The Winter of the Lions

by Jan Costin Wagner

  ‘Which is?’ asked Sundström.

  ‘That Hämäläinen’s still alive.’

  Sundström nodded.

  ‘The murderer obviously wasn’t disturbed. So why didn’t he … well, go ahead and finish the job?’ said Joentaa.

  Sundström’s mobile rang. He took the call, immediately making a face. Probably Nurmela again. Sundström took pains to sound self-controlled, and reported on the planned course of inquiries for tomorrow. ‘Yes,’ he said after a while. ‘Of course. As you are aware, I have been doing work of this nature for several years. Yes. That’s what I said. I really could not care less what you think about it.’

  Joentaa picked up his mobile and rang his home number. He got the manufacturer’s standard message. Larissa wasn’t there, or she was asleep, or she just wasn’t answering the phone. He tried again. ‘I’ll be in touch tomorrow,’ he said finally, and cut the connection.

  Sundström too had ended his conversation. He was muttering curses to himself. Then he abruptly leaned back, suddenly looked relaxed, and said that he and Marko Westerberg had already settled where Hämäläinen should go.

  Joentaa looked at him enquiringly.

  ‘Hämäläinen has to get away from here. If something else happens to him we might as well all pack our bags and emigrate.’

  Joentaa nodded.

  ‘As soon as he’s able to leave the hospital we’re taking him to North Finland. Away from the scene here. His family can go with him. There are two officers on security duty at Hämäläinen’s house already, making sure nothing happens to his wife and daughters.’

  ‘Have you discussed this with him?’ asked Joentaa.

  ‘Discussed what with whom?’

  ‘Hämäläinen. About spiriting him off to North Finland.’

  ‘There’s nothing to discuss,’ said Sundström. ‘Now, tell me about that idea of yours.’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘Your outlandish idea. Would you care to pass it on?’

  ‘Er …’

  ‘You do remember, don’t you? You were saying something about a way-out idea.’

  ‘Yes. I don’t know if I can put it into words.’

  ‘God help us,’ said Sundström.

  ‘I was … I was thinking of Patrik. And how we found him. I thought right away there was something wrong. A picture that didn’t fit with the reality.’

  Sundström looked at him hard.

  ‘Do you see what I mean?’ asked Joentaa.

  ‘I’m trying my best,’ said Sundström.

  ‘The key is that TV programme. The discussion between the three of them,’ said Joentaa.

  Sundström did not respond.

  ‘I don’t think we’re going to find a rational motive, and that’s why nothing we’re doing at the moment gets us anywhere.’

  Sundström looked past him and seemed to be focusing on a distant point.

  ‘I have the DVD with me,’ said Joentaa. ‘In my rucksack. I could watch the interview again.’

  ‘Do that,’ said Sundström, standing up. ‘See you tomorrow morning. Breakfast at seven. Press conference at eleven. Nurmela insists that I’m to sit on the platform this time. After that it’s our date with the Institute of Criminal Technology, among other things about the tread of the tyres. But our colleague at the Institute doesn’t hold out much hope of results there. With a little luck it may narrow the circle of suspects to a few thousand. Sleep well. And don’t drink too much.’ Sundström turned away. ‘Or at least not so much that people will notice in the morning,’ he murmured as he left.

  ‘Sleep well,’ said Joentaa, but Sundström was already out of earshot. Joentaa saw him get into the lift. The doors closed, and Joentaa sat in the silence and muted light of the lobby. Now and then members of the hotel staff hurried by. A young woman was standing at the reception desk bending over some papers. He thought of the DVD in his rucksack.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he called to the woman.

  She looked up. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Do you have a DVD player available? Or a laptop would do.’

  ‘Is the TV programme that bad?’ she asked.

  ‘Er … no. It’s just that I have to watch a DVD.’

  ‘Or we have PAY-TV, if you …’

  ‘It’s a particular DVD I need to watch,’ Joentaa said. ‘Now.’

  The woman shook her head, and Joentaa stood up, went over to the reception desk and took his police ID out of his trouser pocket. ‘I’m a police officer, and you would be doing me a great service,’ he said.

  The woman looked at his ID first with a wry smile, then frowning. ‘Well, of course that’s no problem,’ she said. ‘There’s an Internet terminal next to the breakfast room, with CD drives. I’ll have to unlock the door for you; we lock it all up overnight.’

  ‘That would be kind,’ said Joentaa.

  The woman went ahead, opened the door, and Joentaa thanked her. The flat screens and computers were lined up in front of unsuitable high bar stools. Joentaa sat down at a computer a little way to one side of the others, turned it on and put the DVD in the drive. The theme music began, and a dynamic female voice announced the guests on the show that evening. For the first time Joentaa listened carefully to what she was saying about them, Patrik Laukkanen and Harri Mäkelä. The lords of death. Then the picture of Kai-Petteri Hämäläinen came up, sitting at his desk. And to friendly applause Patrik Laukkanen came on stage. Laukkanen, talking about his work. Entertaining, witty, Heinonen and Grönholm had said, and they were right.

