Light in a Dark House (Detective Kimmo Joentaa)

by Jan Costin Wagner

  ‘I’m here,’ called Joentaa. ‘Coming down again now.’

  Moisander waved to him and nodded, and Joentaa walked towards the scene. After a few metres a strange feeling came over him, one that he didn’t understand. It was a feeling that with every step he was coming closer to a truth that he ought to have recognised long ago. Moisander was waiting for him, holding a pair of gloves provided by Forensics and a shoebox.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Joentaa, putting on the gloves.

  ‘We . . . we don’t know yet. It was beside the body.’

  Joentaa followed Moisander’s eyes, but he saw no body, only trees and wet leaves and snow, and people crouching on the ground going about their work, and then the body obviously covered up.

  ‘The dog’s owner thinks it must have been the stress of Christmas,’ said Moisander.

  ‘What?’ asked Joentaa.

  ‘The . . . er, the stress of Christmas. The dog ran away from him, which it never usually does. And the owner puts it down to all the stress at their Christmas family gathering, because it seems there was an almighty quarrel.’

  ‘I see,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘Anyway, the dog found the corpse. Otherwise I suppose it could have lain there for ever; there’s no real path that way. The dog’s owner is in shock because the body . . . well, it’s not a pretty sight by now.’

  ‘And what’s that?’ asked Joentaa, pointing to the shoebox.

  ‘It was lying beside the body.’ Moisander took the lid off and handed him an exercise book. A school exercise book, with lined paper.

  Joentaa read the words on it, and thought of the giraffe. And the snow. And the night in the hospital where Sanna had died, and her smile that he hadn’t seen for too long.

  He took the exercise book and walked away. Moisander said something, but he wasn’t listening. He walked on until he felt he was somewhere peaceful at last. Somewhere very peaceful.

  Then he sat down on the ground, leaned back against a tree trunk, and read the words again, just to make sure they were really there. A simple, memorable heading that someone had written in careful handwriting on the lined paper of a school exercise book, many years ago.

  Summer 1985.

  73

  WESTERBERG AND SEPPO were met at Frankfurt airport by a German colleague, who drove them along a smooth, wide, almost empty motorway to the city centre without asking questions. His replies to their own questions in English, the language in which the three of them conversed, were brief but to the point.

  Risto Nygren. Six months ago. Checked into the hotel in June, moved into a suite on the twenty-fourth floor, at an all-inclusive price, so it seemed, but he didn’t really know much about these things.

  Westerberg looked at the slushy snow piled high to the right and left of them, and listened to the noise of the windscreen wipers squeaking on the glass. Presumably it was the squeaking that caused his German colleague to utter a quiet, half-hearted curse now and then.

  He parked the car right outside the hotel entrance, to the displeasure of a doorman standing there stiffly in the cold, showed his ID and said something that Westerberg didn’t understand in German. It seemed to make the right impression on the doorman, for he stepped aside and nodded to Westerberg and Seppo as well.

  The hotel was red, gold and large. Westerberg looked up, trying to make out the windows of the suite on the twenty-fourth floor, before joining the others in the lobby, in the middle of which a gigantic, brightly lit Christmas tree stood.

  The German officer spoke to a young woman at reception, and Seppo breathed audibly in and out and seemed to be shivering, although it was very warm inside the hotel. During the flight and on the drive to the centre of Frankfurt, Seppo had hardly said a word, and Westerberg too had been silent.

  Presumably Seppo’s mind was on the same thing that had been occupying his own, and that ultimately consisted only of a name. Risto. And the fact that at last they would be able to put a face to that name, and associate it with the unimaginable.

  ‘He’s right here now and doesn’t know anything,’ said their German colleague in English. ‘Room number 248.’

  Westerberg nodded.

  The German offered to wait for them in the lobby, and Westerberg and Seppo took the lift up. Meditative music came over loudspeakers, and Seppo breathed in and out again audibly before he walked fast and purposefully along the corridor. Westerberg followed him. The droning of a vacuum cleaner came from one of the rooms. But all was quiet behind the white door on which there was a gold plate bearing the number 248.

