The Winter of the Lions

by Jan Costin Wagner

  He finished his coffee and got to his feet. He walked away. He thought of the forensic pathologist, trying to remember his name, but the name simply wouldn’t come back to him. The police officers had mentioned his name. Hadn’t the pathologist said, when they were talking before the show, that he was soon to be a father? Yes, he was sure of that. The pathologist’s eyes had been shining, and they had talked about children for a few minutes – and now the world was slowing down. It didn’t stop, but it was getting slower and slower. He saw the lift in the distance, and the wintry park beyond the glass, and he felt pain stealing into his stomach, into his back.

  Kalle, the forensic pathologist had said. His son would soon be born, and they were going to call him Kalle.

  He felt that he was falling.

  He was lying on the floor.

  The pain moved slowly through his body, and above him hung a glass sky.

  He was hovering.

  Then he was looking into the faces of the two news editors. They were pretty. One of them in particular. Now and then such thoughts crossed his mind, and he immediately banished them again. He could banish them in a fraction of a second. He was the father of a family. A perfectly normal married man with kids. The women’s faces were above him. He was lying down. He had no idea why.

  The two news editors seemed intent on talking to him, but he gathered only the faintest idea of their words, he was wading through a swamp, one step at a time. The two young women seemed to be trying to speak to him. He nodded. He nodded to tell them not to worry, he would listen and understand them.

  He moved away from them. He heard new voices, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He wanted to listen. He wanted to listen and understand, it was what he did best, but it didn’t work. Above him were the blue sky and the trees laden with snow.

  He heard Tuula’s voice. Tuula’s penetrating voice as she let out a scream. Then her face was above him. Tuula’s face and behind it the blue sky. Tuula said something he didn’t understand. He nodded.

  He thought of the forensic pathologist and how he couldn’t remember his name, but he could remember the name of the man’s son. Kalle.

  He nodded, and closed his eyes and saw Niskanen.

  Niskanen.

  A living legend.

  A fallen angel.

  Behind his closed eyelids he saw Niskanen, skiing vigorously through the snowy forest, head bowed, focusing entirely on the elegance of his movements, in a picturesque winter landscape.

  29

  ‘ARI PEKKA SORAJÄRVI?’ asked Joentaa.

  ‘Who wants to know?’ replied the man in the doorway.

  ‘I do,’ said Joentaa.

  The man stared at him for a few seconds. Round face. Self-confident expression. Suit and tie. About to leave for the office. His nose carefully covered with a white plaster.

  ‘And who might you be?’ asked the man.

  ‘Joentaa. Police, criminal investigation department.’

  The man smiled, a little uncertainly, rather amused. Presumably Joentaa didn’t match up to Ari Pekka Sorajärvi’s idea of a police officer.

  ‘Do you mean that seriously?’ asked Sorajärvi.

  ‘You think I’d come knocking at your door just for fun?’

  ‘Well, then what do you want?’

  ‘Here’s your driving licence,’ said Joentaa, handing it to him.

  Sorajärvi was taken aback. ‘Oh,’ he said.

  ‘Didn’t you notice it was missing?’ asked Joentaa.

  ‘Er … no. To be honest, no, I didn’t. Where did you …?’

  ‘Larissa,’ said Joentaa, and Sorajärvi gawped at him.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You’re lucky she broke your nose, because if she hadn’t then at this moment I would be smashing it to smithereens myself.’

  Sorajärvi went on gawping, and Joentaa wondered what kind of nonsense he was talking.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he said, turning away. He sensed Sorajärvi’s eyes on his back. He was still standing in the doorway of his handsome house when Joentaa started his car. Fir trees covered with Christmas decorations stood to left and right of the front door.

  As Joentaa drove away he began to laugh, and he laughed so much he couldn’t stop. His mobile rang. It was Sundström, sounding far away. He spoke softly and distractedly.

  ‘Hämäläinen,’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’ asked Joentaa.

  ‘Stabbed. In the cafeteria of the TV station.’

  Joentaa felt a rushing in his head, and the tears of laughter still on his cheeks.