  This was a different Laukkanen. A Laukkanen well aware of the importance of the moment and the public nature of his appearance. It was a barely perceptible change, although you couldn’t miss it, and it was of no significance. Just an ordinary observation. Someone appearing in public changed, reverting to his usual self later.

  Joentaa heard Laukkanen’s voice, that imperceptibly changed voice. The pictures on the screen flickered, the voices merged, and Joentaa stopped the disk, went back to the beginning and ran it again and again.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw the young woman from reception coming to the doorway from time to time, apparently asking him something. He did not react. He didn’t hear what she was saying. She disappeared and returned after a while. Then she disappeared again.

  Laukkanen talked. Mäkelä talked. Hämäläinen steered the conversation. Cloths were raised and lowered again. The audience clapped. A comic came on stage. Joentaa went back to the beginning of the disk and watched the recording yet again. There was an idea in there that he couldn’t pinpoint.

  The woman from reception was standing beside him, talking to him. A cloth was raised, then lowered again.

  ‘Stop,’ said Joentaa.

  The woman retreated.

  Joentaa pressed the Pause key.

  ‘I’d be grateful if you could …’ the woman began.

  ‘Stop,’ said Joentaa, and he looked at the frozen picture flickering slightly on the screen.

  36

  KAI-PETTERI HÄMÄLÄINEN LAY on his back. First the day and then the night seeped away around him.

  The young doctor or the nurses came in to check up on his condition. They smiled gently and looked at him as if he were a child.

  Irene sat beside his bed, holding his hand, was silent for a long time, said the twins sent him their regards.

  ‘Sounds kind of formal,’ he said.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ she said.

  From time to time one of the smiling nurses topped up the tubes surrounding him with fluids, and he asked Irene if she remembered Niskanen.

  ‘The cross-country distance skier?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Of course,’ she said.

  ‘Do you know what he’s doing these days?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Irene.

  ‘I wondered what’s become of him.’

  Irene said no, and went home. To the twins and her sister Mariella, who was being kind enough to look after the girls.

&
nbsp; Sitting at a table. Drinking coffee. Walking down a corridor. A shadow, a stabbing feeling. A numb, damp sensation in his lower body. Pain turning in on him.

  Irene had kissed him quickly on the mouth before she went, and the doctor checked the various items of apparatus. ‘Sleep well,’ he said finally.

  ‘You too,’ said Hämäläinen.

  A young nurse emptied the bedpan, an older nurse checked his dressings.

  He was not to do anything but lie on his back, the doctor had told him earlier that day, if possible without shifting at all to right or left.

  He had lain on his back without moving, and asked the doctor checking the apparatus whether he remembered Niskanen.

  ‘The cross-country skier?’ the doctor had asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ the doctor had replied.

  ‘Do you know what he’s doing these days?’

  The doctor didn’t know.

  He wondered which of the recorded programmes they had run. At 22.00 hours. Or maybe not until 22.15, if the attack on him had been a major item on tonight’s news. As he suspected, as he strongly suspected it had. Maybe they had ended with his interview with Niskanen. It was long enough ago to bear repeating.

  In neighbouring rooms people were shouting. Loud enough for him to hear them. He saw nurses and doctors scurrying past his window. First in one direction, then in another. He heard discussions going on, but he couldn’t concentrate on the words. The words hovered above him.

  ‘There’s a lot going on today,’ said the younger nurse, topping up one of the tubes.

  ‘Is it night yet?’ he asked.

  ‘More like early morning. Three o’clock.’

  He asked her if she could remember Niskanen the cross-country skier.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Everyone knows his name.’

  ‘Do you know …’ he began.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Oh, never mind,’ he said.

  37

  KIMMO JOENTAA TOOK the DVD out of the drive, switched off the computer, left the receptionist there and went to his room. He dropped on to the smooth white bed and thought for a while.

  He hesitated briefly, then called Enquiries, but he got nowhere with his question. He took the list containing the phone numbers of the central investigators out of his rucksack. There were three numbers by Westerberg’s name: office, mobile and home. He tried the home number.

  After a few seconds Westerberg picked up the phone, sounding considerably more alert than during the day. Joentaa explained what it was about.

  ‘Vaasara. The puppet-maker’s assistant?’ asked Westerberg.

  ‘Exactly. Do you have his number? He lived with Mäkelä, but there’s no entry in the phone book under either name.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Westerberg. ‘Just a moment.’

  Joentaa heard a woman’s voice in the distance, and a rustling, and Westerberg murmured something not meant for him. Then he was back on the line. ‘Got it,’ he said.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Hm. Ready to write it down?’

  Joentaa got out a pen and noted down the number that Westerberg dictated to him. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘You’re welcome. Listen, Kimmo, why …’

  ‘See you tomorrow,’ said Joentaa, and broke the connection. There was no time to formulate his idea for Westerberg when it still eluded Joentaa himself.

  He rang the number on the piece of paper and waited. He let the phone ring for several minutes, until Vaasara picked it up.

  ‘Yes … hello?’

  ‘Kimmo Joentaa from the Turku CID. I came to see you with two of my colleagues.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘I have to ask you something, something that strikes me as important, that’s why I’m ringing so late at night.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘It’s about the puppets.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘About the process of making them. What does a puppet-maker use as a model?’