  Seppo hesitated, looked at his colleague, and Westerberg knocked. He thought he heard footsteps, but that could have been his imagination. Seppo breathed audibly in. Westerberg waited for Seppo to breathe out, but he held his breath and compressed his lips.

  ‘Seppo?’ said Westerberg.

  Seppo abruptly turned away from the closed door. ‘Hmm?’

  ‘We’ll take this very calmly. You look kind of . . . tensed up.’

  ‘Yes, I am. But as you say . . . of course.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Westerberg. The man who opened the door to them was wearing a white bathrobe and did not seem at all pleased to be disturbed. He snapped something in German, but then his expression changed, presumably because neither Westerberg nor Seppo looked like members of the hotel staff.

  ‘Mr Nygren? Risto . . . Nygren? Resident of Turku?’ Westerberg asked.

  The man did not reply, but stared at Westerberg in silence.

  ‘Risto Nygren?’ Westerberg asked again.

  ‘Yes . . . that’s me,’ said Nygren. His Finnish sounded a little strange, with touches of various different accents.

  ‘My name is Westerberg, this is my colleague Seppo, and we are police officers from Helsinki, Criminal Investigation Department.’

  Nygren nodded. Nodded and nodded, and seemed to be thinking intently of something or other.

  ‘May we come in?’ asked Westerberg, and Nygren smiled suddenly, just as suddenly adopting a different tone of voice.

  ‘Of course. Visitors from Finland are always welcome.’ He stepped aside, and made an inviting gesture.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Westerberg. Seppo just nodded.

  ‘Excuse the untidiness,’ said Nygren, a remark that Westerberg waved away, wondering what untidiness he meant. To Westerberg’s way of thinking, the hotel suite which Risto Nygren had been inhabiting for months was meticulously neat and tidy.

  Nygren opened a connecting door to a large and comfortable living room, and asked them to sit down as he took juice and a bottle of water out of the mini-bar and put them on the table. Then he fetched glasses. And then he sat down in an armchair, let himself sink back into it, and gestured to the drinks.

  ‘Help yourselves,’ he said.

  Westerberg declined with thanks, while Seppo beside him suddenly straightened up and reached for a bottle of orange juice. He poured the bright yellow juice into one of the glasses, and Nygren said, ‘Well . . . of course you make me curious.’

  ‘Do we?’ asked Westerberg.

  ‘Yes. Very curious. What . . . brings you here to Germany?’

  ‘Happonen,’ said Westerberg, watching Nygren’s face for any reaction. At first there was none. Then surprise.

  ‘Happonen,’ he said in a toneless voice.

  ‘Happonen, Forsman, Miettinen.’

  Nygren said nothing.

  ‘And Anttila.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Nygren. He seemed to be genuinely surprised. As if he had been expecting another name. Westerberg guessed what name, and Seppo spoke it aloud.

  ‘And of course Saara. Saara Koivula.’

  Leaning back in his armchair, wearing a white bathrobe and white slippers, Nygren nodded.

  ‘Does that mean anything to you?’ asked Westerberg.

  ‘I’m not quite sure,’ said Nygren.

  ‘Not quite sure?’ asked Seppo, and Nygren seemed to be thinking. Then he stood up.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said as he
left the room. ‘I’d just like to get some clothes on.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Westerberg, and sensed Seppo beside him straightening up as if to get to his own feet.

  ‘I’ll be right back,’ said Nygren, and then Westerberg and Seppo were alone sitting on the sofa, which for reasons that Westerberg could not plausibly explain smelled of lemon.

  ‘Is that wise?’ asked Seppo.

  ‘Our friend will hardly be stupid enough to think he can simply walk away now,’ said Westerberg.

  Seppo nodded, drinking his orange juice, and Westerberg looked at the armchair, now empty, where Risto had just been sitting. A tall man with short hair, wet and smoothly combed back, and a curiously composed expression in his eyes and on his lips. His smile non-committal, and doled out in small portions. Not a trace of aggression. His face was slightly bloated and marked by the passing of time, but only if you looked very closely.

