The Winter of the Lions

by Jan Costin Wagner

  ‘Hello, Kimmo,’ said Larissa.

  He turned, and saw her standing in the doorway. Her voice sounded different. Both strange and familiar.

  ‘Hello,’ said Kimmo.

  ‘I’m rather tired,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll go to bed soon.’

  ‘Do that,’ he said.

  She took off her jacket, perched on the arm of the comfortable living-room chair and looked at him.

  ‘Everything … everything all right?’ he asked.

  She nodded, stood up and undressed. She put her clothes in a neat pile on the sofa beside him.

  ‘I’m glad …’ said Joentaa.

  She looked enquiringly at him.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here.’

  She was looking at him, but he couldn’t interpret her expression.

  ‘Sleep well, Kimmo,’ she said. She went into the bedroom and closed the door without looking back.

  27 DECEMBER

  17

  WHEN JOENTAA WOKE up he wasn’t sure where he was. After a few seconds he got his bearings. He was sitting on the living-room sofa, and the digits on the DVD player said the time was 6.38. He ran his hands over his face and thought of Tuomas Heinonen. Heinonen had set off that afternoon to compile a list of people who knew Patrik Laukkanen. ‘Wish me luck,’ he’d said before leaving the office. He probably hadn’t been referring to the questioning sessions ahead of him, and Kimmo hadn’t seen him since.

  He sat up and went over to the TV set, picked up the remote control and turned the TV on. While the picture was coming into focus he tried to remember what Tuomas had said. Manchester. To win away.

  He went into teletext, and felt a tingling as he tapped the code for the sports pages. The second headline gave the results for the top match in the English league. Three-all. Arsenal had scored an equaliser in the fifth minute of extra time.

  Joentaa sat down cross-legged in front of the TV and read the text, which waxed enthusiastic about one of the most spectacular games of the season. He thought of Heinonen’s veiled, harried expression.

  It was probably just as well. Tuomas had to lose if he was ever going to come to his senses. Joentaa didn’t know much about the psychology of gambling, but enough to be aware that the effect of winning was to lure a gambler into real disaster. When he and Sanna had been in France a few years ago, he had found a roulette table in a discotheque, and it took him only a few hours first to treble their holiday cash and then to gamble it all away.

  He remembered that devastating feeling. Sanna’s enquiring, disappointed glances. The anger she had suppressed because she felt sorry for him, and she had enough of a sense of humour to appreciate the funny side of the story.

  He suspected that only such setbacks would help Tuomas, and at the same time wondered what price he was paying. He’d have to ask Tuomas how much he was betting.

  When his mobile rang he felt sure it would be Tuomas. As he dug around in his pocket, he was trying to think of ways to stop him gambling.

  It was Sundström. ‘Things are moving fast,’ he said.

  Joentaa waited.

  ‘Harri Mäkelä,’ said Sundström.

  ‘Who?’ asked Joentaa.

  ‘Harri Mäkelä, puppet-maker,’ said Sundström.

  Then Sundström fell silent as if that said it all, and Kimmo Joentaa felt dizzy.

  ‘Found murdered. Around midnight. In Helsinki, where he lives. Lived,’ said Sundström.

  ‘The guy who was on Hämäläinen’s chat show with Patrik?’ said Joentaa.

  ‘He went to buy cigarettes. After a while his housemate or boyfriend or whatever started wondering where he was, and a little later still he got the idea of going out to look for him, and he didn’t have to go far, because there was Mäkelä lying right outside the window. By the side of the road. Bled to death. Multiple stab wounds inflicted by a knife, that’s the way it looks.’

  Joentaa closed his eyes, and tried to concentrate on Sundström’s voice. In a corner of his mind he was listening to Larissa talking about the chat show.

  ‘Our colleagues in Helsinki think he didn’t even make it to the cigarette vending machine. At least, he had no cigarettes on him, and he lay there as if he’d only just walked out of the house.’

  ‘That means …’

  ‘That means the murderer must have been waiting for him, and it means he’s not inclined to waste time. We have a first scenario pointing to an unusual murder procedure. Most of the stab wounds were in the region of Mäkelä’s throat and head.’

