place the photo prominently. No mention of Forsman and the music teacher for the time being.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Westerberg.

  Instinctively, Joentaa reached for the photo lying in the middle of the table. He looked at the two boys and two men, all bare-chested, and all united in the same forced cheerfulness. Three of the four were now dead. And the search was on for the fourth, using a clip from a photograph twenty-five years old.

  ‘The question is whether the technical boffins can get a usable picture at all. Especially as the man must be much older now,’ said Seppo, as if he had read Joentaa’s thoughts.

  Joentaa looked at the woman in sunglasses in the background, who seemed to be simultaneously looking at something outside the photo and in at the group it showed. He picked up the picture and held it up to the light. Tried to guess what her eyes were like behind the sunglasses.

  ‘All clear?’ asked Seppo.

  Kalevi F. A strange transformation. From hanger-on to ladies’ man. Short but intense relationships. We’d be inclined to call it the result of his desperation.

  Joentaa shook his head, and Westerberg abruptly stood up. ‘I’m going to get some sleep,’ he said. ‘You two had better do the same.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Seppo.

  ‘I’ll be up in a minute,’ said Joentaa. ‘Sweet dreams.’

  He watched the other two go, and raised a hand to wave before they disappeared into the lift. A few minutes later he stood up himself, and took the photo off the table where Seppo had left it for him, presumably on purpose.

  He took the lift upstairs, went along the dimly lit corridor and unlocked the door to his room.

  He sat on the bed for a while in the dim light, looking out of the window and thinking of Jarkko Miettinen, who had been alive two days ago, and whose body would be lying on a dissecting table tomorrow. Probably in Laappeenranta, where the nearest Institute of Forensic Medicine was located.

  Miettinen poisoned. Happonen battered to death. Forsman thrown off a balcony.

  Attractively designed business cards.

  Casual brutality.

  And the brutality inflicted on Anita-Liisa Koponen had been casual as well. Casual and immediate. A natu
ral and unforeseeable catastrophe. Anita-Liisa Koponen had been raped in the presence of Saara Koivula, her piano teacher. She had never gone to piano lessons again, and had not seen Saara Koivula again either. Decades later the piano teacher had been delivered to the Turku hospital in a comatose condition, without papers, without anything to identify her.

  He took a piece of paper with the logo of the hotel on it off the bedside table, picked up the ballpoint pen lying beside it, and thought for a while about what he really wanted to write. Then he simply wrote the names.

  Saara Koivula. Anita-Liisa Koponen. Markus Happonen, Kalevi Forsman, Jarkko Miettinen. What were two schoolboys, a gardener, and a fourth, still unknown, man doing in one and the same photograph?

  We had a barbecue. No one talked about what happened.

  In the background, a woman with her eyes hidden behind a pair of sunglasses, and much too far away, maybe thirty metres from the camera, for anyone to have been able to use the photo for identification.

  She smiled at me.

  In spite of whatever had happened.

  It had been something so monstrous that the schoolboy Kalevi Forsman didn’t have the courage to put what it really was into words. Didn’t have the courage to call it by its name. The woman a ‘she’. The man an ‘R.’ But then they had a barbecue, and R. had said that there was nothing to worry about.

  Casually. Everything fine. Nothing had happened.

  Kalevi F. A strange transformation. From hanger-on to ladies’ man. Short but intense relationships. We’d be inclined to call them the result of desperation.

  Who had actually written those lines? Joentaa stood up and found the school magazine lying on the table near the darkened TV set. He looked at the last page, and found the details. Names of the contributors to the magazine; the chief editor was one Xaver Blom. Joentaa leafed through the magazine and found Xaver Blom among the biographies of the students.

  This text must be one of the very few in our magazine not by Xaver Blom. Good old Xaver can hardly spill the beans about himself. However, not only has our budding writer created this terrific souvenir for us, he has impressed students and teachers alike with his sharp wit, which lets no one off the hook, and expert knowledge of the novels of Aleksis Kivi that would have done credit to university professors. And even if some of us found the way Xaver always knows best just a little annoying, we can honestly say: Xaver, we’re proud of you and we expect great things of you. All the best!

  Xaver Blom. Not exactly a common name. He picked up his mobile, called directory enquiries, and found himself talking to a slightly irate female voice. ‘You don’t know where he lives?’ she asked.

  ‘No, but you could look countrywide. The first name isn’t very common.’

  ‘Look at it that way and it isn’t,’ said the woman at the other end of the line, and Joentaa pulled his laptop over to him and brought up the system.

  ‘You’re quite right,’ said the woman.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Only one Xaver Blom in the whole of Finland.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘Lives in Karjasaari, number eleven Saimankatu.’

  We expect great things of you, thought Joentaa. And the fact that Xaver Blom was still living in the small town where he had spent his childhood somehow made him seem just a little more likeable.

  The woman gave him the phone number, and Joentaa had himself put straight through to it. As he waited, it struck him that Xaver Blom might possibly be asleep.

  The man who answered after some time did indeed seem to have been sleeping.

  ‘Yes . . . Blom . . .’ he murmured.

  ‘Kimmo Joentaa, of the Turku police. I have a question to ask.’

  ‘ . . . hello . . .’

  ‘Can you hear me?’

  ‘ . . . what did you say?’