  ‘At least I understand that now,’ murmured Seppo.

  ‘Hmm?’ asked Westerberg.

  ‘All through the flight, I was wondering what Nygren would say when he heard that name. Saara Koivula. And I couldn’t think of any words.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘I understand that now, because when Nygren heard her name, he didn’t say anything, he only . . . nodded . . .’

  ‘In agreement,’ said Westerberg.

  74

  RISTO NYGREN SAT on his bed in the next room, his fingers busy with the keyboard, his eyes running over the letters. What a good thing his laptop had been here on the bedside table. And that the Internet connection was as fast as the hotel brochure said.

  He read and read, and felt he had only seconds to catch up with what he had failed to do for six months. He urgently needed some information.

  He had flown to Germany, getting out of Finland physically and also putting Finland out of his mind. He had consumed exclusively German television and German news and German papers and magazines, and even that only now and then, because he had had more important things to do. That was how he had acted again and again over the past years and decades, but this time it really mattered.

  He had laid Saara in the ditch, leaving her dead body behind along with all the damn rest of it. Although her body, as he now read, had not been dead at all.

  He hadn’t killed Saara, only injured her severely. Left her in a comatose state, according to the newspaper report flickering on the screen. He had found it, after specifying more and more details, by entering the words accident, woman, Turku and roadside ditch in the search line.

  And then, long after he had come to Germany, Saara had died after all in hospital in Turku, in circumstances that had not yet been conclusively established. The newspaper report contained a picture of Saara, and he clicked on it and looked at it for a while, although he had no time to spare.

  Happonen, Markus. Rising politician. Also dead. Murdered. With bottles of whisky.

  He searched for Kalevi Forsman, and found the home page of a computer company, although the name of Forsman as a partner was only to be found in archival hits. The name had been removed from the up-to-date page. Under Kalevi F. in the search line he found the reason; Kalevi F. was also dead, victim of an unusual murder in a Helsinki hotel.

  Miettinen, Jarkko, Jarkko M., former gardener, dead. A small announcement in the Laappeenranta local paper.

  Anttila, Lassi, Lassi A., cleaner and store detective in a shopping centre, dead. The home page of a tabloid newspaper illustrated the news with a wobbly photograph, probably taken by the camera of a mobile. A grey, then yellow store full of TV sets. The man lying on the floor some way off was barely recognisable, presumably the reason for the red circle drawn round him.

  He leaned back, passed his hands over the keys carefully, and tried to think, but it was no good. As soon as a thought had formed in his mind, other and unwanted ideas made their way in. He thought of Greg, of whorefucker25, of Loverboy-5000, and for a moment felt an absurd impulse to log into the forum and read the experiences of its contributors. Had anyone else tried out little Julia?

  A drink, he thought, a drink to bring him back to his senses. But the mini-bar was in the living room where those two police officers were sitting, the tall one and the short one, who had come to . . . yes, why had they really come? What were those freaks doing in his hotel room?

  Think, he thought, think, but it was no good. He went into the bathroom, ran cold water over his hands, and passed his wet hands over his face. Looking at himself in the mirror, he realised that he hadn’t yet done what he had said he wanted to do: put some clothes on.

  He put on his trousers and jacket. He stood in front of the laptop for a while, in front of the picture of the unrecognisable dead man encircled in red, then he took hold of the handle of the connecting door and after a few seconds went through it.

  The police officers were still there. Of course. The younger one had emptied his glass of orange juice, the older man was sitting exactly as he had sat before. As if he hadn’t moved during his own absence of several minutes.

  He went to the mini-bar, opened it and took out the drink that he needed. ‘One for you too?’ he asked the policemen, but he neither expected nor got any answer. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘You’re on duty.’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Westerberg, and Risto Nygren sat down in the armchair again, and looked at the clear liquid in his glass, trying to concentrate on Westerberg’s voice as the man began talking about a volleyball team.