  ‘What?’ said Joentaa.

  ‘It’s possible, and would fit what clues they have, that Mäkelä went over to a car, bent down to the window and was stabbed by the driver. They expect to lift a tyre tread.’

  ‘Good,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘Investigation on the basis of a tyre tread doesn’t hold out many prospects,’ said Sundström.

  ‘All the same …’

  ‘Our colleagues were quick off the mark in connecting Mäkelä with Laukkanen. They take notice of a fellow officer’s murder right away, even if it happens in Turku, and it seems like everyone except me watches that TV show. I’ve already called Salomon Hietalahti. The two forensic departments are comparing results to see if it was the same murder weapon both times. In any case, the method was similar.’

  Joentaa said nothing.

  ‘Their head investigator is Marko Westerberg. Do you know him?’ asked Sundström.

  ‘Hm?’ said Joentaa. He was picturing a man leaving home. An attacker waiting for him. Just for that one man. Waiting patiently, focused.

  ‘Westerberg. I was asking if you know him,’ said Sundström.

  ‘No,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘I do, from way back. He’s a bit lethargic, but very meticulous. When he’s talking you get the feeling he might drop off to sleep any minute.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘We’ll go to Helsinki. Setting out at eight. I’d like you to tell Tuomas and Petri first, ask them to carry on here in Turku, I’ll draw up a plan of action.’

  An attacker, quiet, patient and focused, Joentaa thought.

  ‘We must find out what connects Patrik Laukkanen to this Mäkelä. Apart from their appearance on the same chat show,’ said Sundström.

  Quiet, patient, focused. And driven by fury.

  ‘I want to see the transmission of the show as soon as possible,’ said Joentaa. ‘Larissa … a friend of mine, she told me about it, she saw it at the time.’

  ‘Larissa?’ asked Sundström.

  ‘We must ask the TV station for a DVD of the show,’ said Joentaa. ‘Or no, maybe Patrik recorded it. If I appeared on a chat show I’m sure I’d record it, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Perfectly possible,’ said Sundström.

  ‘I’ll ask Leena. We have to see that transmission, it’s urgent.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘I’d like to have watched it before going to Helsinki. I’ll call Leena right away. Speak to you later.’

  ‘Er … Kimmo …’

  Joentaa ended the call and called the number he had stored under the name of Patrik Laukkanen. He let the phone ring until Leena Jauhiainen answered in her abstracted, quiet voice.

  ‘Sorry, Leena, I know it’s early,’ he said.

  ‘Hello, Kimmo. I wasn’t asleep,’ said Leena.

  ‘I have a question to ask you,’ began Joentaa.

  ‘Is there … it sounds like something …’ Leena didn’t finish her sentence. Presumably she had been about to say ‘something important has happened’, but what was important after Patrik’s death?

  ‘Patrik was on a TV talk show a few months ago …’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Do you know if he recorded the programme?’

  ‘Yes, Kimmo, I do. He called me about ten times to make quite sure I pressed the right buttons on the DVD player. It was … it was a great thing for him, it gave him a lot of pleasure, and he was really good.’

  ‘Do you have the DVD? Could y
ou lend it to me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Wonderful. I … I’d really like to pick it up at once, if that’s okay.’

  ‘Of course. Kimmo … what’s going on? Why is that recording important?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. But the other man who was on the Hämäläinen show with Patrik …’

  ‘The puppet-maker? Mäkelä?’

  ‘Yes … had he and Patrik been in touch before? Were they friends?’

  ‘No. They met for the first time on the talk show. I don’t know that Patrik had anything to do with him later. Is this Mäkelä …?’

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Joentaa. ‘There’s some kind of connection with Patrik. There has to be.’

  Leena did not reply.

  ‘I’ll be with you in half an hour,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘Fine,’ said Leena.

  ‘See you,’ said Joentaa, ending the call.

  He phoned Grönholm, whose voice seemed to surface from the depths of sleep, and Heinonen, who sounded hunted.

  Then he stood outside the closed door of his bedroom for a while. Finally he pressed down the handle and opened it. Larissa lay curled up in the foetal position. She seemed to be fast asleep.