  ‘He’s in intensive care. We’re driving to Helsinki.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘See you,’ said Sundström, cutting the connection.

  30

  THEY DROVE IN silence. The snowploughs had cleared the motorway, and the snow was piled high to right and left of the road. Nurmela, the Turku chief of police, called several times to find out about the latest developments. He asked if it was all true. He wanted to know why Hämäläinen hadn’t been given police protection. How was it possible for such a thing …? Sundström’s answers were monosyllabic; he seemed to be deep in thought. He said nothing until they arrived in Helsinki and drew up outside the hospital entrance.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ said Sundström. Then he shut his mouth again.

  Outside the hospital, hundreds of people were standing behind a barrier. There were outside-broadcast vehicles from several TV and radio stations. The phone rang. Nurmela’s frantic voice filled the interior of the car.

  ‘We’re there,’ said Sundström.

  ‘And?’

  ‘All hell’s broken loose,’ said Sundström.

  ‘Call me as soon as you have any news,’ said Nurmela.

  They got out and made their way through the crowd. Sundström held his badge aloft. A uniformed officer waved them past the barrier and escorted them to the entrance. After a few minutes Marko Westerberg arrived. He seemed even wearier and more apathetic than usual. In his case, presumably that was a sign of stress.

  ‘He’s going to pull through,’ said Westerberg. ‘The doctors say he was extraordinarily lucky.’

  They followed Westerberg towards the lifts. The peace and quiet inside the hospital was in marked contrast to the excitement outside. They stood in the reception area almost alone apart from a few people in white coats scurrying past. A woman with her leg in plaster sat on a bench against a yellow wall leafing through a magazine. She had two crutches propped beside her.

  ‘Is that lift coming soon?’ asked Sundström.

  Westerberg pressed the button again, and they stared at the red light announcing the lift’s arrival. Its broad door opened. Two paramedics pushed a stretcher past them. An old man who looked like a skeleton lay on the stretcher. His eyes passed over Joentaa as they got into the lift.

  They went up to the fourth floor. A uniformed officer stood outside the door bearing the words Intensive Care in narrow white lettering. He nodded to them, and entered a code into a display of numbers. The door opened automatically. Beyond it chaos seemed to reign, but only at first glance. Joentaa heard several conversations going on at the same time. The doctors and nurses wore blue-green coats, they moved swiftly and purposefully, and Joentaa thought of that last night in the hospital. The moment when Sanna’s pulse had stopped. He listened to the conversations: enquiring voices mingled with firm voices conveying reassurance. They went along the broad white corridor of the Intensive Care ward, stood at one window for a while and saw Kai-Petteri Hämäläinen on the other side of it, lying on a bed. Several tubes were inserted into his body, and he seemed to be asleep.

  ‘A matter of centimetres,’ said a voice behind him. Joentaa turned, and looked at the face of a young man of about his own age. His hair was cut short, and under the blue-green medical coat he looked very thin.

  ‘A matter of centimetres,’ he repeated. His voice sounded calm and confident. Joentaa thought of Rintanen, the doctor who had treated Sanna in the last week
s of her life. His voice had sounded much the same.

  ‘He’ll live,’ said the young doctor. ‘He probably won’t have to spend more than a few days here with us. After that, nursing care at home should do the trick.’

  Westerberg nodded, and Paavo Sundström breathed in deeply and out again. In and out. ‘Well, isn’t that great?’ he said. ‘Oh, brilliant.’

  The young doctor and Westerberg looked at him in some irritation, and Sundström repeated it. ‘Great. Just brilliant. Oh, yes.’ Then he took out his mobile, saying he had to make a call. He moved away, and Joentaa turned back to the window beyond which Hämäläinen lay in his spartan room on a freshly made bed.

  ‘When can we talk to him?’ he heard Westerberg ask.

  ‘Soon, I should think. Soon. Maybe this evening.’

  ‘It’s very important for us. He can probably give us useful information.’

  ‘I realise that,’ said the doctor.