  A volleyball team.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You captained the winning volleyball team, didn’t you? Back in Karjasaari. In the summer of 1985.’

  What a summer, he thought. What a summer that had been. Little Forsman, little Happonen. Although Happonen had grown into a giant. He’d known, even then, that little Happonen would amount to something, and on one of those evenings, just as the sun was sinking into the water and when the others had gone, little Happonen had said he’d like to be like him, Risto, some day, and have a woman like Saara.

  ‘And so you will,’ Risto Nygren had replied. ‘So you will.’

  The volleyball tournament. They’d won a brunch in the fish restaurant. A very hot summer. Risto Nygren remembered how he had sweated that summer, he had been sweating all the time, and he was sweating now, probably because the memory of it was coming back.

  ‘Mr Nygren?’ said Westerberg.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I am asking you questions, but I’m not getting any answers.’

  He did not reply.

  ‘I’d like to know when you last saw your friends. Kalevi Forsman, Markus Happonen, Lassi Anttila . . .’

  ‘Oh, not for a long time,’ he said.

  ‘Is that so?’ said Westerberg.

  ‘I can hardly remember them,’ said Nygren.

  ‘But in the summer of 1985 in Karjasaari, you were all very close.’

  He nodded. He had no idea why now. The focus had been Saara. He had driven out to that dump from Laappeenranta every day, just to fuck Saara, that damn . . . woman, she’d made him crazy. The woman had turned him into a cripple, an emotional cripple, but no one understood that, only Risto himself, and he didn’t recognise the name that the younger police officer now mentioned at all.

  ‘Who did you say?’

  ‘Teuvo,’ said Westerberg. ‘Teuvo Manner.’

  ‘Who’s he supposed to be?’

  Westerberg just looked at him in silence, waiting, and Risto Nygren felt a memory begin to stir, and thought yes, he must know the name after all. He only had to answer that question to their satisfaction, and then Westerberg and his colleague would thank him warmly and go away. Back to Finland.

  ‘Teuvo Manner was twelve years old in 1985. He took piano lessons from your girlfriend Saara Koivula.’

  Too hot, that summer, thought Nygren. Crickets chirping, mosquito bites all over his body. The smell of the insecticide that the gardener Miettinen kept spraying around, sticky insecticide spray.

 
‘She was your girlfriend, wasn’t she? Saara Koivula.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nygren. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And she taught the piano,’ said Westerberg.

  ‘Just a moment,’ said the younger police officer.

  Nygren looked up. He thought he heard a door opening. The terrace door in Majala, a mild breeze blowing in. The little house, the sofa beside the piano, Saara with her legs drawn up and her eyes closed, smiling as he penetrates her.

  ‘Excuse us, please, we are in the middle of . . .’ said Westerberg.

  ‘Room service,’ said a voice behind Nygren’s back. He turned round and saw a man he didn’t know. He watched him bringing a knife towards his neck, all very slowly. He turned back to Westerberg, who had risen to his feet and seemed to have frozen in mid-movement, while his young colleague walked past him in slow motion. Then Westerberg’s face was above him, curiously close and intimate.

  Westerberg was phoning. Said something he couldn’t hear. Nygren’s head fell to one side, and he saw the connecting door swinging back and forth, a chair that had fallen soundlessly to the floor lying in front of it. He heard a humming, and now, very quietly, like a distant, muted murmur, he did hear Westerberg’s voice after all.

  Room service. But the man hadn’t been wearing the green-and-white uniform of the hotel staff, and he hadn’t ordered anything from room service.

  Above him, Westerberg seemed to be shouting. He looked at the man’s distorted face and his wide-open mouth.

  He thought of little Julia, sitting on the bed counting the banknotes. The goodbye kiss, once on the left cheek, once on the right cheek. One day Saara had tried showing him how to play the piano. His hands had lain on the keys, but he hadn’t been able to move them, and Saara had laughed and said he was afraid of music.