  Joentaa closed the door and stood undecidedly in the living room with a piece of paper and a pencil. After some time he gave himself a little shake and wrote: Dear Larissa, I have to go out. Looking forward to seeing you this evening. I could make us lasagne if you like. See you later, Kimmo. He stared at the note for a while, then put it down on the table. The lake beyond the window was still dark, but the sky was clear, and Joentaa felt that the next wintry day would soon be dawning.

  18

  SHE HAS BEEN gliding over the snow, setting the world to rights. The road was broad and empty. The man seemed surprised, and lay quite still as she looked down at him.

  19

  PATRIK LAUKKANEN WAS laughing. It struck Joentaa that he had never seen him look happier, and he tried to concentrate on the words being exchanged, but he found it difficult, because he kept staring at the laughing Laukkanen until the picture blurred before his eyes.

  Harri Mäkelä explained how he made models of dead bodies out of shapeless lumps of modelling material, and the presenter Hämäläinen nodded, asking a question now and then, and Patrik Laukkanen laughed. Laughed and laughed, explained something, praised Mäkelä’s models because the puppet-maker observed a certain anatomical feature accurately in constructing them. Then he laughed again, Mäkelä joined in, Hämäläinen grinned wryly, the audience laughed and a stand-up comic came on stage, a man with some nervous tics who immediately began to imitate famous voices.

  Sundström muted the sound. The pictures flickered silently. They all sat there in silence, Sundström and Tuomas Heinonen on chairs in front of the TV set, Petri Grönholm perched on the edge of the long, narrow table that dominated the conference room. Joentaa was kneeling in front of the TV set. He had put the DVD in the player and hadn’t moved since Hämäläinen, on screen, invited his guests Harri Mäkelä and Patrik Laukkanen to come up on stage and join the models lying on stretchers under blue cloths.

  ‘Well …’ said Sundström after a while.

  The comic on the screen twitched and seemed to be concentrating. He appeared to address some serious subject now. Hämäläinen nodded from time to time and returned the man’s grave look.

  The comic is sad, thought Joentaa vaguely, and death is a joke.

  ‘Does that get us any further?’ asked Sundström, breaking the silence.

  No one replied. Tuomas Heinonen was pale, staring at the pictures on the screen. Three all, thought Joentaa.

  ‘Patrik was good,’ said Grönholm. ‘That’s all that really struck me.’

  Sundström nodded.

  ‘He was really good,’ said Grönholm. ‘What he said was based on facts and interesting. And witty.’

  Sundström nodded again.

  ‘I always thought Patrik had no sense of humour,’ said Grönholm.

  ‘Yes, well,’ said Sundström.

  ‘And the puppet-maker was an arsehole,’ said Heinonen. They all turned to look at him. ‘Sorry,’ said Heinonen. ‘It’s just that the way he showed off because he makes models of corpses for TV got on my nerves.’

  The comic’s face twitched, and Joentaa wondered whether that was part of his act or for real. Perhaps both. Perhaps he’d submerged himself in his role until reality and illusion merged. With the nervous tics of a stand-up comic, he told serious stories from his life.

  Joentaa thought about corpses for TV and what Larissa had said.

  Harri Mäkelä and Patrik Laukkanen were also still sitting in their places with the rest of the people on the screen. Mäkelä seemed to take little interest in the comic’s performance; he was looking at the floor, lost in thought, and changed his expression only when he thought the camera was on him. Patrik Laukkanen seemed to be listening attentively to the comic. The presenter, Hämäläinen, sat motionless and upright at his desk, his body turned to whichever guest he happened to be addressing, always with the same expression on his face, the one that seemed to say he would understand anything. Whatever might come of it.

  Hämäläinen, thought Joentaa vaguely.

  Reality and illusion.

  ‘I’d like to watch that again,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘What?’ asked Sundström.

  ‘I don’t mean right now. I’ll take the DVD home if that’s okay.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Sundström.

  ‘And we have to think about Hämäläinen.’

  ‘Hämäläinen?’