  ‘Kimmo Joentaa, of the Turku police. I have a question to ask.’

  ‘Is that . . . what . . . you arsehole.’

  Joentaa was about to say something else, but Blom had rung off. Our budding writer, thought Joentaa, and he wondered suddenly whether one reason he was getting the man out of bed was that his style of twenty-five years ago in those texts seemed to him rather too sarcastic. He rang the number again.

  ‘Are you out of your mind?’ asked Blom.

  ‘Joentaa, Criminal Investigation Department. I must apologise, but I urgently need some information from you,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘What kind of damn information?’

  ‘Were you the chief editor of the school magazine in your last year?’

  A few seconds passed, and Joentaa wondered whether Blom had rung off again, but he was still there.

  ‘What did you say?’ he asked.

  ‘The school magazine for the class in their last year before their final exams.’

  ‘Is this some kind of a joke?’

  ‘No,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘It’s not?’

  ‘No,’ Joentaa confirmed.

  ‘Oh . . . now I see what you’re talking about. Yes, I put the magazine together.’

  ‘And you wrote most of it?’

  ‘Yes, practically all of it,’ said Blom. ‘No one else wanted to do it.’

  ‘Good. I need your memory.’

  ‘My memory?’

  ‘Yes. I’d like you to tell me about Saara Koivula.’

  ‘Saara Koivula,’ said Blom, in a toneless voice.

  ‘Yes, do you remember her?’

  ‘I certainly do. Our music teacher. Unfortunately only for a few months.’

  ‘For one summer,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘Right, exactly. From just after one holidays until just before the next holidays. Then she went away.’

  ‘Tell me something about her. Anything that occurs to you.’

  At the other end of the line, Blom laughed. And seemed to be thinking. For a long time.

  ‘She was . . . special,’ he said at last. ‘She was quite young, good-looking . . .’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She was very nice. And at the same time somehow kind of . . . disreputable.’

  ‘Disreputable?’

  ‘Well, as if she’d be available. For schoolboys’ fantasies.’

  ‘To what extent?’

  ‘No, disreputable is the wrong word. Available is more like the impression she gave. I think boys felt that . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I mean, she was so nice you felt she wouldn’t give you the brush-off.’

  Wouldn’t give you the brush-off, thought Joentaa.

  ‘In the sense of a schoolboy fantasy, if you see what I mean? The feeling that you only had to tell her you loved her and you could do anything you liked to her.’

  Do anything you liked to her, thought Joentaa.

  ‘It really is difficult to explain. It was the total absence of anything . . . aggressive about her. I don’t think she was stupid, far from it, but kind of . . . totally naive. Yes, I think that was it. As a schoolboy I had the feeling that she was more naive than me, and naturally by comparison with the other teachers that was very unusual.’

  Disreputable, naive, thought Joentaa.

  ‘And all that combined with the fact that she looked like . . . like a princess. And yes, there was something sad about her too.’

  Sad, thought Joentaa.

  ‘Incredible to find all this coming back to me now. After so many years,’ said Blom.

  ‘Markus Happonen,’ said Joentaa. ‘And Kalevi Forsman.’

  Once again there was a brief silence, and then Blom said, ‘Two other students in our class. Happonen was an arrogant character. Tall and rather overweight, but so self-confident that no one would ever have thought of teasing him about it. Forsman was rather unobtrusive, but he was friends with Happonen, I think, because they both lived in the same street and had known each other since their early childhood.’

  ‘Was there anything going on between them and Saara Koivula? You wrote in the school magazine that Forsman had . . . liked her
.’

  ‘Yes, yes, they both did . . . but so did everyone. There was nothing serious about it.’

  Nothing serious, thought Joentaa.

  ‘I don’t understand exactly what you mean,’ Blom persisted. ‘Logically, there wouldn’t have been anything going on between a school student and the music teacher.’

  ‘You say in the magazine that Forsman changed in his last year at school. From being a hanger-on to . . . a ladies’ man.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose he did. Now that you mention it. He was chasing girls quite a lot in his last year.’

  ‘Out of desperation, you write.’

  ‘Desperation?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ah. Well, if you say so. Kalevi really did change, but of course I exaggerated a bit in the magazine . . .’

  ‘What about Happonen?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Did he change as well? In his last year at school?’

  Xaver Blom said nothing for a while, and then said, ‘No. Not at all, as far as I remember. He was top of the class right to the end, and rather full of himself all along. And since we’re talking like this in the middle of the night, I can tell you a little secret of my own . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I didn’t really like him, because I was only the second-best.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘Well, it’s out now, after . . . after twenty-five years . . . ?’

  ‘Twenty-five years,’ Joentaa agreed.

  ‘And you’re sure that you . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘. . . that you really are a police detective?’

  ‘I am,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘Mhm. Is it . . . is it about Markus, then? I mean, he died.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joentaa. ‘It’s about him too.’

  ‘Crazy . . . I mean that was a strange story,’ said Blom. ‘What happened to Markus.’

  Indeed, thought Joentaa.

  ‘But what does Kalevi have to do with it? And the music teacher?’

  ‘Does the name Miettinen mean anything to you? Jarkko Miettinen?’

  ‘No. Who’s he?’

  ‘A gardener living in Karjasaari.’

  ‘Gardener?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Means nothing to me at all.’