  Joentaa looked at Hämäläinen, who seemed to be sleeping peacefully. He turned away and saw a wall to one side covered with vast numbers of brightly coloured cards. Thank-you cards from mothers and fathers whose babies had been delivered in this hospital. Joentaa wondered why they were here rather than in the maternity ward. He went closer to read the cards. The parents had often signed in the names of their children, sometimes even deliberately scrawling names to suggest that the babies themselves had written the cards. Joentaa looked at the pictures, at the exuberantly happy messages, the recurrent phrases. He thought vaguely of Larissa. Or whatever her name was. He had no idea if she took precautions. He wasn’t interested in that. He had no idea who she was. He didn’t want to know. He felt like ringing her. Hearing her voice. He imagined touching her.

  He thought of that last night in the hospital. It was years ago, but it was always as if it had been only last night. Sanna had fallen asleep, he had been holding her hand. He thought of the last moment. Of the pain that had been pulsating under his skin ever since. He didn’t feel it, he just knew that it was there.

  He moved away from the wall and looked back at Hämäläinen lying the other side of the glass. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted a movement to his right. Then a woman came into his field of vision and over to the viewing window. She shook her head and compressed her lips. Their eyes met.

  ‘I heard it on TV,’ she said.

  Joentaa nodded, and the woman turned back to the window.

  She said nothing more for a while.

  Then she said, barely audibly, ‘Heard it on TV. Like so much else about him.’

  31

  THEY DROVE TO the TV station. Several police cars were parked right outside the building. The forensics people in their white overalls harmonised with both the snow and the futuristic glass structure rising to the sky behind them.

  Westerberg phoned. Sundström phoned. Westerberg shouted over the phone at one of his men and managed to make even tearing someone off a strip sound apathetic. Sundström spoke to Nurmela, who was phoning almost every minute. The investigating team in Helsinki had fixed a press conference for 14.00 hours. Sundström was trying to make it clear to Nurmela that he would not be sitting on the platform himself, he would leave it to his colleagues to mention the close cooperation between Helsinki and Turku.

  They entered the glass tower. There was only a doorman sitting behind the glass, and he hardly looked at them as they passed him. The catastrophe had already happened; he didn’t seem to be expecting a second one.

  The reception area and the cafeteria next to it were empty. Cleared for the scene-of-crime unit. Interviews were being held in a conference room on the first floor. Westerberg led the way to it without interrupting his conversation with his colleague, and did not lower his mobile until the man himself was face to face with him, also putting his own mobile away.

  ‘This just can’t be possible,’ said Westerberg. He was not shouting any longer, he was speaking in a soft, slow voice.

  ‘What can’t be possible?’ asked Sundström.

  ‘We have nothing. Nothing at all,’ said Westerberg. ‘No one has the faintest idea who stabbed Hämäläinen.’

  They went on into the room, which was full of people. Police officers sat at tables in conversation with employees of the TV station. Joentaa recognised one of the doormen, the man who had let them in the day before.

  ‘It’s like this: in a way this building is a self-enclosed area,’ said Westerberg. ‘But only in a way.’

  ‘You’re talking in riddles,’ said Sundström.

  ‘Well, in principle the identity of everyone who comes in is registered, which ought to reduce the circle of people we have to look at.’

  ‘To the few hundred people who work here, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, but even that doesn’t cover everything.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Sundström.

  ‘Because there were two guided tours of the station building this morning, for the winners of a crossword puzzle competition,’ said Westerberg.

  ‘Crossword puzzle competition,’ said Sundström.

  ‘So if we begin by considering that an outsider could have done it, and if we then assume that he would hardly have had himself registered here, name and address and all, before going on to attack Hämäläinen, then we suspect that somehow or other he mingled with the group on one of the guided tours and got into the building that way, without our knowledge.’

  Sundström nodded. ‘And then he stabbed Hämäläinen in the entrance hall and simply walked out again.’

  ‘No,’ said Westerberg.

  ‘Really? No?’

  ‘No. Hämäläinen was stabbed in the cafeteria,’ said Westerberg. ‘To be precise, between the cafeteria and the entrance hall. There’s no door between the two, they just merge with each other.’