  ‘Three people took part in that conversation on the chat show. Two of them are dead, and Hämäläinen is the third.’

  Sundström said nothing for a while. ‘I see what you’re getting at. The problem is, I just can’t think how to construct a motive for murder out of that conversation on the chat show. It simply won’t wash. Unless we assume we have here a murderer who kills people because they appear on TV.’

  ‘We’d have to protect a hell of a lot of people,’ said Grönholm.

  ‘It was a joke, Petri,’ said Sundström. ‘Irony.’

  Irony, thought Joentaa.

  ‘Of course we’ll talk to Hämäläinen,’ said Sundström. ‘I’ve already fixed it with our colleagues in Helsinki for us to be present when they interview him. But personal protection … at the moment that strikes me as a rather far-fetched notion.’

  Joentaa nodded.

  ‘What matters is to get an idea of what this is really all about,’ said Sundström.

  On the screen, the comic was telling sad stories from his life.

  The dead bodies lying on stretchers under blue cloths had never been alive.

  And Patrik Laukkanen, who wasn’t alive any more, raised a glass of water to his mouth.

  20

  JOENTAA DROVE TO Helsinki with Sundström. The roads were wide and empty, the winter sunlight gave way to grey clouds, and it began to snow.

  They sat in Westerberg’s office and compared notes on what they knew. Kimmo Joentaa couldn’t get that picture out of his head, the image of a laughing Laukkanen raising the glass of water to his mouth.

  Sundström had not been exaggerating. Marko Westerberg did indeed seem to be very tired as he described the state of their investigation in Helsinki so far.

  They went to the house where Harri Mäkelä had lived, and where he had died outside the front entrance. A sky-blue, unusually extensive clinker-built wooden house. Police officers in white overalls were securing any clues. Neighbours and curious onlookers stood on the other side of yellow police tape. A thin young man was sitting on a sofa in the living room. His head was bowed and his eyes closed.

  ‘Mr Vaasara?’ said Westerberg in his melancholy voice, dragging the words out slowly.

  The man looked up.

  ‘These are colleagues of ours from Turku. Paavo Sundström and Kimmo Joentaa.’

  The man nodded.

  ‘Nuutti Vaasara
,’ said Westerberg. ‘He’s … he lived here with Harri Mäkelä. And they … they worked together too.’ Westerberg sounded particularly weary as he gave this information.

  The young man nodded, Sundström and Joentaa nodded.

  ‘I’d like to know more about the work,’ said Joentaa.

  The young man stared at him for a while, and Joentaa wasn’t sure if he had understood. He was about to ask again when Vaasara said, ‘The studio’s at the back of the house.’

  ‘May I take a look at it?’ asked Joentaa.

  ‘Of course,’ said Vaasara, and got to his feet. He was tall, and his movements were fluid and well coordinated. Joentaa, Sundström and Westerberg followed Vaasara down a long corridor and entered a world that had nothing to do with the warm, elegantly furnished living area of the house. Vaasara had opened the door and let Joentaa into the large white room first. On a long, massive wooden table in the middle of the room stood containers, spray cans and buckets of paint. Joentaa went over to the table and out of the corner of his eye saw human figures leaning against the wall. With their heads drooping. A red and yellow clown stood out sharply against the white that dominated the room. A dead body lay in the clown’s lap.

  A stand-up comic telling sad stories from his life, he thought.

  Joentaa stood motionless, and Vaasara said, ‘This is our studio.’

  Joentaa nodded, shook off his rigidity and went over to the table. He looked inside the containers.

  ‘Silicon, latex,’ said Vaasara. ‘Silicon, latex, plastics, they’re the basic materials for making the puppets.’

  Joentaa nodded. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the puppets up against the wall and felt a pang in his chest. In his chest and behind his forehead. He sensed an idea making space for itself.

  ‘I’m the assistant. Harri is the artist,’ said Vaasara.

  Joentaa nodded. Not with the best will in the world, Sundström had said. By now Sundström had gone over to the table himself and was asking Vaasara a question that Joentaa did not hear, because the idea was taking over more space. An idea that he couldn’t quite grasp yet. Westerberg was standing gloomily in the doorway.