  ‘As a model?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I … excuse me, but I …’

  ‘What serves you as the model? You make exact copies. So what are they modelled on?’

  ‘Well …’ said Vaasara.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Various things. It also depends on the way you go about making a particular puppet.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘A puppet-maker commissioned to provide copies of dead bodies is well trained in human anatomy, of course. He needs that training for making other … well, normal puppets. And for copying corpses we use various sources. For instance, we’ve often used police literature. There are textbooks for trainees at police colleges, showing different kinds of deaths in great detail …’

  Joentaa nodded.

  ‘We work with the Forensic Institute in Helsinki, and the Faculty of Medicine at the university … we attend autopsies, and besides his craft training Harri also had diplomas in chemistry and biology, he … he was brilliant.’

  Joentaa nodded. ‘I meant something else,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ asked Vaasara.

  ‘Is it possible that someone related to a dead person could recognise that person, the one he’s mourning for, in one of your puppets?’

  Vaasara said nothing.

  ‘Do you understand?’ asked Joentaa.

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘That’s not possible,’ said Vaasara.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We don’t copy real dead people,’ said Vaasara.

  ‘But you use photos as models. Photos from police textbooks, for instance.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Vaasara.

  ‘Well then?’

  ‘We use photos, yes. Harri more than me. Harri had whole data banks of such photographs, the Internet is full of them. Drowned bodies. People killed in various different ways, shot, run over, mutilated. Corpses in progressive stages of decomposition.’

  ‘Then we agree,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘No,’ said Vaasara. ‘We use photos and copies just as we use our knowledge of chemical and biological processes and above all, of course, our craft skills to make puppets. Not real people.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning that the real model, if there is one, doesn’t look like the puppet that is our end product.’

  Joentaa closed his eyes and felt the vague, outlandish idea take ever more concrete shape the longer Vaasara tried to convince him of its impossibility. Vaasara did not sound upset or offended, he was answering the questions calmly, in a drowsily abstracted way, and did not seem to understand what Joentaa was telling him.

  ‘The faces,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘Faces?’ asked Vaasara.

  ‘The puppets’ faces. Who is used as a model?’

  ‘Which faces did you say?’

  ‘The faces of the puppets,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘Oh, the puppets don’t have any faces. Usually they’re just blank surfaces, because when we make puppets for films, their heads aren’t shown.’

  ‘Sometimes you see the heads.’

  ‘Yes, true, you do. But as a rule then they’re unrecognisable … just raw flesh, or scraps of skin, or bloated …’

  ‘That’s not quite accurate,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘Hm … well, sometimes there are real faces, but they’re the faces of the actors. We even made one of a dead Hollywood star once. It was used as a running gag in some silly comedy.’

  ‘No, what I mean is the puppets in that talk show with Hämäläinen … they have faces.’

  ‘Hm … no, I don’t think so,’ said Vaasara.

  ‘Yes, for instance the victim of that air crash. The puppet’s face was even shown in close-up for a few seconds.’

  ‘Air crash?’

  ‘Didn’t you see the programme?’

  ‘No, I was in the States working on a project at the time.’

  ‘Well, you see the face …’

  ‘
You say an air crash; I don’t think there’d be much of anyone’s face left after that.’

  ‘You see the face. Of course it’s … well, badly injured, and …’

  ‘Like I said, a mass of flesh with bloody streaks all over it, bloated … certainly unrecognisable. Maybe that one was modelled on Harri himself.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Sometimes Harri gave the puppets his own face when he was making them. For – well, for fun.’

  Vaasara sounded sad as he said that, and Joentaa felt exhausted. ‘The face I’m talking about wasn’t Harri Mäkelä’s face,’ he said.

  ‘I’m only saying that sometimes Harri …’ Vaasara began.

  ‘No. I don’t think we’re getting anywhere,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘Well …’ said Vaasara.

  Joentaa ended the call.

  He put his mobile down on his bedside table and sat on the bed for some time.

  He thought of the face he had seen.

  The face of a dead man who had no face.

  The face of a dead man who wasn’t dead.

  He thought of the blonde woman, the stranger in his house, and didn’t understand why he missed her.

  After a while he closed his eyes, and seconds later fell into a sleep as vague as the pain and dizziness in his head.

  29 DECEMBER

  38

  KIMMO JOENTAA WOKE up shivering and with a sense of knowing what he wanted to do next. He went down to the breakfast room. Sundström was sitting, lost in thought, in front of a cup of coffee and a bowl of cornflakes.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Joentaa, sitting down beside him.

  ‘Morning,’ said Sundström.

  ‘I’d like us to approach this investigation from a new angle,’ said Joentaa.

  Sundström looked up.

  ‘I don’t think there’s any rational motive. I think it’s a motive by association,’ said Joentaa. ‘Something to do with that TV programme.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Sundström.

  ‘I think the murderer was … was traumatised by the programme, felt it was some kind of attack on his peace of mind. That would explain the fury that seems to be behind the whole thing.’

  He looked for signs of mockery or scepticism in Sundström’s eyes, but found none.