  Sundström looked at Westerberg and suddenly began to laugh. ‘Marko, are you taking the piss?’

  ‘No,’ said Westerberg.

  ‘You’re surely not telling me that no one noticed this TV station’s star presenter lying on the floor seriously injured, gasping for breath? That’s … I mean, there must have been someone in that cafeteria. Behind the counter, for instance.’

  ‘There wasn’t anyone behind the counter just at that minute because the girl on duty had gone to the loo. Two women, editors in the newsroom, told us they were drinking coffee at the same time as Hämäläinen, but they only saw him walk away, they didn’t see him being attacked.’

  Sundström nodded for a while, muttering something by way of agreement. ‘Well, well. I see. Yes.’

  ‘I’m as furious about this as you are.’

  ‘You must be joking. See me fall about laughing,’ shouted Sundström. The conversations in the room around them died down, and Sundström actually did begin to laugh. ‘You point your cameras at everything, and then you miss the best bit, that’s the irony of it, it’s amazing,’ he said. ‘Kimmo, take a look at this, see if you get the joke.’

  ‘Calm down, Paavo, and then we can go on,’ said Westerberg.

  ‘Right, let’s do just that. Where do you get all that laid-back lethargy? Is it yoga or Tai Chi or what?’

  ‘Paavo, let’s …’

  ‘Look, the most famous man in Finland was stabbed here today, and two other men are dead already, including a man I knew and liked. Are you with me so far?’

  Westerberg nodded.

  ‘I’d like to speak to the doormen now, the ones who let in the groups for the guided tours,’ said Sundström. ‘And to the people who were in those groups. At once. And Kimmo, have another word with the two women who saw Hämäläinen in the cafeteria.’

  Westerberg nodded. ‘I’ll see to it,’ he said, and spoke to his colleague, who was still standing there with his mobile in his hand.

  ‘You know, I just can’t think of any more jokes,’ said Sundström.

  Westerberg beckoned Joentaa over. He was standing with two young women who looked horrified, and at the same time elated and excited. Mixed feelings. Like the two boy
s who had been standing in the forest in Turku on the other side of the police tape, looking at Patrik Laukkanen lying on the ground.

  Joentaa shook hands with both the editors and introduced himself. They sat down at one of the tables, and Joentaa asked the question to which he already knew they would reply ‘No’.

  ‘You saw nothing at all? Not even a faint indication of someone attacking Kai-Petteri Hämäläinen?’

  The two women shook their heads.

  ‘We were still sitting at our table in the cafeteria when … Kai-Petteri left. We stayed there and …’

  ‘We watched him leave. We were talking about him,’ said the other woman.

  ‘Then he was out of sight from where we were sitting, and we stayed there for a few more minutes. We didn’t … we didn’t hear anything. Nothing at all.’

  ‘When we left we went the same way he had, and then we saw him lying on the floor.’

  Joentaa nodded. Several minutes. Kai-Petteri Hämäläinen had been lying in the middle of that glass box for several minutes, fighting for his life, and no one had noticed.

  ‘He was lying sort of … perfectly peacefully. He looked at us and just nodded.’

  ‘We ran to the doormen, and they called the emergency doctor. And a little while later everyone in the building seemed to know. Suddenly they were all there.’

  ‘Try to concentrate on the people you saw. Was anyone among them who doesn’t belong here? Or maybe outside in the park, maybe you saw someone through the windows while everyone was waiting for the emergency doctor …’

  They shook their heads. ‘There wasn’t anyone there,’ said the younger of the two women. ‘First there was no one there, then crowds of people. But no one I specially noticed.’

  Her colleague nodded in agreement.

  Joentaa thanked them. The two women got to their feet and stood there indecisively, looking around and apparently not sure what to do next. Like most of the people in the room. A curious reversal of circumstances, thought Joentaa. The investigators were asking cogent questions, while the employees of the TV station, who spent their time devising new formats and new ways of presenting life’s disasters, had run out of answers.